Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's theme is Beach/Beachy Reads (Share books you’d take to the beach OR books that take place at the beach.)
I am going to twist the topic a little this week. I have read several books recently where the colours on the cover are pink, orange, yellow and red, the colours of a lovely sunset on the beach so I thought I would use this as my theme for this week. . Coincidentally these are also the colours of the Top Ten Tuesday logo.
Love and Saffron by Kim Fay - I read this a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. I still need to read her latest book! (My review)
The Alphabet Sisters by Monica McInerney - This was the original cover when this book first came out, and which I still have now.
Eat Your Heart Out by Victoria Brownlee - This is my most recent 5 star read, and the most recent cover with these colours. (My review)
An Italian Wedding Adventure by Leonie Mack - I do enjoy this author's books and was glad I could find a cover that worked for this post. (My review)
Happy Place by Emily Henry - In my mind a lot of Emily Henry's books would suit this theme but it turns out they really don't!
A Sunrise Over Bali by Sandy Barker - Sunrise, sunset! Oh well. The colours worked. I have read a lot of Sandy Barker's books but I still need to read this series.
The Bittersweet Bakery Cafe by Catherine Greer - Read and loved this earlier this year! Even cooked a recipe from it. (My review)
One Day and Forever by Shari Low - I am about to read my next book by this author so I needed to add her to this list.
Happily Ever After by Jane Lovering - I have read a few books by this author now and like the way she tells her stories. (My review)
Half Truth by Nadia Mahjouri - This is the colour as it gets darker and darker! Another great read from an Australian author! (My review)
Welcome to the first Saturday of the month where I usually share everything I have made over the previous month. It has been a busy month in our kitchen with lots of baking and new recipes tries!
However, before we talk about this, I shamelessly stole the above pic from Jackie at Junkboat Travel because I feel seen! Often if I am baking I say to my husband that I am creating lots of washing up and the side outcome is something delicious to eat!
Speaking of baking here's what I did make this month
Raspberry Shortbread Cookies with White Chocolate - I made this after reading The Bittersweet Bakery Cafe by Catherine Greer. I reviewed the book and shared the recipe, which is a family recipe, here.
Chocolate Eclairs - My husband had been asking me to make eclairs for a while but I kept on putting it off as I was a bit intimidated by it! However, once I decided to make it, it is doable. The recipe, which I shared as part of my Cook the Books contribution a couple of weeks ago, makes a lot so I still have some in the freezer. When I first filled the eclairs, I made it with a chocolate glaze and chantilly cream filling. The next time, I refreshed the shells in the oven, and then used the passionfruit and milk chocolate ganache from the macarons as the glaze and chocolate cream
Curry sausage rolls - Yes, this is a rare savoury bake, and it was delicious! The recipe comes from Justin Narayan's Everything in Indian.
Passionfruit and Milk Chocolate Macarons - My friend and I went and did a class to learn how to make macarons! It was such a great day. I shared about this experience here.
Chocolate Brownie - It's been an age since I made my favourite chocolate brownie recipe by Bill Granger! It went down a treat!
I haven't bought many cook books this year. When this book, Everything is Indian, was announced as the cook book for Lambs Ear Cook Book Club, I borrowed it from the library. After cooking a few things from it, we agreed that we needed to own it! I am planning to share something about this book in the next couple of weeks. I also got Taverna by Georgina Hayden out from the library. We really liked her book Greekish, so I need to find some time to look through the book before it has to go back to the library!
My most useful purchase this month was two storage containers which are the perfect shape for sheets of premade pastry and things like wraps or rotis. I don't know how I lived without them! I keep on finding new ways to use it, but at this stage, I am resisting the urge to buy any more.
We did have a very nice French dinner a couple of weeks ago. In fact, we had a very French weekend. I had already made eclairs, then we had the dinner before we went to see the arena version of Les Miserables which was amazing, and then I made macarons the next day. I wasn't sure what to expect of the dinner. It was a fixed price menu in the restaurant at the arena, and to be honest I kind of expected to walk away thinking that it was an okay dinner, potentially overpriced but worth it for the convenience of already being in the stadium. It turned out the dinner was delicious, the portions were generous and it was well worth doing!
I had crab tart, mushroom pithivier and potato gratin. In theory, the dessert came boxed up so that you could take it into the show with you to eat later, but we ate it in the restaurant. It was a gingernut base with layers of strawberry and rhubarb.
52 Recipes Challenge
Here are the new recipes we tried this month.
Raspberry and white chocolate shortbread cookies
Curry Roast Chicken, Masala roast potatoes and Raita - from Everything in Indian
Curry Sausage rolls - Another recipe from Everything in Indian. This one got rave reviews from Robert.
Spicy Prawn Noodles - My son was away for a few days so we had prawns. We don't cook these when he is home.
Spicy Beef Noodles - This came from Dominique's Kitchen and we tried this because it was a two person recipes
Chocolate eclairs
Potato Gratin - I had a craving for potato bake. This recipe came from RecipeTin Eats
Cottage Pie - Another recipe from the RecipeTin Eats site.
Sausage and veggie gravy traybake - And yes, another RecipeTin Eats recipe.
Before next month I should check to see what the tally is and how close I am
Saturday - Schnitzel, chips, broccoli, mushroom sauce Sunday - Sausages and potato gratin Monday - Beef and broccoli noodles Tuesday - Cottage Pie Wednesday - Sausage, vegetable and gravy traybake Thursday - Chilli Con Carne Friday - Out for dinner
I am sharing this post with In My Kitchen hosted at Sherry's Pickings.
Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page
Audrey Sweetman-Brown has a pretty good life. She's in line to be promoted to Creative Director in the advertising agency where she has worked for the last twenty years, she has a good marriage and a beautiful home. Yes, she has faced some challenges, and some of those have left lasting impacts on her day to day life but she does her best to maintain her recovery every day. She doesn't know it yet, but all of that is about to change, and not in a good way. By the end of the day, she is no longer employed, her marriage is over and she needs to get away to somewhere new quickly.
The only place she can think of is to head to Whitehaven Bay which is a small coastal town a couple of hours away from the city which is famous for its white sandy beach. It is somewhere that her mother used to take her as a child and that alone is enough to give comfort while she begins to sort her life out. And while she does that, she intends to bake up a storm. It is something that reminds her of her mother and bring her a little bit of joy.
There she meets a very colourful bunch of locals from Shez the wannabe business tycoon (who owns one small town motel) and her boyfriend Lem, Buddy who ends up being her landlord and who has a tendency to take his daily constitutional walk to the beach in the nude, Doctor Flood the handsome retired doctor and Billie, a non-binary teenager who seems to attract trouble wherever they go. And then there is Ruth, Billie's mother, who is a former judge and seems to be the only person that doesn't take to Audrey from day one.
Soon everyone is town is encouraging Audrey to start selling her delicious creations, but none of them expect her fortune cookies to go viral. Audrey hand makes her fortune cookies, impressing edible flowers into the cookies so they look beautiful. However, it is the fortunes inside that make these different. These are tell it like it is messages that say things like "Three can keep a secret....if you get rid of two." Suddenly, she has a start up business and she is struggling to keep up with demand.
Audrey is someone I related to. She is pretty much my age, and looking back on a career and wondering what step to take next, flirting with letting her hair go grey and more. I am very lucky as I don't need to face the same issues as she does in her marriage, but there were other aspects that I definitely recognised. Audrey doesn't always think everything through and as a result she doesn't always do the right thing, but she does try very hard to.
I loved the secondary characters in this book. They all had their own secrets that they have managed to keep even in a small town when everyone knows everyone else's business. I think my favourite was Billie. They do seem to have the uncanny ability to bring trouble on themselves but the way that the author showed the struggle of not fitting in, not meeting their mother's expectation, of trying to do the things that they are passionate about and good at, and of just wanting to be seen for exactly who they are was written really well
Sometimes I am bit wary of a book where the back cover blurbs or the author recommendations tell you that a book is laugh out loud funny because a lot of the time, the book doesn't do that for me. This one absolutely did! There are a couple of times when there are some bikies from the Coffin Cheaters bikie gang turn up on the page and their parts, in particular, made me laugh out loud. And I also ended up reading those passages out loud to my husband!
You can tell that the baking in this book isn't something that the author has just shoe-horned in for story purposes. Greer is very clearly a baker, and she has very generously shared several recipes, most of which played an important part in the book. These include recipes for Cinnamon Buns with Cream Cheese Frosting, Chip, Chip, Hooray Cookies, Raspberry Shortbread Cookies with White Chocolate, Dark Chocolate Birthday Cake, the recipe for the fortune cookies and more. I read this book from the library but I am seriously tempted to buy the book just so I have some of these recipes.
I thought I would make one of the recipes, but it was a challenge deciding which one. In the end I decided on the Raspberry Shortbread Cookies with White Chocolate and they are delicious. Every time he eats one my husband says something along the lines of these are so good!
This is Canadian-Australian Catherine Greer's first novel. She has written some kids books and some non fiction. I will definitely be looking forward to her next novel!
I am sharing this review with Foodies Read hosted at Based on a True Story and New Release Challenge hosted at The Chocolate Lady's Book Reviews.
Rating 4.5/5
Weekly meals
Saturday - Barbecued Honey Chicken, Rice and Broccolini Sunday - Beef Pepper Casserole Monday - Chicken Schnitzel Chips and Gravy Tuesday - One Pot Pastichio Wednesday - Chicken Enchiladas Thursday - Curry Roast chicken and Masala roast potatoes Friday - Takeaway
Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page
Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's theme is Books with the Word “[Insert Word Here]” in the Title (Choose a word and find ten books with that word in the title.)
My initial thought was to use the word girl but in the last few days I have read a couple of really good books which both had the word cafe in the title, so I am going with that!
The Handsome Man's Deluxe Cafe by Alexander McCall Smith - This is book number 15 in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series
The Cafe by the Bridge by Lily Malone - This is the second book in a trilogy set in in southern Western Australia.
Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe by Heather Webb - I loved this book when I read it a few years ago (my review)
Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Cafe by Toshikazu Kawaguchi - This is the second book in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series
The Custard Tart Cafe by Isabella May - Just thinking about this book makes me want to eat a Portuguese Custard Tart! (my review)
The Enchanted Garden Cafe by Abigail Drake - This is the first book in a series set in Pittsburgh. (my review)
Finding Family at the Cornish Cove by Kim Nash - whoops. Had this recorded in my spreadsheet as Finding Family at the Cornish Cafe. It is, however, set in a cafe so I am keeping it! It is the second book in the lovely Cornish Cove series. (my review)
The Pumpkin Spice Cafe by Laurie Gilmore - This is the first book in the very popular Dream Harbor series.
The Bittersweet Bakery Cafe by Catherine Greer - I just read this last week and I loved it. I will be reviewing it in a couple of weeks.
The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris by Evie Woods - Whoops this is a bakery not cafe but it was such a good read I am going to count it anyway!
I am also going to be sharing this post with Weekend Cooking which I host here!
Last week was the inaugural Global Book Crawl in Melbourne, so Bree from All the Books I Can Read and I couldn't resist the idea of wandering around the city visiting bookstores! The idea behind the crawl is that you have to visit between 8 and 12 bookstores around the city and collect stamps. As long as you visited the required number of stores then you could get a free book and you would go into the draw to win 50 books. If you spent $100 in a single store you should have received a Global Book Crawl tote bag.
We were somewhat thwarted by the fact that one of the stores that you had to visit was only open on certain days so we didn't get to get the free book, but we did have a fabulous day visiting some bookstores that we were familiar with, others we had never visited before. We got to talk books, life and everything in general and I did as many steps on that day as I normally do when I am holidays! The photo above was taken at the first bookstore so I still look relatively fresh!
I did get a bag from the last store that we visited but they had already run out of the specific tote bags and it was only the second day when we did it.
The stores that we visited included Books for Cooks, Hill of Content Bookshop, Kay Craddock Antiquarian Booksellers, Mary Martin Bookshop (where the pic above was taken), Paperback Bookshop, Readings Emporium and Readings at the State Library.
I can definitely see myself doing this again if they have it again next year.
Here are a couple more pics, including my haul for the day.
I'm reading
Unlike last week I actually finished more books than I started this week! I also posted 5 reviews which is a very unusual for me! I have a few I would like to post this week and then I will be almost caught up I think!
I finished reading Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris by Evie Woods which I thoroughly enjoyed. Last year I listened to the audio of The Lost Bookshop and was underwhelmed but this one grabbed my attention straight away and didn't let go!
I also finished The Bittersweet Bakery Cafe by Catherine Greer which was a really good read. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I will post a review of this one in a couple of weeks time.
I also read A Greek Island Gift by Mandy Baggot. I have read a few of Mandy Baggot's books now and enjoy her portrayal of Greece in the pages of her books. My review for this one will be up later this week.
I went to the library to pick up a cookbook that was on hold for me and saw The Rainfall Market by Korean author You Yeong-Gwang on the hot picks shelf and couldn't help myself. I have started reading it and so far it is good. Different from my usual reads but good.
I'm watching
We sat down this week and watched the most recent version of All Quiet on the Western Front which was an excellent film. What I didn't expect is that we would watched some of the 1979 version starring Ernest Borgnine as well. By comparing the two you can definitely see how movies have changed over the last 50 or so years. For example, the soldiers in the earlier version were very clean and tidy. The ones in the recent version with covered in mud and other things for most of the movie
However, they both don't compare to the gritty reality of war, as we saw when we watched a couple of epsides of the Ken Burns documentary about Vietnam.
We have watched a few documentaries this week. We watched a four episodes of a documentary series about the life of Winston Churchill which was very interesting. Whilst he is rightly famous for leading the British during WWII, there are some less than stellar instances in his life where he made decisions that had devestating consequences.
On a lighter note we went to the movies over the weekend to see The Penguin Lessons which stars British actor Steve Coogan. It is about a man who is a bit lost really who starts teaching at a school in Argentina right when the military coup happens. He acquires a penguin, and the movie tells the story about how his life changed as a result. It wasn't a bad movie. The word nice probably applies more than anything.
I did catch up on my Springtime in Paris movie viewing this week by watching Paris Blues and Hugo.
Paris Blues stars Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Joanne Woodward and Diahann Caroll, with a guest appearance by the great Louis Armstrong. The story is about two American musicians who live in Paris. They meet two American women who have come to Paris on holidays and they quickly fall in love. I hadn't heard a lot about this movie but I did enjoy it for a number of reasons. Firstly, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were married in real life so it was fun seeing them together on screen. Secondly, it was interesting to see the way that the race question was addressed in this movie. If you had of asked me to name a movie which starred Sidney Poitier which addressed issues relating to race I would have said Guess Who's Coming to Dinner or To Sir With Love. This movie looked at how different the experience was for Poitier's character living as an African American in Paris compared to what it would have been in America at the time. Another point of interest for me was seeing Paris itself. Yes, there was glamourous side of Paris, but this movie was made in 1961 and there were evident signs of the destruction of Paris during WWII. For example, there was a scene where they visit what looks like a market, and the market is set up amongst some runs.
After watching two older movies, Hugo was a more recent movie (made in 2011) but set in the 1930s. It surprised me that this movie was made by Martin Scorcese. I always associate his name with more violent movies but this was a very sweet movie which was based on the book The Invention of Hugo Cabaret by Brian Selznick.
In this movie orphaned boy Hugo lives in a train station in Paris, keeping the clocks wound up as he was taught to do by his uncle before he disappeared. He is trying to fix an automoton that his father had found at a museum, in the hope that he would get one final message from his dad. In order to survive and get the parts that he needs he steals from various stores in the train station, which brings him to the attention of the station policeman. If I had one criticism it is about the police man, but otherwise it is a great cast that brings a lovely story to life.
There were so many layers to this movie, which at its core is about the power of imagination and in particular the magic of movies.
I am really looking forward to watching The Intouchables this week. It is a movie I have been meaning to watch for years!
Life
We did spend a lovely afternoon have afternoon tea at Oxi Tea Rooms. It is more of an immersive experience rather than just afternoon tea. I will post more about it in a couple of weeks for Weekend Cooking but this is one photo.
I did a lot of starting books this week! Some finishing but nowhere near as many as I started!
One book that I finished was the audio of Atlas: The Story of Pa Salt by Lucinda Riley and Harry Whittaker, the final book in the Seven Sisters series. I have listened to all of these on audiobook. Given that each of these books is more than 20 hours long that's a lot of listening time! I started listening to the first book more than 6.5 years ago, so it has been a bit commitment! This final book was narrated by Richard Armitage for Pa Salt's parts and Tuppence Middleton for the modern story. It feels like this book did what it needed to do in terms of tying all the origin stories together, and telling Pa's story, so I was satisfied with the end of the series. I did have one question about what happened on the luxury super yachts (IFYKYK) but overall it was good.
I then started listening to Away with the Fairies by Kerry Greenwood. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Kerry Greenwood had passed away recently, so I thought it would be a good time to go back to the next Phryne Fisher book. It did surprise me a little that is 16 years since I read one of the books but I think I have slipped back into the world quickly. After listening to Richard Armitage for so long it did take me a little while to get used to the sound of a new narrator but I think I am there now!
We did a bit of a roadtrip on the Friday and Saturday of the Easter weekend, and I convinced my husband that we could listen to a book while we drove. It needed to be something that he would enjoy too, so I chose The World According to Kaleb by Kaleb Cooper. Kaleb Cooper is a young British farmer who is now a bit of a celebrity thanks to his appearances on Clarkson's Farm, a reality TV show featuring well known British....presenter I guess is the best word....Jeremy Clarkson. It is only a short book at around 2.5 hours and it was amusing. Kaleb is a young man who knows exactly what he likes (farming) and what he doesn't like (sheep among other things!).
As that book was so short, we then started listening to The Satsuma Complex which is both written and narrated by Bob Mortimer. Bob Mortimer is a British comedian who appears regularly on panel shows such as Would I Lie to You and he makes us laugh a lot every time he is on! He's a great oral storyteller. We will listen to this when we are in the car together for the next little while!
In terms of books I was reading myself, I finished The Best Days of Our Lives by Helen Rolfe. The review for that will be up this week.
I then read The House of Lost Whispers by Jenni Keer, which is another super interesting book by her! It's a bit of a genre bender but I will say more when I review it next week!
I also started The Tea Ladies by Amanda Hampson which is going to be my read on a theme book club selection this time around. The theme is 1960s and this book is set in 1966 so it fits the theme beautifully.
I also started The Bittersweet Bakery Cafe by Catherine Greer. I picked it up on a whim when I went to the library last week, but I can only borrow it for a week so I needed to get going with that one sooner rather than later!
Finally, I didn't take the physical books I was reading with me when we went away so started The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris by Evie Woods. I am a bit torn now as to which book to finish first as I did get sucked into this one pretty much straight away!
I'm watching
We are big fans of the archeological show Time Team here in my house. It is often on the Real History channel at around dinner time so we will watch it if it is on, even if we have seen the episode multiple times before. I was a bit surprised to find that over the last couple of years they have been making Time Team specials that are only on Youtube! This week we watched one called Digging Band of Brothers which was an excavation of the camp where the US 101st Airborne Division was based in Britain. There are a few other specials that we will watch now! If you are interested this is the link.
We also started watching a new series of the American Baking Show which is the first one I have seen where Paul and Prue are the judges.
I also watched How to Steal a Million as part of the Springtime in Paris event hosted by Erin from Still Life, with Cracker Crumband Lisa from Boondock Ramblings. What a fun movie! It starred the beautiful and ethereal Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole, who was very handsome as a young man. The premise is that Audrey Hepburn's father is a serial art forger. He agrees to hand over a famous statue to display in a museum without realising that he has agreed to have the piece authenticated. If it is tested, then it will be revealed as a fake then he will be found out. Hepburn's character then enlists the help of a man she caught stealing a painting from her own house (or so she thought) and hijinks ensue. The movie had such charm and naivety. I couldn't help but think if the movie was made today how very different it would be! I am planning to watch the next couple of movies for the event this week.
Life
I had to go to the funeral of a friend last week. He was a larger than life character who drew people to him. It was a reminder to live life to the best of your ability as you don't really know how long you have. Also #$%$ cancer.
In Australia, Easter is a four day weekend with public holidays on both Good Friday and Easter Monday. A lot of people choose to go away for the weekend. Originally, we were planning to go away overnight next weekend, but then my son is going interstate that weekend so we decided to go on Friday and come back on Saturday.
You probably recall that we like a good art silo, and this trip we managed to see 4 full size ones, plus a collection of smaller ones. The main reason for heading up the highway was to go to the Lake Boga Flying Boat Museum. During WWII, Lake Boga was a secret base for the repair of flying boats like the Catalina aircraft and saw Australian, American and Dutch planes landing on the lake. It was also a key point in the communications between the Allies. It was a fascinating place, and I think it might be a place that we go back to should we be up that way again. Recently there has been a new art silo done at Lake Boga, which reflects this history. The other photo is of a silo at a place called Sea Lake, which was cool because in the day you can see the image below, but at night they projects some films onto the silos taking about the farming and the dark sky environs around which means amazing stargazing
One of the highlights of the trip was going to a nearby lake called Lake Tyrrell which is the largest salt water lake in the state of Victoria. We went at sunset the first night and it was spectacular. I took so many photos. The next morning we went at about 8am and we were pretty much the only ones there. Well...us and the flies.
We had to come back on Saturday as we had a show from the Melbourne International Comedy Festival featuring another British comic, Tom Allen! He is on various UK show and he was very entertaining. This was the only show we got to go to in this year's festival as we were away for most of it!
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