Special jam tarts

I'm sure that everyone has a recipe for jam tarts but none can be as simple or as special as mine! I was baking with 4 year-old granddaughter Millie when she asked why I was using a recipe from a little notebook rather than one of the many cookery books I have on the shelf. I explained that I write up really special recipes in my notebook, which is well-thumbed and stained from years of use. She thought about this for a while and then asked if I would write her special recipe for jam tarts in my book and here it is, just as she dictated:

Millie's jam tarts

You need some pastry and some jam

Roll out the pastry
Cut out circles with a cutter
Put them in a special jam tart tray
Put some jam in each tart
Cook them
Take them out of the oven and let them cool
Eat them.

Simple, isn't it? Of course, this has pride of place in my notebook.

The winner

Thank you to everyone who entered the draw for Slightly Foxed Quarterly. Fifteen names went into the hat yesterday and the one that came out was Derwena. Congratulations! Please send me your details via email and I will set up the account in time for you to receive the Spring edition.

Last day for Slightly Foxed draw

I'm in the midst of the grandchildren for half term but I'll be leaving for home tomorrow. Before I set out I will put the names of everyone who has left a comment here in the past two weeks into a hat and let one of the children draw one out to win the subscription for a year of Slightly Foxed quarterly.  If you have been hovering and would still like to enter then please do so today.

Good luck!

A wan winter landscape

As I drive around the Devon lanes at this time of year, I often think of these lines from Robert Graves: a wan winter landscape, hedges freaked with snow. There was no snow yesterday but the landscape was certainly wan. The last thing, you might think, to tempt me to visit a Royal Horticultural Society garden but that is exactly what I did. The MM and I drove to Great Torrington to  RHS Rosemoor.  The garden, for the most part, looked quite wan, waiting for spring to bring it to life but there were some early plants to enjoy: masses of snowdrops, hellebores, a few narcissi and some miniature crocuses.

Aren't these glorious? I don't have much success with snowdrops in my garden, possibly because little visitors nibble the bulbs at night. I do have lots of hellebores, which I love, but not a yellow one like this beauty

The real reason for our visit was to see the Winter Sculpture Exhibition. It was a really cold day and my gloves did nothing to stop my fingers from aching but I just had to take pictures of the wonderful pieces of stoneware, stainless steel, ceramic, bronze and glass sculpture strategically placed against the backdrop of grasses, evergreens, trees and perrenials. As the exhibition brochure says: "Each piece has been carefully placed within the garden to enlighten, amuse and inspire our visitors this winter."

There are 60 sculpures in all, from 20 West Country sculptors. I can only share a few of them here but I would encourage anyone who is in the area to go and see the exhibition for themselves. It is on until Sunday 24 February.

Small hanging dragonfly by Katie Lake

Female red kite by Ama Menec

Aerviator by Michael Kusz

I like it like that by Penny Hardy

A close-up of one of those amazing dancing figures

Pair of courting cranes by Colin Andrews

A walk in the garden by Melanie Deegan

I am troubled by a great many snails in my garden but nothing like this one!

Big Cyril by Tony Smither

All of the photos can be enlarged by clicking on them. These are just a sample of the delights in the exhibition. Visitors are asked to choose their favourite but my husband and I couldn't settle on one, we both agreed that, if we had a bigger garden and a much bigger bank balance, we would love to have them all.

Nothing new under the sun

The internet has given us instant access to a world of words. Whether that is an advantage or otherwise is open to question. I love the fact that I can look up a quotation that I can only half remember but I'm also put firmly in my place when I think I have an original idea and then discover lots of people have written about it already. Poets seem to have the advantage: as great observers of the minutiae of life, at least one of them will have covered whatever you are thinking about.

The theme for our writing group yesterday was faces and our inspiration came from Walt Whitman's poem of the same name:

Faces

SAUNTERING the pavement, or riding the country by-road--lo! such
faces!
Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality;
The spiritual, prescient face--the always welcome, common, benevolent
face,
The face of the singing of music--the grand faces of natural lawyers
and judges, broad at the back-top;
The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows--the shaved
blanch'd faces of orthodox citizens;
The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist's face;
The ugly face of some beautiful Soul, the handsome detested or
despised face;
The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of
many children;
The face of an amour, the face of veneration;
The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock; 10
The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face;
A wild hawk, his wings clipp'd by the clipper;
A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the
gelder.

Sauntering the pavement, thus, or crossing the ceaseless ferry,
faces, and faces, and faces:
I see them, and complain not, and am content with all.


Do you suppose I could be content with all, if I thought them their
own finale?

This now is too lamentable a face for a man;
Some abject louse, asking leave to be--cringing for it;
Some milk-nosed maggot, blessing what lets it wrig to its hole.

This face is a dog's snout, sniffing for garbage; 20
Snakes nest in that mouth--I hear the sibilant threat.

This face is a haze more chill than the arctic sea;
Its sleepy and wobbling icebergs crunch as they go.

This is a face of bitter herbs--this an emetic--they need no label;
And more of the drug-shelf, laudanum, caoutchouc, or hog's-lard.

This face is an epilepsy, its wordless tongue gives out the unearthly
cry,
Its veins down the neck distended, its eyes roll till they show
nothing but their whites,
Its teeth grit, the palms of the hands are cut by the turn'd-in
nails,
The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground while he
speculates well.

This face is bitten by vermin and worms, 30
And this is some murderer's knife, with a half-pull'd scabbard.

This face owes to the sexton his dismalest fee;
An unceasing death-bell tolls there.


Those then are really men--the bosses and tufts of the great round
globe!

Features of my equals, would you trick me with your creas'd and
cadaverous march?
Well, you cannot trick me.

I see your rounded, never-erased flow;
I see neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises.

Splay and twist as you like--poke with the tangling fores of fishes
or rats;
You'll be unmuzzled, you certainly will. 40

I saw the face of the most smear'd and slobbering idiot they had at
the asylum;
And I knew for my consolation what they knew not;
I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother,
The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement;
And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,
And I shall meet the real landlord, perfect and unharm'd, every inch
as good as myself.


The Lord advances, and yet advances;
Always the shadow in front--always the reach'd hand bringing up the
laggards.

Out of this face emerge banners and horses--O superb! I see what is
coming;
I see the high pioneer-caps--I see the staves of runners clearing the
way, 50
I hear victorious drums.

This face is a life-boat;
This is the face commanding and bearded, it asks no odds of the rest;
This face is flavor'd fruit, ready for eating;
This face of a healthy honest boy is the programme of all good.

These faces bear testimony, slumbering or awake;
They show their descent from the Master himself.

Off the word I have spoken, I except not one--red, white, black, are
all deific;
In each house is the ovum--it comes forth after a thousand years.

Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me; 60
Tall and sufficient stand behind, and make signs to me;
I read the promise, and patiently wait.

This is a full-grown lily's face,
She speaks to the limber-hipp'd man near the garden pickets,
Come here, she blushingly cries--Come nigh to me, limber-hipp'd man,
Stand at my side till I lean as high as I can upon you,
Fill me with albescent honey, bend down to me,
Rub to me with your chafing beard, rub to my breast and shoulders.


The old face of the mother of many children!
Whist! I am fully content. 70

Lull'd and late is the smoke of the First-day morning,
It hangs low over the rows of trees by the fences,
It hangs thin by the sassafras, the wild-cherry, and the cat-brier
under them.

I saw the rich ladies in full dress at the soiree,
I heard what the singers were singing so long,
Heard who sprang in crimson youth from the white froth and the water-
blue,

Behold a woman!
She looks out from her quaker cap--her face is clearer and more
beautiful than the sky.

She sits in an arm-chair, under the shaded porch of the farmhouse,
The sun just shines on her old white head. 80

Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen,
Her grandsons raised the flax, and her granddaughters spun it with
the distaff and the wheel.

The melodious character of the earth,
The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go, and does not wish to
go,
The justified mother of men.

Walt Whitman

Looking back to my student days, I remember finding Whitman a master of description but rather too wordy for comfort. I have learned patience with age and can now appreciate the detail in his work: how vivid the word pictures in this piece.

******************************************

We have been experiencing some pretty fierce gales accompanied by wintry showers. For us, that means  showers of rain with  occasional sleet or hail; further inland, especially over the moors, they get snow. I woke very early on Tuesday morning, before dawn, and looked out of the window. In the dim light, I could just make out a few heaps of whiteness in the sheltered corners of the yard. Snow! Only enough for a few snowballs but snow - the real white stuff that everyone else gets! I had a cup of tea and looked out again as the darkness faded and lo,the snow was nothing but scatterings of paper. The dustbin had blown over in the wind and its contents lay in tidy mounds around the yard. Robert Frost wrote a poem about it!

A Patch of Old Snow

There's a patch of old snow in a corner
That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
Had brought to rest.

It is speckled with grime as if
Small print overspread it,
The news of a day I've forgotten --
If I ever read it.

Robert Frost

 There really is nothing new under the sun.

Birthday book draw

To celebrate the seventh birthday of Random Distractions and to thank readers, commenters and lurkers for your friendship, interest and support I would like to offer the chance to win a year's subscription to the Slightly Foxed Quarterly.

I wrote something about Slightly Foxed in my last post and the winner of the subscription could read the rest of that article by Roger Jones plus lots of other fascinating insights into literary treasures. I love the four days every year when my copy lands on the doormat. It is a beautifully presented magazine, small enough to fit in your handbag so ideal for a bus or train journey or a visit to the dentist. The articles are short enough to read over a cup of coffee but long enough to satisfy the book lover's curiosity. I have been reminded of many old favourites, introduced to authors and titles I had overlooked and sent scurrying to long neglected shelves and to second-hand book sellers to find the treasures that Slightly Foxed has displayed to tempt me.

I don't have a vested financial interest, I just love sharing my favourite publication,  but I must declare a personal interest in the next edition, Spring 2013, because it will contain a review of J.P. Donleavy's work by my son!

If you would like a chance to win a one year subscription (4 editions), leave a comment below. I hope all my old friends will enter (if only the pension would allow me to send each of you a subscription!) but I also welcome new readers, casual readers and those who often come by but never leave a comment. Just say, "Hi. Count me in." and I'll do that. The magazine can be delivered anywhere in the world.

I am sorry that a recent influx of Spam has forced me to stop accepting comments from people who prefer to remain anonymous. You can still enter the draw by sending me an email to the address at the top of the blog.

I will make the draw on Friday 15 February. Good luck!