River Cottage, have built two wonderful looking wood-fired clay ovens and sited them in the grounds. Being a fan of bread-making these are most desirable!

To accommodate these they have setup more ‘bread and bake’ courses.

Take part in a course and you’ll learn how to build your own oven by hand, using local clay, before firing it up and baking fantastic pizzas and artisan breads, as well as fish, meat and veg dishes.

A days guild and bake (Hugh won’t be present) costs £150 (from July £175). Each one day course lasts from 10.00am – 5.00pm. It begins by actually making your own oven and ends with a selection of bread to take home.

The bread baking day costs £175 lasting from 7.30am – 4.45pm.

The day begins at 7.30am at the Town Mill Bakery, run by Aidan. Here, you ’ll be served toast, jam and fresh coffee, after which Aidan will talk about his theory of bread –making, taking you back to basics and explaining how each decision a baker makes, from flour and yeast to kneading techniques and the shape of the loaf, affects the finished bread.

After baking and tasting your own soda bread, you ’ll head back to River Cottage HQ to fire up the clay ovens and get some more dough rising. There ’ll be a break for a three –course lunch cooked by the River Cottage chefs, then Paul will show you how to knead, shape and bake that perfect white loaf. The day rounds off with a Q & A session fuelled, of course, by a few more baked goodies.

The next available course is Tuesday 26 June 2007 – without Hugh. This sounds better value as it includes a full meal but again, Hugh ain’t there!

What do you call people who collect pilchard tins? No idea but they exist I assure you. Food packaging design is an important facet of eating – after all if the prodcut doesn’t entice the specific consumer you are targetign isn’t going to buy.

I mention pilcard tins as someone pointed out how lovely the packaging on these tins is the paintings are by Walter Langley a local to the Cornish Pilchard Works who produce the tins. The fish are all caught locally but packaged across the Channel in Brittany at the world’s oldest sardine cannery.

Caught in the clear waters of the Western approaches using traditional techniques, the fish are caught in prime conditon. To capture the traditional flavour, they have been filleted and flash fried before being canned, with selected virgin olive oil, using techniques perfected since 1853.

Quite a few stores stock the pilchards (Waitrose/Ocado for example) at £1.19 a tin. You can also order direct at £1.50 per tin.

A great concept is Natoora – they list a variety of local, mostly aritsan, foods from across France and Italy and arrange delivery into the UK. They list over 2200 products that are sourced direct from over 160 different producers.

So on the website you can find Salers Cheese (250g £4.46) from Saint Gernim in France, Smoked Eels from Olsen Bonholm in Paris (500g £17.68) and hand-made fresh gnocchi (1kg £12.60) from Machiavelli in Italy.

The product range is wide and varied encompassing breads, cakes, meats, fish, chocolates, coffee, vegetables and fruit. A veritable online farmers market – which is exactly how they describe themselves. English, French and Italian products are all featured.

Delivery starts at £10 with a choice of delivery slots and days available.

There are several foodie clubs, accessible online, that promise regular deliveries of their wares – cheese, chocolate and of course wine – they always sound great until you come to the subscription! The Olive Oil Club promises to deliver “up to three 500ml bottles of ultra fresh extra virgin olive oil four times a year after each harvest to your door”.

Sounds good – personally sourced limited edition or small production olive oils from around the world, sent as fresh as possible soon after harvest. This service costs not far of 200 quid though! (£194.85 EURO 287.87 USD 382.88)

The club is an off-shoot of The Olive Trail a shop and internet shop specialising in all things Olive Oil. Which basically is just olive oil and some tat made from olive wood. Their shop is a stone’s throw from the British Museum. The website offers just a couple of oils though which seems disappointing.

Or Marmite Guinness! A limited edition bottle of the nations most loved/most hated spread mixed with that other love or hate it treasure, Guinness.

Available on the shelves of Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrison’s and Waitrose this ‘just in time for St Patricks’ day edition will cost £2.49 and guaranteed to be a collectors item as only 300,000 of the little darlings are being produced. Guinness Marmite is created using 30% special Guinness yeast, to give it the ‘classic Guinness flavour’.

It has been described as being “even nicer, with more depth and meatiness” or “even more disgusting with a horrid Guinness tang” – depending on your viewpoint obviously!