Writer for Young Adults
Thank you for all your good wishes on my last post! It's been a whirlwind around here, full of classes and rearranging furniture and counting down the last few weeks before school. And I'm suddenly realizing that we only have 7 (7!) weeks left before the baby's due date. So while we've been accumulating books… Continue reading Sad Detectives
I really like to listen to stories while I cook. Sometimes it's books on tape (Jim Dale narrating Harry Potter? check!), sometimes it's NPR, and lately it's been dramatized mysteries. My sister and I grew up listening to dramatized Agatha Christie books and the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes radio plays from the 1940s, so much… Continue reading By Timothy!
Meet Mrs. Hannah Glasse. By day, she is a plain English housewife, struggling to scrape by in the mid-1700s. By night, however, she works on her revolutionary new idea: a cookbook designed for the masses of untrained servants working in fine English homes.source: WikipediaBy 1746, when Glasse began to write The Art of Cookery Made Plain… Continue reading Colonial Cookbook: The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy
There's something I've been keeping under my hat for a while, and it's time you knew: Josh and I are engaged!We're thrilled, and despite all the chaos of starting a new school year, we couldn't be happier. We're also trying to get used to calling each other "fiance," which feels pretty weird. (Did anyone else… Continue reading Dining at Downton: Champagne julep
When I took French in middle school and high school, I particularly loved the words that had both literal and figurative meanings. "Petit chou," you might call your sweetheart, meaning..."little cabbage." "Pomme de terre" was on the list of grocery store vocabulary as the humble potato, but literally it meant "apple of the earth." For… Continue reading Dining at Downton: Gilded crust (pain perdu)
Kedgeree is the very first dish served on Downton Abbey. Mrs. Patmore sends a steaming bowl up for breakfast, and with that we're immersed in the sumptuous world of Edwardian cuisine. Brits still eat kedgeree today, and it's one of those dishes that carries a few hundred years of British history along with it. Plus,… Continue reading Dining at Downton: Kedgeree
I don't know about you, but I'm still recovering from the season 3 finale of Downton Abbey. To be fair, I'd had some warning; my sister told me of Dan Stevens' plans to leave the show long before that last episode. Josh and I spent the whole season discussing when and how the writers would… Continue reading Dining at Downton: Flying Scotchman Cocktail
I am known to get emotionally involved with fictional characters. When they fall in love, I swoon around the house. When they suffer heartbreak, I moan along with them. When they struggle to figure out what they really think about an important issue, my mind gets muddled and filled with conflicted emotions. When they die,… Continue reading Dining at Downton: Irish stew
How many of you watched the Season 3 premiere of Downton Abbey last night? We did, after some technical difficulties, and it was every bit as lavish and funny and swoony as we'd hoped. While a certain someone (cough Josh cough) kept inserting comments about one character's rumored departure from the show, I was on tenterhooks… Continue reading Dining at Downton: Fried oysters
We had a relatively quiet Christmas here in Ohio, seeing family and telling funny stories and going for long, snowy walks and eating good food. As per tradition, we served plum pudding for dessert on Christmas night, along with a lot of other treats (frosted cookies, red velvet cake, petit fours...). We don't mess around… Continue reading Dining at Downton: How to serve plum pudding
Abby Murphy 