Rice, spinach, bacon and onion

Some meals are carefully planned in advance, shopping lists written, ingredients bought, anticipated before and lingered over afterwards. Other times things - work, seeing friends, studying, boring domestic chores - get in the way and you have to feed yourself from what you have already languishing in the fridge.

Not that this is a worse way to feed yourself. I think one of the most important aspects of cooking is learning how to make a meal from what you have, rather than being only being able to follow a recipe and having to go to the shop if you're missing an ingredient. When you cook from what you have to hand you experiment, try things you wouldn't otherwise, and discover new combinations. It's cooking off piste, maybe scarier to begin with but ultimately much more satisfying.

I find it helps that I tend to cook like this for myself or maybe one other person. Cooking alone I don't feel the pressure to come up with something with a wide appeal, I can make some variation on fried vegetables with fish sauce again, or whatever suits my mood. (However, I don't understand why everyone doesn't love fried cabbage, especially with chilli, garlic and fish sauce. Their loss, I suppose.)

This concoction was the result of what I could find in the fridge and that fact that I had some spinach that needed using up. I was particularly pleased by the colour combination here: the bronzed pink of the lardons, the green of the spinach and the violet of the onions. All quantities are, as ever, approximate - use what looks right to you, or what you happen to have to hand. If I'd had either I might have added a sprinkling of toasted pine nuts or a poached egg

100g chopped smoked bacon or lardons
olive oil
1 red onion
1 small bag of washed baby spinach - about two large handfuls

Fry the lardons in a teaspoon of oil until they're browned then add a sliced red onion and turn the heat down. Leave it to soften, stirring every now and then and adding a drop of water if it looks like it might stick. When the onion is sweet and transluscent throw in the spinach and stir until it has wilted. Serve over rice with a teaspoon of butter stirred through it. Makes enough for one greedy person.

Green pie

It is a familiar situation: I had decided to take food to work rather than buy it at the overpriced canteen, but it was getting late and I couldn't find anything in the house I would have wanted to eat the following lunchtime. All I could find was some eggs and salad, and although egg salad would do in an emergency, I wasn't feeling excited by it.

Then I remembered some spinach and peas in the freezer, and that with some flour and butter I could make pastry. Spinach and pea quiche it was, then.

I make fairly awful pasty. This doesn't seem very fair when my Mum makes some of the best pastry I've ever tasted. Maybe pastry-making ability skips a generation, like twins. So I crumbled the butter into the flour, trying to think light thoughts while I did it, then slowly mixed in some cold water.

While that rested in the fridge I put a handful of frozen peas and four spheres of frozen spinach into a pan with a lump of butter and put it over a low heat to warm through. Rather than rolling out the pastry I'd heard of people just pressing it out in the pan with their fingers until the bottom and sides were covered evenly. This was easier than it sounds, and more fun than struggling with a rolling pin!

Two beaten eggs were mixed into the pea and spinach mixture along with a teaspoon on pesto and a tablespoon of crumbled Lancashire cheese. This went into the pastry case and I intended to bake it for about forty minutes, but got distracted and eventually retrieved it after about an hour. Amazing it wasn't burned and I think the firmer texture made it better suited to being shaken about in a box on the way to work.

A slice of this, with some green salad and sun-dried tomatoes (halved cherry tomatoes, tossed in oil, in the oven on gas mark one for five hours) made a really satisfying lunch that was far better than anything on offer in the canteen. Next time I might not bother using any peas though as they didn't add much.