STYLE: Who better to accompany you into the kitchen to whip up a batch of scones than the National Trust? It’s like having your grandma patting you encouragingly on the back. The cover is as beautiful as a National Trust garden.

We don’t hear about chardonnay as much as we used to. Good. In the 1980s, chardonnay was nearly synonymous with white wine. In restaurants and bars customers would ask for “a glass of chardonnay” as if it were a single product, like Coca Cola or Heineken.

Eight years ago, my parents, Frances and Bernard Platman, left their antique maps and lithographs stall on the Portobello Road for a gap year. “A good friend of Bernard’s passed away, which inspired us to take up the offer from a fellow market trader of a stay in his farm house in Carcassonne,” says Frances.

Review of Cordon Bleu one-day taster.

Expectation: The pre-course blurb lists a dazzling array of skills, including French chopping techniques, dry fish curing and sugar syrup preparation.

On Offer: Behind a period stucco facade, the ultra-modern Le Cordon Bleu School offers a one-day taster course for both beginners and experienced cooks.

Baking is sexy.

Cake-, bread- and biscuit-making is no longer bubbe’s domain. A series of whisk-wielding lovelies, headed up by Nigella Lawson and ex-model Lorraine Pasquale, have given it some serious glamour.

Are you sitting down? Good. Then you will not faint in horror when I tell you about someone who owned a house in south-western France and who took with her, every time she drove to stay there, cases of New Zealand sauvignon blanc.

Olives are the marmite of fruit. There is no middle ground — either you love them or you hate them.

In the past year, the number of kosher wine merchants in north London has almost doubled. Previously, the choice of kosher wine was limited to that sold in supermarkets and delicatessens or from the three existing stores — Sussers in Temple Fortune and The Grapevine’s two branches in Hendon and Stamford Hill.