[Confessions of a Novelty Confection Fiend]

If you're a Kit Kat fan and find yourself in Norway, try Freia's Kvikk Lunsj. It's better than the British Kit Kat, and far better than the US Kit Kat, in particular in terms of the quality of the chocolate. The retro-coloured wrappers are also extremely cool.

[elusive beverages]

San Pelligrino Limonata, Aranciata, Chino and Pompelmo (sp?) are all available in the UK too if anyone's interested. Limonata and Aranciata at EAT sandwich bars, and the other two flavours in Italian delis, for example Delice D'Italia on Lupus Street, SW1.

I like the Pompelmo flavour with Campari and soda.

[International Potato Chips]

Walker's in the UK have just launched a 'Great British Takeaway' range of crisps - including Chicken Tikka Masala, Chinese Spare-Rib, and Sweet and Sour flavours.

In the interests of science, I selflessly picked up a pack of the first two. The Chicken Tikka Masala ones were nothing special - they tasted sweet and pickle-y, like tomato ketchup flavour crisps. But the Spare-Rib flavour was great: they had a really interesting aniseed flavour (along with the meaty background flavour) that I've never found in a crisp before.

[Pimm's #1]

Your Pimms recipe sounds good. I'm with you in preferring ginger ale as a mixer to lemonade. And I think cucumber and orange are the two fruits/vegetables you shouldn't leave out (I can live without the strawberries, nectarines, etc that find their way into a lot of Pimms...).

Judging by the Plymouth website, they haven't been making it for all that long. There's a list of US Plymouth gin distributors on the website too, so it may be worth calling your local distributor and seeing if they've been offered the fruit cup.

[Bloody Mary Cocktails]

In the UK, Big Tom mix (Big Tom) is a good Bloody Mary fall-back if for some reason you don't have access to ingredients. It's sold in quite a lot of pubs and off-licences.

One other Bloody Mary tip. The worst Bloody Mary I ever made was when, as a student, I'd bought some Blavod, which was on a promotional offer. Tomato juice + dyed black vodka = drink that looks like toxic waste.

[Whale in Norway]

Thanks, The Viking. Are there any particular sushi bars in Norway you would recommend for whale sushi?

[Pimm's #1]

Thanks for this - adding Angostura bitters to home-made Pimms would probably replicate the Plymouth taste pretty well.

[Pimm's #1]

All the recent hot weather in the UK has given me a thirst for vast quantities of Pimms.

In the interests of variety, I picked up a bottle of Plymouth (of Plymouth Gin fame) Fruit Cup - their own version of the Pimms No 1 Cup.

Plymouth's branding capitalises on the fact that it is 'traditional' strength - 30% ABV rather than 20% ABV, as Pimm's now is.

I compared it to Pimms both mixed with lemonade and mixed with dry ginger ale. It was a revelation. The Plymouth Fruit Cup was a far more interesting product. It was spicier, had fresher orange notes, and had a distinctive Angostura/cola aftertaste that made it taste much more refreshing than the Pimm's. And of course it's stronger, which can only be a good thing.

Unfortunately, it's not easy to come by, at least in the UK. I asked the beer-and-spirits person at Borough Market (who stocks all the other Plymouth products) where I could get it, and he told me that Plymouth have, for the time being, signed an exclusive distribution deal with Waitrose - so you can only get it there. This is not such a big hardship as I will make use of any excuse to go to Waitrose.

So anyway, it's Plymouth Fruit Cup for me from now on.

[TDG: Wine Camp: Use It Or Lose It . . . Sherry]

Thanks, Craig, for a great article.

And thanks in particular for your advice on glassware. I don't own any sherry glasses, and it always made me feel like an old sot to drink sherry from wine glasses - but now I feel vindicated.

On the subject of glassware, while wine glasses do work fine, I've always liked the sherry glasses that they use in what seems like every bodega in Andalusia. They're perhaps 100-125ml in volume, made of normal wine-glass material, and look like squat champagne flutes with a 1-2cm stem. I tried to buy some in the UK a few months ago as a present for someone who'd asked, and drew a blank. The only sherry glasses I could find in stores or online where bizarre maiden-aunt-style liqueur thimbles of the sort Craig describes. Has anyone seen the traditional bodega sherry glasses for sale outside Spain?

[What's the best franchise/chain restaurant?]

Quite a few of the UK mid-market restaurant chains do a good job, especially when you compare them with what came before.

Pizza Express and its descendants (Cafe Pasta, Zizzi, Ask, Est! Est! Est!, Strada) are not stunningly original, and can be annoying in their ubiquity, but I've always enjoyed them. I especially like the 'scalability' of meals there. The ability to have a range of types of meal, ranging from just a coffee, through pizza and mineral water, to a starter, main, dessert and coffee in an atmosphere that's generally not tacky and can be very pleasant is a real plus. (Although the newer, underground aircraft-hangar style Pizza Expresses are pretty awful compared to the charming old high street ones.) For what it's worth, my favourite of all these chains is Strada, which I think is in a league of its own, both in terms of decor (stylish dark wood interiors) and product (speck pizzas, free bottled water).

The nearest parallels to these mid-market pizza chains that I ate in when I lived in the US, such as California Pizza Kitchen, felt much tackier in decor as well as lower in food quality (despite the fact that the quality of the best pizza was much higher.)

[Whale in Norway]

An earlier thread on eating whale-meat in Japan prompted me to describe my experiences with whale-meat in Norway. (Disclaimer: my post doesn't address the ethical issues around fishing or eating whales; I hope that I don't cause offence, and apologise in advance if I do. )

I've eaten whale in two forms: smoked and pan-fried. In both cases, I assume the whale in question was minke whale, although this wasn't specified when I bought it.

The smoked whale was sold thinly-sliced and vacuum-packed. It was dark brown in colour. The overwhelming taste was of strongly smoked, gamey beef, but the most remarkable thing about it was the texture. It was hard to describe, so perhaps I'll be forgiven by evoking the texture by saying what it wasn't like. It's said that good prosciutto should be eaten by hand, and that the nature of the its fat will cause it tear in exactly the 'right' place. Smoked whale's texture was the opposite of this - it didn't tear at all, and had an unfamiliar and almost artificial mouthfeel. The internal fat was evenly distributed all through the meat in tiny dots, as if long veins of fat ran through the meat perpendicular to the direction of the slicing. It gave the meat a processed feel that I found unpleasant.

The pan-fried whale was bought from Fisketorget in Bergen. The steak looked like an intensely dark, bloody piece of tuna. It was cooked in a fairly traditional Norwegian way - peppered and pan-fried medium in butter, and served with crispy fried onions and vegetables. The strong, beefy taste present in the smoked whale was there again, but was more appealing without the smoked-ness. It tasted like a flavourful, cheaper cut of steak. The texture was, again, interesting. It was certainly close to the tenderness of, say beef sirloin. The fact that the fat seemed to permeate the meat in fine threads (as opposed to more distinct marbling of a beef-steak) noticeable again: it gave something of a tuna-like consistency to the bite. However, it lacked the delicious butteriness of really good beef fat.

I probably wouldn't hurry to have smoked whale again. I would have the steak again if offered (ethical issues aside); it might benefit from the creaminess of a sauce au poivre. I've heard that whale sashimi is extremely good, but have not tried this, and would be interested to hear if anyone has.

[Reinventing fast food]

Mmmm... pasties.

In addition to Presto, there seem to be quite a few branch of the "West Cornwall Pasty Company" in London, and perhaps further afield, selling a variety of pasties ranging from the traditional, through the eccentric, to the seriously misjudged. There's one in Covent Garden where the old Cranks used to be, and one on the Strand near the Savoy, for starters.

I remember as a child being taken by my grandparents to Ivor Dewdney's in Plymouth (http://www.ivordewdney.co.uk/modern.htm) for pasties for lunch. These were never as good as homemade, but they were nice in the cold weather. They met the description of fast-food despite taking a long-ish time to bake: high turnover meant they were continuously baking, so you could always be sure of getting a hot pasty without having to wait.

[Favorite Seasonal Foods]

Cloudberries!

Only around in late summer, and absolutely wonderful.

Out of interest, does anyone know if cloudberries are available to buy anywhere outside Norway/Finland/Sweden? Some quick googling suggests that they grow in Alaska, northern New England and perhaps Canada - has anyone seen them for sale there? What about Scotland?