It might not be the bank holiday weekend yet but retailers clearly sense we’re getting into end of summer mode and that means one thing: multi buy discounts.
Waitrose’s, which is the biggie, started on Wednesday and goes on for two weeks until September 1st. You can find a link to my recommended wines and other supermarket buys below.
Otherwise it’s been a busy few days trying to get ahead of myself before I left for a couple of days in London, a weekend in Kent and Edinburgh for a week on Monday.
For those of you who are also planning to head up there here’s my guide to surviving the festival from last year.
A lot of the ideas I get for entertaining come from the restaurants I go to so here are a couple from recent visits plus the virtues of a (very) late lunch.
Then - stop press! - there’s a last minute addition in the form of Santiago Lastra’s amazing pop-up celebrating the Frida Kahlo exhbition at the Tate Modern (see above). It finishes on the 31st so book before then if you possibly can.
And if you’re faced with the reality of your kids leaving home a few thoughts on what that meant to me at the time plus the book you need to send them all off with. (I know that’s not strictly grammatical but you can be too pedantic).
I’m making this first item of the Friday 5 free so you can all read it
Losing your kids - and how you can prepare them for life without you
Having your kids leave home is definitely a bereavement of sorts though unlike death or a messy divorce you will see them again, probably sooner than you think.
But your fear that they will change is justified. It’s inevitable though given the ups and downs of the teenage years that may be no bad thing.
I can remember driving my eldest son, Will to university, full of joy that he was doing what he wanted then sobbing my heart out in the car once I’d left him, surprising myself with my anguished sense of loss.
It’s a rite of passage all parents have to negotiate but few of us have been able to mark the occasion as appropriately as cookery writer Claire Thomson in her latest book Dear Grace which is dedicated to her eldest daughter who left for university last year.
There are recipes, of course, including the ‘legacy’ recipes that are Grace’s favourites, but it’s the letters to her daughter that introduce the book and each chapter that are so especially moving.
What a gift for Grace - a momento to cherish of the extraordinary life force that is her mother. (See her instagram @5oclockapron). A personal story of the kind most of us don’t get round to leaving for our kids.
If this book doesn’t win an award I’ll be amazed.
Buy it for any young person you know who’s leaving home this autumn
How did you equip your kids for leaving home and what recipes did you pass on?
A round up of end of August wine offers (and let’s hear it for muscadet ..)
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