Spinach, feta and mozzarella croissants

I know, I know, I used a shop-bought tube of croissant dough. Don't give me that look. Have you seen how much butter goes into making a croissant? If I buy the dough pre-made I can almost convince myself that it's just bread, whereas if I made it myself I'd always be picturing that enormous slab of butter that gets pressed between the layers of dough.

Plus, you know... I'm lazy, and when you buy a tube of dough all the work's done for you.

But let's not let all that butter put us off, because we also know just how delicious croissants are. Especially when they're stuffed with spinach and two types of cheese.

Um, yeah, these might have to be an occasional treat rather than a daily lunch.

Just pop some spinach, feta and mozzarella onto the triangle of dough, and roll it from the big end all the way up to the point...

Don't be too stingy - a bit of oozing isn't a problem.

Then just bake for 10-15 minutes, and you're all done.

I'd bake a lot more often if it was always this easy.

Did you know, you're allowed to eat as many of these as you want, because despite all that butter, they have spinach in them, so they're technically a vegetable dish.

Mediterranean potato and courgette bake with pesto

This was my view for a few hours yesterday afternoon:

Lazing in the park with my boyfriend and a picnic. Absolute heaven.

All this hot weather and sunshine is making me crave vegetables. I know I eat a lot of vegetables anyway, but they're usually covered in cheese or something else that negates their healthiness. But now I'm just wanting things like this:

And I'm not questioning it because I know it won't last.

Fresh veg, layered up with a little drizzle of pesto and then baked (the above photo was pre-baking). That's it. Easy as pie.

On an unrelated note, how exactly is 'pie' the easiest thing they could think of to use in that phrase?

Post-baking:

Soft potato slices, sweet roasted tomatoes, slightly caramelised onions and tender courgette, all drizzled in rich pesto. All you need to do is serve it with some sort of protein (I had a Quorn escalope, but, dare I say it, this would go well with chicken, for all you meat eaters out there) and you're set.

This really was the perfect summer dish. And hey, if you're not feeling as virtuous as I am right now, this would be great with a bit of grated cheese sprinkled on top before baking.

Mexican inspired rice with coriander pesto and black beans

Can anyone say sunshine?!

Oh, I guess you all can. Fab.

The weather here this week has been A.Maz.Ing. Luckily I've been working the early shift for the last few days, so I've had my afternoons free to enjoy the weather. I'm glad I haven't been stuck in the airport (essentially an enormous greenhouse) every afternoon. Hellooo, sweat patches.

This Mexican inspired rice with coriander pesto and black beans was one of those meals that I didn't really have high hopes for. So it's pesto on rice - just like pesto pasta, right? Nothing special.

Oh my word, this was so so amazingly good - gooey and creamy and intensely flavourful. It was so good that I'm mentally searching my fridge this very second to figure out if I can make this again today. Damn, no spring onions.

When I talked about pesto the other day, I said that it could be made using any herb you like, not just basil. I decided to take my own advice and try coriander, and the rest of the dish followed suit with Mexican flavours - black beans and spring onions. The parmesan cheese doesn't quite fit the Mexican theme, but don't leave it out - it definitely adds to this dish.

Screw the spring onion, I'm making this again right now. My rice will just have to go un-topped.

Oreo cheesecake cookies

Sometimes I'm very easily influenced. If I see an advert on TV for a particular restaurant, I suddenly crave their food. Someone posted a picture of a chocolate cake on Facebook about 3 hours ago, and I've seriously been forcing myself not to go straight out and buy one ever since. You never know, it still might happen - it's only 10pm. Plenty of chocolate-cake-eating hours left in the day.

Occasionally though, I do give in to these temptations. When I saw these Oreo cheesecake cookies on Cannella Vita, I instantly knew that they would be made, and in my face, within a few days.

These cookies are mindblowing. Even if you can get over the fact that this is a cookie rolled in another cookie, there's still the whole idea of a cheesecake cookie to wrap your head around. It's basically three desserts smooshed into one mega cookie. Erica is a clever, clever lady.

The centres of these cookies are soft and gooey, as all cookies should be. Not only are there Oreo crumbs all over, there are chocolate chips inside as well. I know, right?

My boyfriend isn't usually particularly vocal about my cooking, but he said about these "they're amazing. Actually amazing." Coming from him, that is a Big Thing. Plus he said it the day after he'd had one rather than when he was in the middle of eating one, so he wasn't even just in mid-cookie-eating-ecstasy.

I think you might need to go and make these now.

Marinated courgette salad with goat's cheese and pine nuts

I thought I'd gone a bit mad when I posted my warm roasted chickpea and tomato salad recipe the other day. I don't eat salad. I turn my nose up at salad. I may be a vegetarian, but salad is definite rabbit food.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself dreaming of another salad, this time cold and with green stuff - you know, real salad, not a warm dish that I just call salad to make me seem healthy. I think all these early mornings must be messing with my head.
 

My only defence is that this is honestly really good. And it has cheese! Lots of cheese! See! I'm still the same person deep down inside.

And if the cheese doesn't un-saladify this enough for you, this salad would go really well with a glass of crisp white wine. You know, I'm just guessing. But I bet it totally would. I definitely didn't drink wine at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.