hollyt

I vote for Screw and Usher, do we have a date for this? Holly x

I don't know if I can make or yet. I'm going away on Friday and I have quite a few things to do. In any case I haven't read the book either. I'll try and come for a drink if I get chance a bit later. Holly x

Is anyone going tonight? I don't want to be Billy-no-mates! Holly x

We just pick one, we vote on the night. Looking forward to meeting you :-)

Rhian is going to do the book list, the theme will be books that have been turned into films x

Oranges are not the only fruit was the winner from tonight and we'll meet on 10th May. Holly x

Definitely Rhian, look forward to seeing you. Holly x

Hello, Here is this month's book list, the theme being 'Women'. Brick Lane by Monica Ali A captivating read from a debut novelist, Brick Lane brings the immigrant milieu of East London to vibrant life. With great poignancy, Ali illuminates a foreign world; her well-developed characters pull readers along on a deeply psychological, almost spiritual journey. Through the eyes of two Bangladeshi sisters?the plain Nazneen and the prettier Hasina?we see the divergent paths of the contemporary descendants of an ancient culture. Hasina elopes to a "love marriage," and young Nazneen, in an arranged marriage, is pledged to a much older man living in London. Ali's skillful narrative focuses on Nazneen's stifling life with her ineffectual husband, who keeps her imprisoned in a city housing project filled with immigrants in varying degrees of assimilation. But Ali reveals a bittersweet tension between the "two kinds of love" Nazneen and her sister experience?that which begins full and overflowing, only to slowly dissipate, and another which emerges like a surprise, growing unexpectedly over years of faithful commitment. Both of these loves have their own pitfalls: Hasina's passionate romance crumbles into domestic violence, and Nazneen's marriage never quite reaches a state of wedded bliss. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, a dazzling new novel: a story of love and race centered around a young man and woman from Nigeria who face difficult choices and challenges in the countries they come to call home. As teenagers in a Lagos secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are leaving the country if they can. Ifemelu?beautiful, self-assured?departs for America to study. She suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships and friendships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze?the quiet, thoughtful son of a professor?had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a writer of an eye-opening blog about race in America. But when Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, and she and Obinze reignite their shared passion?for their homeland. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson Winner of the Whitbread Prize for best first fiction, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a coming-out novel from Winterson, the acclaimed author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. The narrator, Jeanette, cuts her teeth on the knowledge that she is one of God?s elect, but as this budding evangelical comes of age, and comes to terms with her preference for her own sex, the peculiar balance of her God-fearing household crumbles. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath's shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman falling into the grip of insanity. Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under?maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational?as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classicnd for each other?they will face the toughest decisions of their lives. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith Through six turbulent months of 1934, 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain keeps a journal, filling three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries about her home, a ruined Suffolk castle, and her eccentric and penniless family. By the time the last diary shuts, there have been great changes in the Mortmain household, not the least of which is that Cassandra is deeply, hopelessly, in love. The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood In Homer?s account in The Odyssey, Penelope?wife of Odysseus and cousin of the beautiful Helen of Troy?is portrayed as the quintessential faithful wife, her story a salutary lesson through the ages. Left alone for twenty years when Odysseus goes off to fight in the Trojan War after the abduction of Helen, Penelope manages, in the face of scandalous rumors, to maintain the kingdom of Ithaca, bring up her wayward son, and keep over a hundred suitors at bay, simultaneously. When Odysseus finally comes home after enduring hardships, overcoming monsters, and sleeping with goddesses, he kills her suitors and?curiously?twelve of her maids. In a splendid contemporary twist to the ancient story, Margaret Atwood has chosen to give the telling of it to Penelope and to her twelve hanged maids, asking: ?What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to?? In Atwood?s dazzling, playful retelling, the story becomes as wise and compassionate as it is haunting, and as wildly entertaining as it is disturbing. With wit and verve, drawing on the story-telling and poetic talent for which she herself is renowned, she gives Penelope new life and reality?and sets out to provide an answer to an ancient mystery. Wetlands by Charlotte Roche With more than one million copies sold in Germany and rights snapped up in twenty-seven countries, Wetlands is the sexually and anatomically explicit novel that is changing the conversation about female identity and sexuality around the world. Helen Memel is an outspoken eighteen-year-old, whose childlike stubbornness is offset by a precocious sexual confidence. She begins her story from a hospital bed, where she?s slowly recovering from an operation and lamenting her parents? divorce. To distract herself, Helen ruminates on her past sexual adventures in increasingly uncomfortable detail, taking the reader on a sensational journey through Helen?s body and mind. Punky alienated teenager, young woman reclaiming her body from the tyranny of repressive hygiene (women mustn?t smell, excrete, desire), bratty smartass, vulnerable, lonely daughter, shock merchant, and pleasure seeker?Helen is all of these things and more, and her frequent attempts to assert her maturity ultimately prove just how fragile, confused, and young she truly is. As Helen constantly blurs the line between celebration, provocation, and dysfunction in her relationship with her body, Roche exposes the double bind of female sexuality, delivering a compulsively readable and fearlessly intimate manifesto on sex, hygiene, and the repercussions of family trauma. See you on Tuesday, Susan if you send me your preferences I'll add them in! Holly xx

We've voted on 'The Accident Season'. I'll do the book list next month and since it's International Women's Day, it will have a female theme... It will be on 5th April. Holly x

Is anyone coming?! If so, I'm sitting out the back with a glass of wine... Holly x

Hello, Here't the shortlist for next month - the theme is food! Gourmet Rhapsody In the heart of Paris, in the posh building made famous in The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Pierre Athens, the greatest food critic in the world, is dying. Revered by some and reviled by many, Monsieur Arthens has been lording it over the world?s most esteemed chefs for years, passing judgment on their creations, deciding their fates with a stroke of his pen, destroying and building reputations on a whim. But now, during these his final hours, his mind has turned to simpler things. He is desperately searching for that singular flavor, that sublime something once sampled, never forgotten, the Flavor par excellence. Indeed, this flamboyant and self-absorbed man desires only one thing before he dies: one last taste. Thus begins a charming voyage that traces the career of Monsieur Arthens from childhood to maturity across a celebration of all manner of culinary delights. Alternating with the voice of the supercilious Arthens is a chorus belonging to his acquaintances and familiars?relatives, lovers, a would-be protege, even a cat. Each will have his or her say about M. Arthens, a man who has inspired only extreme emotions in people. Here, as in The Elegance of Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery?s story celebrates life?s simple pleasures and sublime moments while condemning the arrogance and vulgarity of power. The Cookbook Collector Heralded as ?a modern day Jane Austen? by USA Today, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman has compelled and delighted hundreds of thousands of readers. Now, in her most ambitious work yet, Goodman weaves together the worlds of Silicon Valley and rare book collecting in a delicious novel about appetite, temptation, and fulfillment. Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposites in every way: Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, twenty-three-year-old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily is rational and driven, while Jess is dreamy and whimsical. Emily?s boyfriend, Jonathan, is fantastically successful. Jess?s boyfriends, not so much?as her employer George points out in what he hopes is a completely disinterested way. Bicoastal, surprising, rich in ideas and characters, The Cookbook Collector is a novel about getting and spending, and about the substitutions we make when we can?t find what we?re looking for: reading cookbooks instead of cooking, speculating instead of creating, collecting instead of living. But above all it is about holding on to what is real in a virtual world: love that stays. Pomegranate Soup Beneath the holy mountain Croagh Patrick, in damp and lovely County Mayo, sits the small, sheltered village of Ballinacroagh. To the exotic Aminpour sisters, Ireland looks like a much-needed safe haven. It has been seven years since Marjan Aminpour fled Iran with her younger sisters, Bahar and Layla, and she hopes that in Ballinacroagh, a land of ?crazed sheep and dizzying roads,? they might finally find a home. From the kitchen of an old pastry shop on Main Mall, the sisters set about creating a Persian oasis. Soon sensuous wafts of cardamom, cinnamon, and saffron float through the streets?an exotic aroma that announces the opening of the Babylon Caf?, and a shock to a town that generally subsists on boiled cabbage and Guinness served at the local tavern. And it is an affront to the senses of Ballinacroagh?s uncrowned king, Thomas McGuire. After trying to buy the old pastry shop for years and failing, Thomas is enraged to find it occupied?and by foreigners, no less. But the mysterious, spicy fragrances work their magic on the townsfolk, and soon, business is booming. Marjan is thrilled with the demand for her red lentil soup, abgusht stew, and rosewater baklava?and with the transformation in her sisters. Young Layla finds first love, and even tense, haunted Bahar seems to be less nervous. And in the stand-up-comedian-turned-priest Father Fergal Mahoney, the gentle, lonely widow Estelle Delmonico, and the headstrong hairdresser Fiona Athey, the sisters find a merry band of supporters against the close-minded opposition of less welcoming villagers stuck in their ways. But the idyll is soon broken when the past rushes back to threaten the Amnipours once more, and the lives they left behind in revolution-era Iran bleed into the present. Infused with the textures and scents, trials and triumph,s of two distinct cultures, Pomegranate Soup is an infectious novel of magical realism. This richly detailed story, highlighted with delicious recipes, is a delectable journey into the heart of Persian cooking and Irish living. The Last Chinese Chef This alluring novel of friendship, love, and cuisine brings the best-selling author of Lost in Translation and A Cup of Light to one of the great Chinese subjects: food. As in her previous novels, Mones?s captivating story also brings into focus a changing China -- this time the hidden world of high culinary culture. When Maggie McElroy, a widowed American food writer, learns of a Chinese paternity claim against her late husband?s estate, she has to go immediately to Beijing. She asks her magazine for time off, but her editor counters with an assignment: to profile the rising culinary star Sam Liang. In China Maggie unties the knots of her husband?s past, finding out more than she expected about him and about herself. With Sam as her guide, she is also drawn deep into a world of food rooted in centuries of history and philosophy. To her surprise she begins to be transformed by the cuisine, by Sam?s family -- a querulous but loving pack of cooks and diners -- and most of all by Sam himself. The Last Chinese Chef is the exhilarating story of a woman regaining her soul in the most unexpected of places. The Wedding Officer: A Novel of Culinary Seduction In the sumptuous tradition of Chocolat and Captain Corelli's Mandolin, and already optioned for a major motion picture, comes a magical tale of romantic passion, culinary delight?and Italy. Captain James Gould arrives in wartime Naples assigned to discourage marriages between British soldiers and their gorgeous Italian girlfriends. But the innocent young officer is soon distracted by an intoxicating young widow who knows her way around a kitchen...Livia Pertini is creating feasts that stun the senses with their succulence?ruby-colored San Marzana tomatoes, glistening anchovies, and delectable new potatoes encrusted with the black volcanic earth of of Campania?and James is about to learn that his heart may rank higher than his orders. For romance can be born of the sweet and spicy passions of food and love?and time spent in the kitchen can be as joyful and exciting as the banquet of life itself! The School of Essential Ingredients The School of Essential Ingredients follows the lives of eight students who gather in Lillian's Restaurant every Monday night for cooking class. It soon becomes clear, however, that each one seeks a recipe for something beyond the kitchen. Students include Claire, a young mother struggling with the demands of her family; Antonia, an Italian kitchen designer learning to adapt to life in America; and Tom, a widower mourning the loss of his wife to breast cancer. Chef Lillian, a woman whose connection with food is both soulful and exacting, helps them to create dishes whose flavor and techniques expand beyond the restaurant and into the secret corners of her students' lives. One by one the students are transformed by the aromas, flavors, and textures of Lillian's food, including a white-on-white cake that prompts wistful reflections on the sweet fragility of love and a peppery heirloom tomato sauce that seems to spark one romance but end another. Brought together by the power of food and companionship, the lives of the characters mingle and intertwine, united by the revealing nature of what can be created in the kitchen. John Saturnall's Feast A beautiful, rich and sensuous historical novel, John Saturnall?s Feast tells the story of a young orphan who becomes a kitchen boy at a manor house, and rises through the ranks to become the greatest Cook of his generation. It is a story of food, star-crossed lovers, ancient myths and one boy?s rise from outcast to hero. Orphaned when his mother dies of starvation, having been cast out of her village as a witch, John is taken in at the kitchens at Buckland Manor, where he quickly rises from kitchen-boy to Cook, and is known for his uniquely keen palate and natural cooking ability. However, he quickly gets on the wrong side of Lady Lucretia, the aristocratic daughter of the Lord of the Manor. In order to inherit the estate, Lucretia must wed, but her fianc? is an arrogant buffoon. When Lucretia takes on a vow of hunger until her father calls off her engagement to her insipid husband-to-be, it falls to John to try to cook her delicious foods that might tempt her to break her fast. Reminiscent of Wolf Hall and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, John Saturnall?s Feast is a brilliant work and a delight for all the senses.

We are :-) Holly

Check these great cakes out, a couple look familiar...! http://www.buzzfeed.com/sarahjampel/cool-cakes#.ibOQLoVjXo Holly xx

Hello fellow bakers! Thank you to everyone who came on Monday, it was a brilliant night! Our next meeting is: Monday 14th December BAKES YOU ASSOCIATE WITH CHRISTMAS Host: Claudia The time is always 7:45 for 8pm. We decided on our next few themes as well.... Monday 18th January COLOURFUL BAKES Host: Rachel Monday 15th February CHILDRENS BIRTHDAY PARTY Host: Susan Monday 21st March ITALIAN Host: Janet Monday 18th April 70s/80s BAKES Host: Pam Monday 16th May AMERICAN Host: Tash We agreed that we will continue to alternate each time between sweet and savoury, if you really want to swap you have to find someone to swap with! If you are new to the baking group and NOT on our emailing list please message me your email address so we can add you. Our email address is: [email protected]. Looking forward to seeing you in December, as ever, remember to bring a container to take home leftovers and bring a bottle if you fancy a drink! Thanks! Holly x

Thank you for the information about the 'Mince Pie Bake Off', it was discussed at our meeting on Monday actually! I'm away but thanks for bringing it to our attention! Holly

Sorry, my head was in December! Monday 16th!!

Hello :-) Just a reminder that our next meeting is on Monday 14th November at 8pm. The theme is 'Bakes Inspired by Holidays'. That is to say trips at home or abroad, not holidays as in Xmas! Newcomers please message me for the address. Looking forward to seeing everyone! Holly xx

Hello! Thank you so much to everyone who came along this week to 'Make a Bake', it was a brilliant night :-) We chatted about Christmas and decided we did want to have a baking get together. We will do it a week earlier though on Monday 14th December as 21st felt too close to the big day. The theme will be 'Bakes You Associate with Xmas'. Therefore they don't necessarily have to be traditional Christmas bakes but they could be a bizarre family tradition! We also have an email address now, so please email us and we'll add you to our mailing list! [email protected] Our next Make a Bake is: Monday October 19th? GUESS THE SURPRISE UNUSUAL INGREDIENT? Host - Odette(OD)? Look forward to seeing you there! Holly and Tash xxx

Oops, sorry Charmw, I've just realised you're coming in Oct not Sept so you're right, it's an unusual ingredient! Holly x

Hello Charmw! Please do come along in Oct thought the theme is French, you can make sweet or savoury. Alternatively if you bring Tamal you can bring anything you like! Holly x

I want to marry Tamal, does anyone know him?!

I love Nadiya! I'm watching :-)

I've got a kindle so easy for me but happy to change xxx

Hello everyone! I've set up a new thread about the baking group with the new dates of MONDAYS so please see that for details of the next event etc! http://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/forum/read.php?6,1563408 I'll stop using this thread now. Holly xx

Hello fellow bakers! 'Make a Bake' had our first meet up and it was a great success! Thank you so much to everyone who came along, everything tasted so good!!! As well as eating far too much and having some drinks, we chatted about the format for 'Make a Bake'. We've decided to change the date to MONDAYS which works better for most people as that gives you Sunday to bake. The start time will be 7:45/8. We'll take it in turns to host (those that can). We'll have a theme each month and take it in turns to bake sweet and savoury so we have a good balance of both. We divided everyone up into team A or B. Each time one team will do sweet and the other savoury and swap each time. If you're coming for the first time you can make either and then you can join a team when you first come. The teams so far: TEAM A - Holly, Mary, Laura, Susan, Farah, and Rachel. TEAM B - Tash, Claudia, Odette, Ginny and Cath. The themes, dates and hosts for the next three months are: Monday September 21st FRENCH Host - Tash (overcaffeinated) Monday October 19th GUESS THE SURPRISE UNUSUAL INGREDIENT Host - Odette(OD) Monday November 16th BAKES INSPIRED BY HOLIDAYS Host - Ginny(Ginster) Any questions, feel free to post! Looking forward to seeing people in September :-) Holly x