Welcome to June! Sunshine, the smell of summer holidays, sunscreen, iced coffees, this ice-cream (currently in my freezer, awaiting consumption) and salad. I am excited.

For Jen: ‘breakfast has no mystical powers‘.

Do you struggle with portion control? How do you know what is enough? This is a handy infographic and some truths from food writers.

A poem about language and tests.

We should all be learning to cultivate grit. Or should we?

A rose called Julia Child.

Do you like a souffle? I love a them. I think (but I could be wrong, it might be someone else entirely) that one of the pastry chefs I worked with used to pronounce them ‘sou-fils’, and now that is how I say them in my head (and often out loud, by accident). I remember making them during service at Gleneagles. It was possibly the most stressful thing to have on the menu, as they have to be prepared to order and so much could (and did) go wrong. Last August, in a bookshop in Derbyshire with my mom, I bought a copy of Desserts: A Lifelong Passion by Albert Roux precisely because there is a recipe for a pistachio souffle that is on my list of things to do this year.

I am re-reading for the bajillionth time, Sophie’s Bakery for the Broken Hearted. I am so busy at work at the moment (it is student events week), that I cannot process a new story through my brain. And I’ve got Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen by my bed too (which I had to take back to the library to prove I hadn’t scarpered away with it and then take out again). I am dipping into it when I can. Last night I read the chapter titled ‘The Low Tech Person’s Batterie de Cuisine‘, which expressed my feelings about kitchen equipment precisely. As I have a tendency to cause electronic equipment to spontaneously combust (please, never ask me to do anything with a Thermomix), my own kitchen supplies are pretty rudimentary. I mean yes, I do have an inordinate supply of baking tins, and I *may* have a severe problem with wanting to buy all the bundt tins but mostly we make do with a few pots, some baking dishes, and a number of wooden spoons. And it was only in December that I finally splurged on a standing mixer. Which is about as far as I am willing to go, electricity-wise, in the kitchen.If you want to know more about Laurie, you can read about her here, here and here.

An article on Anna Tasca Lanza’s cooking school in Sicily. I have said before that I love the idea of her Cook the Farm 10 week course, but really, any course here would be a dream I think. Possibly the Language of Food one, with Rachel Roddy and Luisa Weiss?

Lastly, I am mostly the antithesis of a morning person. But this coffee alarm clock that has been doing the rounds on the internet this week may just motivate me to raise my head from the pillow.

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