We have house guests this week so it’s been a good opportunity to play around in the kitchen. We took them to Borough Market on Saturday and picked up all sorts of goodies. It’s easy to spend a lot of money at the market but there are some bargains to be found as well - for example, we found fresh figs from Turkey at £3 a tray and we’ve been enjoying them all week. They’re delicious plain or with a sliver of gorgonzola.

I picked up two punnets of English strawberries, probably just about the last of the crop. They were a little tart so I marinated them with a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. It’s not enough vinegar to drown the flavour of the strawberries but it’s enough to enhance the flavour and draw out the strawberry juices. I served it in teacups with a slice of lovely, creamy buffalo ricotta but it would go nicely with ice cream, cream or marscapone as well.

Last night I made the duck recipe I learnt in my Leiths course earlier this year - duck breasts with blackberry, apple and port sauce. I think we’ll have a few nights of simple, family dinners, perhaps eat out on Friday and Saturday night, and then the last hurrah will be a roast dinner on Sunday.

• * Lydia from The Perfect Pantry presents the vanilla bean and shares a delicious looking pear and vanilla recipe. I’m loving the series - earlier it was rose petal risotto, which sounds amazing!

• * Antonia from Food, Glorious Food serves up chicken with ginger marmalade. It sounds great… though I think it would be even better with roast pork!

• * I love unusual ingredients - such as red corn from Susan at Food Blogga. I’ve never had red corn before but it sounds tasty! Corn is not as ubiquitous in the UK as the US but it’s the right season for it, so I’m going to hunt some down.

• * A healthy breakfast of baked cottage cheese french toast with a courgette and corn salsa from Sophie at Mostly Eating.

• * I love the sound of Indonesian-style grilled eggplant with spicy peanut sauce from Love and Olive Oil. I’ll definitely be trying this one. I’m also tempted by their corn fritters with arugula and warm tomato salad.

• * Thai is practically the national cuisine back home - Thai food is to Australia what Indian food is to the UK. I miss it in London - there is a dearth of good Thai food here - so I’ll be curious to check out Jessica at Ripe London’s recommendation for Boys if I ever find myself in Chiswick.

• * The Word of Mouth blog at Guardian Unlimited celebrates 100 years of the tea bag.

• * Now that autumn is here, I find myself craving heartier cuisine. Julia at A Slice of Cherry Pie hits the spot with this recipe for roast pork belly with mashed potato and savoy cabbage, as does Matt from Abstract Gourmet with this recipe for slow-cooked lamb (admittedly written from Perth where it’s spring).

• * Get Rich Slowly, a blog about personal finance and frugality, occasionally writes about food, most recently on home canning and fighting food budget killers. The comments get pretty lively too!

• * I love the sound of this citrus salted salmon trout from Myamii at For the Love of Food. I don’t think we get ’salmon trout’ here but I’m keen to try this with the lovely Scottish salmon fillets in my fridge.

• * My friend Sue is writing about ethically reared meat on Noodle Bowl- a subject close to my heart.

• * Intelligent Travel, one of my favourite travel blogs, brings our attention to National Geographic’s Foods of the World. Also check out this Intelligent Travel post on a Mexican Home Cooking School.

• * SwissMiss brings us news of this intriguing alternative to ice - Nordic rocks.

• * Jonathan from Around Britain with a Paunch smokes his own trout.

• * A Forkful of Spaghetti is back on the blogging scene with this tempting review of Murano in London.

• * And finally, what about these cute chocolate eclairs from Cafe Lynnylu?

The United Nations says we should try to eat less meat to help lessen global warming - and I agree. What do you think?

Environmental concern is the main reason I try to limit my meat consumption and now the United Nations has backed me up. Raising animals for meat is a wholly inefficient use of land and resources, especially given that most livestock are fed farmed grain rather than grazing naturally. Then there is the pesky issue of the methane emissions, particularly from cows. Global food production is a far more serious contributor to global CO2 emissions than flying - and I’m not just saying that because I’m a travel writer.

Of course, I understand that food is a necessity and travel is a luxury. Of course, we need to cut down on polluting forms of transport when we travel, and indeed when we are at home as well. (I also don’t have a car). However, I would argue that meat is just as much a luxury as air travel - we don’t need it to survive, especially in the nutritionally rich first world where we have all the food choices in the world. Animals in the developing world are less of a problem anyway, since they are far less likely to be eating grain and are likely to be slaughtered and eaten close to home.

I am not a vegetarian but I am a meat reducer - I treat meat as a luxury and try to only eat meat or fish once or twice a week.

There are many good reasons to consider vegetarianism. You might have a religious or moral objection to killing animals, or the way they are generally raised. You might be doing it for health reasons - some vegetarian diets can be healthier than meat-based diets. You might just like the taste of vegetarian food.

I am interested in vegetarian cooking because I want to reduce the amount of meat I eat, because people I love are vegetarian, and because some of the food is just really, really good. (Try this fantastic aubergine moussaka recipe and you’ll see what I mean).

I have a great deal of respect for people who devote themselves full time to vegetarianism but I don’t choose to join them. Firstly, I don’t fundamentally believe that killing animals for food is wrong - we are part of the eco-system and at a basic biological level all life feeds on other life to survive. Secondly, vegetarians have to be extremely careful to make sure that they are getting all the nutrients that they need and I don’t have the time and patience to watch my diet quite that closely and while I like beans and lentils, I abhor fake meats such as Quorn as unnatural, processed unfoods. Thirdly, as a food writer I don’t want to shut myself off to new flavours and a whole culinary realm. Finally, I want to spend my money to support organic farming and saving old breeds.

I try very hard to avoid factory farmed meat, though it’s not always easy to make an informed decision when I’m eating out. The great thing about not eating meat every day is that I’m not price sensitive and I can afford to buy the best quality meat with high welfare considerations. A whole organic chicken might cost £10 at the market or butcher rather than £1.99 in Tesco but I’ll only have it a couple of times a year.

Where I do draw the line is eating endangered animals - in Spitsbergen some of the restaurants offer polar bear, while whale features prominently on menus in Japan and Norway and bush meats in many parts of Africa. For the same reason, I try to avoid eating cod and tuna and only buy fish from sustainable sources. (I also don’t have a pet cat).

Two great books that might help change your thinking on these issues are Fast Food Nation by Eric Schloss, a few years old now but still relevant and certainly one of the most entertaining non-fiction books I’ve ever read, and the thoughtful Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, about one family’s attempt to eat locally including raising some of their own food.

What do you think about the United Nations pronouncement? Agree or disagree? What’s your personal stance on eating meat?

A weekend city break to Krakow lets me sample Polish food and, in a surprise twist, I tick Georgian food off the list as well.

Poland

Kraków is better known for its beautiful historic architecture than its food, but Poland’s old royal capital does offer plenty to eat. This was true even for the token vegetarian in our group, though admittedly his patience and tolerance for cabbage would have been stretched if we’d stayed longer than a few days.

As well as pickled cabbage, Polish delicacies include a lot of pork and potatoes and a rather delicious type of dumpling called pierogi. We tried but failed to find a dumpling specialist restaurant called Pierogarnia recommended in the Lonely Planet Best of Kraków and suspect that it may have closed since the 2006 publication date. We ate some delicious dumplings anyway - my favourite had a cabbage and mushroom filling.

We also sampled hard breads called ‘obwarzanki’ sold from street vendors all over Kraków. They were usually salted and twisted, quite a bit like pretzels.

The best meal was at Kawaleria, a traditional Polish restaurant, where we enjoyed a three-course dinner on Saturday night. I had roast wild boar with a Juniper berry sauce and a rather delicious side dish of pickled beetroot. We each chose a different dessert - mine was a medley of ice cream and sorbet but my friend’s pear tart looked like the winner. The bill, including a lovely bottle of red wine, came to the equivalent of £90 on my credit card for four people.

On our final day, we stocked up with yummy gingerbread and biscuits at a shop called Torunskie Perniki.

Kawaleria
www.kawaleria.com
Golebia 4, Kraków
Tel: 012 430 24 32

Torunskie Perniki
Grodzka 14, Kraków
Tel: 012 431 13 06

Georgia

I didn’t really expect to tick Georgian food off the list during my two and half days in Kraków. If anything, I thought Ukrainian food would be more likely, and there are indeed several Ukrainian restaurants in town. On Sunday night we were hunting for a place to eat, having already sampled food at the vegetarian joint Greenway and declared it wanting. We ended up at Gruzinskie Chaczapuri (no, I can’t pronounce it either), which specialises in Georgian cuisine.

Obviously Georgia is a geo-political hotspot and in the news at the moment for all the wrong reasons. But its cuisine is actually quite famous - apparently it’s considered the France of the Black Sea region for its food and wine. There’s even been books written on the subject.

My dish was a cross between lasagne and spinach pie and quite delicious, while my fiancé ate cheese pie and one of my friends ate a chicken ratatouille style dish. It was not as fancy as Kawaleria and the service was a little slow but the food was good and not expensive. I have since found out that my cleaner is Georgian and likes to cook so I’m curious to ask her for some of her home-style recipes.

Gruzinskie Chaczapuri
Florianska 26, north of Rynek Glowny (the main square)
www.chaczapuri.pl
chaczapuri@chaczapuri.pl

Greenway (vegetarian, neither Polish nor Georgian)
Mikolajska 14
Tel: 012 431 10 27

Poland and Georgia are the seventh and eighth countries on my United Nations of Food challenge. There are 184 countries to go…