43:Dal and pumpkin soup, p4, and 44: Spiced roast potatoes with yoghurt and mint, p42

Dinner party with another set of girlie-friends tonight - and one is a vegetarian, whilst several of the others quite like to eat veggie food, so thought it would be a good opportunity to get some of Nigel's veggie curries out of the way - esp since T doesn't really consider a meal without meat to be a meal, or much like curries...

This soup made a very easy starter which went down well... I made it a few days before so just heated it up before serving. A deceptively mild start with a tangy kick to it, with the ginger and a little chilli not blowing your socks off, and the sweetness of pumpkin (butternut squash). Bit naughty of me but I did miss out the fried onion topping, as I had so many other recipes to juggle tonight - the kitchen is tiny, and with hardly any worksurface, so it all got a bit frantic...

The potatoes were super - lovely yellowy mildly spicy roasties with crispy oniony, garlicky, chilli bits on top, and a drizzle of homemade yoghurt and sprinkling of mint leaves on top. Definitely worth repeating in the future.

Served with the potatoes were two curries and homemade naan breads...