The recent Eat This Podcast on foie gras, talking to Michaela DeSoucey, the sociologist who wrote Contested Tastes: foie gras and the politics of food, was really fun to make. Foie gras, the way it is produced, marketed and eaten is such a complex and interesting topic and Michaela DeSoucey is such a knowledgeable person that we talked for over an hour. The hard part was cutting it down to a more manageable length, and that meant that some stuff just inevitably had to be left out.

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World this day, international that week, global the other month.

Normally I find out about these things too late to do anything about it. So I'm actually grateful to Eattiamo -- who'll send a box of Italian goodies to your doorstep, if you're in the USA -- for pointing out that 25 October happens...

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Over on Instagram I became fascinated by the bread videos of Trevor Jay Wilson, marvelling at how gentle he is with his dough and how wonderfully that dough performs for him.

Thus inspired, I tried a new approach, using an overnight autolyse. And it mostly worked.

The point is, why bother wr...

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A few weeks ago, a professional broadcaster asked me how I managed to get such good audio quality on an episode of Eat This Podcast. Once I'd got over the shock, I just told her that it was Skype (and a teeny bit of judicious tweaking). Every time Skype gives me any kind of trouble, I take a deep br...

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Although I am not by any stretch of the imagination a developer, there are bits of what developers do that I appreciate. One of those is version control. On texts, at least, I no longer keep interminable backup versions of different states. I've been using Git to keep track of versions for me, and s...

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