Bits and Pieces

Reese Witherspoon as Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair? I don’t know whether to be thrilled because Vanity Fair is coming out on the big screen, or to shudder because of the casting of the central role. I’d’ve liked to have seen what Cate Blanchett could have done with the role, for example. For those interested, the movie is rated PG-13 for Some Sensuality, Partial Nudity, and A Brief Violent Image (which is, no doubt, the scene where Becky throws the book out of the carriage window).

B12 is back from its month-long holiday!

We leave for our annual spiritual retreat before the sun rises on Thursday morning. They appear to be having the same weather we’re having: fair, cool nights, and the chance of scattered thunderstorms. At least I know what to pack: layers. We picnicked in Angrignon Park last night after the CMS Lughnassadh ritual and graduation ceremony, and I’m really glad that I wore socks and runners instead of sandals, and that I brought a sweater. People who complain about not having our usual sweltering heat should be shot as a public service to others.

Accomplished

After a day or so of doing things but not really getting much done, I sat down and wrote two new book reviews today. I also uploaded four or five reviews that I’d written for Wyntergreene but hadn’t added to the Read page of my site yet. (Those would be Progressive Witchcraft (thumbs up), Witch’s Familiar (thumbs down), Order of the Phoenix (thumbs up, of course — a year late, but finally uploaded!), Voices From the Pagan Census (undecided), Philosophy of Wicca (thumbs down), and Rites of Worship (thumbs up).)

So I’ve finished the reviews of Healing Magic and Advanced Witchcraft, and voila, simply because I’ve gotten writing down on paper (in pixels?) I feel satisfied. This is a problem with defining yourself as a writer: if you don’t write, you feel like a failure. Even rationalising reading as research doesn’t completely cut it. Deep inside, you still feel like you’re making excuses for the fact that you didn’t write.

However, all that has been swept away! I am a writer once more, with eight hundred new words to my name. (Not a stellar harvest today, but it’s eight hundred more than I had this morning.)

Being Excellent Literary News

Good news for all the Caroline Stevermer fans out there! A sequel to Sorcery and Cecelia is finally being released after all these years, again co-authored with Patricia Wrede! (And I know there are a few Stevermer fans who read this journal, and might well be more by the time you’ve finished reading this entry. If you enjoy Jane Austen and Martha Wells, you’ll enjoy these, too. When the first book was released, it was described as “Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer have J.R.R. Tolkien to tea–or chocolate,” and “a Regency Romance, with magic.” If you’ve read Patricia Wrede’s Magician’s Ward or Mairelon the Magician, these are set in the same world).

The Grand Tour: Being a Revelation of Matters of High Confidentiality and Greatest Importance, Including Extracts from the Intimate Diary of a Noblewoman and the Sworn Testimony of a Lady of Quality

Kate and Cecy and their new husbands, Thomas and James, are off on a Grand Tour. Their plans? To leisurely travel about the Continent, take in a few antiquities, and–of course–purchase fabulous Parisian wardrobes.

But once they arrive in France, mysterious things start to happen. Cecy receives a package containing a lost coronation treasure, Thomas’s valet is assaulted, and Kate loses a glove. Soon it becomes clear that they have stumbled upon a dastardly, magical plot to take over Europe.

Now the four newlyweds must embark on a daring chase to thwart the evil conspiracy. And there’s no telling the trouble they’ll get into along the way. For when you mix Kate and Cecy and magic, you never know what’s going to happen next!

Cecy and Kate, loose on the Continent with their new spouses? One knows perky, sardonic banter and catatrophe simply must occur. It’s being released in hardcover this September; I know I’ll be reading it. I might even buy the first book in hardcover to match it. (I often graduate my favourite books to hardcover, and my mass-market paperback is pretty tattered, being originally second-hand, passed around several hands, sold by a borrower without my knowledge, and being re-discovered in another second-hand shop with my name still inside.) The title of the first book has been expanded to Sorcery and Cecelia or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot: Being the Correspondence of Two Young Ladies of Quality Regarding Various Magical Scandals in London and the Country, another delightful description.

There’s a co-author web page called, appropriately enough, The Enchanted Chocolate Pot. It says The Grand Tour will be available in December, but it’s a bit out of date.

Good Things

Hmm, says I while answering loads of e-mail. Hmm, there are rumblings in my tummy.

So I got up and made parmesan-chive biscuits. And now the house smells absolutely delicious. They taste even better, though. Oh gods, they are completely divine, and very grown-up (although any fears of adulthood will be banished once you realise that you’ve gobbled down six in a sitting). Parmesan-chive biscuits are definitely Good Things.

Aren’t I just the regular Martha Stewart. Except not a criminal. Which is also A Good Thing.

Later: To assuage Ceri’s cravings and to save my door from being kicked in, here the recipe. It was originally the basic biscuit recipe from the Joy of Cooking.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

– approx 2 cups sifted flour (that means about two tablespoons less if you’re not going to sift it, which is fine, because you’ll need those 2 tbsp to sprinkle your kneading area, so scoop out the spoonfuls and throw them on your clean counter)
– pinch of salt
– 1 1/2 tbsp sugar
– 3 tsp baking powder
– approx 1/3 cup shortening or butter (or half of one, half of the other)
– 1/4 to 1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (use a coarse grater)
– 2 tbsp dried chives or green onions (fresh is okay too, but I used dried because it’s what I had on hand)
– 3/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Sift flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder together. If you’re going to cheat and not sift it, make sure you remove the two tablespoons of flour before you add the other dry ingredients. Blend well. Stir in the Parmesan cheese.

Add the slice of shortening and/or butter. Use a pastry cutter to cut it in, or two forks, or two knives, or hey, your fingers. (You’ve already thrown flour on your clean countertop, and your hands will get sticky later when you knead it, so why not?) Cut it in until it resembles little pea shapes of butter and flour.

Make a well in the center and pour in all the milk at once. Stir carefully till you won’t throw flour and milk all over the kitchen, then stir vigorously till incorporated. The key to good biscuits is to NOT OVERSTIR.

Turn the dough out onto the counter and gather it into a ball. Then flatten it, turn it, fold it, turn it again, etc. Do this only about nine times. Folding it and then flattening it is what gives the biscuits the flakiness. Roll or pat out to between 3/4 to 1 inch thick.

Use a round cookie cutter to cut out rounds of 1 1/2 to 2 inches in diameter. Don’t twist the cutter. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Gather scraps, reroll, cut again.

Bake for about nine minutes, or until lightly browned. The cheese and chives sometimes give a bit of a burning smell if they’re directly touching the metal as they bake; it’s not the biscuits themselves, don’t worry. Check anyway. Overbaking these is a crime.

Remove from oven. You can cool them on a wire rack, but mine cool on the sheet just fine. Store in an airtight container, unless you’re going to eat them all, which is entirely possible. Serve with butter. (I was thinking of making sage butter, because then I would be in absolute heaven.)

Enjoy!

Oldest Altar Unearthed

How cool is this?

Bulgaria Boasts Europe’s Oldest Altar

Lifestyle: 4 August 2004, Wednesday.

Bulgarian archeologists disclosed the oldest altar in Europe.

It was found in a mound located near the Bulgarian village Kapitan Dimitrievo. The altar dates back from 6000 B.C.

The mound is as high as 13 meters and has a diameter of 140 meters. It is said to be one of the oldest historical landmarks in Bulgaria.

That’s the entire article; the original can be found here. Wren’s Nest over at Witchvox adds that:

ANCIENT SCRIPT UNCOVERED IN BULGARIA

Bulgarian archaeologists found a primitive scripture supposed to have been used by Thracian tribes.

The pictograms, painted on 3, 000 year-old ceramic utensils, were found in the grandiose religious centre Perperikon.

(That one’s here.)

No doubt there will eventually be archaeological reports, anthropological reconstructions, and other research released. Utterly fascinating.