I received another mystery package from an online bookseller yesterday. I really had no idea what it was – I though that perhaps it was an out of print cookbook that I had ordered some time ago, but I didn’t recognize the name of the company. It turns out that the book inside the package was A Year in the Life of the Langdale Valleys. I had actually seen the book before – it was available for sale in the Three Shires Inn, the hotel Dad and I stayed in when we were in the Lake District earlier this month. I hadn’t actually looked at it, but Dad had, and he ended up buying a copy, which he gave to his mother (my grandmother) when he got back to Australia. My best guess (because there was no note accompanying the book) is that Dad ordered the book for me when he got back to Australia. The book is lovely. It’s really a coffee table book filled with photos that document the four seasons in the two Langdale Valleys: Little Langdale and Greater Langdale. The photographer, Bill Birkett, was grew up in Little Langdale, and continues to live there, and his text that accompanies the photographs gives them a very real, local context. The book is a lovely souvenir and reminder of Dad and my time in the Lake District.

Cross-posted on Grevillea

When I got back from my trip from England, there was a mysterious package from Amazon.com waiting for me. It turns out that it was the Muffin Bible, ordered for me by Mum. She’d bought the related Soup Bible for herself, and thinking it excellent, and knowing that I really enjoy a home-baked muffin, ordered this book for me. The book is excellent. I suspect that it’s really an Australian publication – most of the units are metric, and it uses temperatures in celcius, indicating that it hasn’t even been edited for an American release. I find myself looking through the book on a pretty regular basis, wondering what I’ll bake from it. It really is a pretty complete volume – I’m yet to think of something that one could conceivably put into a muffin and not find a recipe (or two or three!). My have just two complaints about the book: First, it’s quite thick, and it can be difficult to get it to stay open on the page you’re working from. It might be better if it were spiral-bound instead. Second, it has a less than complete index. I just lists the recipes by name (which happens to be the order that they are in the book, anyway), and doesn’t necessarily help you find recipes that use a particular ingredient that you might have on hand.

On Wednesday, my box had fresh raspberries in it, and I knew I had to do something with them, quickly, before they spoiled. Last night, I made Fresh Raspberry Muffins from the Muffin Bible. The recipe wasn’t really like any muffin recipe that I’d ever made before – the dough was quite stiff – and the resulting muffins were quite different from any I’d ever eaten before, but they were delicious! I suspect they’d be quite good broken open, toasted, and slathered with butter (but, then again, what isn’t good slathered with butter?), although I’m yet to try that serving option.

To read this with pictures, go here.

Stamped Cookies

http://grevillea.wordpress.com/2007/05/19/interweave-knits-summer-2007/

I’ve been listening to an audiobook of Jim Harrison’s Returning to Earth. I’ve never had this happen to me before, but I’m having serious issues with the reading of the book. Specifically, the person who does the majority of the reading reads very quickly. If it were my own English and my own accent, I might be able to deal with it, but it’s not, and I’m finding I almost have to pay more attention than I have to follow along. It does get better as I get further into the book, but I’m still struggling. At first, I thought they’d just sped everything up in an effort to get more material onto fewer CDs, but I don’t think that’s it. All the other readers work at a much more reasonable pace!

This year, Rinske gave me The Art of Knitting: Inspirational Stitches, Textures and Surfaces for my birthday. It’s an amazing book, with beautiful photography, and lots of inspiration for textures and stitch ideas (as the title might suggest). Most of the photographs of the knitted fabrics are macros and are juxtaposed with images from nature that reflect the texture and colors of the knitting.

This really is more a source of inspiration than a stitch library, although it does include instructions for some of the patterns – both in form of hand-knitting charts and machine-knitting charts. The instructions mainly are for machine-knitting, and much of the text describes how certain textures can be acheived with knitting machines of various types, but there is are good descriptions and discussions for hand-knitters. The emphasis within the book is definitely on textures and surfaces of various kinds – there’s no so much for people looking for complicated lace and cable designs (although there are some of these, usually in the context of creating a particular texture or effect).

I recently finished listening to the audiobook of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. It’s a pretty fascinating read, and for me the take-home message was that education isn’t enough. Knowing that you’ll tend to eat more food if it is served to you on a large plate isn’t enough to stop you from eating more when food is served to you on a large plate. You need to go out and buy some smaller plates.

The second thing that I found interesting was the idea of “mindless margins”. By trimming a reasonably small number of calories (100-300) from their diet, the average person will lose in the range of 1 – 3 pounds each month – not setting any records for weight loss, but achieving it in a relatively painless and sustainable way.

On Friday night, I had a lovely long dinner at Tanjore, followed by ice-cream at Christina’s, with Jason and Anna. It’s been a long time since I’ve had dinner at Tanjore (although I often go there for the buffet lunch, which is also excellent), and I’d forgotten how good it could be. We ordered all vegetarian food – including a few things I’d never had before: the Baigan Bhurta and the Malai Kofta (both are delicious). After ice cream, Anna went home, and Jason and I walked to Kendall to see The Lives of Others. I’d heard plenty of good things about this movie, and it really is worth seeing, but it is incredibly grim (and quite long, too – so you have to endure a lot of grimness). Whenever I see movies set in Communist regimes, it always strikes me as completely foreign to me. I guess it is my luck that I really have trouble imagining what it would be like to live in a Communist country.

Stéphanie and I held a second dinner party a couple of weekends ago. This time, it was my turn to make the main course. Last year, I bought a couple of (mainly) vegetarian “easy supper”-type cook books, one of which was Simple Suppers, from the Moosewood Collective. I’ve been meaning to try it out, but hadn’t had a chance. This was the moment to test it. I ended up making the Beans and Greens Risotto. I was a little apprehensive, as it uses ingredients I’ve never really seen in a risotto before (a can of beans?), but it was delicious. I ended up using red kale instead of escarole (which doesn’t seem to be in season right now), and for the first time ever while making risotto, I did heat the stock, etc. in a separate pot. As much as it pains me to admit it, it does make the whole thing faster and easier, even if you do have more dirty pots at the end of the night.

I finally got around to seeing Casino Royale over the weekend. I’m not sure that it’s showing in cinemas any more but I caught at MIT’s LSC. I’m glad I did, as it’s definitely worth seeing on the big screen. Daniel Craig makes and excellent Bond, and the movie was everything you’d expect a Bond movie to be, although it was definitely on the long side. My one complaint: product placement. It would be nice if it were a little less obvious.