Hey, welcome to Eat This, Drink That, Live Well …
… a regular newsletter about eating and drinking better and living life more fully.
I should know. I’ve been writing about food and wine for over 30 years and living for …er…quite a bit longer. Hence the life lessons …
I still work as a journalist writing mainly about wine for The Guardian, National Geographic Traveller Food and Decanter. But Substack is where I can write about food, travel, books, music and all the other things that interest me and hopefully you too …
So what can you expect?
Well if you’re a free subscriber think of this as a blog. You’ll get posts on things I want to sound off about plus the odd recipe, book rec and ‘postcard’ from my travels. About 3 or 4 times a month
For instance I’ve recently written posts on
Whether vegans are ruining restaurants for vegetarians
Whether you should lend or borrow books (tricky one) and
What I’ve learnt from my 2 years on Substack
and there are postcards from my recent trips to Mauritius, Osaka and Valencia where I went earlier this year to improve my Spanish.
But it’s better still to be a paid subscriber because
you get all my moneysaving wine, restaurant and recipe tips, which come out every Friday in the Friday 5
you can join in my monthly online wine tastings which are a lot of fun
you’re eligible for the cookbook giveaways and subscriber discounts on products I love
and you can access my travel guides like this one on how to navigate Japan and how to choose a language course abroad
Basically all the knowledge I’ve accumulated over the past 50-odd years of cooking, tasting and travelling.
And in turn you’ll be helping me to keep publishing this one-woman magazine …
A quick biog
I’m food and wine writer and Guardian columnist Fiona Beckett, I’ve been writing about food and drink for over 30 years and have written 25 books including, most recently, Wine Lover’s Kitchen and How to Drink without Drinking which is, admittedly, a bit ironic given the day job.
I also have a food and wine pairing website matchingfoodandwine.com which gives advice on what to drink with your favourite food - and what to pair with your favourite wine.
I live in Bristol in the west of England but spend a good deal of my time in London and travelling further afield. I have four children and stepchildren (well, hardly children any more. Let’s say four adults) and three grandchildren.
