Archaeologists say they have found traces of 2,500-year-old chocolate on a plate in the Yucatan peninsula, in a breakthrough suggesting it may have been used as a sauce with solid food.

From carrots and spuds to more exotic selections, bypass the supermarket and get the best veg delivered to your door

Don't laugh: Sarah Lucas's erotic work may bring naughty postcards to mind, but in reality she's as classical an artist as Cézanne or Michelangelo

Imports are replacing home-grown fruit and veg

Serves 4-6

For first-time vegetable growers, leeks are an easy and tasty option. And if they're good enough for Nero...

The team behind The Engineer have moved, but have they taken their cachet with them?

Serves 4-6

It takes Derek St Romaine and his wife Dawn at least two hours to set out the 500 candles that light their garden for a special evening opening each year. What dedication! They hang tealights in lanterns through the rose arbour. Their mophead hollies are lit from below by candles set in bags of sand. They float tealights in clear plastic cups on their pond, highlighting the gleaming scales of the koi carp nosing around underneath. "You've got to put a bit of sand in the cups as ballast. Otherwise they capsize," says Dawn.

For a simple supper, give salad a swerve and sit down to an even more refreshing meal in a bowl...

They resemble the still lifes of the Spanish masters Velazquez, Zurbaran and Cotán. But while these are no 16th- or 17th-century compositions, Clay Perry's photographs of Britain's heritage fruit and vegetables are just as sympathetic to their subject.

Serves 4-6

This week I've been eating... xiao long bao dim sum