The Seville oranges are in the store so I bought some to make Orange Marmalade. I consulted one of my favourite books :
‘Beeton’s Cookery’ by Mrs Beeton herself. We used a recipe from this book last year and made delicious marmalade. This book is one of my favourite possessions. After Mrs Beeton’s death in 1861, several books based on her household management book were published. This dictionary of cookery is one of those books. I have spent hours with it. I love it’s old, smooth cover:
I love it’s matter-of-fact title. I love that it is over 140 years old.
I love the information in the book. Where else would I find out how to carve a plover, fry a cow heel and make cowslip wine? She includes Bills of Fare for dinners for 16, 12, 10, 8 and 6 persons. She provides menus for ‘plain family dinners’ . I have never tried these menus but I am very tempted. I would really like to draw your attention to page 104:
It seems that I have been doing this incorrectly as I have not been placing the box of chocolates on a glass plate. However, I have nailed the part about purchasing them at any time. As is usually the case when I pull out this book , I emerged, after two hours, much wiser but no closer to having the orange marmalade. I’ll try again later.
Maybe it’s just a fear of scurvy but I always start craving citrus at this time of year. I got these lovely lemons:
and transformed them into Lemon and Lime Chutney:
I have some reservations about this chutney because it contains what I think to be an odd combination of ingredients: lemons, limes, salt, sugar, vinegar, hot pepper and raisins. It’s the hot pepper that has me particularly concerned. My concern was not alleviated by the taste I took before bottling it. I’ll give it a few weeks to settle down in the jar before I try it again.
These Hyacinth bulbs have been stuck at this stage for weeks:
They have not got grown bigger or smaller. However, twenty minutes at a Beaver meeting will produce a perfectly reasonable substitute:
So, while I wait for the hyacinths to bloom, I’ll show you the paperwhites that just won’t quit:
I opened the previously mentioned package and found another package:
I opened that package and found this:
‘Mariana’ by Monica Dickens. I am about 100 pages in and find it quite enchanting. So far it’s light and funny. For instance, here is a description of the hero’s first days at her new school: ‘Those first few days at St Martin’s showed Mary why people hang themselves with a dressing-gown cord behind the bedroom door.’ Now a note on the cover. Apparently all the books published by Persephone Books have the same pale gray cover although the end papers for each title differ. Now, normally, I am a firm believer in judging a book by its cover and have discovered many great books simply because the cover art caught my eye. However, I have to say I find the elegant simplicity of the Persephone covers to be very refreshing.
The thing I neglected to mention in the previous post is that we don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day at our house. Other than the necessary topping up of chocolate, since by mid-February the Christmas supply is dwindling, the day passes without much acknowledgment on our part. Even the topping up of chocolate happens with or without a holiday since I am a firm believer in chocolate. I suspect, but have yet to confirm, that this package wasn’t even ordered as a Valentine’s Day gift but was ordered simply as a nice thing to do (which I think is even better). I suspect the person in London who packaged it assumed it was for Valentine’s Day and I do admit the nice wrapping, the satin ribbon and the hand-written card were a nice touch. So this leads me to wonder why I waited to open the package. Rather than reflect on my compliance I thought I would just go along with the whole crass excuse for commercialism and bake a seasonal cake:
Yesterday a package arrived in the mail addressed to me. I love receiving packages particularly when they are unexpected. Upon closer inspection I saw this:
Persephone Books is my favourite bookstore I have never been to. Being in London, England it is a bit too far for me to pop into. I was very excited and flipped the package over to tear it open when I saw this:
Written in ink, by hand, by someone, presumably, in London. Being compliant by nature I did not open the package. I put it on the table. I stared at it. I wondered if perhaps somewhere in the world it was already February 14. I realized that it was not. I spent an extraordinary amount of time thinking about the person who wrote the message on the back of the package. I made note of the fact that it took six days for the package to make its way from London to my mail box in rural Ontario. I shook the package although I was pretty sure it contained a book. I held the package up to the light although I knew I could not see through the envelope. I spent time thinking that the box of Pot of Gold chocolates that I was going to give as a gift would, perhaps, not quite cut it. What I did not do was open the package.
This little guy was trying desperately to blend into the background this morning:
He did a pretty good job. I am pretty sure he knew we were there but he stayed perfectly still and counted on his white winter coat to keep him safe. He stuck with this strategy for a long time and, in fact, we moved before he did.
Meanwhile, inside the house we have been enjoying the white beauty of these paperwhites:
Things can look pretty grim at this time of year:
However, icicle season is starting:
I have noticed over the last couple of years that icicles begin to form on the woodshed around the beginning of February. My theory is that the sun has finally regained enough strength to melt the snow on the roof but it freezes before it hits the ground. So there you have it, the first sign of spring. There’s always hope.
