I had quite a lot of apples recently and after making various puddings I looked in my cookery books and found a recipe for curried carrot and apple soup in the Kitchen Doctor Low-Cholesterol Cooking for Health.

I adapted the recipe to make enough for two rather than four. Here is the recipe as detailed in the book, click on the image to enlarge:

It’s really easy to make – first heat the oil and gently fry the curry powder for 2-3 minutes. Then add the carrots, onion and apple, stir and cover the pan, cooking over a low heat for about 15 minutes until they soften. I added the stock and brought it to the boil.

Then I blitzed it with a hand-held blender, seasoned it with salt and coarse ground black pepper. If you like add a swirl of yoghurt (I didn’t this time) and serve.

The curry and the apple tone down the sweetness of the carrots – delicious.

The book contains over 50 low-cholesterol and low-fat recipes, with sections on soups and starters, meat, poultry and fish main courses, plus pasta, pulses and vegetable dishes and desserts, cakes and bakes.

I’m in the middle of reading The Safe House by Nicci French. It begins:

The door was the first thing. The door was open. The front door was never open, even in the wonderful heat of the previous summer that had been so like home, but there it was teetering inwards, on a morning so cold that the moisture hanging in the air stung Mrs Ferrer’s pocked cheeks. She pushed her gloved hand against the white painted surface, testing the evidence of her eyes.

‘Mrs Mackenzie?’

Silence. Mrs Ferrer raised her voice and called for her employer once more and felt embarrassed as the words echoed, high and wavering, in the large hallway. She stepped inside and wiped her feet on the mat too many times, as she always did. she removed her gloves and clutched them in her left hand. there was a smell now. It was heavy and sweet. It reminded her of something. the smell of a barnyard. No, inside. A barn maybe.

These paragraphs drew me into this mystery/psychological thriller and I wanted to know why the door was open and the source of the barnyard smell. There’s not long to wait because that becomes clear on the next page. After a dramatic opening the book settles down to a more leisurely pace, but slowly building up the tension.

I am wondering just how safe the Safe House of the title really is.

I didn’t read much crime fiction in January, just two books, if you don’t count The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. They are The Burry Man’s Day by Catriona McPherson and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie.

And I’ve chosen One, Two, Buckle My Shoe as my crime fiction pick of the month. This was first published in 1940 (in the USA it was published as The Patriotic Murders).  Hercule Poirot and Inspector Japp investigate the apparent suicide of Mr Morley, Poirot’s Harley Street dentist, who was found dead in his surgery, shot through the head and with a pistol in his hand. Each chapter is entitled after a line of the nursery rhyme and the first line contains an important clue.Earlier in the morning Poirot had visited his dentist and as he was leaving the surgery another patient was arriving by taxi. He watched as a foot  appeared.

Poirot observed the foot with gallant interest.

A neat ankle, quite a good quality stocking. Not a bad foot. But he didn’t like the shoe. A brand new patent leather shoe with a large gleaming buckle. He shook his head.

Not chic – very provincial! (page 26)

The importance of the shoe and its buckle don’t become clear until much later in the book!

Mr Morley had seemed in good spirits when Poirot saw him and had shown no signs of wanting to take his own life. Was it coincidence that his assistant, Gladys, had been called away from his surgery on that day, leaving him on his own in his surgery? As Poirot and Japp interview the other patients it becomes obvious to Poirot that it was murder not suicide. Then one of the patients, a rich Greek, Mr Amberiotis is found dead, and another patient, Miss Sainsbury Seale, the owner of the buckled shoe, goes missing. Poirot begins to wonder if Morley had been killed by mistake whilst another of the patients Alistair Blunt, a banker was the intended victim.

This really is a most complicated plot, and even though the facts are clearly presented and I was on the lookout for clues, Agatha Christie, once again fooled me. Not all the characters are who they purport to be and the involvement of international politics and intrigue doesn’t help in unravelling the puzzle. Poirot, himself, is perplexed until during a church service he is alerted to the trap that has been set for him:

Hercule Poirot essayed in a hesitant baritone.

‘The proud have laid a snare for me,’ he sang, ‘and spread a net with cords: yea and set traps in my way …’

He saw it – saw clearly the trap into which he had so nearly fallen! (page 215)

It all fell into place and he saw the case ‘the right way up’.

Written in 1939, this book reflects the economic and political conditions of the time, with  a definite pre-war atmosphere of a world on the brink of war. But Poirot is concerned with the truth, with the importance of the lives of each individual, no matter how ordinary or insignificant they may seem.

• My Rating: 4.5/5
• Paperback: 294 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; Masterpiece edition (Reissue) edition (18 Aug 2008)
• Language English
• ISBN-10: 0007120893
• ISBN-13: 978-0007120895

You can see other people’s crime fiction picks of the month at Mysteries in Paradise.

We have put a tray of seeds on a garden table outside our kitchen patio doors and can watch them at quite close quarters as they come to eat the seeds. Whilst they crowd together on the ground they’re more cautious closer to the house and they only come one at a time to the table. David took these photos. (Click on the photos to enlarge them.)

I think this one is so lovely. It’s a female chaffinch that has just landed on the rail of the decking and the wind is ruffling her feathers.

In this next photo her feathers have settled down:

Then a male chaffinch arrived. He likes the sunflower seeds.

I love his colours.

An ABC Wednesday post for the letter C.

From the back cover:

Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren’t trusted not to steal the silver…

There’s Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son’s tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white Miss Skeeter, home from college, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared.

Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they’d be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in a search of a truth. And together they have an extraordinary story to tell…

My thoughts:

I didn’t find anything to detract from my enjoyment – even the fact that The Help is written in the present tense, which I normally don’t like, didn’t spoil it. I didn’t even realise it is in the present tense until I was well into the book. I think it’s better than the film because there is so much more in it, the characters are so well-defined, so believable, and the tension caused by the contrast between the black maids and their white employers is so appalling that I didn’t want to stop reading. The setting in Jackson in the early 1960s is tense to say the least. This book lives up to all the hype it created.

Aibileen, Minny and Skeeter are the three narrators and it is through their eyes that the book comes to life as they take turns telling their stories. As I was reading I could hear their voices.  Skeeter wants to be a writer and decides to write about what it is like working for white families from the coloured maids’ point of view. Aibileen is persuaded by Skeeter to tell her story in an attempt to change the prejudice and bigotry and improve the lives of the black population. Eventually other maids also tell their stories despite their fear of the consequences and the book is finally published. I was holding my breath as the story unfolded, would their cover be blown and how would the white women react?

It’s touching, poignant, funny, compelling and definitely thought-provoking. It’s a book that has stayed in my mind ever since reading it. I hope Kathryn Stockett writes more books!

• My rating: 5/5
• Author’s website: http://www.kathrynstockett.com/index.htm
• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Penguin; Reprint edition (13 May 2010)
• Language English
• ISBN-10: 0141039280
• ISBN-13: 978-0141039282

I doubt she was actually sat on the beach at Blackpool when this photo was taken, that deck chair looks remarkably near the waves and the sand looks very solid. I suppose she was on holiday there, but as the photo isn’t dated I don’t know when this was.

She was my Grandmother’s younger sister and I’ve found out from the Census Returns that she was born at Lostock Junction, Bolton in Lancashire. My Great Grandfather, her father was Thomas Taylor, a domestic gardener, born in 1856 at Bulwick, Northamptonshire. He had another daughter, Florrie, born in 1901 and a son Thomas William born in 1892. All his children were born in different places, as he moved from Northamptonshire, to Lancashire and then to Cheshire.

Emily never married, but stayed at home acting as Housekeeper for her father after her mother died in 1911. I have a copy of her death certificate 1935, which records that she was aged 51 and died at 94 Victoria Road, Hale, Cheshire of a cerebral haemorrhage. Her occupation was described as ‘Housekeeper (domestic) Daughter of Thomas Taylor a Gardener (domestic) (deceased) of 6 Oak Road, Hale’. My Granny, Evelyn Owens, was present at her death. Had my Granny come to stay with her because she wasn’t well – at that time Granny lived in Pen-y-fford, in Wales?

I knew Florrie because when I was a child she lived in the next road and I used to visit her each week with my Mother. She was lovely and looked very like Emily does in the photo (only older).

I also have a vague memory of Thomas William - Uncle Tom, because when his daughter, Joyce, her husband and their daughter Jennifer (who was born just over a year later than me) emigrated to Australia there was a family party before they left. I don’t know how old I was at the time, probably about 5. I remember Uncle Tom as a very large old man, who was very upset about his daughter emigrating! As usual I’m left wishing I knew more about these people.

See more Saturday Snapshots on Alyce’s blog, At Home With Books.

Synopsis (taken from the back cover):

August 1923, and as the village of Queensferry prepares for the annual Ferry Fair and the walk of the Burry Man, feelings are running high. Between his pagan greenery, his lucky pennies and the nips of whisky he is treated to wherever he goes, the Burry Man has something to offend everyone wherever he goes whether minister, priest or temperance pamphleteer. And then at the Fair, in full view of everyone – including Dandy Gilver, present at the festivities to hand out prizes he drops down dead.

It looks as though the Burry Man has been poisoned – but if so, then the list of suspects must include everyone in the town with a bottle of whisky in the house, and, here in Queensferry, that means just about everyone …

Part of my interest in The Burry Man’s Day is that it is set in South Queensferry, on the south shore of the Firth of Forth, now part of the city of Edinburgh, formerly in the County of Linlithgowshire. I’ve been there once. It’s close to the Forth Road Railway Bridge:

I haven’t seen the Burry Man’s Parade, which features strongly in this book; it must be a strange sight.

The book has a rather slow start, but it’s one I enjoyed for all its historical detail about the place, its traditions and the people. It has a great sense of place, with a map of Queensferry at the beginning of the book which helps you follow the action. I wasn’t very taken with Dandy Gilver. I liked her more in a later book in the series. In this book she comes across as a busy-body, albeit kind-hearted, and a snob, but then that’s probably just a reflection of the class structure of the times. She’s married to Hugh, who seems to spend his life hunting and shooting and managing his large estate at Gilverton in Perthshire. Dandy doesn’t have much in common with him, being rather bored by life at Gilverton and Hugh doesn’t feature much in this book.

This is Dandy’s second investigation and I suppose if I read the first book, After the Armistice Ball, I might understand her relation with Hugh and with Alec Osborne, her co-investigator. That’s one of the drawbacks of reading a series out of order.

There’s a lot more to this mystery than the death of Robert Dudgeon, who been the Burry Man for 25 years. He’d been extremely reluctant to take the part this year and the question  why was that remained unanswered for the majority of the book. I had an idea about the reason, but only guessed part of it. It’s a convoluted tale and the motive for the murder is buried deep in the descriptions of the characters and their histories. It’s a book you need to concentrate on, and at some points I did have difficulty in sorting out some of the minor characters. Other than that I think it’s a very good book, although maybe a bit too long.

• My Rating 4/5
• Author’s website: http://www.dandygilver.com/author.htm - where you can read an extract from this book
• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Robinson Publishing (30 Aug 2007)
• Language English
• ISBN-10: 1845295927
• ISBN-13: 978-1845295929
• Source: Library book

A for Asiatic Pheasants and also B for Blue and White Porcelain.

This is an oval meal dish in the Asiatic Pheasants design, which was popular during Queen Victoria’s reign. It’s an English design based on an oriental original and is a much lighter blue than the Willow pattern.

It’s large and very heavy, and I’m rather fond of it. It has a cartouche on the back, which identifies the manufacturer as James Beech 1877 – 1889 in Tunstall Staffordshire.

I’ve recently finished The Help by Kathryn Stockett, which I think is absolutely fantastic and I need to write a separate post about it soon.

Before that I read Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, which I think is basically a book of two halves – more on that in another post, because I’ve borrowed The Sensation Novel from The Woman in White to the Moonstone by Lyn Pickett and I want to read that before finalising my thoughts on book itself. I found this book whilst looking for a biography of Collins and wanting to know more about him and his work. I hadn’t known about the sub-genre ‘sensation novel’ before, but apparently the 1860s was a decade of sensational events and sensational writing. So I’ve now started to read the Pykett book.

The next book I read is The Burry Man’s Day by Catriona McPherson, the second in the Dandy Gilver series. It’s crime fiction set in the 1920s in South Queensferry, full of local scenery. More about that too in another post to follow.

I then came to a halt, finding it difficult to find the next ‘right’ book to read. I’m part way into The Safe House by Nicci French, a psychological thriller about Samantha Laschen, a doctor specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder, asked to look after Fiona Mackenzie, a girl whose parents have been savagely murdered. I’m liking it, but I can’t read it in bed as the font is so small it hurts my eyes. I need to read it in daylight, so I had to find something else to read at night.

I’d started The Last Enchantment by Mary Stewart, the third book in the Merlin series. I read the first two books years ago. They stand well on their own and I know the story of Arthur and Merlin quite well, so I was keen to read this book. Again it’s small font, so I’m limited to reading it during the day, or at least, not in bed. And somehow, it has not captured my imagination enough to keep reading it. I’m not abandoning it, just leaving it to one side for a while.

I’ve also dipped into to several others as well. It’s really annoying that when I’ve finished reading books that have had me spellbound, that I have to go through a time of indecision and am unable to settle properly with another book or that the font size defeats me. The answer I realised today is to read on my Kindle! I can increase the font if I need to and have a discreet light to read without disturbing my husband.

Earlier today I started The Bones of Avalon by Phil Rickman on Kindle and I’m happily engrossed in the world of Dr John Dee in 1560 and the missing bones of King Arthur. He’s on his way to Glastonbury accompanied by Robert Dudley (possibly the Queen’s secret lover – does he push his wife Amy to her death, but that’s another story). Just for the next 13 hours or so you can download it from Amazon for 99p – a bargain.