Serving up a cold soup can seem quite an unappetising proposal - I certainly thought so. Lucky then for those around me, I am up for trying out the unexplored, and from time to time challenge my views and preconceptions. The few lovely and hot days last week saw me turn my attention to hot weather meal options.

This recipe meets many eating criteria in our household. It works both as a snack and as an ingredient in another dish. The result is crunchy, flavoursome and, of course, nutritious. We try to incorporate legumes into our meals on a daily basis, and this recipe makes it very easy.

This no-bake recipe went down a treat with Mrs Green. The combination of textures and flavours, including the addition of good quality raw cacao powder, made for a very moreish dessert. We have very loose definitions of what is considered dessert and when we serve the same, especially if, as in the case of this recipe, a dish contains wholesome ingredients. A dish that is ostensibly dessert can be served at any time during the day and in no particular order - it can be had before a main savoury dish if preferred. True to form, Little Boy Green shared his with his mother for breakfast.

I have been on the quest for finding a reliable recipe for a quick and easy veggie burger for quite some time. Many of the recipes that I have come across either seemed too complicated or for one reason or another were just not quite what I was after. Mostly, the way the burgers turned out did not merit the effort put into them, as they were too crumbly, mushy or disappointingly bland.

This recipe is for a very quick and easy ice cream substitute. Frozen bananas form the base of this recipe as they contribute a creamy texture that goes well with a number of additional ingredients. We made two versions for this recipe, one with frozen blueberries and another with raw cacao powder. Including the word banana in the title of this recipe could be off-putting for some, but please believe me when I say that it does not overwhelm the other flavours. The word dessert is just there to indicate that it is sweet, but we have this for breakfast, lunch or dinner- or as a dessert.

In our continued mission to provide Little Boy Green with an enjoyable and varied diet, I am pleased to report that he enjoyed these little patties. Without any intention on our part of deceiving him, he thought that they were cookies and, I believe, was not unpleasantly surprised when he realised that they were to a cookie what a carrot is to an orange lolly. 

Little Boy Green, F.K.A. Baby Green, has given us a lot of food-for-thought (punny?) in his very short, yet highly entertaining two years plus. In fact, his impact on our diet began months before he was born. Our tentative first steps in changing how we ate were guided by our desire to give him a strong start in life and to nourish him as much as we could. Of course, in order to do so in utero we had to nourish mommy, all the more so as she intended to breastfeed him. 

We generally consider this to be a winter recipe, but rather than rebel against the freezing cold of this spring, we have decided to embrace it (ok, not really, more like give up an unwinnable fight) and enjoy what would be an out-of-season dish if the temperatures were a little higher.