Piles of Toast, Best Sweatshirts, A Sparkling Sophie Calle Book
March delights
Some recent pleasures:
Toast and Jam
I love the passage in MFK Fisher’s How To Cook a Wolf where she writes “Breakfast, then, it can be toast. It can be piles of toast, generously buttered, and a bowl of honey or jam…” Over the last few months I’ve been trying to make a semi regular routine of going to a farmer’s market each Saturday so I could get a loaf of sourdough whole grain brioche made by Dawn Woodward. (Dawn recently opened up a bakery! Please go and get everything, especially her ‘Twix’ bars.) This bread is the ideal comfort food as it essentially tastes like gourmet commercial bagged bread (high/low heaven). I initially bought it with the vision of making French toast but also enjoyed it so much dipped in eggs. Or toasted with jam.
Speaking of jam, the most aesthetically pleasing jam, packaging-wise, comes from Italy I love to give it as gifts (no wrapping needed). Strawberry is my favourite of the ones I’ve tried, fig and almond a close second. On their website I see they have chic tubes of Reinette Apple Jam (could be a nice Crème de Marrons alternative).
A few sandwiches have been on my mind lately. In Gabriel Hamilton’s Prune cookbook there is a recipe for butter and sugar sandwiches (served with a side of cream for dipping). In Elizabeth David’s Summer Cooking there is a recipe for walnut sandwiches (to be served on crustless buttered brown bread, as an accompaniment to ices) which has always intrigued me. I am dying to try Elbow Bakery’s EB BB, a sandwich of feuilletine-laced (!) crispy walnut butter, cream cheese and dates on their sourdough black bread. I loved reading
’s latest letter, a dispatch from her temporary Roman kitchen, especially seeing the crustless jam and butter sandwich on incredibly soft bread (reason enough to travel to Rome IMO). Then there’s the Canal House “recipe" for raspberry sandwiches, which involves spreading good butter on a slice of white bread, sprinkling sugar on that and scattering fresh raspberries on top. Those raspberry sandwiches combined with MFK Fisher’s "piles of toast” were my inspiration for this spread I styled and photographed for Maison Simons’ tablewares in 2023.Sweatshirts
Now that it’s basically spring I’m putting away my wool sweaters and pulling out my sweatshirts - my favourite “transitional” clothing item. One day I caught my husband googling ‘what is the best sweatshirt’ (we had a good laugh). The answer to this is