This gorgeous granite pestle and mortar came from a little ‘timewarp’ shop in our local town.

The shop (Goldworthys) sells everything from a single screw to sumptuously beautiful kitchenware of which this is one such item. This particular one was a gift from David for Christmas last year and has been photographed by both of us before.

So why again today? Well, if truth be told, I’ve been hideously busy working and when I finally got through today’s workload, it was dark, I had shopping to do and hair to wash – very, very early start tomorrow morning necessitates hair wash of an evening.

I’ve made a hurried spicy supper and while I was rummaging around in my spice box, I recalled the last shot of this that I did, complete with toasted cumin and coriander seeds. I recalled that I always planned to have another go at the beast and then it was right in front of me so that was it really.

The studio light was right there too, having been removed from the dining room in eager anticipation of the table legs arriving there yesterday. Now it would appear our only course of action to get my gorgeous table in is to take out the dining room window and bring it in through the hole in the wall. Bah humbug.

I was so thrilled to get this gift because it is granite and our beloved Cornwall is granite land like no other. Unfortunately, it’s made from granite from the far east but even so it’s a beautiful object. It’s interesting that it’s a different colour from our stone – ours is grey, beige, black and white whereas this has quite a lot of green in it. I’ve b&w’d it because of an orange reflection from the gaudy walls that distracted terribly.

Interestingly, it's clearly a case of 'great minds' because my friend Becks got one of these for Christmas this year too - but hers is bigger than mine - perhaps I'll have to get her to bring hers round so I can do a 'little and large' of the two of them.

I love the rock here – we’ve got so much granite in our garden, I just want to go out and fondle it all of the time and there is loads of slate too. You can’t imagine how beautiful it is to see the two contrasting stones working so well together. Now I want a slate slab in the kitchen so I can bring inside the contrasts we have outside. Yum!

Last year, I was eating comfort food!