"And a proper casserole has to have both Marmite and celery in it."

Picked up a Marmite recipe book for 50p at an Oxfam shop t'other day. Utterly brilliant! For a skinny little paperback, it's already firmly one of the best cookery books I've got on my shelf...

I got some Champagne Marmite a while ago, which tasted like cats pee or something equally iffy. By contrast, Stout Marmite which they released limited editions of rocked!

But whatever happened to those fabulous marmite stock cubes that were the best ever veggie alternative to Oxo that ever there was?

As for celery in casserole, I prefer lovage with all its dark green and atmosphearically fragrant herbage. Unfortunately my plant died, so it's back to the rather less potently evocative, anaemically pale and neatly defoliaged celery - out of clingwrap...