Fire and Knives to your Christmas Cold's

Last few days before Christmas and I'm sure most people are clock-watching and cruising the internet. I, on the other hand am ill. Holed up in the flat with Lemsip, honey, ginger and whisky and desperately trying to shift this cold before it gets a chance to ruin my Christmas dinner and drinking. The closing down of Borders has left me with Simon Hopkinson's Second Helping of Roast Chicken for £1, along with The Guardian book of Drinking for 70p among others. I am camped out on the sofa, not in the Quentin Crisp sense, flicking through books and magazines whilst I slip in and out of conciousness in the hazy stench of illness. Cue sympathy here.
Amongst the books I've been thumbing through all day whilst I wallow in self pity I can't help turning back to something rather special. Fire and Knives Magazine. Fire and Knives is the food quarterly creation from Tim Hayward. If like me you grow tired of food magazines being crammed with recipes but no real content, nothing to make you think, then get yourself a copy of this magazine. No recipes, just original and interesting food writing from opinions and fiction to photography and food history. I have hardly put Fire and Knives issue one down, Tom Parker Bowles' confessions of a cook book obsessive to a warming, cultural piece from Rejina Sabur giving an insight into a community of bengali women who share an allotment at City Farm. This magazine is aimed at those food enthusiasts that border on the obsessive and if you are reading this blog then that should include you. Smile, you're a food geek. Fire and Knives is brilliant, printed on good quality paper, beautifully designed, full of great content, no recipes and stares seductively at you from the shelf. The attention to detail from Mr Hayward is what has crafted this magazine into something that I will treasure and keep neatly on my bookshelf for a long time to come. I wish Fire and Knives every success for the future. We needed this and more importantly, it's getting me through this god awful cold. www.fireandknives.com