iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Annie Gray

Regula Ysewijn @regulaysewijn.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

One last push as voting closed end of this week: I created a beer with Belgian abbey brewery Grimbergen. A dark beer, I’m using leftover bread, 1/2 slice a bottle, a Stout that echoes Antwerpen Stout, created after WWII. please vote Stout(e) Regula 🖤 www.brouwmetmij.grimbergenbier.be/stemhier2026

brouwmetmij.grimbergenbier.be

Stem hier — Grimbergen

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Yep, that's the one I was thinking of - it's fun. Good choice. Nice evocation of the streets around St James and retailing at the time (snd the confectionery!). Also, great cover.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

@edoffannyside.bsky.social also paged me. I have never heard of it and it sounds suspiciously pat. I'm going with a no. (Was this book the ice cream one? Rather a fab book, some historical details a tad shaky, but only to a true nerd so totally forgiveable).

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

It is too competitive a field for the majority to enter. You have to be VERY dedicated. Years of study. Self-sacrifice. Constant training.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

This week BBC Radio 4 has a themed Norman Day to tie into the Bayeux Tapestry coming to London. I helped make an episode of The Food Programme - went to Frabce, ate cheese. Listen live or via BBC Sounds.

Three people stand around a table laden with cheese in a beamed room with modern downlighting and lots of pine. A woman dressed in black is laughing while holding cheese, and a man in white who has a ponytail leans on the back of a chair. Between them a bearded man in a blue demon shirt, also smiling, holds a microphone and is recording.

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Reposted by Annie Gray

Alison Brackenbury @abrackenbury.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

If you love food, its lore & history, here's a radio suggestion! The Kitchen Cabinet from Spalding... full of Lincolnshire good humour. Highlights include @dranniegray.bsky.social on sage & its many traditional uses..how I wish I could grow this. And insights into Lithuanian food! A fine concoction!

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

The detail is..... something.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

In a break from the unrelenting awfulness of the news at the moment, I give you a picture I hope will make it into my current boom: kidneys and hard-boiled eggs in aspic. Even I would balk at this.

An entry page from a cookery book which has the word kidneys at the top. Drawn illustration of a moulded jelly (aspic) containing kidneys and hard boiled eggs garnished with parsley.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Don't forget: 'cite your source/s'.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Do it! Can swap the water for cream as well. If the jam is v sweet, add a squeeze of lemon juice.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

She's great - her recipes (the ice cream ones, not necessarily others) are really really good.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

When the going gets (too) hot, the over heated moaning food historian makes Victorian ices....

A pale brown moulded water ice (sorbet) made in a pillar mould with a rose on top sits on a floral plate. The background is blurred but is a rather overgrown raised beds with red leaved plants and lots of green.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

I think mine has melted and started drying out as a brown scrape on a floor. Editing..... = eating ice cream and thinking about ice cream and making ice cream.

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Reposted by Annie Gray

Gladstone's Library @gladlib.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Is the Law Really on Our Side? A young people’s Q&A with the first female President of the UK Supreme Court, the Right Honourable the Baroness Hale of Richmond DBE. 🗓️ Mon 6 Jul 🕑️ 10am-12pm 📍 Gladstone's Library 📖 For ages 16-24 🎟️ Free tickets here: buff.ly/Fw4uXaZ

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Reposted by Annie Gray

Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org · 04/06/2026

Ten years on from the Brexit vote: a new @yougov.co.uk poll finds that 77% of the British public have trust in the expertise of historians bit.ly/49I9NV7 It's heartening to hear that so many value, and certainly haven't had enough of, the historian as expert. #Skystorians 1/4

Screen shot of YouGov ranking of experts showing 'historians' and a Royal Historical Society 'Trust me, I'm a historian' badge.

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Reposted by Annie Gray

Greg Jenner (Historian) @gregjenner.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

There’s a new book out from Professor Kate Williams for all you history lovers who want to know more about powerful women in history — it’s called Regina, and it looks like this!

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Same here. Sharing good (within reason, reason being while encouraging others to seek the book out for themselves).

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Reposted by Annie Gray

Gastronomic History @gastrohistory.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

The Story of the Sandwich. Spolier Alert: Once again, the Earl of Sandwich did NOT create the first sandwich. Featuring @dranniegray.bsky.social www.bbc.com/audio/play/w... #foodhistory #sandwich

bbc.com

BBC Audio | The Food Chain | The story of the sandwich

An easy meal with global appeal, endless possibilities and hidden meaning.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

So, in essence, dessert can include puddings and pudding can be a word for dessert but they should be seen as separate categories, even though colloqially they have come, often, to be pretty much the same. (There are class considerations too, but that would be another 6 posts). /end

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

For what the Americans call pudding is just...not - or not on British-English, anyway (it is essentially a variant on custard). 5/

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Also, things in guts are (or were) puddings, as in haggis (bag pudding) and sausage (possibly an origin of the name, from boudin). Some can be sweet or savoury - batter pudding makes for both toad in the hole and clafoutis. Trifle is probably a pudding. It is all terrible British 4/

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Not all dessert/sweets/afters are puddings and pudding is a much broader category of foods. It is almost undefinable, encompassing sweet (custard puddings, jellies, steamed sponges, sticky toffee, iced puddings, set creams, xmas puddings, rice, tapioca etc) AND savoury (dumplings, steak & kidney) 3/

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Which were once part of the broader second course of a large formal meal. Pudding became an alternative word for this sweet course in the mid C20 as many of the elements were indeed puddings. BUT.. 2/

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

WELL. Dessert is the sweet course at the end of a meal. It was once just ices, fruit, nuts, maybe jellies, wine biscuits. A palate cleanser. The steady creep of modernity being what it is, post WW1 it became a more generic sweet course (or afters), and included stuff like tarts and sweet pudding 1/

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Ours has started doing evening 'foodie fridays' which attract a massive crowd, very mixed ages, and is really good to see.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Ours operates til about 2pm, thankfully (later on Saturdays) for I, too, resent the mornings. I have taken to large wheeled panniers on my bike - plus a milkman.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

I was lucky enough to have both a weekly and what was then (no longer) a good covered market at uni- think I was one of the few students who used the former. Particularly good at closing time.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

I have a full section on markets ln The Bookshop, The Draper... but really, they run throughout it.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

I'm very much in agreement with this. 400 years ago there wasnt much of a high street, and fixed shops tended to be for the wealthy. Markets were where most of us shopped until well into the C20th. Where they still exist, they are still big draws, as well as incubator spaces for retailers.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

I came across a version of this in a 1966 book purporting to be Scottish and Irish influenced. Makes much more sense for antipodean roots. (The 1960s picture is deliciously awful, as you'd expect).

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Reposted by Annie Gray

Greg Jenner (Historian) @gregjenner.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

A thread on problems in how archaeological research is communicated to the public 👇😵‍💫

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

You say that because you haven't watched tejo.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Exactly - it was all very much about her. I'm assuming that was how it was written in the books, but still.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

I had issues with her not accepting the perfectly understandable reasons the rather dishy Duke had with not having kids and found her rather drippy. We all react differently to these things, I guess.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

I had some thoughts on Bridgerton (I have not watched the latest series, btw, because I wanted to kill Daphne so hard in the first one). youtu.be/dsmIlgb1fPQ?...

youtu.be

Inside Bridgerton's Kitchens with Food Historian Annie Gray | Shondaland

YouTube video by Shondaland

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

(Easily spotted when they are about Downton, a book i rarely promote as I don't get royalties. They make me laugh).

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Not that many, but a solid trickle. My various agents get them as well. First one had me perplexed, but after that I put my grumpy face on. Bloody irritating.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

CK Samson's stunning Shardlake series. I still haven't recovered from Tombland.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

It is a stunning ice cream (the asparagus one... not so much).

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Chuckleberry FROM MY PLOT. Or cucumber. But round here it could be whatever as long as beet sugar is involved.

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Annie Gray @dranniegray.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Unilever have already quite fucked it. The Swiss version is very good though.

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