This blog post is going to be a great test of the memory box! It was the penultimate stop on the Great Bear adventure that began in August 2018 and this visit to Chalk Farm station was on December 17th, 2022. I cannot believe this was over 2 years ago and I’m only just writing...
We were on home turf with this stop on the Great Bear adventure, as Belsize Park is the nearest tube stop to Mr Rathbone’s pad. His place is my second home as we alternate between his gaff and mine at the weekends. In Simon Patterson’s great artwork, Belsize Park station is reimagined as Henry Fonda...
On our tour around the stations of the Northern Line, carrying film star foodstuff, I am always on the lookout for something appropriate to scoff on the platform. Hampstead is renamed Audrey Hepburn in Simon Patterson’s genius reimagining of the map and the cute little potato balls from Audrey at Home were the perfect snacking...
Ah, the beloved Great Bear Project! Our bid to cook our way through the 21 movie star stations as imagined by artist Simon Patterson on the two top spurs of the Northern Line is done. BUT, I still have to write up 5 of them. I am playing catch-up. What can I tell you about...
I had to bite the bullet and get over my horror of the mushroom for the next of our Great Bear adventures. One of the requisites of creating a movie star dish appropriate to the station stop on Simon Patterson’s reimagined Northern Line is that it can be eaten on a station platform. It doesn’t...
More or less as soon as we were able to venture out into the world again after the first pandemic lockdown we got back on the trail of The Great Bear. Stop #15 was Hendon Central aka Katharine Hepburn in the world of Simon Patterson. We set off there, in masks, to continue with our...
Bo’s Cheese Pies, like Bo herself, are very photogenic… and we had a fun zip out to Colindale on a very windy day in February 2020 in order to scoff one on a tube station platform. Bo’s recipe makes a big pie but I decided to make little ones, much easier to transport. This was...
What can I tell you about the Great Bear escapade we undertook in August 2019? Not much! My memory has been scrubbed clean since then due to various life events and the global pandemic, but at least I have photographs to remind me that we did do it! My hair has grown to about 1,000x...
Crikey, I had to get in the time machine and travel back to May 2019 to find the photos of this trip me and Mr R took to Edgware with an egg. It would have been madness to try and eat a Rip Torn Omelet Mexicali on a tube station platform (cold omelet? No thanks)...
If you are not from the UK, you might not know who Ken Dodd is. Where on earth do I begin? I think for the purposes of this blog post, all you need to know is that his comedy schtick included tickling sticks Remember The Great Bear Project? Where I was taking an appropriate foodstuff...
There was a time, not too far in the past, when people could do whatever the hell they wanted, whenever the hell they wanted to. Me and Mr R would regularly spend a Sunday afternoon transporting a strange foodstuff to a tube station on the Northern Line and then eating it. This was all part...
Memory is a funny old thing. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately as I’ve been reading a lot of food memoirs and autobiographies – current obsession, Dirk Bogarde, what a WRITER! My self-generated food memoir evening class is going slowly, but I’m really enjoying working through the list. This studiousness is partly with...
A pot roast is not an easy thing to eat on a tube platform so we changed the formula a bit for the Groucho Marx stop on The Great Bear Project. On the day before our Groucho lunch, I jumped off the bus in Tufnell Park and purchased a big lump of brisket from that...
It seems strange to be writing about something that happened on a cold January day when we are slap bang in the middle of a heatwave here in London. But I’m catching up on writing about The Great Bear Project. Finchley Central is the last of the Northern Line underground stops that are OVERGROUND on...
Bette Davis’ Baked Beans were the first thing I ever made for the Silver Screen Suppers project way back in May 2006. I was living on a houseboat with a tabletop oven that had to be turned on with a pair of pliers feeling very sorry for myself. Boat kitchen – cooker back left near...
On a chilly October Sunday morning I sprung out of bed, super excited about the next stop on The Great Bear Project. I love having these firmly in the diary, getting all the wherewithal together, cooking whatever the relevant dish is in the morning then heading out into the world via the Northern Line to...
On the Sunday of the John Wayne Great Bear Expedition I was lying in bed and suddenly bust out with, “Ooh, I’m excited! I can see my poncho from here!” Which made Mr R laugh. I explained that a poncho was a strange beast. Most of the time it is too hot to wear one,...
You know when you spend about five hours making something, and when you come to eat it, it’s a massive disappointment? Well, this was 100% NOT the case with Michael’s pie. It was absolutely DIVINE! I’d been wanting to make this pie ever since the Michael Caine Blogathon organized by Gill at ReelWeegieMidgetReviews. The pie...
Oh, what a lovely Sunday it was in Totteridge and Whetstone (or as Mr R likes to call it, “Totts and Whets”). Sunny, sunny, sunny and glorious. We got some funny looks from other tube passengers as we sat on a bench on the platform and ate baked apples in the sunshine. Then we hiked...
Is taking a Pola Negri Banana Trifle to High Barnet like taking coals to Newcastle? I’m not sure, but I do know this much, it was absolutely brilliant fun to do. I’ve been planning to embark on a project relating to the superb artwork The Great Bear by Simon Patterson for a donkey’s age. If...
