The Frozen Strawberry Aperol Spritz Is the Cocktail We’ve Been Waiting For

Steep sand dunes punctured by clusters of beachgrass, frothy sea depositing razor clams and small conches for the eagle-eyed to eagerly gather along tranquil stretches of beach, and towering pines that buffer peerless coastline from swathes of parkland, a trip to Norfolk has long been de rigueur for holiday makers who appreciate its quaint chocolate box villages, abundant countryside and proximity to the sea. 

One of the new things I am trying to grow this year is agretti, Salsola soda. It’s a big hit with chefs, but still new on the UK food scene and virtually untried in British gardens.

Header image: *Psyche Delia*/Flickr, CC BY-NC

At the beginning of May this year, the UK media took note of an unusual case in Italy’s highest court – a homeless man originally found guilty of theft, and sentenced to six months in jail and a €100 fine, was acquitted. The new verdict determined that as he had only stolen a small amount of food because he was desperately hungry, he had not committed a crime.

Ever since we watched Away, Ryan and I have a new toast: “To Mars”. Unlike that fictional crew, we have no hope of ever reaching the red planet. But there are an increasing number of days when I think it would be nice to leave humanity’s mess behind and start afresh on a new world. But the prospect of forming a colony elsewhere in the solar system is a long way off, and when people talk about life on Mars they’re usually referring to alien life. 

In Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars, Kate Greene talks about Shannon Lucid, the NASA astronaut who spent six months living on the Russian space station Mir. Shannon, it turns out, was a bookworm. During her stay, she read 50 books and improvised shelving from old food boxes, complete with straps to stop the books floating off. This was in 1996, a good decade before the invention of the Kindle, and so these were real books. She apparently chose titles with the highest word to mass ratio, since launch weight is a critical factor! Lucid left her library behind for future spacefarers, but it burned up when Mir was de-orbited in 2001.

Guy Singh-Watson of Riverford Organics is warning about the risks of Brexit-related disruptions to our food supply, timed to coincide with the ‘Hungry Gap‘. He says “to be told by people who have no idea how their food is produced that this is ‘project fear’ makes me incandescent with rage”. Farmers and seasoned gardeners will be nodding their heads, but everyone else may be a little perplexed. What’s the Hungry Gap?

What kind of traveller are you? Do you prefer to lie in a hammock slung between two palm trees, reading the latest blockbuster novel? Or would I find you soaking up the local culture along with the sun? I’m more of the latter, and it helps to know a smattering of the local language if you go off the beaten track!

Header image: Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti aboard the International Space Station. NASA

When ESA’s new Vega C rocket blasted off from French Guiana for the first time, on 13 July 2022, it carried an Italian garden into space.

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Emily Followill