There is something rather wonderful about supermarket herbs in pots. I know I shouldn’t say that and I know our desire for out-of-season food to be available all year round is very BAD. I do have a guilty conscience about it but at this time of year we need something to lift our spirits and this is it for me. Let’s face it, in comparison to a mobile phone contract where you get a new phone every year whether or not you need it, buying herbs in pots is probably a lot less bad.

It’ll only be 2-3 weeks now before I can pick mint from my own garden again but in the interim it’s wonderful to be able to pluck a few leaves and add them to something to bring a sense of warmth and summer to our food. I’m sure that it’s not as environmentally unfriendly as some pre-packaged things that are way out of season in as much as I can make a pot last for months by using them sparingly and keeping them watered.

We even buy our chillis this way now and it’s very gratifying to find the two plants on my kitchen windowsill are now covered in flower buds again so for the princely sum of £3 I am going to have at least two crops from the plants and hopefully, if I look after them well, they might go on all year. I wish we could buy scotch bonnets in this way because although the chillis we’ve bought have been quite pokey, I love the fragrance and flavour of scotch bonnets. My home-made sweet chilli sauce made with scotch bonnets is legendary and keeps for months. I’m still using a batch made in May last year and it’s still good enough to knock your socks off!

Yesterday I was watching a programme on the telly called “superscrimpers challenge”, which although I now realise has been around for a while, it hadn’t crossed my radar before. On it, they were making shampoo go further by watering it down with a minty water infusion. I must say, I like that idea very much, perhaps in a few weeks when the mint in my garden is burgeoning this will be another good use for it. I use it to make mint cordial but can’t use enough of it in this way to satisfy my need to make every crop go as far as possible and each year, quite a lot of it goes to waste. So now a fresh idea to reduce that – fantastic.