Valentine’s Day Resolved

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:

 

Dessert Friday

On Friday we have dessert. Sometimes we have it on other nights of the week but not usually. This tradition started with certain children looking at their dinner, making less than flattering faces, and asking if their was dessert. The answer was no, what they had on their plate was as good as it was going to get. Eventually I started making dessert on Friday so at least they had that to look forward to. So today I took advantage of our rhubarb patch and made this Rustic Rhubarb Tart:

The pastry is an almond-buttermilk recipe which I have never tried before and, in fact, haven’t tried yet since I didn’t have buttermilk so I substituted soured milk. The filling is made using the ‘That Looks About Right’ method of cookery which has a success rate of about 50%. We will find out later when we eat it.