Email of the morning arrives from Nigel Hadden-Paton at Truffles UK, who has just had a good day out in Wiltshire:
"We sat at a table in the garden and brushed our spoils clean, then weighed them. Over 4 kilos of top quality [summer] truffle and a further 2.5 kilos of damaged or maggotted truffle — to be used for inoculum. Not a bad day at the office!"
In 40 minutes. With time to take some excellent pictures. I feel a bout of Home Thoughts From Abroad coming on.
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Winner of the Special Jury Award at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. "Absolutely rivetting" - a well-known prince. Available as softback, limited edition hardback, and PDF. Free sample PDF.
Full text searchable in Google Book Search.
It's taking me far too long to read this. I have been a fan of Pynchon since reading Gravity's Rainbow as a student. Against The Day strikes me as one of his most approachable novels, full of fantastic characters and wild invention, but I've been busy doing word things, and sometimes the last thing I want to do is read. But this is like fine wine, keeps tempting me to another glass. At 1085 pages, I'll be squiffy before I'm finished.
I've read two books called Heat in the last month. One was damn scary, and one was by George Monbiot, about global warming (which has a fantastic cover). Some would say I've been and gone and had my mid-life crisis, but it didn't involve doing an apprenticeship at the altar of real Italian cuisine and a tyrannical chef. Bill Buford is not me, and for that I'm grateful. I suspect he may be too. I enjoyed it - the kitchen stuff was pretty compelling (as was the Italian butcher I may just have to visit next time I'm on Italian truffle time), but somehow the whole thing didn't hang together. I know where Bill's coming from - and I can sort of sense where he went - but his own motivation (and his family's reaction) remain mysterious.
Made with Flint version 0.9.4.
Made with Tinderbox version 3.6.2.
