Letters to Nigel Slater - a blog
- rosemary
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
"If you accept what IS, then you can simply relax and appreciate it for its specialness" Hilary Chambers
I haven't written about other bloggers for a while now, so it's time, and the next one is one I have been sort of looking forward to for a while - Letters to Nigel Slater. I mean how could I resist? Having now read a few posts it leaves me a little sad and with lots of questions.
It's a very plain and unfancy looking website which began back in November 2011 and eded with this post in June 2019 - the day before my birthday I see. There are more subscribers than me - but not many more - 41 I think - one of whom is Nigel himself of whom she writes:
"I had a lovely endorsement of my blog on Twitter today, 18th January 2013, Nigel Slater said, 'I cannot tell you how much @hilarykaren's enchanting blog has meant to me over the last year.'
And he has sent her the odd signed copy of his books too. But it was his Kitchen Diaries that started her on this exercise, which, of course, hit a chord with me, because this was how I began too. My daughter-in-law gave me a copy of Kitchen Diaries III - it must have been in 2016. It's subtitle is A Year of Good Eating and in it each short entry is about his day and what he ate on that day. I loved it, and would read each entry on the day it was written - well transposed to the Australian months - hence now in November I would be reading about May so that that seasonal mismatch would not occur. There was not an entry for every day, but every few.
Hence the closest to today is May 17 when he wrote about Radish and Cucumber: a radish gazpacho - a relatively short piece which was just the recipe and a recipe for one of my not very favourite dishes - gazpacho. Other pieces included little pieces about the day, an ingredient, a place .... Anyway I thought it would be a good thing to do for myself and so began my blog.
Which makes you wonder how many others were inspired to do so.
In her short About piece the writer of this blog calls herself Martha Muffett. However, as you read on, and come to that endorsement from Nigel you discover her as @hilarykaren. Which I investigated and found that she is actually Hilary Chambers. There is no explanation of why the Martha Muffett, unless it was some kind of nickname. Does it have any connection to the nursery rhyme?
Little Miss Muffett sat on her tuffett
Eating her curds and whey
Along came a spider
And sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffett away
The origins of which are equally unclear. The blog endedin 2019. Was she frightened away by COVID?
Having now read a few more of her pieces, I have pieced together a little of her life and I'm sure if I read more I would learn more, because as well as the food - what she eats on the days she is writing -and not only Nigel's food - she writes about her daily life and the countryside in which she lives. Which is a small landholding somewhere in the English Midlands - the Peake District is mentioned as is Staffordshire. A particularly beautiful part of the country - and here and there there are photographs of the countryside, the family, events, animals ...
Idyllic you think and also so very Nigel in that the provenance of the food is key - from her own garden, from friends from markets and the farms nearby.
But then you pick up that she is a single mother of seven - yes seven children. Five from her first marriage which ended in divorce, and whose children are, I think, teenagers by the time she begins this - 0ne at least is in a relationship with a child. Then there are two more from a second relationship which also ends with him leaving her with two very small children - one a mere baby. She has no career behind her to fall back on but loves to cook and eventually - and here is coincidence - whilst eating Homity pie in a small vegetarian bakery/café she somehow ends up working there. Also determined to find out about homity pie. And here and there she mentions that she plays a fiddle in a pub.
A hard life then. Such an admirer of Nigel is she, that she likens herself in spirit as well as in a love of food, quoting his words to describe how she thinks of herself:
"The comfort of ritual, the reassurance of the familiar, is important to me. Doing repetitive, domestic things - kneading bread, stirring soup - on the same day each year helps me feel grounded. But that repetition must be seasoned with the new. I don't ever want to stand still. That way lies a score of missed opportunities, not to mention a certain atrophy, physical, emotional and culinary." Nigel Slater
This blog is the story of a life. The writing is good. In the style of Nigel, but I suppose not quite as good - almost though. So perhaps we should all try.
She didn't write many posts - well she must have been hugely busy so when would she do it? There were maybe a dozen a year, and they ended in June 2019, with COVID just around the corner. She ends with Nigel's Greenfeast, some gooseberry and elderflower jam that she made, Baked ricotta asparagus from his book and a courgette, feta and mint soup that she made, and which the café translated into a quiche:
"We decided to try the three key ingredients in a quiche at the cafe. It is nice to take one idea or taste and use it elsewhere."
Her last words are about battling pesky birds in the garden and slugs:
"Back to the slug patrol. I am picking the little blighters up and flinging them across the stream, presuming that they haven't been training for swimming the channel, to get back and polish off what they left behind. Gardening means war in this climate; never mind the Pimms."
Which is a rather nice little picture. But then nothing more. I wonder what happened. Just
around the corner is COVID, but quite a few months away. Did she just run out of steam. Did she have nothing more to say? I have tried to find out but failed. I wonder whether Nigel noticed. Has she found another outlet - at one point she talked about trying to publish something - has she married yet again. Has she died? I do hope not.
Somewhere in her writings I found this:
"I want someone who will get me out of my armchair to make something because my life will be the richer for it and it's suddenly become something i can't bear to live a moment more without."
Is that hopeful, or desperate? I just hope that writing about her life helped. And once again the whole blog demonstrated how food is something that is always there to give you joy, a purpose, learning, an escape - but sometimes an upset tummy like I had last night.
YEARS GONE BY
November 18
2024 - I forgot the Faroes
2022 - Canapés
2020 - Missing
2018 - Al fresco
2017 - Two small local businesses
A rreally very interesting report on the life of a fellow blogger. A bit sad and somehow very real. I hope she is flourishing still 🤔