It’s finally the official ‘end’ of the Marmalade year for me, and as I’m one of the patrons and judges at the World’s Marmalade Festival held in Cumbria every February, the beginning of my year gets taken over by it. Fortnum & Mason held this grand breakfast for the winners of the Artisan Producer category last Monday and it was loud with chat.

I’ve been experimenting with a bread machine, a Panasonic, trying to work out whether it’s a dependable piece of essential kitchen equipment or if it’s another gadget like the juicer and the yoghurt maker that sounds like a good idea at first  - “just imagine, fresh bread in the morning” – but actually becomes another needy machine that has to be understood, tweaked, waited patiently over and cleaned in the name of simplicity and ease. I’m getting to the limit of my machine tolerance, so David has taken over and started writing his own bread recipes for it while I’m working through bread machine trials of different breads and dough for a review we’ll publish later.