We have a medium sized walnut tree in our garden and also grow some parsley and garlic. Our walnuts are a good deal smaller than those you can buy in the shop - but in our view taste better (but we are biased!). A few years ago Mrs Oregano saw a pesto being made with walnuts and parsley on a TV programme (Ainsley Harriot?). She did not write down the quantities but we managed to work out how to make it, this is what we do...

Fills a 300 g Jar (e.g. a sterilised salsa jar)

Ingredients
80 g parsley (we generally use flat-leaved but curly will work too)
50 g parmesan (or similar hard) cheese
50 g walnuts
3 garlic cloves
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
50 ml olive oil + some more for topping up the jar
50 ml walnut oil

Method
1. Wash and dry the parsley
2. Grate the cheese
3. Grind the walnuts in a food processor and add cheese, garlic cloves, salt and pepper
4. Add about 1/2 of the wild parsley and blend
5. Repeat with the remaining parsley
6. Add the olive and walnut oil about 25 ml at a time and blend
7. Put in sterilised jar and top up with oil so that the pesto is covered and close lid.

Tip
We often find that the walnut pesto sticks to the pasta in lumps when serving. To fix, add a little hot water to the pasta/pesto mix and stir.

On Easter Monday we took some visitors from the Netherlands down to the Isle of Purbeck. After a nice walk to Durdle Door and after admiring Stair Hole our guests wanted to take us out for a late lunch. Trouble was, it was already past 14:30 and I feared that the kitchens would be closed. The guests were confident - "in the Netherlands you will be served all afternoon" - and besides there was money to be made with the vast number of Easter tourists.

We tried the pub in West Lulworth - "sorry we just closed the kitchen". No joy in East Lulworth either. I thought we would have a slim chance of finding something in Wareham being the biggest Purbeck town (though hardly a metropolis!).

Before leaving home I had printed out a listing (7 pages no less!) of all the eating and watering holes in Purbeck. We duly arrived in Wareham and tried the first pub on the list..."sorry we serve food again at six". Ditto the next 2 pubs. Finally struck gold at the bar of the Black Bear Hotel who said they served food all day.

From the outside the Black Bear has an impressive Georgian facade complete with a life sized black bear on the porch. The bar was a typical carpeted hotel bar; I never get why pubs and bars are carpeted then sell beer with brim measure! I hate sticky carpets! The menu included fairly typical pub fare plus "tapas". Well, I honestly did not expect genuine Spanish tapas but the offering was fairly true to the tapas idea by offering small portions of bite-sized snacks.

We went to the beer garden which was a slightly dilapidated affair (actually that is too harsh) but provided a pleasant shade. Our waiter must have been 15 years old and while well turned-out seemed to be lacking in training. He did not seem to notice that we needed cutlery and seemed to need to make double the number of trips to the kitchen than normal. OK, I wouldn't have been better at that age...but I think I would have known that you needed a spoon to eat soup!

My guests ordered soup of the day - asparagus soup - which tasted good but which verged on being tepid... a wasted opportunity. We then shared chicken wings, plaice goujons, 'spicy' chicken and deep-fried brie. The chicken wings were tasty though served with a flacid lettuce leaf - why use a flacid lettuce leaf which adds no value?...or why put hot food near a leaf that will spoil with the heat? The plaice was pleasantly fried, and the deep fried brie too...also served with a very good chutney. The 'spicy' chicken seemed a fairly bland breaded deep fried chicken piece again on a flacid lettuce leaf; the 'spicy' label was not merited.

The bill did not burn a hole in the pocket...sorry I do not remember the amount. Food was of reasonable quality and good value for money. If they think that adding salad leaves to hot food enchances the presentation then they should try rocket rather than lettuce.

I like coleslaw but find many supermarket offerings dissatisfying (though I occasionally buy healthier ones). Raw white cabbage (and other veg) ought to be the basis of a healthy dish but much of the British coleslaw spoils this by being laden with mayonaise. I am not a real fan of mayonaise but the main issue I have is that it makes a light, healthy dish heavy!

We have often made dip sauces for raw vegetables or potato crisps using a mixture of yogurt and mayonaise. I have preferred those dominated by yogurt. Mrs Oregano did the same with yogurt and these says has eliminated mayo altogether... much to my approval! Normally our kids polish it off with their main course at great speed.

Serves 4-6 (depending what you do with it)

Ingredients

400 g white cabbage
200 g carrot
100 g/100 ml greek yogurt
dash of tabasco sauce
(optional) green pepper
(optional) handful chives

Method

1. Grate cabbage, then carrots (and optionally pepper) with food processor
2. Mix with the yogurt
3. Add dash of tabasco
4. Add finely chopped chives if in season.

When we lived in Germany I loved the way venison was cooked. Despite that I never learned to cook it in that timeframe. On returning to the UK a personal objective was to gain experience with venison. Over the last couple of years I have bought diced venison in Scotland and used it in stews. Two sons love it while Mrs Oregano and my other son are not so keen.

A few weeks ago a friend from church offered me a roe deer which he had butchered and which I keenly accepted. Last Sunday I roasted the saddle for the first time.

I marinated it in red wine, thyme, garlic, juniper berries, cloves, etc. However the roasting was less than successful. I could not find a reasonably consistent set of roasting times and temperatures on the internet or in my cookbooks. It was undercooked initially and we ended up taking 30-40 minutes longer than planned.

We still have two haunches, the fillet and diced shoulder left. A brother and sister-in-law are visiting for a long weekend and he indicated a strong interest in eating venison. Unfortunately Mrs Oregano is banning venison for another week...

My wild garlic patch is flourishing...leaves that were harvested 3 weeks ago have largely regrown.

The leaves with the irregular edges were cut close to their bases some 3 weeks ago and will yield a further crop.

In previous years I have made wild garlic pesto; a simple and effective way of using the herb. (My youngest son is complaining that we have not made walnut and parsley pesto for some time but that will have to wait!).

Fills a 300 g Jar (e.g. a sterilised salsa jar)

Ingredients

80 g wild garlic leaves
50 g parmesan (or similar hard) cheese
50 g pine nuts
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
100 ml olive oil + some more for topping up the jar

Method

1. Wash the wild garlic leaves and dry them carefully (a salad spinner is a great help!)
2. Grate the cheese (I use my MagiMix food processor for this)
3. Grind the pine nuts in a food processor and add cheese, salt and pepper
4. Add about 1/2 of the wild garlic leaves and blend
5. Repeat with the remaining leaves
6. Add the olive oil and blend
7. Put in sterilised jar and top up with oil so that the pesto is covered and close lid.

OK, today it was double quantities!

When I visited Cádiz as a student I was impressed by the fried fish. After a night in a very cheap hostal I recall going to a little freiduría for a roll and fried squid in a paper cone. Fried fish is a speciality of both Cádiz and Malaga.

After our first attempt at finding tapas in Tarifa we drove on to Cádiz and found an hostal near the cathederal. We decided to try a couple of places for tapas in the evening. Our first stop was in the Plaza de las Flores at the predictably named Freiduría de las Flores. You could order fried fish from a stainless steel counter but we opted to sit outside on the terrace. We got the inevitable "no tapas, raciones" from the waiter. We then ordered 1/2 raciones of calamares fritas, pescadilla (whiting sliced across the fish and fried) and vino tinto de la casa. The fish was good but despite this place being rated in our guidebook was not the best on the trip; maybe it had been standing a while on a hotplate. Sitting on the terrace was marginally comfortable as the evening was cool. We were therefore suprised when the wine we were served was seriously chilled!

We wandered around the narrow streets of the old town ending up in the Plaza San Juan de Dios. The orange blossom there smelt great - even though I have a poor sense of smell. We dropped into a bar on the west side and asked for tapas unsuccessfully again. We were still hungry so ordered another lot of fried squid and paella 1/2 raciones. The former was very tender and very freshly fried. Mrs Oregano did not like the paella which was drenched in chicken stock. When the waiter opened a chilled cabinet for the wine Mrs O protested. However he then offered us vino naturale which was at a good temperature for a red wine; we will remember the expression next time.

The following morning we were back at the Plaza de las Flores for breakfast in a cafe before exploring the market.

The Cádiz market too had its section of fish fryers.

Our last night in Malaga also involved fried fish for me. Although I had had a fair amount on the trip, my guide said that fritura malagueña was a key speciality. We found a restaurant in a little alley to the north of Almeda Principal. The fritura was a plateful of very freshly fried fish including little prawns fried whole, anchovies, 3 small white fish, rings of squid and baby squid. The waiter warned that I had only ordered fried fish and recommended chips to go with it. That was a mistake, not because the chips were bad, but because I would have been much better off with a salad.

Well, that long weekend meant I will not touch fried fish for a while...even though it was generally very good. Next time in Spain I hope for more success finding tapas! I never found a pincho moruno.

Food shopping has changed a lot in my lifetime. When I was small there were not many supermarkets and much of the food was sold through small family-run outlets. I even remember visiting my grandparents in a small village in central Hampshire in the 1960s and there was a one-man butcher business, a two person grocer and a village post office. Most of the population worked on farms and many lived in tied cottages. Now the village is populated by rich finance people and the farmworkers commute from a nearby town. All village shops are long closed so people drive to the big supermarkets.

When in Italy I was impressed that although there are supermarkets the family run businesses still seem to thrive. Spain is similar with large supermarket chains like SuperSol and Eroski co-existing with little family retailers. We did a little shopping - mainly for lunch - in Cádiz.

We went into one "supermercado" which was a small affair but had an interesting delicatessen counter. Hams are taken very seriously and vary considerably in price. Later on our trip Mrs Oregano thought that she that the small 80 g portion of ham she had bought was expensive. We worked out it would be €70/kg!

The permanent covered market was a joy to see. It was full of little businesses each run by one to two people.

The building was organised into rows. There was a row of greengrocers, a row of butchers, a row of fishmongers, etc. We bought fruit from this seller. At home supermarkets import strawberries from Spain in order to offer them when they are not available from British suppliers. I generally avoid them as I do not think they taste good and because I do not like the homogenous year round offering of supermarkets. However the strawberries here tasted good; perhaps they lose their taste when travelling.

This butcher offered fresh meat, chorizo and hams. The produce looked very fresh and it was good to see the guy working with carcases - a change from seeing everything packaged on a supermarket shelf. In my town we have only one independent butcher, one baker and one greengrocer. Firms like Tesco have killed off the rest.

It was very pleasing to see small businesses like this thriving and competing. There were at least 5 suppliers in every section of the market.

As a teenager, I did not instantly take to either tea or coffee. Indeed I only took tea to extend the time I could stay up with my parents before being sent to bed. In my case I did not like milky drinks so did not take to either as served at home.

My breakthrough experience was on the return from a school trip (aged roughly 17) when a colleague ordered black coffee. I suddenly realised that my "taste" for coffee had been previously influenced by the milk rather than the coffee. At that stage, of course, we in the UK (in the 1970s) pitifully had little experience outside instant coffee. It took a sisterly present of a coffee filter to reveal the delights of "real coffee" a few years later.

When InterRailing in 1977 in Spain I loved the coffee. It was not only black and strong but was accompanied with a slender glass of tap water. An excellent way to wake up in the morning without drying out!

When I got to know Mrs Oregano - a non-British national - she told me she was horrified that we were an instant coffee country when most of the rest of the world used "real coffee". It did not take much convincing to avoid instant coffee and I helped found a (filter) coffee club at work.

My first business trip to Italy in 1986 provided me with my coffee reference point. At our conference we had regular offerings of deletable fresh-pressed orange juice and espresso (the best coffee I have ever tasted by then). Although at home we initially could not keep this standard it was firmly in my memory. In 1997 we purchased a Gaggia espresso machine which has subsequently died and been replaced. But Italian coffee remains forever the coffee benchmark. I have been less than impressed by Starbucks which while producing Italian-style coffee seems to burn its beans.

When we visited Cádiz on the southern Atlantic coast of Spain. For breakfast I hoped for the double espresso with tall glass of still water. What did I get? I got the best-tasting double espresso for the last year or so but pathetically no water. That had to be ordered separately. After 30 years is this a move upmarket or simply intransigence? Having noted that Spanish customers seemed to get their free water maybe we are just gullible foreigners.

I thought that the simple glass of water was a great gesture to rehydrate; without using one of the big water brands!

I hoped for a last great coffee at Malaga airport on the way home but was disappointed. It was all machine coffee that tasted like instant.