For lunch, we had onion and mustard seed muffins with left over vegetable soup. The muffins were excellent, but stuck to the paper cups unmercifully. Next time I will probably make them in very well buttered and floured tins instead: scraping the bottom third of the muffin off the paper with your teeth is fine for a lunch eaten at home during a brief thesis-break, but is probably not a sight for polite company.

Adapted from a recipe in Coffee and Bites by Susie Theodorou.

Preheat the oven to 180C, and butter and flour a 12-cup muffin tin.

Heat the oil in a large pan, then add the mustard seeds and cook for a minute until they start to pop. Reduce the heat, add the onions and stir through. Let them cook gently for about half an hour, stirring occasionally, until they are soft and sweet. Stir in the butter, season to taste with salt and pepper, and set aside to cool slightly.

Sift together the flours, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Set aside a couple of tablespoons of the onions, then add the rest of the onions to the flour and mix through. Now add the honey, egg and buttermilk, and stir in. The mixture will still be quite lumpy, that's fine.

Spoon the mixture into the muffin tins, filling each cup about two thirds full. Arrange the reserved onions on top. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the muffins have risen and are golden on top, and a skewer inserted comes out clean. Cool slightly before serving.

Christmas is not about stressful cooking, all appearances to the contrary. Last year the two of us ate an exceptionally enjoyable bowl of spaghetti with garlicky tomato sauce for lunch, in our warm and messy loungeroom, listening to the wind blow off the Channel and bluster against the windows, before settling down contentedly for some desultory novel-reading on the couch with plentiful pillows and cups of tea.

This year, we were invited out to E Ho to share Christmas lunch with friends, so made the pleasant 40 minute drive across the Downs, heading happily towards a meal which was a mixture of the traditional (pheasant, tiny fingerling potatoes with rosemary and sea salt, green beans) and the Mediterranean-via-Australia (grilled zucchinis and roasted capsicums). With us was the dessert, which was supposed to be chocolate mousse but had miraculously transmogrified into walnut oil and apple cake.

My eyes had been opened to the potential excellence of chocolate mousse at Hilary and Richard's place a couple of months ago, when they served one which was light and dense all at once and made me want to lick out the ramekin. Hilary generously sent me the recipe on request, and I thought it would be just the thing to make on Christmas morning and take for lunch. After the first batch seized hideously, and I'd sent Ted off to the one corner store open in the neighbourhood, which I happened to know had the very good taste to stock Lindt 70%, and I had done a bit of speedy web research into the seizing phenomenon, I thought it would be something I could possibly manage to pull off if I worked quickly and cranked the fridge right down to near freezing. After the second batch got most of the way done before seizing, I took some deep breaths and mentally flicked through my collection of tried and tested cake recipes for something which could be begun now and be ready to take with us in the car in 90 minutes. (I should mention that the E Ho posse had told me several times that if I decided at any stage that making dessert was too stressful in my thesis-ridden state, we could easily survive without. So this minor intrusion of angst into my culinary life was entirely self-generated.)

Alas, there wasn't a single cake or dessert recipe on this webpage for which I had all the ingredients, which could be completed in the necessary timeframe. My banishment of possibly stress-inducing traditional Christmas cooking from my life meant that ours was possibly the only household in the land which was not in possession of cream, cream cheese, almond meal, exotic fruits, chocolate (at least any not now in grainy, oily, post-seizure lumps in the sink), or other standard cake ingredients. Fortunately, the very first cookbook I grabbed from the shelf supplied me with a recipe which met all my requirements. My kitchen always contains fresh apples, walnut oil, pine nuts, sultanas, liquor and lemons. These were enough to produce a modified version of Nigella Lawson's apple and walnut cake, which is itself a modification of Anna del Conte's torta di mele. The batter came together in a moment; the enjoyment of working with earthy and reliable ingredients rather than tricksy and thrice-damned chocolate was uplifting. The moment of removing from the oven the beautifully domed and golden cake, surface puckered with apple pieces, was exceptionally satisfying. Almost as rewarding as cutting into it several hours later, after a wonderful lunch and a walk in the afternoon dark to see the village Christmas tree, and finding that this cake was moist, and with a gentle flavour of spice and walnut, and very good indeed. Merry Christmas, everybody.

Preheat the oven to 180C. Butter and flour a 20 cm springform pan.

Put the sultanas and grappa into a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Remove from the heat at once and set aside to let the sultanas plump up.

With an electric whisk, beat the oil and sugar together in a large bowl, then add the eggs one at a time and beat for another minute or two until it looks like a light mayonnaise. Sieve together the flour, cinnamon, bicarb soda, cream of tartar and salt, and then add to the batter and fold together with a metal spoon. Stir in the apples, lemon zest, nuts, and the sultana and grappa mixture. The batter will be fairly stiff. Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin, smooth the top, and bake for 1 hour, or until a skewer comes out clean.

Let the cake stand in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn it out and leave it to cool on a wire rack. Will shortly afterwards be able to survive carriage while wrapped in a festive red teatowel exceptionally well.

Note on modifications: The original recipe called for rum rather than grappa; for 150ml walnut oil rather than half walnut and half olive, but that's all the walnut I had and in any case I think this ratio provides a nice balance; slightly less cinnamon; and walnuts rather than pine nuts, which again was a substitution necessitated by what was in the fridge. You could use pretty much any nut of your choice, I think, or leave them out altogether.

Bless you, smoked trout, for your delicious taste, your omega oil content, and your two-minute preparation time, all of which help to keep me sane. For a quick dinner, here's a slight modification of Ruth Watson's smoked trout with rice and sesame. Boil 200 g of rice, Japanese for preference, then drain. Steam the florets from a small head of broccoli. Slap 200 g of smoked trout in the oven at 180 C for a couple of minutes (or use it at room temperature if you can't be bothered), and flake into large shards. Toss all together with some toasted sesame seeds (black and white if you're stylish), a few dashes of soy sauce, and, if you wish, a dash of sesame oil and/or a pinch of chilli flakes. Mmmmmm.

Today, I was craving a lentil stew, so tried out a recipe I remembered reading on Fae's blog (which is consistently fantastic and inspiring, by the way). I got to do the excited and self-satisfied kitchen dance when I realised that I had all five types of dal required in the cupboard, and then I was thrilled all over again by the gorgous yellow of a pot of golden lentils simmering in a turmeric broth. When the thesis is being truly horrible, minor visceral pleasures become very very important.

The resultant dal: perfect. This recipe is simple but superb. I substituted tinned tomatoes for the fresh ones originally called for, because it is the middle of winter in England, but otherwise left it just as originally dictated from heaven. I will have to investigate the originating stone tablets, aka Flatbreads and Flavors, by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid.

For those who don't keep mulitple types of dal on hand, check out the ever-useful Cook's Thesaurus page on lentils for photos of the different kinds and suggestions for substitutions.

Rinse the dal well. Bring the water to a boil in a large pot, then add the dal, stir, and return to the boil. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside, covered, for two hours. Then add the turmeric, cayenne pepper and a good pinch of salt, stir, and return to the heat and simmer until the dal is tender, about 35 minutes.

When the dal has been simmering for about 15 minutes, start preparing the chaunce. Heat the ghee in a heavy pan over medium heat, then add the onion. Fry for about 3 minutes, then add the garlic and cook a further 1 minute. Add the cumin and garam masala and cook one more minute. Add the tomatoes and cook 8-10 minutes, until the tomatoes are broken down.

Once both components are ready, add the chaunce to the dal, stir through, and cook for a further couple of minutes to let the flavours come together. Season to taste.

This is supposed to serve 4, but we were starving, and are always greedy, so we almost finished it off between the two of us for lunch. We didn't need dinner though.

Chestnut mushroom and pecorino fritatta

Roughly chop chestnut mushrooms, and fry gently in butter, stirring only very occasionally, until dark golden brown. In a bowl fork together some free range eggs, coarsely grated pecorino toscano cheese, chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley and thyme, and sea salt and pepper. Pour this over the mushrooms, give a quick stir through, then leave to cook until set on the bottom. Finish up under the grill, sprinkle with a little more chopped parsley, and eat.