Lifestyle

Those expensive pods will bring their heavenly aroma to syrups, compotes, baked goods, desserts – and even your underwear drawer Can you do anything with vanilla pods once you’ve scraped out the seeds? They’re so expensive. Jo, by email “I put them in my knicker drawer,” says Sarah Lemanski, owner of Nova Bakehouse in Leeds. “They scent it nicely, that’s for sure.” But, culinarily speaking, and beyond custards and the like, Lemanski often uses them in vanilla syrup: “Chop the pod quite small, then dry-toast it with some of the sugar for the syrup – I use a 2:1 sugar-to-water ratio – to give it body.” The Guardian’s own Benjamina Ebuehi is very much in agreement, and keeps a stash of said vanilla syrup in the fridge to fuel her matcha habit: “I can’t be paying £6 for one every day.” (It would work well in iced coffee, too.) “Even when you’ve scraped out as much as you can from a pod, there are always some seeds left inside,” Ebuehi says, so there’s still so much flavour to be had in there. Perhaps the easiest way to keep the love alive is by sticking a spent pod in a fruit compote: “Once that’s cooled, get it in the fridge, but leave the pod in there, so it continues to seep out that flavour.” You could apply a similar tactic to jam. Got a culinary dilemma? Email [email protected] Continue reading...

The Guardian Lifestyle • 7 hours ago

All the joy of peach cobbler, with none of the work. The post Frozen Peaches and Cream Is My New Heatwave Obsession appeared first on Camille Styles .

Camille Styles • 9 hours ago

Seeds are packed into shop-bought pots, meaning they compete and wear themselves out. The best bet is to divide and conquer The problem We’ve all done it: picked up a lush, generous-looking pot of basil from the supermarket – full of promise and pesto plans, and within a fortnight it has collapsed into a dried-out, leggy mess. You assume you did something wrong. In reality, the plant was set up to fail before it even reached your kitchen. The hack That full, bushy pot is not actually one plant; it is dozens of basil seedlings crammed into a single container to look bushy on the shelf. Packed that tightly, they compete for light, water and root space, and exhaust themselves within days. The fix is to divide the overcrowded mass into smaller, separated clumps and give each one room to actually grow. Continue reading...

The Guardian Lifestyle • 10 hours ago

Surfboards, knee-length shorts, wetsuits, flip-flops: all have been seen on the catwalks this year. But what do actual surfers think of the trend? We went to Newquay to find out Summer is here, and with it the annual scramble to decide what kind of season we’re supposed to be having. What will it be? On offer in 2026 are “ freaky sandal summer ”, which requires you to wear weird shoes, and “ euromaxxing” , which is presumably about making the most of the easyJet sale without considering the environmental impact. Maybe “ poet girl summer ” is for you, whereby you listen to Gracie Abrams while wearing a silk camisole. Or simply “ no mascara summer ”, which I won’t spell out but sounds quite appealing. The most plausible contender is “board short summer”, a phrase coined by Marie Claire , which broadly involves dressing like you surf even if you’ve never set foot on a board. Continue reading...

The Guardian Lifestyle • 10 hours ago

Narzny McKinney and her surrogate, Sarah, discuss their experience – and the misconceptions that surround the practice • UK surrogacy law ‘creaking at seams’ as demand rises sharply After struggling with infertility and eight unsuccessful rounds of IVF, Narzny McKinney had two precious embryos left – her last chance to have biological children. After considering her options, she made the decision to find a surrogate to carry her child for her. “We were eight years down the line at this point and I just didn’t want to risk anything going wrong,” she said. “It was a tough decision but it was absolutely the right thing to do.” Continue reading...

The Guardian Lifestyle • 10 hours ago

The seven inhabited isles off the North Sea coast, part of a Unesco world heritage site, are a sanctuary for wildlife – with great hotels and restaurants too ‘Can you hear that?” my guide Andrea Wellmeyer asks as I sink a little deeper into the wet ground, cold mud seeping between my toes. When the wind drops, I detect a faint but distinct crackling, similar to the rustle of a sweet wrapper or the bubbling of sparkling water. “That’s the Wattknistern ,” she says, “a natural phenomenon caused by the tens of thousands of mud shrimp that live here.” We’re standing in the Wadden Sea mudflats on Norderney, an island just off Germany’s North Sea coast. It’s Friday evening at low tide. In the town centre, bars are pumping with music, but here, just 15 minutes along the southern edge of the island, it’s a completely different story. Continue reading...

The Guardian Lifestyle • 13 hours ago