6am I sleep with the curtains open and wake with the daylight. Make a cup of Yorkshire tea, my favourite, and have chopped pineapple and mango, or toast with marmalade if it’s wintry outside. My eating habits change completely with the seasons. 9am Straight espresso, no sugar. I’m working on a campaign with Bernard Matthews at my restaurant, the Box Tree, and we’re getting through a lot of turkey. (Telegraph)

Did I Kill Gourmet Magazine?

Are you still missing the dead magazines you once loved? The Saturday Evening Post? Mirabella? Wigwag? Well, chances are you don’t miss them like I miss Gourmet. Not only did I read it cover to cover every month and always made several of the recipes, the editors sent me to Europe and South America and just about anyplace else I wanted to go. For 10 golden years they picked up the tab while I ate at the best restaurants and laid down my head on the highest thread-count sheets. I never saw a bill. (The Wall Street Journal)

Your hungover cookbook:

We hardened drinkers know how to handle a hangover. Groan, gulp down a pint of water, followed by tea or coffee, fruit juice and/or Coke, painkillers and possibly a bloody mary. Then the solids: something hot, greasy and pork-based, ideally accompanied by fried eggs, fried bread, fried mushrooms, fried tomatoes and chips. (Guardian)

Natural Wine:

Neil Pendock issues a challenge to SA winemakers to throw away their sacks of E220. Controversial UK wine writer Jamie Goode, in SA this month to address the Sauvignon Blanc Interest Group, is working on a book on natural wine. Publication can only be better timed that his visit, which missed both the WINE magazine Top Ten Sauvignon Blanc Competition and the Diners Club Winemaker of the Year Competition (with Sauvignon Blanc as category this year). Although in the Cape, Jamie even managed to miss the annual Veritas Awards function, being spirited off, genie-like, to dinner with a WOSA board member rather than attend the awards dinner for the largest and most prestigious wine competition on the local calendar. (South African Wine)

don’t drink bottled water! drink tap:

Or should I say, try and avoid drinking it as much as possible. Without sounding like too much of a goody-too-shoes, I have been recycling for most of my adult life. I lived in the US for a couple of years and in Europe for a few, so this all helped entrench a behaviour that is a philosophy and a way of life. My sister was an environmental activist, so this created further awareness on the issues. I cannot throw glass away. I have a panic attack. (Drizzle and Dip)

Dilly Diner of the Week:

People go into bars for all sorts of resaons, some to meet friends, others to blot out the cruel world, some for a pie and a pint, others for scampi in the baket and a glass of sweet rose wine but the regulars of this week’s Dilly Diner go for totally different reasons. The name’s a bit of a giveaway, The Rising Sun Anger Release Bar, and it’s perhaps a little more descriptive than The Eagle and Child or the Duke of York pub names. You certainly should know what to expect in this bar. (Kitsch’n'Zinc)