Book Christmas Advent Calendar: Day 4: The Taste, and cookbook pleasure

Book Christmas Advent Calendar Day 4:  The Taste, and cookbook pleasures

So for today's advent calendar book treat, I want to talk about Nigella Lawson and her cookbooks.  Nigella is currently appearing on The Taste on ABC  TV, the 3rd season premiering tonight.  Nigella has been one of my cooking heroes since I lived in England in 2000.  She was just starting her cookbook career at that time, and appearing on her tv cook shows.  The first cookbook I bought by her was Nigella Bites, her third cookbook.  In that cookbook I made several recipes, the Aromatic Lamb Shank Stew being one of our favourites from this book.  I went on to buy almost every book she has put out.  For me, her best books are How To Eat (several recipes in this book are regular features in our kitchen), Feast (food that celebrates, so many good recipes in this book), and my favourite, Nigella Kitchen.  In this book is our favourite crisp chicken cutlets (which I call parmesan chicken) recipe that the kids adore, buttermilk scones which even the kids like (they are picky about scones), Ed's Mother's Meatloaf which is spectacular with the hardboiled eggs in the middle.  In How to Eat is the best meatball recipe for kids, and chocolate lava cakes (to name a few).  Easter Egg Nest cake which I have featured on this blog is her recipe.  She is a divine cook. 

One of the things I love about her is her openness about how she loves food, and loves to eat it.  She shares in making food for friends, family, and all those late nights when all the losses she has had in her life are too much, she consoles herself by looking through her cookbooks or online shopping for them.  When I read one of her cookbooks, I feel like she is in the kitchen talking to me, friend to friend.  I don't envy her last two years and the personal journey through the dark side she has made, and I am so happy she has made it through and is on The Taste again this year.  She is the embodiment of women who love to cook for their families, and who know that food prepared with love is the best kind of food there is. 

What does this have to do with Christmas, you say?  Two things.  One, food and Christmas - well that is what Christmas is about too, isn't it?  Good food, as well as family and friends, love and the new year.   two - well.....there's a book of Nigella's that I don't have, that I really really want. Nigella Christmas.  I put it on a couple of wishlists but the hint didn't materialize, and now her book is rarely available here now.  So this might be a dream for a few years to come.  One day, I will find it.  Uh-oh.  I just discovered that I blogged about this book back in 2008!!
                                                 

The thing about Nigella and food is, that, well she is sensual when she works with it.  She likes the feel of food, how it tastes, the textures, the colour, how is pleases every sense.  I love that about her, as this is how I feel about food too.  It can be a whole sensory experience to eat a meal, if it's done right.  Just how it looks on the plate can be inviting (or not).  She is one of my pleasures in life, and her cookbooks are like a trail through my own history too now.  This year I worked from that cookbook, this is the year I fell in love with her cooking, this is the year I made so many recipes from this particular book.  I've learned to let myself savor the act of cooking more, and the pleasures of making food and understand a little how magical it all is, because of her writing about food and loving to eat chocolate cake.  She's like my dream best friend, a little shy, enthusiastic about food, and loves chocolate. 

I do have to say though that her choice tonight of deep-fried macaroni and cheese as her team's taste - I knew right away what was going to happen, and I was saying to the tv, no, no no!  Not deep fried macaroni and cheese!!! that's not childhood in a taste!  I was right, sadly.  Let's hope I have better luck finding Nigella Christmas than she does in picking her teams (she lost badly the previous two years).  Or, I can hope she has another cookbook in the works....

By the way, her Quadruple Chocolate Loaf cake is the best.  Divine.    Also her Everday Brownies, featured at my 7 year blogversary in Oct. These brownies are a family classic now.  For chocoholics, this is as good as her chocolate cloud cake and the chocolate lava cakes recipe.  A girl can never really have too much chocolate, can she? 

Happy blogversary!!!!

So I went from here, 7 years ago,  to today realizing I was missing my 7 year anniversary again.  I don't know why Oct 1 is so hard for me to remember, it's a date I should have marked:  the date I started blogging!     However, I am proud to be still be blogging, happy with what I've talked about here, books, and ideas, and especially, always, the wonderful people - YOU - that I've met on here.  You make blogging and talking about books fun, and memorable, and we have had many interesting book discussions over the years.  Many of you have become my friends in my personal life.  And, all those lovely books I've discovered because you talked about them.  Thank you, my friends and readers.  Let's go forward into another year and find some wonderful more books to read and let sink into our souls, shall we?

And, in the meantime, I did manage to have some brownies over the weekend, so let's say I had some birthday  blogversary celebration anyway.  These are Nigella Lawson's Everyday Brownies, dark deliciously chocolate - loaded with dark chocolate chips too - a family favourite, which I made for watching Dr Who on Saturday night.  One day soon I will do a post on the new Doctor (I really like him.) For now, come join me in some brownie goodness, and celebrate the simple things that bring joy into our lives: books, food, good company.  Thanks for being with me so far.

                                           

Sunday Salon - Christmas Wish List - mostly books..

I am absolutely delighted. Yesterday I met my eldest son at Collected Works, where I was picking up a book I had ordered (Robin McKinley's Rose Daughter,). And my 20 year old said there was a book he was wanting to read. A book!!! Well, the bookstore didn't have it, so I ordered it for him and said, "Merry Christmas, you know what one of your presents is", and it should be in by next week so he'll get it before we go, AND the clerk said he'd read it and loved it! World War Z by Max Brooks. I was so happy I practically floated out of the store, because my son seldom asks for books, and to get him one that he wants!! I also took the opportunity to order The Wood Wife by Terri Windling. So far, Nymeth,
Rhinoa , Carl, Deslily,
Chris,
Dark Orpheus, and Robin, a new to me blogger at A Fondness for Reading, have reviewed The Wood Wife, and all thoroughly enjoyed it. This will be my airplane book, at least it's the book of the moment. I keep changing my mind about what I'm bringing, however I will save that post until closer to leaving.

On this quiet Sunday, as our city prepares for either snow or snow pellets or rain tonight and tomorrow, I am dreaming of books to buy. On my Christmas wish list this year, which will sadly have to wait until late winter because our Christmas present is really going overseas to England in 15 days! FIFTEEN!!! A girl can dream anyway, and my husband brought home the newspaper which, he said to me, I would be happy to know, contained this years' Best Books to Buy for Christmas Gifts! There is one title in particular that I have wanted since I read a review about it last spring: Champlain's Dream, by David Hackett Fischer. You can find it on Amazon here.

I lived in Quebec City for 3 years as a teenager, the city that Champlain founded in 1608. For me, history is made real when I can see the places and imagine the events as I stand on the ground. I loved York for that reason, because wherever I went, there were layers upon layers of events and history and it enchanted me. Here in Canada we don't have as much physical remnants of history as Europe does, as the Aboriginal peoples lived for 30,000 years and left little trace. It's in their stories and traditions only, and the occasional encampment discovered in by accident in an excavation. What we understand as physical 'history' began with the first explorers and settlers. I love imagining how the land first was, how it was when the settlers first came, what Champlain would have seen. I am interested in the early history of Canada, and our relations with the native peoples, and how the land looked - the enormous dark forests, the rivers and lakes filled with fish, the wildlife. When I lived in York for a year in 2000, one of the things I was so surprised to find I missed about Canada was the feeling of the landscape. Anyone who reads Canadian fiction knows that the landscape is always present. The hard rock face of the Canadian Shield, the forests, even some of our Canadian words like moose, I discovered I missed hearing. Anyway, I am interested in how the explorers came to Canada and what they first found, and how they helped to shape our country. I really want this book!

Also on my Christmas wish list this year is: Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre. It's NOT a book, but it's on my wishlist, high up! This is a new release, with all 26 Faerie Tales she produced for PBS in the US, finally together in one collection. I have long been looking for the individual versions, which was only way it was available until now, and it wasn't available. So this is a dream come true! (I've already shown my husband the Amazon site and dropped a very large hint.) They are retellings of the fairy tales using well-known (usually) American actors and actresses, with high and very charming production standards, and witty, funny, and somtimes dark retellings. Here is a link if you are interested in knowing more. Here is also an excerpt of the description (just because I love reading this over and over!): "From the Brothers Grimm to Hans Christian Andersen, twenty-six of the most beloved stories of all time are brought to life by A-list actors (in some of their most unique and memorable roles) as well as master directors including Tim Burton and Francis Ford Coppola among them --- You'll in seeing Robin Williams as the Frog Prince,Eric Idle as the Pied Piper, Billy Crystal as one of the Three Little Pigs,Jennifer Beals and Matthew Broderick as Cinderella and her prince, Bernadette Peters and Christopher Reeve as Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming, Susan Sarandon and Klaus Kinski as Beauty and the Beast, Paul Reubens as Pinocchio, James Earl Jones as the Genie inside Aladdin's lamp, and Carrie Fisher as Thumbelina.

Each one of these stories is literally hand crafted by the directors (some of them famous directors like Francis Ford Coppella) and Shelley Duvall to reflect a certain style --- An example being the Sleeping Beauty tale was set in Russia with the sets and costumes designed to look like scenes from classic Russian motifs, the music from the Russian ballet --- Another being the direct rip off of the classic Jean Cocteau film "Beauty and the Beast".

All of these were designed with the intent of entertaining not only children but adults --- Some of the best moments in these are only things that adults will understand --- Christopher Reeve does a fantastic job in his multi-role part in "Sleeping Beauty" as does Malcolm McDowell as the Wolf in "Little Red Riding Hood" --- McDowell infuses the character with a subtle dark sensuality --- His chemistry with his then wife Mary Steenburgen is strong.

Probably the best one of all is the "Three Little Pigs" with Jeff Goldblum (as the Big Bad Wolf), Valerie Perrine (as a ravishing piglette), and Billy Crystal(as one of the three little pigs) --- The writing in this one is completely off the wall as well as it should be --- So enjoy with a loving heart and the mind of an innocent child. *sigh* Pure magic.

Also at the top of my list is Nigella Lawson's new book, Nigella's Christmas. I had a chance to peek at the book yesterday at Collected Works, and I confess, I do want this book too! Maybe it's a good idea if I stay out of bookstores for the next 15 days, at least until we get to England! Then, it will be another story!!! Yes, a really bad pun, sorry...

And that is what is at the top of my list. I haven't really looked this year because we are going to England, and because, I confess, I keep bringing home books anyway! And if we don't go soon, Nigella will come home with me.

What's on your Christmas wish list this year?

PS Middlemarch Update: ON page 171, Chapter 17. And I have a confession to make: Will Ladislaw has just paid a visit to Dorothea in Rome, where she is on her honeymoon with Causabon. Well, to my surprise Eliot was writing Ladislaw as if he was falling in love with her. What? I gasped. Wasn't it Lydgate? So, I did a very rare thing, but I went to the back of the book and read part of the ending. I had it wrong from my memory of the BBC production. Dorothea never gets together with Lydgate - it's Will, her husband's second cousin, that she ends up with!!! To all my Gentle readers who kindly didn't tell me I had it wrong, I apologize! And I still don't know the full ending, so I don't feel too guilty. I hate reading the ending of a book I am enjoying, but I had to know! Now I can relax and watch the real romance unfolding. Already there are terrible cracks in Dorothea's and Causabon's marriage, but that was more due to them innocently not knowing that they had never really talked to eachother - a lovely comment by Eliot on how bad marriages everywhere are made!

Sunday Salon - Birthdays and Books and Hallowe'en

It has been a very busy weekend; Hallowe'en of course, but it is also my eldest's son's 20th birthday (on Hallowe'en) and my youngest's 4th birthday today, so in between trick-or-treating and carving pumpkins, we have had two birthdays to celebrate! So I cooked a celebration birthday dinner yesterday for 7 adults and 2 children, and today, my mother left to go back to Kitchener, and I am needing a day to unwind. Aside from Graham unwrapping the rest of his presents later today, we have nothing blissfully planned. So I have a date shortly with Fred Vargas' Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands, which I have been longing to read since I bought it last spring sometime. It won the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger, which replaces the British Dagger Awards that used to be handed out for mysteries. So I will spending today in darkest Paris with an excellent mystery.

However, on this wonderfully quiet Sunday, I do want to share with you the lovely books I bought when my mother and I made our annual visit it Prime Crime, Ottawa's local mystery bookstore. We went on Friday morning, after I finished carving the pumpkin. We always spend well over an hour meandering from one shelf to another, asking each other, "Have you read this book yet?", and our piles grow huge and in my case, toppled over once! Here is what I bought:
- Stalin's Ghost, Martin Cruz Smith (an Arkady Renko mystery! I've loved this series ever since Gorky Park, and I forgot this was coming out.)
- Seeking Whom He May Devour - Fred Vargas (an older one in the series, but I'm reading them as I can find them since they are translated. I have to lend this to my mother after, since she knows she is getting Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands for Christmas).
- What Came Before He Shot Her - Elizabeth George (catching up in this series)
- Skinny Dip - Carl Hiaasen ( I love his funky bizarre characters involved in hilarious mysteries and coincidences set in Florida, all of which Mom says have their basis in real-life cases)
- A Deeper Sleep - Dana Stabenow ( I love Kate Shugak! Now she could run for V-P and I would vote for her!!)
- Winter's Child - Margaret Maron (Deborah Knott series, who couldn't love a judge whose father was the town bootlegger? and her 10 brothers)
- Friend of the Devil - Peter Robinson (I can hardly wait to read this one, new in paperback, a continuation of the Alan Banks series set in Yorkshire)
- Dead Cold and The Cruellest Month - Louise Penny. ( I reviewed Still Life last spring, the very first in the series, and these are the next two. Cruellest Month is new in paperback, and my mother, who I gave Still Life to last year for Christmas, has already read both of these and enjoyed them so much she bought #4, which came into the store in trade paperback while we were there! It's just come out! I will wait until I read these ones.)
- Missing Justice - Alafair Burke - (I keep reading about this author and her Samantha Kincaid mysteries, so I'm trying my first one.)
- Winter House - Carol O'Connell ( a Kathy Mallory mystery, I have two to catch up on, but I grabbed this so that I have it to read. Mom has already read it and says it's good, so the dip in the series is gone, thankfully. Mallory is too good a character to surround with lazy plotting and writing.)
- The Witch is Dead - Shirley Damsgaard. (An Ophelia and Abby mystery, Ophelia is a witch and Abby is her cat. A fun series which I can't seem to buy as they come out, so I grab when I see one).
- A Harvest of Bones - Yasmine Galenorn. ( A Chintz and China mystery, have never read this before, but the amateur sleuth is supposed to be a medium so it should be fun!!)

and finally, for my writing, from the How Dunit Series, "Deadly Doses, a Writer's Guide to Poisons", by Serita Deborah Stevens (with Anne Klarner).

I love my new pile of books!

So, I wish you all happy reading on this Sunday, and maybe some left-over Hallowe'en candy to munch on, wherever you go in your reading today. I have two birthday cakes to munch on! One is Nigella Lawson's delicious Quadruple Chocolate Loaf Cake (from her cookbook Feast), yummy. Now for a lovely cup of tea, and I'm set for a lovely long afternoon of reading.

Food Meme

I got this from Emily's blog http://emilybarton.blogspot.com/2008/03/its-another-two-meme-day.html
at Telecommuter Talk:

Food Meme:
List five food facts about yourself. (Actually this was part of a two-part meme, but since I am making dinner, I only have time for one......I picked the easy one!)

1. I collect cookbooks. My oldest cookbook recreates recipes from the Medieval Ages. However, I lent it to a friend-who-is-barely-a-friend-because-she-still-has-many-of-my-books SEVEN years ago, and yes, she still hasn't returned it. So I can't quite count it in my library, and I haven't seen it since to replace. It was a fabulous book explaining how and what they cooked in the Middle Ages, what utensils they had, the kitchen set-up, and the different kinds of food you'd find at different levels of society. The next oldest book I have is Take a Buttocke of Beefe by Verity Isitt, which I found in a used book store in Kingston. It has over 80 seventeenth century recipes, again with modern equivalents. These are both for historical research for my writing, and for food cookery and because I love recipes. My sister once asked if I actually read the cookbooks. Yes! I read them from end to end, the first time, and pick out recipes I want to try. Lately, I have learned to write in the cookbooks - it was Nigella Lawson who gave me this idea. She said in one of her cookbooks that she had inherited one from her grandmother, that had notes written by her grandmother in the margins, changing recipes, saying what works and what didn't. She felt like her grandmother was in the kitchen with her, leaving her notes on how to cook, and what she did. Like a conversation. I loved the idea. Since I am always altering recipes anyway, I thought this would be a great gift someday for my daughter (or grandchildren), if any of them end up cooking. Plus, I can remember what I did that worked so well, next time I come to the recipe! It works fabulously (is this a word? can I invent it?) now. I can recreate what I did, and see what recipes I really do use often.

2. I can't eat onions or eggplant. This is one major reason I ended up tampering with recipes in the first place. Raw onions upset my stomach, and eggplant makes me throw up. So, I substitute leeks for onions (more delicate flavor, and cousin to onion) which I can eat very happily. And I avoid anything with eggplant. This rules out vegetarian lasagna, which otherwise always looks to delicious!

3. I am not a vegetarian. I tried, seriously, about15 years ago. I ended up missing meat too much. I'm a carnivore! I like the texture and taste! However, I hate the current farming practices of major meat production, so I try to get hormone and antibiotic free meat if not organic meat, whenever possible. I also like that when we eat organic meat, I know the animals have been well-treated and fed properly.

4. My house has been 70% organic in food and cleaning products for 21 years now. I'm lucky in that Ottawa has several very good organic grocery stores, as well as the major grocery chains are now carrying organic lines of food. I buy as many things organically as we can afford. My house has been cleaned with organic cleaners since then because smells bother my nose - and I don't like chemical cleaners. Most of our vegetables, fruit, and staples are organic, or failing that, locally grown (we have a wonderful farmer's market in the summer) and whole grain. I strongly believe that where I spend my money does count, and I am so against chemicals use, and now the sterile corn and soy crops which are truly frightening. Not to get into a rant here, but why do we think chemicals and hormones in our food won't end up in our bodies (where we store them) and end up in the earth, damaging the soil's recovery, and in the food chain itself? I can't stop the big food chains and mass-farming (and it's not the farmers, its the food industry itself and everyone involved in creating mass food production using little-understood chemicals that is the problem) but I can try to use my money where it counts. I just like the taste, colour, texture of organic food better. And I like knowing that I chose food that was grown with the nurturing of the earth in mind.

5. I am a chocoholic. I LOVE chocolate. Dark chocolate. If I buy a recipe book, chances are it has a chocolate recipe I want to try! One of my favorite chocolate recipes to make is Gooey Chocolate Puddings from Nigella Lawson's How to Eat cookbook. Made with dark chocolate, it is like a lava cake, and warm from the oven, is so-o-o delicious with cream.......m-m-m......

I still haven't figured out how to tag yet, so please, do this meme and drop me a line that you did, and I will come read it. Happy eating while reading!!!

Cadillac Jukebox - Done!

Hurray! It took only two weeks, but Cadillac Jukebox is done. I did end up really enjoying it, and although I complained in another blog about the evil people, by the end, the book was about the depths to which people will go to survive, and to get revenge. It's a reminder, in these days of glorifying gangsters and drugs, that there are people who kill for the sadistic joy of it, but in this book, the sadistic killer is not brought down by Our Hero, but by the only one who could, the one out for revenge. This book makes the swampy heat of Louisiana come to life, and made me really want to try eating a shrimp po'boy! A good read, entertaining, and gritty.
Then I read 'The Safe-Keeper's Secret' by Sharon Shinn. This is a new series of books that I just discovered by Sharon Shinn, whose detective sci-fi/goddess mystery 'Wrapt in Crystal' is the book I best remember her for......I had no idea she was writing young teens books, until I saw the 4th in her Mystic and Rider series (forget the actual title of the series) reviewed in Locus (go to www.locusmag.com - a very good science fiction and fantasy review/book publishing mag that has been out for many many years). So at Collected Works two weeks ago I picked up The Safe-Keeper's Secret, and read it in two days! It is a delightful fantasy for teen readers, and the magic world - medieval setting - where some people are truth-tellers, some are secret-keepers and some are dream-makers, as well as normal things like farmers and kings and herbalists and innkeepers - is well-thought out. Highly recommended for an enjoyable read with fun characters.
So now i am working on Life of Pi. I was having difficulty getting into the story until this morning, when I told myself to think of it as a fable - which, duh! it is! A literary fable with humans and animals. So now I am enjoying it more, but I need a stretch of time to read it in, and getting one or two hours to read a day is difficult these days. It's the time between Hallowe'en, birthdays, and the stretch to Christmas......but I will try to read and finish it this week, so I can move on to one of my other 'Stack' titles.
Though, I keep making lists of books to get. As I get through making piles for the upcoming reading challenges starting in January, I see that my shelves have less and less books I haven't read on them, and I start to panic - what will I read next? Oh no, must have stacks of books to choose through!!! So I spent this morning going through the book recommendations on www.endicott-studio.com which is run by Terri Windling of Annual Fantasy and Horror Collections fame (among others things, like her own book The Wood Wife). This is a fascinating site for people who read fairy tales, study fairy tales, write fairy tales or paint them. As a source for new books in the fantasy world (with reviews accompanying most) it is among the best on the internet. So there I was, making my lists (third list in a month! My LSS is trying not to panic!) and drooling, so much to read! So much to handle, open, read, buy.....some are books I've seen in passing but didn't know much about (and needing to buy the latest ones from my favourite authors, which I have done now, so my heart is a bit calmer.....I have new books to read over the holidays, which I WILL do no matter how hectic the kids make it!).....books to get now include Delia Sherman's The Changeling, Elizabeth Knox's Dreamhunter and Dreamquake, Catherine Valente's The Orphan's Tales Vol 2, In the Night Garden, Sarah Monette's A Companion to Wolves (and I still have to finish her Virtu series which I am really enjoying), Michael Scott's The Alchemist, O.R. Melling's The Lightbearer's Daughter, Kate Thompson's The New Policeman. Oh, and Book three of Stevermer and Wrede's series, The Mislaid Magician. And then Neil Gaiman just wrote about Ellen Kushner's sequel to Swordspoint, called The Privilege of the Sword, which Locus did review a while ago (both positively)............no, no shortage of more new books to buy and read!! So I felt calmer, then, and have started carrying my lists with me just in case I pop into a bookstore ("Look dear, the door was open so I went in and look what I found! And don't worry, we still have money for food and Christmas....") Just need some way to open a time portal so I can go somewhere and read, read, read, then when I'm ready, open the portal and slip back into this world. In this fantasy of mine, no time has elapsed so no one knows that I went anywhere, and I get to read all the books I want to!!! I wonder if I would age in that portal/book reading world???
I wonder if I should add to my books read list every year, all the cookbooks I go through? One day I will write about my favourite cookbooks and chefs.....meantime suffice to say Nigella Lawson and Nigel Slater, plus Sarah Leah Chase and James Barber, reign supreme in this household!! Which reminds me, Holly-Anne has already come to ask me what's for dinner, so I'd better go and start cooking......Life of Pi (and this blog) will have to wait......