Dad
Dad is Thoby Kennet, who lives and works in London, England, with his wife and three children. His chequered past included spells working in public transport, making harpsichords and trumpets, playing in only-just-forgotten white boy funk bands and helping setting up a political party (the SDP). He has been a music and video producer, a picture researcher, a PR man and a yacht-fitter as well. He is intellectual in tastes, but not thoughts.
Thoby’s interest in food was set in metaphorical aspic when as a child his dashing mother drove him into Soho to Lina Stores (still there, a little faded, but oh so authentic) on Brewer Street in her Golden Chariot – a gold Sunbeam Alpine Mark 3. No restrictive parking made such joyous outings most practical in those days – the early ’60s – and he would return home to Bayswater with fresh ravioli, chunks of Parmesan and the necessary ingredients to bring to life the recipes in Elizabeth David’s Italian recipe books. If y ou aren’t familiar with those, please check out Dad’s bookshop, which we’ll announce very soon.
As a young man saving up to travel far, far away, on answering an ad for owner/drivers of four door saloons, Thoby arrived at a minicab office in Ladbroke Grove in his lightly crumpled blue Citroen 2CV, and was taken aback to be laughed at. He was only allowed to do parcel deliveries; which went very well until the brakes of the Citroen proved inadequate to stop the car at Marble Arch with a mighty butcher’s block on board.
Thoby’s joint interests in transport and food led eventually to a happy and innovative business idea – the mail order potato. Or to put it another way, Thoby surfed the first wave of the internet devising home delivery services for organic and other authentic fresh foods in Britain. At one point, his Fresh Food Company had the broadest and biggest selection of fresh food available for home delivery, nationwide, organic or conventional, anywhere in the world.
The Fresh Food Co closed down in 2007. Since then, Thoby has been a freelance writer, journalist, and photographer, and a consultant and project manager. He now also runs an internet content and web design company with his wife, the novelist and writer Josa Young. They live in Hanwell, near the River Brent.
Dad’s Cookbook is the result of the many years Thoby passed combining family life with a policy of total immersion in fresh organic foods. As owners of one of the first organic box schemes, Thoby and Josa composed hundreds of recipes to help their customers take full advantage of the wonderful food the were receiving each week throughout the year. The clear writing style and pithy approach to ingredients and cooking found in Fresh Food Co’s newsletters were key parts in the success of the company. Thoby Kennet is revisiting those recipes, and interspersing them with new material, often from guest contributors, in Dad’s Cookbook.
We hope that you enjoy the food discussed and try out the recipes; please do blog and tell your friends about them too. We want to be twittered, or tweeted, or twatted or whatever. Dads don’t always find it easy to do their best by their kids; we want to help make the kitchen an area of family and internet life where dads can find the recipes and ideas they need, quickly and in an easily used form, and pass on something special to their hungry young ‘uns.
