Weekly Love: Week 205

Kent people! The Bank Holiday will soon be upon us and I’ll be heading back down to Kent to enjoy the last few days of the summer sunshine (fingers crossed the weather will hold, and for an Indian summer in September!) and the We Love Hythe Food Festival will be running throughout the weekend at the Hythe Cricket and Squash Club (full event details here). Why am I telling you this? Because if you pop along on Sunday afternoon I’ll be judging the Bake Off event at 3pm, and then signing copies of Student Eats afterwards! Do come along and say hi because it looks like it is going to be a fantastic weekend full of lovely looking local food and drink – I’m looking forward to sampling are cocktails from Beetlejuice and a Stoned Pizza!

1. Starters and oysters at The Gun in Canary Wharf – review coming soon! | 2. Aperol Spritz by the pond. | 3. View across the water to the O2/ Millenium Dome from The Gun. | 4. A sublime pork belly confit with black pudding cream at The Compasses Inn, Crundale. | 5. Building a soft cheeseboard for my summer party – blog post about the cheeseboard coming soon! | 6. Walking to the prettiest postbox set into the wall of someones home in Kent.

• How Instagram as influenced how restaurant interiors are designed. Also, it is scarily simple to get sponsored Instagram campaigns with a fake account and followers. (via Kristabel)
• So, it turns out it really does not matter which side of the cooking foil you use.
• Colu wrote a pasta cookbook and it totally changed the way she saw her body. This is what they don’t tell you – I went up an entire dress size writing and photographing Student Eats, too.
• This is the fascinating story behind Smashbox cosmetics.
• More French market porn from David Lebovitz who is in Villebois-Lavalette.
• Laura has done Tokyo for foodies properly, and here is her travel guide.
• Lucy has some thoughts on achieving a work-life balance, and a deliciously cheesy and tomatoey recipe for a sausage pasta bake with absolutely no chopping involved!
• Julia has some great tips for how to pack all your items so they don’t get ruined travelling. Also, you know all those stunning posts I shared from her trip to the South of France? She’s gathered everything she got up to together in one handy itinerary. 
• This is how to make your favourite retro sweets at home.
• I wish I still lived in L.A. so I could put Trader Joe’s frozen coconut chunks in my smoothies.
• Also, these are the 50 most popular Trader Joe’s products over the past 50 years.
• Angie did loads of research for her blog post on the Blue Lagoon in Iceland, so it is worth a read if you’re planning is visit! (You can read my post from my visit here!) She also stayed in a simply stunning rural farmhouse hotel in Northern Iceland. (This is what to do staying there!)

7. Leaves starting to turn – Autumn is coming! | 8. Gathering up the last of the hydrangeas for a party centerpiece. | 9. Making the most of the sunshine testing barbecue recipes. | 10. Enjoying a family dinner at The George in Molash. | 11. Enjoying drinks to celebrate Student Eats with my agent, my editor and my publicist at the top of the OXO Tower. | 12. Writing about how students don’t have to, and no longer want to eat bad food in the education section of i newspaper last weekend – you can read my piece here.

• Mani went to Miyajima island in Japan and I want to eat all the food.
• The pro’s and con’s of naming your blog/ small business after yourself.
• Lisette has some great tips on how to compromise, because things can’t be 100% all the time.
• Lottie + Doof has a fantastic take down of people who leave stupid comments on recipe posts.
• A little introduction to smoking your own foods at home.
• Refinery 29 has helpfully come up with a Game of Thrones finale drinking game.
• Yaya and Lloyd took some stunning pictures in Sirmione, Lake Garda. They also got to see the ‘real’ (read: non-tourist) Nepal staying with a local family while they were there.
• A look at the drinking culture of Coney Island.
• Mulia has been to Île de Ré – I’ve had it bookmarked as a possible holiday destination for a while, and her photos have made me bump it up the list – totally my sort of place!
• I’m super jazzed for Anthony Bourdain’s new food waste documentary. 
• Jacquelyn has put together a pretty comprehensive guide to visiting Lisbon.
• Rose has found a frankly epic-looking pasta restaurant in Belgravia. 
• Yes, you can make completely natural, colour changing lemonade.
• There are so many recipes you can use vinegar in that you have not thought of.
• I need this: how to get stains out of plastic food containers. 
• Claire shows us you can do a classy holiday in Marbella. 
• I want to start hosting a cookbook club.

What have you been enjoying this week, and what do you have planned for the long (and final) Bank Holiday weekend? I hope to meet some of you at the festival – don’t be afraid to come and say hi! For more like this, don’t forget to sign up to my monthly newsletter which hits your inboxes on the first Sunday of each month packed full of seasonal eats, mini cookbook reviews, and other updates.

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