So now it is only 24 days until we jet set back home. The excitement levels are mounting. Plans are being made in earnest. Bookings at restaurants are being organised (Pot Luck Club, eeek!) Andrés is googling all the cool things we can do in various places (and watching videos of animal sightings at Kruger).

I wish Alison Robicelli was writing a column when I was watching The Great British Bake Off because it is hilarious.

I worked with Ame at LongHouse Food Scholars programme in 2014. She is one of the cooks for Umi Kitchen, this fantastic new app that allows you to buy home-cooked food from people who cook and want to feed others (in NYC).

The story of The Last Bookstore in LA.

The truly important things.

If you’re feeling enthusiastic about making your own ice cream, here is a guide as to how to do it well at home. And these ice-cream sandwiches covered in chocolate. Weekend cooking project!

This lemon, poppyseed and ricotta cheesecake. And millionaire’s shortbreads.

The reality of chef life – it’s not all glamorous locations and tv shows.

Food politics in the Brexit age. Slow Food and food education.

I read Paper Towns this week. (I have been holed up sick with some virus, feeling incredibly sorry for myself – I do not do sick well – and just reading this book.) I have always been a fan of ‘young adult’ literature (which obviously begs the question, why is it not just literature? Why does it have to have a target market?) but have fallen out of reading the genre in the last few years. This book has reminded me why ‘young adult’ fiction is such a joy to read – the angst, the learning, the knowing. I was struck by the following lines: ‘And it is only now, when she closes her notebook and places it inside a backpack next to her and then stands up and walks towards us, that I realise that the idea is not only wrong but dangerous. What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person’.

If you’re not exhausted by American election politics, this response after the DNC is fantastic.

Life wisdom from Winnie the Pooh.

Mary Oliver reading her poem ‘Wild Geese‘. I really needed to hear that this week.

On critique in these times.

When I was a young chef, I learnt about Tartine in San Francisco. I’ve been slightly obsessed with visiting ever since and now that they are opening The Manufactory space, I want to go even more. In my dreams I go work as a stagiere for six months before opening my own space. Next year, the conference I want to go back to (ASFS/AFHVS) is in Pasadena, California. Andrés recently said he wants to go to the Californian coast. Perhaps we can swing it all into one trip next summer?

I’ve had a desire to make peach jam all summer. Now that Emiko has written about making some, I may actually get around to it.