SMOOTH NUT BUTTER

It is really straightforward to make your own nut butter. You can use any variety of nuts (cashew is delicious) and the difference in taste from a shop-bought jar is significant. All you need for good nut butter is roasted nuts and a food processor. Look at the label on any quality brand and you’ll see that nuts and maybe a little salt are the only ingredients, while cheaper brands tend to add palm oil and sugar to their nut butters.

MAKES 450G

450g raw unsalted almonds, skin on, cashew nuts or skinless peanuts

¼ tsp ground cinnamon (optional) ¼ tsp sea salt (optional) light olive oil (optional)

H1 Preheat the oven to 190C/170C fan/ gas 5. Spread the nuts on a baking tray and roast for 10 minutes, shaking halfway through. Remove from the oven and allow the nuts to cool until you can comfortably handle them.

2 Tip the nuts into a food processor or high-speed blender with the cinnamon and salt (if using), then blitz for 8 minutes, stopping regularly to scrape down the sides. The nut butter should be smooth and shiny. Add a little light olive oil to alter the consistency of the nut butter as required.

3 Transfer to an airtight container – I use a sterilised mason jar.

NOTES

For a crunchy version, reserve a quarter of the nuts. Blitz them to a coarse texture and set aside, then stir into the finished nut butter.

Homemade nut butters can be stored in the fridge for up to 2 weeks and you can freeze in an airtight container (not glass) for up to 6 months.

Nuts can be expensive, but you can order them in bulk online; health-food shops often have multi-buy offers too.

HHH

Ishould say, straight off, that this is not an #ad. I’d barely thought about Marks & Spencer’s knickers until reading the company’s recently released sales figures (more below). I definitely didn’t think I was evangelical about them – they’ve just always been in my life, in the same way they’ve probably always been in yours.

But this quiet ubiquity is M&S pants’ USP. They have a specific trusty cosiness – like your oldest friend, or an Arnotts saucepan. Even when we flirt with other brands (on these days I favour Dora Larsen or Stripe & Stare) a corner of a woman’s top drawer is invariably M&S. I can’t think of a more democratic product, except maybe Blu Tack.

Which is not to say they’re dull. There are few more delightful acts of spontaneity than nipping into M&S for a sandwich and buying a pristine pack of garter knickers while you’re at it. I know this because my local M&S is now a Lidl. Going in for milk and coming out with an electric blanket is not the same.

This month shareholders will pocket over €20 million, their first dividends since 2019, as pre-tax profits soared to just over €419 million. The volume of its pants sales may surprise you: it shifts 605 shapewear knickers every hour; over 3.4 million thongs were sold last year, while its gamechanging period pants – over 1.5 million pairs sold to date – are market leaders. In recent years, its underwear sales must be partly down to Rosie HuntingtonWhiteley’s bestselling line, though I always struggle to see M&S underwear as sexy.

It’s not the pants themselves so much as the in-store experience, what with the ghoulish lighting and proximity to Percy Pigs. Buying online doesn’t help, as I associate the M&S website too strongly with ordering children’s PE kit. But I must be in the minority, because 2.8 million of Rosie’s brazilian knickers have sold since their launch.

A surprise perk of my lifelong loyalty is that trying to remember ‘M&S pants I have owned’ is a great insomnia cure. I can document each era of my life this way, beginning with miniature bows and St Michael care labels

TRYING TO RECALL ALL THE ‘M&S PANTS I’VE OWNED’ IS A GREAT INSOMNIA CURE

on childhood pants, to the sack of full briefs I panic-bought during a 2013 pregnancy. I intended to bin them after the birth, but they came out for subsequent babies and for some unknown reason are still in my life.

As a student in the noughties – a terrible era of jelly bras and visible panty line-avoidance – I dallied with M&S thongs. They were so stringy my mother called them ‘your daddy-longlegs’, killing any illusion of womanhood. Perhaps the biggest milestone was the multipack of bikini briefs that I acquired with my first bra. I recall my best friend’s pants at this time equally vividly, because she favoured M&S high-legs. In those days they had very long, Jane Fonda-esque gussets, which I found strangely worrying (long pants still worry me).

I know other people feel the same affection towards all of M&S, but I reserve mine for its knickers – and Colin the Caterpillar. The surprise fashion hits never seem to suit me. I can’t imagine anyone getting excited about M&S interiors, and as far as I know the beauty range has never really taken off.

Still, I grieve for my local branch. Where else can I ever hope to purchase a World Book Day costume, gourmet crisps and new pants without leaving my postcode? Perhaps – to quote the ad – these are not just pants…