• Should you cook with Coolio, Sheryl Crow or Kelis? I tried pop star recipe books (so you don't have to)

    Once, they were the last people you’d call on for advice in the kitchen. But now there are cookbooks by everyone from Sheryl Crow and Grizzly Bear to rapper Action Bronson and the Cordon Bleu-trained Kelis. Our pop critic puts them to the testThe photographer from the Guardian is wearing a curious expression, in which a slightly strained smile does its best to conceal a look of disappointment. It is unmistakably the face of a woman attempting to spare someone’s feelings by pretending
  • Free for all: the psychology of pay-what-you-want cafes

    Given the opportunity, most people pay less than the normal price. So what do companies get out of the business model?In a cafe in Santa Monica, California, some people are getting a coffee for a dollar, while one customer paid $104. Metro Cafe is just one of the latest to try the pay-what-you-want (PWYW) business model, but it has been around for a while. In the UK, the Real Junk Food Project runs pay-as-you-feel community cafes, highlighting food waste, around the country. Radiohead memorably
  • Cycling the North York Moors – a galaxy on my doorstep

    Looking for an adventure with a cosmic feel, our writer reckons a new cycling centre in the wonderfully named Great Fryup Dale will fit the billThe best trips, I reckon, are those where you arrive home feeling like you’ve been to the other side of the cosmos. And the strange thing is that those trips don’t have to involve travelling very far – or remortgaging the house. I’m on a mission to see how close to home I can find such a trip. Not only that, but how cheaply it can
  • ‘I’m 78 on an £18,000 income and live a very good life in London’

    An ex-council worker on how she makes her pension stretch to holidays, a car and theatre tripsIt always fascinates me when I talk to other retired people that they don’t seem to know what their income is. I always know exactly what my earnings and outgoings are and, because I’m of the generation that was taught to be canny with money, I make a little go a long way. £18,000 might not seem a lot given the expense of living in London, but I manage a very good life on it.The mortga
  • Advertisement

  • ‘Cancer I could deal with. Losing my breast I could not’

    When Joanna Moorhead found out she had breast cancer, a mastectomy seemed the best option. So why did she pull out of the operation at the last minute?The taxi arrived at dawn but it could have come earlier. I’d been awake all night: terrified about the day that lay ahead and what it would mean for the rest of my life.At the hospital I changed into a high-tech gown that would keep me warm during the long hours I’d be unconscious, and my surgeon arrived to do a quick pre-operative che
  • Hooked on Galicia: spectacular seafood … but not without a fight

    A foodie pilgrimage to northern Spain, in the company of a chef on a mission, means inventive fish dishes, fun at the market, friendly locals – and a battle with an octopusIt’s one thing to cook an octopus. It’s quite another to catch one, to actually haul an octopus out of the sea and try to convince yourself, as its tentacles wind around your arm, that you’ll be eating it for dinner, not the other way round. The Basque chef Nieves Barragán Mohacho, who has just o
  • Healthcare is a huge industry – no wonder Amazon is muscling in | John Naughton

    Boss Jeff Bezos is ahead of the game again, spying an opportunity for big data to transform the system‘Health groups suffer as Amazon, Berkshire and JP Morgan team up,” proclaimed the front-page headline in Wednesday’s Financial Times. The report below the line revealed that the online giant had teamed up with Warren Buffett’s conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, and America’s biggest bank to create a not-for-profit healthcare group whose mission is to reduce the healt
  • BT broadband user charged £5,000 after exceeding usage limit

    My grandmother unwittingly bust her allowance – and the charges add up to thousandsMy grandmother has been subscribing to a limited broadband package with BT since 2010. It turns out that every month she has exceeded her usage allowance and drained her savings, paying thousands of pounds of additional charges. For example, the extras in the third quarter of 2017 were £171, so, if this is representative of the whole period, she may have paid more than £5,000 in extra charges sin
  • Advertisement

  • 'We shout at and smack our children: how can we stop?'

    Take a deep breath, step away and avoid bust-ups with your kids, says Mariella Frostrup. Failing that, seek professional helpThe dilemma I have two lovely little girls aged six and three and a wonderful husband who helps a lot with childcare. I work full time and my husband works four days a week, so we’re busy, but I do have some paid help. I worry that we both have very short fuses, and our girls are exposed to a level of anger that isn’t appropriate. I want them to grow up in a ca
  • ‘Shyness didn’t happen overnight. It was a process of feeling exposed’

    For Hayley Webster, shyness was a way of hiding herself in life. But finally she decided she didn’t want shyness to hold her back any longer…I wasn’t always shy. Snapshots of complete confidence: a choir concert, my mum and dad singing, and in the audience, toddler me. I climbed on to the stage after one song, tapped the conductor on the shoulder, and said: “Is it my turn now?” I sang Do Re Mi from The Sound of Music, in front of a paying audience. There was thunde
  • Ofo bike share review: ‘It will be to cycling what Uber is to taxis’ | Martin Love

    Move over Boris, with the arrival of the Ofo, city cycling just got a lot easierOfo bike hire
    Price Download the free app, then 50p per 30 minutes, with a daily maximum cap of £5
    Where In 250 cities across the world, and counting
    Details Ofo.comThe guy who chains his bike up next to mine at work takes no chances. He has a D-lock for both front and back wheels, plus a cable lock that he twists around the frame. Then, in case someone is still tempted, he removes the saddle and puts it in his
  • Nigel Slater’s Middle Eastern recipes

    Whether it’s braised lamb with turmeric or filo pastry with dried apricots, these delicious dishes sing with spiceWe breakfasted each morning on soft sheets of warm bread, quince jam and spoonfuls of thick, sour cream. We cut wedges of chilled watermelon, squeezed sweet-sour oranges and cracked fat walnuts. There were bowls of mint and basil to pick at and luminous, treacle-textured molasses of pomegranate, mulberry and date, to trickle over jagged crumbs of crumbly white cheese. Some of t
  • How to live well: Ian Rankin on feeling young

    The crime author, 57, may have aches and pains but ‘new-age stuff’ has him reaching for the beer – writing is the cureI’m 57 and as the great philosopher Leonard Cohen once said: ‘I ache in the places where I used to play.’ I’m very aware that my hearing isn’t all that it used to be, my knees ache most of the time and my lower back gives me problems. It’s all the stuff I used to take for granted.I’ve had a few friends in the past year o
  • Hair out of control? You need a shot of Gorilla Snot

    It’s gloopy and it has a weird name, but Moco De Gorila will tame even the wildest hairI wrote a book and for the launch I asked the stylist to turn me into Josephine Baker. In a puff of smoke a miracle hair product appeared. I didn’t know a book launch was usually some wine in a room above a pub: mine involved a new hairstyle, a yellow open-top bus, hula hoopers, rainbow sequins, doughnuts and a Spice Girl.For my book launch I had a new hairstyle, a yellow open-top bus, rainbow sequ
  • A raging bull in his own sitting room | Nikesh Shukla

    Learning to throw a punch feels good. But, wonders Nikesh, would it protect him in a street fight?A month after that incident on the train, where I worried about my inability to defend myself, having overheard some men threatening to beat me up because they didn’t like my sweatshirt, I decide to take up boxing.I’ve never been into boxing in any way other than enjoying a good sports movie. And self-defence doesn’t even enter my mind. Boxing, to me, seems like the perfect way to
  • Desert in bloom? Wildflowers could sprout along storm's path

    LAS VEGAS - Outdoor enthusiasts looking for wildflowers in the Mojave Desert this year are likely to encounter the blossoms only along the path of a storm that moved through ......
  • How to wear… bold colour – in pictures

    Brighten up your wardrobe with block colours Continue reading...

Follow @NL_LifeAndStyle on Twitter!