Category: Famous Foodies

Please, God No… ‘The Tig’ To Be Revived By ‘HighGella Lawson’ Wannabe Meghan Markle
As the Duchess of Sussex gets busy with ‘lemon olive oil cake’ for a new cookery book and revives ‘The Tig’ also, one is left wondering if she’ll collaborate with Elizabeth Arden and promote ‘todger cream’ as well

Only the Duchess of Sussex – a wack job woman who once wrote messages on bananas and gave them to prostitutes – could think that a ‘lemon olive oil cake’ is a recipe that sounds appealing.

Now, with news that this deranged diva is submitting such for inclusion in a cookery book and planning to revive her tedious The Tig blog, it seems that the mendacious meddler formerly known as Meghan Markle clearly has aspirations of becoming the next Nigella Lawson.

Not content with interfering in international affairs and throwing hissy fits about not being welcomed into the royal family in the manner that she demanded, here is a pugnacious pest who simply doesn’t understand that the world would rather she just shut up and sauntered off to Siberia.

According to the Mirror’s Sophie Goodall, the duchess has given her “famous recipe” (“famously awful,” more like) to the Spanish chef Jose Andres for his forthcoming tome, The World Central Kitchen Cookbook.

Confirming this on the Archewell website, a statement from ‘MeGain’ patronisingly declared that she’d sent a letter to accompany her recipe and that it read:

“Sometimes we overlook how much it matters to express thanks and show appreciation. Perhaps we realise now more than ever that fundamental human moments, like enjoying a meal together, fill us up with more than just food (even if that food is delicious!).”

“To that point, we hope you enjoy the offering we baked for you – a small token of thanks, from our home to yours. Our hope with this effort is to show that, when we all participate, even the smallest actions can have a ripple effect. Even individual actions can impact the whole of us.”

In it its previous incarnation The Tig was subtitled with a message informing followers that they must pronounce the wine after which it was named ‘teen-ya-nello.’ God only knows what she’ll be captioning her oil slick cake with; a message from Elizabeth Arden about ‘todger cream’ perhaps?

Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party.

Pictured Top – ‘Mucky Meg’ baking cakes; no doubt there will be a lot more of this going on when the revived ‘The Tig’ launches, but will Oprah Winfrey and Gwyneth Paltrow, for example, be bothering to join in?

What’s the truth about the stories that abound about the Duchess of Sussex?
- In November 2021, the duchess was forced to apologise to the Appeal Court in London for making a misleading statement in her privacy case against The Mail on Sunday’s publishers.
- Her very own father, Thomas, has called out her many untruths about him and others again, again and again.
- Of her claiming having got married the day before she actually did, Mr Markle stated: “Lying about the archbishop? How can you say: ‘We’ve been married three days before we got married’? Her lies are so obvious, I don’t know why she says them.”
- Her very own half-sister, Samantha Markle, who is currently bringing a defamation case against her, has called her out as a liar on multiple occasions also. It has been proven that the duchess’s claim that she hasn’t seen her sibling in over 20 years was untrue given a photo of the pair together 14 years ago proves quite to the contrary.
- Her very own half-brother, Thomas Jr., said of her: “I told Prince Harry, I think she’s going to ruin your life. She’s very shallow… She’s a phony, a bully, a jaded, shallow, conceited woman.”
- The wife of Prince Harry has been called out on multiple occasions for spinning stories against other members of the royal family, most especially the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
- Staff who’ve worked for her have complained that she is a bully and investigations into this remain ongoing.
- The Duchess of Sussex is a known manipulator of the press and paparazzis and it has been claimed that she’ll “twist the truth” to get any headline she wants.
- Questions remain as to how many times she’s actually been married in total. Some say twice, some say thrice.
- What’s the truth about Meghan’s mother Doria Ragland? Is this clearly equally manipulative woman an honest and decent citizen or is she a jailbird who has spent time in the clink?
- Did the ‘Montecito Meddler’ meet Prince Andrew or Prince Harry first? Rumours abound that she could have spent time and holidayed with the former as long ago as 2001 and that her claim to have no prior knowledge of the royal family until 2016 is just utter baloney.
- “Would you trust this woman with a bargepole?” is something often asked of this money motivated minx.
If the petulant public and most definitely anything but private pest that is the ‘Modern Day Mrs Simpson’ dares to talk of Tignanello on ‘The Tig 2.0,’ sales of that wine will most definitely plummet.

That this former ‘Suits’ actress thought it appropriate to give prostitutes bananas that she’d daubed “you are loved” across about sums up her lack of class, decency or common care for fellow humans. The Duchess of Sussex ought to jolly well just remain silent; it’d be the best course of action.

The thought of ‘Murky Mucky’ taking over any kitchen would be enough to turn anyone off their supper. Given her predilections for temper tantrums, even Gordon Ramsay might run for the hills if she dares enter his culinary domain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4tycbbMCCs&embeds_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thesteepletimes.com%2F&feature=emb_imp_woyt
Part 1 of Matthew Steeples’s ‘Meghan Markle Expose’ interview with Shaun Attwood has been watched over 193,000 times on YouTube. Subsequent episodes 2, 3 and 4 have also been watched many thousands of times in addition.
March 16, 2023
James Martin Motors Into Gin – TV Chef’s 44% Silky Smooth Spirit

Matthew Steeples samples petrolhead and television chef James Martin’s London Dry Gin and finds tradition with a twist dominates in his punchy 44% ABV tipple

In recent months, I’ve reviewed new gins from historic landed estates such as Goodwood and ones from recently created small-scale distilleries and vineyards such as Terlingham and Bone Idyll. In a once staid sector that now surprisingly keeps growing and growing, there is clearly room for all sorts of varietals, so my next sampling had to be from a favourite television personality of mine, the cheery chappy and North Yorkshire born chef James Martin.

50-year-old Martin – who anchored BBC One’s Saturday Kitchen for ten years from 2006 to 2016 and whom now has an equally popular ITV1 series, James Martin’s Saturday Morning – is a farmer’s son and trained as a chef at the Hostellerie De Plaisance, Saint-Émilion in France.

He went on to appear on television shows from 1996 onwards and won a Michelin star at a restaurant he opened at The Talbot Hotel in Malton, North Yorkshire in 2012. Subsequently came a range of premium wines produced in in the village of Névian near Narbonne in the Corbières region of France in 2021 and then also a gin.

Described as a “rich flavoured gin” and a “truly proper gin” in marketing material, the chef’s eponymous spirit is made in Holland with grain spirit and, as it should be, the dominant botanical is most definitely juniper.

Featuring a total of eleven botanicals, the 44% ABV offering has notes of coriander, angelica and orris, but it is the ginger, lemongrass and limoncello lemon zest that gives it a taste that will appeal to both the traditional ‘Gin & Jag’ set as much as this renowned petrolhead’s much younger ‘Insta Influencer’ fans.

Of his gin, in a video introduction at the time of launch, Martin suggested:

“I worked on it for about a year… I’ve blended a whole range of different botanicals, eleven different botanicals in this gin and I’m really proud of it.”

“It’s just won its first award in Vegas [in 2021]. We sent a bottle out there not knowing what we were going to get and it came back with a gold award… As it says on the bottle, it’s my own gin, try it.”

To purchase a 50cl bottle of James Martin’s London Dry Gin for £39.95 (tax and shipping included), click here. Follow on Twitter at @jamesmartinsgin.

Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party. Follow Matthew Steeples on Twitter at @M_Steeples.

Botanicals featured in this handmade small batch, 44% ABV spirit include organic juniper, coriander, angelica, orris, as well as Valencia orange peel and limoncello lemon zest. Ginger, pine, lemongrass and a “few secret ingredients” are also included. It is lauded as a “silky smooth, flavor rich gin.”

The television chef has joined many other personalities who have ventured into the booze business. George Clooney has made more money from his tequila, Casamigos, than he has in acting (the brand was sold to Diageo for US$1 billion), and Robert De Niro has indulged in vodka making in a partnership that created Vdka 6100.

As obsessed with cars as he is with food, James Martin has a £5 million collection of motors that, when featured in an article in ‘The Sun’ last June, included an Audi RS e-tron GT, a Bentley Continental, an all-wheel-drive John Deere Gator, a Ferrari 275 GTB, a Ferrari 288 GTO, a Ford Escort MK1 rally car , a Ford GT40, a classic Land Rover Range Rover, a Mercedes-Benz R127 SL, two Mini Cooper S rally cars, a Shelby Mustang 350 and two Subaru Impreza rally cars.

The chef currently presents ‘James Martin’s Saturday Morning’ weekly on ITV1.

His gin, James Martin’s London Dry Gin, features in a 11:10-minute video review that was shared on YouTube last year by the popular vloggers ‘The Ginfluencers UK.’ The pair describe the gin as “herby” and “a savoury gin” that is “fresh and warming.” They suggest “it would be amazing with food” and “having enough power to cut through a lot of food flavours.”

January 8, 2023
Five Famous Coffee Drinkers – From Bach to Britney

Coffee addict David G. Lennox examines the stories of five famous coffee drinkers – including J. S. Bach and Britney Spears

Some say that blue mountain beans from Jamaica – which are of extremely limited production and of which 80% of each year’s crop go to Japan – give those that purchase them the finest coffee in the world.

Others, on a lesser budget, plump for Shoreditch brand Grind or “coffee without fuss” from Cirencester’s Rave collection, but for those looking to serve up something that is accessible yet enjoyable at home you will need a great quality coffee coffee grinder (also called a ‘mill’).

By using such a device you’ll get a fresh brew that has a delicious aroma and a house smelling with pleasure and here below I select five famous individuals whose caffeinated brilliance allegedly stemmed from their addiction to the taste and smell of this black nectar.

Johan Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750)

“If I couldn’t, three times a day, be allowed to drink my little cup of coffee, in my anguish I will turn into a shriveled-up roast goat” shared the German composer and musician Johan Sebastian Bach in his humorous Coffee Cantata – a controversial 18^th century secular vocal composition that was also titled Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht BWV 211 (‘Be still, stop chattering’).

In it, a killjoy father urges his coffee addicted daughter to give up her pleasure and pursue happiness in marriage instead. By the end, both end up expounding the pleasures of coffee drinking and forgetting the woes of marriage.

    Father sir, but do not be so harsh!

    If I couldn’t, three times a day,

    be allowed to drink my little cup of coffee,

    in my anguish I will turn into

    a shriveled-up roast goat.

    Ah! How sweet coffee tastes,

    more delicious than a thousand kisses,

    milder than muscatel wine.

    Coffee, I have to have coffee,

    and, if someone wants to pamper me,

    ah, then bring me coffee as a gift!

T. S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)

Also well-known as a gin swiller, T. S. Eliot observed: “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons” in his first professionally published poem, The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock.

Written from 1910 onwards and shared in the June 1915 edition of Poetry: A Magazine in Verse, this Dante inspired work was considered as “outlandish” in its content as the supposedly hundreds of cups of coffee the American born British transplant drank whilst penning it.

Thomas Jefferson, 3^rd President of the United States of America (1743 – 1826)

Noted also as an “enthusiastic” wine drinker, this Founding Father referenced coffee as “the favourite drink of the civilised world.” Considered one of the finest examples of a “Renaissance man,” Jefferson enjoyed the coffee houses of Williamsburg and Paris and consumed a pound of it a day during his retirement. His French maïtre d’hôtel, Adrien Peitt, served the political titan’s beverage of choice from a “silver coffee urn made to his very own design.”

Britney Spears (born 1981)

The Baby One More Time singer created her twentieth fragrance in June 2016 with the help of coffee. “Get a whiff of Britney” enthused ETOnline of ‘Private Show’ whilst Miss Spears herself told them that she’d come up with “an uplifting, sexy scent that empowers [my fans] to achieve their dreams.”

A press release for the perfume added that it was inspired by the Mississippi born ‘Princess of Pop’s’ “love of dulce de leche, white florals and iced coffee.”

Voltaire (born François-Marie Arouet, 1694 – 1778)

This witty French enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher was known best for his advocacy of freedom of speech and religion and the separation of church and state. Voltaire supposedly came to such views whilst drinking an astonishing 50 to 72 cups of coffee per day and aside from viewing this “brain brew” to be a creative inspiration paid “hefty bonuses” to servants who found his favourite beans.

August 9, 2022