It’s okay to not love your job. ‘You need less shame around the idea that you’re not doing your best’. The problem with job guidance that says you should ‘follow your passion’.

A school kitchen garden in Australia shares some tips.

These rather glorious photos of snow in Sweden and their accompanying spicy warm cinnamon shortbread recipe.

A super cute baby sea otter finds a home. (Thanks Princess!)

The chef you haven’t heard of. (Thanks Jen).

Food prices, bread boycotts and the power of women. A step-by-step guide to kneading, folding, shaping and baking your own bread.

The food waste debacle and why you should consider the ugly fruits and vegetables.

This brilliant column by Eva Wiseman in this week’s Observer. It articulates much that I find worrying about the #eatclean brigade – the way some foods become ‘clean’ then means that others become ‘dirty’ and feared. This thinking is the same as that which crafts fat bodies as grotesque, uncivilised or unclean from eating foods that are becoming taboo or worse, from eating foods that are pleasurable, enjoyable, comforting. The list of foods is getting longer and longer – wheat, sugar, fat all become feared because of their potential ability to make you fat/unhealthy/unwell. Such foods are ‘unclean’ or ‘dirty’ and should therefore be avoided if one is to be clean/pure/healthy/thin.

I downloaded (via Audible) and listened to (in a few days) The Year of Living Danishly. I thoroughly enjoyed the meandering conversation around the quest for happiness and the insight into living in Denmark (those dark winter days would not be good for me I don’t think). I loved the honesty of how difficult it is to be an immigrant in a country where you don’t speak the language and have no support network, and have to work to make new friends. I happen to love a lot of ‘stunt fiction’ like The Happiness Project and this is of a similar, if more accidental, vein. I’m always up for insight into how to live more happily.

I also bought (as a birthday gift to self) the latest issue of Cherry Bombe. I’ve never really been sure about this particular magazine but this issue is fantastic. There seem to be interviews with lots of my favourite women in food, great illustrations and fantastic contributors. It is quite expensive but as a once-a-year treat, okay…

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