December 23, 2014By Linda Parker

If you’re reading about Christmas now, it’s a bit too late to start making home-made Christmas puddings and cakes. So … unless you are one of the ultra-organised home chefs who have already marinated their dates, frozen the home-made bread sauce and laid down a few bottles of home-made sloe gin or raspberry vodka you will be going to do the last-minute run to the supermarket on the 23rd Dec like the rest of us…

December 2, 2014By Linda Parker

For writers and reviewers, Christmas starts in July, with a host of events to launch the festive season’s goodies. As always with seasonal celebrations, there’s a danger of peaking too soon and getting far too fed up with all the Christmas razzamatazz before the day itself even happens…

October 21, 2014By Linda Parker

It was only a few weeks ago that we were enjoying an early autumn hot-spell, & had got the barbecue equipment out again. It hardly seems possible that the nights are drawing in so quickly, & that I’m sweeping leaves off the lawn as well as collecting apples…

October 2, 2014By Linda Parker

After the latest patch of beautiful sunshine, and a surfeit of cakes’n’bakes, we strayed back into barbecue territory, using an old pot-bellied cast iron model we found in the garage, backed up with a few disposable bbq trays to take up the slack when needed…

September 2, 2014By Linda Parker

Is it wrong to be slightly underwhelmed by GBBO this time round? I think I have a bake overload. And since when did everyone refer to a cake of a plate of biscuits (not cookies) as a ‘bake’. Perhaps I’m over-egging the pudding a bit, but…

August 5, 2014By Linda Parker

One of the highlights of the last few weeks (glossing over the events of the World Cup, needless to say, us Brits are used to disappointments now) was my visit to Wimbledon. Not just for the tennis, which of course was excellent, but for the totally delicious & generous catering facilities…