Gift Guide: World Sleep Day

Because there are no big holidays until Easter and Passover, this year I’m mashing up St. Patrick’s Day (March 17th) with World Sleep Day (March 18th.) Translation: I will bake and then demolish a round of Irish soda bread (recipe below) and then hopefully have a good night’s sleep.

It’s funny that World Sleep day comes the week we’ve all had our slumber thrown into disarray thanks to daylight savings time. According to the Canadian Research Chair, up to 25% of Canadians suffer from a sleep disorder. I would argue that by a certain age (ahem) that number hovers around 100%. Does anyone our age sleep through the night unassisted?

Here is the Oldish sleep pack:

Madge and Mercer’s La Calma is a high 50 mg dose of CBD with a micro 2 mg dose of THC for anxiety reduction and sleep assistance. And the subtle ginger and lemongrass flavour handily mask that ‘singular’ pot smell and taste. It cracks me up that so many of us who did not partake when we were younger are all over this stuff now.

The Belif Aqua Bomb sleep mask, $45, Sephora, a cousin to the truly stellar Aqua Bomb moisturizer soothes and hydrates your poor, winter-dried-out face overnight, with anti-oxidant-rich Lady’s Mantle and Scottish heather to calm irritation and redness. So even if you don’t sleep properly (oy), at least the face in the mirror the next morning will look dewy and rested.

A great big, body-wracking O is still the best soporific. Dame Products is a woman-owned company so you get cleverly designed tools that are cringe-factor free, much more aesthetically pleasing than a standard issue vibrator and ‘face meltingly’ (not my words, but such good words) effective. The Aer, $120, doesn’t vibrate, instead using puffs of air to work its magic.

30 minutes before bed, open the window (cold rooms equal better sleep) and lightly spray your pillow with Bleu Lavande’s calming lavender room spray, on sale for only $13.88, Shoppers Drug Mart. When you walk into the gently scented, cold room at bedtime, it will feel like some kind soul (you, a half an hour ago) prepared the room for a good night’s sleep.

Keep Ilia Lip Wrap Hydrating mask, 434, Sephora, on your nightstand as a reminder to use it before bed. Papaya enzyme gently exfoliates while mango butter and a host of nourishing oils bring moisture back to chapped lips. You might argue that a lip product isn’t a sedative, but it’s these bedtime rituals that tell your brain it’s time to sleep.

We’re supposed to turn off our screens and read a book before bed, but that’s difficult when our phones are virtually soldered to our hands. A bath prevents this, unless you are a true cowboy who puts their laptop or iPad on a bath tray, in which case I cannot help you.

My favourite Canadian bath company, Bathorium, has stellar scent blends like Sea Kelp Serenity bath crush, $30, The Detox Market, a Dead Sea salts bath soak with lavender and bergamot that will relax you down to your bones so completely that you’ll have to crawl to your bed.

This stunner of a soda bread is not mine, but with this recipe and a cast iron pan, it can be yours.

And finally, I want to leave you with a recipe for soda bread. It comes together quickly, requires no kneading and by baking it in a cast iron pan you ensure a satisfyingly crunchy crust.

Soda Bread

Makes one round, serves 2-4.

For a savoury version, omit the sugar and add three chopped green onions and a cup of coarsely grated cheddar to the dry ingredients and butter mixture before adding the buttermilk.

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups buttermilk (no substitutions)

1 egg (optional, for added richness. So yeah, do it.)

4 1/2 cups all purpose flour (spooned into a measuring cup to ensure an accurate amount. Dragging the cup through the flour and then levelling it off packs too much flour into each cup.)

3 T granulated sugar

1 t baking soda

1 t kosher salt (Diamond Crystal if possible. It really is the best.)

5 T cold, cubed unsalted butter.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F and lightly grease a 10 inch cast iron skillet.

Whisk together the cold buttermilk and the egg.

Combine the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.

Add the cold cubes of butter to the flour mixture and incorporate it with a pastry cutter until it all resembles cornmeal (as if you were making a pie crust.)

Pour in the buttermilk/egg mix and stir until combined. When you have a unified (albeit crumbly) mass, turn it onto a floured board and barely knead for only half a minute until the flour is incorporated.

Shape into a round and place in your cast iron pan. Cut a cross into it almost all the way through, as this will help it bake evenly, place on the middle rack and bake for about 40 minutes. (Start checking at the 30 minute mark. You might want to drape it with foil if it browns too quickly.)

Remove when done and cool it on a wire rack and then happily consume it all in one sitting.

***

And finally, here’s something to be proud of: the government of Canada reached their $30 million match ceiling for the Red Cross by March fourth, but the Red Cross is still a great place to donate to help Ukraine.

Cheese Fondue Makes Your Hair Shiny

Have you ever seen such shiny, perfect hair? (Surreptitious photo taken in Zürich by me.)

I’ve never seen as much beautiful hair as I did in Zürich. Just look at this gloss, the perfect variegated colour. I believe with all my heart that the Swiss have such gorgeous hair because of their high per capita cheese consumption. Canadians put away a respectable 13.3 kilos of cheese each year, but the Swiss trounce us with their 21.73 annual kilos eaten.

Sadly, my theory may be flawed. An American makeup artist I know who once lived there told me that all the beautiful hair was because excellent hair colourists gravitate to Zürich, a global banking centre, to serve the very wealthy population.

But I still think it’s the cheese.

In that spirit, please make cheese fondue for dinner this week. See below for the best, authentically Swiss recipe. I posted it last year, but will not rest until everyone has tried it.

Outdoor fondue dining would be a perfect Covid activity, wouldn’t it? (Photo from that same Zürich trip.)

Authentic Cheese Fondue for two

Try this cheese fondue recipe instead of defaulting to those pre-mixed foil cheese packets from the grocery store. This version only takes minutes to pull together and is so worth it. The only challenge may be in finding the perfect cheeses, (see note below.)

400 grams total of grated Gruyère and Vacherin Fribourgeois cheese (see Note, below)

150 ml white wine, like a nice dry Riesling

2 tsp cornstarch

2 tsp kirsch (Kirsch is a colourless brandy made from fermented cherries. It is not a sweet liqueur. Don’t skip this ingredient as it adds a lot of essential flavour. Buy a bottle and it will last forever.)

A round or loaf of sourdough or country bread with a deep crust, cut into bite-sized cubes

A plump clove of garlic

Method

Cut a garlic clove in half lengthwise and rub the cut side all over the interior of your fondue pot (caquelon) releasing the garlic juice. Leave the little garlic bits in the pot.

Whisk the cornstarch into the wine in a measuring cup. Pour this into your fondue pot with the bits of garlic still there.  

Place the pot on the stove and heat the liquid over low-to-medium heat until hot but not boiling and then add all the cheese. Whisk constantly allowing the cheese to melt, paying special attention to scraping up the bits on the bottom of the pot and not letting the heat go too high. 

Once the cheese has melted, add the kirsch. Remove the pot from the stove, light the heating element on your fondue stand (the ‘rechaud’) and place the pot on the stand. Adjust the heat so your cheese is hot enough but not furiously bubbling. Add a tiny bit more wine if it’s too thick. 

Skewer your bread cubes on your fondue forks, dip and twist to remove excess cheese and enjoy. Tradition has it that anyone who loses a bread cube has to pay for the next bottle of wine.

As you eat and the amount of cheese in the pot goes down, turn down the heat so as not to burn what’s left. If there is a caramelized circle of cheese at the bottom of the pot when you are finished, carefully pry it off with a wooden spoon (not metal because it will scratch the finish) and enjoy. 

This recipe increases easily. Add 200 grams of cheese and 75 ml of wine for each additional serving.

Note: a classic Swiss mix of cheeses for fondue can be as simple as the above half Gruyère and half Vacherin Fribourgeois version, but you can also add small (or larger) amounts of Emmentaler, Appenzeller and Challerhocker as well.

Valentine’s Day Gift Guide 2022

This Valentine’s day please give yourself a reward (large or small) for having made it this far.

And let’s go wider with our gift-giving. Galentine’s Day (great idea, terrible name) was just the beginning. Let’s include family members, friends, even pets. If you love someone, give them a treat.

The All-Clad 4 quart slow cooker, ($175) is a great gift to buy yourself. It doesn’t look too aggressively large on the kitchen counter, but is still big enough for make meals for four. It is less about getting yet another appliance and more about the irrefutable fact that waking up to a hot breakfast is life-changing.

Overnight Hot Steel Cut Breakfast Oats

Before bed, butter the inside of the ceramic liner with a teaspoon of softened butter to prevent sticking (do not skip this step.) Add one cup of dry steel cut oats (not the quick cooking version and definitely not rolled oats) a diced apple (don’t bother peeling it,) some walnut pieces, a quarter cup of golden raisins, several shakes of ground cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice and 4 1/2 cups of liquid (water, milk, nut milk or any combination of the three) and set the slow cooker on ‘low’ for 8 hours and hit the start button.

Then tidy the counter and lay out nice bowls, spoons, napkins and a non-scratch serving spoon (I like this silicone one from Muji, $12.90) and when you wake up you will have a hot breakfast waiting (the machine will switch to warm after the eight hour cycle is complete) and you will think ‘How lovely. My staff prepared breakfast for me,’ and your day will be off to the best possible start.

The Kosta Boda Snowball votive holder, $49, WilliamAshley.com, is a 1973 Scandi design classic from Sweden that is still in production. Just one (they’re three inches tall) adds a warm, refractive glow to your mantle or coffee table in these later winter months. It’s wintery, but not Christmassy.

Zara Vetiver Pamplemousse eau de parfum, $39.90, Zara.com, created by Jo Malone no less, is not a complicated scent. It’s actually pretty linear, just vetiver and grapefruit. But what it lacks in nuance, it makes up for in eye-opening, happy-making grapefruity zest and rain-soaked, humid jungle vetiver. It is so wonderfully alive and invigorating and because it is (relatively) inexpensive, you can use it liberally. Spray a giant cloud and walk through it? Sure. Bring life back to a stuffy a stuffy room? Absolutely. It’s not a classically ‘romantic’ rich or floral Valentine’s scent, but it is the promise of spring.

Did you read The Thorn Birds (Indigo.ca) when it came out in 1977? How about Scruples, Princess Daisy, Flowers in the Attic or Judy Blume’s Forever? A nostalgic dive into the books we read right under our parents’ noses is calming in a way that a new book just isn’t. This is the perfect gift for an old friend to remind them of just how long you’ve known each other.

I am totally charmed (sorry) by the idea of wearing a loved one’s (spouse, child or pet) diamond-studded initial around your neck. These wee 8mm high letters (not including the ‘bail’) are from Canadian-owned Mejuri.com, $265.

Toronto’s Soma Chocolatemaker should get a medal for making sophisticated high quality chocolates that include all the fun and mouth fizz of pop rocks. Their new Wild Berry Pop bar, $12, somachocolate.com of white chocolate with fruit and pop rocks is as if the gods somehow made fruity cereal milk into a creamy, melty solid that also fizzes. And how beautiful is this packaging?

Weekend Baking: Panettone Bread Pudding

A sprinkling of turbinado sugar on top of your pudding creates crunch to contrast with the soft, squidgy centre.

I always think that if I get past Christmas without gorging myself, I’ll be ok. But then comes endless January and I start baking.

A giant panettone recently sat on our kitchen counter for a few days: rich, eggy and studded with craggy chocolate chunks. And even though we kept shaving off slices throughout the day, it was so large that it appeared relatively undiminished until it got semi-stale and I got tired of looking at it.

The panettone bread pudding I made with it is a tweaked version of Nigella Lawson’s ginger jam bread pudding and it was, all modesty aside, absolutely perfect and what the British call ‘moreish’ in that you can’t stop eating it. Please try it as there is still so much winter left.

Panettone Bread Pudding

1/2 stick of butter

4 eggs

3 T granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup Sultana raisins

1/2 cup rum

Enough leftover panettone to slice and fill a 1 /12 litre casserole or baking dish (approx 10 slices)

700 ml total of milk and cream (I used 500 ml of 10% table cream with 200 ml of skim milk because that’s what we had)

1 Tbs turbinado sugar for sprinkling over top

Method

Preheat the oven to 375º F.

Gently heat up a quarter cup of raisins covered in rum on a medium low stove or microwave for a minute.

Butter a 1 1/2 quart casserole (I used an old cornflower pattern Corningware dish because it retains heat perfectly and it is a scientifically proven fact that using your mother’s old Corningware dishes makes everything taste better) and then slice a quarter of a large panettone into 1 inch thick triangular slices. You can thinly butter each slice as well to add to the richness. Don’t butter too lavishly as you can easily go overboard and you will be dotting the whole affair with butter anyway before it goes into the oven.

Into a bowl, place your cream/milk mixture along with four beaten eggs, the vanilla extract and three tablespoons of sugar and set aside.

Start placing your panettone slices standing up into your buttered baking dish. You can alternate pointy end down with pointy end up to give some texture to the top of your assembly. (If you quartered your panettone vertically before slicing you get pointy slices and if I could draw I would draw an illustration for you, but just picture cutting your panettone into giant wedges like it’s a cake.)

At this point remove your raisins from the stove where hopefully they have plumped up nicely in all that rum. Scatter them between your bread slices and on top. You want raisins all the way through this dish, not just on top.

You can also pack in any stray chunks of panettone throughout the final mix. It doesn’t have to look too tidy. It’s going to soon be drowned by the milk and egg mixture anyway. Just fill in any large gaps if you feel so inclined. This is a very loose ‘do it however you like’ recipe.

Pour the milk/cream/egg mixture over top making sure to soak ever area and then allow it a few minutes to absorb into the panettone. You can push the panettone down a bit with a clean hand to submerge it a bit if you need to.

Dot the top with a divided tablespoon of butter if you choose and then sprinkle your turbinado sugar evenly across the surface. This will add a wonderfully crunchy top to contrast with your pudding’s soft and yielding interior.

Put your (uncovered!) casserole or pudding dish on a cookie sheet, place on the centre rack of the oven and bake for 45 minutes, but do peek in starting at the 35 minute mark. If your oven heats unevenly, give your dish a 180 degree rotation after 20 minutes or so but it’s not really necessary. This is a sturdy pudding, not delicate piecrust.

Remove from the oven after 45 minutes by which time it should be nicely browned and puffed up. (Sadly though, it will sink in the centre as it cools.) I would say wait until it does cool before serving, but why? If you are only sharing it with family, then to heck with societal norms and just stand over the stove with a giant spoon and dig in while it’s still hot. Melted chocolate is the best chocolate.

Baby, It's Cold Outside: Bengal Spice Tea

It hurts my delicate minimalist sensibilities to post a photo of this colourful box, but Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice is crucial to getting through the chill of winter. It also keeps me from rooting through the remaining Christmas chocolate come late afternoon, but this is not a diet post. I hate New Year’s diet posts.

Bengal Spice herbal tea is my secret shame. It doesn’t taste at all like tea, but rather like high school-era Dentyne cinnamon gum. It’s that strong. It was first served to me by a friend who takes her tea very seriously, so I was surprised that she was drinking something you can buy at the grocery store. But I instantly became a Bengal Spice true believer and I haven’t been without a box since.

I soon found out that other friends love it as well. We’re members of a secret society that has no meetings but is united by a love of this intense, ‘spice forward’ tea. Bengal Spice contains no sugar, but maybe our brains read the full-on cinnamon assault as sugar? I don’t know. And I stockpile it this time of year because I will drink many cups over these next few months, while all sorts of weather rage outside my window.

One tip: I do transfer the tea bags to a white enamel tin because the scent is pretty potent and it will permeate other items in your pantry if you let it. But I mainly do it because lord, that box is ugly.

Desperately Seeking Stuff: Obsessive Lockdown Shopping

I spotted this cream-coloured Goyard Saint Louis tote on the train from Cannes to Ventimiglia.

Have you bought anything weirdly out of character during these past almost two years? Have you indulged in any late-night tipsy shopping, fallen down an internet hole, weighed the merits of certain items, different colours, different sizes and then just bought them all? No judgment here.

We’re all looking for that dopamine hit that we used to get from oh, I don’t know, seeing people and living a normal life. Not sure if long, slow science agrees with me, but I am certain that the joy and relief we used to get from unloading onto friends over a glass of wine after a particularly hellish day has been replaced by hitting ‘Buy Now’ for a battery-powered milk frother from Amazon.

Homemade pastas and sauces in Ventimiglia

A usually sensible girlfriend of mine recently became obsessed with the Goyard Saint Louis tote bag. I hadn’t helped matters as I’d shown her a photo (main image) that I sneakily took on a train from Cannes to Ventimiglia back in June of 2019. And it really is a cute tote to take to a farmer’s market in Italy. (Europe, right? People cross borders on the weekend just for homemade pesto). But thirteen hundred euros for this particular discontinued colour on TheRealReal? You could actually fly to Europe from Canada and still have money left over. Like so many of us, I think my friend wants the trip and the bag was merely a proxy.

I’m bad too. After my lockdown online extravagance (I now own pretty much the entire Westman Atelier makeup line, have enough white linen bedding to outfit multiples guest bedrooms and never need to buy another scented candle) I am trying to transfer my dopamine-seeking to smaller items, specifically weird recherché liqueurs. Thirty or forty dollars is not an excessive amount of money to spend and even after the purchase is completed, there’s the time I’ll be happily absorbed researching new cocktails.

My latest strange liqueur is Licor 43, ($31.85, LCBO.com.) a popular Spanish vanilla, citrus and herb mix which apparently makes a screwdriver taste like a creamsicle. Works for me.

All is calm. All is bright.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all!

Gifts For Frazzled Hosts

Etiquette experts say that it’s impolite to bring flowers to a dinner party because you are asking your already put-upon host to find a vase and arrange flowers when they are busy welcoming guests and seeing to dinner. Much better to send flowers ahead of time or the next day as a thank you.

Guidance like this increases my already sky-high gift anxiety. Like there’s an unseen panel judging my gift as ill-conceived or merely thoughtless. But I don’t want to show up empty-handed knowing I’m sending something the next day. So I am trying to think what would be appreciated if I were feeling overwhelmed or just plain distracted in the kitchen. Happy holidays!

Instead of flowers, let’s start a tradition of showing up with a lasagna and some face masks for the hosts to enjoy the next day when they are exhausted. If you are in Toronto the bolognese lasagna at StockTC on Yonge at Eglinton is hefty for its size and it tastes extravagantly rich and homemade. Throw in some cooling and depuffing, day-after-the-party Cucumber Eye Masks, $5, Sephora.com, and you have a perfect Thank You for your host. (Do I have this beauty writer thing right? Dunno, but if someone showed up at my place with lasagna and cucumber eye masks, I’d let them in.)

The perfect gift for any plant-based friends who may not get the iron they need, the Lucky Iron fish, when boiled for 10 minutes in a soup, curry etc, provides six to eight mg of bioavailable iron. Created by Canadian health workers in Cambodia, witnessing malnutrition in marginalized communities, the fish is best used here for anyone needing an iron supplement. And a percentage of the proceeds goes to help communities in need through Lucky Fishes non-profit partners.

Olli’s Caramelts which contain 2.5 mg of both THC and CBD each are definitely not for kids.

If you were tasked with bringing dessert:

This season people may feel as overstuffed as a couch by the end of the holiday meal. If dessert is up to you, why not go lighter? A couple of boxes of President’s Choice cocoa dusted salted caramel Truffles, $2.49 each, (the cocoa dusting make them look instantly fancier than a regular chocolate), with some fresh figs and raspberries or clementines on a platter lets everyone take what they want. Not to mention, fewer dishes afterwards.

And if your table is adults only, then why not add some Olli Passion Fruit Caramelts, with 2.5 grams THC and 2.5 CBD for gentle “relaxation”. Olli Caramelts are like an ‘enhanced’ version of the wrapped Kraft caramels of our youth except that they also taste brightly of passion fruit and they contain both 2.5 mg of both THC and CBD for the ‘entourage effect’ that amplifies the effect of the THC. So not really like Kraft caramels at all.

This appeals to me for its university dorm party vibe. Show up with a carton of grocery store egg nog (or an actual bottle of ‘fancy’ nog like this one from Toronto’s Summerhill market) and a mickey of just good enough brandy, like St. Remy XO, 375 ml, $20.95, LCBO.com. You can crown yourself barkeep and mix up fortified nogs for the assembled (and hopefully delighted) throng. No punchbowl required, just a willing arm to provide generous pours.

Gift Guide: Dinner in Italy

The best part of foreign travel is renting a place with a kitchen and roaming through markets and small shops to assemble dinner like a native. Seeing as that may not be happening until later in 2022, assembling a food basket is the perfect gift (along with an off piste item or two) for that friend who, at this point in the pandemic, would happily swim to Europe if they thought they could make it.

If I found this beautiful bottle in Europe, i would be ranting about how much lovelier everything is over there. But surprise! it’s available at the LCBO and it’s only $27.95. More subtle than the amaretto you may be familiar with, Luxardo Amaretto di Saschira is sweet but also nutty. It’s nuanced as opposed to one-note and the sheer grandness and arresting beauty of the bottle demands that you build a drinks tray around it. Great as a digestif or in cocktails, it also makes the cleverest and fastest dessert: an Amaretto Affogato. It’s the classic ‘hot espresso poured over vanilla ice cream', but with a generous slug of amaretto added to the bowl as well.

Add an unexpected treat to a food-centric gift by including the perfect red lipstick (nothing more Italian than Gucci) that an Italian hostess would quickly swipe on before receiving guests. Gucci rouge à lèvres satin lipstick in Goldie Red, $55, Sephora.ca is a vibrant true red that looks good on every complexion.

Yes, I know hand soap is not food. But I am so thrilled that this gorgeous and reasonably priced Italian brand is now available at Eataly. Their amber and spice scented Gattopardo Ambra Nera Glass Plate and Soap, $20.90, Eataly.ca makes a perfect practical but glamorous hostess gift.

This year, let’s normalize using vibrantly coloured panettone tins as sewing kits. Definitely one step up from the ubiquitous blue butter cookie tins. I found this Dolce & Gabbana panettone at my favourite Italian grocer (Toronto’s Lady York on Dufferin street) so it’s worth seeking them out at your local shops. And then you aren’t at the mercy of overstretched shipping companies.

Mimi Thorisson’s Old World Italian, Chapters Indigo Books $45, is equal parts tour through Italian cookery, interior design inspiration and straightforward, easy to execute recipes. FYI, The Cacio e Pepe is on p. 160. (Maybe mark it with a Post-it if you are giving pasta and cheese as well?)

Did you read about the bucatini shortage exactly one year ago? All the more reason to include it in your gift. Add a hunk of pecorino and some black peppercorns and you have everything you need for Cacio e Pepe (except the starchy pasta water. You’ll have to make that yourself.)

***
Storytime!

In my twenties, I visited the Toronto home of an up-and-coming film producer and his lovely Italian girlfriend. According to the friends of his who brought me, he apparently wouldn’t marry her, even after years together, because he didn’t want her to get his money in case they broke up.

She was warm, welcoming and low-key cool and kept all her beautiful dried pasta boxes casually displayed in a wicker basket on top of the fridge. When I got home, I immediately put all my pasta in a basket too, and 30 years on, I still store it that way. I googled him for this and no, they are no longer together. If you and I are friends, just ask and I will tell you who he is.

A Bath, a Bottle, a Book: Gifts for a Quiet Day

I want to steep in this marble bath at Stockholm’s Ett Hem hotel until my fingers get all pruney.

Something you want/something you need

Something to wear/something to read

This dusty old couplet is a useful reminder of what makes the best gifts, but this year I’ve shortened and simplified it to ‘a bath, a bottle, a book’ because I adore alliteration as much as I like reading and good smells (and right now, everyone needs a bottle of something.)

The book itself can be new and glossy, or an out-of-print favourite, scrounged second-hand, that you need your friend to read. That may have a whiff of ‘reading assignment’, but so be it.

This inaugural Bath, Bottle and Book is a trio of gifts for a quiet homebody, rendered weary by the season:

Canada’s own Bathorium bath bomb in Boreal Fog , $12, Holt Renfrew, Etiket.ca, has an evocative name that encourages you to go walking in the bitter cold, then come home to steep in a hot tub like a giant, human tea bag, surrounded by Boreal Fog’s wondrous eucalyptus, fir and vetiver fug.

Empress 1908 gin, $52.95, LCBO, named after the Victoria, BC, hotel, is loved for its floral notes and blend of botanicals, makes a mean martini (a very last century, female writer drink) and is arrestingly beautiful enough to be displayed on a drinks tray (the aromatic, dry gin gets its colour from butterfly pea blossoms.)

One Pair of Hands (copies available here and here), is a funny, clever and often pointed, detail-rich account of Monica Dickens’ (yes, Charles’s great-granddaughter) time spent as a cook for hire in 1930s London households after she got booted from acting school and became bored with debutante life. Why this book and this author are not more famous is beyond me.