Bitten Crayon Colour Blocks

These colourful blocks look just like Lego, but are in fact crayons.  You can build with them, as well as colour.  A neat multitasking indoor activity, perfect for cold mornings and wet afternoons. $9.95.

AWW #9 Love and Hunger by Charlotte Wood

Love and Hunger is by Charlotte Wood, who is a well known writer of fiction with some very good novels under her belt.  She is also a keen cook and has had a food blog for some time called howtoshuckanoyster where she posts recipes and her thoughts on food. Her latest blog post is on being a dinner party guest, how to be a good one and pitfalls to avoid.

Love and hunger has chapters that cover why Charlotte enjoys cooking and sharing food, food fashions, musings on different aspects of food culture as well as plenty of recipes.  One surprise to me was that Charlotte rarely uses butter.  She keeps some in the freezer for the times when she needs it, but doesn’t use butter as a matter of course. My life would be much the poorer without butter, but maybe that partly explains why Charlotte is slim and I am not.

There is a chapter about picky eaters and phobia’s and another where Charlotte confronts something she was not comfortable with, offal. I dislike offal intensely, but her thoughtful words on the subject were very interesting, as well as entertaining.  I am still not, and never will be an offal fan though, her writing isn’t THAT good.

Love and Hunger would be the perfect book for someone who is interested in food, but for whom you don’t necessarily want to give another cookbook.  $30