Wise words from Teju Cole.

American Thanksgiving. This is a great piece centered around traditions in different families. The photographs are fabulous and the stories are just wonderful.

Some disturbing reporting from The Guardian around casual contracts and the paltry amounts lecturers at Russell Group universities earn.

And it turns out even fine-dining places with well-known chefs don’t pay their staff well. The Sustainable Restaurant Association has been critical of this revelation but admits it is a culture of the industry.

Young people in the Outer Hebrides.

If you’re preparing for Thanksgiving, I quite like this idea of a chocolate pecan galette. Less fuss than a traditional pie. We’re having a small Cookbook Club meets Friendsgiving on Sunday, cooking from Nigella’s Feast. I strongly feel there must be pie, but maybe this galette will suffice that craving (obviously it’ll be breaking the cookbook club rules so I’ll have to check Nigella’s book for pie recipes). If you’re not into pie, these pumpkin doughnuts look awesome. (Louisa, we can make these over Christmas yes?) Or there is this chocolate gingersnap tart.

Toasting sugar for more depth of flavour.

If the winter weather is getting you down (it was like a squall outside yesterday and is deeply grey and half-lit today), have a look at these photographs and recipes from a May weekend in Tuscany. 

This image.

Preserving South African food heritage and tradition.

If you’re starting to get into the Christmas spirit (yes, really) I love this article on tradition and ritual. ‘Ritual has an anticipatory relevance‘. We are still working out our rituals for our hybrid family, with its different traditions and foods. Fortunately the one thing we agree on is a feast on December 24th. This might be my favourite day of the year. We’re working out the finer kinks of foods, friends, sharing, and the like but for me it is the gathering and sharing of food and drink on the 24th that is important, whether it is with friends or family or a combination of both.

German baking. I love the look of the linzer cookies.

The Princess and I were in Barcelona this weekend! It was amazing and wonderful. We ate all the foods, drank all the wine, looked at much art and architecture. I’ll post more on all our activities soon. In all the travelling (planes, trains, buses) I read The Girl in the Ice which was a thoroughly enjoyable detective novel, with a tortured and dysfunctional detective, power plays, mystery and intrigue. I didn’t guess the outcome until right at the end (always winning) and will read the others in the series in due course.

On fasting for a month or more.

A cookbook club in Martha’s Vineyard.

Immigrants and food in Michigan.

I listened to a really fascinating episode on the Radio 4 Food Programme on cooking clubs in the Basque region of Spain. It discusses the ability of food to build community which I find fascinating.

Have a good week! x