Feel I have accomplished an awful lot today and it’s not even dinnertime yet! Well, not really accomplished anything major, just small steps. I even managed to put up my very tiny tree atop what is slowly becoming The Bookshelf o’ Christmas Cheer (!)… though it looks more like The Bookshelf of Seasonal Confusion at the moment. Needs more tinsel. Also need to find a good piece of cardboard to fashion a snowy wreath for our door.
I’ve been going through my queue, so it’s time for another period film review 🙂
After watching “The Way We Live Now,” I decided to go through the Anthony Trollope BBC collection. Based on Trollope’s The Warden and Barchester Towers, “The Barchester Chronicles” follows the religious and political machinations underfoot in the town of Barchester.
While some of the older BBC series often feel like dated set pieces (this one was released in 1982), this one seemed as fresh as “Cranford”. And like “Cranford,” the characters are wonderfully developed–Mr. Harding is as sweet and endearing as Miss Matty.
I did not think I was going to enjoy the series after watching the first episode, but it was the dynamic between Mr. Harding and Mr. Grantly that captured my interest and made me stick to it.
The parallel between Mr. Grantly’s tantrums and Mr. Harding’s easy manner adds to the tempest in a teacup quality that drives the plot. Every move is a political move of great importance in Mr. Grantly’s estimation; he must have his way or else! Mr. Harding, however, is a man of great conscience and empathy–according to Mr. Grantly, it is his greatest weakness. What else must a clergyman be if not immune to empathy? Of course, there is a limit to the level of empathy that any man can possess, as is evidenced by Mr. Harding’s less-than-warm reception of Mr. Obadiah Slope–the sleazy chaplain played by a young Alan Rickman.
While I enjoyed the series, I cannot call it a favorite. I haven’t read Trollope and so can’t compare the series to the novels, but I find that it takes a little more effort on my part to enjoy the Trollope collection. The first time I watched “The Way We Live Now,” I stopped watching after the first episode and only returned to it a few months later because I forgot to remove it from my Netflix queue and received it. I didn’t make the same mistake with “Barchester;” though the first episode was slow, I convinced myself to keep watching and found that the slow start gave way to an interesting story.
originally posted @ things she read
Last week, I finished reading:
Happy Birthday or Whatever by Annie Choi (Review)
I started reading:
Cherry Cheesecake Murder by Joanne Fluke
I’m still reading:
An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon
Eventually, I will return to:
Cecilia by Frances Burney
I want to read:
Jane Austen’s Letters
Yesterday was my b-chan’s birthday so I made him a batch of fresh-baked lemon sugar cookies as a sweet birthday treat 🙂 . It’s been a while since I’ve baked cookies and I wanted to try something different, so I look for a recipe with a lemon twist and found this one on myrecipes.com, lemon sugar cookies from Sunset magazine.
I decided to make the dough a day in advance, so that I would have plenty of time to shape, bake, and ice the cookies before having to pack them up. At first, the recipe seemed simple enough… sugar, check, butter, check, eggs, check… until I got to the part where I had to mix the dry ingredients. This recipe calls for two cups of sugar (I used turbinado instead of refined), so I assumed there would need to be a lot of butter and flour to bring it all together. What I did not anticipate was the reality of 5 cups of flour. Have you seen what five cups of flour looks like? Apparently, I had not or I would not have had a mild panic attack wherein I jumped to the conclusion that I must have printed a faulty copy. Surely, the recipe could not call for 5 cups of flour? But it did. I double checked and forged ahead, hoping that I wouldn’t have to scrap the whole thing and buy a box of sugar cookie mix (for shame, think of all that wasted butter, sugar, and flour).
Mixing all that stuff proved to be harder than I thought it would be. I’m a poor baker, no fancy kitchenaid mixer here. I have to rely on my handheld and pray that the baking fairies are on my side (and that I won’t burn out the motor again, had that happen once). Well, my mixer couldn’t take it, this required physical labor to mix. I had to press my mom into mixing service, but between the two of us we managed to get something that resembled semi-solid concrete.
Wrapping it up, I waited til the next day.
This dough is dense. It’s hard and solid when chilled. Let’s not get into how hard it was to roll out.
Suffice it to say, the cookies were more work than a cake would have been.
Regardless, they taste great, though not as lemony as I would have liked. No matter, half the dough was enough to make 18 shaped cookies and 5 sample drop cookies for taste testing. I’ve frozen the rest of the dough for Thanksgiving and Christmas. This recipe can certainly go a long way.
Next time, I’ll add more lemon… and take over auntie Em’s mixer.
Had an action-packed Halloween in Marioland with the b-chan 🙂
A few months ago we settled on Princess Peach and Mario as our couple costume of choice, so I begged my mom and gran to make me a costume, as nice Peach costumes are rare. We wanted to have nice homemade costumes, rather than pre-packaged deals, so it took some hunting and creativity, but we managed.
After some wig difficulties, and having to repaint the b-chan’s Mario ‘stache, we made our way to the Grove for a bit and then continued on to the Hard Rock Casino.
There were a bunch of Marios and Luigis at both places, but no Peaches 🙂 so we were original in that respect (there was an intersting Mario Kart costume, a guy as Mario with a little kart made from an old cooler). Lots of Asian tourists wanted to take their pictures with us, and a few little ones as well.
pictures ahoy!
Oh my, I am just bloody bad at math. I think I just created a kamikaze budget for the figure out this budget based on these numbers assignment in my library admin. class. I haven’t tried to work with so many numbers since the early days of my freshman year. I barely made it through the math portion of the GRE a few years ago, and I haven’t had a proper math teacher since 10th grade. Honestly,this budget is doomed to failure. I’m hoping the grade is based on my analysis of the case, not my poor adding skills.
Let’s not even talk about my trying to calculate percentages 😦
I finally took the plunge and purchased a domain name for my book blog, so now you can easily access things she read by going to things-she-read.org. I’m very pleased 🙂
They’re done! And they taste fantastic! I wish I had more seeds to roast, but this was an incidental sort of experiment, so that’s it for this batch.
I reviewed a bunch of recipes and just combined what I liked from each of them to come up with this one.
Here is my take on this fall classic:
Ingredients:
Preparation:
Preheat oven to 350°.
In a bowl, combine melted butter, sugar, and spices until well-coated.
Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and spread seeds in a single layer.
Bake for 20-25 minutes, stirring the seeds about halfway.
That’s it. Quick and easy.
I’m roasting pumpkin spice and brown-sugar coated pumpkin seeds. It’s my first try; the house smells wonderfully of nutmeg and autumn. And my floor is covered with brown sugar 😕 .
A look at my Netflix queue looks something like Period Films 101. I love a good costume drama–the more corsets and bustles, the better–so I’ve decided to start blogging about these. I blog about one of my pastimes, why don’t I blog about this one?
I recently watched Berkeley Square, a drama set in Edwardian London that follows the travails of three nannies: straight-laced and dedicated Matty, naive but loyal Lydia, and troubled Hannah. Each nanny has her own story, their lives coming together as they enter the tight-knit community of nannies that serve the families of Berkeley Square. Despite the differences in their character, the three women bond over the difficulties of their position as women and servants. The series raises issues of social justice for women and the working class, as well as the question of women’s right to experience love when serving in a profession that requires complete dedication to the demands of one’s employer.
I was surprised by some of the issues raised by the series. Hannah’s story in particular raises several issues concerning women’s tenuous position as mothers and workers during this era. An unwed mother, Hannah finds herself in trouble when her child’s father, her only protector, dies in an accident. Struggling to keep her child safe, Hannah is forced to leave little Billy in another’s care before she can take up her post as nanny. Keeping her child secret from her employer and friends, Hannah acts as a mother for the children in her care, but is unable to do the same for her own child.
The series is a must-watch for any lover of period pieces. The storyline is intriguing and illustrative of a slice of Edwardian life that is often overlooked. Think of it as The Nanny Diaries with prams and prying nursemaids.
marginalia and such 