The Excellency of Rarebit

They had just ordered, it seemed, and Richard went away to the back premises to command another portion of Bidlington rarebit. “It is a cheese affair,” Desterro said, “but not those Welsh things you get in London teashops. It is a very rich cheese sauce on very soft buttery toast, and it is flavoured with odd things like nutmeg—I think it is nutmeg—and things like that, and it tastes divine.”
Josephine Tey, Miss Pym Disposes

The cozy mystery from which my recipe comes this month takes place in summer, not winter; however, the first time I had rarebit (or the first time I remember having it) was on Christmas Eve, and ever since then it has seemed a festive dish to me.

This was supposed to be my November recipe but, as you see, it is nearing the end of December and here we are. I think I will retire Crumbs between the Pages soon. It’s been fun, but I feel I no longer have enough time to dedicate to my posts. I have one more recipe planned (which should have been my December recipe, but will probably go up sometime in January), and after that my presence here will be spotty at best.

The ladies’ book club at my church recently read Miss Pym Disposes. It was my mother’s pick. There are actually very few books or authors I have refused to read on the principle that someone has recommended them to me, but Josephine Tey is one of those authors. I don’t know why, because I loved Miss Pym. Anyhow, we discussed this story at book club and there was quite a spirited putting-forth of opinions. Many of the ladies ranked the book low because *SPOILER ALERT* justice wasn’t served in the end. But my mom made the point that that’s the point. It makes you thirst for justice. *END OF SPOILER*

We also discussed the book’s curious title: Miss Pym Disposes. The word disposes in this case means “determine the course of events” (New Oxford American Dictionary), as in the proverb, “Man proposes, but God disposes.” (Which is a paraphrase of Proverbs 19:25, “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s will that prevails.”) The point of the book was that it is not man’s job to dispose, and that when we try to, justice is not served and someone (or many someones) end up hurt.

Food does not feature prominently in this book. My choices were pretty much beans, crumpets, or rarebit. And I must confess that I made a Welsh rarebit, not a Bidlington rarebit. Out of curiosity I Googled “Bidlington rarebit” and got five hits, all of which were this quote. I could have winged it, I suppose, but I had no nutmeg. So, Welsh rarebit it is!

On a winter evening, it would be lovely to curl up by a crackling fire with a cozy mystery and a plate of Welsh rarebit.

Lunch with Sam

I would bake the acorns in the fire, and grind them between stones. … I would simply add spring water to the flour and bake this on a piece of tin. When done, I had the best pancakes ever. They were flat and hard, like I imagined Indian bread to be. I liked them, and would carry the leftovers in my pockets for lunch.
Jean Craighead George, My Side of the Mountain

What child doesn’t fantasize about running away at least once in their life? I know I did. My destination in my daydreams was an old, dilapidated building called Miller’s Garage. For some reason I loved Miller’s Garage. I always said I was going to buy it and live there when I grew up–before it was torn down and replaced by a shopping center with a grocery store, a dentist, and a True Value. (Fun fact: I loved Miller’s Garage so much that the Christmas after it was torn down my parents gave me a commissioned watercolor of it. It’s still hanging on my wall. I’m a little bemused at the dwelling aspirations of my seven-year-old self.) Here’s a key fact about Miller’s Garage: it was two miles from my house. I never thought to run farther away than that. To be honest, I would have been happy running away in my own backyard.

I remember telling a friend that I was going to run away and her pleading with me not to. But my announcement was only a grand, empty claim calculated to get a reaction. My daydreams about running away stemmed more from a desire for independence than from unhappiness with my home life. Something deep down in all of us, I believe, yearns to be independent. Or, to put a finer point on it, self-sufficient. (Although, depending on your worldview, you could argue that there’s no such thing as true self-sufficiency; not one of us could sustain our own lives without God. But that is a different blog post for a different sort of blog altogether.)

One of the ways in which we can get a small taste of self-sufficiency is by foraging our own food. This year I foraged acorns and hickory nuts–wandering the yard barefoot as I scanned the ground, stuffing my pockets with a squirrel’s bounty.

Have you ever eaten a raw acorn? On a group camping trip about nine or ten years ago a friend and I tried to nibble on some acorns we found. They were the most vile thing I’d ever put in my mouth, their bitterness consuming. So I was surprised when these pancakes turned out to be delicious!

After I had let my acorns cure in the sun for a couple weeks, my boyfriend and I floated them in a bowl of water and picked out the bad ones that floated to the top. Then we cracked the good nuts, ground them in a blender, and put them in the fridge in a container of water to soak out the tannins. I changed the water two or three times a day for three days, at the end of which the bitterness was (miraculously, to me) gone. I baked them on the lowest heat my oven would consent to for an hour or so to dry them out a bit, blitzed them again in a blender, and made these pancakes, inspired by but by no means identical to Sam Gribley’s.

Sam would shake his head over my pancakes. Far from being hard, they were light and soft, with an interesting chew from the acorn meal (I should have ground it more finely). And most of the ingredients were sourced from a grocery store: flour, sugar, baking soda, eggs. But I think I’m doing pretty well to have even one foraged ingredient in my pancakes! My boyfriend, sister, and I greatly enjoyed them. As you’ll see from the photos, we ate them with blueberries in a nod to Sam and Bando’s blueberry jam.

And, just for kicks, here’s a video about acorn bacon by BlackForager on YouTube. I found it intriguing and hilarious. Maybe I should put acorn bacon on next year’s project list? If you watch the video, let me know what you think in the comments!

Oh! Almost forgot, but I hope it was obvious from the post: I loved the book! Thanks for the recommendation, Kyle!

Royal Birthday Soup

Lunch was an excellent cheese and cauliflower soup, with bacon and tomato sandwiches to dip in it, and bunches of enormous grapes. Lilah loved cheese and cauliflower soup and grapes.
“You need to eat,” Celie said sternly, taking a big bite of her own sandwich to encourage her sister.
Tuesdays at the Castle, by Jessica Day George

I can’t believe Crumbs between the Pages turns one this month!

I should have made cake to celebrate. Authors love to talk about cake, so I have no shortage of options. In fact, I was even going to make cake–apple cake from Maggie Steifvater’s The Scorpio Races. But then I realized how minimally I remember The Scorpio Races, and how little time I have to reread it, and how many other books I should be reading. At the same time, I read a food passage from Jessica Day George’s Tuesdays at the Castle and thought, “Mm, that sounds good.”

So, instead of celebrating Crumbs’ birthday with apple cake, I’m marking it with cauliflower and cheese soup and tomato bacon sandwiches.

I have a small friend who has been campaigning for me to read Tuesdays at the Castle for a long time. To my shame, I only decided to read it at last because I thought it might be a good comp title for a Middle Grade fantasy I’m writing. (It is.) And it turned out to be a captivating story as well. My small friend has good taste in books. I will join her in urging you to go read it as soon as possible.

This lunch, enjoyed by the children of the Castle Glower, is intriguing because it reverses the norm: usually we dunk grilled cheese sandwiches in tomato soup. In Sleyne, apparently, they dunk tomato bacon sandwiches in cauliflower and cheese soup. I am fascinated by this.

I was going to try not to apologize for the photos in this post, but I find I can’t do it. Thus and therefore, here are my excuses: I was rushed; I didn’t think through the setup; as usual, I forgot to include the book in the photoshoot. And I also forgot to actually dunk the sandwich in the soup. Oops. Oh well. Apologies over.

I’m planning something I’m really excited about for next month, and I hope to be able to spend more time and thought on it. I’ll just say that it involves acorns.

See you next month!

Peaches and Cheese

The vagabond sun winks down through the trees,
While lilacs, like memories, waft on the breeze,
My friend, I was born for days such as these,
To inhale perfume,
And cut through the gloom,
And feast like a king upon peaches and cheese!
I’ll travel this wide world and go where I please,
Can’t stop my wand’ring, it’s like a disease.
My only regret as I cross the high seas:
What I leave behind,
Though I hope to find,
My own golden city of peaches and cheese!
Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

*UPDATE (November 12, 2021): I was poking around on an old blog of mine and found this post I wrote about Tess of the Road in October 2018. Fun!*

I meant to reread Tess of the Road before I posted this, but I’ve found that what with working 30 hours a week and spending much of the remaining time with my boyfriend, reading has become a lesser priority. And for now, I’m very okay with that.

And, if you read the quote attribution, you’ll see that I misremembered which book I needed to reread anyway. This charming and intriguing song turns out to be from Seraphina, not Tess of the Road as I’d thought. Same author, at least. While I do love both books, which are set in the same fantasy world, Tess is my favorite of the two. It delves deeper into the culture of the quigutl and it fearlessly tackles hard themes like rape, teen motherhood, grief, and loss in a way that is nonetheless gentle and accessible to its young adult audience. It’s also extremely quotable.

I read Seraphina when I was fifteen and loved it for its unique and detailed fantasy world, its feisty title character, and its excellent writing. (No dread coiling in pits of stomachs here, thankyouverymuch.) And … ummm … without having reread it, that’s about all I can fairly say of the book. Except that this funny little song from it stuck with me.

You know, I’m not even sure what the song means. Reading it more closely, it seems to be a declaration of insouciance bordering on irresponsibility. It reminds me of the song “Hakuna Matata” from The Lion King– “Peaches and cheese!” “No worries!” See? It even rhymes!

It also speaks to leaving home behind and seeking comfort in familiar flavors, which is a theme that comes up often in the food memoirs I love to read, such as My Berlin Kitchen (which is, by the way, another wonderful book).

I chose to make Honey Roasted Peaches with Goat Cheese as a nod to the peaches and cheese in the song. I bought the peaches at a roadside stand near my house; the honey came from a local apiary; the thyme and the Black-eyed Susans I picked from the garden bed right outside my front door. Too bad my friend who makes soap doesn’t make chèvre too!

These were delicious – probably my favorite recipe that I’ve tried for this blog. If you happen to have some leftover chèvre and some extra peaches on your hands, I’d recommend making this! (And reading Seraphina while you eat it. ;))

Chocolate Cake with a Side of Ambition

And finally, a slice of chocolate cake for each of us is positioned in the center of the table, chocolate drizzle steaming along the sides. …
“Leave us,” the king says. “We won’t need anything else.”
There’s something about watching him give orders that has my blood flowing faster in my veins. He has such power. Men are forced to obey him without a word of protest. They would do anything he commanded.
I want that power. …
When the door closes, I shift the plates and bowls in front of me, moving everything to the sides of the table until my path is clear to the chocolate cake. That, I bring forward, until it’s directly in front of me.
I don’t look at the king, but I get the sense that he’s watching me closely. As I take a bite, the soft cake practically melts in my mouth, and I know I made the right choice to start with it while it’s still warm.
When I can’t take the awkwardness any longer, I deign to look up. The king has his own slice of cake in front of him.
“How alike we are,” he says after licking a drop of drizzle from his lips.
“Because we both enjoy chocolate? You can’t get out much if you think that an uncommon trait.”
He takes a drink from one of the goblets that was brought in with the food. “I didn’t mean the chocolate. When I see something I want, I reach for it without hesitation.”
The Shadows Between Us, by Tricia Levenseller

Am I ambitious?

This is a question I have been asking myself lately. A year ago, I would have said yes. I wrote in my journal on June 24, 2020, “I have plenty of ambition–or at least ideas about how I want my life to go. …”

What is ambition?

Merriam-Webster says it is “an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power.” That couldn’t be further from my vision. The Cambridge English Dictionary hits a little closer to home with: “a strong wish to achieve something.” But the New Oxford American Dictionary’s definition is my favorite: “a strong desire to do or achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work.” This last definition reminds me of my favorite quote: “Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.” Booker T. Washington.

My dreams have changed so much. From ballerina to doctor to author to literary agent to personal trainer to health coach to farmer to what I’ve lately been telling people I want to be: an herbalist and sustainable homesteader. Here’s what I’ve learned about myself: I need movement. I need creativity. And I need to be useful.

My dreams have narrowed to this:

A cottage. A garden. Some chickens. A couple goats. Bees. Long walks. Yoga.

Writing by hand at a desk in the morning. Hanging laundry on a line. Baking. Hours of reading curled in a cozy nook. Gathering herbs from the forest’s edge.

Is that ambition? Yes, I believe it is. My desire for these things is so strong. And, as ironic as it seems to me, I will certainly have to work hard for them.

My wall calendar for 2021 is illustrated by Sandra Boynton, a children’s author and illustrator who has a delightfully quirky sense of humor. This month’s illustration is a cow draped bug-eyed across a crescent moon, as if caught in the stomach mid-leap. The caption is, “Nothing is ever simple.”

On the other hand, this same calendar proclaims July 12th “Simplicity Day”, with a drawing of a pig napping in a hammock. There is some simplicity out there–we just have to work for it.

Nothing says “simplicity” to me like curling up with a good book and reading the afternoon away. Actually, now I’d call that “luxury”. Tricia Levenseller is exactly what you want to read when you’re craving a rollicking Young Adult fantasy adventure with atmosphere, character development, and a little heat.

I’m not sure I want to eat my cake first, but I do agree that cake is the best part of the meal. Especially this “sweet potato yam cake” from YouTuber Isabel Paige’s recent cookbook, Tiny Pantry, topped with the raw chocolate sauce from the same cookbook. If you need me, I’ll be eating this cake and reading Young Adult fantasy.

Prison Pasta

Around noon a woman brought them bread and olives, and toward evening there was pasta smelling of fresh rosemary. But the food couldn’t cut short the endless hours, any more than full stomaches dispelled their fear of what the next day might bring.
Cornelia Funke, Inkheart

Even before I read Cara Nicoletti’s wonderful book Voracious, which sparked my interest in food in literature, I wanted to try this pasta from Inkheart. I always thought the food they ate in Capricorn’s village sounded delicious. I guess even soulless villains can appreciate good food.

Elinor, Meggie, and Mo eat this pasta while they are being held captive by Capricorn, the aforementioned soulless villain, who has been read out of his book into the real world.

I recently started a nearly full-time job, and I know I’m being a tad melodramatic but I feel like I’m a captive too. I’m having a hard time adjusting to the sudden reduction of my free time. I have much less time now for all my favorite activities–reading, writing, drawing, doing yoga, taking my herbalism course, watching YouTube, even folding laundry!

I hope I’ll soon learn how to balance these pursuits with my actual job and stop feeling like a prisoner to adulthood. But I am turning back with new eyes to my writing projects, realizing just how much they mean to me and wondering if perhaps I should try again to get published …

Just yesterday, actually, I finally finished writing a Rapunzel retelling (ish) that I’ve been working on for a couple years.

Alrighty, so we should talk about this hideous pasta. I used a recipe from Life from Scratch, by Sasha Martin. And I promise you that she was not to blame for the way this pasta turned out! This was my first time attempting fresh pasta and only my second time working with gluten flour. I consider the fact that it was edible at all to be a great accomplishment.

I tossed the pasta in a rosemary-infused olive oil that I made. It had to infuse for a couple weeks, so that’s why my June post is so late!

Did this turn out the way I’ve always pictured it in my head? Um, no. Do I still love Inkheart? Oh yes. With all my heart.

Have a Piece of Wedding-cake

“Mawidge is a dweam wiffin a dweam.”
The Archdean

Whoops–sorry, wrong book! We’re not here to talk about The Princess Bride, although that is one of my favorite books of all time. Nope, we’re actually here to discuss Emma.

There was no recovering Miss Taylor–nor much likelihood of ceasing to pity her; but a few weeks brought some alleviation to Mr. Woodhouse. The compliments of his neighbours were over: he was no longer teased by being wished joy of so sorrowful an event; and the wedding-cake, which had been a great distress to him, was all ate up. His own stomach could bear nothing rich, and he could never believe other people to be different from himself. What was unwholesome to him, he regarded as unfit for any body; and he had, therefore, earnestly tried to dissuade them from having any wedding-cake at all; and when that proved vain, as earnestly tried to prevent any body’s eating it.
Jane Austen, Emma

My cousin is getting married today, so I thought wedding cake would be an appropriate recipe for this month. Plus, I just reread Emma and finally watched the 2020 movie version (which I loved; there were just a couple things, such as the portrayal of Isabella’s character and the proposal scene at the end, that bothered me a little, but overall it was wonderful. The subtly sarcastic tone threaded throughout was delightful and very Austen-esque).

Jane Austen was brilliant. Her books, although set in a very specific place, time, and class, are still thoroughly enjoyable and relevant today. For example, Mr. Woodhouse’s attitude towards Mrs. Weston’s wedding cake is startlingly similar to our diet culture today; many people have a pet diet (Keto, Paleo, South Beach, Atkins, Mediterranean, vegan, low-fat, low-carb, high-carb, etc.) that they will tell you is the only path to health.

I used to struggle with orthorexia–”right eating”. I read a ton of books about diet and was convinced that sugar, gluten, and dairy would kill me slowly by pumping me full of incurable chronic diseases. Slowly this orthorexia gave way to anorexia; instead of denying myself the foods I wanted to eat, I just ate minuscule portions of them. I never stopped eating completely, but I skipped meals several times a week and monitored my body and my weight compulsively. I think many more people struggle with the effects of diet culture than we imagine.

I am now a happy, healthy omnivore, although I lean towards the vegetarian end of the spectrum because that’s what makes me feel the best. And although Mr. Woodhouse might not feel great eating this cake, and warn people away from it with the best of intentions, I have no problem saying, “I’ll have a slice anyway.”

If you’re interested in the history of wedding cake, you should definitely check out this fascinating article. And if you’re curious about the cake I chose to make, here’s the recipe, although I left out all the ingredients except the butter, sugar, flour, and eggs. The original recipe is more or less authentic to the time period. Oh, and the icing I made for it is aquafaba based 😉

Hungry for Buckwheat Cakes

Note: I want to make it absolutely clear that I DO NOT SANCTION SLAVERY OR RACISM and I did not enjoy the racist ideas presented in this book; however, Gone with the Wind is a classic for a reason and I admire it for the story it tells about human passion, blind stupidity, and unrequited love.

In her large black hands was a tray upon which food smoked, two large yams covered with butter, a pile of buckwheat cakes dripping syrup, and a large slice of ham swimming in gravy.
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

I didn’t really want to read Gone with the Wind. I only got it from the library because it was a classic that I felt I “should” read, and I knew my sister had read it several years ago. I was even more reluctant to read it when I picked up the hulking tome from the library and actually held it in my hands. Once I started reading, though, I was hooked. I was not prepared for the captivating tale of jealousy, passion, heartbreak, and selfishness that Ms. Mitchell had in store for me.

Scarlett O’Hara fascinates me. Never before have I encountered such a selfish, nasty anti-heroine who nonetheless I wanted to be happy, and whose character arc develops so much yet leaves her exactly where she began–or perhaps even worse off.

Scarlett is sensuous, headstrong, and independent, and we see this in her attitude towards food throughout the book.

At the very beginning, just before the fateful barbecue where Scarlett meets Rhett, is rejected by Ashley, and agrees to marry Charles Hamilton, Mammy brings her a plate of food so she won’t need to eat at the barbecue–and she has to eat after she’s laced into her corset, or her waist won’t be able to compress to seventeen inches. At first Scarlett refuses to eat, wanting to leave room for the delicious food at the barbecue to come–and when Mammy does bully her into eating, she fills up at once– “I can’t eat another bite.”

Scarlett sopped the wheat cake in the gravy and put it in her mouth. Perhaps there was something in what Mammy said. There must be something in it, for Ellen said the same things, in different and more delicate words. In fact, the mothers of all her girl friends impressed on their daughters the necessity of being helpless, clinging, doe-eyed creatures. […] There was no one to tell Scarlett that her own personality, frighteningly vital though it was, was more attractive than any masquerade she might adopt.
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

Though she might pretend, Scarlett is no “helpless, clinging, doe-eyed creature”–but neither are her mother and Mammy, who exhort her to be; not even Melanie fits this description, though she might seem to at first.

Later in the book, right after the war, when Scarlett and her family are starving at Tara, hunger becomes her greatest enemy, and the satisfaction of that hunger becomes her greatest drive.

[Scarlett] had become what Grandma Fontaine counseled against, a woman who had seen the worst and so had nothing else to fear … Only hunger and her nightmare dream of hunger could make her afraid. […]
“I’m going to have money some day, lots of it, so I can have anything I want to eat.”
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

Then, when she finally marries Rhett and he takes her to Louisiana for their honeymoon, she revels in her ability to eat as much as she wants of whatever she wants.

Her appetite never dulled, for whenever she remembered the everlasting goobers and dried peas and sweet potatoes at Tara, she felt an urge to gorge herself anew on Creole dishes.
“You eat as though each meal were your last,” said Rhett. […] “If you don’t stop being such a glutton, you’ll be […] fat […] and then I shall divorce you.”
But she only put out her tongue at him and ordered another pastry, thick with chocolate and stuffed with meringue.
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

I almost made that pastry instead of the buckwheat cakes. Something about the words “thick with chocolate” is incredibly seductive.

Scarlett is strong, but blind. She thinks she knows what she wants, but she wants the wrong things. She thinks only of herself and her own happiness, and is not easy to love on a day-to-day basis. If this book taught me anything, it’s that I need to value the people I love, and to show them that I value them.

Scarlett never finds a middle ground; she’s gorged or she’s empty, she’s got everything or she’s got nothing. She is a woman of appetites, not only for food, but for money and luxury and, on a deeper level, approval, although she seeks approval from the wrong people and doesn’t value the right people’s approval and love.

If I was going to bring in a reference to another epic tale right here, I’d cite Hamilton; like Alexander Hamilton, Scarlett will never be satisfied.

Old-Fashioned Buckwheat Cakes

This recipe comes from the website Ancestors in Aprons.

2 cups buckwheat flour
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup warm water

Mix, cover with a towel, and let it sit in the fridge overnight. The next morning, in a separate bowl, mix together:

1 tsp baking soda dissolved in 1/4 cup water
2 Tablespoons baking powder
1 Tablespoon bacon grease or softened butter
1 Tablespoon molasses

Add the leavening mixture to the buckwheat mixture and stir to combine. Let the batter sit at room temperature, loosely covered, for at least half an hour.

Cook, using 1/4 cup batter for each pancake. Eat with syrup, or butter and apple butter.

Note: These were good! Next time I’d put in some salt, though.

Pie and Dreams

Three luscious lemon tarts glistened up at Catherine. She reached her towel-wrapped hands into the oven, ignoring the heat that enveloped her arms and pressed against her cheeks, and lifted the tray from the hearth. The tarts’ sunshine filling quivered, as if glad to be freed from the stone chamber. […]
“You are my crowning joy,” she proclaimed, spreading her arms wide over the tarts, as if bestowing a knighthood upon them. “Now I bid you to go into the world with your lemony scrumptiousness and bring forth smiles from every mouth you grace with your presence.”
“Speaking to the food again, Lady Catherine?”
“Ah-ah, not just any food, Cheshire.” She lifted a finger without glancing back. “Might I introduce you to the most wondrous lemon tarts ever to be baked within the great Kingdom of Hearts!” […]
“Are lemons in season this time of year?” asked Cheshire. […]
“Not exactly,” she said, smiling to herself. […] “They’re from a dream,” she confessed.
Marissa Meyer, Heartless

National Pie Day occurs on January 23. Pi Day takes place on March 14. Today I am combining them and celebrating Pi Day with pie. Or rather, tart. Lemon tart.

Short of writing the thing, I had this blog post all planned out: lemon tarts from Marissa Meyer’s Heartless. I was going to talk about dreams.

Then my aunt died. And I wondered if I should find a more sorrowful food from some sorrowful book. (Perhaps Miss Havisham’s wedding cake?) But I don’t like sudden changes in schedule, and pi day only happens once a year, so I decided to stick to my original plan. (The lemon curd filling for these tarts, though, does come from A Half Baked Idea, which is a food memoir about grief. So that’s appropriate.) Now that I sit down to write about dreams, though, I can’t make my thoughts and ideas connect with the book.

I’m going to try, though. Forgive me if this post doesn’t hang together as well as some of my other ones.

What do you dream about?

Cath, the protagonist of this delightful and heartbreaking (yes, I did that on purpose) Alice in Wonderland prequel, dreams a lemon tree into being. (See also: The Dream Thieves, by Maggie Stiefvater.)

I have never dreamed a tree into existence, but I have two recurring dreams. One is that I am pregnant; the other is that I am being chased by some animal/person/organization. The latter dream is never stressful, but exciting and plot-driven. I wonder what these dreams say about me?

I found a quiz that purports to answer exactly this question. Here are my results: “Your dreams say you’re looking forward to new beginnings. There’s something big coming and you’re looking forward to it. You might be dreaming of babies and pregnancy, or of pure white snow, or of water washing things away. You probably dream in a mix of styles, first person and third, long dreams and short dreams, with a wide variety of emotions. That’s because change and beginnings can come with mixed emotions. Your dreams are probably as all over the place, like your emotions right now, so ride out the wave.”

Well! So that was actually kind of accurate. If you take the quiz, let me know! I’d be interested to hear whether it’s kind of accurate for you too.

I also found an interesting article about some common dreams and their supposed meanings.

That is apparently all I have in me for this month. I enjoyed making these tarts; Cath would think them far, far from perfect, but I had fun making them (it was my first time making both lemon curd and candied lemon peel, which, I’m pretty sure, is said to give courage to the eater in Jackson Pearce’s Sweetly), although I now understand why hers took five hours to make. Mine are a bit “rustic”, but they really tasted good. And that’s what counts, right?

Oh, and if you have any recommendations for Alice in Wonderland-inspired reads, let me know in the comments!

Snickers for Company

The rat comes in through the open door at twenty past six. It settles on the threshold and focuses a very watchful gaze on the Snickers bar, which is on a plate on top of a little towel. Britt-Marie gives the rat a stern look and cups one hand firmly in the other.
“From now on we have dinner at six o’clock. Like civilized people.”
After thinking this over for a certain amount of time, she adds:
“Or rats.”
Fredrik Backman, Britt-Marie Was Here

I recently discovered what homesickness feels like, and I did not enjoy it. I suspect that everyone experiences homesickness a little differently; for me, it felt like nausea, lightheadedness, and a constant shivering that I could not control.

The kind folks with whom I was staying ordered pizza for dinner the first night, and I could barely enjoy it through the shivers that gripped me, and then the distinct sensation that I was about to vomit (I didn’t).

Maybe a chocolate bar would have suited my appetite better.

I had brought Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone with me, but perhaps I should have brought Fredrik Backman’s Britt-Marie Was Here, a novel about an maddeningly fastidious, socially awkward, middle-aged woman who leaves her husband after she discovers he’s been having an affair. In the tiny town where she ends up, she learns the meaning of community, and finds that home is not anchored in one person, but can be created anywhere (if you have enough baking soda. And a friendly rat).

Incidentally, Britt-Marie Was Here features both pizza and chocolate bars. Specifically, Snickers bars.

Without her husband to obsessively cook and clean for, Britt-Marie takes to serving dinner (at six o’clock! Like a civilized person!) to the rat that resides in her new workplace. They share some good, albeit mainly one-sided, conversations.

There were no rats at the place where I learned about homesickness. I feel fairly confident asserting this because of the dozen or so cats who resided there. Although the cats all lived outside, so perhaps the house was full of rats that were seeking sanctuary from the cats. But I never saw a single rat. So I never formed one of those rosy fictional rat-human relationships such as we find in A Little Princess, Ratatouille, Little Women, and The Tale of Despereaux. I didn’t have any Snickers either.

I’m back home now, and while I still have no small rodent friends, apart from this adorable mouse my sister crocheted for me, I do have healthier homemade Snickers bars, and that makes me very happy indeed.

(The recipe I used for the Snickers bars came from the blog Addicted to Dates; I cut her recipe in half and left the peanut butter out of the caramel filling. I also left the coconut oil out of the chocolate topping, fearing that it would make them even messier than they already were, due to the fact that the caramel would. not. set. But the chocolate hardened to an almost unbreakable degree, so when I tried to break apart the bars, the caramel squished out of the middle and the bottom separated from the top. Next time, maybe I should follow the recipe. Despite their flaws, however, these “Snickers” bars were delicious. Better than actual Snickers bars, in my opinion.)

P.S. The mouse’s name is Albert.