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In celebration of Nigel Slater’s Greenfeast: autumn, winter publishing this October, we asked some 4th Estate authors to write a few words about veg-minded living. Lisa Appignanesi, author of Everyday Madness: A Many Coloured Feast 'Back in the mid-nineties, I lived around the corner from a street market in Paris. Most mornings, I’d head out early for a coffee. But well before the first pungent whiff had come my way, my eyes were startled wide open by the various stall holders’ displays of fruit and vegetables. Read More

In celebration of Nigel Slater’s Greenfeast: autumn, winter publishing this October, we asked some 4th Estate authors to write a few words about veg-minded living. Lucy Wood, author of The Sing of the Shore: Blackberries 'Blackberries are my favourite autumn food. By the end of summer the hedges are starting to fill up and I watch them, waiting for when they’ll be ripe. It usually takes longer than I think.  Finally, I take out an old ice-cream tub and go picking. If it’s sunny the berries will be warm. If it’s raining they’ll gleam like sweets. The hedges and lanes are a mixture of abundance and things dying back – the coppers of changing leaves, strings of red berries, the brittle stalks of cow parsley. Everything is quietening down. There’s a shift in pace. It always feels like the start of a new year. Read More

In celebration of Nigel Slater’s Greenfeast: autumn, winter publishing this October, we asked some 4th Estate authors to write a few words about veg-minded living. Angela Saini, author of Inferior and Superior: "My parents moved home a lot when I was young, but in the garden of one of our houses - my favourite, thinking back - was an old plum tree. Read More

In celebration of Nigel Slater’s Greenfeast: autumn, winter publishing this October, we asked some 4th Estate authors to write a few words about veg-minded living. Laura Whateley, author of Money: "When I decided, aged 25, to move in with my boyfriend, it was not the loss of single-girl freedom that most concerned me, nor how we would navigate our different views on “tidiness” - he’s an Essex boy with a father who was an architect, immaculate work surfaces are in his blood. Read More

In celebration of Nigel Slater's Greenfeast: autumn, winter publishing this October, we asked some 4th Estate authors to write a few words about veg-minded living. Allan Jenkins, author of Plot 29 and Morning: "Winter came close to my kitchen last week. I had been lazing in late summer, eating endless varieties of salad and baked ratatouille, made mostly with shallots and various squash from our organic allotment at the top of Hampstead. I was surrounded by sunflowers, chest-high marigolds and fragrant flowering coriander. Plot 29 was in its pomp. Read More

The summer before our family fell apart, a legend started on our estate. I was ten at the time, and like every other ten year old, all I wanted to do was spend summer riding around on my bike at the park near our house. The climbing frames in the park were rusty and completely discoloured – unless whoever built them had intended brown to be the colour of childhood excitement – so it didn’t appeal to many parents as an afterschool site. Also, I’m pretty sure that drug dealers used to hang out there but I never met any, so how much of a presence could they have been really, you know? Read More

1964: the year his marriage ended. The year his record stopped spinning, the needle in his groove lifted haltingly, and with a snap returned his tone arm to its cradle. Read More

‘Check the time and date properly on the ticket. I don’t want us getting a fine. I’m still paying off your brother’s overdraft,’ said Mum, as she pulled herself out of the car. Read More

MISE EN PLACE: the preparation of dishes and ingredients before the beginning of service Though he might not like to admit it, my dad has always been good with food. He has a talent for improvising kitchen cupboard scraps into a meal, transforming stale bread and old sun-dried tomatoes into delicious bruschetta, or producing delicate crudités from vegetable drawer remnants. He has an innate sense of what flavours pair well together, and an ability to plate things in the artful way they do in restaurants. He often denies this gift, brushing off compliments by saying he can only make snack-food, which is really just his way of saying he doesn’t want to cook for the household. Read More

We are always barefoot. I try to explain this to the police officers who arrive from the mainland. We’re quieter this way and we need to be quiet when we’re stalking wild animals in the pine forest. Heaven walks in front because she’s the oldest, then me because I’m the youngest, then Bluebird at the rear. When I tell the black policeman we were hunting, Heaven shakes her head. She tells him we were at home. He looks at me, then her, then back at me. We’re sitting at the kitchen table, the soles of our feet muddy and bleeding. Well, says the officer, which one is it? Read More

The rainy season brought rumours. Whispers of poison after a mass recall of Indomie noodles. A girl in Form 3 reappearing after several months with family in Maryland, withdrawn. Lurid headlines warned of cults, front pages daubed with blurry corpses. There were mutterings that the pastor of the Shining Light Ministry had not succumbed to a brief illness as had been announced to his congregation. Suicide. A word breathed into neighbours’ ears along pews. They said the body would never have been found if the hyacinth had not bloomed so late. Read More

A handful of Turkish food stalls are present at every German market. Indeed, Turkish flavours and in particular their spices have become embedded in the national cuisine ever since the first guest workers came over in the 1960s. Read More