‘Please stop putting things in my brownie that aren’t chocolate, because it makes me sad’. (This is from February, but still a fascinating account of what ‘wellness bloggers’ are doing to our eating habits, body image and potentially, our health.)

I love the sound of this twice weekly pop-up. And the photos of the space look amazing. And this food studio in Edinburgh, only open a few nights a week.

This model for a small restaurant business is fascinating.

A list of dinners to make when the prospect of turning on the oven fills you with dread.

The food at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

The Strand bookstore in NYC has a quiz for potential employees.

A glamorous (Southern belle) version of spice cake which I intend to make for the princess the next time she visits. (Come visit Princess!)

I listened to the Bon Appetit Foodcast from July 7th last week. They talk to Jessica Koslow of Sqirl in LA. It’s a superb conversation full of jam, ideas and living by your own rules.And for some visuals of what Sqirl serves, look here. Links to the Eater Upsell interview here. Preorder Koslow’s book ‘Everything I Want to Eat’ (due October) here.

Wanderlust.

This is such a fantastic essay from Zadie Smith – on Brexit, on inequality, on London, on the future. She writes, ‘extreme inequality fractures communities, and after a while the cracks gape so wide the whole edifice comes tumbling down’. This is a well thought out piece about how, in the last thirty-odd years, the UK has fractured into spaces for those with money and spaces for those without, and how the people in these spaces live independently of each other, without seeing ‘the other’. Her discussion of how impossible it has now become to bridge these spaces, and purposively encounter people ‘other’ than oneself (she uses the example of a child her daughter was friends with at school but whose mother she couldn’t seem to start a conversation with) has stayed with me ever since.

Really thought-provoking podcast on the Food Programme last week, all about the funding for infant free school meals and the problems faced by small schools. The additional funding for small schools is being cut (it was only ever supposed to be temporary) and they will be expected to continue to provide a service for £2.30/child. This is problematic for small schools, who cannot operate on the economies of scale larger schools use, and who will struggle to keep their services afloat without additional help. In the programme they indicate that this may undo all the years of work that have transformed the school meals service in England.

Blueberry bbq chicken anyone?

Living in big cities is stressful. Community is important when you live there.

Do you need to build a restaurant empire to be a successful chef?

I listened to the Sporkful podcast on my way to work Monday. Last week’s episode was all about eating on presidential campaign trails and was totally absorbing and funny.

Pictures of Georgian London. (Also, this is a blog find! Notes for my next fieldtrip to Paris.)

Should you be able to buy olive oil alongside your CSA delivery? Debate about how ‘local’ locally supported agricultural programmes need to be and whether customers wanting to buy a great variety of products for delivery are really supporting local agriculture.

Things I will be cooking this week: peach and cherry cobbler (inspired by Claire Ptak’s version in The Guardian this weekend), tomato tarts inspired by this tomato pie and (if the universe sends me an ice cream maker) peanut butter and strawberry ice cream (also from The Guardian).

A list of workshops to stretch your creative skills.

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