The Jane Austen Cookbook

I was perusing the food section of a bookstore the other day, looking for another cookbook to add to my ever growing collection, when I came across The Jane Austen Cookbook by Maggie Black & Deirdre Le Faye.
Naturally, I picked it up right away. The cover is exactly what I hoped it would be.

The authors are a food historian and an Austenian scholar, so you just know the book is going to be good. And it is.
Aside from recipes like Lady Williams’s Muffins and something called Forcemeat Balls (which involves anchovies and pigeons’ livers), The Jane Austen Cookbook also has a great introduction that goes into the social conventions of shopping, eating and entertaining in Austen’s time.

As much as I love Jane Austen, I have no real desire to make a Pigeon Pie or Venison Cake, so I can’t say I really want to attempt any of the recipes in this book. That’s why I was happy to find the site Austenacious. Here’s how the lovely ladies of Austenacious describe their site:

Austenacious began as an excuse to cook, eat, and watch BBC period dramas on Friday nights, and grew into an excuse to cook, eat, and talk about Jane Austen every day of the week.

What’s not to love, right? They have posts with recipes from the book including Apple Puffs and Martha’s Gingerbread Cakes.
Their other posts are worth reading, too.

Have you tried a recipe from this book? I’d love to hear how it turned out.
But if you made the Chicken with Tongues, you can omit the gory details.

Related posts:
Happy Valentine’s Day, Mr. Darcy
How writing is like baking cookies

Happy Valentine’s Day, Mr. Darcy.

If you’re anything like me and the people who answered this survey of the most romantic characters in literature, you have a thing for a certain Mr. Darcy.
Shocking as it may be, Fitzwilliam Darcy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was not number one on that list. It turns out that more people swoon over Mr. Rochester of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. But since I prefer Darcy and since I was looking for any excuse to bake something, I decided to whip up a batch of cookies in honour of Valentine’s Day and my favourite romantic hero.

(I used the Williams-Sonoma Message-in-a-Cookie Cutters to make these.)

Related posts:
How writing is like baking cookies
Literary Recipes

Book vs Film: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

The title of this post is a bit misleading since I haven’t actually seen the movie version of Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Yet.

There was something about the book that really moved me. I held off reading it for so long, and I had read plenty of negative reviews (Like this one. Yikes.). But when I finally got around to reading it, I couldn’t help but love it just a little.
And even trying to explain what it was that I loved about it doesn’t seem right because the reasons why I did were all so personal. That’s why I completely understand when people say that they hated the book. It demands that type of emotional reaction. No matter what you think of Foer’s book, the movie stars Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, so a few important Hollywood people obviously loved it.

But I’m hesitant to see the movie.

On top of the fact that it was the worst reviewed movie of the past ten years to receive a best picture nomination (Yikes again), I can tell from the trailer that it will have a different feel than the book had. And since I felt such a strong connection to the novel, I don’t know that I want to ruin that with a (potentially awful) movie adaptation.

Sometimes it’s good for a book to just stay a book in my mind.
Does that even make sense?
It doesn’t really have to, I suppose.

Judge the book cover: Cannery Row

I recently visited the California coast for the first time, and while the entire trip was pretty incredible (amazing beaches, annoyingly perfect weather, great food), one of my favourite stops had to be Monterey.
I was very excited to check out the street in Monterey that John Steinbeck’s classic Cannery Row was based on. Strolling that beautiful street inspired me to buy myself a copy of Steinbeck’s famous novel and finally commit to reading it.
Now I just need to decide which cover I like best…

Related posts:
Judge the book cover: Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Judge the book cover: The Beautiful and Damned

10 reasons why I love my Kindle

10. It’s tiny and weighs next to nothing, making it ideal for travel. No more lugging heavy books around in my suitcase.
9. It wasn’t very expensive and buying ebooks isn’t either.
8. If I feel like reading a book, I can buy it and start reading in just a couple of minutes. It couldn’t be more convenient.
7. It’s a conversation starter. While it may seem like everyone has some kind of eReader these days, for a big part of the population they are still very new. And people are curious.
6. The E Ink display makes it so easy to read. No glare and no eye strain = more hours reading.a

5.  I don’t have to worry about people judging me for what I’m reading because no one can tell with a Kindle. So should I feel like reading Twilight (again), no one will have to know.
4. Being able to read a sample before buying is like being able to flip through a book in the store. It’s great and leads to more book purchases, for sure.
3. I’ll never run out of things to read. Ever.
2. Because there are so many classic titles available for free, I no longer have an excuse not to read them.
1. It’s not a replacement for actual books. It never will be. But if you don’t view it as an either or, a Kindle (or any eReader) is just a new way to read books. And that’s good enough for me.

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