VIRGINIA Woolf wrote many fine lines, but a sentence that particularly resonates with me is, “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

I very much took this to heart this weekend and dined with joy and pure, unleashed and unabashed gusto. I started by making Nigella’s Chocolate Guinness cake from her Feast cookery book.

Any recipe which has Nigella’s name attached, in my experience, is an absolute guarantee of enjoyment.

The cookery books of hers that I own give testament to many satisfying meals by nature of the chocolate smudges and saucy smears that mark the pages and the many turned-down page corners and scrap of paper bookmarks slipped in throughout.

The Chocolate Guinness cake is, like Ireland’s muchloved drink, comprised of a frothy layer of cream nestled on top of a dark, damp mass of pure pleasurable ambrosia.

I also cooked a dish from Sabrina Ghayour’s ‘Simply’. Chicken cooked with honey, cinnamon, rose harissa.

It was sprinkled with a crunchy topping of sesame seeds and crushed pistachios winking their green eyes at me as though flirting.

Spicy, sweet, soft this has now become our new favourite dish and indeed not 24 hours later, my daughter asked if we could have it again for dinner.

I said alas no, but only because I had popped to Thompson’s butchers in Penarth and bought thick rib eye steaks.

I must pause to praise Thompson’s for their cheery service and purely personally my opinion that their lamb shoulder steaks are the sweetest and most succulent I have had, quite possibly ever.

I cooked the rib eye a bit beyond blue and made a mustard sauce of Dijon and wholegrain. Well rested then snuggled on the plate next to thick cut chips, is there a more pleasurable way to spend a Saturday evening in lockdown January?

On to Sunday and after waking early to sneek-a-peak at snow, we headed out for a walk. The snow didn’t stick around as long as the brilliant blue sky and a low sun that quick stepped across the water and left in its wake dapples of gold. Once home with flushed cheeks and chilly toes, we had bacon and egg sandwiches in sourdough.

Sunday evening it was comfort food from Italy as we curled up with a big bowl of lasagne. I always think of my friend Alex whenever I cook it as it’s her favourite. At this time it feels more poignant as she lives four hours away and I haven’t seen her in far too long.

I went to bed thinking of the marmalade I would have for my breakfast, made by my brother-in-law, gin-maker and preserve producer extraordinaire. We may not be able to sit in restaurants or be cooked for by friends and family right now, but there can be abundant joy in the cwtch of our kitchens.