Our brand new Book of the Month is Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, and I’m super excited to get started! It’s hard to find time to read with a new baby, but I MADE time for Neverwhere. It was such a fun read—clever, imaginative, and an Alice in Wonderland retelling to boot! What’s not to love? 🙂
Even though most of the book is set in “London Below,” I decided to start things out with a fancy little dish from London Above: the mushroom vol-au-vents from Jessica’s gala. Vol-au-vents consist of puff pastry stuffed with (in this case) a creamy mushroom filling. They may look complicated, but they’re deceptively easy. Just bake some puff pastry shells, cook your mushroom mix in a pan while they bake, and fill the finished shells!
When I started looking up vol-au-vent recipes, I noticed that parsley was the most common herb people turned to for seasoning. To change things up, I decided to try fresh basil instead, and I loved the way it turned out! The basil flavor rose above the mushroom base without overpowering it, just how I wanted. I also noticed that a lot of people made their base from scratch, but I decided to take a little shortcut: cream of mushroom soup. The results were subtle, perfectly seasoned, and utterly delicious. Perfect for a sophisticated young lady like Jessica!
We’re wrapping up our Little Princess menu with the very first food Sara ever shares with her close friend Becky: sweet, delicate, delicious cake!
I love the friendship that develops between Becky and Sara. And I think it’s no coincidence that it all develops around food! 🙂 At first, Becky the maid is shy and uncertain around the well-to-do Sara, and Sara is lonely in an unfamiliar country.
But when Sara sees how hungry Becky is, she shares all kinds of foods with her, starting with this cake (which I modeled after the rosy dress Becky says she once saw on a real princess). Becky is touched by the generosity and soon gets over her shyness, opening the door for a friendship that both girls desperately need.
I always knew cake had the power to change lives! 🙂
Becky is one of my favorite characters in A Little Princess because she’s so genuine. As a young maid in a school full of little girls with large fortunes and influential families, it would be easy for her to get bogged down in resentment or jealousy. Instead, she’s open to friendship with even the most affluent student—little Sara—and proves to be a great friend in Sara’s time of need.
When Sara starts sharing food with Becky, these meat pies were Becky’s favorite, and I can see why. They’re hearty and heart-warming, with substance and simple goodness—much like Becky herself! 🙂
July is here, and with it, summer is in full force! I’m loving how long the sun stays up now, but I could do without the 90° heat, humidity, and mosquitoes (Oh, Illinois, why must you treat weather like an intensity contest?). On the upside, I got to spend all of June making a menu I’ve been looking forward to for AGES! 🙂A
This time last year, we were just starting our Anne of Green Gables menu. In a way, we’ve come full circle. We’re greeting July with a the story of a displaced young orphan girl who breathes vibrancy and life into her new home: The Secret Garden! But this time the home (Misselthwaite Manor) is breathing life into the heroine too. While Anne Shirley was flighty and dreamy, Mary Lennox is serious and grim.
Howdy, folks! I just got back from ringing in July in the best way possible: 5 days of cabin camping with old college buddies! It’s a summer tradition that started 5 years ago. Now that we’re scattered across 3 different states, it’s the most important way we keep in touch. Despite the mosquitoes and lack of cell reception, it’s the highlight of my summer. There’s just something magical about age old inside jokes, ice cream cone s’mores, and late-night discussions about how The Lego Movie is basically The Matrix.
On our way to get groceries for the cabin, we stopped at a Mickey D’s for wi-fi so I could post our final Tom Sawyer recipe: Tom’s Whitewashed Jelly Doughnuts. I brought the leftover doughnuts with me to share at the cabin, and my oh my were they popular, especially with blackberry jam (possibly more so than the original raspberry jam I used). If you’re looking for a drink to go along with your own jelly doughnuts, we just released our Tom Sawyer tea from Adagio: Becky’s Peach Tea! Click here or the image below to visit our tea gallery!
This month’s dessert is actually two Anne of Green Gables recipes rolled into one! I wanted to create a tribute to Anne’s “genius for getting into trouble,” and two of her greatest scrapes revolve around ice cream and raspberry cordial.
You knew I had to do it. No Anne of Green Gables menu is complete without carrots! Who can forget Anne’s sensitivity to having her bright red hair compared to a popular root vegetable? It drives her to fly into a fury at Mrs. Rachel Lind and break a slate over Gilbert Blythe’s head in school…little did she know, Gilbert was only drawing attention to her hair because he thought it was pretty!
Leave it to Anne Shirley to turn an egg salad sandwich into a feast for the imagination. As I recreated the sandwiches she served to her friends during their “golden picnic,” I resolved to make them as Anne would: with as much extra flair as possible. I started with my own personal egg salad recipe (a close cousin to my deviled egg recipe) and spiced it up from there. After whipping up some croissants (no boring bread here!), I cut the croissants in half, added a layer of watercress for an elegant touch, and sneaked a special surprise into the egg salad. The result: a feast for kings, no imagination necessary! 🙂
Once in a rare while, you come across a book with so much vibrance and life, you read the last few chapters as slowly as possible, just because you don’t want it to end. For me, Anne of Green Gables was one of those books. SO AWESOME. That’s why I chose it for our July Book of the Month!
