Noticing that they all had difficulty in sleeping and concentrating on the nights when they slept with their phones by their heads, they devised a simple experiment to test whether the radiation from their phones could be the problem. Admittedly, extrapolating too much from an experiment on cress could be dodgy, but the result of their efforts have sufficiently impressed Professor Olle Johansson at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm that he is proposing to repeat their trial with Belgian research colleague, Professor Marie-Claire Cammaert at the Université Libre de Bruxelles.

All they did was to set up twelve trays with cress seeds and to put six into a room where there was no electromagnetic radiation and the other six in a room next to two routers, broadcasting the same level of radiation as an ordinary mobile phone. Twelve days later, this was the result: the trays in the radiation-free room had grown perfectly normally and had a good crop of healthy cress, the ones in the room with the routers just did not grow at all – indeed some of the seeds had mutated and some were just dead.

We will await the results of Profs Johansson and Cammaert’s rerun of the experiment – but meanwhile the girls now leave their phones outside their bedrooms and turned off when they go to bed!

Well, I am delighted to say that it did! Thin, crisp and not at all chewy  – although weirdly, very difficult to cut with a knife and, as yet, they do not have dedicated gluten-free pizza cutters. But actually very flavoursome – and with, of course, the usual selection of fresh and tasty toppings. (About 2/3 of their normal toppings are gluten free and those that are not are clearly marked up.)

The waiting staff at my ‘local’ were very helpful and well informed about the new g-f range and, I am delighted to say, when I asked for a pizza cutter, explained that they did not have any that were not also used for ordinary pizzas. However, it was only when I started chatting to the chef that I was told about what I feel is Pizza Express’ trump card – the fact that they now only use gluten-free flour in all of their restaurants, for both gluten-filled and gluten-free pizzas so that there is no chance of loose flour blowing around and contaminating their gluten-free offer or indeed any other part of the restaurants. (Interestingly, the feed back on the gluten-free flour is that it ‘works’ exactly the same as ‘normal’ flour – no discernible difference.)

However, the new gluten free offer does not only involve pizzas. A tasty little ‘Risotto d’oro’ with roasted butternut squash, a Leggera ‘superfood’ salad, Melanzane Parmigiana topped with gluten-free breadcrumbs, not to mention a very yummy-scrumy little gluten free brownie and some Green’s (FFFood Awards winners….) gluten-free lager!

All gluten free dishes are prepared in a separate part of the kitchen with dedicated utensils and gluten-free pizzas have their own metal bases and are cooked on separate shelves in the ovens. Read all about it here on their site!

Now we just wait for them to go the final step and create some dairy-free and gluten-free pizzas!!!

We had opted for a stay in Casale Panayiotis, an eco-hotel (for much more on this see the next blog) in the village of Kalopanayiotis, 700 metres up in the mountains over looking the Marasthasa valley. The plan was to chill, read a large pile books, go for the occasional gentle wander up a mountain and eat some nice food. That was before we discovered Easter…

The large and deliciously shady terrace outside our room looked not only over the valley but over the village church. Greek Orthodox Easter starts on Maundy Thursday (the day we arrived) and runs until the following Tuesday and each and every stage of every celebration is marked by the tolling of the church bells. Either our own village church, just below our room, or the one immediately  across the valley, or just down the valley at the next village, Oikos. Delightful – except possibly at 2am on Easter Sunday morning when  the priests were still going strong!

The Troodos mountains are justly famous for their Byzantine monasteries and churches, dotted around the peaks often with stunning views across the mountains and many with UNESCO ‘World Heritage’ wall paintings dating from the 11th to 15th centuries.

These are just a very few of the paintings that cover the walls and roof of Kalapanyiotis’ very own monastery, Agios Ionnis Lambadistis, a charming, higgledy piggledy building made up of three churches built side on to each other over four centuries from 1100 onwards.

Agios Ionnis Lambadistis is, sadly, no longer used for the Easter services or, as far as we could see, for any other public services although there are monks still resident in the monastery.

Other monastery buildings are newer – Troodos monasteries seem to have rather a habit of getting burnt down although, given the number of candles brandished by not only the celebrants but the congregation  during the services, maybe that is not that surprising.

However, unlike so many churches in the UK, most of the monasteries seem to be not only very active, but well funded and well kept. These are the busy monks at the monastery of Kykkos, perched at over 1300 metres on a mountain peak – one of the richest and most lavish of the monasteries (it, apparently owns large chunks of Nicosia real estate) and the burial place of Archbishop Makarios of independence fame. Victim of several fires, the current buildings are lavish but relatively recent although the monastery does house  one of three icons attributed to St Luke the Evangelist.

Back in Kalopanayioptis, the Easter services got into full swing on Good Friday, working up to a three hour peak starting at 11pm on Saturday and running till 2am. (Being practical people, it seems that the Cypriots decided that rather than go to bed after the midnight service and then have to get up again early the following morning for the Sunday service, they should just keep on rolling after the midnight service and sleep in the following morning.)

We had already been provided with candles by the Casale, and invited to a midnight Easter supper after the service – the first break in the seven week Lenten fast – traditional chicken soup with lemon, chicken joints, red hard-boiled eggs (red for the blood of Christ) and a pie filled with a sort of baked egg custard.

We arrived, summoned by the bell, at 11pm to find a sprinkling of elderly people in the church and the priest and respondents already in full chant. Assuming that the service would be as sparsely attended as a similar event might be in the UK, we were amazed to see more, and more, and more people file into the church, each bearing their decorated, but as yet unlit, candle. Although the permanent inhabitants of the village now number no more than a few hundred, Easter is great visiting time, so the few hundred had been swollen to around a thousand by their families and friends who had poured in from all over Cyprus – and, no doubt, further afield. Forty five minutes and much chanting later, with new worshippers still filing in, the first candle was lit and the flame passed around the congregation – after which we all gradually filed out of the church for some further chanting and bell ringing and then a general melée of friends and greetings and gossip and chat before heading off for our supper.

We had assumed that that would be the end of the Easter celebrations but…

The day after we had arrived we had been asked by a visiting BBC journalist doing a piece on Kalopanayioitis and its mayor (see the following blog) whether we would mind being interviewed about our visit. We said we were happy to help and in the course of arranging the interview spent some time chatting both to the journalist and to the mayor, John  Papadouris, a native of Kalopanayiotis who, having made a substantial fortune as a civil engineer in Dubai, is responsible for the regeneration of the village. We also visited his orchards (to do the interview) and, on subsequent evenings, spent several hours chatting with him and other village returnees made good – including the now Professor Emeritus of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was born in the house which now houses the ‘library’ of the Casale!

On Easter Monday the mayor invited us to accompany him to the special Easter Tuesday service which takes place in a tiny chapel, up a dirt road high in the mountains, built to celebrate the miraculous powers of the icon which had been found on the site.

Worshippers come from all of the surrounding villages, bringing with them plastic chairs and the wherewithal to provide everyone with a slap up breakfast, including Cypriot coffee!

The tiny chapel with its beautiful local stonework,  was not only famous for its icon, but for the headless skeletons  recently been discovered lying in stone coffins beneath the pine tree in front of it and currently undergoing DNA tests to establish whether they were indeed Venetian knights from the fifteenth century!

We were delighted to have been included in this feast but – there was yet more! The village of Oikos, across the valley from Kalopanayiotis also held a celebration on Easter Tuesday – but their’s was a more secular one – lunch and entertainment in the village meeting place. So, at one o’clock, off we set once more.

This time the fare was even more lavish – these are only the sad remains that you can see… A huge joint of slow cooked lamb, surrounded by potatoes and stuffed vine leaves, large bowls of freshly chopped green salad, platters of baklava and other honey pastries, mounded piles of fresh fruit topped off with baskets of nuts and washed down by copious amounts of well chilled beer.

And these were only two tables of about twenty! Some serious catering operation…

Lunch was followed by an enthusiastic display of local dancing performed initially by a group of well-drilled teenagers who were then ousted by the ladies of the village  displaying their talents – watched by the grandchildren of the village, when they were not posing for the camera!!

We had only one further day left in the mountains and, after so much food, we were happy to spend much of it on the pleasant terraces of the Casale finishing off our books, sipping at the occasional cool beer and nibbling on salads straight from the Mayor’s organic orchards –  and wondering whether we could wait five years to come back, by which time we should also be able sample the Casale’s very own wines…

If you are interested in visiting (and I would thoroughly recommend doing so) check out the Casale Panayiotis site. The rooms are very comfortable (and several are due for an upgrade this summer which will take them to the ‘luxury’ level), the terraces and views are spectacular, the weather is delightful, the staff are charming and the food is excellent although, currently, the menu is quite restricted if you are staying for more than a couple of days.

We flew to Larnaca and hired a car (maximum two and a half hours drive to Kalopanayiotis) which also enables you to explore the mountains and the many wonderful painted Byzantine churches and monasteries that teeter on top of the peaks. Go – and enjoy!

And so it was with Kalopanayiotis, a small village high in the Troodos mountains. Until the Turkish invasion in 1974 the nearby copper mines provided just enough work to keep some people in the village but the mines are in what is now the Turkish north with a bristling border cutting off all access. Effectively, to make a living the villagers had either to go to Nicosia, or to head for the UK, some to go to university, some to make their fortunes, some to do both.

So it was with John Papadouris who left Kalopanayiotis to study civil engineering London. In due course he started a building company in north London and then, in search of new outlets for his skills, moved to Dubai. Perfectly positioned to take full advantage of Dubai’s building boom through 1980s and ’90s, Papadouris is now a very wealthy man  with construction interests that span the middle east and further afield.

But while John Papadouris was making his fortune in foreign fields, his village was dying. By the early years of this century its population had shrunk from the 1500 or so who lived there in the 1950s when he was a child, to a few hundred, most of whom were in their seventies. But no more. Through a combination of agro-tourism and investment in the local infrastructure, and with some help from the EU, Papadouris, now mayor  of the village, is dragging Kalopanayiotis back to prosperity.

Eco- or agro-tourism is not new (back in 2007 I was tramping the Himalayas checking out another such project) but it is a successful way of enabling dying communities to regenerate and become self sustaining. In the case of Kalopanayiotis, Papadouris has bought around 30 of the village houses and turned them into comfortable, verging on luxurious, ‘hotel’ rooms with large terraces overlooking the very beautiful mountain valley. Currently served by an attractive restaurant and terrace coffee bar, a very comfortable and appealing ‘library’, a sauna and steam room and a conference facility seating up to 120, Casale Panayiotis, as it is known, will soon also benefit from a much larger  spa which will harness the local mineral springs to offer a full health treatment option complete with swimming pools.

On the way to creating the Casale, a combination of Papadouris and the EU have also widened some of the village’s tortuous lanes just enough to allow cars through (for some reason Cypriots like to drive large SUVs which seriously struggle on most of their roads), repaved them with their original cobbles, rebuilt and strengthened many of the retaining walls (the village is perched on the side of a near precipice) using the local stone and the lovely local semi-dry stone wall techniques and are building a small funicular to improve access between the upper and lower village.

Admittedly, Kalopanayiotis is fertile territory for agro-tourism. Not only were there suitable houses within the village to create a workable complex, but it is situated in a beautiful valley, already ‘equipped’ with mineral springs and its very own UNESCO World heritage site monastery, Ayios Ioannis Lambadistis – a wonderful higgledy-piggledy 11th to 16th century church covered in stunning (and stunningly preserved) Byzantine frescoes. But the impressive though the Casale may be, project Papadouris does not stop there.

Across the valley he has built a small bottling factory next to a bore hole accessing fine spring water and now supplies water to many of Cyprus’ office blocks and industrial sites. Down the valley the mayor’s own house sits on a fertile strip of land beside a bubbling stream on which grow groves of citrus, olive and soft fruit trees and vegetables to stock the restaurant at the Casale; it also accommodates a small trout pond. And across the valley below the water bottling factory, the whole of the top of one of the hills is being groomed for the planting of a substantial vineyard which should, in about five years time, be producing up to 50,000 bottles of wine per season. (Although most locally grown wine in Cyprus is also locally consumed, the soil and climate are perfect for viticulture so, with the right professional input, there is no reason why they should not have a good exportable product.)

The common thread which runs through all of these enterprises is the principle that underlies all modern social innovation and enterprise: creating projects which can, in time, be self sustaining. Given the level of investment which, once the new pools and spa are finished, will run into tens of millions of euros, there is no way that investors (in this case the mayor himself) could ever expect even a modest return on the investment. But that was never the point. The purpose of the project was to give life back to the village by providing work and a viable source of income for its inhabitants – but without destroying its character – and that it most certainly is doing. Bravo Mr Papadouris! Many are the villages who would love to have so far-sighted and committed a son.

If you are interested in visiting (and I would thoroughly recommend doing so) check out the Casale Panayiotis site. The rooms are very comfortable (and several are due for an upgrade this summer which will take them to the ‘luxury’ level), the terraces and views are spectacular, the weather is delightful, the staff are charming and the food is excellent although, currently, the menu is quite restricted if you are staying for more than a couple of days.

We flew to Larnaca and hired a car (maximum two and a half hours drive to Kalopanayiotis) which then also enables you to explore the mountains (which do sit on the top of the world even though they are not that high) and the many wonderful painted Byzantine churches and monasteries that teeter on the tops of the peaks. Go – and enjoy!

Or maybe it is because way back in the dawn of time when I used to do a regular recipe slot on LBC Radio, Pizza Express’ founder, Peter Boizot, a great LBC enthusiast, used to treat me to the occasional lunch in the original Pizza Express in Wardour Street.

Or maybe it is just because they not only serve excellent pizzas, but they also serve nice salads and a decent glass of wine quickly and at a very reasonable price.

Anyhow, for whatever reason, they have always been my favourite and I have been becoming increasingly frustrated at their failure to accommodate their freefrom customers – although I did completely understand their concerns over contamination. Since they do roll out all their pizza bases on site, there are permanent clouds of flour emanating from the pizza kitchens – which are situated in the middle of most of the restaurants!

So I am particularly delighted that they have not only finally bitten the bullet but have done it in an extremely comprehensive fashion – and with the imprimatur of Coeliac UK. They have not just created a gluten-free pizza base but a whole gluten-free menu, including starters, salads, oven-baked dishes, gluten-free brownies and gluten-free beer!! (One of  FreeFrom Food Awards winners Green’s pilsners no less!)

But – and this is the master stroke – they have also solved the flour contamination problem. How? By, as of today, using gluten-free flour for rolling out all their pizza doughs, be they gluten-filled or gluten-free, in all their restaurants. This will not affect the taste of the normal pizzas as literally it is only a dusting, but it means that the apparently insoluble contamination problem ceases to exist.

The new menu goes live tonight, in all of their 420 odd restaurants, and I am very much looking forward to trying it – although it may not be till the end of next week. However, we will be investigating the whole process they have gone through (which included taking on board feedback from concerned bloggers) in more detail on FreeFrom FoodsMatter once we have tasted the new pizzas – and the beer!!

Then we will need to start talking to them about creating not only a gluten-free menu but a gluten and dairy-free one….

Meanwhile, if anyone else gets to try them out before I do, I would love to know what you think!

However, since both Alex Gazzola and NutMums (who he quotes) have posted very sensibly on the subject, I shall not re-invent the wheel but merely refer you to their respective blogs – Alex’s here and NutMums here.

The Jamie’s case, of course, has nothing to do with the new regulations. Their coeliac customer used the quite comprehensive provisions of the Food Safety Act, the Food Safety Regulations and the Consumer Protection Act to bring her case. However, she was on strong ground as she had  asked for gluten-free food no less than three times and still not got it, so the restaurant did not really have a leg to stand on. But, when the new regulations come in next year, although they are still pretty vague – the restaurant only has to ‘provide the information’ although in what form is not specified – the onus for informing the customer will have shifted to the establishment. (For a more detailed assessment of the proposed regulations see my blog last August.)

This has already reduced many catering establishments, especially those who know little about allergy so really have no idea what they are getting into, to gibbering wrecks. Catering consultants,  laboratories and groups such as Coeliac UK and the Anaphylaxis Campaign are all rushing around setting up guidelines and courses by the truckload. Indeed, we are at it ourselves and are discussing with the Food and Drink Innovation Network the possibility of adding a second ‘catering’ day to our annual ‘freefrom’ industry seminar in September.

But although, obviously, the ‘freefrom’ food that is going to be served and the contamination controls that are established in the kitchens are hugely important, the most crucial area it seems to me is the level of allergy awareness and the quality of the information that is provided by the front of house staff. No matter how wonderful your gluten or dairy free dishes or how conscientious your contamination control, if the front of house staff do not understand the requirements of your food sensitive customers and cannot give them the correct information, then you might as well not bother.

It was very much this aspect of ‘freefrom’ catering that we had in mind when  we announced, at the FreeFrom Food Awards presentation two weeks ago, that we were looking at the possibility of launching a FreeFrom Restaurant Award for 2014. In the spirit of the awards, for which entrants’ products must be available by some means or other nationwide – and also because there is no other way that we could practically run it – entry would be restricted to chains with a minimum of, say, 20 outlets around the country. More to the point, judging would place heavy emphasis on allergen awareness and the provision of allergen information. Anyhow, early stages as yet, but, watch this space…. And listen up, all you restaurant chains out there!

And, of course – how could I forget?…. Because I have a horrible habit of being at least five years ahead of every game (who else would have tried to sell organic, ‘freefrom’ food into the supermarkets ten years before anyone had invented the term ‘freefrom’?….) – if you want a quick primer on how to deal with allergy in food service, all you need to do is to buy a copy of our excellent Allergy Catering Manual.

Published way back in 2005, it ‘takes you, step by step, through food allergy: what it is; how people react; the foods that cause reactions; how to deal with those reactions and prepare food that allergic customers will be able to eat; how to train your staff; where to buy ingredients and – most important – your legal position.’

As a result of current measles scare in Wales the health agencies are peddling the same old line – MMR is totally safe. There is, and never was, any foundation in the allegations about MMR and autism that caused the disastrous parental failure of trust in the vaccine –  as a result of which we now have the potential for a measles epidemic. Sadly, the last of those statements is probably the only one that is true.

What caused the disastrous failure of of trust in the MMR vaccine was not Andrew Wakefield’s research into the possible connection between MMR and autism, but the government’s immediate and categorical denial that there could be anything in his research. So immediate and so categorical was it that parents smelt a ‘cover-up’. But instead of addressing their concerns, the government just continued to categorically deny any connection thereby re-inforcing parents’ cover-up fears.

Many thousands of pages have been written on whether or not there could be a connection between the live measles vaccine and late-onset regressive autism, and there is now significant amounts of research both supporting and rubbishing the theory. (Working both on the precautionary principle and the belief that, however much we have learnt about the human body there is vastly more to be learnt, I would come down on the side of caution and suggest that there could be a link and we would do well to investigate further.)

However, all that Andrew Wakefield claimed back in 1998 was the possibility that, in a very small subset of genetically or environmentally vulnerable children, if you give three live viruses together, ‘you potentially increase the risk of an adverse event [such as autism – my brackets] occurring, particularly when one of those viruses influences the immune system in the way that measles does.’ He did not suggest that you should not vaccinate children against measles, merely that  you should do so on a more staggered timetable and with single rather than multiple vaccines.

It is recognised in all medical circles that vaccination can bring great benefits but that it is also a potentially dangerous business with a significant risk of untoward side effects. And that the more vaccines you give together, the shorter the time interval between vaccinations and the younger the age at which the child is vaccinated, the more you ramp up the potential for adverse side effects. That is not to say that you should not vaccinate, but it is very much to say that you should treat vaccinations with respect. For a very balanced and sensible view, see Dr Richard Halverson’s article here on FoodsMatter.

Of the children whose regressive autism (autism which strikes an apparently healthy, normal child around the age of two) appeared to be linked to the MMR vaccine, virtually all were atopic (had a genetic disposition to allergy and immune system problems), were unwell or had already had multiple course of antibiotics when the the vaccine was administered. Yet many millions or other children had the vaccines without apparent ill effect.

Would the sensible, balanced and responsible, if somewhat more labour intensive, approach to the problem not have been to screen each child before the vaccine was administered to ensure that it was in good health, had not had lengthy courses of antibiotics and did not come from an atopic background. If any of these applied then that child should either have been offered single vaccines at appropriately staggered intervals or, if it was just unwell, should have been sent away and its parents told to bring it back when it was in good health.

But that never happened. Parents were just told that Andrew Wakefield was a fraud and that his research was wrong, and that is what they are still being told. Yes, measles is a potentially dangerous disease, and herd immunity from it is a great thing. I just wish the government would go about achieving it in a more intelligent and convincing way.

The Ice Follies came as the gift and inspiration of Prudence Neusink, she of Body Talk fame. She  arrived at the front door last October, preceded by a large sack of bulbs, and directed a day of heavy digging, overseen by Tawny Pipit, our wire foal who is now enjoying the grass at their feet. If you want to see how it is done, go the to garden page and spool down to 20th October last year. Meanwhile…

This is them seen early morning from my bedroom window…

This is them from the balcony outside the kitchen over breakfast..

And here they are at lunchtime in the full sun – on display to Prudence as it happens…

And here are those that got knocked over by the cats and rescued…

And if I am somewhat tardy on reporting on it, I apologise, but the last few days have been crammed to the eyeballs with photos, video editing, sending out certificates and logos, dealing with press queries etc etc etc…

There is a full report of the event on the awards site from Twitter-king Alex plus the text of the presentation speech with all kinds of exciting plans for next year and, of course – all of the winners! Not to mention a video of short interviews with all the very excited winners…. Check in to the awards home page for the link.

The high point of the evening was, as always, the free gluten-free beer and, this year, sulphite-free wine, bar…

Other high points were Pig and Co’s dash for the podium… They were quite convinced that they had not won as they had read all about the buffet on the blog. Since their sausages are only available from their site and they knew that we had not ordered any, there was obviously no way that they could have won!!  The whoops that accompanied their dash for the podium had the whole room in stitches!!

Equally delightful were Indian Coeliac’s Inder Hira and her husband, also a very new, young company, very excited to have won an award. Not that small companies had it all their own way by a long chalk.

Sainsbury’s picked up two wins and Tesco and Waitrose one each, as did Doves Farm, Riso Gallo, Pizza Hut and Orgran while Warburtons new gluten-free Newburn Bakery, Provamel, Yes! You Can, Fria, DS Gluten-free and Amy’s Kitchen collected a slew of Highly commendeds between them.

However, the ‘gong of the evening’, Marble Mo, went to the delightful Emma Johnson, collecting him from Antony WT on behalf of Steve Bessant and Ian Drury, founders of the very successful Bessant and Drury, who were away on holiday. Do check in to the winners video on the site to see her kissing her ‘food Oscar’!! Here she is receiving Marble Mo from Antony.

But… I hear you ask…. What of velvety svelte Cressida and  Anna Belinda’s over-strained waist line?…. Well, I have to report that Cressida did look extremely svelte in her devoré velvet. Here she is talking about next year’s awards with Marble Mo by her side –  with Anna Belinda and I standing in the background. And please note that we do not look in the least strained! Indeed, thanks to a grumbling tooth for a week before the party, I had been on an enforced diet so, in the event, the waist-line was not an issue!!