In the Sunday paper

Nigel Slater has a book on gardening, "Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch," coming soon, and offers a substantial excerpt in The Observer.

Among the best paragraphs:

"The beauty of a single lettuce, its inner leaves tight and crisp, the outer ones opened up like those of a cottage garden rose; the glowing saffron flesh of a cracked pumpkin; the curling tendrils of a pea plant... a bag of assorted tomatoes in shades of scarlet, green and orange is something I like to take time over.

"And not only is it the look of them that is beguiling. The rough feel of a runner bean between the fingers, the childish pop of a pea pod, the inside of a fur-lined broad-bean case, the cool vellum-like skin of a freshly dug potato are all reason to linger. And all this even before we have turned the oven on..."

This is exciting. I like Slater even more than I like Jamie Oliver, and we know how much I like Jamie Oliver.