A shrub is really just fruit that has been macerated in sugar and vinegar, the fruit yields its flavour and juices, mixes with the vinegar and sugar and once strained and left for between a week to 6 months, creates a sort of juicy, tangy cordial. Enjoyed neat (especially added to cocktails) or topped up with lots of fizzy water it makes one of the most thirst quenching drinks out there.

Before the head of broccoli is fully formed, great handsome leaves grow up in a protective circle all about the head. By the time it’s fully formed the leaves are vast and drooping, their raison d'être is finally met and its the hour to collapse with exhausted relief. The sole purpose of these leaves cannot have been just to protect the head they guardedly wrapped around. The leaves are strong and handsome, surely full of the very same goodness as the broccoli itself, these sweet, creamy leaves should be celebrated in their own right.

Never without, always within, alioli with any herbs we can forage is a constant somewhere in our fridge. It’s a simple mayonnaise with a little garlic and the combined flavour of one or many soft leafed herbs – dill, parsley, coriander, chive, tarragon, basil, chervil or mint. I like it best with every single one, then pimped with a big spoon of Dijon or English mustard stirred through.

The pleasure of eating ones own pickle (eh eh) has to hark back to a primal instinct innate in all of us to store and preserve what we find in the juicy sweet months of sunshine to enjoy when the sky outside is white and we are need.

Endless blue skies and bluster meant there was no escaping my hankering for the reassuring warmth of a cupped hand around a bowl of steamy soup.