Table Talk
Who's the king of the jungle in your kitchen?
How do you visualise your work colleagues? Are they a right bunch of animals? Now you can find out for sure thanks to an online quiz by equipment supplier Lockhart, which says being in the kitchen is a bit like being in a zoo. Get your team to answer seven multiple-choice questions and you'll find out who is a preening peacock, a saucy sea lion or a cool and confident cheetah. Go to www.kitchenzoo.co.uk.
Daredevils dine out on cook-chill salmon sorbet
The food was cold, the service was slow, but there was no way a pair of daredevils could fault the view or send the food back. Ex-SAS soldier Bear Grylls and Royal Navy officer Alan Veal broke the world record for the highest formal dinner party by tucking into salmon in a hot-air balloon 7km above Salisbury Plain. In temperatures reaching minus 45C the food tasted like "one big sorbet", according to Grylls.
Don't stay here if you walk in your sleep
A hotel designer has brought childhood fantasies to life by building a tree-house hotel in Germany. For between £100 and £150 a night, guests have the luxury of staying in a room built on the branches of a tree. The Zentendorf Tree House in Saxony offers five rooms connected by narrow walkways and built into the branches of a black locust tree. The rooms come with small balconies, electric lights and shared bathrooms. Designer Juergen Bergmann said: "It's every kid's dream to live in a tree house, and many adults never lose that desire."
Please join us in a glass of liquid gold
A businessman paid £32,000 for a rare bottle of Dalmore 62 Single Highland Malt Scotch Whisky at the Pennyhill Park hotel, Bagshot, Surrey. Only 12 of the bottles were ever produced, in 1943, and one was sold at auction in 2002 for almost £26,000. The hotel said the man bought the whisky and drank almost all of it in one night with some friends. The bar manager, who negotiated the £32,000 price tag, was lucky enough to be offered a glass and said it was "the most beautiful thing" he had ever tasted.
