Features from the Guardian newspaper are listed below but pieces in the Observer Food Monthly 'Word of Mouth' blog are updated daily and best viewed through their own index.

Lamb club
Some men like to get together in their homes to watch sport on the television, some gather at a pub for a drink or maybe a quiz. Others enjoy poker or literary discussion in a book group, but for me and a small group of neighbours it's dismembering a sheep. Welcome to Lamb Club. 

Who needs pubs?
I've been entirely unable to find anyone with a good word to say about home brew and yet there is something very tempting in the idea. It is, after all, only a simple cooking process. I'm not expecting to produce something that will compete with a Californian microbrewery or a burgundian chateau, I just want a drink that will compare to the stuff coming out of the pumps and bottles at my local pub..

The old ones are always the best
However you characterise our national relationship with food you can't deny that we like to read about it. Cookery books by celebrity chefs, tied-in to television programmes and often ghost-written, have been a constant fixture in the UK bestseller lists for many years now.

Though food publishing has never been in sleeker health, this is not necessarily good news for lovers of cook books. The latest celebrity offering might make an admirable gift for that hard-to-please relative but it's rarely the kind of thing you want to curl up in a corner with, and it seems publishers may be taking notice.

A Spaniard in the works
His restaurant, El Bulli, has been named best in the world - for the fourth time. He's led the revolution that has demolished the culinary supremacy of France and become an icon to creative chefs around the world.
An exclusive interview with Ferran Adrià.

What's in your fridge?
Twenty years ago we didn’t think about fridges much. They were small, cupboard-like, and fitted under the kitchen counter. They smelled a bit. They had a ‘freezer compartment’ - usually a solid berg of frost in which was set a broken ice-tray and an escaped oven chip - and they made that reassuring ‘thunkety humm’ noise at odd times throughout the night....

In search of the 'God Shot'
I bought my first espresso machine in the 1990s. It was a La Pavoni Europiccola, a small, retro-looking chrome job with a big lever you yanked down to express the coffee. It looked great on the counter in a Patrick Bateman sort of way but it made vile coffee, was a bugger to clean and constantly threatened to explode in a shower of steam and shrapnel. When, one glorious day, it blew a gasket, I seized the opportunity to upgrade...

The future's orange
Twelve kilos doesn't sound too much. A dozen jars maybe. It all seems manageable - until I load the damn things on to the kitchen table. I phone Fi Kirkpatrick, author of Debrett's New Guide to Easy Entertaining, who is to marmalade, what Howard Marks is to marijuana. "I'll be right over," she says.

Ready, steady, eat
Do you remember how it used to feel leaving a good restaurant? The endorphin-induced glow of wellbeing, tightness about the waistband, the pleasing alcoholic buzz and a feeling of rightness with the world. That seems to be happening less and less these days. It's far more common to find ourselves back out on the pavement, 90 minutes after arrival, chillingly sober, wondering what to do next.

Bringing home the bacon
Washed clean of the cure and patted dry with a towel, the bacon looks like something in an 18th-century still life. The fat is creamy, the lean centre dark and lustrous. Bacon is unique among meats in its power to move the soul. Even sworn vegetarians can be swayed by bacon ... if they say they can't they're lying.

Things to do with soggy veg
We've inherited the idea that stew is cheap, nourishing and virtuous. We start with an outsized cauldron, a load of cheap meat and veg and keep adding ingredients until it looks right. Nothing beats that Little House on the Prairie feeling that you've made enough food to feed everyone on the homestead through a cruel winter - nothing except the realisation that there are only two of you, in a suburban semi and that you'd probably rather eat the dog than another bowl of stew.

A barbie world
Perhaps it is the importance of the social ritual that keeps us barbecuing. I'm all for events that bring families and friends together for shared meals, although, try as I might, I can't think of any civilised culture where a public performance of making dreadful food taste worse would be regarded as hospitable.

A cut above
I've studied drawings purporting to explain the cuts of meat, but I've never understood them. I imagine they are about as much use in trying to find your way around a carcass as one of those ceramic phrenology heads would be to a brain surgeon. However, watching the side transformed into neat piles of recognisable cuts suddenly made everything drop into place.

"We can fit you in - after 10pm"
It's hell trying to book a table, chefs and waiters hate serving up lovey-dovey food and restaurateurs see it as an easy way to rake in the cash - no wonder Valentine's is the worst night of the year to dine out.

Are you a gourmet snob?
You delight in dining off-menu. Your knives are worth more than your car. 10 tell-tale signs that you love food a little too much.