Q3 - my nemesis

You are not a friend of the aubergine. What other food loves and hates do you have?

Last year, I tried blogging but gave up pretty quickly when that job I stayed behind in Edinburgh for took over my life.

One of my very few blog entries was about how much I disliked aubergines and that, despite all this, I was going to conquer my repulsion in a way that would make Jeffrey Steingarten proud - by cooking aubergine in as many different ways as possible until I learned to love the damn thing.

Liz saw my post and kindly suggested that I try aubergine caviar. Over the course of the past year I've made both that recipe and several others, and now I can honestly say that I don't dislike it any more. I just don't love it.

Other dislikes... are few and far between really. I'll try most things once or twice - how else are you supposed to find out?

One thing, which is more of a preference really, is that I'd much rather have tea than coffee. I've just never developed the taste for it. Mr B., on the other hand, is a coffee man through and through and would rather drink dishwater than tea. We have a gentleman's agreement that I won't try to make his coffee and he won't attempt to make my tea.

Oh, and I don't like Stilton. Scooping out the centre and filling it with port doesn't make it any better. Just wrong.

I love chocolate but it depends on my mood as to what I want. Sometimes I'll want a couple of squares of something really good with a high cocoa content. Other times I'll want the kind of crud from my childhood - Double Deckers were, and still are, a particular favourite. For some reason though, I don't like mint and chocolate together - perhaps some After Eight trauma inflicted in early youth.

Bread - that's another great love. I would never be able to go on the Atkins diet. In fact, I tried out the Carol Vorderman detox diet once, which was equally disapproving of carbs, and I cracked after 36 hours because I walked past a bakery and all I could smell was warm bread fresh out of the oven... (deliberate self-sabotage?) Love it, love it, love it.

I have some hazy domestic vision of standing around and making a lot of bread after I move. But I suspect the panicky reality of trying to find a job may intefere with that slightly.

Other stuff I love includes... fresh strawberries that actually taste of something (ditto tomatoes), pesto, pickles of all kinds, apples, cinnamon, gingerbread, asparagus, pancakes, chickpeas, anything with some kind of starch element (mmmm starch), coriander, fennel, lemons, chillis, fresh herbs, a really good homemade burger, noodles, a crisp, crunchy apple, earthy soup on a cold winter's day, roasted veggies with Sunday dinner and Yorkshire pudding, puddings in general... God, I'm hungry.