Funny, passionate, outrageous and honest, this is a memoir about travel, house renovations, food, music, men and change. ‘I’ve escaped more houses than I’ve said Hail Marys.’ Peta Mathias has been making major moves since leaving home to train as a nurse, before living in Canada, London and later France, where she set up her own restaurant. Although she returned to New Zealand, writing food books and making television series, she continued to yoyo back to Europe a...

A New Zealander's hilarious culinary romance with France, interspersed with recipes. A New Zealand nurse opening a restaurant in Paris? Surely that would be sheer fantasy? But luck and blind determination led Peta Mathias to fulfil her long-held ambition - rising from dishwasher to French chef - and a life filled with sensuous gastronomic experiences. The wonderful recipes Peta cooked during her extraordinary time in France are intermingled here with her lively account of ...

'The point of this book is to explore my ideas for sartorial satisfaction, to tell the stories associated with my love of clothes and fashion, and to share the message of accidental sustainability.'When Peta Mathias dug through the clothes she had stored away for twenty years in her shed, she realised it was full of valuable, beautiful items that were crying out to be worn again:*'*Fashion is mysterious, irresistible and alluring . . .

‘The point of this book is to explore my ideas for sartorial satisfaction, to tell the stories associated with my love of clothes and fashion, and to share the message of accidental sustainability.’ When Peta Mathias dug through the clothes she had stored away for twenty years in her shed, she realised it was full of valuable, beautiful items that were crying out to be worn again: *‘*Fashion is mysterious, irresistible and alluring . . . they are not ...

In a world of hate, let’s serve up some love . . . Peta Mathias has encountered many a lovelorn tale on her gastronomic travels around the world. Searching further, she has unearthed more stories — the heart-warming and heart-rending, the passionate and poignant, the macabre and merry — and in these retellings brings them all to life. With her characteristic wit and colour, she also dishes up many of the ingredients of love: * intriguing courtship rituals, such as bundling...

Winner of Best Literary Food Writing (in English) category at the World Cookbook Fair, this is a lively journey discovering Ireland's food, people and music. If Peta hadn't known of her Irish ancestry, her love of potatoes would have betrayed it. Peta always connects with a place through its food, and in visiting the country of her forebears she set herself a difficult task. But it didn't take long for Peta to find the world-class restaurants hidden up windy cobbled stree...

Writer and broadcaster Peta Mathias is a woman who has never been afraid to embrace life with all its glorious inconsistencies, joys and heartbreaks. In Fabulous, she becomes every woman's confidante, as she shares with us the wisdom she has learnt over years of living outrageously. She is a woman who appreciates the importance of a gorgeous pair of shoes and the perfect shade of lipstick. She knows the value of good friends, great music, lively conversation, beautiful surrounding...

'A splendid romp. Vive la France!'Peter Mayle, author of 'A Year in Provence' and many other bestsellers'Mike Buchanan is the best kind of opinionated, middle-aged, middle-class Englishman abroad: the funny kind.'Andy Heslop'If you have a sense of humour, this book will put a big smile on your face. I laughed out loud many times. A refreshing absence of political correctness.'The lovely Maureen PadleyPolitical correctness is a curse of the modern era. This book is not politically correct. ...

With The Cook's Companion front and centre in half a million kitchens, Stephanie Alexander is the very definition of a household name. Each day thousands turn to her 'food bible' for the most reliable recipes and advice. But before Stephanie Alexander penned a word for the emerging food media, let alone for The Cook's Companion, she had spent decades avidly documenting food experiences.Shaped by her mother's dedication to good food and her father's love of reading...

The first collection of food writing by Britain's funniest and most feared criticA.A. Gill knows food, and loves food. A meal is never just a meal. It has a past, a history, connotations. It is a metaphor for life. A.A. Gill delights in decoding what lies behind the food on our plates: famously, his reviews are as much ruminations on society at large as they are about the restaurants themselves. So alongside the concepts, customers and cuisines, ten years of writin...

John Baxter's The Perfect Meal is part grand tour of France, part history of French cuisine, taking readers on a journey to discover and savor some of the world's great cultural achievements before they disappear completely.Some of the most revered and complex elements of French cuisine are in danger of disappearing as old ways of agriculture, butchering, and cooking fade and are forgotten. In this charming culinary travel memoir, John Baxter follows up his bestselling The Most Bea...

'Forty is a fine age, a young, strong powerful, prime-of-life age, a frisky age, a coming-to-maturity age when all things are possible. But beware, it is also an apocalyptic number, a number full of climactic warnings' - Margaret Drabble.40 is a truly meaningful and fascinating number. For example, the number forty is used in Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and other Middle Eastern traditions to represent a large, approximate number: 'umpteen'; forty is the number of weeks for an averag...