A Thousand Feasts

For years, Nigel Slater has kept notebooks of curiosities and wonderings, penned while at his kitchen table, soaked in a fisherman’s hut in Reykjavik, sitting calmly in a moss garden in Japan or sheltering from a blizzard in a Vienna Konditorei.

These are the small moments, events and happenings that gave pleasure before they disappeared. Miso soup for breakfast, packing a suitcase for a trip and watching a butterfly settle on a carpet, hiding in plain sight. He gives short stories of feasts such as a mango eaten in monsoon rain or a dish of restorative macaroni cheese and homes in on the scent of freshly picked sweet peas and the sound of water breathing at night in Japan.

This funny and sharply observed collection of the good bits of life, often things that pass many of us by, is utter joy from beginning to end.

‘I loved this. It is a secular book of hours – thoughts and pleasures beautifully cadenced and generously placed’ Edmund de Waal

‘Nigel Slater has a magical capacity to find beauty in the smallest moments. A nourishing, sustaining book’ Olivia Laing

‘His evocative, uplifting observations are a balm for life: a prose-poem for eaters and a spiritual companion for thoughtful cooks. A true and enduring joy’ Nigella Lawson

‘You can’t always feel buoyant and grateful but noticing – and getting pleasure from – the seemingly insignificant is a good way to live. As he says, feel the “small moments of joy”’ Diana Henry