Touch Not The Cat

I think I am starting a vintage reading kick! I just started to reread Mary Stewart's Touch Not the Cat and is it ever good! She really describes her landscape and I am making myself read slowly! I have a secret habit of skipping descriptions to read dialog and I know it is a mistake when reading someone like Mary Stewart!

Bryony Ashley knows that her family's grand estate is both hell and paradise -- once elegant and beautiful, yet mired in debt and shrouded in shadow. Devastated by her father;s sudden strange death abroad, she is nonetheless relieved to learn the responsibility of running Ashley Court has fallen to a cousin. Still, her father's final, dire warning about a terrible family curse haunts her days and her dreams.

I remember reading The Gabriel Hounds as a teenager and I of course devoured her Merlin books. And I remember Airs Above Ground as being a really wonderful book! Oh I think I am going to go back and read all her romantic mysteries!
Then I start to think about Agatha Christie and she really deserves re-reading-for her Hercule Poirot especially! I just love Poirot! Somehow this kind of nostalgia is just right for summer reading.

















Or how about Georgette Heyer? She is probably better known for her Regency Romances but she wrote a couple of really good mysteries. One I remember as good was Behold, Here's Poison
I don't know if you have read other mystery writers of the time like Dorothy L. Sayers or Agatha Christie but Heyer wrote some wonderful stuff at the time and I don't think people remember her as well!

Anyway I will have some reading ahead at this rate! Talk to you later,
Lynda

By the way, I am working on a simple shawlette for a knit along at Susan's Fiber for the month of June/July knit out of Koigu and just one skein...

Cold Weather Food

We have had a sort of warm spell! Temperatures in the teens and not much snow have been welcome the past week or so. And if you read this somewhere in the South you may find it hard to believe, this is a warm spell around here lately!
But this is not to continue! We expect that the temperature will not get above 5 degrees Fahrenheit with Wind chill readings 13 below to 23 below zero tomorrow. I just stay in when it is that bad...it is terribly hard on the animals! The wild birds just cover the bird feeders and I have to refill them twice a day sometimes. If I don't get out there and pick up chicken eggs quickly, they just freeze!
Well, all this is leading up to something...I suppose you knew that! I stay warm with a couple of things-yes Grand Marnier in my coffee is one of them. (Big Grin)
But I also like to make a pot of homemade macaroni and cheese to warm me up as well. I have used a recipe of John Thorne's for many years and think it is the best macaroni and cheese known to man!
Here is John's recipe:
John Thorne's Macaroni & Cheese Serving
Size : 6
1/2 pound elbow macaroni
4 tablespoons unsalted butter -- cut into bits
1 Dash Tabasco sauce
1 can evaporated milk -- (12 ounce)
1 pound sharp cheddar cheese -- grated
2 large eggs -- beaten
1 teaspoon dry mustard -- dissolved in 1 tsp water
2 teaspoons Salt
Pepper
Preheat oven to 350. Boil the macaroni until just barely done in salted water. Drain and toss with the butter in a large, ovenproof mixing bowl. Mix the Tabasco into the evaporated milk. Reserving about 1/3 cup, stir the milk into the macaroni, then add 3/4 of the cheese, the eggs and the mustard. When well combined, season to taste with salt and pepper and set the bowl in the oven. Every five minutes, remove it briefly to stir in some of the reserved cheese, adding more evaporated milk as necessary to keep the mixture moist and smooth. When all the cheese has been incorporated and the mixture is nicely hot and creamy (which should take 20 minutes all told), serve at once with a plate of toasted common crackers to crumble over.




















This macaroni and cheese is so good, so rich that it isn't like any other food of that name you have ever eaten! Try it, you won't be sorry!
Another way to deal with this awful weather is a pair of really warm mittens. I stopped out at Susan's on Wednesday on my way home from the Dr. in Middleton. The yarn rep Joan was there and started talking about Shokay Yak yarn. To quote Shokay's publicity:
Shokay yarn is created from down that is hand-combed from yaks, high in the Himalayan regions of Western China. The yarn is a beautiful fiber, perfect for many knitting and crochet projects due to its resilience, warmth and softness.
100% Pure Yak Down
100 grams/164 yards, 6ply
4 sts per inch/US 9 needle

Well this is a gorgeous yarn, and Joan was saying that is is waterproof as well. So I decided to knit a pair of mittens with this luxury yarn! Really a great idea in this awful weather...warm, dry hands are essential, even for a short trip out side!



















Just finishing the thumbs...I will have a picture of the mittens tomorrow!
Talk to you later,
Lynda

Perhaps I am a bear, or some hibernating animal underneath,
for the instinct to be half asleep all winter is so strong in me.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Hand Bags

I've been doing a little sewing and made a couple of hand bags with some of the fabric I bought at the Quilt Expo. I used some lovely Japanese prints and some Amy Butler prints. I am such a novice but I have noticed a couple of types of fabric I really like! Terri N. Says I am a name dropper! Maybe but it is my way of remembering what I like-connecting names to things helps me keep those things in my brain.

I don't know if you can tell but the lining is some pink sheep fabric that I bought from Susan's Fiber Shop. It is really sweet.

This is the Japanese prints and the bottom stripe I got at the thrift store here in town for 75 cents! I try to interface these pretty stiffly so they stand up. It seems that they will wear better if they are quite firm. This lining I also purchased from Susan. Can you tell they are sheep? Susan has some really nice sheep fabrics. Don't remember the price off hand but these are hard to find prints!

The stripe fabric is a pocket.

Nothing much else to report. I just finished a book by Mary Norton of The Borrowers fame called Are All the Giants Dead? It was illustrated by Brian Froud. I love his work. He really draws a wonderful goblin!

Aren't these wonderful?

Talk to you later,

Lynda

Society, my dear, is like salt water, good to swim in but hard to swallow. - Arthur Stringer