I thought Sophie's new book deserved a mention as it is has been released and looks a very interesting read.




I just noticed Jamie wrote the following about the book on Twitter earlier which is very sweet !.....

My future wife's brilliant new book is out today in the UK! Full of great food and great stories. I couldn't be prouder. X Yes! We are engaged! It's true! The newspapers reported it wrongly about 10 times and when we finally did it (a month ago) they had no idea!


This article was in the Telegraph today........

My Perfect Weekend: Sophie Dahl

After years in New York's fast lane, model and author Sophie Dahl prefers dressing down and taking it easy.


By Casilda Grigg

I've always aspired to have a one-place sort of life, even though I had a slightly Bedouin childhood. In my twenties I lived in lots of different apartments in New York. I spent my time getting on and off planes, but I still managed to be quite domestic. I was one of the few people I knew who had friends over for supper. I'd make English comfort food: massive fish pies and rice puddings.

Approaching my 30th birthday, I had this wave of longing for home. Living in New York I missed the open spaces and going to people's places for dinner, and I really missed the rain.



I've been back for two years now. I live in a house in west London, with my fiancé Jamie Cullum [the jazz singer/songwriter]. We have a place in the country, near fields and hills, but it's being renovated so we're spending all our weekends in London. We've got a small paved garden and I tend lots of plants in pots. I'm growing lavender and mint, and I've got a camellia.


On Saturdays we might go and have a late breakfast, or lunch, at the Wolseley. I love their crayfish salad and their scrambled eggs on toast with smoked salmon. We might nip to the Curzon afterwards. I love that bit of Mayfair – it's so hidden away. The last thing I saw was Vicky Cristina Barcelona. It's Woody Allen at his very, very best and I've got a proper girl crush on Penelope Cruz.


People don't come up to me in the street. I'm really not that interesting. Perhaps if I was walking around in seven inch heels and an Afghan coat they might look at me. But I'm usually in jeans, ballet shoes and a jumper stolen from Jamie.


My Sunday routine involves waking up quite late. I'll head off to my local newsagent to get the papers wearing my yoga trousers and Converse trainers with a big woolly coat over the top. I don't bother with make up, but I'll tie my hair back with an Alice band.

Then I bring a little antique tea tray up from the kitchen with a tea pot and two cups – Earl Grey or PG – and maybe a glass of pear juice, or apple and rhubarb. The Converses and Alice band come off and it's back into bed. We might have a piece of toast with butter and marmalade, or Marmite.


I'll get up slowly and listen to a bit of Radio 4 – maybe Desert Island Discs. If it's sunny I'll throw open the large French windows in the bedroom. Slowly I'll start to think about lunch. There are lots of little greengrocers and delis near where we live. I'll go and buy a lovely organic chicken and lots of good veg. Jamie really appreciates it – what man wouldn't? I don't eat meat but I'll happily cook it. Last Sunday I did roast chicken with bread sauce, leeks, roast carrots and roast potatoes cooked in goose fat. We drank a very good bottle of Meursault.


There's always a lot of chatter and laughter, with doors flung open, and general pandemonium. Jamie's brother and a couple of other friends might come for lunch. The kitchen is quite small. We'll listen to music as we cook. Sometimes Jamie plays experimental jazz and I get cross. I like singing along tunelessly to Santogold while I'm chopping the veg.


Lunch usually goes on till about five – then we might go for a bit of a walk. I love exploring London. One time we ended up in Strand on the Green.

I occasionally go to parties but it's not something I seek out. We're all grown-ups now and in our early thirties – people are having babies. I haven't stepped inside a bar or nightclub for a long time.


If I have a writing deadline I go into Sunday night school panic mode. I guess it's because I went to boarding school. On Sunday nights there was always that hour of melancholy before going back to school. But it happens less now and it helps that I don't have a nine-to-five job.


In the evening, Jamie and I might watch an old James Bond film – Sean Connery is my favourite. How could he not be? Sometimes I conk out watching reruns of the Antiques Roadshow – now that's a heavenly Sunday.


Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights by Sophie Dahl is out now (£18.99, HarperCollins)





And from The Sun:


CURVY model SOPHIE DAHL has launched a blistering attack on “stick-thin starlets” that inspire others to try faddy diets.
Sophie warned people not to follow the “paranoid and unhappy” stars.

The 31-year-old — a size 14 when she began modelling aged 19 — said: “Starving is not sexy.

“It is bleeding gums, acrid breath, brittle bones, osteoporosis, infertility and complication. It saps and withers.”

She added: “Please don't be swayed by some glossy fictional food diary that a stick-thin starlet swears by.”

Sophie, engaged to jazz singer JAMIE CULLUM, said she never thought of being model until a chance meeting at Vogue fashion magazine, adding: “I had enormous t*ts and even bigger a***.”

The granddaughter of author ROALD DAHL has written a cook book, Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights.

Great read, thanks for sharing Winnie

I know she mentioned on Jonathan Ross about a potential BBC TV show in the near future, she could be the new celebrity chef!

I've liked Sophie Dahl for ages, way before they'd even met, so it was rather a coincidence that they got it together after being a huge fan of both of them! Am surprised there doesn't seem to be an official site for Sophie?

Heidi

Ps Had to re-register for some reason (something to do with another e-mail address I think), hence why my first post!

Hi Heidi!

There is a website but I am not sure if it is official and I don't think it is updated too often!

Sophie's website

Thanks. However, I've come across that one before and it appears to only show photos!

There is a little bit of information if you click the links at the bottom of the homepage -

Bibliography | Biography | Filmography | Audiography | Store

The latest issue of Red magazine (June 2009) features Sophie as the cover girl and an in-depth article with some gorgeous full-colour photos!

Sophie Dahl on food, family and falling madly in love

how lovely :3

There has been really good press for Sophie surrounding her new book! Another article today in The Mirror

Sophie Dahl: 'I want you all to fall in love'
Jez Taylor 31/05/2009

Sophie Dahl, once known for her super curves, talks body image, towering over her pop star fiancé, and her latest big passion


In the 90s, Sophie Dahl was the voluptuous model whose curves provided the antidote to a fash-wan world saturated with skinny minnies. Having been out of that world for a while now (though she occasionally does the odd gig) and having slimmed down to a slender type herself, she’s been quietly reinventing herself as a writer (well, when your grandpa was Roald Dahl...). Her latest book is about food and Sophie describesher current attitude to grub as ‘bold and adventurous’.

Sophie, 31, looks pretty damn good. A slender size 10 and 6ft tall, she’s other-worldly with giant saucer-like eyes and a kittenish face. She’s all cheekbones and super-pout, which she’s practised to perfection, and deploys at the end of every sentence like a full stop – until she forgets and laughs, unleashing a grin bigger than a Cheshire Cat’s. But she has good reason to be happy. She’s back in London and living with the man she loves. Yes, now Sophie is off the fashion merry-go-round, when she isn’t writing she’s busy carving a life of domesticated bliss with her fiancé, jazz musician Jamie Cullum. She describes their life as ‘possibly rather boring’. Well, you can’t party forever...

‘Well that’s the thing,’ she laughs. ‘I’m not 21 now, I’m 31 and I’ve done all of that and it was lovely. I’m not saying I never want to go to parties or go dancing, but I do think when you get into your 30s they become fewer and far between and you do begin to relish being at home and cooking and hanging out with the one you love. I was living in New York until 2007, but I came home because I longed for rainy days, flapjacks and to be with the man I’d fallen madly in love with. This sort of life makes me very happy.’ The pair got together in March 2007, and despite media interest over the height difference – Sophie is 6ft and Jamie 5ft 6in – are blissfully happy. ‘I don’t know why people are so fascinated by the difference in height between my boyfriend and I,’ she says. ‘It’s very tiresome. One falls in love with whoever one falls in love with.’


Sophie with Jamie Cullum

It’s this domesticated bliss that’s influenced Sophie’s cooking (she and Jamie cook for one another) and led to her writing her book. See, Sophie’s on a mission – through the power of her pen, she wants to make the world fall in love with good grub. She reveals she learned to eat healthily by trial and error’ over the years and wants to impart her wisdom as well as dispel any myths that she’s had issues with her own body image. She blames said myths on the time she became very, very skinny a few years ago, after getting unwell in India and spending six months on antibiotics.

‘There was such a wave of media commentary on my body when I began modelling – and I was only young,’ she says. ‘I was 18, the backlash when I naturally got thinner was something I was quite baffled by. There’s no great mystery. I had some puppy fat and I lost it. I hadn’t decided I wanted to ring-lead a cause. Your body is your own and you should be able to do what you want with it.’

She says she indulged in a ‘season of chocolate cake’ between the ages of 17 and 21, but changed her attitude towards food after a spell at a guest house – Ballymaloe House in Cork, Ireland. ‘I was there for under a week, eating substantially, but I left thinner than when I arrived,’ she says. ‘I was simply eating well and walking. Now I believe in moderation and balance. Have three meals a day and don’t pick. Who wants to do a million lunges a day? But at the same time, starving is not sexy. I love food, I always have and I want other people to as well. There’s no big myth.’ And it looks like her skills might even get her her own cookery show – the BBC are currently ‘in talks’ with her.

Could she be the next Nigella? ‘She is the original and irreplaceable,’ says Sophie. ‘I should be so lucky to get anywhere near her. But I’m a massive fan.’ Hold on to your whisk Nigella...

Sophie’s Food Files...
I’m naturally very greedy. I go to bed wondering what to have for breakfast.In the beginning my first word was ‘crunch’ which was muddled baby speak for fudge which I think says rather a lot. I also dreamed of clouds that looked like trifles and I used to have an awful recurring nightmare about men made from mashed potato wearing stripy tights chasing me. I think it was because my school mashed potato was so disgusting, so that would pop up in my five-year-old mind as a horror at night time.

Joyce and George were our neighbours, and they had such great food. I was about three or four I think and they built a gate between their house and our house. They had delicious fish and chips at their house and I didn’t get fish and chips at my house and so I’d run there when it was time for my bath, secretly through the garden, and arrive naked at Joyce and George’s house, and say: ‘Evening, what’s for dinner?’

I think I am a natural cook. Not a natural baker. I think baking is such a science and with baking you really do have to stick to the formula. One of the things that stops people cooking is they’re frightened. They look at a whole fish and think, ‘Christ what do I do with that?’ And actually it should be something that’s fun. An experiment.

I get recipes from friends and family. There’s a little anecdote to each one in my book and for the most part they are simple and can be cooked in around 30 minutes. I didn’t want to do anything wildly complicated. People have less time now and cooking is not something which needs to consume lots of time.

Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights (HarperCollins, £18.99) is on sale now

Sophie made an appearance at the Hay Festival ths weekend:


In Wales’ seaside resorts, retailers were doing a brisk trade, while the heat also brought the crowds out in force at the Hay Festival, where supermodel Sophie Dahl was the main attraction.

At a reading of her first cookbook, Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights, she spoke about how she has rediscovered her passion for food after years of having her weight under constant public scrutiny.

Heralded as a champion for bigger women when she first broke into the fashion industry, Sophie was later berated for slimming down, with many accusing her of having developed an eating disorder.

At a question and answer session following her reading, the 31-year-old, who recently got engaged to jazz musician Jamie Cullum, described her unease at being made into a role model because of her weight.

“People had noticed me. Women from all over the world complimented me on my big-built frame,” she said.

“I produced such a strange mixed reaction. My weight became a matter of public record.

“Big was an anomaly in fashion. I got all these letters from people saying, ‘We are so excited that there is someone who represents us.’

“Then when I was in my early 20s I thought I wanted to do more exercise and see a trainer. It was more about me wanting to exercise than wanting to get thinner.

“My body had been so analysed and discussed that I had no idea what size I was.

“I don’t know whether some people thought I had betrayed them (by losing weight).

“It took me a long time to get here, but I feel I now have some power and control which I felt had been removed from me.

“People said that I had an eating disorder after I had lost weight. And I found that incredibly damaging and distressing. But at a certain stage you just have to get on with things.”

Another little mention in the press:

Sophie Dahl: Jamie likes to cook
Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Sophie Dahl revealed she splits the culinary duties when at home with her boyfriend Jamie Cullum, despite the model having her own cookery book.
She said musician Jamie refuses to let her do all the cooking.
"We share - he is a great cook, so it's probably half and half," he said.
The couple met in March 2007, and at six feet tall Sophie towers over Jamie, who is just five feet four inches.
When the pair are eating in, or entertaining, Sophie says her signature dish is surprisingly pedestrian.
"It sounds deeply unadventurous, but the thing I make the most is probably a roast chicken and ratatouille. If people are veggie, then I'll do a cauliflower choose and wild rice risotto to go along with it."


source

In the Telegraph:

Forget size zero - it's friendly giants that matter
Sophie Dahl faces some awkward questions at the Hay Festival of Literature

By Sophie Dahl
Published 05 Jun 2009

On the most halcyon of summer days, the sort the novelist Laurie Lee used to write about, I drove from Bath to Hay-on-Wye to read from my new cookbook and take part in a question and answer session at the Hay Festival of Literature. I had always held a romantic image of the event, picturing tiny stands on cobbled streets, so I was staggered to come upon a literary version of Glastonbury – but with cleaner loos and, I imagine, a dearth of drugs.

I was interviewed by the journalist-turned-smallholder Rosie Boycott, who asked me a series of thought-provoking questions about cooking and the relationship women have with their bodies, including today's obsessive preoccupation with flaws. I had no answer to a lot of the body stuff, although I wished I had. There were more questions in a similar vein from the audience, along with a few about baking and allotments. At the end, a small, red-headed girl, sitting on her mum's knee, put up her hand. I thought, what now? Is a 10-year-old going to ask me about the size zero debate?

"Have you ever met the BFG?", she asked.

*A year ago, my boyfriend Jamie [Cullum], won an auction at a benefit for the organic charity The Soil Association. The prize was a day of fishing and eating with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Nick Fisher, of River Cottage fame, on the coast of Devon, and we finally set off to enjoy it on Monday. For months we had been consumed by excitement at the prospect. We met Hugh and his lovely crew at the quay and headed out to sea, whereupon we caught mackerel and bream, as well as a less appealing dogfish and conger eel, which swiftly went back into the sea. We ate incessantly, devouring bread that Hugh's wife had baked that morning, and mackerel sashimi soused with soy and wasabi, as well as potato salad with chive flowers. Then, a pile of molten brownies that were offered on the condition of a swim. How could I resist? Wearing pants and a T-shirt, I threw myself into water that was so cold it felt like being electrocuted, then swore like a trooper as soon as I resurfaced. The brownie and tea that followed were manna. Hugh, Nick and the boys were the finest hosts we could have imagined; generous, funny and a mine of marine and culinary information.

*We drove back to London the next day, eating extra strong mints and reminiscing all the way.

"Do you remember when Hugh jumped off the boat first?"

"What about when he gutted that fish?"

Our neighbour saw us mournfully exit the car. "What's wrong with you two?" he asked.

"We miss Hugh," we said in unison.

Jamie left for Hong Kong a few hours later. I discovered hundreds of emails in my spam folder and spent the evening answering them while fantasising about River Cottage brownies.

*I woke up feeling horrific on Wednesday, and tried to edit my Vogue column with a jagged head and a fever. Then I realised I was meant to be co-hosting The Royal Academy Summer Party, which would entail getting tarted up so as not to look like a female version of the Child Catcher.

I stood up and thought I was going to faint. Then I cried.
Then I emailed Anya Hindmarch, who was co-chair of the event, and told her that I felt awful. She sweetly told me to get into my nightie, and go to bed, which is what I did.

*The next day my Dad (who lives in LA) came to visit me. I remained in my nightie as we sat in the garden all day, drinking cups of tea and talking about love, sickness and marmalade.

Sophie Dahl's cookery book, 'Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights', is published by HarperCollins

Thanks to share this info! And really really interesting book to read. I gotta say i find this couple adorable.
Cheers for Jamie and Sophie!

Popped in a Somerfield store the other day and picked up one of their free magazines - August 2009 issue.

Who did I find inside?

Tessa Dahl: 'I'm so glad Sophie's marrying Jamie Cullum... At least it will stop my old boyfriends asking her out'


Read more..

What an interesting interview - thanks for posting