Here's a quick recipe for you, lifted straight from Guardian website, and for once made with no alterations so definitely deserving of credit and a link, it's an amazing cauliflower and sweet potato curry, "Leon Gobi". I first saw it in the paper as an extract from Allegra McEvedy's new book, "Leon, Ingredients and Recipes for the Good Life". Despite it's fairly long list of ingredients, it's really easy to make, and incredibly tasty. I saw the book in the shops yesterday and I have to say it looks pretty tasty too. I wanted to hug it (erm is that it bit strange?). It's one of those big chunky books with unfinished paper, loads of beautiful retro illustrations and quirky pages with bits and pieces that you can take out. None of this really has anything to do with food and it being a cookbook I suppose you'd probably prefer to know whether or not the recipes are any good before you'd decide to go buy it. All I can say is that if this recipe is anything to go by then it definitely will be. I was too busy stroking the pages and drooling over the quirky design to actually ...

When we moved away form Manchester we put our compost bin plus all it's contents on freecycle and it was snapped up in seconds. In fact loads of people wanted it. The guy that we chose to give it to arrived with a big smile on his face, an estate car, 4 bins and a shovel. It was a smelly job, hard work too, but obviously the he knew it was worth it. An estimated 6.7 million tonnes of household food waste is thrown away each year to rot in landfill. This creates a toxic sludge and gives off greenhouse gases which contribute to climate change. As well as looking at how to avoid wasting food by your shopping behaviour and meal planning the harm caused by any unavoidable food waste (eg peelings, cores etc) could be reduced or even eliminated by composting. If you have a compost bin, or wormery your food scraps are converted into a valuable resource. The food breaks down and the nutrients they contained are put back into the soil as part of a natural cycle renewing the earth. It is a potent natural fertiliser that in large scale non-organic farming is replaced by polluting oil ...

Here's a lovely recipe for a quinoa salad I got from Scrumptious a random food blog I stumbled across while wondering what to do with the jar of quinoa that's been sitting in the cupboard for well over a year. I've been a bit scared of these small grains ever since I saw them, not sure what to do with them, how to cook them, what they would taste like blah blah blah, but it turns out they're pretty easy going little chaps and they assisted in making this very tasty, hearty but fresh tasting salad. Apparently it's very good for you too. A 'Super Grain' no less. Wooo. I wonder if that's a bit like Super Gran. There's only one letter in it, must be. Maybe super grains turn you into Super Grans?! Now, I said I got the recipe from a blog, but what actually happened was I'd seen it and decided I was going to make it after I'd been to the shops, then got part way through and realised I was missing several of the key ingredients, so I would say this was influenced by rather than a direct cover of the original. I'd also intended to ...

It's soup time, yipeeee! One bonus of it getting colder and darker is that it makes soup suddenly seem like a brilliant thing, which of course it is! I've already started cooking up a huge vats of lovely fresh soup and am very much looking forward to more to come. It really is so easy to make and far, far tastier than the gloopy gunk that comes in tins. Years ago when I was working I used to eat tinned soup quite often and Marzena, a Polish girl who came to work with us was astounded that you could actually buy soup in tins. "Soup comes in tins?... Really?... I can't believe it.... but why?". At the time I thought she was bonkers, now I feel exactly the same (about the soup/tin thing, not her being bonkers. Although actually she is a bit). Most simple soups follow the same basic idea, cook your onions off in a a little oil, or butter (nicer), add the chopped vegetables, cover to sweat for ten minutes or so, then cover with stock and leave to simmer until all veg are soft and then blitz it, maybe add a bit of cream. Lovely jubbly. While I'm on ...