cookie recipes

a little taste of susan branch’s a fine romance + lemon butter cookies

~ jama ~ 53 Comments

“England, with its history and air of magic, the soil and woods thick with meanings that survive in fragments, is an empire of imagination.” ~ T.S. Eliot

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Help yourself to a cup of organic darjeeling and a lemon butter cookie.

Fancy a drive along a winding country road, rolling green hills and grey stone walls as far as the eye can see? Perhaps a leisurely stroll along an ancient footpath across a meadow resplendent with wildflowers?

Maybe you’d rather visit Beatrix Potter’s house, explore the formal gardens of a stately home, find a welcoming inn for a spot of tea, or join the convivial conversation at a neighborhood pub.

I cannot think of a better way to celebrate all that is glorious, interesting, inspiring, beautiful, memorable, unique and charming about England than to pore over the pages of Susan Branch’s latest book, A Fine Romance: Falling in Love with the English Countryside (Vineyard Stories, 2013).

This gorgeous, handwritten, illustrated diary chronicles the two months in 2012 when Susan and her true love Joe wandered around England from Tenterden, Kent, up to the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales, and down through the Cotswolds.

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mrs. tiggy-winkle comes to tea

~ jama ~ 48 Comments

 

Just in case you were wondering, the reason we usually look so spiffy around here is because we have the best washerwoman.

Her name is Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and she hails from the Lake District. Do you know her too? A tidier, more conscientious “clear-starcher” you’d be hard pressed to find. The other day, when untimely Spring (?) snowflakes were drifting down from the sky, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle chanced by to deliver a freshly laundered stack of tea towels and table linens.

We couldn’t very well turn her out in a snowstorm, so we invited her in for tea. Coincidentally, Cornelius and I had just baked a fresh batch of Littletown-Farm Carrot Cookies. Every Easter we get into a “Peter Rabbit mood” and crave carrots. We found the cookie recipe in Peter Rabbit’s Natural Foods Cookbook, and since we’d made Fierce Bad Rabbit’s Carrot-Raisin Salad from that book many times before, we thought the cookies would also be a good bet.

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“Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle’s hand, holding the tea-cup, was very very brown, and very very wrinkly with the soap-suds; and all through her gown and her cap, there were hair-pins sticking wrong end out; so that Lucie didn’t like to sit too near her.”

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another cup of downton tea with chocolate madeleines

~ jama ~ 47 Comments
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Daisy and Mrs Patmore teach Lady Sybil how to make a cake in happier days (ITV photo).

If, like me, you’re a Downton Abbey fan still reeling from the tragic events of this past Sunday’s Episode 4 and are in dire need of comfort, you’ve come to the right place.

There now, have a nice cup of tea and we’ll talk.

HOW COULD THEY??!!

Lady Sybil was my favorite Crawley sister, and as Mrs Hughes said, “The sweetest spirit under this roof is gone.” I’ll certainly miss her progressive thinking, optimism and open-hearted goodness. The episode was a painful reminder of how powerless even upper class women were when it came to critical medical decisions. Who knows a patient better than her lifelong physician? Who knows a child better than her own mother? And what about a husband’s right to decide what happens to his wife?

Downton Abbey Joss Barratt Photographer
Jessica Brown-Findlay as Lady Sybil and Allen Leech as Tom Branson (Carnival Film & Television, Ltd., 2012)

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friday feast: fishing for cookies

~ jama ~ 49 Comments
Newton and me at Grandma’s house.

 

OH PLEASE TAKE ME FISHING!
by Jack Prelutsky

“Oh please take me fishing, oh please, pretty please,”
insisted my sister the pest.
She drives me bananas when she’s at her worst,
she bugs me when she’s at her best.

She wouldn’t give up, so I’ve got her along,
but I’ve not decided her fate.
Maybe I’ll patiently teach her to fish —
maybe I’ll use her for bait!

~ from A Pizza the Size of the Sun (Greenwillow Books, 1996).

* * *

Unlike the sister in Prelutsky’s poem, I was never a pest (*cough*), but the narrator sounds very familiar.

While my brother and Dad went fishing, I stayed home and played with my Ruthy doll and read Madeline’s Rescue. When it was time to take a picture of the day’s catch, I was only too happy to oblige. Even though I didn’t go fishing, this is still my favorite childhood picture. It hangs in our den and makes me very happy.

Newton and I spent a lot of time together growing up because we were latchkey kids. During the summer we rode our bicycles all over, bought fuzzy chicks at the carnival, tried to sell the macadamia nuts from my grandma’s tree, played marbles and ate hamburgers at Dairy Queen.

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author chat: a special aloha from margo sorenson

~ jama ~ 22 Comments

Of all the wonderful things Hawaiʻi has to offer — breathtaking natural beauty, world-renown beaches, stunning tropical flora, rich cultural diversity, divinely delicious variety of ethnic foods — its most valuable commodity is, and always will be, the genuine warmth and friendliness of its people.

Because I’ve always wished that this “spirit of Aloha” was more prevalent in the United States, I was especially pleased to read Margo Sorenson’s latest picture book, Aloha for Carol Ann (Marimba Books, 2011). In her heartwarming story, which is illustrated in bright colors by Priscilla Garcia Burris, Margo gives the “new kid in school” theme a tropical treatment. And there’s a nice twist: it’s a multicultural book where the main character is Caucasian.

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