Blimey! What a milestone to reach with the blog – I can
barely believe that I am still writing entries for it. I know they are rather
infrequent now, and I am really trying to spend more time writing, but starting
this blog a decade ago unwittingly made me a bit of a busy bee today.
Four-hundred and twenty-four recipes in means I only have 26
more to cook so there is light at the end of the tunnel.
I started the blog back in 2007 because I had just began my
PhD in evolutionary biology at The University of Manchester; I
knew I’d have to do a lot of writing, so a blog seemed like a good idea. Having
never heard of Julie & Julia,
I thought cooking a whole cookbook was a pretty original idea.
Those first few posts are rather badly written as I had
never done any of this sort of thing before, but I soon settled into a style
and found I really enjoyed the history side of things, hence starting the
second blog British Food: A History.
So much has happened from the blog it is startling! If I had
known the potential of writing a blog I might have chickened out.
I’ve started a food business, The Buttery, from
market stall via a pop-up restaurant in my own house to a restaurant with my business husband Brian
Shields, founded a community market in Levenshulme,
Manchester, come second in a Telegraph cookery competition for
bloggers and Radio 4’s The Food Programme and been
nominated for a Manchester Food &
Drink Award. More recently I’ve been working on an episode of a history
programme with Channel 4 as well as my first paid writing jobs. The restaurant
is also going to be expanding in the next year: wait til you hear about that!!
All of this is because of Jane Grigson; none of this would
have happened had I not forced myself to cook dishes containing ingredients
such as brains, eels, sweetbreads, quince and the like. Jane opened me up to
exciting and scholarly food writing and a whole unknown world of exciting
British food. She is also an excellent teacher.
I’m going to try my best to work through the remaining
recipes, some of which I have no excuse for not trying yet. I promise to pull
my finger out. A bit, at least.
Finally, of course, I wouldn’t be writing blog entries if
you good people didn’t read them and send such great comments.
So many thanks to all of you and to Jane herself, because
without you I wouldn’t be on this unexpected journey!
