A Kitchen Diary of sorts with rather a lot of chit chat and some exceptionally useful recipes. Photos and artwork by Anna Vaught (me), Giles Turnbull and the generous people at Flickr who make their work available through creative commons. They are thanked individually throughout the blog.

Monday 11 January 2010

Food and funny poets: a thinly disguised piece of advertising for....me.

Oh -- I could tell you some things about poets and food, you know. Did you know that Byron liked to mash up potatoes with pepper and vinegar*; that he would either gorge himself silly or try to be an aescetic? Or --and I speak here of a novelist, I know-- have you ever read the most erotic scene in the whole of literature? It begins "afterwards." Madame Bovary regarding a bowl of lemons and putting her lover's pipe into her mouth. But I am actually here to tell you that I'm running a whole extra set of poetry classes -- an Introduction to British Poetry-- starting on Tuesday the 2nd of February and running for nine weeks on alternate Tuesdays. These will be at 10 and run until about 11.30. This is to catch those who were too late for the evening classes. Roaring fire as appropriate, home-made cake and I'm sure I will mention food because it is an important part of our cultural context.

You can book here. Food writing is only part of what I do.

*Strange, then, that you sometimes see "potatoes Lord Byron" -- a rich confection of potato and cream-- on menus. Do they know what he actually did with his potatoes? We know from contemporary sources that, on occasion, he disgusted his guests.

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