J.  Okay V,  I know I'm being a blog hog!  I just can't seem to control myself...so difficult to stem the tide when it comes to talking about books!  Speaking of stemming the tide, that reminds me of Grayson by Lynn Cox....there i go again...hopeless...

J.  Two books, one author, and a third book that rocked my world.

In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan writes about how our food is grown -- what it is, in fact, that we are eating. The book is really three in one: The first section discusses industrial farming; the second, organic food, both as big business and on a relatively small farm; and the third, what it is like to hunt and gather food for oneself. And each section culminates in a meal -- a cheeseburger and fries from McDonald's; roast chicken, vegetables and a salad from Whole Foods; and grilled chicken, corn and a chocolate soufflé (made with fresh eggs) from a sustainable farm; and, finally, mushrooms and pork, foraged from the wild.

We needn't learn how to shoot our own pigs, as Pollan does; there's hope in other ways -- farmers' markets, the Slow Food movement, restaurants supplied by local farms. To Pollan, the omnivore's dilemma is twofold: what we choose to eat ("What should we have for dinner?" he asks in the opening sentence of his book) and how we let that food be produced. His book is an eater's manifesto, and he touches on a vast array of subjects, from food fads and taboos to our avoidance of not only our food's animality, but also our own. Along the way, he is alert to his own emotions and thoughts, to see how they affect what he does and what he eats, to learn more and to explain what he knows. His approach is steeped in honesty and self-awareness. His cause is just, his thinking is clear, and his writing is compelling.
Be careful of your dinner!  Bunny Crumpacker

Eat food, not too much, mostly plants...this has been my (food) mantra ever since reading this book.

Food is the one thing that Americans hate to love and, as it turns out, love to hate. What we want to eat has been ousted by the notion of what we should eat, and it's at this nexus of hunger and hang-up that Michael Pollan poses his most salient question: where is the food in our food? What follows in In Defense of Food is a series of wonderfully clear and thoughtful answers that help us  navigate the nutritional minefield that's come to typify our food culture. Many processed foods vie for a spot in our grocery baskets, claiming to lower cholesterol, weight, glucose levels, you name it. Yet Pollan shows that these convenient "healthy" alternatives to whole foods are appallingly inconvenient: our health as a nation has only deteriorated since we started exiling carbs, fats--even fruits--from our daily meals. His razor-sharp analysis of the American diet (as well as its architects and its detractors) offers an inspiring glimpse of what it would be like if we could (a la Humpty Dumpty) put our food back together again and reconsider what it means to eat well.  -Anne Bartholomew

AND....a third book that rocked my kitchen...the most beautiful, sexy, intoxicating cookbook I have ever read:

In this exquisitely designed and photographed volume, Britain's favourite Italian chef brings forth the work of a lifetime: combining old Locatelli family stories and recipes with the contemporary must-have dishes from his celebrated London restaurants. 'I am an Italian chef who has cooked in Paris and come of age in London,' says Giorgio Locatelli. 

'Innovative, imaginative food is what people expect from me, but everything I do has its roots in classical, regional Italian cooking.' This is the book that fans of Locatelli have been waiting for ever since he first made his name at Zafferano. The recent opening of Locanda Locatelli, widely regarded as one of the most exciting restaurants in London, has fuelled interest in this master chef. Locatelli lights up Locanda with his big, welcoming personality, seamlessly marrying style with an all-Italian mission simply to bring people together at the table to share food, relax and enjoy good company and conversation. In the same way, his delight in food shines through on every page of this exciting new book. Whether he is reminiscing about the dishes of his native Lombardy, suggesting a starter combining the simplest and freshest ingredients, or explaining how to make the ultimate risotto, Locatelli transports the reader into his own kitchen to savour the real tastes of Italy. Full of the insight and historical detail you might expect from a food writer, combined with the hands-on expertise of a top chef, peppered with evocative stories, and funny and often outspoken observations on the state of food today, this is the contemporary Italian food bible, from the acknowledged master of modern Italian cooking.

J.  Books written first in a foreign language and then translated to English.  Here are writers I am in total awe of.  To create something beautiful in your native tongue is commendable, but then for it's essence to be translateable into another language...that is magic.  Here are two in this category of remarkable writers:

 The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

My Heart Is Afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky."Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams."

Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. The Alchemist is such a book. 

It tells the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure as extravagant as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the markets of Tangiers and across the Egyptian desert to a fateful encounter with the alchemist.  The story of the treasures Santiago finds along the way teaches us, as only a few stories have done, about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, above all, following our dreams.

The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

At the age of eleven, Daniel Sempere awakens early one morning, screaming. He has suddenly realized that he has forgotten his mother's face. His devoted father, a seller of used books, comforts him, and as dawn breaks, he decides to take him on his first visit to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a secret, maze-like library where books "no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader's hands." By tradition, each visitor to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, on his first visit, has to choose a book—any book—and adopt it, guaranteeing that it will never disappear.

Written by Julian Carax, The Shadow of the Wind is the story of a man's quest to find the father he never knew, to recapture his lost youth, and to lay to rest the ghosts of a lost love. Totally captivated by the book, Daniel later tries to find out more about its mysterious author and locate additional novels, but he discovers that some other unknown seeker is also searching for Carax's books—in order to burn them.

p.s.  Zafon has just written a prequel to The Shadow of the Wind called The Angel's Game for release May 18. Can't wait! 

J. Poetry...next to first novels comes poetry.  My favourite poet is Seamus Heaney.  I have read most of his work, certainly not all, and of all I have read this is my favourite.  I love it so much I have it framed in my home:

Lightenings viii

The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise

Were all at prayers inside the oratory

A ship appeared above them in the air.

The anchor dragged along behind so deep

It hooked itself into the altar rails

And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,

A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope

And struggled to release it. But in vain.

'This man can't bear our life here and will drown,'

The abbot said, 'unless we help him.' So

They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back

Out of the marvellous as he had known it.

He hands me a cup of tea, with the milk placed in a small jug next to it. Then he looks at the plate beside the cup, and notes its uncomfortable blankness.

'Would you like some … bread?' Heaney asks, tentatively. I tell him that I have already eaten. 'A monastic biscuit then!' he says, and goes off to dig out the tin of digestives from the cupboard.

It is, perhaps, the casual exactness of that word 'monastic' that might betray Heaney's profession to one who didn't know.

But then almost no one can be unaware, either, of Heaney's profession, or his stature within it. Irish wags refer to him as 'Famous Seamus' in a sly but proud acknowledgement of his international celebrity, crowned with his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.

Although Heaney was born into a Catholic, nationalist family in Northern Ireland - and once objected to inclusion in a book of British poets with the warning lines: 'Be advised, my passport's green/ No glass of ours was ever raised/ To toast the Queen' - British readers can't get enough of him: it is an oft-cited statistic that his books account for two-thirds of the sales of living poets in Britain.

All that might be expected, perhaps, to puff a man up and render him a little prickly with self-importance. With Heaney, quite the opposite has occurred: he only rests easy in the gentle understatement of his achievement.

That derives, I think, from the small, superstitious voice that echoes within the Northern Irish psyche, greeting success with the words: 'Be grateful: don't get cocky and blow it.'

The word 'lucky' thus chimes like a tiny warning-bell throughout his descriptions of past successes, be they his First Class honours degree from Queen's University, Belfast, or the rapturous critical reception for his debut book of poems, Death of a Naturalist, in 1966.

And yet it is evident that Heaney has been a powerhouse of literary labour throughout, regularly turning out poems and translations, essays and lectures, taking up professorships at Harvard and Oxford, and winning the Whitbread Prize twice.

I am reminded of that old quote from the movie mogul Sam Goldwyn: 'The harder I work, the luckier I get.' At the sound of my Belfast accent, he asks, as though regretful for some past imposition: 'Did you have to do the poems at school?' We did, I say, and then I heard him read when he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford. 'Ah, Oxford was wonderful,' he says.

'It was great that so many people came to the readings'. As I recall, the scramble for tickets was fierce.

You would be a fool, though, to mistake the 68-year-old Heaney's modesty for sleepiness: in the centre of the broad, calm plains of his face, beneath the poetic shock of white hair, his dark eyes glitter and dart.

They are the quick eyes of a man who notices everything: noticing, after all, is Heaney's profession.

A minor stroke last year compelled him to ease off on his public appearances, but beyond him the worldwide Heaney industry continues unabated.

He was born on a farm in Mossbawn, County Derry, the eldest of nine children, at a time when Catholics were conscious of being politically marginalised in a Unionist state. 

'The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.'

Indeed they are: some of Heaney's most powerful poems spring from exactly those intimate crises: in 'Mid-Term Break', recalling the death of his four-year-old brother when he was 14; or in 'Clearances', after his mother Margaret's death, tenderly remembering the time 'When all the others were away at Mass/ I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.'

In his 1995 Nobel address, Heaney related a story about the 1976 Kingsmills massacre, at which masked men stopped a bus full of workmen going home, lined them up outside, and asked each to declare their religion.

There was only one Catholic in the group, and it was presumed that the gunmen were loyalists. One Protestant worker squeezed the Catholic's hand, as if to say 'we'll not betray you' but he declared himself anyway.

He was promptly thrust aside, and the Protestants were gunned down: the gunmen were from the IRA. Heaney remarked that the future of Ireland lay, not in the gunfire, but the hand-squeeze.

Now that Heaney is at home more, in the house where he has lived for 30 years, one suspects that he is the frequent object of poetic pilgrimages from far-flung places: a Japanese academic writing a thesis on Heaney is arriving later that afternoon.

The place has the romance fitting to a poet's house, with a triangular garden blazing with summer flowers tended by Marie, and the walls either crammed with books or hung with paintings and drawings.

As I leave, he is offering advice on where in Dublin to eat good mackerel, and asking, 'Have you euros?' while preparing to rummage in his pockets, just in case I have stumbled up without the currency to make it back to the city centre.

A generous poet, then, and most generous of all is his parting benediction: 'Write whatever you like!'

There it is, a gift from the Irish poet whom the world watches: an exultant setting-free from the fetters of responsibility.  Jenny McCartney

Every time you read...you learn.

J. This book has circled round within my family for the past seventeen or so years.  The pages are dog-eared and the dust-cover torn.  It's that well-loved.  If anyone is looking for it right now...I think Lindsay has it.

"You can't solve a problem with the same mind that created it."  Albert Einstein

It is ten minutes past six by the invisible clock on the wall. Minute by minute new objects gain form. In the dim light of morning the young patent clerk sprawls in his chair, head down on his desk. For the past several months, he has dreamed many dreams about time. His dreams have taken hold of his research. But the dreaming is finished. Out of many possible natures of time, imagined in as many nights, one seems compelling. Not that the others are impossible. The others might exist in other worlds.

The patent clerk is Albert Einstein. In his dreams he imagines new worlds, in which time can be circular, or flow backwards, or slow down at higher altitudes, or take the form of a nightingale. Einstein's Dreams is a literary adventure, one which Salman Rushdie has compared to Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.

"a dazzling first novel . . . Lightman is exploring fiction's deep space, taking us further than we are used to being taken. It is playful, poignant, intimate . . . cool, languid, intelligent, and quotable." -- The Sunday Times (London)

"By turns whimsical and meditative, playful and provocative, Einstein's Dreams pulls the reader into a dream world like a powerful magnet. As in Calvino's work, the fantastical elements of the stories are grounded in precise, crystalline prose. As in Jorge Luis Borges's ficciones, carefully observed particulars open out, like doors in an advent calendar, to disclose a magical, metaphysical realm beyond." -- The New York Times

"a wonderully odd, clever, mystical book of mediations on time, poetically spare and delightfully fresh" -- The Chicago Tribune

" [Lightman] is an artist who paints with the notion of time; he makes a delicate link between its philosophical and its existential meanings. Time weeps and laughs in the perplexed inhabitants of his fables." -- The Los Angeles Times

Thank you Sarah!

Title photo is gracias http://www.sarahklassen.com/ , a beautiful place to stop by and visit.  Thanks  Sarah!

V. Here's my pick for 'first novels'...

Fall on your knees by Anne Marie MacDonald.

It is a riveting depiction of a family beset by hidden desires and secrets.

It begins in a small community in Nova Scotia in the early 1900's. James elopes with his 13 yr old bride, Materia Mahmoud whose Lebanese father then casts out and curses her.

James and Materia have four daughters...each one is filled with hope, talent and passion but each one in her own way is affected by their father's hold on their lives.

It is a book that you cannot put down and as each page is turned and each chapter finished you cannot but gasp at what happens next.

Sunday Times wrote "It is the unpredictability of this huge book that is its greatest joy. With allusions ranging from Hollywood stars to religious tracts Fall On Your Knees simmers with vibrancy and crackling, effervescent, breathtaking language'.

J.  I have a passion for 'first books'.  Not that authors don't improve as they publish more, but it seems all their enthusiasm, expectation, energy is released in that first novel.
So here are two firsts that I have read and re-read many times...and loved every second of it.

if you spend most of your life alone you do not know that you are lonely....

A shimmering first novel of self-discovery, of redemption from numb solitude, and of the matchless consolations to be found in human connection and spiritual nourishment, Miss Garnet's Angel limns—with uncommon subtlety and an engaging, often subversive wit—the thematic parallels and intersections that bind an ancient tale from the Apocrypha to a modern-day narrative about a retired British spinster on sojourn in Venice. A word-of-mouth bestseller and a critics' favorite on both sides of the Atlantic, Salley Vickers' resonant debut achieves something that has become all too rare in recent years: a wholesale blurring of the line distinguishing the "popular" from the "literary" on today's fiction shelves.   Daniel Eshom.

He saw her across the Piazza San Marco and fell in love from afar. When he sees her again in a Venice café a year later, he knows it is fate. He knows little English; and she, a divorced American chef, speaks only food-based Italian. Marlena thinks she is incapable of intimacy, that her heart has lost its capacity for romantic love. But within months of their first meeting, she has packed up her house in St. Louis to marry Fernando—"the stranger," as she calls him—and live in that achingly lovely city in which they met.

Enjoy!

V. I thought I would start this conversation with one of my most treasured books...

'Women in Love' by D. H. Lawrence.

I have loved this book since first reading it many, many years ago.

And here we are two sisters talking about books so it is no coincidence I that I pick a story about two sisters...Ursula and Gudrun.

Ursula is a teacher, Gudrun an artist...they live in the midlands of England in the 1910's.

They meet two men Rupert Birkin a school inspector and Gerald Crich a coal-mine heir.

The four become friends.

Lawrence takes us on a brilliant journey as they question the society they live in, politics and the relationship between women and men.

Although it is written during World War I it is never mentioned in the book, but is felt throughout with a sense of something stirring in the background of their lives.

E.M. Forster claimed that Lawrence... 'was the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation'.

And I agree with others when they say this does little justice to his writing more than too much.

Jake Zeitlin, an LA bookseller, who took care of Lawrence's estate, captures perfectly my feelings when reading Women in Love.

"That night when I first opened the trunk containing the manuscripts of Lawrence and a I looked through them, watched unfold the immense pattern of his vision, and the tremendous product of his energy, there stirred in me an emotion similar to that I felt when first viewing the heavens with a telescope."

Books...The End of the Alphabet

J.  Okay V...time to talk about books.  Somewhere to go and hide.  A place to loose yourself and find yourself.  A journey.  I have been reading 'a book' since I was seven years old.  Never, never, never, since then, have I not had the companionship of a book.  I cannot imagine my life without something to read.  How many times have I had to open my suitcase at the check-in counter at the airport and pull out the hardcover (it's all I buy) books because my luggage was over-weight?
A tender agreement my husband and I share is that one of the most beautiful things you can leave your children is your library. It shows all sides of your personality...the myriad of your vulnerability.  We have moved trans-pacifically many times and always we move our books. When each of the girls left home, we sent their childhood books along with them.
My friends know...you may borrow any book I own...but it must always, always find its way home.

So here is my first submission...The End of the Alphabet by CS Richardson.  A tender love story that can be read in one sitting.  This story captivated my heart.
"A gem....A very difficult book to put down..even when the final page is turned." The Globe and Mail
"Delightful, graceful, stylish, humorous, intelligent and lacking even the faintest whiff of sanctimony.  Each page shimmers with life at its gentle, everyday best:  always unraveling at one end of the alphabet or the other, laced with love."  Washington Post
"Nothing less than gorgeous...evocative and unforgettable, it manages to arouse both a longing for travel and a longing for home...It is beautiful.  Both inside and out."  Calgary Herald.

J.  My two beautiful, talented, brilliant daughters!

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY EVERYONE!

J.  For those who are mothers, have mothers, were mothers, would like to be mothers.   Dads who mother, those who nurture and teach and inspire, who help things to grow and help others to get better.  Those who shelter and comfort, who soothe and watchover.  Being a mother is so much more than giving birth.  Celebrate, this day is yours.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

V. I wish I had known you then...the beautiful blonde with the lovely shoes.

Surrounded by your sisters, you can see them leaning in, knowing you were the strong one.

I wish I had known what you talked about with them and others...boys or men, what you loved,

what you didn't.

I wish I had known what life was like for you...before me.

I wish I had known you when you were born.

I wish I could have held you then.

You were more than my mother, you were a child, a girl, a young woman, a bride.

Yet I only knew you as one...my mother.

How limited that is, when one is so large.

I might have understood you better and laughed with you more.

We were so alike and yet so different.

And that is why I love you for being who you were and still are to me.

So today we will wear our pearls and we will all be children, and girls and young women and brides...

and for those of us who are mothers let's tell our children who we were before them.

And let's not limit our largeness.

A little bird has come to sit with me and is whispering in my ear

'Your mother never leaves you...just look around

I am everywhere you go"

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY MUM

J.  I've been rummaging through 'mum's box', a treasure chest of memories...here are a few I would like to share:

The abstract and promise of the heart:  Nana found her home in that idea.  She never resided on the rose-studded avenue, or high above city-stained concrete, or even in-between four walls built by a child's laugh and neighbours' calls.  Home was found in that corner of your heart, in that spot only she could cuddle herself into.  This was her permanent address.  Jessica

"Wherever a beautiful soul has been, there is a trail of beautiful memories"  Frieda and Finn

Young at heart in my 85th year, I contemplate the passing of a dear lady friend who attended a wake I held for myself a year or so ago.  Her attendance was the finest compliment I received that day and one I shall never forget.
My friend, Yvonne Moore, had many admirable qualities and to my knowledge nothing but.  I had never met anyone as focused as Yvonne in all my years and Oh...her sage advice on some sticky family issues! She smoothed the problems I told her about before they became big issues.
Fiercely independent about so many things, like allowing me to shop for her or take her out for a meal.  It took me so long to accept this independence for what it was ~ mainly her wish to be her own person.  I can hear her respond now with "ABSOLUTELY!".  Richard, her friend of ten years

V. and I chose Emerson's Earth Laughs in Flowers to mark where Mum's ashes were spread.  Here is Jane's understanding of that quote:
A lovely poem "Earth laughs in flowers" expresses an idea of beauty and also an idea of the absurdity of ownership claims.  We are here so briefly.  I think it works, as an acknowledgement of our brevity and of the beauty of earth's abundance.

I love you for giving me life and for loving me all of your life.
I love you for the Christmases and Birthdays and for making a home, even in the bad times.
I love you for loving my husband and my children and for being the best Nana ever.
I love you for the goofy animal lamps, the beautiful hand-knitted outfits and the chocolate-covered strawberries.
I love you for coming to us wherever we were in the world, and for appearing not to mind when I didn't come to you.
I love you for your sense of humour, all the funny old sayings and the lessons of independence.
I promise I will remember you always.  Jacqueline

Yvonne left more than memories in her legacy.  She provided an amazing role model for us.  Yvonne was there for Christmases, birthdays, communions, confirmations and graduations.  She was a strong grandmother figure to our girls and a welcomed addition to all gatherings.
Yvonne epitomized the best about England to me.  Like the country of her birth, she was an island.  She was strong, independent and self-contained and like England had survived wars and floods, both literal and personal.  I am astounded now as I realize just how young she was when your father died and that she faced the task of making a living and raising her young family alone.  She triumphed in her battles and came out stronger.  She had the determination of Winston Churchill and the gentleness and welcoming nature of a beautiful English garden.
Yvonne was dignified and wise.  She was a classy woman and knew how to celebrate in style.  Victoria and Cos' wedding was the poshest affair I have ever attended.  It was there I saw my first Daimler, ate prawns and sipped champagne.  The afternoon reception at The Rose & Crown in Salisbury could have been from a fairy-tale.
When Jackie & Rudy married here in Canada, Yvonne, once again celebrated another wedding in a beautiful English garden setting.  Yvonne set the standard for me and was my role-model when it was my turn to be Mother-of-the-Bride.  Like your Mum, I told my daughter the day of her wedding that she didn't have to go through with the ceremony if she didn't feel 100% confident that she was doing the right thing!
Yvonne had a fabulous sense of style, she always kept a trim figure and looked well put together.  In spite of her illness and advancing age, Yvonne never looked or acted like and old person.  She always had a youthful spirit.  I feel privileged to have know your mother.  Adrianna

"You never know what you've got til it's gone".

J.  Crazy windy day in NOTL today!  Trees down, plants flying, thunder, lightning, forecast of rain/snow showers tomorrow.
I LOVE it when Mother Nature asserts her status.  We simple-minded human beings think we know what's going on...Yes?   Uh...NO, I don't think so!
So here's hats off to the most powerful Mother of all ~ Mother Nature, Gaia, The Universe, God..whatever you wish to call her.
HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY...now can we please have Spring back?

J.  This is what my daughter, Jessica, the chef...gets to do when she goes to the office:

Now I know it makes for some very long hours, and a very tired back...but how could this opportunity to create not making going to work a satisfying thing!  What a wonderfully creative woman you are Jess.

V. I've fallen in love...yes, I'm having a wonderful love affair!

With my house...I want to shower it with little presents here and there...love notes tucked into its flower beds...I can feel it smile when I bring the bunches of tulips through its door...yes it's love affair alright...the kind you know where both of you love each other just the way you are, ones wrinkles and the others sloping floors, a love affair that was meant to be!

It's been a fabulous friday full of sunshine, warmth, gifts and love!

An orchid for my mantle

A coffee table for my living room

A little bench by my kitchen door, with a basket under

for some shoes

A fun wall plaque in my kitchen

and a couple of old silver serving spoons

Some white impatience for the garden

and a pink geranium for the patio

there's lavender there J. for the front path

and a mix of loveliness for my urn

J.  Is it the brioche, champagne, freesias, delicate small pot of cream, seashells?...no I think it's the french marble...yes definitely the french marble.  Thank you Beautiful Things To Share, always love stopping by to visit when you lay such a marvelous table.  http://beautifulthingstoshare.blogspot.com/

J.  A cold and rainy day in Niagara on the Lake today...but my world was warmed by the company of my best friend and a visit to our local lavender farm.  We bought pots of angustifolia and grosso lavender  to plant in the garden and in pots.  

Angustifolia, the lighter in colour of the two species, will be planted in my front garden.  Robert Achal, co-owner with his wife Melissa, told us the shrub can be trimmed to a pretty round shape and the spikes cut and dried for an ever-lasting bouquet.

Grosso lavender is going in a pot by the front door, so that each time I go in and out I can brush the wands and smell that heavenly fragrance.

At their farm, Robert and Melissa distill lavender for culinary and cosmetic use. They make a myriad of products from essential oils to a full range of body creams.  A lovely afternoon spent learning about this beautiful plant from this enthusiatic young man.  www.neobboutique.com

After a drive to Jordan, still in the rain, we stopped by a local eatery for a delicious thinest-of-crust pizza, laced with broccoli, portobello mushrooms, chicken, pine nuts and tomatoes and a glass of tongue-tingling pinot grigio.  Home for a cup of tea and a lavender shortbread cookie, and now toes-up on the couch and a movie.  Great day!

Oh, yes...and this was the wisteria growing in Jordan...beautiful even in the rain.

Pancakes! Two boys, two forks, and one Goddess!

If I had to choose how to be remembered by my grandchildren this is it! I know they love my pancakes...thanks to Nigella Lawson and her recipe from 'How to be a Domestic Goddess'.

Yes, I think I have earned this title..'.Pancake Goddess'.

So here is the recipe from Nigella's book...I keep it pure and simple...no blueberries or strawberries or bacon on the side...just pure perfect sumptuous pancakes...pour organic maple syrup over and a dab of butter and enjoy!

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

pinch of salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 large eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
1 1/3 cups milk
butter for frying

The easiest way to make these is to put all the ingredients into a blender and blitz. But if you do mix up the batter by hand (because you’re like me and don’t have a blender for some reason), make a well in the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar, beat in the eggs, melted butter, and milk, and transfer to a pitcher. The pitcher is for ease of pouring the batter onto the skillet. You can also use a ladle, which is what I usually do.

If you let the batter sit for a bit, it thickens slightly, which usually works out well but sometimes requires more milk.

When you cook the pancakes, all you need to remember is that when the upper side of the pancake is blistering and bubbling it’s time to cook the second side, and this needs only about 1 minute, if that.

Also, make sure the pan is really hot.

Personally, I never use a blender I always mix by hand, and not too much, then let sit on the counter for about 5 - 10 minutes before cooking.

Thanks Nigella...

p.s. I also want that T-shirt!