Am I always thinking about the biography I’m researching or am I always thinking about the biography I’m researching? Hard to say…
“Always remember, your focus determines your reality.”–George Lucas
Little house on a hill
“An old house that had lived its life long ago and so was very quiet and wise and a little mysterious. Also a little austere, but very kind.”–L.M. Montgomery
My momma’s birthday is today! We celebrated it last night with a tasty meal at home. I try to make those I love a special dessert for their special day. Our resources and mobility are limited these days, obviously. Because of this, I needed to make something with ingredients I had at home. I decided that it was finally time to make Emily Dickinson’s coconut cake. It’s been on my radar for at least 12 years. No joke.
Emily’s handwritten recipe
I used this post as my guide. Like that blogger, I mixed the cake by hand.
Since this was for my mom’s birthday, I embellished the cake a bit by adding a blueberry glaze* before topping it with walnuts and confectioners’ sugar.
Birthday cake
The cake itself is moist, flavorful, and not overly sweet. Perfect with a cup of tea.
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*For the glaze, I added approximately 3/4 cup blueberries and 1 cup of confectioners’ sugar to a blender and mixed it until it was smooth.
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“Hold dear to your parents for it is a scary and confusing world without them.”–Emily Dickinson
Happy birthday, mom! I love you.
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I hope you are all well during these difficult, uncertain times. Have a great weekend.
“Elegance is elimination.”–Balenciaga
Ngaio Marsh by Henry Herbert Clifford (1935).
This 85-year-old photograph of New Zealand writer Ngaio Marsh proves that elegance, coziness, and individuality can be as stylish as anything out of the pages of a 21st-century fashion magazine.
Embellishments are minimal: an eccentric shoulder, a few buttons, an indifferently tilted hat, a bit of pattern and texture here or there.
Clean lines. Confidence.
She is, more than anything, mysterious.
How appropriate.
Pride and Prejudice was published on this day in 1813:
Pride and Prejudice
“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book!–When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”–Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
“Nature does not create works of art. It is we, and the faculty of interpretation peculiar to the human mind, that see art.”–Man Ray
Katherine Mansfield died on 9 January 1923.
Katherine Mansfield.
“When we begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them.”–Katherine Mansfield
“Authors do not supply imaginations, they expect their readers to have their own, and to use it.”–Nella Larsen
Nella Larsen (1928). Photographed by James Allen.
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”–The White Album
“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
“I am a writer. Imagining what someone would say or do comes to me as naturally as breathing.”–The Year of Magical Thinking
