Dr Sally Bayley.

‘Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea’, so begins Henry James’s novel, A Portrait of A Lady. James’s novel begins with tea and ends in cross-cultural despair: a young American woman, Isabel Archer, running back to a tyrannous husband in Rome. Culturally, socially and personally speaking, Isabel fails to translate herself. She lacks any real ceremony and, in turn, any real dignity; instead she resorts to desperate duty. Her order of being, her personal and cultural choreography, is never her own…


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posted in Columns, Culture, Food & Drink, Literature
by TOAST ( 09.02.12 )

Or at least of those things, jaded and happy on the 22nd December, that we could remember…

A is for avaaz – giving the good people, the millions of ordinary people, a real voice. A great thing. www.avaaz.org

B is for Barry the Barber – a Geordie in Spitalfields via New York, great haircuts & beard trimming, good chat, good vibes. www.barrythebarber.com

C is for Christmas, still wonderful, longed for, magic, restful and festive in the right measure…


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posted in Art, Culture, Diary, Film, Food & Drink, Music, Outdoors, People
by TOAST ( 22.12.11 )

Jess Trethowan.

Almost exactly a year has gone by since I wrote the first Diary of a Cheesemaker and so once again, I am sitting, looking at a beautiful autumn-scape of trees on the turn, berries and beautiful sunlight. I can see the cows munching away on the rough ground. It won’t be long before they go inside for the winter months and begin their silage diet, which produces that lovely creamy milk we so value for our Christmas cheeses…


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posted in Columns, Food & Drink
by TOAST ( 13.10.11 )

Dr Sally Bayley.

When I was eight years old my grandmother taught me how to make tea. It has proved to be one of the most vital lessons of my life. Tea, in my household, was radically inclusive. Making it was my first lesson in socialising… In a house swarming with adults and children, you never made tea just for yourself, it was a community affair and took place in the depths of a large dark brown pot whose bottom seemed limitless. I peered down its deep dark shaft and thought of those striking miners I had heard about on the television and wondered if they were striking for more tea breaks as well as better pay…


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posted in Food & Drink, Literature
by TOAST ( 12.10.11 )

Lara Smrtnik

Last weekend we went to Harvest at Alex’s… Initially lured by talk of good food plus talks and demonstrations by the likes of Mark Hix, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Jay Rayner and Alys Fowler, we thought Toast would fit in well…


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posted in Diary, Food & Drink, Music, Outdoors
by TOAST ( 16.09.11 )

Last week we packed our bags and moved to the Wilderness. We arrived on Tuesday, with two vans full of our favourite outdoor things – deckchairs, firebowls, storm lanterns, blankets… – to install ourselves near the lakes of the Cornbury Park Estate, and in the tents of the very first Wilderness Festival. We hefted boxes and carried piles of blankets, attached lanterns to bamboo poles and hung them from trees, arranged deckchairs, put up bunting and washing lines, decorated stages and projection screens, and late at night allowed ourselves a swim in the lake (four girls in matching polka dot swimwear) then warmed ourselves around our very own firebowl…


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posted in Culture, Diary, Food & Drink, Literature, Music, Outdoors, Travel
by TOAST ( 18.08.11 )

Next year marks the fifteenth anniversary of ‘Moro.’ The Moorish Mediterranean restaurant was started by husband and wife team Sam and Sam Clark in 1997 in what was then a ramshackle, partly boarded up Exmouth Market. The street has since become a thriving and vibrant parade with plenty of independent shops and many competing restaurants (surely in no small part because of Moro’s success)…


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posted in Diary, Food & Drink
by TOAST ( 08.08.11 )

For those of us based in London our forthcoming trip out of this wild city and into the Oxfordshire countryside will come as a welcome relief. The cause of our exodus has been planned for some time however – Wilderness, a new festival run by the same people as Secret Garden Party, asked if we wanted to join them in their celebration of arts, music and the outdoors, and we saw no reason to refuse…


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posted in Culture, Diary, Food & Drink, Music, Outdoors, People, Travel
by TOAST ( 08.08.11 )

Jo Craven.

It’s worth noting that foraging isn’t only for those with hedgerows at hand – there are urban foragers who marvel at the finds on Highbury Roundabout or in Richmond Park.


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posted in Columns, Food & Drink, Outdoors
by TOAST ( 17.05.11 )

Just a few weeks ago we hosted an evening of cheese and beer tasting in our Bath shop…


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posted in Diary, Food & Drink
by TOAST ( 16.05.11 )
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