Tony Blair

Published Oct 29, 2024, 12:00 AM

We return with our guest this week, former Prime Minister Tony Blair. In the second episode of the new series, Tony Blair reminisces about food in politics, from the 'memorable’ meals he made his children at Chequers to dining with Heads of State, including the late Queen Elizabeth II. 

Ruthie's Table 4, made in partnership with Moncler. 

This episode is brought to you by Me and M, the British modern luxury clothing label designed for busy women. Founded and designed in London. Me and M is about intelligence style. Much thought and care are put into the design process, so every piece is flattering, functional and made to last forever. Me and M is well known for its trousers and how I got to know the brand. It's my go to for styles that are comfortable enough to wear in the kitchen or the restaurant, also polished enough for meetings. Me and M is available online and its stores across London, Edinburgh, New York. If you're in London, I'd really recommend heading to their beautiful, brand new flagship store in Marlevin, which opens on the twenty ninth of October. I'm often asked about the quality I look for when interviewing a chef. Is it the way they make an omelet own a fish, or perform under stress? For me, the answer is easy. The quality I look for is quite simply curiosity. The world knows Tony Blair as a visionary leader prime Minister. I know him as a close and loyal friend, but most of all, he is curious and the first dinner we had for him in our home in nineteen ninety six, he went straight into the kitchen to talk to a young, inexperienced chef, Jamie Oliver, asking how he was making the rottolo di spinacci. Tony Blair has been interviewed countless times, but tonight on Ruthie's table before, we're going to look at his life and his career through memories of food, food in politics, food and family, And tonight the curiosity is all mine.

Thank you, Bolle.

So the recipe that you chose is grilled and roasted wild sea bass. Would you like to read the recipe?

Sure a lot could have chosen fifteen different things. I'm just delighted on this because I like it's kind of simplicity. Grilled and rose did wild sea bass serves four to six one three kilogram wild sea bass. Two tablespoons fennyl seeds, two lemons, sliced parsley stalks, fresh fennel bulbs, trimmed and sliced, juice of one lemon, seventy five mil white wine, and extra virgin olive oil. Preheat oven to two hundred degrees. Season the inside of the fish with fennel seeds and season well. Brush the skin with olive oil, and grill on a cast iron, ridged or oven grill for five to six minutes on each side. Put the lemon, parsley, remaining fennel seeds in a roasting tin and lay the sea bass over. Drizzle the lemon juice, olive oil, white wine, and the remaining herbs and vegetables. Bait for thirty minutes or until the fish is firm to the touch. Delicious with salsa verdi.

Thank you. I was really really pleased that you chose this recipe because it's two methods. It's grilled, so you have the chargrill on the outside, but then you have the juiciness of actually taking it. Was there a reason you chose it or did you just?

I often if I'm in a restaurant, will order fish, just simple fish, and especially when when you if you get a nice white fish, which I've just been in Greece recently and they do that very well. You know, take it from the sea and it's it's a white fish. You add a little bit of olive oil and lemon and it's it's it's very simple, but it's beautiful and tasty.

Yeah, that's I mean, that is the difference I think between Greek, Mediterranean food Italian of the South of France is that there's not a lot of sauce. You know, you just have the great ingredient and then you trust it to be It's.

Like, yeah, and I think it's it's you know, it's fantastic when you're the food is just very simple but well cooked, well prepared, and you know, it's things like if you even if you're like a tomato salad, it's a very simple thing. But if the tomatoes are really nice and it's done with a nice dressing on it, I mean it's beautiful. So I'm I'm not a great one for very fancy sources, to be honest.

Although sometimes to go to Paris and have a delicious, well kind of turbot with the bourblog not that.

And by the way, one thing I always say to people because sometimes people say to me, what's your favorite type of cooking? Yeah, and I say I don't have one. Yeah, I mean I like good food. I appreciate good food. And I could eat Thai, I could eat Japanese and eat French, I could eat Italian, I could eat Greek, and I could eat English or Scottish.

So Downing Street is in office, it's a public space, it's a governmental space, but it's also a home. And you were there with young children and you presumably they came home from school and you sat down to me or did you not. Did you have a certain way that this was work and then you would have family time at the weekends. Was there a sort of routine or structure for being a family.

Or before going into Downing Street. I mean, we did have a much more structured life, but then once you become premnise to frankly, your schedules just packed, and so at the weekends, usually when we were through in checkers, we would eat all together and that would be great, But otherwise it was pretty hand to mouth. When my kids knew I was coming on this podcast, they said to me, are you going to tell them that you used to cook for us and that your cooking was terrible? And I said, well, now, what I might just do is just say that the meals I cooked for my children were memorable. Memorable, believe it at that? So yeah, I mean no, Downing Street was just too busy.

There wasn't a maybe there still isn't a Downing Street chef that hooks markfast lunch, and there wasn't. I know, at the White House they have the residents, and I know that the State Department is very careful with ambassadors about what they can spend on parties and food. But to have the Office of the Prime Minister, you would think that there was a yeah.

And by the way, in our embassies you can eat very well in British embassies abroad in the Elisa you get. I think it's a high quality for n actually and very traditional French cooking.

You didn't give very many state dinners at Downing Street that you would know. I didn't be at the Palace.

I almost took the view with we didn't. I mean, occasionally I would do it and if someone really wanted to have a dinner. But I with other political leaders, I mean, I just know what I feel like. You know, when you're engaged with the political leader, I mean, you know, maybe you have a drink together and so on, and maybe you do have a meal together occasionally, but you want to do business. You want to sort out the business of the day. And then if you're a foreign leader and you're visiting and you're in London, and you know, maybe Franklin would like to go out and spend some time with you, your friends or colleagues, and rather than be within the formality of these dinners, which on the whole I never felt yielded a great deal.

Was there any in your memory that wasn't in China or in Russia, or in Germany or France? Was there a steak dinner that really well brings in memory?

There wasn't a state dinners where the head of state, So the only state dinner in the UK would be the Queen obviously giving the dinner, and where again the food is pretty good actually, but I do remember one really memorable meal. So France and the UK and Germany we were all together in this consort HM to build the airbus three eighty okay, and we visited Toulouse, which is where part of the plane was being built, and so the leaders all went there, and she actually was the president at the time. And I remember we after we visited the plant and saw the plane and so on, we sat down and we had a I think they called it a cas.

Yeah, it was completed. What was it like? What was was.

Just with with the beans and the beans yeah, and the sausage and it was unbelievably good. And the funny thing was, so Jacques Shiaq, who's you know, a big, big figure and someone I actually, despite our disagreements politically from time to time, I liked greatly. But the strange thing about Jacques was he didn't drink wine. He's a French president, didn't drink wine wine, And I don't think it was very interested in food. I mean, I'm and so I was saying to it this. He was talking to me about the airbus three eighteen. I was saying to him, Jacques, you gotta understand this food is absolutely unbelievable. And I think he's always a bit eccentric after a time, because I was calling the chef over and talking to him and saying like, okay, that is a memorable.

I went to Richard and I were living in Paris and David Owen was given a dinner at the k Doors and we were invited. We've been to various dinners here, but that one was there was a footman behind every plasma. Everyone had their own liveried footman behind you in the service, and the grandeur of the palace was it was something to behold. What about in Buckingham Palace? Was that more? Did you ever have to have the Queen to Downing Street or would you always go to the palace?

Well, we did once at the Queen to Downing Street when all myself and the other prime ministers people have been prime minister, we all had a dinner with her. She said, well you all know each other anyway, But yeah, that was I don't remember the details of it.

And now on your travels, you know, coming up to now, do you have a kind of ROUTINEO Do you have a way that you eat when you're traveling When you know you're taking a long flight, do you eat on the flight or.

Do you mean will I mean I will eat on the flight. But I think if I go to anywhere, I mean, you know, for example, in the Middle East, I will try and if I've got some spare time, then I would try and have a dinner in a good restaurant.

And what is it like the food is it?

I mean a lot of the restaurants you get in the in the Middle East will be restaurants where they're serving international food, if you like. But I think one thing that's happening around the world is a lot of you know, you get emerging new cooks and chefs cooking traditional food from their culture, but they're doing it in a much more innovative and exciting and interesting way. I had a actually a great meal not so long ago. Because my institute now works in over forty different countries, we're very busy around the different parts of the world, and we've we have project in Guyana and there was a restaurant there that it was suggested I went to because I said, I knew I had an evening free in the capital city, and so I said, it's a really good restaurant eating And they said, well, you know, there's this place in the place, but the very best food is this place the backyard. But it's not suitable for you because it is literally a backyard. I mean it's someone's it's a small house and it's the backyard. It was a backyard. But the chef was fantastic. There were fruits that I'd literally never tasted before, and the food was just exceptional. And I think wherever you are in the in the world, you can today you will find people who are innovating in food. And I think it's a very you know it's a very good and healthy thing. And I often say to the leaders I'm dealing with, if you are giving a dinner for visiting foreign leaders, serve your local produce and your local cuisine, don't you know. I remember when I first went to China. Used to go there and they would serve you Western food. They'd serve you a very sad looking lamb chop, and I in the conversation with him, saying, you've got one of the great cuisines of the world. Serve that, which I think they do far more now. But it's an important thing if you want to showcase your country. The cuisine is an important part of the culture.

The River Cafe Cafe are all day space and just steps away from the restaurant is now open in the morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti, chiambella and crostada from our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon ice creamed coops and River Cafe classic desserts. We have sharing plates Slumi misti, mozzarella, briusquetto, red and yellow peppers, Fortello, tonato and more. Come in the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar. No need to book see you here. You grew up in Edinburgh, right, Well.

I went to I was born in Edinburgh, I went to school in Edinburgh. My family came from Ireland, but we spent a lot of time in Glasgow, so it was and then Durham in the northeast. So we were kind of a bit of a mix.

And what was the food your memories of food in your house? Who cooked?

So my mother cooked? And I mean I knew it was coming on the podcast and going to speak to you. I could remember some things. And then I asked my brother and my sister for the any of their memories, and oh, my good as a whole there was a whole explosion of yeah, yeah, so and I completely forgotten things like my mum cooked curries, which is quite unusual for British people to do in the nineteen sixties. She introduced me to cachery. She did a wonderful toad in the hole sausage with round it. Yeah, you know, the classics she had.

She did she have a career, did she work?

No? But she was actually a super good cook. Yeah.

Sounds like in your house, what would you do? Come home and start doing your homework and then have dinner around the table or every night. You'd have to know pretty much.

And I always remember when we would go in the seaside was not so far away from us, in the northeast of England, and we'd occasionally go up to from Durham to Northumberland and go by the seaside and the great treat was to stab fish and chips in the in the car at the end of a of a day when usually it was too cold to swim. But yeah, but she was interested in food, and all sorts of memories came back about tell me pineapple upside down cake, baked Alaska she did, which is actually quite I think quite difficult to do probably, But.

What would that be? What year? What decade was that?

It's all been the sixties, early seventies.

And would she have come from a home that cared about food or.

Well, she came from her father who died when she was quite young, was a farmer, actually a Protestant farmer in the south of Ireland or in the Republic of Isoland. And then when he died, her mother remarried a butcher in Glasgow. So we always had you know.

Good that was your step grandfather.

Yeah, that was my step grandfather. And I remember he'd had an accident when he was young, so he was he had hit a limp and walk with a stick. And some of my earliest memories were going down to the Glasgow meat market with him when he would go and you know, you go down these great rows of carcasses hung up and he would tap them with his stick and decide which ones he wanted to take his business. So, yeah, they say, and my grandmother cooked as well. You know, she cooked stews, roasts, I mean, very traditional stuff.

But to grab in a house where one night you had bachel ask and one night you heard pineapple offside down cake and tone the whole and a curry so it was a currie. Do you think that was just from her ambition to cook or.

Did she Yeah, and I think it was because she was I mean, I mean I think at the time not many people were making curries. I mean obviously later it became completely different. I think she had the funny credit cookbook. Yes that's mine.

I have a chef here who has said that she was from Wales. In her she and her mother entertained she had to do those kind of rolls of butter and there was a kind of I think there was probably a resurgence you know, of cooking maybe in the sixties after also probably after the terribleness of rationing.

Yeah, they were rationing the war. Yeah, but people people did. The great leap forward in Britain I think came later the late days nineties. It really started then and then yeah, because I mean Britain say you can eat well. But there was a time when Franklin it was a struggle.

But I never come down hard on British for that because they did come from a war and they came from rushing, and so I always say cut them some slack when people say how food bad food was until.

Yeah, it was also I think there was this thing at the time. I remember I used to have this debate quite often because I represented then a Northeast constituency near to where I was brought up. And you know, now it is much much better, by the way, but at the time when I first came there, I mean, the food was poor. And I used to have this debate with people where they'd say, yeah, but you know, working class people, they're not so interested in fancy food and all the rest of it. And I was just say I can't believe anyone's my interest in food. And you know, it's a ridiculous piece of snobbery to think that if you come from working class background, Okay, maybe you can't afford some of the fancy dishes, but why would you want to eat bad food rather than good.

For And it's very patronizing and as you say.

And it turns out it's wrong because now a lot of these places have got good, good pubs and restaurants and do.

Well, did you go out to restaurants as a child? Would your parents take you out occasionally? They for special occasions or would.

You but yeah, it we'd have to be pretty special occasion. And then when we would go on a holiday to France, for example, we would we would eat in restaurants there and that was that was great.

That So your parents took you to Europe? Did you as a child? Well? Three of you?

Yeah, well three of us and we would drive down there and usually rent a little place. And certainly then in a lot of the small villages. We used to go to the Pyrenees a lot, and the small villages there you would you would go to a restaurant that wouldn't really be a menu. You just sometimes you sit at a long table and they'll just be whatever they had, But it was always good.

What did your father do? What was his? What was his?

So my father was a lawyer. He was also an aspiring politician, and he was a conservative in fact, and he was head of the local Conservative association. And then just before the nineteen sixty four election he was going to become an MP. He'd been selected for a good Conservative seat and unfortunately he had a very serious stroke that kind of ended his career all together. How old was he was forty?

Now he had a stroke when he was forty. How old are you ten?

So it was quite a big moment for our family, obviously, because all our circumstances changed overnight. But I know he then lived for another almost half century.

Actually, I was able to travel to and take you on trips.

Yes, I mean he never fully recovered, but he recovered enough to better work again and so on. But I remember conversations around the table. My earliest political conversations were around that table where they have aspiring conservative politicians would come and pay him a visit because they would want nominations in the local constituencies and so on. Usually young conservative those who wanted to be MPs. So some of my earliest conversations around politics, which is absorbing that, I guess.

Yeah, as a child to be around the table. I did an interview with Valerie Biden, President Biden's sister, and she described having that that was orchestrated in a very There were I think six children, there was a very Catholic Irish family, you know, and that every night there was a conversation about a political issue. Did that meals around the table? Did that matter to you?

Yeah, I mean it was, it was. I guess my earliest political memories were doing that. I mean I wasn't particularly part of the conversation that I was just listening to it, but I was aware of it, and I remember things from it. And I remember some of the people.

That came and your mother would cook them and the children would be there'd be present.

I mean, I was sort of feeling that my mum was not fully signed up to the conservative course. Actually yeah, I mean she never sort of expressed a view particularly on it, but that was always my impression. But you know, the food to which you cook the food.

Obviously, when you were young, we went to boarding school at what age thirteen? Was that a big change for you to go from these very domestic, cozy dinners, family dinners to a boarding school.

I mean the absence of good food was only one of the changes, as it were, it was quite a I mean, look, I always say to be like, I got a good education at the school, so I'm grateful to the school for that. But the food was awful. I'm afraid. The only thing they could get just about got right was the breakfast because you got porridge because it was a Scottish school. And the one thing I do remember is that the bread rolls that they would have would usually be fresh. The breakfast went too bad, but some of the other meals.

Did they force you to eat as well?

Did you have to did you have to finish for you when you're a young teenager growing up hungry? So in the annual eat pretty much enery, which we did, you know during holiday times of course, I'd come back home, so yeah, and you'd have half terms and I remember I also had This is interesting, So my father was actually brought up as a foster child. He was he was his real mother left him with someone because she was on the stage. She was an actress and anyways, a long story, but he never got given back, so he stayed with my foster grandmother. But we used to go through because the schools in Edinbury used to go through to Glasgow where she would live. And she lived in one of the corporation flats in Glasgow, and I remember it was always a treat with her Scotch pie. It's kind of like a mutton insider inside a crusty pie, and you'd have it with baked beans and Scotch pries. I mean it's years since I've had one, but they actually really good, and I remember that you'd have it hot hot, they'd make you know, it's like the Scottish loads. I remember as well. They had a different type of loaf in Scotland where the outside of it would be much the crust would be much firmer and stronger, and it was very good bread to toast.

From fatties coming home and going to that school. You then took a gap year or what did you do?

I took a gap year. I came down to London and I did various things, you know, with music.

But well, tell me what did you do?

Well? For a time I worked in Barker's food store down in the basement, and then I.

Was that in Kensington High School.

It was in Kensington High Street. And then I we myself and a few friends used to manage some groups and put on some gigs and things, and we started to make enough money so I could give up the Barker's job and did that for a year.

And you had your own flat. And do you remember any of the food sperience as your head as a young adventurer in London.

I do remember that.

I can remember a meal.

Remember was that I had a girlfriend whose mum was a fantastic cook. That's good, Yeah, that was good because I wasn't eating a very well during that I wasn't eating there. I wasn't really eating much at all.

Do you remember what you ate? What she cooked?

What I remember is that for the first time in my life I had spinach and broccoli and liked it because we used to do this strange thing back in the old days in Britain where you just boil these things. You just boil them and they just be there boiled and usually over boiled. So it was not a pleasant experience. And I remember the first time thinking it is really tasty.

End of mine was talking about how now that women had careers, this is a long time ago, they didn't have time to cook and they thought what a sad thing that is. But actually vegetables would be better because they wouldn't have the time to boil for an hour. Hurry up, we only have an hour to dinner. Get the cabbage on.

Boil them disintegration. Yeah, cabbage was the other thing I remember. Yeah, that's right. I remember she did the cabbage in her I didn't didn't like cabbage either, and this was the first time it was done with her. I can't remember exactly what was in it, but I remember tasting and thinking, because I've been school, cabbage up to them have been my experience.

Did you but did you ever? We were ever attempted to cook at all? When you were?

When I went to university and for my first period I was it was in the hall, and then I shared a house with one of my friends and myself and my my friend who was a guy, and three women. And I remember, you know, when we all sat down and said, right, everyone's taking turns and cooking. And I said said, wow, I can't cook, And so the women said we're going to show you. So they did. I remember making stews, the traditional kind of spaghetti, boligneers type stuff, maybe the odd roast, but I needed a lot of supervision to be to be absolute frank, it was, I should say that I went to We just joined the European Union in the UK is in the seventies, and one of the great things was you could just go and work in any European country. So I decided to go to Paris. And I just decided to go there. I literally went there. I knew someone who was there. I mean a bit live when I came down to London. I never really been to London before. I just turned up and thought, you know, let's get on with it. And so I went to Paris. I worked in a restaurant there, in a hotel.

Do you remember the name.

The hotel was called the Hotel Superindu La tour was just by the Eiffel Tower. And I was just I was a comedy du bar. I was just a you know, waiter. But in Paris you had well virtually any anywhere and even in the in the cheapest of restaurants. And then at the end of my time, because I then did some sorry, this had been nineteen seventy six, I think. And then I worked for a time for an organization called the Group DISASSINOLSNACNL, which is which was a nationalized insurance company. And I remember the great thing was every morning I was I was this young guy in the office and it was just me. I was just a gopher in the office, and there would be all I think there was mean about twenty women in this office. I don't think. I think I was the only man who was in there. But every morning, before we settled down to work, they would discuss the meals they'd had the night before. I'm just thinking, this is, this is wonderful. And I would be sent off to the local patisserie to get in a croissant, cakes for everyone. And then when I finished that I spent a few weeks, they gave me a bonus and I took a bite. You used to have this thing which you would hire a bike and have a train ticket at the same time. And I went down to the door doin and I cycled round it. And I remember going to places right up in the in the hills and having these fantastic meals, really really great French, very simple French cooking and I think that was when I I've always been interested in but that's when I decided this is something I like, so something that matters to me.

And I think they except, you know, as you say, to be able to arrive in a small town in the middle of France and have a meal that's care, it's part of the culture. Always say that Melbourne has a great food culture. But then when you go to Paris and the taxi curfer can tell you how to poach a seabars or they will tell you in the patisserie, there's no your point about fresh bread that if you want bread for lunch, you go in the morning, and you can want bread for dinner you go in the afternoon. That was the bigetts. Yeah, and you can have a big gette which was crusty or non crusty. You could have a croissant that had butter or no butter. It's just so imbued when you travel, do you do you think about what you're going to eat when you go to.

So with Si, I mean we it was It's always been important to us and when we would go on holiday particularly, we would always trying to used to go a lot to France and we get out that Michelin Guide with the the restaurants that were not the Michelin Star ones, but they used to have this thing called Redar which was good food of reasonable prices, and it was my job was to plan out the itinerary for eating out.

If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you please make sure to rate and review the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, O, wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. We would be a missed opportunity if we didn't talk about food and politics, and we were talking about Jamie Oliver and his campaign for school food. You know that there's a great poster saying today four hundred thousand children in Britain will have the same thing for dinner.

Nothing.

And we found out during COVID when kids didn't go to school, that they weren't being fed and that we live in a country, or we live in a world where we know that there is food inequality. And I know you're dealing a lot with climate. Is that a concern of yours?

Yes, I mean I think one of the reasons why when I was in government we did a lot on early years education. Sure start and school meals indeed with Jamie is because could you not go to school and be hungry, because they won't learn so well, And to give them an appreciation of good food early and healthy food is important. It's going to be important for their later life. And I think we know much more about nutrition today than we ever used to, so I think there's a lot you can do there, and then on a more kind of global scale with some of the work we do with governments. For example, the new president in Indonesia, his principal program is all around school meals for children, and I think there's a recognition in countries where previously there wasn't of the importance of this. But I also think there's a whole set of policies around famine and agriculture which we can develop with the use of technology to a much much better degree today. And there are still many of the countries we work in in Africa, because we're in roughly twenty different countries in Africa and we work with the governments there. But I would say large numbers of those countries will import a lot of basic food stuffs when they've got a large amount of arable land. And then one thing that's in a way almost worse because it deprives them of income. And it's something we work on with some kind of tries, is how you add value to the food that you create. So you will have countries that, for example, will produce the raw commodity of nuts, but then they will be sent to Vietnam or to India to process and then come back into that country. And obviously then it's not merely that you're losing the income from that, but you're losing the higher value added skills that come with that, and thatfore your economy really suffers. So there's a whole series of things I think we need to do today around food, how we grow it, where we grow it. I think there'll be a lot of work done on drought resistant crops, which are going to be necessary for the future because of climate is changing. And how you raise productivity when you look at different countries equal potential, but one country will be producing from the same land four or five times the amount of crops.

And so this brings us to your book on leadership, Tony Blair, Lessons for the twenty first Century. So this is a book that was published in September. I would love you to tell us about it.

Yeah, So it's an unusual book in a wait because when I said to the publishers, I want to write a book about the lessons I've learned from governing and leadership, not just in my time as Prime Minister, but in the work that i've been doing now for the last seventeen years with governments around the world. And I think they struggled at first to think of whether a book on governing could be of any interest to anyone. But I've tried to write it therefore, in a style that is short chapters, just about what I think of the lessons of leadership and really apply whether you're in government or you're running a country, a company, a community center. Family, Yeah, parenting, parenting. Absolutely.

I was reading it and I thought these are.

Someone else said that to me.

Actually, yeah, about listening, about being honest, this is about family, to be about friends.

Well, most of the learnings have come through mistakes. I have to say. When you come into a position of leadership, when you first come in, you know you know nothing, so you're very open to learning. The second stage of leadership is you've then got your feet under the table. You've been doing a whole lot of stuff. And the risk is you think you know everything and you stop listening. The thing that you should aspire to is to get to the third stage of leadership, where you realize what you do know and you realize what you don't know, you understand the difference, and you're back to listening again. And it's the dangerous when you get stuck on two.

I have to say that when we knew that we had to close the restaurant for COVID, and we didn't know where to know how we do it, and I thought, we have to get all the staff together, it's about leadership and tell them that they're not going to come to work. We don't know for how long weeks or months or this was such a serious thing that what we were going to do and how are we going to do it? And so we said, okay, get everyone to come in at four o'clock and we'll sit down. And I went, I googled how to tell yourself bad news.

Yeah, I guess what.

Harvard Business School. I told you.

Of course, how to give your staff bad news.

You know, the first thing you do is tell them what's going to happen. Then you tell them step two is how it will affect them, and then number three was what you're going to do to help them. It was just but as you say, I've been working in this restaurant for a long time, and you say, the first step is to know that you know, and then the second one is to know that you don't know, and the third one is to get some help. So I think it's a very very important book and everybody listening should buy it and read it and write to me and tell me how much you like it. When we're going to eat in the River Cuffet have dinner, but before you do go, we do have a question that we do ask everyone, and it is about food. Is teaching about the culture. If food is feeding your children or going to a state dinner, or entertaining the queen, it's also comfort when you do need comfort for it. Is there a food that you would actually go to.

I would go for something very simple. I still can cook a decent omelet. I would do that

Probably tell me that and the bread would be fresh, The bread would definitely be Thank you, Jim

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