earlier this year, when we were in brighton, i bought a bar of chocolate that became my obsession. montezuma’s dark chocolate with essential oil of geranium and orange. wow! dark chocolate has always been my favourite but the floral flavour of this bar blew my mind. it was soon my new favourite, usurping the previous winner, green & black’s dark chocolate with cherries.

once the bar was finished i decided a visit to montezuma’s shop in spitalfields was needed. by happy coincidence i saw on emily’s blog, chocolate in context, that the blogging event “food destinations” was focusing on “my favourite chocolate shop”. this is my contribution.

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fennel and prawns is a such a good combination – it just makes me smile because I know that something delicious is going to be created. last night’s supper involved both fennel seeds and a bulb of fennel and it was particularly delicious. it also smelt great while it was cooking!

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it has been one of those weeks where finding time to cook has been almost impossible. lots of work, lots of studying (plus an exam) and lots of being out and about catching up with friends and family.

it’s been lovely seeing everyone but i’ve really missed cooking. all my flights of fancy – pumpkin ravioli with sage and lemon butter; raspberry brownies; getting that piece of pork belly out of the freezer and eating crisp pieces of crunchy crackling – have had to remain as thoughts to be revisited another day.

however, yesterday i managed to take a break from the books and made my favourite linguine with chilli and garlic.

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last week i had supper at zero quattro in wimbledon and was regularly caught sneaking mouthfuls of my friend amanda’s risotto. it was flavoured with goats cheese and it was delicious! they served their risotto with asparagus but, given it’s out of season, i decided to recreate the dish with butternut squash and it was truly delicious. this is a great way to perk up your risotto and make it a little bit special.

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this morning for breakfast we had authentic german pumpernickel. i received this in the post on friday, from florian, a food blogger in hamburg.

this was part of a parcel full of german goodies, that florian sent to me as part of european blogging by post. this is a food bloggers' event where you send, and receive a parcel from someone else who has a food blog. the match-making and all other arrangements were done by johanna at the passionate cook.

so, what was in the parcel apart from the pumpernickel?

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