Oh, how my taste buds yearn for...

trio of olives

petit lucques, kalamata and da vinci marinated olives with maitreya organic home-made bread

avocado ravioli
fresh avocado shell filled with marinated fennel served with toasted almonds and raspberry vinegar dressing

smoked applewood cheddar tart tatin
all butter puff pastry tatin with crown prince pumpkin, chestnut mushrooms, caramelised red onion and pistachio. served with caramelised apple pak choi and plum anis dressing

pineapple and saffron pancake
fine crepes filled with caramelised pineapple, gratinated with saffron cream sauce, served with orange sorbet

Cafe Maitreya is without doubt the most elegant yet fresh vegetarian restaurant I have yet experienced.

"And I'll never return here again"

Frankly, I don't want to. So many talented people; their creativity stifled. Well, from an outside point of view, anyway.

So, the other day I jokingly said to my father 'I could audition for Skins next year'

Jokingly because although that would be amazing, you probably know what goes on in Skins. So I was shocked when my dad sincerely replied 'Yeah, I think you should; you've always wanted to be an actress'. Well, people surprise you all the time.

But, regardless, I'd do it if the opportunity came up. Now that would be something to put on your CV.

"Christian sees a man with a bent penis which needs straightening out while Pixie provides advice on flatulence to the people of Cardiff."

You just know the new series of 'Embarrassing Bodies' is going to be good with a description like that.

Foods I have had obsessive flings with:

• Vegetable pies
• Cheese coleslaw
• Croutons
• Bread and butter
• Mustard on cheese on toast
• Milky Ways and Magic Stars
• Cornflakes
• Porridge
• Cocopops
• Blue cheese
• Alfalfa sprouts

And probably some others. I just really, really, really love food.

Morals aside...

The fish dissection was terribly interesting. The poor creature was a sardine from Morrisons, and we began by inserting a probe through his (it had a sperm sack) alimentary canal. We were 'lucky' as the probe came out of his anus, and from here we cut up to its chin and opened it out. At first it was daunting, but soon I became accustomed to poking and pulling the corpse, so it was fine.

We then removed the sperm sack, the intestines and the heart, which was kind of pyramid-shaped. Following this were the gills which contained many red false-eyelash-like surfaces. Upon extracting these, we saw that they had a large surface area to enable gas exchange to take place adequately (this was, of course, the point of the dissection, so it paid off).

After examining the semi-inflated swim bladder which kept the fish afloat when swimming, we moved on to the eyes. At first it was a rather violent affair - we pulled the eye up using the surgical forceps and snipped the connections. After this, it was time to find the lens, and having rolled perforated eye ball around a little, out popped a perfectly spherical transparent ball. This was the fish eye lens, the origin of the eponymous camera lens. This was quite a specimen, and on hovering the lens over newspaper we could read the text, albeit with the distortion that one would expect from a fish eye lens (Google some fish eye lens images if you want to).

Finally, and most brutally of all, we cut open the sardine's head just above the eyes (or, rather, where they were before we ripped them out). Brain tissue was pulled out and we came across the hard cartilage, but then it was time for the ambitious task of removing the spinal cord. With my partner, Sara, grabbing the fish I used the surgical forceps to pull at the spinal cord with all of my supposed might, but, alas, we were cut short and forced to dispose of Lesley, our sardine.

Despite the spinal cord failure, it was a thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening experience, however I can't say I'll soon be cutting up anything outside the human food chain that has been killed specifically for dissection. After all, it's more beneficial to dissect a sardine than it is to eat it.

Scalpel, please

It's my first dissection tomorrow in Biology. We're going to be dissecting small fish, and although I'm not easily disgusted and I've been fascinated by dissection since I was around 7, it still doesn't feel perfectly right.

I'll only do it if the animals died naturally or if it was something that currently couldn't be avoided e.g. small fish getting caught in a fishing net when fishing for marketable fish. Both the Biology teacher and technician are vegetarians, so hopefully this issue will have been carefully considered.