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The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — The Poetry of the Packed Lunch
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here and don't miss out on his latest writing. The sonnet is one of my favourite forms of poetry. Don Paterson, among our greatest living sonneteers, once wrote of this ancient fourteen line poetic form ‘it is a box for [our] dreams, and represents one of the most characteristic shapes human thought can take.’ Shakespeare was one of the most famous exponents of the form, writing 154 of them, all centred around the idea of love. In som
Andrew Jamison
Dec 3, 20254 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Oranges from Spain... from Tesco, and Louis MacNeice
Subscribe to Andrew Jamison's weekly newsletter here for more updates and articles from The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food . I love clementines at Christmastime. Who remembers two cricket ball lumps at the bottom of their Christmas stocking? One an apple, and one an orange. These were the staples of the stocking, but somehow it would never have been a stocking without them. Perhaps we felt they were some kind of healthy counterweight to the chocolate Santas full of palm oil a
Andrew Jamison
Dec 2, 20252 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — A Chocolate Mallow in the Tesco Car Park with Gus
Read another chapter of Andrew Jamison's food writing. You can read the rest here . Wordsworth and UPFs ‘Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’ wrote Wordsworth. When he wrote these words I can’t imagine he ever thought they’d be recalled by someone wolfing down a Tesco own-brand chocolate mallow from the packet, with his son perched on the trolley at the end of a shopping trip, one early Friday afternoon in late November at a supermarket car park near the M
Andrew Jamison
Dec 1, 20255 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — In Praise of Parmesan (POEM)
Read an exclusive poem from Andrew Jamison's third collection of poetry, Swans We Cannot See , and buy a signed copy here . In Praise of Parmesan The cheesemakers of Parmigiano Reggiano employ a special silver hammer to tap, precisely, each straw-coloured wheel with a rat-a-tat-tat, beat the bottom, the top, the sides, testing in totality its tones, its tune, to locate, listen out for any imperfections, decipher if it’s ready, to gauge its age, adjudicate whether this one pas
Andrew Jamison
Dec 1, 20251 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Eating Alone in an Empty Diner (POEM)
Read this exclusive poem from Andrew Jamison's first collection Happy Hour, which you can buy a signed copy of here. Eating Alone in an Empty Diner There’s nothing romantic about it, eating alone in an empty diner; there’s nothing healthy about it either, ordering the burger with American cheese (which isn’t cheese at all) and the Coke and the deep-fat-fried-from-frozen fries; there’s really nothing new about any of this: the highly strung, chatty New Yorkettes that pass with
Andrew Jamison
Dec 1, 20251 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Fifteens
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all of his latest writing. Fifteens or, should I say, one huge fifteen. The Fifteen - A Condensed Milk Concoction What is condensed milk? I’m not entirely sure I want to know. I remember hearing somewhere that it was invented to be taken on long sea voyages as the amount of sugar in it would act as a way of preserving the milk, or something like that. At any rate, if you’re looking to give your dentist reasons for replacing yo
Andrew Jamison
Nov 26, 20253 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — To Lime Pickle (POEM)
Read an exclusive poem from Andrew's third collection Swans We Cannot See , which you can buy a signed, first edition of here: To Lime Pickle Epitome of pizzazz, apotheosis of citrus, firecracker poppadom ambassador, you are a tightrope walk between here and a star of funky heat, your flesh a punchy, hit-me beat in a hit song about what someone did all summer long in a hot country in their youth; you are a walk-in pantry, lip-smacker starter, beer washed down bounty; if flavo
Andrew Jamison
Nov 5, 20251 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — PREFACE
Read the preface to Andrew's series of food writing, The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food, below. To subscribe to his blog for exclusive weekly posts, you can do so here: Is it right to write about food in 2025? Has there ever been a worse time than now to write about food? In August a famine was declared in Gaza; food prices are rocketing in the UK due to very stubborn inflation meaning families have to make choices between heating and eating; there has never been as much obe
Andrew Jamison
Nov 5, 20256 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Gravy Chips from the Chinese, for Lunch
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all of his latest writing. "Did I eat too many gravy chips growing up?" is a question it's only occurred to me to ask, approaching forty and shuffling ever more subtly off this mortal coil. Googling photos of the dish, if I can call it that, to feature at the top of this post, almost made me want to retch. The idea of gravy on chips, or gravy chips as we’d call them, goes way back. Poutine, considered Canada’s National dish
Andrew Jamison
Oct 24, 20254 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — A Pint of Guinness, and a Scotch Egg with Oxford Sauce, in Oxford, with The Beach Boys
To subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter sign up here for weekly updates. The Occasion "I guess Oxford just wasn't made for these times" to misquote The Beach Boys. Recently I went for a pint with a mate in Oxford. I don’t live in Oxford. I live in a village about nine miles south, or 30 minutes by car on a clear run, which is never, because driving to Oxford, more often than not, is a nightmare. Oxford, an eighth century Anglo-Saxon fortified town at heart, was just not m
Andrew Jamison
Oct 23, 20257 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — The Slow Art of Porridge, Quickly
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all of his latest writing. I know what you might be thinking... porridge!? First of he's writing about chicken and mushroom Pot Noodles and now it's porridge! Hardly Elizabeth David or Jane Grigson is he? Well, that may well be the case, and in fact, I'd never claim to be of the same stature as those wonderful food writers, but I'm becoming quite zealous about porridge. I have it every morning. What's Wrong with Weetabix? Wel
Andrew Jamison
Oct 20, 20254 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Let's Get Ready to Crum—ble!
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for news of his latest writing. Apples are one of my favourite ingredients to cook with , when I’m not eating them by themselves. Dr Bircher-Benner, founding father of the Bircher Mueslie (aka overnight oats) was adamant about the multifarious qualities of raw apple, including minerals, high fiber and vitamins. Not only that but he saw them as a way to energise recovering patients and aid their digestion. I wonder if apples have b
Andrew Jamison
Oct 14, 20254 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Cooking for Other People
Discover more about Andrew Jamison's life in food. Subscribe to his weekly newsletter here. Cooking for Other People I can remember well the first time I cooked for other people. It was a beef and Guinness stew. I had to cycle to Crossgar to the butcher's for the stewing steak, and go to the off-licence for the two cans of draught Guinness (the best kind of Guinness for cooking). I remember following the instructions of the recipe, which I believe was this one from Jamie Oli
Andrew Jamison
Oct 6, 20253 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Sunday Dinner... at Lunchtime.
A journey through Andrew Jamison's life in food. Subscribe to his weekly newsletter here. Sunday Dinner… at Lunchtime If food in our house reached a peak, a zenith, a crescendo it was on Sunday. It would form two waves. The first wave was Sunday dinner itself which we ate about 1pm (2pm on a late day) involving a form of roast meat, roast potatoes, boiled potatoes, mashed potatoes served in a dish with a sprig of parsley (why not?), carrots, broccoli, cocktail sausages, bac
Andrew Jamison
Oct 1, 20253 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Wheat Beer
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here to find out about his latest writing. One of the students in the room next to me, Matt, had gone to public school, Westminster to be precise. I was completely unaware and naive to the English education system at this point. We ended up being great friends and he even came back to NI with me at one point to see where I’m from and experience it. Two things struck me about Matt: 1. he was incredibly polite. 2. He had a cool-box ful
Andrew Jamison
Sep 22, 20251 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — A Ginsters BLT, a packet of Flame Grilled Steak McCoy’s and a Can of Coke
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all of his latest writing. This was, and in many respects still is, my go-to takeaway lunch. Queen Mary was quite unique in relation to many other London universities in that it had its own halls of residence on its campus, and the year I moved in the accommodation had just been renovated. Clad in sheets of zinc, with big windows, by the Mile End Canal it was very striking and appealing to an 18 year old, and when you add in
Andrew Jamison
Sep 16, 20252 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — The Home Bakery
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for news about his latest writing. The Home Bakery The Home Bakery was Crossgar’s only bakery. I remember the shop itself only vaguely – small, a modest banner above the door, an unadorned shopfront, undecorated, unexciting. I can’t even remember the baker. The reason for my hazy memory of the home bakery is due to the fact my mother never really allowed us to go in for fear of wanting everything on display. As a parent now, I c
Andrew Jamison
Sep 10, 20251 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Houmous, Huh?
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for news about his latest writing. Houmous As a student in London in the early 2000s houmous was ubiquitous; I’m not saying people were throwing it from windows or from their cars as you waited at the bus stop, but places like Leon were starting to pop up and also this was East London, so there were plenty of Lebanese restaurants (not that I went to any!). My first experience of houmous was at student house parties in East Londo
Andrew Jamison
Sep 3, 20252 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food - 'Burning a Frozen Pizza', 'Bacon Sandwiches'
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all of his latest writing. Burning a Frozen Pizza The first night I had to cook for myself in London, I put a frozen pizza in the oven. Well, I thought it was the oven, but I’d actually turned on the grill. Needless to say, after about 20 minutes the kitchen absolutely stank of burnt pizza and the pizza was black on top and still frozen underneath. Suffice to say, since then, I have always been careful to choose the setting
Andrew Jamison
Aug 26, 20251 min read
The Hungry Poet: My Life in Food — Post-School Chicken and Mushroom Pot Noodle
Subscribe to Andrew's weekly newsletter here for all of his latest writing. There are some statistics we may have wished to have recorded about our lives. Indeed some people do and every now again we see a scientist pop up and say that the average human sleeps for such-and-such a percentage of their lives. I’d love to have kept a record of the amount books I’ve read, and their titles, but I guess there comes a point when life’s just too short to count up these things. At
Andrew Jamison
Aug 19, 20252 min read
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