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Books

She Writes Press Holiday Sale: Nov 29 – Dec 6

Posted on November 29, 2013

Buy Americashire for Kindle | Nook | Kobo for 99¢

My fab publisher, She Writes Press, is having a 99¢ ebook holiday sale from Friday, November 29 through Friday, December 6, 2013. Pick up my award-winning Cotswold travel memoir based on this blog, Americashire: A Field Guide to a Marriage, or gift a copy to a friend for a virtual stocking stuffer. Anyone with an iPad, mobile phone or computer can read a Kindle book with the free Kindle app.

While you’re at it, pick up some books from the other fabulous women that are also part of the She Writes Press 99¢ sale, including:

  • Tasting Home, a fabulous food memoir and recipient of a Publisher’s Weekly starred review, among other honors, by Judith Newton
  • Fire & Water, a novel with a gazillion five-star reviews by Betsy Graziani Fasbinder
  • Our Love Could Light the World, a collection of short stories by Anne Leigh Parrish, who has been compared to this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner for literature, Alice Munro
  • Shanghai Love, Layne Wong’s WWII novel set in Shanghai and recipient of a Publisher’s Weekly starred review
  • Duck Pond Epiphany a coming-of-middle-age novel by Tracey Barnes Priestly

And for the writers in your life:

  • What’s Your Book, everything you ever needed to know about writing a book from writing coach and She Writes Press publisher, Brooke Warner
  • Journey of a Memoir, Linda Joy Myer’s how-to for memoir writers
Cotswolds

Ode to the Pheasant: It’s turkey time, but I’ve got pheasant on the mind

Posted on November 27, 2013
This blog first appeared on Anglophiles United
 

My move to the Cotswolds started in 2007 with a rented cottage for weekends away from London. It only took six months until my husband and I were seduced by the countryside into buying our own place, where we, along with legions of other Londoners, continued the weekend ritual of self-imposed exile for the next year. Then, finally, in 2009, I took a job within commuting distance of our weekend village and left the city behind for good.

It was not, however, my status as a full-time resident that made me finally feel like a local. This, instead, was marked by the evolution of my attitude towards a bird, a feathered creature that dominates the English rural landscape by virtue of both its abundance and airheadedness. I write, of course, of the pheasant.

My early encounters with the creature were marked by fawning. While out on a bike ride I would stop to admire the miniature beasts as they foraged the fields: the male with his crimson masquerade mask over a hood of teal, the female cloaked in a humbler but still handsome pattern of nutty browns. (I couldn’t help admiring mother nature for the role reversal from humans in giving the male the responsibility for seducing a mate with his sartorial flair.) But soon my fawning and photographing morphed into annoyance. Too often when caught off guard—which was, apparently, always—the pheasant would panic and scurry toward our bikes rather than away. On the steep downhills of the wolds, the pheasant became responsible for one too many near misses of going head over handlebars. The same was true for driving; these birds are drawn to rather than repelled by headlights. I suppose it was inevitable, but the time finally came when such an encounter ended badly for both bird and car. It happened too fast to be sure, but there, on the steep downhill-side of the Fossebridge dip in the moments before impact, I’m sure I spotted this death-wish-with-a-plume flying straight for the car grill.

Not long after, I had my second encounter with a dead pheasant, this time in a farmhouse kitchen where my husband and I had been invited for Sunday lunch. This weekly gathering is a fixture of English life, and a ritual I had admired since we first moved from Los Angeles to London. Now we had been invited to our first Sunday lunch since becoming residents of the Cotswolds, and we were titillated at the prospect. We joined our hosts and two other guests around a weathered pine table, where the pheasant pie was served in a puff pastry-topped casserole dish, much the same as an American chicken pot pie. When I remarked with enthusiasm to the hostess that it was the first time I had ever eaten pheasant, she dismissed the dish as an excuse to rid her freezer of them. (Hers is a sentiment I imagine is shared by hundreds of other spouses of game shooters all around the English countryside.) Despite this, I enjoyed the meal, relieved to learn there was a savory use for this majestic if dopey bird. The afternoon continued to deliver on all my expectations of a proper English Sunday lunch. By the time snowflakes started dancing outside the kitchen window, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson had walked through the door and joined us for the cheese course.

My transition from London expat to Cotswold local had been gradual, marked by subtle milestones—the first time I wore tweed without irony, for instance. But it wasn’t until I asked for a second helping of pheasant pie in that farmhouse kitchen that I felt like a real Cotswoldian for the very first time. Should you ever be in the position to make use of a pheasant that has met with an unfortunate end, here’s that recipe for pheasant pot pie:

Ingredients
3.5 tbsp (about half a stick) butter
1/2 lb. pancetta
4 leeks, cut into large chunks
3 celery sticks, sliced
3 carrots, halved lengthwise and sliced
2 bay leaves
3 tbsp plain flour
1 and 1/4 cups cider
2 cups chicken stock
2 tbsp double cream
6 pheasant breasts, skinned and cut into large chunks
3 tbsp wholegrain mustard
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 package of puff pastry
plain flour, for dusting
egg beaten with a little milk, to glaze

Directions
Heat the butter in a casserole dish and cook the pancetta for 1 minute until it changes color. Add the leeks, celery, carrots and bay leaves, and cook until they start to soften. Stir the flour into the vegetables until it goes a sandy color, then add the cider and reduce. Pour in the chicken stock, stir, then add the cream. Season, then bring everything to a simmer. Add the pheasant and gently simmer for 20 minutes until the meat and vegetables are tender. Stir through the mustard and vinegar, then turn off the heat and cool.

Heat oven to 425 degrees. Pour the mixture into a large rectangular dish. Roll the pastry out on a floured surface, place over the dish and trim round the edges, leaving an overhang. Brush the pastry with egg, then decorate with any leftover pastry, if you like. Sprinkle with a little sea salt. The pie can now be frozen for up to 1 month; defrost completely before baking. Bake for 30-35 minutes until golden. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 5 minutes before serving.

England

Best of the British Isles: A Gift Giving Guide for Anglophiles

Posted on November 6, 2013

It’s November, which means (hurrah!) it’s socially acceptable to start talking about holiday shopping. If you’re in need of a gift for the Anglophile in your life—even if that’s you—look no further than my list of favorite things hailing from or inspired by the British Isles.

Riley’s Gastronomic Guide to the British Isles

For the Foodie

Riley’s Gastronomic Guide is a charming illustrated map of all things edible in the British Isles. How else is a self-respecting Anglophile supposed to know where to find Star Gazy Pie?

It may not have made Riley’s Gastronomic Guide, but Grasmere Gingerbread in the heart of the Lake District deserves a mention. The village is best known for Dove Cottage, William Wordsworth’s former home, but the gingerbread that’s been produced there since the mid-nineteenth century is equally poetic. Luckily they deliver overseas.

You’re going to need some tea to wash down all that gingerbread and, short of moving to the Cotswolds, a piece of china from Emma Bridgewater is the easiest way to invoke that feeling of English cottage cozy. Plus, this line of English pottery has managed to do the seemingly impossible in creating tasteful tat to commemorate royal events. Prince George mug, anyone?

For the Dandy

When we first moved to the Cotswolds, the Cirencester-based gentlemen’s clothier, Pakeman, Catto & Carter, was the destination of choice for my husband to suit up in the local garb (think corduroy, tweed, and the occasional velvet collar). Their selection of accessories includes pheasant cuff links, mother of pearl collar stays, and a flat cap made from their specially commissioned 150th anniversary tweed. I also love their selection of women’s pajamas.

Clothes and accessories in Liberty art fabric prints are another classic option. Shop a curated selection of Liberty clothes and accessories at J.Crew and avoid overseas shipping costs to the U.S.

For the Bibliophile

Just in time for Christmas are three new offerings from classic British franchises. Sebastian Faulks brings us the first new Jeeves and Wooster novel in forty years, which makes a perfect pairing with Liberty’s Jeeve’s Bowler Hat table lamp. William Boyd has penned a new installment of James Bond, Solo, set in 1969 in West Africa, and Helen Fielding gives us the next phase in the life and times of Bridget Jones, now 51 (!), in Mad About the Boy. And, if you’re looking to try something new, I humbly suggest my own Cotswoldian memoir, Americashire: A Field Guide to a Marriage.

California

In Search of the Cotswolds of California: Ojai

Posted on October 26, 2013
View of the Ojai Valley from the Ojai Retreat

Within two years of moving to London, my husband and I had started taking regular weekend trips to the Cotswolds in search of some respite from city life. True to form, now that we’ve been in Los Angeles for almost two years, the search for the Cotswolds of California has begun. The criteria are the same: our weekend escape must be within a two-hour drive of the city and offer scenic outdoor activities for the day and peace and quiet for the night, good food and drink, a dose of culture, and, preferably, an assortment of eclectic locals.

Last month we headed northeast to Ojai in our quest. The drive was mostly along the PCH before heading inland near Ventura, and the approach was not as promising as I had hoped. State Road 33 was occasionally marked by dingy-looking retail in a setting of hills baked to straw from months of summer sun. As we rose in the hills, so did the temperature, reaching a crackling 90 degrees before we arrived at the hotel.

We had declined to reserve at the area’s most well-known accommodation, the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa, due to the hefty price tag. (Later we visited the grounds in the vain search for a drink—despite an abundance of waiters setting up for dinner on a veranda, we failed to ever get the attention of one—and, while immaculate, it reminded me a little too much of a gated retirement community in Florida.) Instead we stayed three miles out of the center of town at the hilltop Ojai retreat, just on the edge of Meiners Oaks. The hotel is well-appointed but not luxurious. Most the rooms are individual cottages, including private patios with views of the surrounding Ojai Valley. From up here, things started to look more like the Edenistic version of California I was expecting: bluejays, bougainvillea and oleander hemmed in by groves of orange and pomegranate in the distance. It is flora and fauna as emblematic of California as rapeseed, mayblossom, and cow parsley are of the English countryside.

BookEnds Bookstore in Meiners Oaks, Ojai

After checking in, we drove into town and took refuge from the heat along the shaded pathway of the Spanish-style arcade that runs the length of the city’s central block. I stopped for a soda at the type of old-fashioned candy store that’s obligatory in quaint tourist towns. Since Ojai is a quaint California tourist town, there was also no shortage of masseurs and new-agey shops. Our requirement for a dose of culture was fulfilled just around the corner from candy store, where, at the Ojai Arts Center, preparations were underway for a performance of A Streetcar Name Desire.

For dinner, we walked the twenty minutes from our hotel into Meiners Oaks, where two couples have elevated the retail landscape with a well-appointed bookstore and an acclaimed café. The former is a retirement project for Marcia Doty and Celeste Matesev, housed in a converted chapel where the books are displayed in pews. Steve Sprinkel and Olivia Chase are, respectively, Farmer and the Cook at their eponymous vegetarian salad bar and market, adding the café at weekends. They do glorious things with food, including legitimizing jalapeno poppers for those of us who think of ourselves as foodies by stuffing their version with goats cheese. The crowd around us at dinner, full of gentle-looking pony-tailed men wearing rope sandals and late middle-aged women wearing pixie cuts, seemed to be enjoying their food as much as we did. We ended the evening sitting on the patio of our hotel room, soaking up the silence and the stars.

Outskirts of Meiners Oaks

By the time we had finished a long, dusty walk around the perimeter of Meiners Oaks on Saturday morning, the sun was already blazing. This time we escaped the heat back in the center of town at the Ojai Playhouse, a restored movie theater, conveniently located next door to the Jester, a pub owned by an Ojai resident originally from Birmingham, England. He is not the only Brit to have settled here. Sheffield native John Wilcock, co-founder of The Village Voice and long-time travel writer, also calls Ojai home. To make good on our cultural intentions, we spent the early part of the evening at a poetry reading at BookEnds. Dinner was at Deer Lodge, a cleaned-up honky tonk specializing in burgers and chili, followed by dessert at the Ranch House, a hidden garden at the bottom of our hotel’s road.

We spent Sunday morning eating a lazy breakfast on the hotel’s communal patio while scanning the real estate ads of a local magazine. This, to me, is the ultimate sign of a successful weekend away. It’s not the same as the house porn of watching HGTV, composed of alternating yet equal parts envy and marvelment that money can’t buy taste. Instead, we were trying on a new life like a new dress, much as we had six years ago in the Cotswolds. Only this time we were imagining what it would be like to live amongst the eucalyptus- and tortilla-scented air of this peaceful slice of California.

 

The Details + More pictures of Ojai on Pinterest

Ojai Retreat
http://www.ojairetreat.com
160 Besant Rd.
Ojai, CA 93023
(805) 646-2536

Farmer and the Cook
http://www.farmerandcook.com/
339 W. El Roblar
Meiners Oaks
Ojai, California 93023
(805) 640-9608

Bookends Bookstore and other Curiosities
http://bookendsbookstore.com/
110 S. Pueblo Ave.
Meiners Oaks
Ojai, California 93023
(805) 640-9441

Deer Lodge
http://deerlodgeojai.com/
2261 Maricopa Hwy
Ojai, CA 93023
(805) 646 4256

Cotswolds

English Lessons for Americans in England

Posted on October 1, 2013

My thoughts on learning to speak the Queen’s English are up in a post on JustLanded.com. These include my greatest hits of faux pas as a fresh arrival to London. Surely I’m not the only one to mistake the Chelsea Physic Garden for a bucolic retreat for fortune tellers?

Cotswolds

A Family-Friendly Foodie Guide to the Cotswolds

Posted on September 8, 2013

One of my enduring memories of Paris is eating lunch at a sidewalk café on the Rue Cler next to a table at which the most radiant French family was also dining. Their party included several small children, all wearing outfits that appeared to cost substantially more than the contents of my entire wardrobe, and all sitting politely and using utensils to do adept things like remove slices of buffalo mozzarella from a deconstructed caprese salad served in a jam jar. They were the embodiment of Pamela Zuckerman’s book, French Children Don’t Throw Food, and I experienced a moment of deep national envy.

But never fear: Even if the manners and tastes of your little ones are lacking the luster of my ideal French family, it’s no reason to compromise your own gastronomic ambitions on your next holiday in the Cotswolds. Granted, you’re probably not going to be dining avec les tout-petits at any Michelin-starred restaurants, although, for the record, there are four of them in the area, including the three-starred Le Champion Sauvage in Cheltenham. Instead, try one of the options in our family-friendly foodie guide, each handpicked to keep all ages’ palates pleased.

A gourmet guide

Say Cheese
It’s the mainstay of childrens’ diets around the world, whether served on toast or atop macaroni. Luckily the Cotswolds is full of it, from Double Gloucester to goats’ milk varieties. Look out for offerings from the Windrush Valley Goat Dairy and CerneyCheese while shopping at the acclaimed Saturday Stroud Farmers’ Market or The Cotswold Table, a newer market with a growing reputation that takes place on select Sundays in Kingham. Alternately, if royal baby mania has drawn you to the market town of Tetbury—home to new grandparents Charles and Camilla—stop in the House of Cheese. It specializes in farm-made cheeses and stocks 120 types.

Luscious Libations
Let’s face it, you’re going to need some wine to go with all that cheese. The Ox House WineCompany in Northleach specializes in offerings from small producers around the world. Indulge in their great selection of wines by the glass while the kids enjoy a hot chocolate. Don’t miss the wine barn in the back for great bottles to take away. As an added bonus, the World of Mechanical Music is just across the square and offers and eccentric assortment of self-playing music and automata to keep the kids amused.

Festival Fun
Why not make a day of gluttony at one of the many food festivals that take place throughout the Cotswolds? The British Asparagus Festival in the Vale of Evesham includes a mascot, Gus the Asparagus Man, and, this year, an asparagus-shaped soapbox cart, the AsparaCart. In other words, it just may succeed in making vegetables interesting to your kids. Other festivals to be on the lookout for include the Cheltenham Food Festival, and the Cotswold Food and Farming Festival in Bourton-on-the-Water.

Farm-to-Table
Farm-to-table eating is all the rage, and there’s no better place to teach kids about where food comes from than the Cotswolds. Start with a visit to a working farm like Butts Farm in South Cerney, near Cirencester. The shop is open year round, and, from Easter until the end of September, kids can help bottle feed lambs, collect eggs, and milk goats. To up the luxury quotient, stop into Daylesford Organic near Kingham, the mothership of the eponymous outlets in London, Surrey, and Tokyo. The food produced for their shop and café doesn’t come cheap, but it does come straight from their animals, creamery and market garden and tastes divine.

Sweet Treats
End your visit to the Cotswolds on a sweet note with an evening at The Pudding Club in Mickleton, a lovely village
on the northern edge of the Cotswolds, close to both Hidcote Manor Garden and Stratford-upon-Avon. The lofty aim of The Pudding Club is to preserve the traditional English pudding, from Sussex Pond to Spotted Dick, but it’s really just an excuse to eat seven puddings for supper. For something simpler but just as sweet, try Winstones Cotswold Ice Cream Shop on the edge of the National Trust’s Rodborough Common.

Note: This post originally appeared on HomeAway.co.uk on the same date it’s back-published here.

Books

Americashire FREE on Kindle August 29-31st

Posted on August 29, 2013

For your Labor Day weekend reading pleasure, from August 29-31, Americashire: A Field Guide to a Marriage, is available as a FREE Kindle download. To download it from the US Amazon store click here. To download it from the UK Amazon store click here. Happy reading!

England

Ode to Sunday Lunch

Posted on August 23, 2013

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My love of travel and marriage to a Brit have meant that, at the age of 41, I have made a home in four countries outside the U.S. Throughout my life as an expat, food has always been my favorite portal to a culture: A country reveals itself in the way it breaks bread. In Singapore, citizens belied their buttoned-up reputation in the raucous aisles of the evening hawker stalls, where my favorite meal was nasi goreng, served up on a plastic plate and washed down with a large bottle of Tiger beer. In Berlin, pragmatic stereotypes prevailed, and I acquired a Teutonic appreciation for the importance of the first meal of the day, Frühstück. And in England, where I have lived the longest, I made a rookie error in assuming the tourist staple of high tea at a fancy hotel was the country’s quintessential meal, prim and proper as the Queen herself. It turns out that Sunday lunch, a far more languorous affair, holds that mantel. In the below excerpt from Americashire: A Field Guide to a Marriage, my memoir of life in the English Cotswolds, I recount one of my favorite experiences of this most British of meals…Read the rest over on Transitions Abroad, who were kind enough to post the excerpt.

Books

Great British Summer Goodreads Giveaway

Posted on July 11, 2013

Last summer the UK had the Olympics, but this summer isn’t too shabby either. The Stones finally played Glastonbury, Andy Murray won Wimbledon, and, according to Twitter, Kate Middleton is in labour as I type. To celebrate all things great about this Great British summer, there’s a Goodreads giveaway for my book, Americashire, running now through August 8th. Hurry on over and enter now. It’s open to UK residents as well as many of the notable former colonies (by which I mean Australia, Canada and the U.S.).

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Americashire by Jennifer Richardson

Americashire

by Jennifer Richardson

Giveaway ends August 08, 2013.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win