Any writer should also be a reader. I have been for a long time and though I have read hundreds of books, only a few have become truly my favorites. A lot of them are books that I read when I was younger and that left a deep impression on me. Everyone remembers the first time they visited the Kansas prairie of the Little House books or the fantastic realm of Narnia.
One of those books for me was undoubtedly, Robin Hood.
Little Women has been one of my most favorite books since I was a teenager. Surprisingly, I didn’t read the whole book through until I was around 15 or 16, but the movie has always been one of my go-to comfort films. Probably because it was one of the very first period drama movies I watched and actually enjoyed. 🙂
When I was thinking about a recipe to try that reminded me of Little Women, I was inspired by the short passage from the book about the Christmas breakfast that the March sisters so willingly give up to others.
Continue reading “Literary Foods: Little Women and a Civil War Treat”
Some of my favorite books will forever be the Little House books. I remember the first time I read them being utterly taken with the amazing descriptions Laura Ingalls wrote of her pioneer life. And though they were written as fiction, the stories were true! I still love to take out my battered copies of the books every once in a while and peruse the well loved pages.
Continue reading “Literary Foods: Little House Apple Turnovers”
If there is one author I have read who I would love to go back in time and have tea with, it would be Jane Austen!
Tea features so prominently in her books that it is not hard to imagine the author herself sitting with a cup as she penned her novels! If she wasn’t sipping while she wrote, I am sure the kettle was always sitting ready on the parlor hearth.
Jane Austen and her family were not extremely wealthy like some of the characters she writes about, but her family always had a constant supply of good tea from one of the best tea merchants in London, Twinings. Since Jane was in charge of making her family’s breakfast every morning, she also kept the keys to the tea chest and the sugar in her charge. I am sure she knew just how to make the perfect, proper cup to go along with the toast and muffins!
I recently came across this fascinating book about the history of tea in Jane’s day and highly recommend it! If you have ever been interested in the importance of tea in Regency England, and particularly Jane Austen and her family, you will greatly enjoy it!
Continue reading “Literary Foods: Jane Austen and an English Tea”
Sometimes, when I am discouraged with my writing, to distract myself, I like to think about what a famous author of the past would have said if they were alive today and could see how we write now days.
George Washington: What do you mean you no longer practice penmanship in schools? How can one even think of doing away with such an important accomplishment?
Jane Austen: Emails? But what about love letters?! *Gasp*
For the last two years or so, I have been on a quest to read some of the classical literature that I missed reading when I was in high school. I took two years of literature in high school and really enjoyed it, but I felt I missed some of the other great stories out there. Yes, I made it through Dickens, but David Copperfield was not the best one to read of Dickens, I would say. And I missed half of Jane Austen’s fabulous works in there somewhere! Needless to say, I decided to try and dig a little deeper into the amazing world of classical literature.
Ivanhoe had been on my TBR list for some time before I finally got the enormous book from the library and started in. I had pretty much no idea about what I was getting myself into except that it was set in England.
When I got done, I was more than pleasantly surprised with the story! I loved it!
“From that time the exercises were part of the day’s duties as much as the Magic was. It became possible for both Colin and Mary to do more of them each time they tried, and such appetites were the results that but for the basket Dickon put down behind the bush each morning when he arrived they would have been lost.
But the little oven in the hollow and Mrs. Sowerby’s bounties were so satisfying that Mrs. Medlock and the nurse and Dr. Craven became mystified again. You can trifle with your breakfast and seem to disdain your dinner if you are full to the brim with roasted eggs and potatoes and richly frothed new milk and oat-cakes and buns and heather honey and clotted cream.”
The Secret Garden, Chapter 24
I don’t know about you, but roasted potatoes with butter, oat-cakes and buns with clotted cream and honey and with milk to drink sounds like a wonderful picnic to me! Perhaps a breakfast picnic. Especially on the windswept, foggy moors of an English manor house.
Continue reading “Literary Foods: A Cottage Picnic on the Moors”
Legends and Roses 