No, Victoria’s is not a restaurant. She’s our friend Pamela’s daughter, who lives in a darling house  – called Cobweb Cottage, smack dab in the middle of the Cotswolds country, out on a remote country road with nothing but pastureland in sight. It sounds like it ought to be right out of Beatrix Potter, doesn’t it?

I’ve told the story before, about how we met this family. It started in 1981 when Dave and I were on a trip to England and Pamela and Jimmy befriended us in a local pub. In a tiny little town called Ilminster, in Somerset. And we’ve been friends ever since, Jimmy, sadly, passed away some years ago, and Pamela now lives in Cheltenham (on the west edge of the Cotswolds). She’s a woman of indeterminate age – I won’t embarrass her by announcing it. She’s an absolute dear. A dear heart, as the saying goes. She’s still full of piss and vinegar at her age, although the body is having a hard time keeping up with her agile brain!

Pamela and Jimmy had two children – Victoria (her husband Graham was away, sadly) and Nicholas who lives in Ludlow (Wales, about 2 hours away) with his wife Lottie. This time we met one of the grandsons, James, who’s about to go to India for an extended trip and plans to write a book about the refugees (now in India) from Nepal. He met the Dahlai Lama, who’s been impressed with his writing and offered to write a foreward to his book. James writes a blog too, called Coffee and Countries, if you want to go check it out. He’s a new college grad with a degree in journalism, about to experience life as an adult. In his spare time in India he’s also looking into the family genealogy too. Pamela’s family (originally from Ireland)  lived in India. It was her great-grandfather who moved to India and actually joined the Indian Army (as a liaison with the the British Army then occupying India). Pamela was born in India, but moved to England when she was 10 (to attend private school) and stayed. But India runs in the blood, I guess you could say. We sat in Pamela’s kitchen this time and she told us long, fascinating stories about her childhood, about India. And how proud she is of her children and grandchildren.

Victoria is a very accomplished cook (Cordon Bleu trained), and this was the first time we had the opportunity to enjoy it. Pamela used to be a fabulous cook – I’ve told stories about her before on this blog – about how she taught me to make a proper pot of tea, for instance. And how she wowed us on our first visit with a lamb roast dinner.

There, clockwise from top left: Victoria, James (Victoria’s son), Lottie (Nick’s wife) and Nicholas.

First we enjoyed sitting outside (on one of those rare, but glorious English sunny summer afternoons) for awhile with drinks, then sat down for the dinner inside. Victoria had outdone herself with providing ample side dishes to go with the beef roast. I mean – can you see in the top left photo – that roast is huge. And it was so juicy and delicious. Then we had the Yorkshire puddings (popovers), honeyed parsnips (to die for, I swear), cooked carrots from her garden, broad beans (here we call them fava beans) in cream sauce, cooked leeks, roasted potatoes, and cauliflower cheese (a casserole of cooked cauliflower in a cheesy cream sauce – divine is all I can say).

Once all that settled Victoria served dessert. She doesn’t make fancy desserts, she said, but served instead a delicious concoction (fondly called in English-speak “Eton mess”) of crumbled meringue, fresh berries and whipped cream. In England you can buy ready-made meringues (like baby pavlovas), so she’d crumbled them up, spooned in a bunch of fresh berries with juice, then some sweetened, whipped cream. It was delicious and easy. I make something very similar – see my blog post about it: Mixed Berry Meringue Parfaits. Mine also has ice cream in it, but originally it didn’t. So, it’s an American version of “Eton mess.”

Then Victoria served a cheese course – oh so lovely. With wonderful, mostly local, English cheeses. I was so full by that point I could hardly eat any, but I did anyway. I don’t remember the names of any of the cheeses – one was a Cheddar, another a type of Brie, I think.

Hopefully Victoria will read this – we had such a lovely afternoon at her home – and the food was off the charts wonderful. Thank you, Victoria! Now all I want to know is what she did with the 10 pounds of leftover beef? Maybe shepherd’s pie?

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Laughing at yourself is one of the humbling and fun things in life, isn’t it? This picture doesn’t show you the laughing part. First, the coffee tray. What’s there not to love about staying in a charming B&B and having the owner deliver a fresh pot of coffee at 8:00 in the morning? Indeed Nicky brought this cute little tray for us and it just barely lodged on the edge of the bedside table. We savored every drop.

Now the other part – we had just one electrical outlet in this room above (in Wales). If you’ve never traveled in England before . . . well, for us with U.S. 110 volt plugs, we must first use a British plug. On the back are the holes for both European and American plugs. But first you have to insert a power converter so you don’t  blow up the electrical device. It converts their 220 volts to 110. But, the plugs don’t hold very well. They’re loose. They fall out. Either the converter falls out, or the American plug/cord falls out. So I’ve had to resort to all kinds of makeshift things to prop it up.

As I write this (it’s Sunday here in Cheltenham), up in the room I’m charging my ipod. But in order to do that I had to unplug the television, which meant my DH couldn’t watch morning TV while he waited for me to finish showering and dressing. So he went down to the “lounge,” (the living room type place where small hotels offer drinks or lounging) to read. When I first got up this morning I began charging my iphone. It was completely dead. Because, you see, when we drove yesterday we needed to leave the GPS plugged into the cigarette lighter. Dave thinks that the GPS must be plugged in when it’s in use (I think it has some reserve juice to run awhile; he thinks it doesn’t). So I couldn’t charge my iphone in the car yesterday.

So, I should have charged it last night, but Dave was watching TV when I decided to go to sleep. My ipod, that I listen to almost every night before I drift off to sleep, was nearly dead too. It had just enough juice for me to listen for about 15 minutes. So therefore, nothing got charged. Ah, the dilemma of a techie. Of course, I have to have my ipod, and my iphone, and my mini-laptop. Then, you throw in the fact that Dave’s razor (his only battery type device with him) must be charged too. He told me this morning that his razor is just about dead. So we need to leave it charging while we’re out and about today. With the British plug, the converter and then the curlicue cord for charging. But it falls out too, so we have to find something in the room that’s not flammable (like plastic or something similar) to prop up under the contraptions – to keep them supplying juice.

So here I am, sitting in the lounge myself, running the laptop on battery power because the British plug and converter are upstairs in the room. I hope I have enough juice left to upload this post. You readers are just lucky I even have a post with all this electronics mess!

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We’re staying at a B&B in Hay-on-Wye, a charming Welsh town nearer the English border that we were a few nights ago, And the owners are limited in how much they can (internet) upload and download through their wi-fi-system. So I’m just including this picture above – the tea tray in our room. If you’ve never traveled in England, you may not know that nearly every hotel, inn or B&B has a tea tray. Some are nicer than others. Some include cookies (biscuits they’re called here). Some include all sorts of teas, hot chocolate packets and instant coffee. At the B&Bs they will also send you off to bed with a little pitcher of milk so you can have milk in your tea when you awake in the morning. Or, some have little thin plastic packets of milk that don’t have to be refrigerated – here they’re in little bags that are about 3/8 inches wide and 3 inches long.

On the tea tray above there is a corded hot water maker (top left). There’s sugar cubes, a teapot, a dish for your spent teabags (top right) and the other little pots contain tea bags, instant coffee, etc, The owners actually brought up a tall cafetierre (a coffee press-pot) for us this morning, so my empty coffee mug is resting there at the bottom right.

This tea tray thing in the room is a nice cultural thing. Of course, in the US our hotels often have a coffeepot and teabags are usually there too. But here you can make an actual pot of tea, a proper pot of tea if you want it. Whenever we visit England I vow I’m going to start making a proper tea tray more often. I do make one when I prepare tea for myself during the daytime.

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If this isn’t a typical looking country inn of England, then I don’t know what is! Our flight was very nice – oh that first class stuff is something else. We both slept about 4-5 hours on the way over, arriving several hours late (took off 2 1/2 hrs late from LA too). I won’t tell you about the ticket snafu. Let’s just say we arrived fine, rented our car, and started driving. It always takes me an hour or so to adjust to driving on the other side of the road, but no mishaps so far. We arrived at this inn above, at Waddesdon, called the Five Arrows. We arrived late, but kindly they still were willing to feed us dinner. Delicious it was, too. We both had pork belly and I ordered the oh-so-lovely summer pud (layered bread in a small bowl with oodles of fresh berries and clotted cream. Off we went to bed.

The next morning we tried to tour the actual Weddesdon Manor, a National Trust home, but found it was closed on Mondays. Too bad! So we drove a ways and visited Claydon House (another National Trust house) instead. Lovely.

Then we zipped up the motorway and arrived near Nottingham about 4:30 pm. Our dear friend Dinny was expecting us. We went out to dinner that night to a lovely country inn called Langer Hall. Yesterday we spent hours and hours visiting, going into downtown Nottingham to buy a new battery for my camera (can’t believe I went off from home with it charging away in the kitchen near our all-packed bags). We visited Marks & Spencers too (Dave always buys his knickers at Marks & Sparks – he’s owned nothing but M&Ss knickers for about 28 years.) Bet you didn’t know that the Queen wears Marks & Spencer’s knickers. They are extremely well made – Dave still has the ones he bought 30 years ago and they’re holding up, albeit a little thin.

As I’m writing this we’ve driven north into Yorkshire. Maybe tomorrow I’ll share more photos of the Dales. We’re having fun. As I type, my DH is watching Robin Hood on television (how appropriate since we just left Nottingham). We’re about to go to dinner.

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It’s been awhile since I started using Eat Your Books, and thought it was about time I told you something about it. So you can check it out yourself. If you’re an avid cook (well, you must be or you wouldn’t be reading my blog, right?) and have a whole collection of cookbooks and never know where or which book has what, this website is right up your alley.

The other night I wanted to fix cauliflower. This provides a perfect example of how you’d use EYB for cooking at your house. At Eat Your Books, or EYB for short. Somebody mentioned it on his/her blog a couple of months ago, and the website was offering a lower-priced sign-up bonus. Which I did. It wasn’t exactly cheap, but I hope to use it day in and day out for years to come (here’s hoping the website is successful and stays in biz!).

Here’s what EYB is all about. Once you sign up for an account (30 days for free at the moment), you enter the names of all of the cookbooks you own. In an ideal world, they would have listings for all the books I have on my bookshelves. Not so, but they had about 75% of them. As an aside, the books they didn’t have listings for are ones I own that are really old, a bit obscure, several books from England, and one Indian cookbook. It also didn’t have several new books I own. Go figure. So I individually entered the titles of all the books that matched up with their list. Their server grinds through and pops up the book. I add it to my cookbook collection at EYB. It did take me awhile (maybe 1 1/2 hours) to do this, but then I own a huge collection of cookbooks. What I did, actually, was stand in front of my cookbook collection and write down all the titles with the author’s last name. That was all I needed for all but a couple of books. Here’s what my EYB bookshelf says now:

You have (147) Cookbooks and (16,480) Recipes on your bookshelf.

THEN, here’s the good part – I was ready to cook something (cauliflower this time, remember) – I went to EYB and typed in the word cauliflower. Up it came with a listing of where, in my cookbook collection, recipes exist for cauliflower. (It doesn’t give you the recipes, it just gives you the recipe titles they’ve gathered from the recipe titles or indexes of the cookbook library.) It gave me about 12 choices. From the recipe titles I could tell several of them were not something I wanted to make (like cauliflower with pasta, cauliflower and peas, cauliflower and rice, cauliflower in a salad), but there were about three that met my initial criteria as a dinner side dish. And the one that sounded most interesting was in Deborah Madison’s book, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. Time elapsed: It took me about 3 minutes to type in the search term, get the results and hone in on the recipe I wanted to investigate, and about 30 seconds to find the cookbook and go to the right page. A whole lot less time than standing in front of my cookbooks and staring at the titles wondering which one(s) might contain an appropriate recipe for a side dish cauliflower.

There are other functions at EYB too. Like advanced searches for ethnic, or by category. Or maybe gluten-free (I’ll use that one next time my cousin comes to visit), or sugar-free. If the cookbook has been fully indexed it will show you a page with all the ingredients in that dish (so you might eliminate it if it contained something you didn’t have, or didn’t want to go shopping to get).  Only 880 cookbooks at EYB are fully indexed. That means that you would be able to use a cookbook’s intuitive index (like a recipe titled just Provencal Summer Squash Casserole, for instance, might be listed under Squash, Summer Squash, French, vegetables, sugar-free, and gluten-free).

You can also mark recipe titles with a favorites icon, or a do-later one, in case you run across one as you’re doing a search. Like the pasta with cauliflower and peas I spotted on this search. It wasn’t appropriate for this meal, but it sounded interesting for later. I haven’t tried those functions yet, but they sound like great ideas. It will also help you with menu planning if you want, and help create a shopping list (without quantities, though). I used to store my myriad cookbooks in two or three places (now I have just one area), but if you have multiple locations, you can flag the cookbooks in “My Locations” as you enter the info about them, to indicate “kitchen,” or “dining room,” or “garage” perhaps to save time when you need to run and find one. You can also rate (with stars) your own cookbooks. There’s a user forum too, and you can make friends with other EYB members if you want to, like Facebook for cookbook users.

If you want to get a quick tour of EYB, go check it out for yourself. And right now they do have a 30-day free trial. I’m quite pleased with the resources so far. The website was founded/developed by three women who live in far parts of the world. Amazing how the web levels the playing field. I wish these gals success in the venture. Makes perfect sense to me that I can go to the web to find my recipes. Just differently!

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A year ago: Blueberry & Ginger Salsa (so very good with pork)
Three years ago: Peppered Pecans (a favorite)

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As I was writing up yesterday’s post where I used some chicken broth, and I included a little photo of these soup bases, I decided I really needed to write up an entire blog post about these little plastic jars of flavor treasure.

Just because they’re called a soup base, don’t think you only use them for soup. Far from it. In the chicken dish I was making last night, it called for 1 1/2 cups of chicken broth. I just dipped my clean spoon into the jar and took about 1/2 teaspoon and put it into the sauce and added the required water measure. You don’t have to mix it up. Easy.

Can I just tell you, please, go online (or visit a Penzey’s store if you’re lucky enough to have one near you) and order the chicken and beef soup bases?

I’ve been using these for several years now. I like them because:

1. the flavor is incredibly rich tasting – the first ingredient in the chicken soup base is chicken meat! What does that tell you? There are other advantages, but this is the strongest one that will speak volumes if you try it.

2. the jar takes up very little space – although they recommend you refrigerate it once opened. You don’t have to – but since most home cooks won’t use it up all that fast, I think you should.

3. it’s lower sodium than some (it does contain 610 milligrams per  3/4 tsp.)

4. no more of the boxes, cans, cubes or granules – you won’t have to buy any of this again. Whatever you currently use, use them up and they’ll never have to clutter up your pantry shelves. You’ll use these.

5. They have lots of different types – chicken, beef, seafood, pork, ham, vegetable and turkey. The pork, ham and turkey don’t get used much in my kitchen. I use the chicken, beef and seafood the most. I never did buy the vegetable one.

Each of the bottles is about 3” x 3”. I use the chicken a lot (I buy 2 chicken to any other type). The unopened jar can sit in your pantry until you’re ready to use it. They do recommend using it up in some reasonable time period, but I’ll tell you, I’ve had some of these in my refrigerator for at least 18 months, and they seem to be just fine.

According to the diluting recipe on the jar, you use 1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon per cup of water. Sometimes I’ll use a bit more, but then I’m never making a dish that serves one person. And I credit many of my favorite dishes with the flavor that comes in these little bottles. Particularly soups where the flavor from the broth is so important. So, if you’ve learned to trust me, may I highly suggest you go to Penzey’s soup base page and order some of this for your pantry? As I write this, their price is $8.39 per 8-ounce jar. Each jar, it says, contains 45 servings (probably using 1/2 tsp. per cup of water). Even at that price it’s a real bargain.
Fine print: no, I don’t work for Penzey’s, nor do I market for them. I just think they make a superb product and I’m happy to broadcast it!

Two years ago: Beef Sliders with Onion Pepper Marmalade

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I promised a few weeks ago that I’d post pictures of our new patio cover. Now that all the electrical is done (lighting and two fans) it’s ready for its debut on the blog. We’ve used it about three times for guests and many, many meals for just the two of us, so it’s just getting broken in. Nothing about the patio arrangement has changed – it’s the same patio space, the same furniture, same brick and cement combo patio floor that’s been here for at least 20 years, it’s just the cover that’s new.

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My DH brought me his favorite bathroom reader/book, to show me a story. I do remember, vaguely, the famous book Peg Bracken wrote, called The I Hate to Cook Book. It was published in 1960 and now has the above 50th anniversary edition. Here’s the back story to the origin of the book.

[quoting from the book] When advertising copywriter Peg Bracken showed her husband (also a writer) the manuscript of The I Hate to Cook Book, he said, “It stinks.” Their marriage didn’t last, but the book did – and went on to sell more than 3 million copies.

It all started in the 1950’s, when Bracken and a group of Portland, Oregon, women friends who called themselves “The Hags” used to meet after work to down martinis and do a little griping about their lives. “At the time,” she wrote, “we were all unusually bored with what we had been cooking and, therefore, eating. For variety’s sake, we decided to pool our ignorance, tell each other our shabby little secrets, and toss into the pot the recipes we swear by instead of at.” What struck people most about The I Hate to Cook Book was that it was witty, funny, and totally irreverent about the sacred subject of cooking. Bracken hated spending time in the kitchen and wasn’t afraid to say so – it turned out that thousands of other women felt the same way. The recipes relied on the use of convenience foods (her recipe for “Sweet Steak,” for example, was pot roast cooked with a can of cream of mushroom soup), avoided complicated techniques, and took very little preparation time. She told women – in a tone both friendly and unapologetic – that it was time to stop feeling guilty about dinner and get on with their lives. That was revolutionary for the 1960’s. Sales of The I Hate to Cook Book topped 3 million copies, which encouraged Bracken to write other books, including the equally irreverent I Hate to Housekeep Book (1962) and I Try to Behave Myself (1964), an etiquette manual. And in keeping with her motto of “keep it simple” she became the spokeswoman for Birds-Eye frozen vegetables in the late 1960’s.[end of quote]

— from Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader (Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader) , by the Bathroom Readers’ Institute

Peg Bracken died in 2007, at the age of 89, and wrote 15 books over her lifetime, some published in the U.K. I remember having read her first book at one time, probably back in the 60’s, but I wasn’t fascinated with the techniques, obviously. It’s an interesting story, though.

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Two years ago: Steak Diane Flambé

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From the reader’s end of this blog, you probably think I prepare massive meals every night of the week, just about. That I spend every afternoon slaving in the kitchen, poring over recipes, with my DH making endless trips to the grocery store. Really, that’s not true at all. There are days when I have nothing – absolutely nothing – to write about. I go through spells (usually no more than 3-5 days) when I just don’t feel like making anything new. I don’t feel like researching recipes. Or standing in front of my island chopping, mincing, stirring, assembling. Stirring a pot, sautéing something, digging in my cupboards to find obscure herbs, frying, boiling, steaming, mashing garlic, brewing tea. And I truly do have days when I don’t feel like cooking at all! Can you believe that?

Fortunately, those spells don’t last very long, and I’m back to the drawing boards, standing at my island chopping, mincing, creating. If you want to know about the other things (that are already ON my blog) that have been served at my house lately, read on.

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Several weeks ago we had a ladies luncheon at our church. I’d agreed to set one table because I thought it was going to be a tea, a luncheon tea. Turned out it wasn’t. Nothing to do with tea, actually. But the deal is that a hostess sets a table of her own things and she gets to attend the lunch for free. Time is allowed ahead to set up the table. My friend Joan took a natural twig type wreath she hangs on the wall at home and added some greenery and some cute birdies sitting on it. She put a ceramic birdhouse in the middle, added some color coordinated placemats, plates, napkins and glassware. I thought her table was really lovely. Joan has a real dramatic flair for decorating – you should see her house! It’s gorgeous.

Meanwhile, I was stuck on the tea theme, so I used a centerpiece of a pretty (decorative only) ceramic teapot that I bought in Cortona, Italy some years ago. Sorry you can’t see the teapot very well. It has a very unique shape, short, squat with an adorable corkscrew spout (that’s navy blue – you can barely see it on the left of the pot hidden in the greenery). The green print tablecloth I scrunched up all around the table to give it some character, then I used some wicker chargers, green and brown glasses, and green and beige napkins. The plates are larger luncheon sized plates that belonged to my grandmother, my dad’s mother. Sorry you can’t see them very well, they’re really quite pretty. I often mix formal and casual things on the same table.

This grandmother Bessie, who lived in a small central California town called Keyes (between Modesto and Turlock), enjoyed entertaining her lady friends for coffee and dessert on special afternoons. Her scrapbook type recipe collection that my mother gave me many years ago contained just dessert recipes. Nothing but cakes, as I recall. And none of her own – they were just clippings from newspapers, magazines, church newsletters and things of that sort glued to the scrapbook pages. There weren’t any notes, either, sad to say, so there was no way to know if she’d even made any of them. Most of the recipes were very elaborate, labor-intensive cakes and icebox type whipped cream desserts, none of which appealed to me, so eventually I threw it out. But over the years my grandmother accumulated a whole lot of china dessert and lunch sized plates. I do have them all – a mixture of things, mostly Haviland. And I do use them often. Obviously there was some breakage over the years so I have 2 of one type, 3 of some, 5 of a couple, and this group has 9, I think. I’m sure my grandmother would be happy that I’m using her plates, don’t you think?

A year ago: Grilled Caesar Salad with Chicken
Two years ago: Broccoli Rabe

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