I don't think the garlic farmers need to start worrying yet. We cooked with the home grown garlic today. The cloves were very small - I'm sure the whole bulb was smaller than the clove I planted last year.

The garlic itself smelt reasonably pungent - not quite as 'garlicky' as the Tesco Organic garlic (which has a much better 'fresh garlic' smell than their normal stuff).

Seen in a shop at a motorway service station on the M1:

It was a toss-up between the lunchtime buffet at China Red in Hertford Street, or the Handy Nasty (Han Dynasty) near West Orchards. We chose China Red simply because we were nearer to it at the time.

The buffet was fairly cheap at £5.90-ish. The selection was reasonable given the price. Starters included prawn toast, chicken satay sticks, ribs, spring rolls. Main courses included beef curry, sweet and sour chicken, noodles, rice.

The food was tasty, but the disadvantage of eating at lunchtime is that I can't eat as much as in the evenings, so I didn't get to have as many platesful as normal.

The salad leaves are the only vegetables in the garden which are ready to eat. I picked a few this evening which we chopped and ate with our tea tonight. The seeds were described as 'herb salad mixture' and included cress and rocket, so there was something with more flavour than just lettuce.

The courgettes are slowly growing. The pepper plants are still a bit too small and don't have any fruit yet. The garlic from last year is still there and should be ready to harvest in the autumn. The leeks and 'land cress' were only planted a few days ago so haven't germinated yet.

The spinach beet is starting to look a bit past its best, but we only keep that for the quail. It might be worth planting some more soon.

I've also planted a few trays of grass seed for the quail. They enjoy sitting in the grass, pecking and scratching at it. We bought a roll of turf for them a few months ago but they destroyed it fairly quickly. We now give them a tray of grass for a few days, then remove it before they can irreparably damage it.

I spent much of this afternoon in the garden: weeding, digging the borders, planting veg seeds. I should probably have started preparing planting winter veg slightly earlier, but if all goes well we should have some leeks growing soon, ready to harvest in late autumn.

The 'fruit' have started to appear on our courgettes.

The Wetherspoons pub chain is trying to break the world record for the most people at a wine tasting. They are having simultaneous wine tastings at all of their pubs throughout the country.

We went along for our free tasting (a tiny 50ml glass) and stayed to eat. The actual wine tasting was a bit disorganised. It was a while before we managed to get our tasters. For a world record attempt, it was very low key, almost to the point of being half-arsed. The free samples were only their ordinary house wines, rather than any of the 'festival' wines.

They don't seem to handle the wine festivals as well as the beer festivals.They don't promote them as well and the staff don't always seem aware of what's on offer.

We went back to Aqua for a meal tonight. We were there as part of a conference organised at the University.

Everything seemed to go smoothly. When you are a group of over 50 people in a small restaurant, you appreciate that the service can sometimes be a bit slow, especially when they're still open as normal.

The food was excellent. When we arrived, there were bowls of olives on the tables. The first course arrived and consisted of plates of falafel and pizza. Subsequent courses had pasta, pizza and a bit plate of spiced chicken.

After the meal, most of us went down the road to the Whitefriars pub for a pint. A lot of the people with us were from other universities and they liked the old medieval building, and the range of beers on offer.

The Langar on offer consisted of bread dipped in a spiced batter and deep fried, and what looked like some kind of bhaji with onion, potato and spinach. There was also the sweet spiced tea available.

Walking around the stalls, we noticed some strange orange coloured food. We were told it was a kind of sweet so we bought a bag. It turned out to be a sweet spiced batter which had been deep fried. We watched it being cooked and it went into the oil a normal batter colour but came out a brilliant orange colour. I can't remember what it was called but I'll certainly look out for it again.

The last few times we've made pizza, the yeast has taken a long time to activate and the dough hasn't risen much. This time I thought I'd leave the yeast for a bit longer.

The overflowing yeast froth reminded me of the 'Instant Pudding' from the Woody Allen film 'Sleeper', where it expands so much it fills the kitchen.

We were staying in Croydon and were looking for somewhere to eat but Wetherspoons and Lloyd's were both busy and we couldn't find a table in either. We ended up eating in Yates's Bar. The music wasn't too loud when we got there but it got louder and louder while we were there. By the time we had finished eating, the music was painfully loud and we couldn't wait to leave.

We went to Wetherspoon's for a quiet drink afterwards. We managed to find a table where we could talk without having to raise our voices.

Comparison of Yates's and Wetherspoons:

I really don't know why bars insist on playing music at painfully loud volumes. I can't see how it can attract people in without also annoying them. You've only got to look at how busy Wetherspoons was compared to Yates's. If you ran a bar which was regularly half empty when a nearby bar was almost full, it would be in your best interest to find out why. You'd have to be some kind of moron to not realise the loud music is driving a lot of people away.

Update 14/04/08 I've since read that the Yates's in Coventry has closed. It was always blaring out loud crappy music - that probably drove away most potential customers.

A lot of the small shops near us have started selling Polish beers. Some have quite an extensive range. We were pleasantly surprised by the Redd's range of fruit flavoured beers. Last week we bought a can of the Apple beer. We initially thought it was cider (we had already bought a couple of bottles of cider from another shop). It was a bit of a surprise to find it was an apple flavoured beer. Tonight we bought some cans of their other flavours: Sun and Red. The Sun was citrus-y whereas the Red was raspberry flavoured. They would both work well as summer drinks, served chilled. I think I preferred them to the apple version.

What's that funny smell in the kitchen?
Smells like something's burning...
Oh crap, I forgot about the bread in the oven!

I had put some part baked baguettes in the oven for tomorrows lunch. I smelt them just in time. They were brown but not burnt. We often put bread in the oven then 'forget' about it, especially if we're watching something on TV and we only remember after the programme has finished.

One of my Guinness t-shirts is wrong this year. Since St Patrick's Day was moved by 2 days the one I wear on March 17th has the wrong date on it.

This year, for one year only, it's on the March 15th instead of the 17th, so it doesn't clash with the start of Holy Week leading up to Easter. I've got my cans of Guinness in the fridge ready to open tonight.

A couple of weeks ago, I read about a new beer from the Warwickshire based Purity Brewery. Called Farmers Market, it was the first alcoholic drink to get the 'Red Tractor' mark for British ingredients. We found a bottle of it in the Wayside Farm Shop at the weekend and got around to opening it tonight.

First impressions were of a fairly light flavoured beer, but after swallowing, the depth of flavour become more apparent. It's a tasty brew and I hope it finds its way into pubs, rather than being restricted to bottle sales.

Purity is only a small local-ish brewery and its beers are available in a few pubs in Coventry - I don't know whether they're as readily available in other parts of the country.

According to the BBC News website, scientists in Scotland have found a way of using whisky to clean up contaminated land. They are actually using a by-product rather than the whisky itself. It's good to know that as well as tasting good, whisky is also good to the planet.