Dog days of summer people! I hope you all had a lovely bank holiday. I am back from Copenhagen. What a lovely city. Swoon. Now I am trying to do book edits and article edits and noting down all the ideas I had while at ECER. We are going to Spain next Friday for a last minute, before I start traveling for work again, time spent together week of holiday. I am trying to get another book draft polished before we go…

On performance and public speaking.

Why you should blog as a PhD. Reasons why you might blog as part of a research project.

Issues of postdoctoral mental health.

Community and allotment gardens, and the question of selling produce.

A new zine.

Eating as an agricultural act?

Urban meadows in Oslo.

George Monbiot on the importance of language when describing our planet.

Brave Tart on chocolate chip cookies.

The various editions of Joy of Cooking. What I find most fascinating about the book is the way it has been updated and revised for each edition – the way new recipes are included, out-of-fashion food trends are cut. It is like a living commentary on our food habits. I did not grow up with this book – we had others – but I think I would like to track down a copy to read and digest.

Food photographs that look like still-life paintings.

Do food magazines perpetuate whiteness? An important read. And an extract from Michael W. Twitty’s book The Cooking Gene. On class and food in America.

Celery used to be a luxury. Who knew?

A portrait of Alice Waters, who has a new book coming out. This made me smile and roll my eyes with equal measure.

This past weekend I read The Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit. The book is a collection of essays on everything from silence to books women should avoid to rape culture. As Jen (who lent me the book) and I noted in a conversation we had while at the Ladies Pond at Hampstead Heath, once you read essays like these, your world is never the same. Everything looks different.

Is this satire? Is it real? Somebody read it and tell me please.

If you are in the southern hemisphere, please make this blood orange wreath!

The internal micro biome.

Have a good week!