Sunday 30 January 2022

What Rhymes with Orange?

Well, nothing rhymes with orange, or so they say, but you can make Marmalade with oranges, and that's exactly what I have been doing. An annual tradition for me. My cousin in Australia makes Marmalade every year too, we obviously have inherited the marmalade gene from our mums.

Six Seville Oranges, only available in the nearby grocery stores in January and February. The Sevilles are wrinkly and rather ugly and very bitter, and way more expensive than normal oranges, but they make terrific marmalade, so indispensable. 
Add two sweet navel oranges, and two juicy lemons. 

Squeeze all the juices out, remove the pips and the membranes, and chop the peel very thinly. For every cup of juice and peel, add 2 cups of filtered water, and soak overnight with the pips contained in a mash bag.

Boil until the peel is soft, add a cup of sugar for every cup of fruit mixture, boil some more and when it starts feeling thick and jellyish, pour into heated jars and seal.... voila! Marmalade!


Home made Marmalade on home made toast for breakfast, can't get any more delicious than that!!

Sunday 2 January 2022

2021 Books

Books read in 2021.... finally got to make a list and publish it! But I may have forgotten some in December.



Canadian authors in RED
British authors in BLUE
American authors in GREEN

January 2021
The Lola Quartet - Emily St.John Mandel (unputdownable story)
The Murder of Cleopatra, History's Greatest Cold Case - Pat Brown
Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng (another unputdownable)
Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng (I enjoyed this author a lot)
The Glass Hotel - Emily St.John Mandel (loved this book)

February 2021
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine - Gail Honeyman (good book)
All Adults Here - Emma Straub
The Girls - Emma Cline
Akin - Emma Donoghue (loved this book) (just noticed, 3 Emma authors in a row)
More Than a Woman - Caitlin Moran

March 2021
Remarkable Creatures - Tracy Chevalier
The Tobacconist - Robert Seethaler
The Widow - Fiona Barton
Lawn Boy - Jonathan Evison (loved this book)
A Whole Life - Robert Seethaler
At the Edge of the Orchard - Tracy Chevalier
13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl - Mona Awad (DNF)
Weather - Jenny Offill (DNF)

April 2021
Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout
Olive, Again - Elizabeth Strout
Real Life - Brandon Taylor (DNF, got as far as page 27, not my style)
The Green Road - Anne Enright
The Long Call - Anne Cleeves
This is Your Life, Harriet Chance - Jonathan Evison

May 2021
Astray - Emma Donoghue
Utopia Avenue - David Mitchell (all books by David Mitchell are worth reading, especially this one)
Slade House - David Mitchell (2nd time reading)
The Lager Queen of Minnesota - J. Ryan Stradal
This One Wild Life - Angie Abdou (DNF but may try again)
The Dutch House - Ann Patchett (good book)
Big Sky - Kate Atkinson
Shotgun Lovesongs - Nickolas Butler
The Wangs vs. the World - Jade Chang (DNF)
The Revolution of Marina M - Janet Fitch (DNF, 805 pages, too big too heavy too complicated)

June 2021
Adults - Emma Jane Unsworth (DNF, nope)
The Child - Fiona Barton
The Lady and the Unicorn - Tracy Chevalier
Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens
Piranesi - Susanna Clarke (good book, I read it twice, clever)
Modern Lovers - Emma Straub
Gifted - Nikita Lalwani

July 2021
This is Happiness - Niall Williams (lovely book!)
Legends of the North Cascades - Jonathan Evison
Rainbow Milk - Paul Mendez  (loved this book, surprised myself!)
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore - Robin Sloan 
Mayflies - Andrew O'Hagan (good book)

August 2021
Instructions for a Heatwave - Maggie O'Farrell
Bad Dreams - Tessa Hadley (short stories)
The Hand that First Held Mine - Maggie O'Farrell
Late in the Day - Tessa Hadley
The Village - Nikita Lalwani
Dual Citizens - Alix Ohlin

September 2021
The Glass House - Beatrice Colin (DNF)
The Paris Dressmaker - Kristy Cambron (DNF, pathetic)
The Wonder - Emma Donoghue
The Secret of the Great Pyramid - Bob Brier and Jean-Pierre Houdin

October 2021
The Return - Joseph Helmreich
A Passage North - Anuk Arudpragasam
The Woman on the Stairs - Bernhard Schlink
The Motion of the Body Through Space - Lionel Shriver
A Boring Wife Settles the Score - Marie Renee Lavoie

November 2021
All I Ask - Eva Crocker
Swimming With Horses - Ross Oakland
One for the Rock - Kevin Major
The Opposite of Fate - Alison McGhee

December 2021
Bone and Bread - Saleema Nawaz
Transcription - Kate Atkinson

Click on "books" at the bottom of this post for my reading list for previous years.