iamafeeder.net

A few days ago a lovely chap by the name of James contacted me asking, rather tentatively, if I might be interested in their little infographic – a cheat sheet for the novice/intermediate/experienced UK cook. He assured me that it was very pretty but, having the high standards I have, I was a little dubious. So I clicked on the link, fully expecting a hastily hobbled together Photoshop job, and instead was very pleasantly surprised when I was greeted with this absolutely stunning bit of work.

I simply love the font, the graphics and most of all, the fabulous tips, hints and cooking info (or culinary magic, as I often refer to it) and, best of all, it’s free! Print it out, stick it on your fridge or even laminate it and create a kitchen shrine for it – I probably will. I don’t know how many times I’ve ended up getting sticky fingers all over my laptop because I need to check a conversion, weight or safe cooking temperature – this not only looks great, it’s useful and it’s actually correct (huzzah!).

So a big thank you to James and Everest for creating something useful for the British home kitchen. A link to printable PDFs is down the bottom!

(more…)

The world of Twitter has brought me into contact with many wonderful people. It has also brought me into contact with many porn bots, but thankfully Mardi from Eat.Live.Travel.Write falls into the former category and not the latter.

Friends for just under a year now, Mardi has become a great friend. She is well travelled and loves to eat and write, just as her blog would suggest, and I was lucky enough to share a meal (and a few drinks – or perhaps a few too many in my case) with her very recently when she was in London. This kind, talented and wonderful lady has pulled out yet another superb looking dish for her guest post, a fabulous chicken, goat’s cheese, tomato and rocket galette; my mouth’s watering again and I only just ate my dinner! Thank you lovely Mardi – so happy and honoured to host you here at my little blog and with such a wonderful recipe! Give her some love and hey, if you get to see Mardi more than I do, give her a huge hug from me, eh?

I am thrilled to be visiting my dear friend Jackie over here at I Am A Feeder. Not only have we been friends online for many months now, but I had the pleasure of meeting her in real life at the beginning of the month when I was in London for a conference and we went out to dinner with the lovely Sarah and Helen. A good time was had by all and you can read about some of it here!

When Jackie asked if I would like to write a guest post, I was stumped at first. After her two recent guest posters – Russell and Brian, I felt like I had big shoes to fill! Jackie told me to be inspired by what was around me – Paris right now (I’m on a bit of a work and vacation trip in Europe) – and so I present a dish that was born of late night blog reading (hello jet lag!) and what struck my fancy along the rue Montorgueil where I am staying right now.

(more…)

Photo courtesy of the BBC website.

Every few years or so there comes an event so horrific that the entire world is joined in shock, mourning and the intense need to help. When I heard about Japan I was in New York towards the end of my Big Adventure, taking photos with my friend, chatting idly at 2am and catching up on my Twitter feed. Suddenly all I could see were Tweets saying, ‘Japan. Oh God. Pray for Japan. Japan. Japan’ – what had happened? A quick glance at the CNN and BBC news sites and it was all too clear. I felt sick to my stomach: I had friends in Tokyo, how far had this disaster reached? With news that the resulting tsunami could spread to Australia & New Zealand, even as far as Hawaii and the West Coast, all places where I have family and friends, I couldn’t rest. The next couple of hours were filled with watching live news feeds, reading the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre‘s page obsessively and worrying.

With news of more and more aftershocks still ravaging Japan, more footage and images of devastation, coupled with the odd glimmer of hope, there seems to be little that we can do. But a little is still better than nothing. It was easy then for me to get involved in two separate projects to raise money for Japan.

(more…)