“I came to this business partly because of a love of food which I blame on my mother. She’s a complete foodie. I was born in Singapore and my parents met and married out there. My mum was really into eastern flavours and I suppose we had a bit of an eclectic upbringing on that front.

“Several things in my life turned me into a cook. I grew up in the country but wasn’t horsey or interested in country sports so I whiled away my time making rather bad fairy cakes out of packages. My grandmother lived in France and, though she didn’t cook herself, it was sitting round her table that I began to learn what good food was, seeing how well she shopped at the beautiful shops and specialist markets.

Rick Stein is horrified when I tell him that, according to the website Wikepedia, he now lives in Australia. “So that’s why people keep coming up to me in Padstow and saying ‘Oh, are you here for long?’” he exclaims. “That’s baloney, I live here!” For a brief moment I fear I may have inadvertently unleashed a powerful storm but instead he is the height of charm and warmth, and as I write this I see the Wikepedia piece has been changed to point out that, although he lives in Padstow for part of the year, he also has a house in Sydney as well as a restaurant in Mollymook, New South Wales.

Reader, I’m marrying him. Since moving to Dorset we have home-grown a free range ring-bearer each plus one bridesmaid. In the first year of our thirteen together without a drama, crisis or major distraction, we are sailing away with them, our mums and two old friends to the land where the Bong-tree grows for a wedding-moon.

Whilst some may battle with a triffid-like harvest of weeds and vegetables, Simon Ford emerges unscathed from his vegetable garden and wonders how the economic downturn is affecting those that pioneered the sale of local veg.

The idea of a chat with Hugh about his current preoccupation with vegetables was hatched at an informal gathering celebrating the epic, thirty-six hour firing of Tim Hurn’s huge wood-fired kiln, at his pottery in the grounds of Bettiscombe Manor.

“I believe that what we eat, how we eat it and the circumstances in which food is produced has a profound impact on our sense of well being. Poor quality food results in ill health and the fact that people on low incomes may be forced to rely on poor quality food really concerns me.

In the annals of my memory, the most resonant echo is that of afternoon tea. It is the meal to which the term ‘treat’ almost invariably applies. Tea is an occasion, to be taken occasionally, a set-piece with, like all good plays, a beginning, a middle and an end; replete with the things that we don’t get every day. There are teas I remember so vividly from my childhood that I can almost hear the silver teapot, covered in its hand-knit stripy tea-cosy, spouting amber hued China tea into the elegantly handled, thin-lipped Coalport china.

Who would have guessed it – a Portuguese café and food shop in Chard? But then again, who would have guessed that there was also a Portuguese community there?

In the hills above Borgo San Lorenzo, in the Mugello area of Tuscany, chef Carlo sharpens the biggest carving knife I have ever seen.

Some town mice come with us in the packing boxes when we move to the South West. Literary types, they stow away in the crates of books where they make finely-nibbled nests out of a couple of novels. And after a good nap they set about systematically breaking into all the dry goods. Thin, grey and organised they seem quite a different species from the rounder, browner country cousins who restrict their store room damage to delicately whittling walnuts. Not taking out Foodie’s finest risotto rice collection.

It’s fairly safe to say that photographer and filmmaker Robert Golden sees things a little differently to many people. After a long career and an enormous body of work he still brings an uncompromising intensity and depth to his subjects, and although his unique eye is obvious when looking at his photography and the films he has made, it is the way he lives his life that stands out. Shouldering a keen sense of justice he stands ready to do what is right, whether that is choosing to only eat locally sourced food where he lives in Dorset or ensuring that the young people in a film he is making in Bosnia are fairly represented.

I hadn’t bargained for the reaction I had when I spoke to Sheila Dillon to arrange a meeting; I almost dropped the phone. Presenting Radio 4’s The Food Programme, Sheila’s voice has been the kitchen companion to the preparation of countless Sunday lunches, a relationship that feels very intimate – but belongs on the radio – not coming out of the phone. I took a deep breath and hoped for enough composure to see me through the dizzying prospect of meeting The Voice in the flesh.

“Apparently the Chinese invented sweet and sour cooking for the English dockers because they liked their food really sweet and chicken tikka masala was invented when someone poured a can of tomato soup over some curried chicken. Billy Bragg’s song ‘England Half English’ talks about Englishness in terms of food; veggie curry fried up with bubble and squeak for breakfast or marmite soldiers washed down with a cappuccino. Englishness has always been a collision of cultures.

June is the start of it. That endless blue sky, long-light, lazy-lunch feel that carries us through the summer and the holidays and puts us in mind of al fresco picnics, garden lunches, rugs and showers and easy food where the temperature of the food is less important and critical than the temperature outside. That peculiarly British thing of braving the breeze and the cloud on the horizon and taking food outside no matter what.

We are undergoing a quiet revolution in our bread eating habits. Some of us are beginning to cast off the tyranny of the supermarket loaf and embrace proper bread. But as ever in this country the revolution is gradual.

In mid December I made the fatal claim, quietly and only to myself but still a dangerous articulation, ‘this is going to be the best Christmas ever.’ I know when Foodie says ‘this horse cannot lose’ to distract myself, leave him to his delusional compulsion, ultimately secure in the knowledge that after all these ‘life changing’ bets he comes out even – else over the cumulative years we would have become destitute or loaded. But I really did think I couldn’t stumble.

Photographer Simon Wheeler has reached a stage in his life that a lot of people will find very familiar: his children have all gone back to university and the house seems deathly quiet. For many, this is a time of reflection. It is a time when we can take stock and look at what we have achieved over the years, especially the ones that went by in a blur while our children grew from tiny pink dolls to confident members of the community.

Fairtrade, Organic, Dolphin Friendly, Rain Forest Alliance – these have all become familiar labels on our food, but back in the early Eighties, they were rare enough to be almost non-existent. It is thanks to the vision of a few key people that the Fairtrade mark is now on over 3,000 everyday products. One of those key people is Lorraine Brehme with her company Clipper Tea.

Tracking down photographer Christian Barnett is no simple task. As a food photographer he is much in demand, however his love of travel is as likely to keep him on the move as much as his love of photography. When we caught up with him recently in between locations, he had just finished working with chef and food writer Valentine Warner and was dashing off to his next job with chocolate maker Willie Harcourt-Cooze in Devon. “I seem to spend half my life on either the M4 or the A303” he told me. “At least every other week I am shooting in the South West”.