Muscat grapes

I decided to take a post breakfast walk to the Museum of packaging in Notting Hill. Having tried and failed to find it a few times before, this time I look a map and found it tucked away in a mews around the back of Ledbury street.

The waves of nostalgia were overwhelming as I discovered more and more memories of childhood. From the Vesta curry that my mum lovingly reconstituted as her one and only gesture to foreign food to the boxes of Lindt chocolate bunnies dad brought back from business trips to Brussels.

There were alarming discoveries too. Did you know that in the 1950's Heinz marketed REAL turtle soup as well as the mock variety (made from calves heads or oxtail depending on what you read).

Suitably inspired I walked west down Westbourne Grove where these grapes caught my eye. They were in the doorway of a deli called Tavola, totally devoid of any packaging what so ever, naked and alluring.

I went inside and chatted to the owner. We both had a rant about the term 'organic' being used as a license to whack up the prices on sub standard food and then I returned home with my grapes and a fine collection of olive wood chopping boards (four for ten pounds).