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ave a look shame on me because it s beautiful as it stands it was started by charles cavandish one of bess of hardwick s sons you can just about see hardwick house and finished by his son william they seem to have liked women and horses it was an unplanned trip so the only camera i had was on my phone which isn t brilliant but here are a few pictures anyway posted by desperate reader at 9 49 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels days out friday september 13 2013 a thirkell it s been a very busy week so much so that i m currently slumped on the sofa fighting to stay conscious the only thing energising me at all is a desire to share the news that i found another angela thirkell this week i went over to uppingham with my friend r on wednesday afternoon where the highlight was a browse around the rutland bookshop it s impossible to describe how tiny dusty cobwebby and crammed with books this place is there are some pictures from a previous visit here along with an excellent recipe for rowan jelly but they really need somebody in them to give a sense of scale unfortunately it s hard to get far enough away from a second person in the shop to get all them in the picture to really give that sense of scale the place is a treasure trove neither very cheap or terrifyingly expensive it has a wonderful collection of middle brow fiction hunting shooting and fishing books and victorian children s books my treasure this time was an old penguin paperback edition of angela thirkell s the headmistress in not bad condition and reasonably priced at 2 there where a few hard back thirkell s as well but they were more than i could afford more than 2 and take up to much space on the shelf to be really attractive to me i struggle to find affordable second hand thirkell and when i do come across her books it s almost always the brandons or wild strawberries why is it that there are so many second hand copies of specific titles around and so few of others it s a rare charity or second hand shop that doesn t have precious bane and the well of loneliness knocking about for example so i m delighted with this find i ve not had much time to read more than a few pages yet but was really pleased to find a little recap of a couple of trollope s barchester chronicles mostly doctor thorne relayed as gossip on the thirkell front there s more good news a quick search on amazon reveals that virago are reprinting summer half august folly which i think is my favourite so far and the ubiquitous the brandons in may 2014 i m more excited by november s release of pomfret towers and christmas at high rising apparently an exclusive never before collected set of short stories as both will be entirely new to me but overall the portents seem good for an extensive re print of her back catalogue and that s excellent news posted by desperate reader at 9 58 pm 8 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels angela thirkell virago modern classics monday september 9 2013 it s that time of year again the time of year when i find myself hunched over a boiling pan of jewel coloured liquid garnet tonight frantically trying to read a sugar thermometer through the swirling steam yes its finally cool enough to consider making jams jellies and marmalades again there s not much that i really like about the autumn but preserving is one of the few things that reconcile me to the end of summer time to fall in love with diana henry and pam corbin all over again posted by desperate reader at 10 56 pm 4 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels diana henry jam pam corbin sunday september 8 2013 sundays it s been a long overdue domestic day today i ve cleaned a few weeks overdue moved some pictures around and painted the wall underneath when it became clear there were unsightly black marks around where the pictures had hung a couple of years overdue have started some red current jelly last years red currents found at the back of the freezer and put a couple of pheasants to slow cook hopefully last years possibly the season before that if they re really dry i ll try them in soup i chipped the lime scale off my bathroom taps needed doing since i moved in almost 9 years ago cillit bang stinks but at least it works on lime scale if not the black bits on the grouting i actually bought it for polished some silver watered the plants and have generally been very virtuous i also took my new laptop back to the shop i got it from as it has an irritating habit of throwing 5555555555 s in to text which is bad enough but was making it impossible to sign into as i couldn t tell which were letters and which were 5 s this is annoying for a couple of reasons primarily that due to being at work during shop opening times i missed getting the dratted machine back in time to get a simple exchange by 2 days it s now gone for a likely 2 weeks so i m back on my old laptop which is prone to overheat or just stop working it s 6 years old and had deserved it s retirement with this in mind i m not sure how feasible blogging will be over the next few weeks so don t be surprised if i disappear for a bit at least whilst out i picked up some cushions so the fabric i bought in july might soon get turned into the cushion covers planned for it altogether a fairly productive day off and much of it displacement activity because i should have been finishing a book that i just can t get into or see the point of at this rate i might even do some ironing posted by desperate reader at 6 47 pm 5 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday september 5 2013 friday s child georgette heyer thank god for georgette heyer i m reading avidly at the moment newspapers instructions journals well friday s child and i had it partly confused with cotillion i think and again it s not a title that was a particular favourite so i d forgotten most of the details over the last 20 odd years okay slightly foxed and ppc magazines everything but books really i m struggling to concentrate on anything that requires a lot of thought but am craving story telling so heyer is rescuing me from my reading slump there s nothing at all demanding about reading heyer and she s a master story teller it s a long time since i d read what i ve found re reading these heyer s is that they re far better than i remember friday s child is bitter sweet comedy it s light reading but perfectly crafted over the years i ve read enough trashy romances i used to share my grannies mills and boon as a teenager and for my sins once borrowed a barbara cartland from the library the cartland was the worst book i ve ever read ever to have an idea of how poor they can get heyer who liked to mix her romances with elements of other genres mostly detective fiction it can get heyer manages plots that hang together and characters that the reader can warm to not as common as you might hope she has a magic touch at what she does i m aware that after writing about 5 heyer titles in the last few weeks i think i ve read about 9 that i m running out of things to say about her but she really is good i keep describing her as light which is accurate but probably does her a disservice i think these are books that are meant purely for entertainment a way to avoid thinking about the every day rather than reveling truths about it but often that s what you want to find someone who does it with grace and humor is something to be very glad off posted by desperate reader at 10 00 pm 14 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels georgette heyer wednesday september 4 2013 goan pork with potatoes for debbie this is so far the best recipe i ve found in the madhur jaffrey book as a pork dish it s great but i like it because i think the sauce part will be extremely versatile i certainly mean to use it with some sort of white fish salt cod if i can find it and possibly with beef or lamb jaffrey says it could be described as a simple vindaloo which is intriguing this quantity serves 4 2 teaspoons whole brown mustard seeds 1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds 2 teaspoons whole coriander seeds 3 whole cloves 140g of onions peeled and finely chopped 5 cloves of garlic peeled and chopped 2 5 cm piece of fresh garlic peeled and chopped 2 tablespoons of cider vinegar 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper i halved this 2 teaspoons of paprika salt half a teaspoon ground turmeric half a teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper 560g boneless pork shoulder cut into cubes 3 tablespoons of oil corn or peanut 340g of small waxy potatoes half a teaspoon of sugar put half the mustard seeds all the cumin seeds coriander seeds and cloves in a clean coffee grinder and grind as finely as possible put this mix with the onions garlic ginger vinegar cayenne pepper paprika and 3 tablespoons water into a blender and blend till smooth rub a generous teaspoon of salt plus all the turmeric black pepper and 2 tablespoons of the spice paste over the meat marinade for at least half an hour heat the oil in a large heavy non stick lidded pan over a medium high heat when the oil is hot add the remaining mustard seeds after a few seconds they will start to pop at which point add the rest of the spice paste stir and fry for about 5 mins or until the paste is lightly browned add the pork and marinade and stir for a minute cover and reduce the heat to medium let the meat cook for about 10 minutes until it s lightly browned add the potatoes sugar and a little more salt cover with water reduce the heat to low and cook gently for about an hour or until the meat is tender posted by desperate reader at 9 11 pm 5 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels cooking kitchen monday september 2 2013 madhur jaffrey s ultimate curry bible really this much spice for one little stew sometimes a thing is so blindingly obvious that i just don t see it sometimes blind prejudice gets in my way and sometimes i feel really stupid about it leicester is arguably the best place in the country to find and eat an authentic excellent curry people certainly argue about it and i m prepared to back my city to win on this the thing is that i really can t handle hot food anything but the very mildest of heat floors me and because there s no shortage of good if beyond my pain threshold curry to be had in the city i d never thought about cooking it spices being heated prior to grinding very satisfying process when i was in shetland earlier in the summer my step mother who s a chef was trying recipes for a wedding she was catering one of them was a bhuna from jaffey s book and long story short it was delicious and here s the bit that makes me feel stupid she d gone easy on the chilies obvious isn t it catering for a 150 people with wildly different tastes made a very mild heat more desirable and so all you need to do is dial it back a bit inspired i tried the same recipe when i came home happily i had the same book courtesy of a christmas present a few years ago and it was pretty good since then i ve been experimenting with a few other things in there and again they ve been great which is all quiet exciting i m sticking with dishes which are on the milder side anyway if something is genuinely meant to be hot it would probably lose something fundamental by the time i d scaled it back to my palate but cooking in a different tradition with a whole new set of spices is something i love doing and in this case i couldn t be in a better place to do it there is no ingredient no matter how obscure which i shouldn t be able to get hold of within a 15 minute walk from my flat or at a push a 5 minute bus journey away i also understand for the first time why the basic spices for this kind of cooking are so often sold in such epic quantities i ve never cooked anything that demanded so much seasoning or so many different seasonings before so learning my way around these flavours is going to be interesting posted by desperate reader at 8 41 pm 10 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels cooking kitchen newer posts older posts home subscribe to posts atom desperate reader about me desperate reader view my complete profile my blog list reading matters recommended reads 2 8 hours ago tales from the reading room who gets believed by dina nayeri 15 hours ago the kissed mouth the other pyke nott girl 23 hours ago kate davies designs each to their own 23 hours ago crossexaminingcrime the glass mask 1944 by lenore glen offord 1 day ago the passing tramp some cornell woolrich book news silent as the grave is out and some thoughts on a few woolrich stories 1 day ago stuck in a book the book of eve by constance beresford howe 1 day ago kate macdonald meeting in positano by goliarda sapienza 3 days ago book jotter winding up the week 476 4 days ago 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