We have often thought that baby roborovski hamsters look a bit like monkey nuts.

One of these things is not like the others...

Last year I planted some 'Mignonette' alpine strawberries. We only got a handful of strawberries per week last year but this year we are getting many more. Most of the time we eat the fruit on its own, with melon, or with ice cream. This week I decided to keep the strawberries in the fridge until I had enough to cook something new.

Ingredients

• 250g puff pastry, rolled out.
• 2 cups of strawberries.
• ¼ cup of light brown sugar.
• 3 tablespoons of cornflour.

Method

Mix the strawberries, sugar and cornflour together. Place in the middle of the pastry. Brush the edges with milk, and roll up, crimping the ends together. Brush the outside with milk then bake in the oven, gas mark 7, for 20 minutes.

The strudel was slightly over-cooked, thanks to me failing to start the kitchen timer properly, but otherwise it was good.

This weeks recipe came from the Mail on Sunday. When we first read it, it sounded unusual and interesting. Since we recently tried Chocolate and Beetroot Cake, we thought another strange vegetable cake was worth trying.

The cake came out quite moist and lightly spiced. We made a few slight changes, using allspice instead of ground cloves, and doubling the quantity of cinnamon. You couldn't tell it was tomato soup based unless you tasted carefully and tried to discern the flavour. If you didn't know, I don't think it would be obvious.

Earlier in the year I bought some Red Sunflower seeds from a shop called Premier Seeds Direct, off Ebay.

I planted some, along with some sunflower seeds picked from the hamster food. Both types of sunflower sprouted, but the red sunflowers grew the fastest and so far are the only ones to flower.

Both the above flowers were grown from the 'red' seeds. Some of the plants have multiple flowers, such as the one on the left where several smaller flowerheads are visible.

Some photos from this year's Festival of History.

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Some photos taken inside Bath Abbey.

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Bath has a number of decorated lions on display in the city, similar to the Cow Parade in Manchester or the Penguins in Liverpool. I took some photos while I was walking round today.

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We were trying to think of a new recipe for this week, probably involving sausages because we had some in the fridge. Emma came up with the idea of Bagel Dogs, based on Corn Dogs but with the sausage wrapped in bagel dough.

The dough was made following the same recipe as last time. After leaving the individual dough balls to rise, they were rolled out and a cooked sausage was placed on each, before being rolled up to completely enclose the sausage.

After boiling for 1 minute on each side, the 'dogs' were put on skewers and baked for 20 minutes - resting the skewers on the sides of a deep baking tray so the dogs were held above the tray while they cooked.

A cooked bagel dog on a stick.

We thought the Bagel Dogs were an original idea but according to Wikipedia, they have been around since 1943.

The pizza sauce was a home-made pesto using herbs from our garden: rocket, land cress, oregano, parsley and basil. I added finely ground pistachio nuts, mature cheddar, vegetable oil, salt and pepper.

Toppings included red onion, leek, courgette, capers, anchovies, chillies and cubes of tuna, along with the usual mozzarella and more grated cheese.

Some photos from this years festival - mainly the parade through Coventry City Centre.

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This was my attempt at recreating a Marks & Spencer dish which we ate a couple of months ago. I can't remember what the original tasted like but I was happy with the flavour of my version. A lot of our cooking is based around what we can buy reduced or on offer. The sweet potato and butternut squash came from a supermarket pack which was cheap since it was going out of date.

In a low oven (approx gas mark 4), roast the following for about 30 minutes:

• 250g sweet potato and butternut squash.
• 2 cloves of garlic (peeled but kept whole)
• ½ green chilli (chopped).
• 1 sprig of rosemary
• 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil.

When everything has cooled down, add to a food processor, along with:

• 100g cooked white beans
• 2tsp smoked paprika
• 1 tsp chopped parsley
• a pinch of salt
• ½ tsp lemon juice
• 1tsp pumpkin seed oil
• 1tsp horseradish or ½ tsp wasabi paste.

Add a small amount of water if needed, to get everything to blend to a smooth paste.

We used some of the dip as a pizza sauce, and topped it with salmon, leek and cheese.

We have a monthly cake day in work, on the last friday of each month. My contribution was this chocolate and beetroot cake:

The recipe came from the Channel 4 website. A couple of months ago I mentioned to a colleague that I had some beetroot in the garden. He sent me the recipe and said it was better than you'd expect.

The beetroot from the garden was smaller than I expected. When I weighed it, it was closer to 75g than the 250g required so I had to go out and buy some more. The supermarket didn't have raw beetroot so I got cooked instead and I don't think it had any adverse effect.

The cake was quite good, with a nice gooey texture. I don't actually like beetroot so I was glad you couldn't really taste it in the cake. I peeled all the beetroot to reduce the chance of the cake having that 'earthy' taste which beetroot often has.

Home-made Pesto Sauce

This is a version of pesto sauce tailored to the ingredients we had in our kitchen at the time. All quantities are very approximate - we didn't measure anything at the time.

• 50g of mature cheddar cheese, grated
• 1 handful of fresh basil leaves
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tbsp ground almonds
• 2 tbsp white wine.

Put the basil and the vegetable oil in a small food processor and blend to a rough purée. Mix with the other ingredients.

Chicken Mozzarella Pasta

(Serves 2)

Slice and fry 1 red pepper, 1 red onion, 2 chicken breasts and 2 cloves of garlic. Boil the pasta, then drain and mix with the chicken and vegetables. Stir in the pesto sauce followed by 125g of diced mozzarella.

On our way to the shops this afternoon, we saw someone standing on a patch of grass near the road, feeding the crows. Surely this cannot be a good idea. Feeding pigeons is a bad idea but feeding crows is worse. You really don't want crows to get used to swarming around people, expecting to be fed.

We bought the miniature whisky from the Food and Drink show last year but I didn't get around to opening it until tonight. I think this is probably the strongest whisky I have tried: at 62.8% it is over half as strong again as normal whisky.

As expected it has a bit of a kick to it but it isn't too harsh when sipped.