Whatta man.

I want to share with you a little bit of the love I feel for Mr Bill Bryson. Admittedly not a conventional hero Bill is, nevertheless, one of my most favourite writers and he never fails to educate, entertain and enlighten me (he certainly makes it on my list of 'people I'd like to have dinner with " which I concede, from those featured on this blog alone, is stretching to a medieval sized banquet affair...)

His latest offering is not a traditional travel book, and yet it is no less educational than his previous works: 'At Home' takes us on a voyage of factual discovery around Bill's... home. We visit the scullery, the hall, the bedroom, the garden, the stairs... in each of which Bill teaches about that which we have become so blase and accustomed.

'How lovely' I hear you say, 'but what the devil does this have to do with seasonal food?' Ok I will admit it. It's got absolutely nothing to do with seasonal food. Seasoned food, however, does play a major part of the dining room chapter. Ever wondered why salt and pepper play such a pivotal role in our culinary lives? If you are anything like me, the answer is probably not. But once raised, I realised it was certainly a question that I wouldn't object to knowing the answer too.

Unfortunately the answer is not that thrilling: our ancestors worked hard to find and source these little tasty devils and consequently we will blooming well honour their efforts by having them grace every table on every restaurant from here til kingdom come. Whilst I admit I was somewhat disappointed by this revelation, Bill soon perked me up by providing a whole host of exciting seasoning facts. The best of which are:

• You only need about 200mg of salt a day: most people eat 60 times that
• The Aztecs used to get their salt by evaporating their urine. Tasty!
• An ounce of cornflakes contained the same amount of salt as an ounce of salted peanuts (just one example of how processed foods contain ridiculous levels of salt. Best shun those ready meals I say and embrace a seasonal carrot instead)
• Peppercorns are the dried fruits of the plant Piper nigrum
• Christopher Columbus was actually a complete plonker and instead of returning to Europe from his infamous voyage with spices and gold, came back with treebark and iron pyrite.

Anyway what's the point of this post? To remind you to season, season, season!!! Processed food often tastes better (at least initially) than homemade stuff because we are reluctant to add seasoning to the dish. Don't worry, the level of salt which is added to homecooking is inevitably much much less than that added to readymeals. Don't scrimp on the seasoning, trust me your taste buds will thank you for it!