Editor: Serving up our own local delights for tastiest future

There's no getting away from the fact that food keeps us alive, it makes our hearts sing with joy, our tastebuds dance with delight and is so tempting that a lot of us overindulge.

Sheffield's restaurant and cafe scene has changed beyond recognition since I was a child.

There were plenty of takeaways back then but they certainly weren’t on every corner and while a few of the old favourites survive – Candy Town and Uncle Sam’s to name just two childhood winners – most have been reinvented or replaced. Now you can feast on treats from every corner of the world without leaving your own city. We are home to experts in cuisines that we might never even heard of, and dishes that we could never have imagined a few years ago.

The Star's Food and Drink pages are proving a big hit and it is joy to be able to share stories of such a blooming dining scene with you every Wednesday. It isn’t just about new restaurants and places to eat, it is about helping you cook perfect dishes at home as well as thinking about the impact our food has on the environment.

Recycling is one of the oldest tricks in the book when it comes to gardening because that’s exactly what compost does – using unwanted vegetable waste to help grow new food. But recently this city has started tackling the problem of food waste and used it for good. We have fed thousands of hungry bellies, we have charities which save tons from landfill and we have an increasingly large land army to help Sheffield ingredients thrive.

What are you doing to play your part? We can all help by shopping locally, eating less meat and using leftovers rather than binning them.

Food, glorious food. It really isn’t hard to help your own city and planet by eating well.

One of the silly bits of conversation that we all missed during lockdown was being able to ask each other 'what's for tea then?'. It might be a reporter looking for inspiration or just somebody with a rumbling tummy wanting to be nosey. It certainly wasn't worth sending an email or making a phone call about, but basic chat and food love stories are things we took for granted.