New tastes

The office has a fruit basket, stocked up every week, to encourage us to eat healthy food and not get sick. (They also have a biscuit jar, which encourages quite different behaviours!) They get seasonal fruits in, and this week I have discovered two new things I have never tasted before.

These are noisettes, which I think means hazelnuts. I googled and have discovered a world of fine nuance between hazelnuts, cobnuts and filberts. I am not entirely sure which is which

I don't think I've ever seen a fresh hazelnut before, let alone tasted. They're the same size and shape as the brown things you find on chocolate cakes, but they taste totally different. They taste fresh, crunchy and almost juicy - the closest comparison I can think of is fresh peas eaten straight from the pod. Yum.

The other new taste for me is these. I wasn't sure what they were, tentatively nibbled, and YUM! It's slightly tart, and sweet, but gently sweet rather than overpoweringly. Lovely. It's a kind of small green plum - so I think it's a greengage. I've never had a greengage before. I'm a convert - I think I'll get some for my fruit salad. Anyone have any experience of greengage jam?

Nuts for nails

Eating healthy is good for you in totally weird and unexpected ways, and this simple-homemade-kinda-crunchy life is surprisingly healthy. Because it's completely transformed my nails.

My nails, you say? Yes indeed. My nails.

I hate the stereotype that you can tell a lady by her hands but we have to admit that our hands and nails do say an awful lot about us. Mostly, whether we can be bothered to pamper them or if we just give them a quick scrub with the nail brush and the dish soap to get the worst of the mud off. French manicure nails suggest that you're expecting not to pick up half the bill afterwards.

If my nails could talk, they'd tell you I am accident-prone and that I rush through life. They're short, often breaking or tearing on things as I dash past, or fumble through a disorganised bag for some change. They're rarely smooth and shiney, never polished, and never beautifully shaped. But that was LAST week!

This week, they're strong, long and starting to look a little bit shaped. They're smooth and shiney, and I don't have to worry about breaking them so much. I think this minor miracle is thanks to the daily consumption of nuts and seeds which I introduced to my diet about a month ago, as it's about the only thing that has changed. So I am now officially a nut fan, and will be ensuring I get a daily handful. My heart will thank me, and so will my nails. So who'd have thought that homemade breakfast cereal would improve my nails? Hopefully they speak more eloquently now.