Julia Child's Chocolate Mousse

On this 100th anniversary of her birth, I decided to make Julia Child's chocolate mousse. This recipe holds a very special place in my heart. In the old days there were no repeats of television shows, there was no way of taping a program, and there were no videos or dvds to be had. Which meant that if you liked a recipe on a tv show, and the only cooking show in town in those days was Julia's, you had to write really, really fast as she was cooking and talking.

You can see by my printing on the front that I was still in my previously mentioned 'ee cummings phase.'


When you open it up, you see five sides of paper in Tom's writing. On the first page, those are my notes on the side. 'This makes 6 small custard cups - not full cups. Double - 8 full custard cups.' (which as you will see wasn't true today. who knows why, but today I got 8 quite full cups without doubling)

You may click the photos to see more clearly.

This is the beauty of handwritten recipes and cookbooks with notations. No iPad can ever duplicate the joy of a long-ago handwritten note. There is room for both in the world, but it would be a sad loss if a 'machine' took the place of the history which may be found in old cookbooks and recipe boxes.






My notes (which I didn't even write on the recipe because I know them so well):
used salted butter because that's what was in the house
didn't have any cream of tartar
didn't 'melt' the sugar
and I don't put the egg yolks and sugar mix in a 'pan of hot water.'

Chocolate Mousse was so new in those days that we still referred to it as we first heard it, 'mousse au chocolat.' Now it is as familiar to all of us as chocolate ice cream. There's another recipe here on the blog that is a bit different from Julia's.


Just before I began making the chocolate mousse, I heard Bob Spitz on The Diane Rehm show. He is the author of the new biography of Julia called Dearie. It was a wonderful interview, and you may listen here. At the end, Diane read an email from a woman who overheard a mother tell her child at the Smithsonian exhibit of Julia's kitchen, 'this is a holy place.'




You may have seen this adorable picture which is on google today.

There are some great tributes on the PBS site. And PBS also offers entire programs of The French Chef here.

To end my little celebration of the birthday of this wonderful woman, I'd like to share a video someone put together for the occasion, set to an inspired choice of music - Sweet Child of Mine by Guns N' Roses.

Today's song/I'm Getting Ready - Michael Kiwanuka

Kilmeny of the Orchard by Lucy Maud Montgomery

42. Kilmeny of the Orchard
by Lucy Maud Montgomery
fiction, 1910
first book for the Canadian Book Challenge 6 - Prince Edward Island
Nook book 15
finished 8/5/12


After reading almost half of a novel, and the first page of another before quitting them both, it was such a relief to fall into the words of Lucy Maud Montgomery - the peace, the slowness, the quiet of an earlier time in a beautiful rural locale.

The story begins with a college graduation ceremony (in April) in Nova Scotia. Eric Marshall has always done exactly as he should growing up, and is now perfectly groomed to go into the family business. This is not a duty for him but a pleasure. He tells his doctor friend, David

But ambition, man! Why, I'm full of it - it's bubbling in every pore of me. I mean to make the department store of Marshall & Company famous from ocean to ocean. Father started in life as a poor boy from a Nova Scotia farm. He has built up a business that has a provincial reputation. I mean to carry it on. In five years it shall have a maritime reputation, in ten, a Canadian. I want to make the firm of Marshall & Company stand for something big in the commercial interests of Canada.

Though Eric seems the ideal young man for any woman, he has shown little interest in anyone.

"… if the future Mrs. Eric Marshall exists in the flesh I haven't met her yet. I haven't even started to look for her - and don't intend to for some years to come."

Eric's mother died when he was ten. She was much beloved by both father and son, and is the model for all women for the son.

"When a man has had a mother like mine his standard of womanly sweetness is apt to be pitched pretty high…."

A professor says of him,

I am afraid Eric Marshall will never do one quixotic thing, but if he ever does it will supply the one thing lacking in him.

Eric receives a letter from a friend who has become ill. Larry is a teacher at a country school on Prince Edward Island, and needs someone to step in for him while he takes time off to recuperate. It will be for only a week in May and the month of June. To lure Eric, he writes

Of course, this little north-shore farming settlement isn't a very lively place. The rising and setting of the sun are the most exciting events of the average day. But the people are very kind and hospitable, and Prince Edward Island in the month of June is such a thing as you don't often see except in happy dreams.

I'd be sold, wouldn't you? And Eric agrees to oblige.

There is a foreshadowing remark made by his father before he goes. As parents always do, the older man warns his son not to get into any 'mischief.' When Eric says there isn't much likelihood in the little place where he's going, his father says,

"Probably the devil finds as much mischief for idle hands in Lindsay as anywhere else. The worst tragedy I ever heard of happened on a backwoods farm, fifteen miles from a railroad and five from a store."

And so the stage is set. The reader wonders whether romance or dark adventures will happen to this young, kindly, impressionable yet practical young man.

Although the scenery is achingly beautiful, Eric is indeed bored … until he visits an orchard one lovely evening.

… three long rows of trees with green avenues between, each tree standing in a wonderful blow [literary meaning - state or period of flowering] of pink and white.
The charm of the place took sudden possession of Eric as nothing had ever done before. He was not given to romantic fancies, but the orchard laid hold of him subtly and drew him to itself, and he was never to be quite his own man again. He went into it over one of the broken panels of fence, and so, unknowing, went forward to meet all that life held for him.

And then there came

a strain of delicious music, so beautiful and fantastic that Eric held his breath in astonishment and delight. Was he dreaming?

A young woman appears and then runs off in fear. She is the loveliest woman he has ever seen.

Shall I say more? If I do, I fear it will tell too much of this beautiful story. It has the feeling of a fairy tale; a reminder of a sleeping beauty in the woods, a woman, while childlike and innocent, has secrets that even she doesn't know.

I've read many of the Anne of Green Gables books but nothing else by Lucy Maud Montgomery until Kilmeny of the Orchard. I found it quite wonderful. This is the great gift of ebooks - that these older books are being brought to a wide reading public who may not know they exist. For free, or for 99¢ we can go back in time and read what people were reading in the early days of the twentieth century. It was a pleasure to read a book that presented such a love story. Though there are obstacles to be surmounted, and old troubles to be faced, love really can prevail. Not a bad message for those days, or our time.

The name Kilmeny comes from a poem by James Hogg. You may read the whole poem here though I had some trouble with some of the Scottish words. I think the gist of it is that the girl, Kilmeny was pure and untouched by society. She was taken away, her life ruined, and she died. Please do correct me if I'm wrong. Montgomery's Kilmeny does not die, but when we first meet her she is a young girl completely free of outside influences.

A potato field on the north shore of Prince Edward Island



I read this for The Canadian Book Challenge 6

First Corn

And then all attention is riveted on the corn patch. ... For three glorious, hedonistic weeks we will dine on it nightly. We rush it from field to pot to table in under ten minutes.
The Country Kitchen, chapter from In Deep
by Maxine Kumin

Our 'three (I hope it is that long!) glorious, hedonistic weeks' began today! Five years ago I wrote that we no longer boil corn, but bake it according to The Nero Wolfe Cookbook. Out of this world delicious!!

Quote du jour/Jonathan Schwartz

The summer's still got a lot of strength in it; it ain't goin' anywhere for a while.
Jonathan Schwartz

Quote du jour/The Old Farmer's Almanac

Don't let the weeds get the upper hand these hot days. Of all of the months in the year, this is the best for the growth of weeds and the time of all others when it is the most difficult to kill them.
August 1887
The Old Farmer's Almanac

Goin' on vacation right here at home

When the kids were younger and we went on vacation in the summer we'd stay in a rental house for a week. Those weeks usually ran from Saturday to Saturday. I've decided that I am going to do that for this coming week, without leaving home. I'm going to live in my house, on my land as if it were a vacation destination. And what that means is that I will not be on the computer during that time. If I went away, I certainly wouldn't haul this desktop computer with me, so I won't be using it on my little 'staycation.'

Hoping to spend a lot of time right here

The loss of Geoffrey Hughes

Though well known in Britain for other roles, he will always be remembered as the much-loved character Onslow in Keeping Up Appearances to us in the United States.

More here, and here.

Geoffrey Hughes (1944-2012)

Today's poem by Edgar Guest

My mother was not a gardener. She didn't grow and tend a flower garden, but she did have hollyhocks growing up on the east side of the house. In my memory they were there every summer of my childhood, but of course it may have been just one year. I recently heard from my mother's only living sister that their mother also grew hollyhocks on the farm. I have been trying to grow them at Windy Poplars for the thirty-one years we've lived here, with only one year of success. That year I bought a plant from a local nursery in the spring and it produced beautiful yellow flowers. This year I got serious and planted hollyhock seeds under the indoor lights, and wow did they ever grow. They were quite large when we transplanted them to one of the raised beds, and now they are huge, with a couple taller than I am.



I do battle with Japanese beetles, going out every day with a container of water and flicking them into it with my fingers before they fly off.


They've done a lot of damage to the leaves.


But thankfully, so far, the flowers are not bothered one bit. It is a great joy to see these red and pink beauties.





I looked around for a hollyhock poem and found one by the beloved poet Edgar Guest.

Hollyhocks

Old-fashioned flowers! I love them all:
The morning-glories on the wall,
The pansies in their patch of shade,
The violets, stolen from a glade,
The bleeding hearts and columbine,
Have long been garden friends of mine;
But memory every summer flocks
About a clump of hollyhocks.

The mother loved them years ago;
Beside the fence they used to grow,
And though the garden changed each year
And certain blooms would disappear
To give their places in the ground
To something new that mother found,
Some pretty bloom or rosebush rare--
The hollyhocks were always there.

It seems but yesterday to me
She led me down the yard to see
The first tall spires, with bloom aflame,
And taught me to pronounce their name.
And year by year I watched them grow,
The first flowers I had come to know.
And with the mother dear I'd yearn
To see the hollyhocks return.

The garden of my boyhood days
With hollyhocks was kept ablaze;
In all my recollections they
In friendly columns nod and sway;
And when to-day their blooms I see,
Always the mother smiles at me;
The mind's bright chambers, life unlocks
Each summer with the hollyhocks.

Edgar Guest (1881-1959)

The loss of Maeve Binchy

It was true what they had been saying: if people remember you, then you're not dead. It was very comforting.

Minding Frankie
by Maeve Binchy (1940-2012)

Book notes on four July books; and a year long resolve

37. Crocodile on the Sandbank - book 1 in the Amelia Peabody series
by Elizabeth Peters
mystery, 1975
second reading
Nook book 11
finished 7/4/12



I was surprised to see that my 37th book in 2010 was read just about this time of year, and it was the last in the Amelia Peabody series. And here I am two years later reading the first in the series. I first listened to it on Recorded Books unabridged tape maybe fifteen years ago. Is that possible? I adore these books, and I adore the characters. In Crocodile on the Sandbank, Amelia has inherited money from her father, and decides to go traveling. She is a most independent woman. She hates fashion, believes in comfortable, wearable clothes for women, isn't afraid to express how she feels, and is all about rights for women - not all that common in the late 1880s. Amelia meets a down and out young woman named Evelyn, and hires her as a companion. They travel to Egypt where their adventures and their new lives begin. They meet brothers and ultimately fall in love and marry. Amelia discovers a passion for pyramids, and Evelyn a talent for drawing. The story continues through 19 books, as they age, have children, suffer heartache and tragedy. Yet through it all Amelia is a bulwark of strength, and as they say, a force to be reckoned with. One of the all time great fictional characters.



38. Corduroy Mansions - book 1 in Corduroy Mansions series
by Alexander McCall Smith
fiction, 2009
library book eight
Nook book 12
finished 7/13/12



It's hard to write about this book. There were the usual Alexander McCall Smith moments of insight and musings about the world. There was a strong sense of the London setting. But the stories and many of the characters were just so 'out there' to me. I felt this about many of the Scotland Street series characters as well. And yet, I continue to read them, as I probably will continue to read this series. You probably know that the book was presented in a most interesting way - serialized in the Daily Telegraph. Wonderful idea. And it was also recorded by Andrew Sachs, who played Manuel on Fawlty Towers.



40. That Affair Next Door - book 1 in the Amelia Butterworth series; book 7 in the Ebenezer Gryce series
by Anna Katharine Green
mystery, 1897
Kindle book 16
finished 7/26/12



I first heard of this writer when Peggy sent me an email saying That Affair Next Door was available for free on the Kindle. She has a wonderful post on the author and her books. Well, I loved this book. Look at the publication date! That's a long time ago, and yet, I was as interested as if Anna Katharine Green had just written it. There's a site here which talks about Agatha Christie's Jane Marple and Anna Katharine Green's Amelia Butterworth. Amelia is a well-off spinster living in New York City. She is very intelligent and curious. One evening she looks out her window and sees an odd occurence. From this episode springs a quite intricate mystery. There are many twists and turns, but Amelia helps us out by recapping every once in a while. Oh, I had so much fun reading this book. Highly recommended.



41. Best Staged Plans
by Claire Cook
fiction, 2011
library book nine
Nook book 14
finished 7/31/12



I have Marcia to thank for getting me back on the Claire Cook reading path. I had read Must Love Dogs years ago, and so enjoyed it, as well as the movie. But that's it. Well, after reading a few of Marcia's reviews at Goodreads, I was reminded that I want to read more by this author. I really liked this book. Sandra Sullivan is around 50, her kids are grown - one married, the other a college graduate living at home, and she is ready for a change. She wants to fix up their old Victorian house by the sea in Massachusetts, and then sell it. This fixing up to sell has a name. It is called 'home staging.' It is much, much more than just baking cookies before a prospective buyer comes for a tour. It's all about selling a dream. People buying a house apparently don't want to see a junk drawer just like what they have in their own homes. They want to see such a space nicely organized. They want to see an exercise room with machines and dvds and a mat on the floor to encourage them in the belief that once they move, they will begin an exercise regime. Sandra's job is a home stager so she knows what she's doing. She gets annoyed with her husband that he isn't taking the renovation work seriously, and so accepts a job working on a 'boutique hotel' in Atlanta. She says not to call her until the work is done. This part seemed a bit contrived to me. She seemed too upset with her wonderful family, but I let it go, and of course she sees the error in her thinking later in the book. There was a lovely section about helping a homeless woman get a job, showing readers how any one of us could end up in that situation with just a few twists of fate. The book has humor, lightness, great characterization, and seriousness all at once. Pure delight.

Book 39 is missing from these notes because I wrote about it in a separate posting; Cleo Coyle's French Pressed.



This year I've bought a lot of books. I now own plenty of fiction and nonfiction. Beginning tomorrow, August 1, I am not going to buy any books for an entire year. The exceptions will be gift books, and possibly buying some for the Canadian Challenge. I own a few, and will try to get more from the library, but if I can't, I will buy them. The other exception will be ebooks for bedtime reading, if I am not able to get them through the state library's downloadable books.

Tom has announced his retirement for next June, and that means we are going to have a lot less money coming in. We should be okay because we live quite simply. I don't buy clothes unless necessary, I don't buy furniture unless ours is worn out, we haven't traveled in years. Tom hardly ever buys anything unless it is a necessity. But what I buy is books. I love hearing about a book, buying it, unwrapping it, and putting it on my shelf. And that is the rub. I put it on the shelf. And all too frequently it stays right there. A book I just had to own sits and sits. Often the hardcover I bought as soon as it was published remains unread. And then I see it is out in paperback, and feel a bit ashamed. Right now every shelf in the house is full of books. I've read a few but the vast majority I haven't.

If I read about books on Goodreads or on blogs, I will either bookmark the post or jot down the title in this cute little notebook a friend gave me.


If I truly 'can't wait,' I'll borrow from the library. Those of you who love buying books will understand this is not an easy endeavor to embark upon. But I shall persevere.

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

36. Still Alice
by Lisa Genova
fiction, 2007
finished 6/29/12



I'm quite sure it was Marcia who first brought this book to my attention. And then I read reviews from Les and Kay. I knew I wanted to read it but didn't pick it up until this summer.

Tom's father has Alzheimer's. For a while it was quite slow in manifesting itself, but lately the changes are coming quicker and stronger. The other day Tom was to bring his father for a haircut at 9 am. When Tom arrived to pick him up, he wasn't dressed. His landlord said that the previous evening he came down his outside stairs, all dressed and ready for his haircut. The solution that day was to make a later appointment, but we know that there are going to be events and situations for which there are no solutions.

At present he lives alone but in a house owned by a wonderful man who keeps track of him. He still recognizes everyone. He still goes down the hill to his part-time job as a proofreader at the weekly hometown newspaper. Don't ask. We can't imagine how he does it, but they may just keep him on because everyone there is so fond of him. Yet, this very job has created a couple disturbing Alzheimer's situations. One evening he went down at 8 o'clock, thinking it was the morning. Another time he called here just before midnight all upset because he had to get the paper ready for publication the next day. Tom talked him out of this, saying it wasn't his job; that someone else would be doing that work and he could go to sleep.

The difficulty dealing with a person who has mental issues, whether Alzheimer's or anything else, is when they look you in the eye and speak rationally. We all tend to take people at face value. If someone says they're out of orange juice, the listener assumes it is true. But we are fast learning it isn't necessarily true. Tom has jumped into the car to go buy medicine his father said he was out of, only to bring it to the apartment and see bottles of it sitting on the shelf. For a while we thought it would be good for Tom to call each morning just to check in, but even if he does so, whatever his father says at 9 am may be entirely different at 9.05. That's just how this disease works. There are no rules. There is no map. Every sufferer is both the same and different, one from another.

But there is a guidepost. Still Alice is a most helpful way to get inside the head of one with this disease. The reader meets Alice, a woman who has it all - a family and a very successful career as a Harvard professor. Both husband and wife are acclaimed in their fields and spend much time working. The children are grown and living their own lives. She begins to quietly, slowly feel a little odd. The book in fact begins with her husband John racing around looking for his keys, a typical situation in their household. It is a moment of levity; a moment of familiarity for the reader because this is something we all know. If not ourselves, then our partners or children cannot find things that are right in plain sight. The sense I got was that this is a problem John has, but not Alice, at least not until recently. She hasn't told John about the little episodes of forgetting she has experienced, like not being able to find the charger for her BlackBerry, and after a search bought a new one only to find the original plugged in next to her bed, 'where she should have known to look.' The book is fiction but reads as if it were really happening. Sometimes it felt like a thriller in the way it built up. What now? we wonder. After that beginning, the narrative slips into a regular tale of life with concerns about a daughter and annoyance that her husband is away so much. And isn't this like all mystery/thriller books? Normalcy with a little something strange, and then the strange begins ever so slowly to take over the normal. It is a very gripping story which I read at two sittings. The characters and the situations have stayed with me. When things come up with Tom's father, I am reminded of an event in the book. I've told Tom how very, very helpful Still Alice is in understanding how the disease can work. Sometimes Alice seems almost 'normal' and then does something so unexpected that I was stunned and shaken. Later in the book, as her Alzheimer's has gotten worse, but she is still functioning, she attends a seminar. After someone gives a presentation, Alice makes a comment which is received with respect until … she says the whole thing over again though in fewer words. What a mysterious disease that causes someone a few moments of brilliance which she can't recall saying but can repeat.

The confusing thing for those of us on the outside is that sometimes the person with Alzheimer's does indeed seem so normal. Tom will say something to his father and it seems as if he understands. And he well might for that instant, but then it is lost. This has been the hardest thing for Tom to grasp so far. Tom says he has to stop looking at his father's words in a 'logical' manner.

Still Alice is simply brilliant in the way it shows Alice's state of mind. A morning is described when she and her husband are going to go for a run. She felt the cool air and went inside for another layer of clothing. After searching through several drawers, she found a lightweight fleece and put it on. She noticed a book she'd been reading on her nightstand. She grabbed it and walked down the stairs and into the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of iced tea and walked out to the back porch. She settles down to read. Goes and gets a blanket. John finds her and asks, "What are you doing, aren't we going for a run?"

And there is a terrible incident when she can't find the bathroom in her own house.

Every character in this book is well-written, and real. Her husband does not come off as a knight in shining armor, but his actions do seem possible in light of who he is. And really, how do any of us know how we would react if the person we know so well is no longer that person. It's hard enough if the couple is in their 80s, but being thirty years younger creates particular strains on the relationship. We see the impatience of her children, and the great kindness of those same children. They react, when what they are reacting to can change in an instant. Alice remembers the word 'condiments' but can't name that

... tub of white butter. But it wasn't called white butter. What was it called? Not mayonnaise. No, it was too thick, like butter. What was its name?

Some people say that they would rather have cancer because it may be able to be cured, while Alzheimer's at this point in time is unstoppable. Even Alice feels this way.

She'd trade Alzheimer's for cancer in a heartbeat. She felt ashamed for wishing this, and it was certainly a pointless bargaining, but she permitted herself the fantasy anyway. With cancer, she'd have something that she could fight. There was surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. There was the chance that she could win. Her family and the community at Harvard would rally behind her battle and consider it noble. And even if defeated in the end, she'd be able to look them knowingly in the eye and say good-bye before she left.

I understand this view, but it is not my view. Probably it comes from watching two parents die of cancer. I would hate to know I had cancer. I would hate that 'good-bye.' Whereas, if I had Alzheimer's I wouldn't know, at least at some later stage. You know the Alzheimer's joke? The doctor says to the patient. 'I have two bits of news. You have cancer and you have Alzheimer's.' And the patient replies, 'well at least I don't have cancer.' This may seem irreverent and impossible, but it happened to Tom's father. He has had lymphoma for a couple years but it is very slow moving, and the doctor has said outright that this is not what will kill him. When Tom and his father were at a new doctor's office one day, there was a mention of chemotherapy. Tom told the doctor his father hadn't had chemo for his cancer. And Tom's father piped up, 'I have cancer?' So there you are. I would be happy with an illness that let me forget I had cancer. Yes, there are horrific things about it, but if I had my choice of the two that's what I would choose.

One day Tom had to interrupt class because he had to call his father. He asked this group of about 18 junior high kids if they knew anyone with Alzheimer's. Five hands went up, and they proceeded to tell Tom their own personal Alzheimer's stories. This disease is a plague, and is only going to get worse as we baby boomers get older and older. Doing crosswords, using stainless steel cooking pots, running every day - they aren't going to prevent it. The early onset seems to have a genetic component, but most people get it when they are older. The statistics from the Alzheimer's Association are chilling:

One in eight older Americans has Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States.
Over 15 million Americans provide unpaid care for a person with Alzheimer’s or other dementias.
Payments for care are estimated to be $200 billion in 2012.

I am someone who believes in the gifts, even the strengths, that can accompany a dysfunction in the brain, and Still Alice illustrates my belief. Alice's daughter is an actress, and though Alice doesn't 'get' what is going on in a play, she does understand the essence, the truth of a character and what the actress is trying to portray in that character. In a very touching scene near the end, Alice doesn't remember her daughter Lydia's name or that this young woman is even her daughter but when Lydia asks

"Hey, Mom, will you listen to me do this monologue I'm working on for class and tell me what you think it's about? Not the story, it's kind of long. You don't have to remember the words, just tell me what you think it's about emotionally. When I'm done, tell me how I made you feel, okay?"
Alice nodded, and the actress began. Alice watched and listened and focused beyond the words the actress spoke. She saw her eyes become desperate, searching, pleading for truth. She saw them land softly and gratefully on it. Her voice felt at first tentative and scared. Slowly, and without getting louder, it grew more confident and then joyful, playing sometimes like a song. Her eyebrows and shoulders and hands softened and opened, asking for acceptance and offering forgiveness. Her voice and body created an energy that filled Alice and moved her to tears. …
The actress stopped and came back into herself. She looked at Alice and waited.
"Okay, what do you feel?"
"I feel love. It's about love."
The actress squealed, rushed over to Alice, kissed her on the cheek, and smiled, every crease of her face delighted.
"Did I get it right?" asked Alice.
"You did, Mom. You got it exactly right."

And Lisa Genova 'got it exactly right.' This is a perfect book. It is real but not completely discouraging. Facts are faced and not faced. People respond well and don't respond well. It is the truest fiction I've ever read. The author has given a great gift to the world.

Dead and Berried by Karen MacInerney

35. Dead and Berried - Book 2 in the Gray Whale Inn Mysteries
by Karen MacInerney
mystery, 2007
eighth book in the Foodies Read 2 Challenge 2012
Kindle book 15
finished 6/25/12

For someone who purports to not care so much for cozy mysteries, I am finding myself quite enamored with this series. I love the heroine, the plots, the locale, and the food! In the second adventure for Natalie Barnes who has moved from Austin, Texas to Cranberry Island, Maine, she is trying to make ends meet running her bed & breakfast. Dead and Berried is set in the fall, when business traditionally falls off. In addition to this problem, Natalie hears noises coming from her bedroom ceiling at night and she wonders if her house may be haunted.

In this installment the reader learns more about the other inhabitants of the island, and not all the revelations are pleasant. A woman who works for Natalie is murdered, as is a new Episcopalian priest. And Natalie's ex-fiancé shows up at the Gray Whale Inn trying to win her back to him, and their life in Texas. Is he sincere? And if so, why is he spending so much time with a gorgeous fellow guest? Two of Natalie's new island friendships are faltering causing her much distress.

There's a lot for Natalie to deal with in this book. It is a cozy, but it is rather a serious one. Of course all murder is serious, but perhaps the time of year and all her troubles make the book a bit darker. I enjoyed it very much, as I did the first one, and plan to continue on with the series. So far there are four books, and a short story. You may read more at Karen MacInerney's website.

I include Dead and Berried as an offering for the Foodies Read 2 Challenge because baking is a big part of Natalie's life, and hence the book. There are numerous mentions of delicious sounding dishes, with recipes following the story, as in the first book, Murder on the Rocks. I'm particularly interested in Berried Medley Lemon Streusel Muffins. I think I'll be trying them when autumn arrives.

The very local meal

You may have heard of the 100-mile diet, as part of the locavore movement. This is a goal which is impossible for me to achieve most of the year, but in the summer, on this very evening it is a reality.

I'll call it the 15 steps to the garden diet. Everything is from our garden except butter and olive oil. While the potatoes are baking in the oven,

I am making a salad with

lettuce and tomatoes

and cooking:

peas

yellow beans

onion, zucchini, and summer squash

and when we sit down there are chives to top the potatoes

Today's poem by Arthur Rimbaud

When we were in college, living in a Boston apartment, the guy across the hall loved Arthur Rimbaud. So often he'd say, 'Rimbaud, man, Rimbaud.'

So, in honor of Paris in July, and that long ago neighbor,



here is a poem by Arthur Rimbaud.


The Cupboard

It's a board carved wooden cupboard;
the ancient dark-coloured oak
has taken on that pleasant air
that old people have; the cupboard is open,
and gives off from its kindly shadows
inviting aromas like a breath of old wine;
full to overflowing, it's a jumble of quaint old things:
fragrant yellowed linen,
rags of women's or children's clothes, faded laces,
grandmothers' kerchiefs embroidered with griffins;
- here you could find lockets,
and locks of white or blonde hair,
portraits and dried flowers
whose smell mingles with the smell of fruit. -

O cupboard of old times, you know plenty of stories;
and you'd like to tell them;
and you clear your throat every time
your great dark doors slowly open.

Arthur Rimbaud (20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891)


From Groundhog Day

Strawberry-Blueberry Cobbler

I can't believe it has been five years (!) since I first read Les' recipe. I've meant to try it every summer since, and today I finally made it. I will not wait five years to make it again!

Strawberry-Blueberry Cobbler

Preheat oven to 350º F.
Grease 7 x 11 pan. Les called for an 8 x 8, and actually used a deep dish pie pan with a tray underneath to catch juices. I found the 7 x 11 worked great. It rose to the top but didn't overflow.

In the mixer, beat together:
1/4 cup soft butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla

In a separate bowl, mix together:
1 1/4 cups flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Turn the mixer on low, and add dry mixture alternately with
1/2 cup milk

Top with 3 cups of chopped strawberries.
Because I had both fresh strawberries and blueberries, I used a mix of the two.

In a small bowl stir together:
1/4 cup flour
1/4 sugar
and cut in (with two knives or your fingers) 1/4 cold butter

Spread on top of strawberries.


Bake about an hour.


This is fantastic. Just the ticket for a mid-July day. You could top with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream but I didn't have either one, and it was still delicious.

Françoise Hardy

What on earth prompts a young American girl to listen to a young French girl sing in French? That was me in the late 1960s, listening to Françoise Hardy albums. For most of us in the US we were first introduced to her in a famous scene in the 1966 movie Grand Prix. Happily I found it, with a little bit of James Garner afterwards.





She was the essence of cool to me. Her songs in English, and the ones I couldn't understand in French, created a grownup world I was just beginning to enter. On the album Françoise Hardy there are translations in the liner notes. I can remember poring over them. They are all about romance and relationships. For example in the song 'Quatre Fois'

Four times now winter has come and the falling snow still speaks of you. I sit down on every bench and I wait for you. Four times I have seen the rust colored leaves which died in autumn beneath our feet as we walked in the woods - do you remember? We'd be walking and people would say 'How happy they are, how happy are those two!'

Heady stuff for a young girl. In those days, I was immersed in the poetry of Kenneth Patchen, and even Rod Mckuen for a while. ee cummings was so important in my life that for years I never used capital letters. My one venture into writing poetry was on black paper using white ink. Sadly (?) it has disappeared.

In those days, I didn't know anyone else who listened to her music. And I still don't except for a woman who left a comment on my blog four years ago. When I went over to hers, Life Must Be Filled Up, and saw the name Françoise Hardy on her sidebar, I knew I had come upon a kindred spirit.

I am still a fan, and have her 2010 album La pluie sans parapluie (the rain without an umbrella). It is lovely.




Françoise has a website. It is thrilling to see that she has over 50,000 friends on Facebook. Apparently my blogging friend and I were not the only ones listening all those years ago.

Here is a sweet little video of a song which is on my The Best of Françoise Hardy album.





If you go to YouTube, you'll find lots more. There is also a great tribute on the The Style Notebook, where I was pleased to read that a favorite artist Feist was influenced by her.

This is an offering for Paris in July.

French Pressed by Cleo Coyle

39. French Pressed - book 6 in the Coffeehouse Mysteries series
by Cleo Coyle
mystery, 2008
ninth book for the Foodies Read 2 Challenge
Nook book 13
finished 7/18/12


Clare Cosi's daughter, who attends culinary school, comes upon two murdered people - a friend and the chef she is interning with - and is charged with killing them. She is sent to Rikers Island jail until a judge can decide if she will be allowed out on bail. The police have decided she is the culprit and do not intend to investigate further. Clare and her ex-husband Matteo know that Joy is innocent. Clare joins forces with her policeman friend Mike Quinn to find the killer and thus free Joy.

In French Pressed we get a brief and interesting glimpse of Brighton Beach, and learn quite a bit about upscale restaurant life. Who knew that chocolate mousse was passé?

You start putting traditional chocolate mousse and creme brulee in your dessert selections, and the gourmands will declare you zombified ...

One of the many pleasures of this series has been watching Clare grow into her sleuthing work. At the end of this book Mike actually suggests that she might want to become a Private Investigator. She is quick thinking, has good instincts, and is really quite fearless.

The characters and relationships in the series change over time. The reader has seen Joy grow into a young woman who makes mistakes. Clare worries about her. She has to confront some behaviors and let others alone. It is not easy being the parent of a child in her early twenties.

The husband and wife team of Marc Cerasini and Alice Alfonsi who write as Cleo Coyle consistently impress me with the intelligence and heart in their books. I love this series.

French Pressed is my ninth book for the Foodies Read 2 Challenge.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach

34. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (originally published as These Foolish Things)
by Deborah Moggach
fiction, 2004
finished 6/23/12

The book cover looks very like the colors in my yard just now.

In The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel we meet several people, from Dorothy, a lonely former BBC employee to also lonely Evelyn, a widow who has never held an outside job; from inconsiderate, self-absorbed Norman to kindly Douglas. We also get to know the various children of these older people, and several much younger men and women. It is a book large in scope but filled with details and descriptions which make it easy for the reader to become familiar with everyone. What they all have in common is the Marigold Hotel in Bangalore, India, an alternative life for older English individuals facing elderly residential living. The people take a leap of faith, and their lives (and prejudices) are changed in the process as they move from England to India.

Sealed into their compound, the residents lived in a world that was, in many ways, more familiar than the England they had left behind. It was an England of Catherine Cookson paperbacks and clicking knitting needles, of Kraft Dairylea portions and a certain Proustian recall.

Yet outside their hotel is India in all its glory. Bustling, noisy, full of all the various conditions of people.

Much is made of the dangers in England compared to the safety in India. I so hate to think that present-day London is as described in this book with muggings, old women not feeling safe in their long-lived in, long-loved homes, and gangs of youths scaring and harming people. I'm hoping the author exaggerated in order to better show why these folks would be happy to go off to a strange-to-them, new land.

I bought the book as soon as I heard about the movie, which I was terrifically excited to see. I read the book first, and then was quite disappointed in the movie version. It felt like a not-very-good translation of a book. Almost every facet of the book was changed except for some names and the hotel. I wonder if Deborah Moggach found it almost unrecognizable. I know I did. Afterwards I said to Tom that I didn't really like it that much, and he agreed. He used the adjective, 'contrived.' And it is. Contrived from the basic story. Snatches taken here and there. What I liked about the film were Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, and India. The colors, the bustle, even the cremation. I have a longing for that country which I don't understand. Our friends who went with us said they couldn't take the crowds which would usually be my own feeling, but there's something about India that draws me. My friend wondered as we left the theatre if it was really safe for those people, particularly the women, to wander the streets, even at night, in such a carefree, fearless manner. I told her that the book mentions it being safer than England, but of course I didn't know the truth, until just recently when I came upon an article exposing the dangers to women in at least one part of India. It doesn't mention foreign women, but being an Indian woman is wrought with danger and humiliation. Another piece talks about Indian crime statistics.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is quite a good story. Good, but not great. Good characters, but maybe too many. And I will offer a caveat. It quite vividly describes a number of bodily functions, which often seemed gratuitous to me. I liked the book better than the movie, but I didn't love either one. Still, the book offered lovely passages, and interesting people, and a reading experience I'm happy to have had.

The author's website is here. It is interesting to read in her 'news' section that the book was prescient. Places like this are showing up in various countries now.