Carl Warner, who photographed the above, got together with a team of five model makers and spent three weeks creating an “edible” London to promote healthy eating.  The model makers took hundreds of fruits and vegetables and glued them together.  Among the buildings which were included in this foodie fest were the Houses of Parliament made from asparagus, green beans, runner beans and baby sweetcorn.  The Gherkin, oddly enough, wasn’t made from gherkins but was made of melon and green beans.  Nelson’s Column was made from cucumber, courgettes, a carrot, a monkey nut and an almond.

The London Eye contains green beans, plum tomatoes and lemon and even the lamp posts came under the spotlight, being made of onions wrapped in vanilla pods and asparagus.

St Paul’s Cathedral was made from carrots, courgettes, baby leeks and baby sweetcorn; and the magnificent dome was made from melon – I wonder what Sir Christopher Wren who designed it in the 17th century would have made of it!

Now for another work of art – but a more “natural” one!  The above is a marrow which was grown in a British vegetable patch!  Anyone can see it resembles a duck, even down to the eye.  Apparently the eye was caused by the marrow being scratched on a twig. 

The lady who grew this wonderful piece of natural art said she’d been gardening for 40 years and had never in that time come across anything quite like it.

This marrow however, is not likely to end up baked and stuffed, presumably because it’s become like a family pet!!  It is, however, now part of a display for Wild Bird Care Week at the garden centre where the original plant was bought.

Now on to something for the Christmas present list! 

Jacqui Wood, an archaeologist who has been studying the history of British food from the Stone Age to the 20th century, has produced a book entitled Tasting the Past: Recipes from the Stone Age to the Present (available from Amazon UK for around £12 and US for $21). 

Jacqui tells us that the Celts loved their ham and bacon.  The first Celts came from a salt mine region of Austria and it naturally follows that they salted their meat so bacon and ham became popular as they travelled around the world.  They liked simple foods, like stews, although they didn’t have too many herbs. They had a cinnamon-like herb called bog myrtle, but it was the Romans who introduced many of the herbs and vegetables that we now know and love.

When the Romans invaded the British Isles, their favourite vegetable it seems was cabbage and they also enjoyed various root vegetables and onions.  The Roman trade routes to southern Asia meant that spices such as pepper, nutmeg and ginger came over with them.  However, once they left in 410AD many of these spices left our “supermarket shelves” until the time of the Crusades around 600 years later.

The Celts had a “beef en croute” equivalent – beef wrapped in a dough and cooked for a long time under a pile of hot stones in a clay pit.  The dough comes out rock hard but the beef apparently comes out tender and juicy.  They also made bread cups which are basically dough shaped around hot stones.  These “bowls” were then used to hold all sorts of fillings, one particular favourite being a fish stew – a mixture of smoked fish, leek, hazelnuts and cream which apparently is reminiscent of clam chowder.

The book is a real gem as, unlike other “historical” recipe books, it contains recipes which us 21st century bods would enjoy.  She could have included such delicacies as stuffed cows’udders or fish stomachs stuffed with chopped liver which the medieval people enjoyed.  I’m not sure that my local butcher would actually be able to find me a cow’s udder and as for the stuffed fish stomach – don’t think it’d fill my stomach.  You’d definitely want two items off the dessert trolley to follow that up!!

I’m definitely buying this book for my partner for Christmas as he loves cooking and history so it combines the two and hopefully I’ve given some of you people out there an idea to knock at least one present off the list!!