To la Poisonnerie de l’Avenue, where courtesy of a generous friend, we dined on a feast of melt-in-the-mouth asparagus - followed by a succession of beautifully presented seafood dishes, reminiscent of Elizabeth David five decades ago. My oeufs a la neige (which predictive type keeps trying to turn ‘beige’) au ... Read More...
Food
In every party there comes a critical point when the sober and the pissed have diverged so far that they can no longer communicate with each other. I found myself on the wrong side of the divide at about 10.45pm on Saturday night, staring at the bonfire and sipping a ... Read More...
Solo Twister, fried chicken and good old heterosexual tactility in Susan's diary this week... ‘Rebecca – 3 miles away’ keeps popping up on my computer screen, looking for a date - I’m just trying to work out why. I understand that men have occasionally been known to feel attracted to women. ... Read More...
In the first of a small series, London-based dabbler Luke Honey, maître d' of The Greasy Spoon Blog, resurrects a venerable cookery magazine, complete with a retro recipe that has long since fallen out of favour... Not that long ago I managed to save a complete set of the 1968 Cordon Bleu ... Read More...
Susan's been globe-trotting again... Arriving at the luggage reclaim in Cape Town, I couldn’t spot a single black face among the passengers from our plane. South Africa does seem to attract a certain type of tourist - less package tour, more ‘comfortably travelled.’ There’s an air of middle-England Middletonia about the ... Read More...
This week Susan faces the dentist's drill and observes some Olympian sell-outs... What sort of a person becomes a dentist? I was pondering on this, whilst my hands gripped tighter and tighter around the arms of the dentist’s chair (the only other time I do this is when a plane takes ... Read More...
Susan Muncey is our trendspotter-about-town, and this week she's dealing with soup, soap, and a "cornucopia of hair, teeth and beards" at a Harvey Nicks launch party... Sometimes, the things designed to make our lives easier have completely the opposite effect. Take my new food processor – the mini Magimix, designed ... Read More...
Thank god, the Christmas food (and drink) fest is almost over. Though if your Christmas is like mine, you may end up with quite a few culinary curiosities in your food cupboards. I buy numerous jars of pickles every year. Last year’s pickled walnuts were still in the cupboard when I ... Read More...
Christmas is but one week away, and where would a good dabbler be without a spot of wassailing. Before we set off wassailing incorrectly, we thought it prudent to consult Epicurean Luke Honey from The Greasy Spoon Blog to find out what wassailing actually is... Here we come a-wassailing Among the leaves ... Read More...
Frank experiences Maryland culture at a transatlantic Dabbler summit - and then teaches the Americans a thing or two about British culture... I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas. But instead of being the claws, I was staring at them, piled high ... Read More...
