Step away from the kitchen, right now

You know when you think 'there's all sorts of crap in my freezer, why don't I go all Iron Chef and see what I can make with it?' Well, that happened this week, and it wasn't all good.

My clearing out frenzy resulted in one of the weirder plates I've eaten in recent times, but I thought I'd post it for amusement value. Here's a couple of beets I defrosted earlier and arranged into this jaunty fan salad thing. It tasted fine, but you can't really go wrong with roasted beets. You can even put beetroot in cake and it's nice, so I'd have to foul up things up pretty badly to not be able to eat one slice on top of the other.

As for the other thing, I'd love to tell you a) what it was and b) I was drunk when I made it, but nope, I think I was just hungry and desperate and I've no idea what I was thinking. It's a masala roti type thing with some leftover salad in it - roasted peppers, chick peas, salad leaves and know knows what else.

It looks alright doesn't it? It wasn't. It was less than the sum of its parts. Masala rotis are best saved for curries.

Still, what better to go with clearing out old food from the freezer than going a bit mad with all the good new stuff that spring's brought in. Yes! It's gorging time for anything new season, pointy and green: roasted asparagus, purple sprouting broccoli, and wild garlic. I love spring, it brings an abundance of some of the best veggies of all time.

Here's the rest of that yellow beetroot coupled with some lovely pointy green things and cashew cheese from the back of the fridge. I could eat this pretty much every day. In fact, I pretty much will do until asparagus is out of season (Dear Mother Nature, please don't let that be soon, love Flicking the Vs x).

Yep, while asparagus is cheap at the markets (and not air-freighted in from Peru), it's going into everything. Like chick pea scramble.

I love chick pea scrambles. They're like a blank canvas that you get to paint all over with veggies. I think if you take a serious peek at that scramble, you'll see a bit of wild garlic in there. I wasn't joking when I said I'd been eating these veggies almost every day (Dear Mother Nature, leave us the wild garlic next to the asparagus for a while, would you? Thanks, Flicking the Vs x).

No spring stuff in this brunch type dish, but lots of green stuff nonetheless. And note the avocado fan attempt here - I'm just trying to impress you by slicing my avocado funny.

Here's a bit of marinated tofu, snuggling up to its new avocado best friend, all sitting on a sun lounger of English muffin and spinach. Note the huge lump of ajver - thanks to Maud at Food Feud for reminding me just how much I love that stuff. I think it's because it's like the Swiss Army Knife of jarred sauce - you can use it for so many things. It's a dip, a tofu topping, a sandwich filling and a pasta sauce all in one. 

You know I can't go too long without cooking up something sweet, and thanks to find some scarily speckled bananas in the fruit bowl, it was time for banana bread. 

Oh banana bread, why don't I make you all the time? You're almost no effort to cook, you taste amazing, and you freeze really well. If there's every any left to freeze, of course. Banana bread is one of those cakes for all seasons as well - you can have it with a cup of tea in the afternoon, or a couple of slices for breakfast. There's not many cakes you can say that about.

(Side thought - when I lived in France many years ago, you used to be able to buy sponge cakes sold as a breakfast food. They were known as 'le cake'. I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine that, but if anyone could confirm, that would make me rest easy in the knowledge I've not lost my marbles in my old age.)

And from the readymade pile, a vegan Wagon Wheel! I love the variety of weird and wonderful things people have veganised. I salute you, Ananda Foods, for making the Wagon Wheel vegan. It's so cute - I love the little Alice in Wonderland inscription. I think the fluffy mallow bit has got a slightly weird texture, but the biscuits were delicious and I'd eat this whole thing a million times over.