Lunching on lentils in the holidays

During the holidays having people in the house every day - namely my husband and children - I have to think about lunch in a more formal way.

When alone, I usually rustle up some avocado toast or a biscuit and fruit. I rarely bother to actually make anything which involves excessive cutting or seasoning, mostly because I eat breakfast at 10 and only get hungry again around 2 and then it seems too close to dinner to make a fuss.

But when Gareth is home I will make us lunch. Around noon he gets hungry and starts pacing, slicing onion to eat standing up in the kitchen with picky little bits of cheese and so I think about eating myself. I also find people standing up to eat irritating - if you're going to eat, sit down for goodness sake. I am not however content with a corner of cheese. We always have nice things in the fridge and cupboard, so I challenge myself to create something easy but tasty - the two necessities of a good lunch.

This puy lentil salad is made with those pre-cooked lentils you can buy, not the mushy tinned variety, but the vacuum packs - and are perfectly nice for a quick family lunch.

I chopped up some sundried tomatoes and red onion, quartered and halved hard-boiled eggs and added a mixed leaf bag we had (it had those fine matchsticks of beetroot in it, so grated raw beetroot would be lovely if you have none in your bag). The dressing was simply cider vinegar, sea salt, a little whlole grain mustard and extra virgin olive oil. I think it could have done with lashings of chopped curly parsley (my new favourite herb - so much more cinnamon-ny than flat leaf) but we had none. You could also add toasted walnuts.

I put some flat tortilla breads in the oven with garlic and oil and a sprinkle of this Italian seasoning for fish I bought in Lidl in Sicily (it is a truly beautiful mix of dried oregano, rosemary, salt, marjoram, fennel, thyme and coriander).

And voila! A holiday lunch.