Had a culinary success yesterday evening entertaining a couple of our friends. I like having dinner parties, because it gives me an excuse to try and impress people with food - I wouldn't say I'm a natural, instinctive cook, but I like trying new things, and I'm building a decent repetoire.

Anyway, our guests impose an additional problem when coming up with a menu, because one of them is vegetarian. The actual problem is that Cath can't stand all the usual things you substitute in for meat as the main ingredient in a vegetarian meal - mushrooms, nuts, aubergines, butternut squash are all off list, and there's a few others that she doesn't really like.

So, we had a warm salad of chargrilled leeks and red onion with mozzarella and a tarragon and mustard (and some other things) dressing to start, and linguine (in a a creamy sauce of parmesan and dolcelatte) with feta stuffed roasted figs - ours were wrapped in parma ham - as a main. It worked really well, and there were excellent reviews.

I must remember to have more dinner parties.