Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

That was until I reluctantly agreed to grow some.

A neighbouring allotment keeper when I had a patch in Fallowfied some years ago persuaded me to give them a go – mainly I think because they had a reputation for being easy to grow and I’m a bit of a rubbish gardener.

They certainly did prove to be easy and surprisingly delicious. So I’ve grown them every since. In fact I seem to plant more of them every year and never tire of them – picked young and eaten within minutes of picking, they don’t even need cooking to be delicious but, if you’ve got a bit of a glut of them at this time of the year, this recipe brings out their full flavour. It’s from the fab Moro cook book but is basically a mash-everything-together recipe.

I had mine with barbequed lamb chops marinated in garlic and olive oil but they’d go equally well with other dips or any grilled meat or fish.

All you do is briefly blanch 300g of podded young beans in boiling unsalted water.
Drain and put them in the blender with a garlic clove mashed into a paste with sea salt, a squeeze or two of lemon, two tablespoons of olive oil, a sprig of chopped fresh mint and salt and black pepper to taste.

If you’ve any more broad bean recipes, I’d love to hear them.

Living it up: Trattoria al Ponte del Megio, 
S. Croce, 1666.
This is my favourite of all the places I’ve eaten out in Venice. On several visits, over several years, this friendly trattoria on a canal junction is consistently good. Weather allowing, sit outside and watch the gondaliers (sometimes noisely) negotiate their right of way along the narrow canal or simply watch the passing parade of stylish people on a night out.
The menu always includes an interesting selection of specials alongside the usual local specialities of pasta with cuttlefish or clams.
This spring visit we were lucky enough to be just in time for that fleeting delicacy – fried courgette flowers. Light and crispy with each holding just a little anchovy stuffing. Sublime! Fresh fillets of John Dory or a simply grilled sea bream followed. The vegetable portions are simply cooked – in this case spinach, carrots and ratatouille but the fact the ingredients are so fresh means everything is bursting with flavour. The house prosecco – sold by the half litre jug – is good and dry and means that wine doesn’t need to set you back too much and the hosts always offer an end of meal liquer on the house. Our meal for five with drinks, two courses and side dishes came in at 170 euros.

Can’t go wrong with pizza:Pizzeria Accademia, Rio Terra Foscarini.
Essentially a snack bar, this is worth a visit on outside seating views alone. Nestled into the great Accademia bridge, it’s easily found after a day of art and next to the vaporetto stop of the same name. The pizza is good, but in a land where all pizza is good, it’s not exceptional. What is exceptional is a front seat to the spectator sport of watching the Grand Canal traffic. Maybe Venetians find this as interesting as a day out to watch the M6 but, for us visitors, bring able to see the gondaliers plie their trade alongside the utilities of a floting city provides an endlessly entertaining and colourful backdrop to a companiable lunch or early evening. Downsides are ever present birds around the table and lack of salad accompaniment options – it’s a giant salad for approx 10 euros (with cheese?) only. Wine’s on the pricier side at 10 euros for 0.5 litres, pizza in the 10-12 euro vicinty. Cash only.

Fed up of Italian food: Chinese Restaurant, The Frari.
I realise I’m risking the wrath of a nation here but…….some people do get fed-up with pasta and pizza even on their holidays – not me of course, you understand.
I’ve picked out this Chinese because it is exceptionally good value – most dishes are around the 5 Euro mark – but also because the staff are so accommodating and helpful. They will guide your choices should you wish and have some unusual dishes such as cuttlefish with green peppercorn alongside the more commonplace.

Other bits and bobs – we had intended to eat at the Trattoria San Toma which the guide book Chow Venice recommends for its impossibly light gnocchi but, sadly on our short break, it was always completely booked out so will have to wait for a return trip to sample. If you happen to eat there please do let me know if it’s worth the wait. A couple of general points about eating out in Venice – check the cover price. Usually there’s a euro or two to add to each person’s bill but in San Marco this can be boosted up to seven to pay for the benefit of having music in the cafe!
The local drink to ask for is a Spritz bitter, a refreshing Campari based drink usually served with an olive and at three euros is a value apperitif.

Buon appetito!

It was just one of the reasons which made the East Coast the best train operator for customer experience in my opinion – the chance to escape the humdrum of a long-journey and the tyranny of pre-packaged tasteless sarnies.

Here, writer Michael Williams marks the occassion and eats in the final railway restaurant car with this audio recording for BBC Radio 4.

For the uninitiated the get togethers of tea and fabulous looking cakes take place in secret venues organised via a blog and at around 7am today she promises a radio interview to hear, “the clinking of cups and slurping of tea and lots of chatter from my guests.”

and that’s not the only appearance this week revealed on the blog;

“As a result of another exciting email I received only a few days ago, from the very nice people at Radio 4, you can hear Kerstin and I talking to the lovely Jenny Murray on Woman’s Hour on Friday 13th May – no I’m not superstitious, at around 10am live from Manchester.

“That, for now, is all I can tell you about. The rest is being kept close to my chest, after all this is the SECRET Tea Room.”

The trolley put forward which comes in on the money includes stables such as bread and pasta but also tinned soup, packets or crisps and chocolates, prompting some commenters to question the nutritional value of the offer.

One reader pointed out that, “if you learn the basics of cooking and source food at street markets where you aren’t ripped off and less tempted to buy luxuries you don’t need, then yes, you can feed a family of four.”

And I see Katie over at Leeds Grub has been doing just that by carrying out her own value for money investigation – buying some everyday foods from the market, TescoOnline and two city centre Tesco stores to compare the prices actually available to people.

TescoOnline was the only one to beat the market prices (by £1.11) but only because of a special offer on the fish and in all other categories the market proved cheaper.

It is also worth remembering that on the market you can ask for any quantity, where as the supermarkets encourage you to buy multiple packs to get the best price. This is great for families but for single people and students with small/ shared kitchens in the city centre this is far from ideal. Today on the market I saw a lady buying just a single slice of ham- no waste, just what she wanted.”

See her findings in full here.

Do you feed your family for £50? Sound easy or unrealistic? Feel free to share your thoughts below.

So I was a little surprised to receive this comment in:

“Well, it’s the 6th May 2011 and I have just replaced an old, much loved jar of Marmite with a new jar of so called Marmite. Like many of the previous correspondents, I have eaten Marmite all my life (60 years or so) and this new jar of Marmite is definitely not the same. Its paler, thinner and much less tasty. In short, its an insipid imitation of the original.”

It prompted an image of someone so irritated by the new jar of Marmite that the first thought in how to redress the problem was to turn to the interwebs and see if anyone else felt likewise and, by search, so they did!

Of course I shouldn’t have been the least bit surprised. Having long tails of content is a well-understood online concept but it did make me wonder how long the comments thread might eventually run for.

And to think about the often used newsroom phrase, “it’s not old till it’s told” or in this case “it’s not old till it’s googled”.

I’ve been following the live blog of the event here as participants from The Food Insiders’ Inquiry, the Lancashire Inquiry, the Cumbria Inquiry, the Merseyside and Cheshire Inquiry, the Greater Manchester Inquiry and the Young People’s Inquiry tackled some of the issues raised in food inquiries which have taken place over the past ten months to come up with a ‘local vision for food’.

The impact of take-aways got a lot of attention with the participants pledging to take action;

“The target here is to reduce the number of unhealthy takeaways so that means targeting local council planning departments, via councillors, because they have the power to make decisions to change things. MPs will also be targeted to address this isssue by reducing takeaways via the Localism Bill.”

In brief, the campaigns agreed after the two days were:

Education (1)- Access to healthy food education for adults and communities.

Education (2)- Better healthy food lessons in all schools.

Takeaways - Reduce the contribution of takeaways to unhealthy eating in the North West.

Advertising – Reduce the influence of junk food advertising aimed at kids, teens and adults.

Plenty more about the event and the detail of those campaigns here.

But the list also highlights some worth a try out for free. Here’s three that caught my eye if you want to shun the slebs;

• VeganYumYum mobile; lets you search, view, and organize veggie recipes from the award-winning food blog, VeganYumYum.com.
• Boskoi; The only android app to make the list is also open source and helps users map wild food available for a bit of foraging. Made by the foragers at Urban Edibles in Amsterdam Boskoi is an Ushahidi-based app that comes with a few foraging guidelines. If you don’t have an android smartphone, the service is also available on the web.
• All recipes.com dinner spinner;  Like the website, this iphone app lets you search for recipes by ingredient or time allowable or by popularity and makes the recipes sharable.

I got round to trying out the Thai Curry Kit which was offered to myself and readers of this blog recently.

And it worked out pretty well.

The resulting meal was fresh, tasty and quick to prepare. I served it with some stir-fry veg and jasmine rice

Following the instructions on the packet, it took the 15 mins they suggested it would.

A couple of things to note. I don’t like my curry red hot so I only used the suggested 2/3 of the packet of paste which was given a two chili rating. I found it quite mild and would definitely use the entire sachet next time.

I’ve never used powdered coconut before and probably added too much water.

Verdict: I’d use this again, I thought the generous serving of herbs and the small amounts of those sometimes difficult to get ingredients such as fish sauce made for an easy to achieve Thai dish. Next time, the massaman mix….