To celebrate the weather getting warmer, we set out to combine those ingredients to see if we could create the perfect meal. You can see the results of our efforts above, but what about you? What does your perfect lunch look like?

Either send in a photograph OR create a Pinterest board around the theme ‘My Perfect Lunch’ and you could be the winner of one of two fabulous prizes – each comprising of:

* £100 of gift vouchers from luxury loungewear brand hush
* £100 of gift vouchers from homewares brand The Linen Works
* A seasonal veg box from Riverford Organic, a bottle of Prosecco and a copy of their award-winning cook book

Look out also this month for a series of guest blogs from a team of lifestyle experts, including Francesca and Kirsty, two of Riverford’s top chefs; Marina, the founder of The Linen Works; and Mandy, founder of hush.

So whether your perfect lunch is inside or outside and whether it involves grabbing a quiet moment alone or a filling your place with friends, please make sure you submit your entry no later than Sunday 9th June.

To enter, please email your photograph or the URL of your Pinterest board to competition@hush-uk.com.

Where did you work beforehand?
I have worked in the wine industry for nearly twenty years (yikes!). I started my wine career at Tesco, and was a wine buyer there for almost a decade. Then came five years of having babies and working part-time before I set up my own wine marketing consultancy in 2011.

How do you relax/switch off?
That would be with a big glass of really chilled, crisp white wine, so cold it leaves beads of condensation on the glass. Unless it’s actually cold outside: that calls for red wine. Nibbles within reach, of course.

Favourite book?
Hardy’s Tess or Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love. Understand this makes me sound like a complete square, but Jancis Robinson’s Oxford Companion to Wine needs to go on the list too.

Favourite film?
Moonstruck, that one with Cher and Nicolas Cage. Mostly because the drink her father makes her at the end looks so delicious – he drops a sugar cube into a glass of fizz and hands it to her. And you just know that everything is going to be OK.

Favourite blog/website?
I spend too much time on the John Lewis website, looking for children’s clothes/bedding/birthday presents. Also, the Berry Brothers’ website – wine heaven. And I love my-wardrobe.com, for all my fantasy wardrobe needs. And Hush, of course!

What’s your guilty pleasure?
No matter what, a blast of Boogie Wonderland by Earth, Wind & Fire and I can take on the world. Or at least put a wash on.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Trust your taste buds. That, and be kind.

What are you listening to at the moment?
Laura Mvula’s Green Garden. Love, love, love.

Click here to read Helen’s blog, The Knackered Mother’s Wine Club

Specialising in linen products in soft, muted tones, the company’s pared-down style was inspired by founder Marina Guirey’s family farmhouse in the South of France that had barely changed since the 1950’s.

Just enter promotion code HUSH15 to claim your discount. With the fibres already broken down through washing, the linen will instantly feel like an old friend.

Thankfully, Tobias Wolff is one of the rare exceptions and This Boy’s Life, a memoir of his childhood in redneck America, does justice to the fascinating raw material.

It reads like a novel, except the fact that it’s true gives the story an added piquancy.

Set in the mid-Fifties, the story is really one of unrealised (and unrealistic) dreams – young Toby (or Jack as he calls himself after his favourite author Jack London) and his mother flee Florida and an unhappy marriage for Utah, with a plan to make their fortune mining uranium.

The reality is, of course, more mundane – short of money, the mother reluctantly agrees to marry Dwight Hansen, who turns out be another in a line of abusive men, and living in the prosaically named Concrete, a hick town north of Seattle.

Bullied at home by Dwight, Toby/Jack’s behaviour deteriorates as he starts getting into fights (ironically the only time Dwight shows any interest in him is when he teaches him how to fight) and he retreats into his own imagination.

But in keeping with the rest of the story, the one time he gets together the money to run away, he loses it all gambling with some older kids.

Beautifully written, this is a truly engaging story that deserves to be read.

We’ll have more recipes from Riverford in the next few weeks, as they’ll be sharing their best recipes for a spring-themed lunch, but to whet your appetites here is a fresh take on asparagus, enjoy!

750g asparagus
75g toasted hazelnuts, coarsley chopped
3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp hazelnut/walnut oil
1 tbsp white wine or balsamic vinegar
Sea salt & freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Place the hazelnuts on a baking tray and place in the oven to toast for a few mins. Remove from the oven. Increase the temperature to 220C.

Put the nuts in a clean tea towel, fold the towel over and rub the skins off the nuts. Coarsely chop them or blitz in a food processor. Keep to one side.

To make the dressing, place the hazelnut or walnut oil in a bowl with half the olive oil, the vinegar and salt and pepper to season. Whisk to combine.

Put the asparagus spears on a baking tray and toss with the remaining olive oil. Place in the oven and roast for approx 12 mins, until they are just lightly browning and tender. Small spears will take less time to cook, larger ones maybe more, so keep a good eye on them.

Transfer to a serving dish and drizzle over the dressing, then sprinkle over the hazelnuts to serve.

And by that token Tan Tawn Eng’s follow-up to his debut novel The Gift Of Rain is certainly a good book.

Central to the story of The Garden Of Evening Mists is the relationship between Yun Ling Teoh, a young Malayan lawyer and survivor of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, and Aritomo, formerly gardener to the Emperor Of Japan.

Learning that Aritomo is now living in the highlands of Malaya where he has created the only Japanese garden in the country, Yun Ling tries to persuade him to build a garden as a memorial to her sister, who died in the camp.

Aritomo refuses, but says he will take on Yun Ling as an apprentice so she can learn the principles of building a Japanese garden.

Set against the background of the communist insurgency in post-war Malaya and narrated both contemporaneously and in hindsight, it’s a beautifully written book that does a fantastic job of conjuring up time and place.

In the same way that the The Gift Of Rain offers a fascinating insight into the Japanese martial art of aikido, so does this book with the art of the Japanese garden.

As I said, it’s a book that stirs your interest in subject matter and events that you might otherwise not have much considered, but above all one that makes you want to read on to uncover the secrets of its most enigmatic characters…