Today is the 50th Birthday of Nutella the chocolate and hazelnut spread from Piemonte. People get a little bit obsessed with Nutella. There’s even a concert streaming live on youtube tonight to celebrate. You can buy it in the largest jars I have ever seen, it’s slathered into and onto all manner of pastries, deserts, flans and bread. Its cloying texture gets stuck to the top of your mouth and into your teeth. And yet it’s advertised as a healthy breakfast. I’m not really a fan. The only way I can eat it is cold, straight from the jar with a spoon. 

   My breakfast spread of choice would be Marmite. Apparently Nutella now outsells Marmite in the UK. I can’t think why. I recently succumbed and bought a jar from Castroni (a vast and dangerous international food shop close to where I live). I say succumbed, it cost over 7 euros – English price £2.49. My other half found it in the cupboard and assumed I’d bought some fancy English jam. Having smelled it, he soon lost that illusion. It’s a bit difficult to describe the somewhat acquired taste of this sticky brown paste, but the recent ad campaign “Love it or Hate It” just about sums it up. Full of vitamin B and folic acid it even keeps the mosquitoes away too. Give it a try.