Marco Pierre White's Glorious Soups

As this is a food blog, I felt the urge to share my new lunch option for those busy days in the office!

I spotted in Asda last week, a range of soups called Glorious, endorsed by the one and only Marco Pierre White. I find tins / jars / cartons of soup normally predictably bland and avoid them in favour of my homemade versions usually rustled up from seasonal ingredients. However, these soups caught my eye due to the fresh and unusual sounding combinations and I invested in the Chicken, Courgette and Orzo Pasta broth variety. Special offer too, so under £1.50 I think.

The flavours were very fresh tasting, with proper chunks of ingredients not overcooked. There was plenty of meat and pasta making it thoroughly delicious as well as filling. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this soup and now just need to get hold of the other varieties to try (I eagerly went back to ASDA but couldn't find them??) which include:

• Irish Colcannon Soup
• Indian Chicken Soup
• Toulouse Sausage and Bean Cassoulet Soup
• Mexican Bean and Tortilla Soup
• Moroccan Tomato and Chick Pea

Stockists include Asda, Sainsbury, Morrisons and Nisa - get yourself down there and try them out!

East Midlands Food Festival

We've trying to just come back from having eaten our way around the East Midlands Food Festival and are now find space in the fridge and freezer for our purchases which included...

Three types of Chilli Relish from Peperoncino. Their motto "Everyone loves a hot Italian", wasn't quite true as Heidi found out whe she sampled the Lava All'Italiana (labelled Infernal) and then proceeded to sneeze for the next 10 minutes. I'm sure that plenty of people thought she had Swine Flu, and gave us a wide berth, allowing us to get through the crowds more easily - Good work Heidi!!

A Steak and Kidney pudding and Toffee Fudge Pudding, from The Old Fashioned Pudding Company.

Four types of sausage from the guys from Jimmy's Farm, using meat from their rare breed Essex pigs.

Steak pies from Nova Scotia Farm Produce made using Yorkshire prime beef. The crispy pastry was enough to convince us to buy a boxed Baker's Dozen of the pies.

Imogen and Scarlett managed to divide their pocket money between the Chocolate Pizza Company, a skewer for the Chocolate Fountain and some cookies. All our hard work teaching them about healthy eating obviously fell on deaf ears!

Luckily for me and Heidi, the Chocolate Fountain was immediately next to the Somerset cider company selling Natterjack Cider, so our time waiting for the chocolate to be eaten was not completely wasted.

Off then for a Burger for lunch, sitting outside in the October sunshine, such a difference from the rain soaked festival in 2008.

Time now to put our feet up and read all of the literature we picked up, starting with information regarding the recycling products from Recycle for Leicestershire, including the Food Cone and Johanna hot composter for all of our food scraps. Some useful ideas too for reducing food waste from Love Food Hate Waste.

Apologies to all of the people who spoke to that I haven't mentioned, but rest assured I will be reading more and may decide to place and order later.