This past weekend before a tutoring session at the library, I completed a mission I’ve been looking forward to for weeks: getting out my giant 2016 To Be Read list and hunting down as many books as possible. And I was pretty proud of my efforts! Unfortunately, I’m a combo of slow reader and type-of-reader-who-can-only-read-one-book-at-a-time, so I had to pace myself and only get three. I just keep reminding myself I have all year to read them all, especially since my library has all the ones I want to read most…
Initially I wasn’t planning on continuing with Beautiful Books/Beautiful People posts after finishing last year’s NaNo challenge, but I liked the questions for this month’s prompt so much, I actually filled them out just for fun before I even considered making a linkup post! Maybe I’ll keep going with these linkups. Who knows? Let me know if you’re interested in seeing more! 🙂
In the King Arthur legends, there are countless accounts of feasts and merriment, but descriptions of the specific dishes they ate are rare. We know from medieval history that these feasts probably involved a lot of savory pies, boiled vegetables, fruit, and roasted meat. I’ll admit I fantasized about roasting a whole pig for this recipe just like they would have done in the olden days, but whole animals are a little difficult to source these days (and I’m not exactly sure how I’d cook one if I found it). Still, large beef roasts were equally common, so I decided to use my go-to pot roast recipe to make a dish very similar to the sort of entrée you’d expect to see at a medieval feast, yet prepared in a way that fits a modern kitchen. Inspired by the Questing Beast which Sir Pellinore so valiantly pursued, this delicious roasted beast is fit for any king’s table.
Would you like to know how excited I was about getting this award? I was so excited that when I tried to title this post, I accidentally called it a “blooger” award. I’m not sure what a blooger is, but something tells me it’s like a blogger, just a lot more awkward…and probably hopped up on sugar. ^.^
Here are the rules for the Creative Blogger Award:
Thank the blogger who nominated you and post the link of said blog.
Share five facts about yourself to your readers.
Nominate 15 to 20 blogs and notify all nominees via their social media or blogs. (NOTE: I decided to only nominate 4. I follow about 35 blogs total and only wanted to nominate those that I thought truly fit the award, rather than working to come up with 15 names to meet the total.)
Howdy, folks! As you know, King Arthur is our January Book of the Month, and I’m loving every minute of working on it. I didn’t pick one specific book version of the Arthurian legends, partially because there are so many…and also partially because I don’t know which is my favorite! I love that there are so many versions of the story. To me, our continued cultural draw to these legends is proof of just how timelessly awesome they are. But which modern versions are the best? In no particular order, here is my completely subjective list of favorite King Arthur retellings:
We kicking off the New Year with the granddaddy of all classic stories: the legend of King Arthur! I’m a big fan of ancient myth and folklore (you should see my Irish myth collection), and the Arthurian legends are some of my favorites. What’s not to love about epic tales of grand quests, noble knights, and a brave king? In fact, the reason I waited so long to make a King Arthur menu was because I wanted to wait until I had enough blogging experience to do it justice. So here we go! 🙂
The appetizer for our King Arthur menu is inspired by the beginning of Arthur’s story: his retrieval of the sword from the stone. These easy, delicious cheese bites are just the right snack to kick off a long afternoon of knightly adventuring…or at least reading about knightly adventures! The perfectly British combo of Camembert and English cheddar is balanced with toasted nuts and sweet-tart dried cranberries—a truly kingly dish! 🙂
Howdy, folks! Welcome to our very first 2016 book of the month: King Arthur! The theme is King-Arthur-in-general rather than a specific King Arthur book, since there are so many and I have no idea which one is my favorite. Since the bright and shiny New Year newness hasn’t quite worn off for me yet, I thought it would be fun to start things off with one of our new additions to the blog this year: a reading kit!
I posted a few homemade reading kits on Real Life at Home last year, but now my plan is to make reading kits here on the blog for every Book of the Month. What’s a reading kit, you ask? It’s basically a compilation of items mentioned in a book or related to the subject matter, often including a copy of the book itself (I first heard of the idea on Epic Reads). When I make a kit, I like to include a snack, three items related to the book, and the fanciest copy of the book I can find.
I’ve included links to each of the items below, making it easy to whip up a kit for yourself or an avid reader in your life. So grab your kits and read on, my valiant Knights of Wonderland! 🙂
What items would I include in a King Arthur reading kit? I’m so glad you asked…
This is actually the wine the Mister and I served at our wedding. We’re big honey wine fans, and this is our favorite brand. The Mister is actually working on brewing his own right now!
My very bookish Christmas book haul: an Alice in Wonderland infinity scarf, Novel Teas, Irish pub and Downton Abbey cookbooks, and an olde book messenger bag! My mom and sister actually got me the scarf and teas after seeing them in my bibliophile gift post last year. I’m hoping I can work at least a few of these things into post pics for this year. Fingers crossed! 🙂
Now that we’re starting a fresh new year, I want to give you guys a heads up on some changes you can expect to see around here:
DOUBLE THE POSTING, DOUBLE THE FUN. I’m planning on expanding my schedule and posting twice a week. In addition to my usual weekly recipe, I’ll also post monthly reading kits, Top Ten Tuesday linkups, new tea overviews, and one random post per month. Huzzah!
AN UPDATED THEME AND TEA PAGE. You may remember that some unexpected side effects from a theme update had me shopping for themes last August. I love the theme I found (Tweak Me by Nose Graze), but I want to change the colors and fonts, plus add an awesome header a friend made for me. Some time this month I’ll shut the site down for maintenance for a day so I can make all the updates. In the process, I’ll update our tea page so that, instead of a gallery with just names, there will be paragraph descriptions and food pairings for each tea (much like the format of our 2015 tea review).
WHAT DO WE WANT? A CONSOLIDATED PINTEREST PAGE. WHEN DO WE WANT IT? …PROBABLY SOME TIME TODAY, ACTUALLY. Originally I organized my Pinterest profile by having a board for each menu, but now there are just too many boards. Some time this week (maybe even before this goes live), I plan to condense all my menu boards down to one.
MAKE WAY FOR 2016 NANO! As many of you may recall, I won National Novel Writing Month last November! I’m planning on taking part this year too, so keep an eye out for writing updates when November rolls around.
I WILL FIGURE OUT YUMMLY. I SWEAR ON A STACK OF A MILLION COOKBOOKS. I signed up for Yummly last August and was all excited about it, since it was a streamlined way for me to add printables to all my recipe posts. Unfortunately, I’ve been having trouble getting my posts to upload. When I submit my post to the Yummly database, weeks go by before it’s processed (and sometimes it never gets processed at all). I’ve been working on the problem on and off since I signed up, but now it’s time to buckle down and truly devote myself to solving it. I’m determined to fix it soon…because you beautiful Wonderlings deserve printables! 🙂
Happy 2016, folks! Is there a change you’d like to see that I didn’t mention in the list?
Leave it in a comment below, and I’ll take it into consideration! 🙂
Happy 2016, folks! Can you believe we’ve made 52 recipes this year? I can’t. I’m convinced cooking fairies came in the night and finished all these posts for me…mostly because I want to believe there are such things as cooking fairies. 😉
These little beauties combine white rum, vodka, lime, coconut water, strawberries, and fresh basil into a refreshing accompaniment to homemade basil crackers.
Do you have your drink? Ok. Time to reveal this year’s most popular posts! The winners are…
It’s December 31st! The year is ending, and with it our Little Women menu. It’s been a fun year, folks! I’m excited to start a new one with you tomorrow, so today I decided to post something I’ve been working on for MONTHS: a full review of all of the teas we’ve made on AWR!
Back in August, I invited my friends Laura and Mary from The Twins’ Guide over to perform a very serious task: review our Alison’s Wonderland Teas. The goal was to see how the teas hold up across a range of different palates and get some ideas about which ones could be improved. There are a few teas in this post that weren’t reviewed at the party because I hadn’t created them yet (like the chocolate mocha tea). For these, I brewed them several ways over the course of weeks to be sure they created a balanced cup each time.
Below you’ll find a picture of each tea followed by its name, description, a food pairing, and notes from the review. The pictures and titles link to the page on Adagio.com where you can order each tea. Enjoy!
P.S. These are all loose teas. To brew, you can place them in a tea infuser or paper tea filter…or you can drink your tea like Professor Trelawney and brew the leaves loose in the teapot! 🙂
