Okay, it’s not quite 10am on Wednesday. Maggie has long ago left for work, fuelled by my fresh hand-squeezed orange juice – navels are still in season, just – and a short black coffee; the pots and pans from yesterday’s cooking have been washed and dried; a load of towels, washed and on the line; my hair washed, for good measure; and a simple apple cake baked and on the cake rack.

We have a busy couple of days ahead. Maggie will be serving lunch tomorrow to a group of friends she gained from a previous job. I will give her a hand to prepare individual smoked trout and spring/green onion filo tarts before I head off to the other side of Melbourne to catch up with a mate from my enviro-activist years. Bro and his wife have made their lifestyle better than carbon neutral, including solar power, rainwater tanks and an electric car. I have been tempted by the offer of a photo-op with the car and the apple cake is my way of saying “well done”!

Meanwhile, I am editing the drafts of my father’s memoirs. The task of making them coherent and printable is close to overwhelming.

So, who knows when I will have time to share some more recipes? When I do, here are some of the dishes I will share:

Navarin of lamb, Monday evening’s dinner

Pasta with tuna, rocket and preserved lemon, my light lunch on Tuesday

Chocolate, almond and hazelnut torte, for Maggie’s guests on Thursday

Here also is the simple sauce of cooked and reduced tomatoes that Maggie makes for using with dishes such as veal parmigiana, which we ate for dinner last night.

And tonight we will be going seriously retro, even by our baby-boomer standards! We will be preparing a meal with steak diane as its centrepiece.

Finally, the opinion of one of our regular recipe testers on her bowl of the cream of white asparagus soup: “I was momentarily transported to heaven.” Nice one, Janet.