(and potatoes and carrots and pork and…) — Fried? In cream…? This method always sounds ever-new, but in fact it’s as old as the hills. Mrs Bailey learned it at her grandmother’s knee, when that indomitable old lady served as cook to the squire’s house, and fed half the village else. It may seem strange at first, but…

Cumina my house… — MRS BAILEY’S JEERA RICE Historically, even on Mars most Indian families have preferred to keep their daughters at home until they marry. Change is coming, as barriers erode between one culture and another, but it is still slow. …

Indigenous food and folkways, friends, fun… Ah now, what a day we had yesterday, people. What a day. I’m a devout foodie and Karen approves wholeheartedly of this whole eating thing, but we didn’t actually go out much even before the pandemic: it was an occasional treat, rather than a…

…and it can be just the same with writing — Let me be clear, I am a truly rotten gardener. It’s not just plants; whole trees have died under my care. To be fair to myself, I’m a Brit transposed to California, in the middle of the worst drought on record. It’s seriously hard to do well here and save…

(and a recipe for candied orange peel) — “The unexamined life is not worth living.” — Socrates Just around the corner from us is asuburban home that has actually appeared on Google Maps as “The Quantified House”. It is inhabited (inevitably: this is Silicon Valley, after all) by techbros, and they use All The Apps There Are to…

From Marsport’s Chinatown, direct to you… Green beans, Chinese long beans, haricots verts: through the season, Mrs Bailey’s poor harassed kitchenmaids trim a lot of beans. Perhaps half of every crop is pickled or otherwise preserved for the long Martian winters ahead, but while they’re fresh, they appear at school…

A story for All Soul’s Day… [This is a few days late — All Souls’ Day is November 2nd — but fiction rarely aligns with the calendar, so…] Ten days in every year — Easter week, the solstices, All Souls’ — the canons of the cathedral have a great many…

As hot as you can take it is as hot as it should be… Mrs B learned this one, as she learns so much, from girls passing through the school, each bringing with them their own cultures and concerns. …

Measured Words — Some call it emigration or immigration, depending on their point of view (and PoV, as we know, is all-important). Some call it exile, or translocation, or fleeing-the-country. Whatever you choose to call it, the facts remain: we have shifted two cats and one novelist some debatable thousands of miles (should…