The Cupboard Was Bare; Recipes for the Tighfisted. 3: The Rainy Day Cook

Lunchtime on a stormy Monday, rain and hail lashing the windows and high winds hurling wheelbarrows and watering cans across the road outside. The News is full of the devestation of our coastal towns, and I'm seriously worried about the rabbits. You think I'm going out to buy lunch - or indeed dinner?

So, to the fridge. Yesterday's lunch for 3000 has (again) cleared it out, but there's a potato, a couple of leeks, a manky old carrot and a sprouting red onion. To me, that's a steaming vegetable soup within the hour.

The man from Geeks on Wheels is busying himself with my router so I can legitimately take time off from researching the updated Jamie Oliver book I've got to finish by the end of the month and whizz up that onion, Nigella styley.

Actually, I don't know why she whizzes everything, other than to avoid the tear-jerking process of chopping. I suppose it releases the sweetness before the oil crisps the onion, and as I've run out of cinammon sticks, I'm going to need as much natural sweetness as I can get. I won't tell the kids that I've sullied their favourite toy when they make their after-school fruit smoothies.

So, the potato, unpeeled (all that insoluble fibre) and the garlic (two cloves a chilly day keep the colds at bay) is chucked into the now golden onion and its glug of olive oil, gently heated. Add the leek, chopped and washed, and jam on the lid to my heavy-bottomed Le Creuset (£10 for the 5 pan set from a charity shop) to sweat the lot while I boil the kettle for the stock.

Of course I should have made the stock from yesterday's roast chicken, but I didn't. So it's Knorr again with all its MSG. (Note to self: find an MSG-free stock that tastes as good as Knorr)

Chuck in a bay leaf (the little tree looks at me forlornly from the garden while I choose the pot of dried from the herb shelf. Those winds are 70mph, for God's sake) Add the dregs of the cinammon stick pot, season and simmer until the Geeks on Wheels man has done his thing and I can sit down in front of Jamie at Home and dream of the veg plot that I'll have when the March winds die down and the April showers put a spring back into my cookery.