Administrivia

Blogger is stopping support for FTP blogs in a couple of months, and this blog happens to be one of them. I'm migrating the blog this week.

Hopefully, you shouldn't experience any downtime (I'm hoping you won't notice any difference at all). It's a big blog, though, and there are a bazillion links and pictures that I'm going to have to check, so the work will take me a few days. There will probably be no more posts this week - hopefully service should be back to normal on Monday.

Christmas!

Apologies for having had such a quiet week or two, blog-wise. As frequently seems to happen at this year, I am a bit low on batteries, and I'm not feeling brilliantly creative. All should be well again in the New Year - I'm off to Morocco tomorrow for the festive season, to enjoy some lovely recharging sunshine, snail soup and shish kebabs. And a lot of things cooked in pointy earthenware pots.

In the meantime, you're probably after some Christmas recipes. Fortunately, we have plenty of those around here. Here's the main event - a turkey recipe which is, uncharacteristically for turkey, so good you'll be tempted to cook it when it's not even Christmas. It's brined overnight, leaving it juicy and succulent (the juices will spurt when you prick the thigh to check for doneness), the flesh infused with aromatics from its night-long submersion. If there are too few of you to justify a turkey, try a roast duck with prunes and pancetta, which is just about as Christmasy as it gets with its port and cherry gravy. And here's a really fine ham for Christmas Eve.

You'll want some trimmings. Chipolatas wrapped in pancetta and stuffing balls always go down well, alongside some cranberry sauce and bread sauce. Try a maple-mustard glaze on your vegetables, or cook the cabbage/chestnuts side dish that's mentioned in the duck recipe above. And nobody can say no to a crunchy spiced parsnip.

You've probably bought your Christmas pudding, and you already know how to make mince pies. If you want something to drink alongside them, try some hot buttered rum (but beware - you'll inevitably drink too much, because it's hopelessly good). This is an especially good drink for those with cold fingers and toes. Mulled wine is another fantastic loosener-upper, and you'll find present-opening is even more fun with a glass by your side and a little plate of cherry and almond cookies.

Merry Christmas!

Ouch

My RSI's suddenly decided to flare up again - so I'll keep this necessarily brief! Unfortunately handling a knife and typing are both causing the joint where my right index finger meets my hand to resemble a boiled sweet, so I'm taking some time away from chopping board and keyboard until it goes back down again. Hopefully things will be back to normal next week; in the meantime, if you want something to read, I'll still be using Twitter, which is something I can do with my left hand!

Competition winner!

Janilizi is the winner of the two tickets to Lille - well done! I'll put you and the Eurostar people in touch today.

I am, as you may have noticed, back from America considerably later than was expected; a friend we were with ended up in hospital for a week, so we stayed with him until he was able to travel back to the UK. Business as usual resumes tomorrow (and I'll get Twitter going again today) - and I've plenty of food to tell you all about! I intend on spending the rest of today staring fixedly ahead in pyjamas.

Blog holiday

I'm away until October, gallivanting around Las Vegas and Phoenix in search of the perfect meal. I plan on blogging a very little (if at all), and I'll be on Twitter a minimal amount too. I'll be picking up emails as usual (and a friend is staying in our house while we're away, so burglars beware).

What else? I have to thank the guys at Charlie Bigham's, who sent me a week's worth of ready meals which coincided very nicely with Dr W's absence of a week (he's starting an MBA, his existing MA and PhD not being sufficient, as far as he is concerned). I moved from sceptical to stuffed in one meal. I am not really a ready-meal person, but these are as close as I can imagine such a thing getting to a meal you've cooked yourself, and kept me very nicely fed for a lonely week. (I hate cooking for one. I always end up eating too much, and most of the fun for me is in having someone else to enjoy what I've cooked.) A hearty recommend in particular for the little 1-person pies. Now, these things are pricey - the lamb parcels in filo, which I particularly enjoyed, rocked up at £10 when I looked for them at Waitrose - but if you're looking for something swanky to feed to last-minute visitors when you don't have time to cook, I don't think you'll find much better.

I've also got a new camera - an Olympus Pen E-P1, which I have fallen hopelessly in love with. So far, only the peach and papaya jam post has been illustrated using it, but I'm amazed at how much better my pictures are turning out (the photos accompanying this post were all taken as I pootled around the village with it the other day). It's exactly right for me - a four-thirds body means it's smaller and lighter, so more portable than a DSLR, but it'll still take interchangeable lenses; it's a stroll in the park to use; it's fabulous in low light (good news for restaurant photos); and look at the picture quality! I'm not a natural photographer; I have a lousy visual imagination and recall, so taking pictures for this blog is something I've always had to work pretty hard at. I'm absolutely thrilled at how much easier the E-P1 is making things. I am really looking forward to unleashing it on Las Vegas.

Back in early October. If there are any recipes you'd particularly like me to have a swing at on my return, please leave a comment here, and I'll see what I can do!

Pause for thought

It's sunny, I have an unexpectedly free week, and I find I've got several half-formed recipes in my head to work over. I've decided to take a week away from blogging to catch up on some reading and sunshine, to slap aloe vera onto my angry-looking shoulders and to think hard about red wine - I'll be back at the end of next week.

A follower, not a leader

I've finally bowed to the inevitable and signed up to Twitter. I'm @Liz_Upton - come and say hi!

A quiet week...

I'm away from the kitchen this week (and mostly, joy of joys, away from the computer), taking a short break in sunny Windsor. I have Malaysian noodle restaurants and Joel Robuchon to investigate in London, Heston Blumenthal's pub in Bray to visit on Thursday, and I'm on a quest to find any non-chain restaurants here in Windsor itself. Updates will be brief and even more sporadic than usual this week, but do keep tuning in; there are some interesting reviews coming up.

New blogs, a competition

Some notices today. First up, there are two new blogs in the blogroll at the left of the page. South of France Cooking is written by David, a chef working in the hotel he part-owns near Carcassonne. It's full of recipes and tips on technique, and I'm finding it absolutely fascinating - drop in and see what you think.

Also on the new blog front, Cait and Jude in Anchorage are busying themeselves making good things like bouillabaisse, and hanging out in bakeries. Check out 907Eat, and marvel at the fact that you suddenly want to go on a culinary tour of Alaska.

Finally, my buddies over at Allrecipes are running another competition. This time, they're inviting you to post a recipe with a photograph on their site. The writer of the best recipe will win £500. Read the rules and enter here - and good luck!

Boasting

When I'm not writing about food, I write about perfume. I'm not even going to try to be humble about this one - I won a Jasmine Award (one of the beauty industry's most prestigious gongs) yesterday for this article, and my feet absolutely haven't touched the ground since.

I plan to spend the rest of today sitting very still and looking at my trophy.

Merry Christmas!

I'm taking a short break from blogging over Christmas. Look out for a return next week with a turkey recipe (which will be too late for this year, but you can give it a whirl in 2009) with all the trimmings; in the meantime, a very merry Christmas to all of you!

Posting is likely to be slow this week...

I've come down with a really nasty cold, and I'm not finding food an easy thing to contemplate at the minute. I'll be back on top of things as soon as possible - in the meantime, have a look at some of the blogs in the blogroll on the left to get your food fix!

Interview with yours truly

Over at Simmer Till Done, the endlessly delightful and fragrant Marilyn has, for some reason, decided I'm a food blogger worth interviewing. Thanks very much again, Marilyn; I had real fun answering your questions. And I kind of agree with your reader's comment about the Wolfgang Puck pizza...what can I say. Las Vegas does something awful to the volume switch in my brain that enables me to differentiate between what's tasteful, and what's encrusted with white tigers and rollercoasters.

Go and have a read, and let me know what you think, people, and be gentle about the pizza thing.

Technical problems - fixed

Apologies to those of you who've been wondering where the new posts (and, on occasion, the entire blog) were over the last week. Two technical problems, one at my host's end and one at mine, managed to combine into a freakishly awful whirlwind of complicated things I do not really understand. Bother my classical education. It's all fixed now - welcome back.

Elderflower time!

A quick reminder - it's that time of year again, so if you're in a foraging mood, spend some time this weekend harvesting some elderflower heads for cordial and fritters.

You may also enjoy this article from the Times on wild foods, especially if your garden is as full of nettles as mine is, but please do not follow Prue Leith's example and raid the nests of wild geese for eggs unless you want a serious telling off from the RSPB! If you really can't live without a June goose egg and you're near Cambridge, head to the fruit and veg stall outside the Grafton Centre, where they often have a large tray of goose eggs to buy.

Ugh

Apologies to those of you who've been waiting for an update; I'm busy getting over a bout of flu. It's getting better - this is the first day I've been able to get out of bed and look at a monitor without coughing all over it and then being sick, but I'm afraid that the very thought of food is still making me want to crawl back into bed with a box of tissues and die quietly.

I am bored stiff. I'll be back as soon as I can - in the meantime, I'd love to hear ideas about things I can do which involve lying very still and not using my brain too much (thinking hurts) in the comments section.

Radio silence

I hope you've all been missing me. Dr W and I are away for a few weeks' work and (mostly) skiing on the West Coast of America. Normal service will resume in mid-February, but in the meantime I encourage anyone who happens to be in Portland, Oregon, to run as fast as they can to Typhoon at the Lucia Hotel on Broadway, where the Thai food is even better than it was at Lotus of Siam in Vegas. (LoS is the restaurant that Gourmet Magazine called the best Thai in the USA. Perhaps I caught them on a bad night and Typhoon on a very good one, but although LoS gave us a great meal, Typhoon gave us one that's making me consider a bigamous marriage so I can get a green card and come and live in Portland so that I can eat there every night.)

Stomach bug

I'm laid up with a really nasty tummy bug at the moment, and I'm afraid I really can't face writing about, still less eating, food without feeling very poorly. I should be posting as usual next week (this on the understanding that I don't wither away and die from lack of sustenance in the meantime).

A reminder for Cambridgeshire and south Suffolk readers - the Reach Fair starts at noon on Monday May 7. Looking out of the window, I can see chair-o-planes, a coconut shy, a big whirring thing with a picture of Britney Spears on it and some swing boats. There's a beer tent and a hog roast, and lots of opportunities to buy local produce like organic herbs from Snakehall Farm and local honey - please come and say hello if you're visiting.