Baking from a foreign cookbook

During the summer, Melissa wrote about cookbooks she likes called Ladies, A Plate.  The title refers to the tactful code at the bottom of a community event notice in New Zealand for attending ladies to bring along some baked goods to share. 

We know where this is going, right?  I had to have these books.  Or at least one of them.  For a start pretty much everything Melissa does or gets interested in is awesome, and also, the custom of catering en masse is traditional to the neighbourhood where I grew up, too.  Bonus: did you click on the Melissa link and look at the covers?  Please. 

Right away when my copy of the original book arrived I spotted the cuteness of the recipe titles - 'bumble bees', 'butterfly cakes', 'coffee cloud cake' - and in particular the presence of 'Nainoma Bars'.  This recipe is immediately recognizable as what is known in my circle as 'Nanaimo Bars', after a town in British Columbia, but also 'You Name It Brownies,' and even 'Johnny No-Name Bars' because they are known under so many different titles.  (graham/coconut/butter/cocoa crust, vanilla pudding-enriched icing for filling, melted chocolate poured over top.)

I love this book and have been making recipes from it, none of them yet keepers but all - and collectively too - fascinating.  Like, who knew you could have so many ginger-based recipes in one book and have them all be different?

And another cool thing: dissolving the baking powder in milk or water so it's part of the liquids added to the dry ingredients.  Where I live, the baking powder gets sifted in with the dry stuff.

Those are 'Friendly Road' buns, named after the depression-era radio show where the recipe was first shared.  By my local standards, they are not a bun but rather a tall satisfying cookie, sweetened noticeably with a little addition of Golden Syrup (sweeter than pure corn syrup and generally one of the most delicious things imaginable: try it on pancakes.)

These are Ginger Kiss halves, served without being sandwiched over icing because who has time? They poured out onto the cookie sheet like cake batter, but puffed up prettily into a soft but firmer-than-cake morsel.  I balked at the amount of ginger the recipe called for and halved it, but of course it came out very delicately-flavoured so another time I would make it as directed.

There are recipes in the book I would never bake, but which serve to point out how incredibly dedicated those New Zealand moms were about treating their families with special tarts and mini eclairs and elaborate cakes.  Actually I could never make any other recipes in the book and it would still have been worth buying it - the pictures are soooooo wonderful! and the introductions to where the recipe came from or how it was adapted by dozens of different bakes!  it's everything I like about social history. 

Try a copy yourself and see what I mean - and if you make something I haven't but should, let me know.

Trixie's Household Tips

Man, I can't believe how many household and safety tips got written into Trixie Beldon. I'm reading The Red Trailer Mystery and here's what I've got so far:

Pantry supper idea - heat dried canned beef fried in oil, add a can of mushroom soup, add a can of peas if you're lazy about pot-washing, and smear over toast. (I haven't had breakfast yet, so I'm hungry enough to think this sounds pretty good.)

Saving a drowning person - swim out but instead of grabbing, throw a towel for your quarry to grab, tell them to flip onto their back, and tow them to shore - that way they won't flail and drown you too.

Peeling an onion without tears - do it under running water. (no word on how you chop it without tears, though.)

Cooling a minor burn - mix baking soda and warm water and smooth it over the affected area.

I love how Julie Campbell slips this stuff in without slowing the story. Makes me think I'd be pretty smart to acquire the other ones she wrote, and not just self-indulgent...

Trixie Beldon

I found these at a thrift store yesterday (my last thrift store run of the summer season, sob!):


Also, a boy-directed horseriding mystery entry that had been owned by the same girl who had the Trixies; I passed on the girl-turns-mermaid book from the same era, which I still sort of regret and am trying to get over.

These series books were pretty lame in a lot of ways I know, though obviously the concept still does well today, but when I look at illustrations like these


I can't help but remember the comparative innocence in which a child could grow up in the 50s and 60s. Obviously, not knowing about seamier parts of life leaves you more vulnerable to experiencing them when you might choose to avoid them if only you knew more. On the other hand, freshly back from picking up fruits and veg as I am? I gotta say I am glad I wasn't checking out of the grocery store with my 40-something mother at a time when Cosmo is considered an impulse purchase to be displayed directly above the batteries.

Seriously, most of the headlines on this month's issue are worse than Barbie!

(disclaimer: Barbie did not teach me personally that social success can be obtained only by fitting a certain mold, but I do blame her for my time- and energy-wasting love of putting together outfits.)

Anyway this is it, my last hurrah. I've got my work cut out for me this week to get ready for my return to the writing life, but I am carving out a few last bits of summer reading time to laze in a chair with my jeans rolled up and my hair in ponytails to solve a mystery about a red trailer. Yum!

Classics Illustrated

An awful lot of my childhood memories involve books. Most of those include food with the book - tea and cookies for example, or red Jell-O, not quite solid yet - but one that doesn't is the time I spent reading my older siblings' issues of Classics Illustrated.

I would pick one out from the shelves my dad mounted on the little bit of corner wall between the doors to the bathroom and my brothers' bedroom, and read it either standing up or slowly slumping to the floor. Certainly I never made it down the hall to my own room, or to the sofa downstairs.

If you haven't experienced Classics Illustrated, they're terribly illustrated comic book synopses of great novels - I still shudder at the bent faces of Jane Eyre's companions at boarding school - that somehow manage to be completely compelling. The good writing is lost, but all the action remains, and I guess that's the core of storytelling after all.

Anyway this spring I got a little obsessed with rereading some (not Jane Eyre) and eventually wandered onto eBay for some seriously competitive bidding. The last of my winnings arrived today, including both Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein, but here is the first shipment:


This was one of my favourites. The covers are always beautiful - no comparison to what's inside - but The Moonstone is so exciting, even weird drawings can't ruin it. I can't wait to read it again.


These two are also high on the list of must-reads. I did sit up with The Woman In White a couple of nights ago - it certainly captured the highlights and then, of course, there were the biographies of Alexander Graham Bell and the lady who founded Christian Science in the back.


These two, not so much. But I'm sure I'll get to them.


I've never heard of this one, and I'm going to make time for it soon because - flying ships and trains? How can it not be awesome?

Seasonal

There are a couple of books I like to read when the weather is really, really hot in summer - To Kill a Mockingbird and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - because the settings are so hot it makes me feel cool by comparison. But the other day when it was hot for the fifth day in a row I suddenly remembered strawberries.

In particular, the Jane Austen novel in which some officious female character is taken out for group strawberry-picking on a hot day and goes on and on and on about how lovely until she switches to how insupportable, and I thought: must reread those novels, again.

Isn't it amazing to think of a writer being timeless enough to appeal to readers hundreds of years hence, not just once per reader but repeatedly? Of course, she writes all those wicked asides, saying exactly what anybody of sense would think, about people the like of which still walk among us today - so there's that.


I started with Emma. I'm pretty sure it's not the strawberry-picking book but it does have a picnic that ends badly. And strawberries are in season so I can supply them.

Being read to

Ages ago when I knew I was going to have to spend a whole day tearing up carpet and I was sick to death of all the music I had, I went to the library and got a book on tape.

(am I dating myself here?)

I dragged my boom box

(again: okay, we're talking 1997)

over to the area in question and magically spent the day listening to the story of a British newspaperman who moved to a farm in Cornwall with his artist wife after WWII and spent the rest of his life writing about the commercial flower growing operation they ran there, in books she illustrated.

Along the way they acquired a cat, which was the point of this particular book, and I was so smitten with the angle he took on this otherwise minor event that I got a bunch of his other books out of the library to read.

Can I remember now the title or author, particularly now that I'd like to read or hear it again? Of course not.

However, I did remember how nice it was to be read to, and when some knitting friends suggested I try audiobooks rather than old movies as accompaniment to this yarn obsession that has beset me, I got more or less on it.

Which is how I ended up on the elliptical machine at my gym on Monday listening to the opening chapter of Queen Lucia, courtesy of Librivox and the recommendation of my friend Kathi. Between the music and the people walking around and my own internal monologue

(entirely related to why exactly did I forget my water bottle and how many minutes more had I programmed in already and wasn't it getting a bit warm? and so forth)

it was hard to follow, but yesterday I tried it again with my knitting in hand and - yes. Got it. Loved it.

Today: it's back to the gym, with Queen Lucia and a bottle of water. Let's hope Chapter Three gets me through more than 15 minutes of ellipticizing, shall we? And also that I remember the water bottle.

Somebody else's life in France

A friend mentioned she was reading My Life in France, Julia Child's memories of the early years of her marriage (spent, oddly enough, in France) and I suddenly felt I must read it too. So I am, and I can hardly put it down!

I never saw any of Julia Child's cooking shows or other TV appearances and I'm only registering that a movie was made of this book because there's picture on the cover of my copy of Meryl Streep in a market and wearing a pink cardi on her shoulders. So that's not what grabs me. And it's not the food stuff - I have no aspirations toward that level of cooking - or the locale, really.

It's that voice. The voice of the narrator is everything for me. And it's obvious that Julia Child was a person you'd want very much to know, if you could. It's invigorating to read about somebody so passionate about a subject, and so energized about learning, and so focused on the fun of it all.

Bonus: she met a lot of artists and writers and conditions generally in postwar Paris that I know from my other reading, which grounds things for me and adds new perspective.

This book will go on my gift-giving list. But not this edition, with its Meryl Streep cover and complete lack of photos inside of the people being written about. That's a rare oversight in a memoir and what a loss it is, when those people are so fascinating.

Brown paper packages

A month or two ago I heard about a book that has been mostly in print for more than a hundred years. Which is to say it went out for a while, recently, but has been brought back and can now be bought new.

Since it's about needlework (current obsession), and clearly would be talking about the art as practised a hundred years ago (longtime obsession) I decided I needed a copy for my library.

However, reviews of the book at Amazon clearly indicated that earlier editions are to be preferred, because the quality of illustration is just so much better.

So I got onto an online bookseller of used books and tracked down a 1920s copy for really quite a bearable amount of money and ordered it, and after some time - it was living in England when I got my impulse - it arrived.

There were several layers to unwrap before I got here:


and then there was a cardboard case, still intact:


Don't you love how the letter on the spine of the case would tell you what book is inside, while keeping said book dust-free? The title, of course, shows on the opposite side:


And the cover itself is still clear and beautiful.


But none of that prepared me for the illustrations:


As promised. And this may be all I need when it comes time for me to darn my first pair of handknit socks:


It's a lovely, lovely book and now that I have it, I can't stop thinking about the person who had it first and took such care of it, and wondering how long it was had before being passed on, and how many hands it passed through before it came to mine. I hope I will do all of them proud.

Rainbow reading

I've been staying up way too late until yesterday, when I got a new book in the mail:


No time to look at it until the day was over, so I ended it early, and boy oh boy, the ideas I got. Wouldn't it be cool to have embroidered birds or trees on your canvas summer sneakers? Or Art Deco lettering on your tea towels?

This book so does not bode well for my writing career.

Or, if I look at the upside - maybe it bodes well for a plethora of made Christmas gifts in 2010?

A book I can't put down

Saturday I glanced at my library's Best Bets shelf as I passed and

WHAM

stopped dead to pick up 19th Century Embroidery Techniques, by Gail Marsh.

That might not seem like much of a compelling title to the average procrastinator, but the cover shares several images of beautiful and seriously labour-intensive embroidery and quilting.

This told me two things:

a/ the book might inspire an idea for something I could use to procrastinate productively should the writing bog down this winter, and anyway I don't expect to have any quiet writing time until Tuesday so I have little pockets of time to fill in

b/ any book talking about historic embroidery techniques is going to be talking about historic lives of women. And I am a sucker for social history.

The book so did not disappoint that I stopped reading about halfway through and ordered a copy for my own library, along with the author's earlier work, 18th Century Embroidery Techniques.

All of the textiles in the book are gorgeous, and quite a lot of it is work I can imagine seeing on tiny happy, or Quite A Handful - it's that vibrant and contemporary. There is, in fact, quite a lot of incidental history, and some really touching moments.

For example, the book includes pictures of one Nancy Horsfall's wedding bedcover, made in 1833. It's a bright and cheerful with an embroidered message, part of which reads, less cheerfully,

When I am dead and in my grave,
and all my bones are gone to dust
Take up this work and think of me!
When I am quite forgot.

Done and done, Nancy, and not in a sad way either. She was an artist!

A year later Nancy made a cot cover of similar design that includes the phrase "Welcome sweet babe."

I think Nancy must have married for love and looked forward to having children to play with, don't you?

Looking back for future procrastinations

I found this book the other day when I was clearing out my storage room, trying (and failing) to find space for current and future procrastinatory materials:


I Remember The One-Room School, by Myrtle Fair. It's full of first-person anecdotes from students and teachers alike, plus some bonus photographs:


I just love stuff like this. Of course the book covers many decades but it has a lot of material from the 1920s and 30s, my favourites for reading about - those two blocks of time were such stark contrasts for each other, and considering it was such a terrible time, the Depression was a rich and creative one too.

In another blast from the past, last week my mum persuaded me that it is time I took home with me a mug that my aunt and uncle gave me for Christmas one year when I still lived with her and dad. I have drunk a lot of tea from this mug:


and am having more this morning as I ponder where the book and another little problem are leading me.

Yesterday I had to hit the mall to size down on something (always a happy problem for a chocoholic like moi) and looked at wool cardigans. I really, really need a wool cardi and really, really need to not knit one myself - I want to get back to some serious writing in 2010 and cardis require a serious time commitment. But I didn't like any of the ones I saw.

Then, at the grocery store, I paused at the magazine rack and picked up a sewing magazine with a pattern for making a ladies' sweater out of a man's felted one. Hello! Still swimming in felted sweaters here!

So I'm thinking... if I make my cardi, but sew it rather than knitting it, it might be as fast as a four-hour possibly fruitless shopping trip for just the right one, yes?

And I'm thinking I should have bought that magazine when I saw it. Or maybe I can just wing a pattern myself, like I ended up doing for the mittens. The hardest part is always the sleeves anyway, and I have no shortage of those:

Merry Christmas

I don't think there is any nicer gift at Christmas - given loved ones to spend time with - than books to read and chocolate to eat while you do it.


This book, In A Unicorn's Garden, is a fascinating mixture of social history and medieval garden planner all wrapped up in a beautiful binding - the perfect companion for a day stuck home with a wicked cold!

Here's hoping your own day is much more mobile and just as pleasant.

The holiday before the holiday

An unfortunate incident with a vehicle that was moving rather too quickly has me staying out with a dear friend this week.

It's not so much fun for my friend, of course, but I'm having a fabulous time. My duties are meal preparation and cleanup, small amounts of fetching, and much maneuvering of a wheelchair. The list of perks, however, are much longer. Lots and knitting and chatting and really good sleeps, and - thanks in part to my laziness/wisdom in bringing out meals that require heating only and no pans to wash - reading.

My friend likes an interesting book, and a diverse array of friends who are happy to indulge her, so her shelves offer a large and mixed selection.

Yesterday, for example, I was attracted by the title "The Full Cupboard of Life" which has proved to be a mystery from Alexander McCall Smith and quite enjoyable as an accompaniment for late-night milk-and-chocolate consumption.

Today, I noticed some anothologies: Penguin's Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales, a collection of memoirs from 26 different writers called My Wedding Dress, and highlights from the archives of Maclean's magazine titled Canada in the Fifties.

I don't think I have ever spent the last few days before Christmas Eve sitting on a sofa and dreaming over books, but golly. I gotta make sure it doesn't take a car accident to get me doing it again next year.

Launching in 3, 2, 1...

Tonight is Binnie's book launch!

Well, one of them. The one I can actually get to.

It's a wonderful novella she's written, Harbour View. Much to weep over, and feel glad for at the same time, which to me is rather the point of literary fiction. If you can't get to the launch, you really should treat yourself to a copy of the book.

Just being there will be a treat for me; I always feel so inspired at literary outings. Usually I come home buzzing with so many ideas, the next day I sit down at my desk and hammer away at the keyboard without having to pause between any of them.

This would be something of a problem tomorrow, as I will have no time to myself whatsoever, but still. Given my track record with writing lately, even a problem would be something of a blessing.

The Owl Pen

Yesterday as I was scrambling out the door I checked for the mail and found a parcel in the box. A book!

and I hadn't ordered any books!

Of course, I had to be late then, and stop to open it up. Inside I found The Owl Pen, by Kenneth M. Wells, beautifully illustrated by his wife, Lucille Oille.


Confusinger and confusinger - until I read the packing slip and saw it had been ordered for me by my cousin, the one who is so vastly clever at finding all the best books.

If the first page is anything to go by, I'm in for a real treat with this one, but what a treat it's been already. I don't think there's anything better than a lovely vintage hardcover book, sent by surprise to your very own mailbox.

(except maybe reading it over tea and biscuits.)

All caught up

Finally!

I've been, at best, three weeks behind on my New Yorkers for almost a year, after many more years than that of being, at best, ahead by five days (at worst, six and a half). But no more! I'm caught up, and halfway through the current issue, which arrived yesterday.

Ahhhhh, normalcy.

I am guessing by this fact, and also by the rather large novel on my nighttable (Cloudspitter, by Russell Banks, recommended by Binnie) that I am reading again.

However, I noticed this morning a growing obsession with reading this book, and that does not bode well for a return to literary, as opposed to crafty, life.

Oh well - at least I'll always have chocolate...

Weekend reading

I have a great family, one of whom is a cousin living far away - one of those people you particularly wish didn't, because she's always introducing me to wonderful things that I wouldn't otherwise know about.

Well, just now she's in town, and she brought me books!


The House by the Thames views nearly 450 years of London history from the lens of a particular house and the people who lived in it over that time - a fascinating concept and one I can't wait to dive into.

War in Val D'Orcia is the diary of Iris Origo, an English woman who married an Italian landowner and was raising their family there when WWII pitted his country against hers. Apparently she helped to save many lives and again... can't wait.

I wouldn't want to be able to read three books at once because none of them would last long enough, but... The Morville Hours is also tugging at me. It traces the year in a garden at a house in the English countryside through the format of a medieval Book of Hours, and its author was a rare-book librarian before she became a full-time gardener and writer. I know the journey through this book will be sufficiently intriguing to feed positive dreaming and peaceful enough to lead me to sleep.

So much better than the ghost story collections I've been scaring myself with the last few sleepless night, don't you think?

Reading vs. Writing

It's such a beautiful summer day I can't help remembering being 10 or so and enrolling in a summer reading program at the Grimsby Public Library. The arrangement was that you read a book, then told a librarian about it, and she (it was always a she) gave you a bookmark. I think the library was hoping kids would read five or ten books over the summer and become good library customers.

Well, like many other nerds in the making, I made the library the cornerstone of my daily routine. I'd have breakfast and walk to the library, tell the librarian all about--and I mean, ALL about--the book I'd read the day before, get my bookmark, and head off to the stacks for that day's reading material. Then the next day I'd start all over.

It can't have been much more than a week before the librarians would see me coming, thrust a bookmark at me, and send me on my way. Anything to avoid having a breathless kid retelling a story in minute detail.

Now if only I'd used that summer to write as well as read, I could be outside right now, cutting up branches. Ooh la la!

Research is a Beautiful Thing

They don't teach this trick in Mr. Zippy's Writer School, so I'll spill it here instead: when writing something hard, be sure to include lots of places and times you don't know a thing about. That way you can always read other people's books and still be 'working'.

I did that last night - reading other people's books. Not research! That's something I actually *need* to do, so naturally I'm avoiding that. But sitting and reading for a change was TERRIFIC, not a bit of that 'a' word I'm avoiding.

Today however I noticed that the ice cream diet did not produce its usual thrilling results. Perhaps the key weight loss factor was never sitting down?

Following a hunch, I did a search on the phrase "And then she sat down" in Google Books to see how sitting impacts my writing. (Yes, I'm typing this standing up.) 669 hits! Out of how many scanned books?? I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

The link for the hitlist is in the delay tactics list if you're trying to kill time. My gift to you.