Here are some upcoming July events that caught my eye and might be of interest.

Like London’s recent Taste of London, there is a similar event to be held in Birmingham. Its the Taste of Birmingham and will run between 9-12 July.

The month of July is cherry season, but did you know that in the last 50 years, Britain has lost 90% of its cherry orchards and now imports around 95% of the cherries sold. So FoodLoversBritain.com has come up with CherryAid, a campaign to support the British cherry. The highlight will be CherryBake, to be held on National Cherry Day which is on 18 July 2009. Foodies can register online and then come along with a baked dish which includes cherries. The dish will be entered into a competition for a chance to win a cherry tree in an orchard in Kent. The venue for CherryBake will be London’s Borough Market. For more details click here.

They say in a relationship there is a honeymoon period, during which time you are usually on your best behaviour. But there will come a point in the relationship when the dynamics change, and there is no longer a need to be polite to one another. Well, it seems that ours is well and truly over. Readers will know that a few weeks ago, G and R came to blows over the use of one pasta rolling machine, resulting in G descending into a heated tirade. This week, it was my turn to loose my cool.

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Wild rabbit starter for two

I suffer from a disposition that I call ‘geographical disorientation’, an affliction which I liken to not ‘knowing’ where something is. It usually strikes when I am trying to remember where I have last parked my car, and most inconveniently when I am in a desperate hurry to go somewhere. I usually can’t remember, a debate ensues, which ultimately results in me having to guess. Living smack bang in the middle of my street, there is roughly a 50/50 chance that I have parked the car either to the left, or to the right of my flat. But it is not unheard of for me to occasionally guess wrong, which means that I invariably have to walk back on myself. Sigh – what to do?

The situation wasn’t particularly different when, over coffee the other day, I was trying to tell a foodie friend of mine, D, that the next restaurant on my agenda was the Harwood Arms in Shepherd’s Bush. ‘Oh no, it’s in Fulham’, she said. ‘No, I’m pretty sure it’s in Shepherd’s Bush’, I insisted, and so it went. But now that I have actually been to the Harwood Arms, the consequence of which was that I had to drive to, umm, Fulham, and not Shepherd’s Bush (and this was after finally locating my car), I now have no option but to swallow my words and admit to D that she was correct. Sigh, what to do?

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Maggie Beer

A few weeks ago, I blogged about how Maggie Beer, the famous Australian food writer, cook, TV presenter and food producer, was coming to London. Maggie is perhaps not that well known in the UK, but she is a bit of an Australian icon. And so when I was invited to the UK launch party for Maggie’s new products, including her acclaimed verjuice, at Australia House, I was absolutely delighted to go along.

As a consequence of being able to attend the launch party, I have managed to get hold of this never-seen-before recipe of the verjuice custard that Maggie showcased at the 2009 Melbourne Food and Wine Festival in March. The festival was also attended by Heston Blumenthal from Fat Duck, Sat Bains from Restaurant Sat Bains, Shane Osborn from Pied à Terre, and René Redzepi from Noma. You can read all about the festival on the Australian Gourmet Traveller website.

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Baked oyster with gooseberry granite

I found it mildly amusing to read what had been written on the ‘location tab’ of The Sportsman’s website, a one Michelin starred gastropub situated in Kent. It goes something like this:

“A common theme in many write-ups and reviews is that The Sportsman is remote, bleak and a bit of a dump. Equally, many regulars find this point of view shocking as they love to arrive early, go for a walk on the beach and then have lunch or dinner.”

I suppose the view of the former group was not easily dispelled for me, seeing as the day of our visit was a rainy, bleak day in June. Who would have believed it was summer?! And the long journey from London (a tube ride to Victoria Station, a 1½ hour train ride to Faversham, and taxi from Faversham to The Sportsman) further confirmed the assertion of remoteness.

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