Malteser meringues aren't for the faint hearted. Word.

I'm a girl. Technically I'm supposed to love chocolate. Well I just don't. I like it. A bit.

I can't eat a whole bar of chocolate, not ever. It makes me feel sick. I could eat a whole block of cheese, three packets of Starburst, a multipack of corn based snacks and drink a whole bottle of wine but a single chocolate bar? No. Which means that I have to do something with the vast amounts of chocolate knocking around the Onion household following the selection box frenzy that was Christmas.

So I started today. I stuck two fingers up at the January diet, fat free soup brigade and launched into some hefty baking involving a lot of sugar. And it felt good.

Sweet things allegedly release happy chemicals in the brain. If this is the case then these sticky, sweet meringue treats are the equivalent of all all night rave in a darkened warehouse. Be warned.

Malteser meringues with chocolate ganache and malteser cream

Ingredients:

For the meringues.

4 organic egg whites

115g caster sugar

115g icing sugar

teaspoon white wine vinegar

teaspoon vanilla extract

1 packet of Maltesers

For the chocolate ganache

100g good quality dark/plain chocolate

4 tbsp double cream

For the malteser cream

300ml double cream

1 pack maltesers

• Preheat the oven to 140/gas mark 1
• Lightly oil a flat baking tray, line with greaseproof paper and lightly oil the greaseproof as well.
• In a very clean bowl whisk together the egg whites with the caster sugar until stiff. This usually takes at least 3 minutes
• Add the icing sugar, vinegar and vanilla extract and whisk again for another 3o seconds or so until glossy.
• Crush a packet of Maltersers in a bag with a rolling pin and then gently fold in to the meringue mixture.
• Spoon onto the prepared baking sheets swirling around with the back of a spoon and bake for 45 minutes.
• Turn off the oven and open the door, leaving it open for another 10 mins for the meringues to gently cool in the oven.
• Carefully lift out the meringues to finish cooling on a rack

For the Ganache

Simmer some water in a pan with a heatproof bowl on top. Add 100g plain or dark chocolate stirring gently to melt.

Add 4 tablespoons of double cream and stir into the melted chocolate. Put to one side to cool slightly.

For the Malteser cream

Whip the cream until thick and add a packet of crushed maltesers.

Now all you have to do is sandwich the meringues together with the chocolate ganache and whipped malteser cream. And die happy. You little raver.

The best fried egg sandwich in the world......

My sister is five years older than me. The perfect age gap. A five year age gap as teenagers means you don't argue, not much. The older one is too concerned with 'older' stuff to bother fighting with the little sister and the little sister is trying too hard to impress the big sister to fight at all. Perfect. Having a sister five years older than me also meant that I looked up to her and thought that whatever she did was what I should do (apart from that dodgy perm in 1991). Some examples:

Prince.

She loved Prince. A lot. She played his music. All the time. Which meant that I had to listen to it all the time. Which meant that I loved him too. Which was probably why I was the only 12 year old singing all the lyrics to 'Get Off' in the Youth Club disco without quite understanding the full meaning of what I was saying whilst wondering why the rampant 15 year old boy I had a crush on was suddenly so interested. Thanks Annie.

Drinking and smoking.

She was cool. Very cool. Her friends were in bands. She took me on magic mushroom picking outings (many hands make light work) before I even knew what magic mushrooms were. Our house became the house where her and all her trendy friends would hang out, eat pasta, drink wine and smoke Marlboro Lights when they were supposed to be in school. Which inevitably became what I wanted to do too and which sometimes, rarely but magically she let me join her and her gang. Cheers Annie.

Fried Egg sandwiches.

When I was 12 she went away with her friends (3 boys naturally) to Greece for a holiday. Instead of choosing a resort packed with drunken British teenagers vomiting all over the streets after drinking cocktails named after sex positions they chose a picturesque ancient village where they stayed in a whitewashed apartment, drank in authentic Greek bars and adopted a three legged dog. She came back beautiful and bronzed and talked me through the (censored) photographs. I was impressed by their apartment and wondered if they cooked there. It turned out the only thing they cooked in the apartment was Fried egg sandwiches. I had never eaten a fried egg sandwich and so to me, from that day on, Fried egg sandwiches became cool. In my twelve year old mind I didn't connect them to greasy spoons. I connected them with chic teenagers, drinking wine, smoking Marlboro Lights with an adopted three legged dog in a whitewashed Greek apartment in an ancient village. And I've loved them ever since. So look, it's not Michelin starred cookery here but I give you:

The perfect Fried egg sandwich

1 egg

2 slices of handcut bakery bread buttered with real butter

Some grated vintage cheddar

Sliced gherkin

Finely sliced red onion

Sweet chilli sauce

Thinly sliced tomato.

Butter the bread

Heat some vegetable oil and a small knob of butter in a frying pan and crack in the egg.

Fry until a little bit crispy underneath and then flip for 2 seconds so that no gloopy white remains.

Place fried egg on buttered bread and sprinkle the cheese on. (This is important, you want the cheese to slightly melt from the heat of the egg!)

Top with gherkin, sliced tomato and onion and pour a little drizzle of sweet chilli sauce over it.

So there you have it. The very best Fried egg sandwich in the world. Fact.

Don't thank me. Thank my sister.

It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

I love Christmas. A lot.

I have a slight issue with it being a finite time though. I find it difficult to deal with. It's a bit like a holiday romance. You keep trying not to fall in love but you can't help it. And then you realise it's too late, you've fallen in love and it's time to go home and you're at the airport crying into your pint of over priced warm lager. And deep down you know its over. Until next year.

This is how I feel about Christmas. I let myself fall in love with it every year. I get swept away with the twinkling lights, the rich food, the 80's movies and endless booze on tap. And every year I get hurt when it goes away for a whole other year. So rather than sit here and cry into my glass of Alka Seltzer I'll reminisce. I'll remember the good times. In no particular order:

Christmas on vinyl.

Mr Onion came back from town with a haul of Christmas records. Tijuana Christmas, Band Aid, Wham, Frank Sinatra, Elvis sings Christmas. Within hours my lovely shop neighbour 'Guitar shop John' had set up a record player and oversized amp in the corner of Onion. Ah, Christmas had arrived.

Stalbridge Christmas.

I am blessed. Not only are my friends amazing in most ways, they also know how to cook, eat, drink and be merry. We get together at Cheese man's house every Christmas for an orgy of food, wine and any other booze we can get our greasy paws on. Last year it was Goose and so much booze that many of us barely remember the meal. This year was more refined. We tucked into the biggest Rib of Beef that I have ever seen, creamed cabbage and sprouts, carrots with cumin, crunchy as hell roast potatoes and some towering Yorkshire puds. God, it was good. We danced badly to Christmas tunes, drank the house dry, argued about whether Miranda was any good and got told off by my four year old spring onion for being way too noisy. The bonus? Waking up the next day hangover free. Unlike some of the others who report stopping to throw up in various laybys up and down the country on the way to family homes. Bloody lightweights.

The big day

Look, it doesn't have to snow on Christmas day to be a white Christmas, as long as snow is on the ground then I'm happy. And a perfect day it was too. I went through a phase for the last few years of being a Christmas control freak. This basically entailed making my family come to my house and doing things 'my way'. Goose not turkey. Shredded sprouts not whole. Anyway, I gave the baton back to my wonderful parents this year and had the best Christmas day we've had in years. The shredded sprouts stayed, the goose went. Result - spending precious time with my lovely parents, sister and her family and my very own family too eating a magnificent Christmas dinner instead of spending the whole morning in the kitchen and drinking too much champagne. Us kids did the washing up and the grandparents got to play with the kids high on e numbers. We walked home, the spring onion rode her new retro red bike. We saw three people in shorts and a man on crack.

Boxing day

Woke up to noises of the spring onion trying to rebuild a flattened box in my bedroom. The reason? 'It's Boxing Day mummy'.

I love Boxing day. A s a child it is the day where your parents leave you alone to play with your toys in peace. As an adult it is the day where you can truly relax, especially when you are going to someone elses house for the party. This year we went to the Batmen's house. It's quite strange really. Mr Onion's brother fell in love with my sister's best friend from school and now we all live in the same city and so get to play all together on occasions like this. It's top. We had a pate off, dipped cold roast potatoes into cold bread sauce and accidentally booked a table at Le Manoir aux Quatre Saisons after drinking too much white wine.

The time in between.

Drinking fizzy pop watching Karate kid, making cushions with my daughter, reading in bed, Mr Onion making me hazlenut lattes every morning, watching Agatha Christie adaptations on TV, playing with lego, croissants, continental breakfast with ham boiled in Coca Cola, falling asleep on the couch waking up with my face stuck to the leather with drool. Having and making no plans..... God I love Christmas.

New Year's Eve

The original plan - go to a bunkhouse far far away with friends where we can do what we want and make as much noise as we want leaving the spring onion in the the trusted care of my parents.

The actual plan - Have a couple of people over for civilised food and drinks, keeping the spring onion with us

The actual (amended) plan - as above but leaving the spring onion in the trusted care of my parents. The company was great as was the food - marinated chicken kebabs, prawns with chilli and garlic, feta and roast veg tart (made by my gorgeous friend who claims to be a crap cook but pulls out the stops every time), prunes stuffed with mascarpone and wrapped in bacon, asparagus, parma ham and pecorino, crispy pork belly squares (Marks and Spencer and actually really good), tortilla, olives, sunblushed tomatoes, bread...a veritable feast indeed.

Those of you with offspring may agree. It can be dangerous to have an overnight babysitter. It is like the pre offspring days. Only much worse. Because you go crazy. Because it is such a luxury to wake up and to only have to worry about yourself. So you go mental. Which is why the civilised food and drink evening ended in madness and why I had to cancel my family coming around to my house for New Years Day lunch and instead, as soon as I finished being sick in the bath had to go to my parents with my head hung low and ask my mum to make me some toast.

And now it's over. Christmas. New Year. Both now in the past tense. Both great. I knew it would come to an end. And it did. Many great things do. So here I am. Sat in my unChristmassy living room, my bare beloved tree cold and brittle in the Christmas tree graveyard in the park, the decorations already in the attic. The Christmas vinyl has been put away, the neat little piles of presents transferred and dispersed into various rooms. My holiday romance over. And God it was good. As a wise man once said, 'it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all'.

I'm not going to drink it. Honestly.

In between my house and my shop there is a Tesco.

Ah, Tesco. Love them or hate them they exist. Everywhere.

Every.

Single.

Where.

And while I try to not buy things from them I just can't help it. And this can be a problem. Running the type of place that makes healthy, fresh food with some organic things on the shelves people make assumptions about me, one being that I am a wholefood, organic brown rice loving, healthy, Tesco hating vegetarian.

I like whole food. I have enjoyed organic brown rice a couple of times, and I mean a couple. I don't love Tesco but I still shop there and I'm certainly not a vegetarian unless you count my brief flirtation with vegetarianism in 1997 for around 2.4 hours until my school canteen won me over with a chicken pie (it was chicken mince in a grey gravy - wrong, but so very right).

So yes, people can get it wrong. And while I don't pretend to be a wholefood, organic Tesco hating vegetarian I do think people think of me in a certain way. Which can be difficult when you live in a smallish suburb community where everyone pretty much knows each other and shops in the same Tesco while pretending not to.

Tesco - the place not to be at 3.57pm on a Sunday afternoon with a basket of Fish fingers, Birds Eye potato waffles, tesco value baked means and two tubes of Pringles. Not when the person who was asking you how to make Broccoli and Brie soup two days previously is in the queue behind you.

Tesco - the place not to be at 7.47am trying to buy bottles of Real Ale and getting knocked back because they don't have a licence until 8am. Pretty embarrassing when the leader of the school mum brigade who come in for Danish pastries at 9.08am every Thursday is in the queue behind you buying a loaf of (probably organic) brown bread for her daughter's sandwiches.

It wasn't just booze I was buying. Oh no, there were carrots, potatoes, swede, parsnips - the makings of a pretty delicious stew.

Till lady -'I can't serve you with this'

Me 'With what?'

Till lady - 'Alcohol, drink, booze.'

Me 'Ah you mean the Cains FA?

Till lady 'Whatever, it's too early to serve alcohol. We don't have a licence until 8am'

At this point I was shocked. What the hell was I doing in Tesco before 8 o'clock in the bloody morning?

Me -'Oh, I didn't realise it was so early. Um, what time is it exactly?'

Till lady '7.47'

Me - Oh. I'll just take the other stuff for now then. The ingredients for stew. A stew made with Real Ale. I'm not going to drink it. Honestly. I'm making a stew you see. You know, with Real Ale. It's nice. Really nice. The stew I mean. Not the ale. Although the ale is nice too, y'know, in the stew.

Till lady - Next.

So I stood there. The girl from onion. Waiting for 8am. To buy booze. Waiting. Exposed. The fraudster. The faker. Caught out. In community killing Tesco. With my over packaged capitalist genetically modified vegetables sweating in my non biodegradeable plastic environment killing carrier bags. Waiting to buy booze on the school run.

I'd quite like to smell beautiful.

I love working with food. Always have. Probably always will.

There is however a major downfall. You never, ever get to finish work smelling beautiful. Basically you smell of hotdogs. We don't even sell hotdogs. Every night when I get home from work after spending the day rustling up glorious salads, baking delicious cakes and making fresh soups I smell myself. Do I smell like fresh basil, fresh mint, warm vanilla sponge? No. I smell like hotdogs.

A trip to the shops after work can be embarrassing. The coiffed beauty that smells of of Japanese musk in the queue in front of you in Tesco turns around because she wonders where the in-store hotdog cook off is. The man with the stylish glasses and record bag won't sit next to you on the bus even though it would make it easier to play whatever game he's playing on his i phone. The taxi driver driving you to the pub for sneaky after work drinks tells you he hopes you're not going on a date because you smell like you work in a hotdog van. The scenarios are endless.

So... A plea. Next time you finish work smelling like roses and then get a taxi straight to meet your other gorgeous smelling friends in the pub; spare a thought for me, the onion girl sitting alone on the bus smelling of hotdogs.

A soup that I would make to make me feel better if I had the energy to go and make it

Soup.

I remember the first time I made soup. I was nineteen, hungover to hell and working in a hectic bar/restaurant in town. It was just still the nineties and food was just becoming trendy hence the opening of the place where I was working. Situated right by the red brick university (not the ex polytechnic that I'd just dropped out of) it was the first place that I knew of that aimed the menu at students that wasn't your basic burger and chips. We served grilled goats cheese and roast vegetable crostini and we rubbed the tomato on our fry ups with herbs. I liked working there. They had really comfortable couches where I would sometimes try and sleep hangovers off in between orders. Anyway, I digress.

Soup.

So, yes, despite having cooked and learning to cook lots of new things at the age of nineteen I still hadn't made a soup until the head chef rang in sick one day and left me to it. I had never been interested in soup much. It brought back memories of tinned Heinz 'Big Soup', which was sometimes a quick last minute tea in our house as a child. I remember asking one of the bar staff if they'd ever made soup and they suggested I ring my mum. Now, my mum is an amazing lady, she has given me many gifts; gifts of love, patience, respect, good table manners, understanding to name but a few but soup making wouldn't be on her list of achievements. Soup came in a tin. And that was that. So we rang one of the bar staff's mum who gave me a quick recipe for Leek and potato soup. And that was that. A soup maker was born.

I still have mixed feelings about soup. I don't like broth. I don't like stock type soups. A good soup is thick and full of flavour. It can be chunky as long as it is part blended. With these things in mind I give you my recipe for Butternut Squash, rosemary and bacon soup. The soup I would make to make me feel better if I had the energy to go and make it.

1 onion

A big knob of butter

1 Butternut squash

A couple of sprigs of fresh rosemary

2 large potatoes

2 vegetable stock cubes

4 rashers of bacon

1) Roughly chop the onion and put in a large pan with the knob of butter on a medium heat.

2) Peel and roughly dice the potatoes, deseed and dice the butternut squash and add to the onions with the chopped rosemary. Saute together for a couple of minutes to get the flavour out of the rosemary.

3) Make up the stock and pour over the vegetables. I generally don't measure the stock, just pour until it covers the veg plus 2cm. You can always thin it down later if it is too thick.

4) Simmer for about 15 minutes until the veg is soft and then blend with a hand blender.

5)Chop up the bacon and fry until crispy and sprinkle over the soup.

And now my stomach is rumbling. But I still don't have the energy to make anything so I'll lie in bed and watch The Spirit of the Beehive on DVD instead. Enjoy! xx

What I should be doing. Right now on a usual Thursday:

Feeding hungry mouths. Either my own or my delightful and slightly crazy customers.

What I am actually doing: Sitting up in bed with an empty bottle of Lucozade and a bad back that has come from lying in bed for nearly 24 hours. I. am. Sick. Not in a disturbed, creepy way. Not in ghetto amazing way. No. I am sick in a sickly, poorly, feeling sorry for myself way. I have not eaten anything for 2 days, and this my friends is why I am weeping inside.

I am on the road to recovery. I know this for the following reasons:

I have thought about Spaghetti Bolognese approximately 2.1 times in the last hour.

I read an article on Guardian online about the perfect Scrambled Eggs and the descriptions and pictures didn't want to make me vomit.

I have been nostalgically thinking about spending evenings in France drinking cheap red wine mixed with summer berry Fanta.

All the signs are pointing to recovery.