Whilst many of the books that I consider favourites I first read years ago, there are others that I have come across much later in life. Continue reading “Journeying through life and food”
Category: The Novel
Easter baking
Like Christmas, Easter provides the keen cook with the opportunity to spend hours in the kitchen. There’s the traditional dinner of roast lamb – the springtime counterpart to the roast turkey Christmas dinner.
And when it comes to baking, Easter offers its own slightly lighter variants of Christmas delights, which stlll contain many of the same ingredients, specifically dried fruit, nuts and marzipan. Instead of the heavy fruited Christmas cake there’s the simnel cake, which can be made at the last minute, dispenses with the icing and makes a real feature of the marzipan. And the dense alcohol-rich fruited filling of the mince pie gives way to the lightly fruited and spiced hot cross bun. Continue reading “Easter baking”
Hotel Life
One of the perks of my job is travel. And since most of my work trips require an overnight stay, I’ve become increasingly familiar with hotel rooms in the last couple of years. I still feel a flutter of excitement when I open the door of a hotel room to see it for the first time – and thankfully the flutter only occasionally turns to disappointment. And the delight of the bedroom is often matched – or surpassed – by the breakfast choices on offer in the hotel restaurant the next morning. Continue reading “Hotel Life”
Sibling rivalry
They sat down to a lunch of eggs au gratin and baked apples. Unspoken, the challenging testing exchange went on beneath the ripple of superficial commentary and question, the small bursts of laughter that exploded between them like bubbles released under pressure. They were meeting to be reconciled after fifteen years. (Rosamond Lehmann, The Echoing Grove) Continue reading “Sibling rivalry”