This week I decided that I needed to try and make black eye bean stew better than the one I made two weeks ago. I did not tell you about that debacle did I? I thought I would use up all the vegetables in the house and start eating black eye beans again. This was an admirable idea but once I had chopped up all the vegetables I realised that I did not have any vegetable stock cubes. Not a culinary disaster, I could have continued and things would have been just fine. However, for reasons that I just cannot explain, even now, I decided that the best thing to do was to substitute white wine vinegar for vegetable stock. Yes, utter madness. Yes.

So this black eye bean stew came out looking nice. The taste was – interesting…It was intense and saturating.

I pretty much managed to fill up all of my food containers! I knew I was sorted for lunch for two weeks. Maybe I should get a medal…I ate this concoction every day with a packet of Tilda microwave rice.

Actually not that bad. I was full every lunch time, the beans provided much needed sustenance after a full morning clinic.

However, with the beans due to run out I thought I ought to try again. So this time I bought some vegetable stock and decided to use peeled plum tomatoes as the base, just as I have grown up with. I put two cans of two peeled plum tomatoes, two onions and two red peppers in a blender. I has soaked a cup of black eye beans for 24 hours. I added all of this, four chopped up potatoes, two bay leaves, 10 cloves and some paprika and salt and let it cook overnight. The result was really tasty. Nacho has even polished off two of the seven portions, leaving me enough for lunch every day next week.