Fress to impress

Aloha, shalom and Happy New Year. I'm back from my maternal sabbatical to return to regular, or at least, regularly intermittent, blogging service. And I'm here to talk about food.

First, I'd like to call your attention to the resurgence of the foodie blogging scene in Manchester. Erstwhile Mancunian Foodie Sarah has cooked up a tasty little google map with all the food bloggers in the north of England plotted on it. Thanks Sarah! I'm adding the foodie bloggers in the Manchester area to my blogroll - quite a haul including Denton duo Eat Out Eat In, Stockport's Cookbook goodness, Foodographic in Chorlton and Mancfoodian.

A bit more digging revealed a few more new additions to the food blogging category: buttered crumpet, beccabakescakes and curry fiends Flavours of Manchester. Also, I'm not sure if The Greedy Girl is based in Manchester or just a frequent visitor to our delicious city, but I'm adding her anyway. Missed anyone? Let me know.

In other foodie news, the supper club trend hasn't missed Manchester, but most of the action has been taking place in twitterland. First, Gastro Club has been making a few fressers of my acquaintance very happy indeed. If you haven't heard about it before (you might have read this excellent summary on Inside the M60) it's a growing group of hungry folk who meet on the second Tuesday of the month for a themed dinner at a city restaurant. Some nice photos of past events here including the picture above by Samscam.

It was also on twitter that I also heard about Spice Club, a monthly Indian supperclub run by Monica from her Manchester home. She blogs about cooking at Monica's Spice Diary. Nice to have some off-menu culinary action in the city. More please.