Book Advent Calendar Day 10: Food and books, and cookbooks stash

   I love Terri Windling's blog Myth and Moor.  On Friday, December 5 she blogged about food blogs that have to do with books.  You have to scroll down to Dec 5's post.  She has put up photos of the most amazing foods recreated from novels, photos of dishes that several bloggers have been recreating  from various literary sources, or from poets and author's diaries and journals.  They are fascinating to look through.  I have listed all of the blogs she mentions under a new setting on my sidebar, Food and Book Blogs.  I will be going to peruse each one in depth.  Some have the most delightful stories and anecdotes about authors.  Glorious pictures about food.  I am so delighted to discover these blogs.  I love the idea of eating the food that characters did, or authors loved.  Especially older books.  Who can resist trying to recreate Jane Austen's Brown Butter Bread Pudding Tarts? 
 Or Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell's Black Forest Raven Cake?

                                                

I also love Terri's blog because she talks about the creative process, what it's like to be an artist in today's world, the struggles to be creative.  She discusses nature, and fairy tales, and so many other interesting topics.  The post on Dec 4 is about the folklore of food.  In this post she talks about books that feature food, like Joanna Harris' Chocolat.  Her blog is interesting, creative, soul-nurturing.  And now I have all these lovely new-to-me food and book blogs to go visit!  This has been like a Christmas present for me, so this was my advent calendar opening for the day.

For your treat, I thought I would show a few photos of the cookbooks I currently have. Cath at Read-Warbler did a post last week on Show Your Bookstash,  from Carolyn at Riedel Fascination who come up with this idea.  Margaret at Books Please and Pat at Here, There and Everywhere blog did a post on Dec 7. So here are my cookbooks stash, on their bookshelf in the dining room:

The only cookbook not on the shelf is The Jane Austen Cookbook by Maggie Lane, which is on my classics shelf with the Jane Austen books.   If I feel like shaming myself in revealing just how double-booked my shelves are in my reading corner, I'll take some photos for you tomorrow.

I'm interested in the history of food, how we eat, how the way we cook and serve food has evolved over the centuries.  A book that I just realized you can't see on my shelves because it was hidden by some papers is Kate Colquhoun's Taste: The Story of Britain through its Cooking.  That's a book I've dipped into on occasion and loved.   The magazines on one of the shelves are all food magazines, which I love to look through and cut out recipes from. 

An idea I am forming is that I think in 2015, one of my goals is to start using my cookbooks more.  I like the idea of cooking my way through a book, like Julie Powell did with Julia Child in her book and the movie, Julie and Julia. 
      

I loved how she cooked her way right the way through the cookbook.  I might try something like cooking a recipe from every cookbook I own, or something along those lines.  I need to try expanding my cooking.  I love how cooking is a marriage of magic and alchemy in the kitchen. I love the comfort I get from making good food for my family, that tastes good and I know is nutritious and healthy.  I definitely want to explore taste and colour and spices more.  And maybe I'll check on those book and food blogs for some other creative ideas to do with cooking over the next year.  A literary feast sounds fun, doesn't it?

Of course I confess I haven't read Julie & Julia, I've only seen the movie.  And I haven't read Chocolat or Like Water For Chocolate yet, though I have seen those movies as well.  *hangs head in shame*

Here is something soul-comforting and immensely nurturing that I baked yesterday:
                                                   

The taste of homemade chocolate cookies is sublime.  Yum.

So what are some of your favourite books that feature food?  Have you discovered a favourite recipe/dish/food because of a novel? 

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? 

new Jane Austen cookbook, and other cookbooks I want

I was just going through my facebook reader, and I discovered this lovely little article in the UK Telegraph, from last week.  "Dinner With Mr Darcy" is the name of a new cookbook coming out in October, featuring recipes from meals or food mentioned in Jane Austen's novels.                                          

The white soup recipe listed in this article is from this book.  It looks like an interesting book, and of course I want it.  Jane Austen recipes, recreated so we can make it!  I would LOVE to do a Georgian tea party one day, wouldn't you?  Look at this recipe for roast pork loin.  Mmm.  I'm getting hungry!

Speaking of cookbooks, another cookbook I have my eye on is this one:  Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, by Anya Von Bremzen.  I was looking at it at the store tonight.

 It combines memoir and Soviet food through the decades of her family life in Russia.  Another book that looks fascinating.

I have long wanted A Cook's Year in a Welsh Farmhouse by Elisabeth Luard. 
                                                                                        

It is still in hardcover.  I wish it would come out in softcover, which are easier to open and use in the kitchen.  Cath at Read-Warbler gave this lovely review earlier this summer. A farmhouse out in the country side, eating seasonally, what more could one ask?  Except to be there, of course......

One last cookbook that I have been gazing at longingly in the book stores is this one:  Country Cooking of Ireland by Colman Andrews. 
                                      

It looks splendid and has so many recipes in it.  Plus a bit of Irish history.  Being part Welsh and Irish, I am interested in exploring more about the foods of my culture and ancestors.     This book is to drool over, literally and figuratively!!

So are there any cookbooks you are wanting to buy, dear reader? 
                                                                

Some birthday books and how to get your footie man to read

My birthday was a month ago, but for various reasons, I haven't been able to post about the books I received. The first book I received on my birthday, from my wonderful husband who is also the lucky recipient of my recipes so he likes picking out what he is going to be eating for the next few years.

Nigel Slater is one of my favourite cooks. He was the one who taught me how to roast a chicken perfectly every time, how to make bangers and mash the way the English like them, and who gave a recipe for lentil soup that is a winter mainstay in our household now. He is an English cook, so I am not able to see his tv shows, though I do copy out his Observers Food Monthly columns often. I didn't know before discovering him that that there were cooks that could speak to us, whose recipes made sense and who I would feel comfortable spending time in the kitchen with, until I met Nigel in Appetite while I lived in England in 1999-2000.

Appetite is his award-winning cookbook, and had just come out that winter. Giving me The Kitchen Diaries, the latest from this wonderful cook, was a real delight for me. In this cookbook, Nigel takes us through the year of a cook and his garden and the vegetable market. He decided to cook with what ever foods he could find at the market that day, and whatever his garden was producing at that time. Seasonal eating, which seems trendy now, although if you buy food at the fresh market stalls, as we are lucky enough to have here in Ottawa, then eating seasonally is possible 5 months of the year. I have done this for several years now, from May until Oct when the last of the harvest is gone. So I am thrilled to have a book by Nigel on how to use the bumper foods as they come into season, how to live rhythmically with the seasons.

I have only dipped into this cookbook so far, and already I've seen several recipes I want to try. Grilled zucchini with basil and lemon, cannelini beans with coppa, spinach and mustard (the picture of this dish always makes me hungry when I look at it!), lamb chops with oregano and tsatziki, Nigel's delightful trifle (alcohol-free!), Chicken stew and mash (for winter days)........mmmmmm, it must be lunch time soon. I will be reading this cookbook throughout the year, so I can try out Nigel's recipes as the food becomes available here too, so I can experiment further with eating seasonally. I'll let you know how it goes.

My other presents didn't arrive from Amazon.ca until this past Friday, thanks to a gift certificate from my mother:


Yes, I treated myself to a hardcover! Connie Willis's Blackout, which I had been intending to wait until it came out in softcover so I could carry it, has had so many good reviews that I can't wait. A very rare treat, and I've already read the first chapter while finishing up reading books for the other book challenges about to wind up. I bought for my birthday:
Blackout - Connie Willis
Diamond Solitaire - Peter Lovesey - 2nd book in the Peter Diamond series
Dido Live - dvd of Dido's live performance in 2004 in England
Lone Star - dvd, John Sayle's dark mystery, which I absolutely love and haven't seen in ages.

By the way, Blackout is book one of two books. It was so huge the publisher broke the novel into two parts, and the second book, All Clear, is due out in October. That's not so long to wait! Connie is one of my favourite authors, and this book is a return to Mr Dunworthy and his time-travelling historians. This time they are going back to World War 2. Here is a review that does not give anything away, at Locus Magazine online.

**I'll be posting on Carl's challenge tonight, after I finish reading A Midsummer's Night's Dream this afternoon. Lovely, lovely midsummer's eve! And Shakespeare.

Happy Fathers' Day and how to bring more books into the house:
It's Father's Day here in Canada, as it is in many places in the world. To my readers who are also fathers, Happy Father's Day. I hope you get some quiet time to read (most likely tonight after those who have made you fathers go to bed). My spouse, who is parked in front of the tv for World Cup football (aka soccer over here in North America) for this month, received two books from me - many of you know he is long-suffering because I buy more books than he has seen in his life. Slowly but surely I have been building a large library of English football books for my love. Today was no exception: he received the England pre-match warm-up kit to wear, as a proud England supporter, and two books:

Soccernomics, by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski
The Story of the World Cup by Brian Glanville

Since England, and now Italy, are on the bubble - they must win their next game or go home early from the tournament - Soccernomics, which I bought some time ago, seems timely with its subtitle: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, And Why the US, Japan, Australia, Turkey - And Even Iraq - Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport.

I hope wherever you are, you are enjoying a book and some footie on this Sunday.

PS May I add my congratulations to my readers from New Zealand? We were cheering for you today, and it was a thrilling point you won today against the Azzuri.
PPS To my Italian readers, I'm sorry, I really am. As someone who cheers for England, you can take comfort that you played better than we did in our last match.

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!!!