Food

Letters to The Hobbledehoy, Thanksgiving 2025

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Cynthia writes:

I stumbled upon The Hobbledehoy while looking up Cliff Edwards on the internet to learn more about him. I’d spent several hours on YouTube listening to his recordings as I have done periodically over the last years, as I fell in love with Jiminey Cricket’s voice as a child. Then I found your website and saw your I Stand with Ukraine flag; Richard Thompson’s music; a repost of Heather Cox Richardson’s post; and knew I’d found a kindred spirit out in the ether. My heart is lifted. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Hi Cynthia!
I’m glad that you stumbled upon The Hobbledehoy, and thank you for your kind words about the website.
I, too, was introduced to the talents of Cliff “Ukelele Ike” Edwards through his iconic performance voicing “Jiminy Cricket” in Disney’s 1940 film Pinocchio. I grew to love Cliff’s distinctive voice and ukulele on tunes like “Singing In the Rain”(recorded for a film by Cliff in 1929, over twenty years before Gene Kelley’s version), “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” and of course, Cliff’s “Jada” – one of the first big hits of the jazz age

Glad to have lifted your heart!

For fellow hobbledehoy that missed it, here’s a link to my piece:
Give a little whistle: The life and sad death of Cliff Edwards, voice of Disney’s Jiminy Cricket

Monte writes:

Hi Mike, Forgive me if I’m barking up the wrong tree here, but I’m trying to contact Oliver Kornetzky (sic) to seek approval for the use of an article he wrote about his return to his hometown in Wisconsin. I have recently done a road trip through the red states of the US and am currently editing the resulting book, and would love to republish the work in full therein, since it is the most articulate explanation of America’s degradation at a human level as I have encountered. Please advise if this is acceptable, and if you wish to see the relevant chapter to view its inclusion. Warm regards, Monte

Hi Monte!
Thank you for your letter and best of luck with your upcoming book.
Unfortunately, I do not have any contact information for Oliver Kornetzke.
Kornetzke’s post remains one of The Hobbledehoy’s most viewed. There is growing suspicion online that Oliver Kornetzke is actually an AI creation. If true, that’s one AI that I would welcome to my Thanksgiving dinner table.

Felipe (again)writes:

I’m writing to you because many women between 25 and 40 are actively seeking solutions to improve their quality of life. If this is a topic that resonates with your audience, this information is for you
•••• is a unique, natural formula that delivers concrete results.

It’s specifically designed to help women achieve:
Increase desire and sexual response.
A real boost in day-to-day vitality. Improve comfort and natural lubrication.

Hello again Felipe!

Your product sounds wonderful! Tell me – can I also use your product for the purpose of home insulation? I have several old windows that allow drafts into the house, and New England winters can be brutal! Please let us know asap, as Hobbeldehoy subscribers will surely also benefit from this information!

Letters to The Hobbledehoy, October 2025

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Kathy writes:

For Oliver Kornetzke ~ EVERYONE IS Equally Important, Beautiful And Sinful. We are Also ALL Equally And Uniquely LOVED BY GOD. THANK GOD for our President, Melania and Barron. Whoever thinks that they are better than someone else ~ Luke 18 NLT ~ Parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector … We’re equal sinners, but in our own ways.

Hi Kathy!
Thanks for visiting The Hobbledehoy. The post by Oliver Kornetzke remains one of The Hobbledehoy’s most viewed. I do agree with you that we are all sinners. I’m not so sure about your “equal sinners” idea, however. Also, it’s curious that you thank God for Trump’s son, Barron, without mentioning Trump’s older sons, Beavis and Buthead. I’m informed by The Google that Trump also has two daughters, both blonde. So you probably should thank God for these siblings as well.

Howard writes:

Just read your comments about Rex Allen. [Cowboy singer Rex Allen and the Carousel of Progress]
First, I live in Tucson and did not know how Rex Allen died. Truly sad Wish I knew he was around. I would have reached out to him when he was alive. Second is “Carousel of Progress’” I remember it very well. First, as the General Electric. exhibit at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. “It’s a Great Big Wonderful Tomorrow” was magic as it played as the transition between the “ scenes” of GE’s technological progress. The show moved to Disneyland and, I think, Disney World. GE eventually dropped the sponsorship, but Disney continued to run it. They had to update the show as “tomorrow’s technology” became yesterday’s technology. If you didn’t know, the “carousel” in the show was the audience moving around the different scenes. In the 1970’s I had the opportunity to work with Marty Sklar, the first head of Disney Imagineering on EPCOT’s Land Pavilion. I realized then that so much of the honest, kind, warm culture expressed in so many of Disney’s “show” were a reflection of Marty’s world view. He was a gem.

Hi Howard!
Thank you for your letter. Like you, I love Rex Allen’s work, as you may have guessed from my article. Though I’ve traveled all around the world, I’m one of the few Americans who has never once been to Disney! I just turned 68 years old. Do you think it’s too late for me?

Steven writes:

I love your blog! Are you from Scotland or Wales, by chance? I’m from Pennsylvania originally, but have lived in Spain, Costa Rica, and Puerto Rico and am now in God-Forsaken Florida!

Hi Steven!

I live in Rhode Island – the smallest state in the USA. Yes, my people originated from Scotland, Ireland and Wales on my Dad’s side, Ireland and Germany on my mom’s side. My Welsh great-aunt Theresa once told me our ancestry goes back to the Pirate Morgan! I’m a huge fan of several Welsh folk performers currently making music: Katell Keineg, Gwenifer Raymond, and Cerys Hafana, especially.

As for “God-forsaken” Florida – I have no real desire to visit there. I do like their orange juice, however.

You are a well-traveled soul, Steven. Good for you! Check out this article written by travel authority Rick Steves, Britain’s Pub Hub. We’ve been in Rick’s company many times and enthusiastically recommend his tours. Here’s Rick’s advice for seniors traveling in Europe

Felipe writes:

I’m writing to you because many women between 25 and 40 are actively seeking solutions to improve their quality of life. If this is a topic that resonates with your audience, this information is for you
•••• is a unique, natural formula that delivers concrete results.

It’s specifically designed to help women achieve:
Increase desire and sexual response.
A real boost in day-to-day vitality. Improve comfort and natural lubrication.

Hi Felipe!

Your product sounds wonderful! Tell me – can I also use your product for the purpose of home insulation? I have several old windows that allow drafts into the house, and New England winters can be brutal! Please let us know asap, as Hobbeldehoy subscribers will surely also benefit from this information!

Can this writer convince the French to fall in love with British food?

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Ben Mervis’s new cookbook has been a hit in Paris, laying waste to centuries of sniffiness about stodgy, unsophisticated cuisine

By Adam Sage

When The British Cookbook, a tome containing 550 of the UK’s most quintessential recipes, was published in France this month, its author Ben Mervis was sceptical.

Mindful that British gastronomy has a poor reputation on the other side of the Channel, he wondered whether the French really wanted to know how to make purée de pois (mushy peas), oeufs à l’écossaise (Scotch eggs) or anguilles en gelée (jellied eels).

“I wasn’t 100 per cent sure how it would be received,” said the American food writer, who has become an ambassador for British cooking.

 

He need not have worried. His work — Le Livre de la Cuisine British, as it is in French — has gone down remarkably well among Parisian critics who seem to be shedding longstanding prejudices. “No, British cuisine is not that vile,” wrote Le Monde after consulting Mervis’s recipes for such dishes as leek and potato soup, grilled kippers, Bakewell tart and sticky toffee pudding.

Noting that the French viewed British cooking as “too fatty, not sophisticated enough and even a bit strange”, the newspaper hailed the publication of the cookbook as a chance for “the reader to take a new look at this cuisine and to discover that it is far richer, more diverse and singular than it seems”.

The Libération newspaper said the book had been published in France amid an upsurge of interest in British cuisine, with chefs like Calum Franklin enjoying success with his new Parisian restaurant, Public House. The paper asked whether it was time for France to put aside its “scornful” view of British cooking, which it said had been summed up by Jacques Chirac, the late French president, who claimed at a G8 summit in 2005 that it was “the worst that exists, apart from Finland’s”.

Mervis begs to differ. “I think it’s delicious,” he said. “When I was growing up in the US, you heard all the clichés about British food and weather. But since coming here, I see it very differently.”

Read more

Karine Polwart “Wild Food and Medicine”

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WILD FOOD AND MEDICINE

The Equinox has just passed and the turn is palpable here in Pathhead, thank goodness. Don’t get me wrong, I love the hunker down creep into winter dark but by this point in the year, I’m craving birdsong and blossom and light.

I’m marking this Spring with some fresh learning via Grassroots Remedies, an Edinburgh and Glasgow based workers’ cooperative which is rekindling the tradition of herbal community healthcare. Or, as they put it: Folk Medicine for All Folk! That’s folky enough for me.

One of my favourite late summer and autumn season pursuits is gathering fruit. I make elderberry syrup (I’m down to my last bottle in the fridge now) and sloe gin and I boil up jellies and other concoctions using brambles, crabapples, haws, hips, rowans and sea buckthorn. I love it, but it requires a degree of seasonal awareness and timekeeping organisation that sometimes escapes me. I miss the raspberries every year. And beyond the summer and autumn harvest, I always mean to do something with the wild leek and garlic, the wood sorrel and the dandelions.

I’m enrolled on Wild Things: A Year of Wild Food and Medicine. And I’ve signed up for a series of local Edinburgh based herb walks that begin this Friday. I’ve put all the dates in my diary, and carved out some learning time, which feels great.

Plant Medicine has a long history and much if it is bound up with the knowledge and of care and women whose contributions have largely been erased from history. But there’s a striking link to one of Edinburgh’s most beloved institutions too.


The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh was founded in the grounds of Holyrood House in 1670, by Robert Sibbald and Andrew Balfour, two of the leading physicians – and botanists – of the era. It was designed as a ‘Physic Garden’, a collection of fresh plants for medical prescription and for the teaching of botany to medical students. Sibbald was inaugural Professor of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, but he was also keen to ensure that plant knowledge was not confined to the privileged.

In 1699, in response to ‘The Ill Years’, a series of successive crop failures and widespread hunger across Scotland, he published ‘Provision For The Poor in Time of Dearth or Scarcity’, a 24-page plant field guide to foraging. It is subtitled ‘Where There is an Account of Such Food as May be Easily Gotten when Corns are Scarce, Or Unfit for Use: and of Such Meats as May be Used when the Ordinary Provisions Fail Or are Very Dear’.

The connection between plants and health has been somewhat breached by the industrialisation and compartmentalisation of modern medicine. I’m deeply grateful for the modern NHS that we have. But I’m fearful too. We’re in a period of history when we, as ordinary people, will need more knowledge and agency around how to look after ourselves and each other. And whilst we’ll still need specialist expertise and care, for those that can access it, we’ll need much more than that too. And we’ll need to share what we know, and what we have.
SPRING

Next month, I’m hoping to do a day of solo filming with the brilliant Ormiston-based videographer Sandy Butler. Let’s just say my own house is not quite for this purpose right now! So, I’m reaching out to folks locally in Midlothian, East Lothian or north Borders who might be willing to host me for a day in a spacious, quiet, bright living room or studio space in exchange for a bespoke wee household song offering and two free tickets to my next Edinburgh show (which will be in November – more on that next time).

If you’re free during the day on April 21st, all you’d need to do is take some phone snaps of your room to give an indication of size and feel and let me know where you are!

 

TOUR DATES

Thanks so much to everyone who’s bought tickets for my solo tour south of the border in June. Shoreham is sold out already and several dates are shifting towards limited tickets. So please don’t leave it too late!

I’ll also be playing three dates with Dave Milligan – What A Wonderful World Festival in Alnwick in June, and Milton Keynes International Festival and Yn Chruinnaght Celtic Gathering on the Isle Of Man in July.