Monthly Archives: November 2015

Christmas Pudding or Omigosh I Missed Stir Up Sunday

Updated on January 24, 2023 by Diane Gaston

First of all, congratulations to Teresa B., winner of It Happened One Christmas. Stay tuned for other guests and giveaways!

Here’s a blog that I originally posted on Dec 5, 2011. It (slightly altered) seemed perfect for today!

Stir Up Sunday is the Sunday before Advent begins, when, according to the Book of Common Prayer, the prayers begin:

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord the wills of thy faithful people, that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Traditionally, the prayer read at Church was supposed to remind cooks that they should mix up their Christmas pudding.

This year Stir Up Sunday would have been on Nov 22, so I am a week late and my pudding will not be ready for Christmas. To us Americans, pudding is some chocolate or vanilla or banana custard-like dessert, but English pudding is a mixture of lots of different ingredients, including some grain product.

In the Regency, meats such as beef or veal could be added to sugar, raisins, sherry, lemon, orange, prunes (the dried plums that give plum pudding its name), cinnamon, cloves, brown bread, and such unfamiliar (to me) ingredients as cochineal (a food dye made from insects), suet, sack (a wine from the Canary Isles), hock (another wine), and treacle (a sugar syrup).

Into the mixture was stirred a coin (for wealth), a ring (for marriage) and a thimble (for blessedness. Each member of the family stirred the mixture and made a wish. The mixture was then boiled in a cloth for hours, and hung on a hook to dry until Christmas.

On Christmas day, the pudding was covered with warm brandy and set aflame, making it a dramatic and exciting addition to the Christmas dinner.

If you would like to make a Christmas pudding for your Christmas the Regency way, you are too late, because it has to age to get the best effect and flavor. But never fear! Modern technology comes to the rescue:

What special “pudding” (aka dessert) do you make for the holiday season?

Posted in Diane Gaston, Regency, Research, Winner announcement | Tagged christmas pudding, Diane Gaston | 2 Replies

Favorite Historical Period (Other Than Regency)?

Updated on November 17, 2022 by carolyn

I am currently in San Diego, California for the RWA (Romance Writers of America) Board meeting. In November, the board meets at the location of the next conference– which is, as you might have guessed—in San Diego. We’re at the conference hotel, so allow me to tell anyone thinking about the conference, you want to be here for the 2016 conference. The hotel is fantastic and is surrounded by great places to eat and shop and it’s all strollable. You don’t have to go anywhere near traffic. It’s just, hey, I walked past the hotel pool and through this gate and look! Shopping! Cookies! Great food! Spectacular view of the Pacific!! Wonderful places to walk! There’s loads of seating inside and out, too. I hope to see everyone there!

The Poll

You can choose up to 5. In the comments, please list other favorite historical eras, any time, any area.

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Posted in Former Riskies, History | Tagged English Historical Eras, Poll | 8 Replies

Two truths and a lie

Updated on November 23, 2015 by Rose Lerner

Listen to the Moon, my next book (about an impassive valet and a snarky maid who marry to get a plum job), releases in just a month and a half, on January 5th! I’m going to start giving away e-ARCs in December, but just for the Riskies…I’ll do one today. 😉

As part of my research for this book, I read The Complete Servant (1825) by Samuel and Sarah Adams, a married butler-and-housekeeper couple. It is full of housekeeping tips that are sometimes familiar, sometimes full of mysterious ingredients, and in some cases, struck me as frankly bizarre. Which doesn’t mean they don’t work! I’m a Martha Stewart Living fanatic, so I thought I’d make up a magazine, Regency Housekeeping, and share some of these tips formatted to look like magazine features…

But there’s a catch.

Two of these tips are real, pulled from The Complete Servant. The other one, I made up. One commenter who correctly guesses which tip is fake will receive an e-book of Listen to the Moon in the format of your choice! (I will choose the winner using random.org on Wednesday evening, 11/25.)

This is on the honor system, but please, no googling!

So: first, I mocked up a few different covers. I’m going to add article titles and stuff, but I can’t decide which one I like best. Which one is your favorite?

background is a still life with fish, oil and vinegar bottles, a punch bowl and lemons

Image source: Anne Vallayer-Coster, “A still life of mackerel, glassware, a loaf of bread and lemons on a table with a white cloth,” 1787.

background is a room in buckingham palace, all gilt and white

Image source: “Buckingham House, the Saloon,” by James Stephanoff, 1818.

background is a regency banquet of some kind

Image source: “Messrs Pellatt & Green,” from the May 1809 Repository of arts, literature, commerce, manufactures, fashions and politics.

And now…two truths and a lie!

Image source: Jean-Étienne Liotard, “Still Life – Tea Set,” c. 1781-3.

Tea: NEW USES FOR AN OLD FAVORITE

1. Wash tainted meat with strong chamomile tea before cooking.
2. Soak pearls in strong tea to restore shine.
3. Slowly whisk boiling tea into a beaten egg, and substitute for cream.

(Honestly, the challenge here was coming up with something that wouldn’t work! According to Google, tea is used for freaking everything, including washing windows, polishing boots, and conditioning hair.)

Which one did I make up???

Posted in Giveaways | 36 Replies

Re-releases and Time Travel

Updated on November 19, 2015 by susanna

While I don’t have a new release out, I’m happy to announce the re-release of my 2013 Christmas novella, Christmas Past, with a brand new cover as part of Entangled’s Scandalous line.

Christmas Past cover

Time-traveling PhD student Sydney Dahlquist’s first mission sounded simple enough—spend two weeks in December 1810 collecting blood samples from the sick and wounded of Wellington’s army, then go home to modern-day Seattle and Christmas with her family. But when her time machine breaks, stranding her in the past, she must decide whether to sacrifice herself to protect the timeline or to build a new life—and embrace a new love—two centuries before her time.

I’ve always loved a good time travel story–I think the idea of getting to actually visit the past is just so seductive to me as a history geek. Christmas Past is my first attempt at the genre, but it won’t be my last. I’ve started work on a story I’ll talk more about in my December post that takes a magical approach to time travel rather than a scientific one. But for this week I thought I’d talk about some of my favorite time travel stories as a reader and viewer. In no particular order…

Outlander. (Though despite that lovely illustration, due to the lack of Starz in my cable package I’m far more familiar with the books.) It’s big and epic, satisfying that part of me that loves a decades-spanning saga. It’s romantic and sexy. And I appreciate how in the later books when most of the action moves to colonial and Revolutionary America, Gabaldon gives a much more nuanced portrayal of both sides of the conflict than your typical Plucky Liberty-Minded Colonists vs. Tyrannical Royalists.

Tempus Fugit

Sleepy Hollow, my current TV obsession, on the other hand, will never win prizes for its nuanced examination of the Revolutionary era–the British in many cases are literal demons. And technically it’s not even a true time travel show, since its man-out-of-time hero Ichabod Crane gets to the future by dying (or close enough to it) in 1781 and getting resurrected in 2013 rather than your traditional time machine or time travel spell. But in the Season 2 finale, Abbie Mills, his 21st-century cop partner in apocalypse-fighting, goes back to the 18th century to save Crane’s life, not to mention all the American history yet to come. Along the way she gets to meet Benjamin Franklin and her own ancestress who first got her family involved in the secret war against evil. (The show is 100% as crazy as it sounds, but at its best, as with this episode, it’s crazy-awesome. And frankly, I’m nervous about including it on this list, since I’m writing this post Thursday evening before the Season 3 mid-season finale airs, so I have no idea if I’ll be giddy and squeeing over crazy-awesome or grumbling, “Why, show, why?” over plain old crazy tomorrow morning when you’re reading this!)

First Contact

The Star Trek universe goes to the time travel well a lot, but I’m listing First Contact as my example because I have such fond memories of watching it in the theater when it first came out. It was everything I loved about Next Gen Trek, made big-screen and epic.

Everybody lives!

Doctor Who, of course, is all about time travel…so I’m just listing what remains my favorite two-part pair of episodes, The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, wherein the Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler, and Jack Harkness end up in the London Blitz…and just this once, everybody lives!

A Swiftly Tilting Planet was always my favorite of Madeleine L’Engle’s time quintet, probably because of the high stakes (stopping a nuclear war!) and dizzying leaps through multiple times.

What about you? Are you a fan of time travel in fiction? What are some of your favorites?

Posted in Risky Book Talk, TV and Film | Tagged Christmas Past, Susanna Fraser, Time travel | 2 Replies

Treasures in Wood by Grinling Gibbons

Updated on November 16, 2015 by Mary Blayney

In the spring of 1986 I absorbed a museum exhibit that ranks as the best in my experience. The Treasure Houses of Britain was seen by almost one million people during its six months at Washington’s National Gallery of Art. Like most of the visitors I was amazed, impressed, “gobsmacked” not only by the sheer opulence of the treasures but also by their artistic merit. The memory of that exhibit is as fresh in my mind today as it was when I first wrote on the subject years ago.

According to the National Gallery of Art (DC) website more than “700 objects were gathered from more than 200 homes representing collecting and domestic arts from the 15th to the 20th century.”

Above is one of seventeen period rooms that were constructed to display the objects. It is obviously the most ambitious project ever undertaken by the NGA. Gervase Jackson-Stops chose the art work and the exhibit was structured to showcase each period of collecting by the great families of England.

It was at this exhibit that I first saw the work of master woodcarver Grinling Gibbons. The piece on display was a carving of fish and game, not my favorite subject matter, but the delicacy of the carving amazed me. The work was done in the days before dental drills and dermal tools made intricate carving more accessible. Gibbons work shows an attention to detail that defies the imagination of my contemporary “hurry up and get it done” approach to the craft projects I have undertaken.

Grinling Gibbons was born in Rotterdam in 1648. It’s possible his father was an Englishman who worked with Inigo Jones, who introduced Italianate Renaissance design to the English. Grinling Gibbons came to England in 1667 his talent obviously developed in the nineteen years before he arrived. He was discovered working “in a poor and solitary thatched hut in Kent” by diarist John Evelyn who introduced him to King Charles II through the intercession of Christopher Wren.

His work can be found in dozens of houses and public buildings throughout Britain, including Petworth, Blenheim, Kirtlington Park and also at Windsor, and many of Wren’s London churches. Gibbons and his “workshop” added immense detail and beauty to St Paul’s, London. Arguably the greatest example of his work is found at Petworth in the Carved Room, a small segment of which is shown above. Ignore the paintings (yes, I know that’s not easy) and look at the work in wood that fills the wall like we use wood paneling today.

Gibbons and his workshop worked in mediums besides wood, but wood best suited the detailed handiwork for which he, himself, is best known. To the right is a detail of his work in wood.

Last year when I visited Biltmore in Asheville North Carolina I noticed a fine wood carving over the mantle in one of the rooms. I’ve been meaning to call the curator and find out if it was by Gibbons. I might do that tomorrow and I will let you know what I find out.

Are you familiar with Gibbons? But, more important tell us about an exhibit that made you stop in your tracks in awe and appreciation.

Posted in Risky Regencies | 8 Replies