the yak occidental

 Here are some things I tried cooking in January! Biggest hit: Giant Pretzels I made these big soft pretzels based on the cover recipe of Canadian Living January/February 2022 for New Year's Eve and again just this past weekend! Sooo tasty. I can't find the recipe online unfortunately but this issue is still on newsstands. These were SO GOOD and worth the slightly more lengthy bake/prep time (you have to let the dough rise, etc).  Cozy (and cheap!) comfort food: Vegetarian Split Pea Soup I haven't had split pea soup in years as its typically made with ham bone. On one of our especially cold days in January though I suddenly craved it, missing how hearty and comforting this soup is. I nosed around and tried this recipe over at Lord Byron's Kitchen . It was very good and turned out well. It was also very inexpensive to make! I served this delish soup with some biscuits. I used the Flakey Biscuits recipe from Julie Van Rosendaal's Dirty Food which isn't online, but...

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton. Painting above: Fantaisie sur Sylvie (c. 1910-1911) by Jacqueline Marval "We thought it was very nice of Father to give his hardworking daughters a glass of sherry every evening, and we used to look forward to the ceremony. In fact Pandora said that the blackest time of day in her new little suburban house was sherry-time with no sherry. She felt she would never get used to doing without it."  "I could feel her losing interest in me as she left the room, and I was a little disappointed; but I know Thisbe when she’s on a poem, and I couldn’t be resentful. On the whole she had been sympathetic."  "“It’s never any good deciding ahead. Rather like saying you’re certain some word you’ve forgotten begins with a B, and then it always turns out to be a T or a Z.”" Hilarious: "Then I retired into myself, played the piano mournfully and insistently, and settled down to be a perm...

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from High Wages by Dorothy Whipple. Painting above: The Dark Lady (c. 1938) by  Anna Zinkeisen  Pages numbers unknown for this one as I read it on my e-reader. "There was almost no one about. It was a moment. Jane sometimes had these moments. She stood still in them."  Amusing: "She wished, for the hundredth time, that her name was Gladys."  "He gave in to her, but not without irritation. He felt he could not cope with her ideas. Youth and enthusiasm can be fatiguing to those who have lost both. Mr. Chadwick, however, had enough shrewdness to know that, though her ideas made him tired, they were nevertheless good ideas. So he left her to it." Decor notes from 1913: "He liked to hang up specially sumptuous eiderdowns and cram his windows with embroidered covers of every conceivable kind; covers for beds, cushions, tables, chairs, sideboards, brushes-and-combs, night-gowns. Everything was covered in 1913; it was...