Last month I spent a long weekend in the Lake District, the beautiful area in North West England renowned for its lakes, mountains and literary associations: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles and Mary Lamb, Robert Southey, Beatrix Potter and John Ruskin all lived there at some point in their lives. Continue reading “The Lake District: Poetry and Grasmere Gingerbread”
Tag: gingerbread
Gingerbread from Shakespeare
So next we made – and filmed – Shakespearean gingerbread. The original post and recipe can be found here
A Shakespeare Feast
Something a bit different this week. I thought – following the suggestion of a friend – that it would be a nice idea to get together a group of my friends who live locally and have been complimentary about my blog, and feed them. Thus, the Shakespeare Feast was designed.
Spicing it up
The history of ginger in English cookery and literature is similar to that of sugar – see here. Like sugar, ginger is not native to England; its origins lie in South Asia, and over time its cultivation spread to East Africa and the Caribbean. As with sugar, it is thanks to the Crusades that ginger was brought to the west. And like sugar, ginger was expensive – a pound of ginger was the same price as a sheep – though nowhere near as expensive as black pepper, which cost more by weight than gold. Used for medicinal and culinary purposes, including in wine, ginger was also commonly imported in a preserved form and made into sweets. Continue reading “Spicing it up”