At the risk of being sued by Delia (at which point I will happily change the title of this page!), I feel that this is the perfect time of year to consider food. We are all miserable, cold and fed up. I lay in bed this morning with my tea and watched the sky turn from black to dark grey, and it has now settled on an unpleasing pale grey (9.30am). On a day like today I wake up looking forward to the evening, and today my mind turns to a stiff margarita and a spicy pizza (preferably enlivened by a scattering of our Yucatan taco mix), having kicked a cat off the sofa and prodded Andrew into shoving another log in the stove.

But tequila and pizza is not, let's face it, going to give us the stamina to get us through current fuel costs and January weather. Hence I have been reviewing our beany veggie blends and thinking up new recipes.

The vegetarians I meet in my Bitspicy travels clearly have to do a lot of label-reading in supermarkets. I have been asked about stock cubes, gluten, salt and all manner of health/diet issues. There are various well-known brands on the shelves whose pastes and sauces do not stand up to close inspection. So I should like to make it perfectly clear that ALL our blends, whatever they are called, are suitable for vegetarians, vegans, gluten-free diets and indeed anyone worried about salt levels. Whether you add meat to the Sulawesi Beef curry (and personally I adore it with chicken!) is up to you. In fact, if you try it with beans and/or vegetables, please let us know how it turns out! And the great advantage of our recipes is that you can make them as healthy as you like - yoghurt not cream, less oil, half-fat coconut milk (although that makes Andrew very cross!)

There have been numerous articles in the press about health-giving foods and slow-release carbs such as beans, but chillies are the latest thing to get excited about. In fact if you have a margarita the damaging effects of alcohol are completely negated by a spoonful of our Fool's Pickle (see under other secrets)! Well, possibly not, but you will experience a very warm glow!