February's blogs of the month

Being in the middle of a book project (don’t ask!) I haven’t had much time for dipping into blogs over the last few weeks so I’ve shamelessly picked up on some recommendations from fellow bloggers and tweeters for you to follow.

Crumbs
Recently flagged up by cookery publisher Quadrille, a clever blog written by two sisters and fellow journos Claire and Lucy (though Claire seems to do most of the posting). It’s mainly for harassed mothers of young children hence the highly practical division of the recipes into 5, 10 and 20 minutes and ‘a little bit longer’. including - and I like this one - slack mummy soup. Very sparky writing - there must be a book in this (which Quadrille has no doubt snapped up).

Closet Cooking
I nicked this one from my mate James Ramsden who drew attention to the Jiaozi (Chinese dumplings) post in his weekly round-up. It’s one of those amazing blogs that seems to have come from nowhere created by a young Canadian called Kevin simply because he ‘came to realize that my meals were boring’. As you can see from his posts and pix they are far from it now. As his 5288 followers (at the time of writing) seem to testify

The Wine Detective
Diligently updated and well-informed blog from award-winning writer Sarah Ahmed. As she openly points out she specialises in the Loire, Australia, South Africa and Portugal (most of us wine hacks try and give the impression we’re on top of everything) so if you’re particularly interested in what’s happening on the wine scene in those countries follow her on her blog or on Twitter where she tweets as @sarahwine.

Paris by Mouth
We’re hoping to reschedule the trip to Paris we had to postpone just before Christmas so I’ll be keeping an eye on this excellent collaborative blog which has the current lowdown on the city's food scene. It’s also got some great guides so if you want to check out the latest in wine bars, for example, (which we do) or where to go for oysters (ditto) you can find it there.