January 10th - A post-coital Mango and Moroccan chickpea and spinach soup

Dear Nigel,

Sometimes it takes a happy accident to put you right about something you've been doing wrong for years. For me it was the near death of a Mango. The poor thing had been sitting there in the vegetable trug since before Christmas waiting to be pureed with passion fruit and made into a wonderful meringue roule - only it never happened, did it. I was too busy with pre-Christmas celebrations and i kept putting it off and putting it off (as you do with something you've never made before and are psyching up the nerve to attempt). So it got shelved and no one except me was any the wiser.

January dawns - time of counting the pennies and frugality - and we're eating our way through anything i can find that looks like it needs to go. The Mango sat and sat. I squashed it and it gave a dimple: EAT ME OR I DIE TOMORROW, it said. Now I've always struggled to get at a mango. That damn stone gets in the way from all angles, and, while i love the taste, sometimes i just think it's all too much like hard work. But not this little darling. It fell away from the knife with a sigh and the taste was positively orgasmic. It took a happy accident for me to realize that i'd always been struggling with a half-ripe, tense and anxious fruit; but now i had tasted the best - a relaxed, post-coital beauty that melted in the mouth. There would be no going back.

Soup today - a Moroccan chickpea and spinach soup, which i adore. It sits nicely with my hope to slim down, yet smells and tastes of exciting other worlds. You made a wonderful double ginger cake to keep out the endless drizzle. It's drizzling here too and i am very tempted to make one as well. I love the warmth the ginger gives you and it's so good for the digestion. I've been trying to persuade myself to drink more herbal tea - lemon and ginger etc. but i don't really like my ginger like that even if i know it's doing me good. It makes me miserable. Think i'll fill my kitchen with the gentle fug of baking and enjoy a piece of proper ginger cake. It will be doing me good, won't it? and i could always have a smaller piece, put it on a smaller plate, cut it with a smaller knife (or something like that)...

Martha