2. This evening I popped into Sainsbury’s on the way home from work – it was to be the Summertown M&S Simply Food but I changed my mind after I could only find candles in there (oddly the only thing that I couldn’t get in Sainsbury) – and impulse bought India Corn (the decorative sort) and little squashes and tiny pumpkins to make my house all nice and festive for the Autumn season.

3. Does anyone know how one would go about drying/preserving mini-pumpkins and gourd squashes -€“ I can remember one year I did it wasn’t terribly successful. Is there a technique like with drying flowers?

4. I’m really enjoying the current Jamie Oliver series, Jamie at Home – there’s more of an emphasis on ‘real’ recipes that you can actually see yourself having a go at cooking, and it’s all centred around vegetables, which of course, depending on the size of your garden you can grow yourself (I can grow some vegetables in my garden but its not ideal…). Given the predominance of vegetables it’s a little odd that most of the recipes end up being meat dishes. And here’€™s the thing, to my knowledge there haven’t been any TV series out there (or indeed books) which deal with providing exciting, easy, everyday (and special occasion) recipes for both vegetarians and meat-eaters. And yet the number of households out there where couples are of mixed persuasion, or familes with a vegetarian in their midst must be in their millions. Could this idea be the next big thing? A series that gives recipes that are exciting and scrummy and everyday but which suit both tastes…

5. There should be a fifth thing here. I think you might already have guessed that I love Autumn…

Pumpkin Harvest
Originally uploaded by shepline on 22 Oct ’05, 6.42pm PST.