Guest post by Alison Jane Reid I have two great passions in life. The first is writing and the second is slow food. By the time I was seven I knew I would be a writer. Reading and living in my imagination is and was as important to me as breathing. The second passion found me. I was a freshman at university in Wales studying for a degree in English Literature. The eighties was a miserable time to be a foodie. It was the era of boil in the bag fish, pot noodles and cuppa soup. Ghastly doesn’t begin to describe the situation. Everything had the pervading taste of plastic and chemicals. Then something utterly marvelous happened. A tiny jewel of an organic bakery opened in my Welsh university town, with a ridiculously long name in Welsh, which I still can’t pronounce. At the time it was like entering a lost, culinary Elysium – the holy grail of baking nirvana.