We are so OVER pop up restaurants at suffolkfoodie.  The food might be fantastic but not if it's served tepid. The service only pub-average and the final prices high. Let's try pop up + fun + cheap = a great night out - and then we might go to another one.

Stopped for a bite to eat at lunchtime on Friday, you have to duck your head to get in this quaint tea room on the edge of Suffolk at Oulton Broad. Home made cakes are their speciality and their ginger and carrot cakes were especially good, but we had ordered a cheese and tomato quiche before we saw the board with home-made sausage and onion pie or pea and ham soup on it .  You will need to be friendly with your neighbours as these tables are close together but when your coke comes on a saucer with a doily you know you are in the right place and the whole meal with a pot of tea was only  £10!

And here is Justin's recipe -

Saute of snails, bacon and bone marrow, flat parsley and capers.

4 pieces of short sawn bone marrow

12 ex large snails (tinned will do if you can't get fresh)

1/2 shallot chopped

2 slices of pancetta cut into lardons

100g fresh garlic butter

For the parsley salad:

small bunch of flat parsley, picked and washed

1/4 red onion thinly sliced and sprinkled with salt to withdraw moisture

20 baby capers

salt and pepper

drizzle of olive oil and squeeze of 1/4 lemon. Combine all ingredients together just before serving.

First roast your bone marrow in a medium oven, on a rack on a tray sprinkled with rock salt for 10 mins then turn the bones for another 5 minutes.

Gently colour the pancetta in a small frying pan, then add the chopped shallot, add the snails and gently fry without colouring the shallots.

Add the garlic butter and allow the butter to start to froth and gently colour.

Assemble by placing the parsley salad on a plate alongside the bone marrows and spoon the snails on top and around the marrows. Serve with a spoon to scoop out the marrow and good bread to soak the juices. Simple but delicious. And it has been on the menu since day one. Serves 2.

Ok, a blast from the past. A salmon mousse recipe, very 70's dinner party but also still good if you want to make an economical fish dish a day or two ahead for a party. I used to make these in a salmon shaped tin which is long gone; but I could buy back at great expense from a vintage cookware site.

Everyone around me is making marmalade but I have never liked it, so here are some pictures - you’ll have to find your own recipes.

.            

  My friend Rebekah kept her

  wedding cake top layer in her

  loft for four years and went to 

  look at it the other day for the first time.

  She says 'Oh well, it went the same way as the   marriage'...

There has been a revolution in food, and it isn't just about eating.  If you have been in a restaurant and seen someone taking a picture of their starter you can be pretty sure they are doing it to show someone who cares, but can't be there to taste it themselves. They might even be going to write about it later. Food blogging has taken over the culinary world and the food critics of our national newspapers are upset – until now they were the only ones allowed to have an opinion. Those of us who love food and write as well were always envious of their job – being paid to eat? We dream about work like that and the critics who have publicly moaned that too many people are getting in on the act have been inundated by indignant food bloggers. But when do they ever come out of London? Of course London has some of the best restaurants in the country but here in East Anglia we have some of the best produce, some great chefs (including Jamie and Delia...) a lot of dedicated cooks and foodies, and those of us who know where to find them want to tell everybody else.

So now anyone can do it and it's going to be big - in August there was an International Food Bloggers Conference in Seattle, featuring food sponsors, talks on blogging ethics, special diets and five course menus for breakfast lunch and dinner. I might call my blogging mates in this area and see if they want to come with me next year; because we are going to change the way you think about food.

A quick look through the thousands of food blogs that I can connect to in a moment takes me into a foodie world that was previously inaccessible.  From beautifully photographed decorated cupcakes in New York, to sushi in Japan, via a sweet-maker in Indonesia - the skill and dedication of people who cook, photograph and write about food is inspiring, and can make you instant friends with people around the world who are as passionate as you. And they have such great names – Eat like a Girl, Rate My Sausage or Kiss My Spatula anyone?  

Here on suffolkfoodie you will find gorgeous Suffolk food -  there is so much of it. I am not an expert chef but I do love cooking and eating, and nothing pleases me more than buying a pumpkin from the side of the road, or a home-made cake from a village fete, or discovering a cafe that still sells liver and bacon casserole (with fried onions and fresh cabbage) for under a fiver. I want to celebrate what comes out of my garden, from down my road and in my village. It should be easy to find, good and cheap Suffolk produce – just as easy as it is to find a simple and cheap risotto in Italy, and through the suffolkfoodie community we will encourage, not condemn.

When I worked in a Suffolk restaurant the thought of a food critic discovering us, writing amazing things and launching us into celebrity-land was always tempered by the fact that they might not get it, would write something rude and send us in a nosedive into even greater obscurity. Like a Michelin star it's as much a blessing as a curse. And although the critics still have some influence, now that anyone can have an opinion I'm sure it keeps them on their toes. Tracey MacLeod, food critic of the Independent, ventured out not too long ago to review The British Larder, a Suffolk country pub that has a food blog of the same name.