This week has been busy. Last Saturday I ran my third food photography workshop at the School of Artisan Food. It was a great success with two of the students writing wonderful blogs about how positive their experience was. You can read Jenny Hammerton's blog at Silver Screen Suppers and Debbie Fletcher's at Done Dreaming. I love teaching the courses with Alison Lowe who runs Nottingham Flavours Magazine. She is a whizz on the camera and has a lovely calm personality so everyone feels relaxed and confident.

Nick and I have completed the final checks on our book Cooking For the Sensitive Gut which is being published by Pavilion Books in February 2016. The book looks wonderful. It is beautifully designed and the recipes and text read beautifully. We are so pleased. Nick is a gastroenterologist and therapist and has written the medical part of the book.

And now I am just about to drive up to Burton in Kendal to head up a Food Portrait's course at Aspire, the award winning photography training company. It is a wonderful location and I love working with the team there too.

But before I set off I had to use up a couple of avocado. I did not fancy anything too sweet and so I simply liquidised the ripe avocados with lemon verbena, mint and almond milk and decorated the smoothies with with a few crunchy cocoa nibs. So creamy and delicious. It did not need any honey, agave syrup or sugar. It was just perfect the way it was.

Incidentally the white borage flower appears in a lot of my photographs at the moment because I love it. This is the first year I have grown it in preference to blue borage. It is a smaller neater plant and less of a garden thug than its blue brother.

Have a lovely weekend - when it comes....

Avocado, lemon verbena and mint smoothie

Serves 2

Ingredients

2 small ripe avocado
juice 1/2 lemon
400 ml almond milk, or other preferred milk
small handful fresh mint leaves, rinsed
small handful lemon verbena leaves, rinsed
2 tsp cocoa nibs

Method

Cut the avocado in half and remove the stone. Scrape the flesh from the skin using a dessertspoon. Make sure you scrape the greenest flesh from close to the skin. This really adds colour to your smoothie.

Add the lemon juice, almond milk, mint and lemon verbena and whizz with a stick blender or liquidiser. Pour into glasses and sprinkle with cocoa nibs. Decorate with an edible flower if you have one.