'I'm starving - need lunch', he says, covered from fingertip to moustache in grease. The hard wife in me ignores him. I want to say: you know where the bread and cheese are. He is more than capable of making baked beans on toast or a cheese and pickle sandwich. I think of the years I spent puzzling how Mum always made lunch for Dad - always. The man never cooked. I would never be that wife, I'd sworn, young and feminist and idealistic as I was.

But he's been rebuilding the engine of my van, I remind myself. I channel my mother. I channel my best wife, the one who recognises what my darling puts into us. I might make us dinner and do the shopping and change the beds, but he'll pick up the vacuum cleaner after spending the day digging a garden path or having his entire body leaning into the engine bay of one of our cars so we don't have to spend more than what's necessary.

I can make him a bloody sandwich.

'Go chuck your t-shirt in the bucket' I say. 'Wash your hands and make a cup of tea. I'll make you lunch.'

'Really?' he says. That's the thing about keeping him on his toes. If I don't always make him lunch, then it's a pleasant suprise when I do.

I start with frying homemade sourdough bread in butter, adding chopped garlic scapes to the pan. As this slowly fries and toasts, in another pan I add red peppers to chargrill.

I then use half of those peppers to make a kind of tapenade as the halloumi fries - olives, jalapeno, pomegranate molasses and peppers are roughly blended to make the spread that I'll add first to the cooked toast. It's good - salty, spicey and sweet, just like I like my husband.

Then it's assembly - the tapenade, halloumi, peppers and lettuce - and the plate put in front of my husband with a flourish and a kiss. I mock announce it like he's in a posh restaurant. 'Today's fare is a garlic butter smeared sourdough, gently pan fried to a golden brown...' I begin.

'This doesn't look like a cheese sandwich' he mock protests.

'It essentially is,' I say - 'the halloumi.'. And in a true wifey way, I tell him if he doesn't like it, he can shove it up where....

But I'm happy to make it. I'm happy to serve him lunch, despite my mock grumpiness.

Sometimes sandwiches just say I love you, and I appreciate you.

With Love,

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