~How To Find Love In A Bookshop Veronica Henry When her father dies unexpectedly, Emilia Nightingale finds herself in charge of the bookshop he owned and operated for thirty years, nestled on the main street of a charming English village in the Cotswolds. The book weaves the stories of several customers including Sarah, the owner of the village manor house, and quiet and shy Tomasina who runs a pop up restaurant out of her tiny cottage. Unsurprising and predictable it may be but it’s heartwarming, has a bookshop makeover (I’m a pushover for makeovers), a wedding (sort of) and lots and…
Pudding&Mess Posts
Kedgeree is a dish swiped from Indian culture during the days of the British Raj. It appears to be derived from an Indian dish, khichri, which was made with onions, rice and lentils. In England, in its purest form, kedgeree is a curried rice combined with smoked haddock and egg and it became quite the breakfast item for the upper classes in the Victorian Age. Think of our friends at Downton Abbey enjoying an early morning gallop through the dewey countryside, returning to a chafing dish of Kedgeree whipped up by dear Mrs Patmore, to be devoured alongside deviled kidneys,…
~Longbourn Jo Baker Named after the house in which the Bennet family lived, this is a sobering portrayal of what must take place behind the scenes in order to make the household of a respectable family run smoothly. A world where something as simple as an afternoon walk in spring upstairs, requires an afternoon of cleaning muddy boots downstairs. And how an evening excursion to a ball creates all manner of excitement and giddiness for the young ladies attending, but also creates a mountain of laundry and sewing and patience for their servants who must make it all happen – not…
~Never Let Me Go Kazuro Ishiguro In the late 1990’s Kathy H, 31, narrates the story of her two closest childhood friends and their days at Hailsham, a boarding school set in the quiet isolation of the English countryside. It was a privileged school, we are told, and its students understood that they were special. And while it is a classic coming-of-age story, it takes place in a world built on unsteady ground, where things don’t quite add up. The narrative unfurls gently with hints of this and glimpses of that: an odd scene, a suggestive word, a strange question.…
Rivals For anyone not familiar with Jilly Cooper, she is an iconic writer of naughty, glitzy-glam romance novels full of rich privileged people behaving very, very badly. Escapist reading at its finest. Rivals is the televised version of her book of the same name and let me tell you, this show starts as it means to go on — with a couple having sex in the bathroom on Concorde and reaching that critical moment just as the plane breaks the sound barrier. Subtle this show is not. The overall plot goes something like this: Lord Tony Baddingham (David Tennant) owns a…
Recipes For Love And Murder Maria is a food columnist for a small local newspaper in South Africa when her editor, Hattie, informs her that the paper is demanding an advice column. Maria pivots and becomes Tannie (Aunty) Maria dispensing advice each week, and cheekily managing to include a recipe designed to help cure the problem at hand. When Martine, the writer of Maria’s first letter, turns up dead, Maria does some sleuthing, aided by Jessie, the newspapers young and ambitious journalist who longs to sink her teeth into stories more serious than the fluff pieces she’s relegated to. The…
It just ain’t an English Christmas without mince pies. And these mince pies are really, really, easy. Why? How? Well, because these mince pies are made with store bought pastry and a jar of store bought mincemeat. To be fair, I don’t think I have ever made my own mincemeat, but I generally do make my own pastry. However, I recently discovered that Trader Joe’s frozen pie crust is delicious — which is a huge compliment coming from someone who is not, as a rule, a huge pastry fan. With sweet desserts I will generally make a sweetened pastry crust…
Terry’s Chocolate Orange is a British Christmas staple thanks to a decades old, ingenious marketing campaign suggesting it as a perfect stocking stuffer — perhaps a play on the traditional orange often given at Christmas. Its storied roots go all the way back to York, England in the 1700’s where a confectioners shop sold candied lemon and orange peel. In the 1820’s Joseph Terry joined the company and introduced marmalades and chocolate and then, in the 1930’s, he got wildly creative and the classic Chocolate Orange was born. For as long as I can remember, their slogan has been “tap…
Cranberry sauce seems to be one of those things that everybody loves to hate. Not me. For me, it’s one of my favourite parts of Christmas dinner, in part, I suppose, because I never have it at any other time of the year. And while I’m certainly not above eating canned sauce if I’m a guest in someone else’s home —which means I’m not cooking, so a small sacrifice to pay in my estimation! — when I am the host, I will always make my own. (On a side note, I read somewhere recently that some people just take the…
Welcome to Glorious Tuga Francesca Segal London research vet, Charlotte Walker, travels to Tuga to study the endangered gold coin tortoise. Tuga is a tiny British territory reachable only twice a year via a very long boat ride. On her trip over, Charlotte suffers from horrible seasickness and is tended to by Dan, a doctor nervously returning to Tuga after 15 years in order to take over island doctor duties from his Uncle. Upon landing on the tropical paradise the two are swept into the warm embrace of a bevy of quirky islanders and enveloped in the sweet scent of…