Food

Dining in catastrophe used to be more interesting: but we must be fair. It was a smaller (and wetter) catastrophe: the Acqua Alta in Venice. That is when the sea rises and you put bin bags on your legs; and people push you off the duckboards while other people waltz in the water, sweetly and poorly; and inexperienced tourists turn to hotel managers and say, with loss in their eyes: when can we go outside without bin bags on our legs? The experienced hotel manager will reply, with mirrored grief: ‘Madam, it is the sea [and what do you want me to do about it, you imbecile]?’ After paddling in

I was tipped off to meet a white Hyundai at a French motorway toll rest area at 2.30 p.m. (I would be driving a red Seat, I’d said.) My prearranged deal was for €230 worth of gear. I swung into the car park 20 minutes early and waited nervously. Ten minutes later the Hyundai appeared and parked in a nearby bay. A young blonde woman in Sweaty Betty leggings got out and opened the boot. I got out of my car, sidled over and gave my surname. She found my name on her list and ticked it off. Then she rummaged about among a heap of labelled packages until she

The Corbin & King dining and home entertaining box includes dishes from the Delaunay, the Wolseley and Brasserie Zédel ‘delivered to your home and finished by you’. My husband doubts it, because it comes from London, of which some Brexiters are more suspicious than the whole of France, and because it is not ‘cooked from scratch’. He claims he never heard this phrase before he married me, but he had the sort of rural Wiltshire childhood where he would roam the fields chasing hot air balloons while his mother stood in the kitchen in an apron with a spoon waiting for him. ‘It’s like being a latchkey kid,’ he moans,

Caroline was pretty heroic during the first lockdown. She’s used to having no children to deal with between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., into which she crams her part-time job, food shopping, exercise classes, tennis lessons, dog walks and a hundred other things. But during our children’s three-month break from school they would appear in the kitchen at 1 p.m. and ask what was for lunch and, in spite of her other commitments, Caroline would always do her best to rustle something up. ‘I’m like Nigella Lawson on steroids,’ she said at the time. But she has drawn the line at repeating this Stakhanovite labour during the

Welcome to the sunlit uplands which, for me, contain small plastic tubs of stock, which is just the opening to the year I wished for. Even local restaurants are closed for takeaway now and I cannot face my husband’s excellent British cooking (roasts, stews, pies, like a speaking Regency cookbook). When each day is Christmas Day its lustre declines; it is like being bored and rich. I should not have ordered two ribs of beef for three people. Even Virgil Dog is off beef now, and that is disgraceful. So I subscribe to Simply Cook, a bestselling meal kit that is delivered by post. We are in danger of existing

There is straw inside the Fortnum & Mason Christmas Treat Hamper (£100). As the straw drifts through the house, it begins to resemble a stable. I like this. Hampers are dependent on plants for their mystery: without them they would be just a carrier bag full of food. Restaurants are closed to those who live apart, unless you are in Cornwall or the Isle of Wight. So, this is the Christmas of hampers; of alcohol, sugar and baked and dried goods. There are gin hampers and beer hampers and vegan hampers. There are hampers for dogs (‘woofly good’) and hampers for cats (‘the hampurr’). There is a Branston Pickle hamper,

Turnips is an haute cuisine restaurant inside a greengrocer in Borough Market in London. I suspect others will try this conceit soon — it is the sort of dishonest fantasy affluent anti-vax mothers enjoy as they peddle their oblivious self-hatred on smartphones made of minerals hewn by child slaves — but not like this. Turnips is indisputably magical. Perhaps I say this because it is almost completely outdoors but still warm. These are mad times, even for mad times. Borough is a good place to feel the throb of the ancient city; but particularly now. It has the toughness and ennui of a district that says: global pandemic, kids? What

Ford’s Kumar Galhotra once remarked that carmaking is 100,000 rational decisions in search of one emotional decision. You spend five years and billions of dollars perfecting the drive train, the suspension and the onboard software only for people to choose a car based on the number of cupholders or the fact that the satnav is voiced by James Earl Jones. I’m hardly immune to this myself. I recently decided I wanted a Tesla because it offers an ingenious function called dog mode. This is faintly absurd to begin with: it’s even more ridiculous when you consider that I don’t own a dog. Consumer capitalism is the Galapagos Islands of human

Lockdown is hurting everyone except the chickens. I have bought them a conservatory because Philippa, a Light Sussex, looks like ancient pants in rain. It is really plastic sheeting to hang under the henhouse; they need it because the rain is horizontal. They stare out like chickens from film noir. I have exhausted local take-aways, and you cannot get fresh hampers here. Someone sent me stock cubes for beef stroganoff in the post, which feels joyless, but everyone is selling condiments — you can lick them, call it lickdown — or chocolates or alcohol, as if for a loveless Valentine’s Day. What do I seek? Thai food. I spent my