WordPress Daily Prompt: BYOB(ookworm)

Write the blurb for the book jacket of the book you’d write, if only you had the time and inclination.

Photographers, artists, poets: show us BOOKS.

Hidden in a cottage on the edge of a cemetary somewhere in a European village where no-one knew her or her blogging background, things happened again. She was sure this was the place where she belonged, Her fingers quivered as they raced over the keyboard. It was a fight against the powers that wanted her and the powers she needed.

The terminal glowed with illuminated vibrancy but she continued undaunted. She was writing the blog of a lifetime and she knew it would be her last blog. There was too much at stake to give up now. The ghosts of her blogging life were waiting in the bytes of the computer, their hunger wanting to devour the prize winning words of her last blog.

A laugh filled the room, she stretched her hand out for a glass of red wine but it tumbled out of her hand, spreading its red juice and blood similar stain over the keyboard, mixing with the crumbs remaining from her breakfast of strawberry jam and toast. She found the various shades of red suited her work, it was 51 Shades of blood red. That this was going to be the last blog she wrote, but she would leave the world of Blog with a deafening roar, a text to shake the foundations of all prompts and challenges.

Read on and discover a blog world unknown to most. What lies behind the backdrop of this devilish work of occult and mystery? Are you hungry for the ultimate judgement of THE Blog? This masterpiece will not disappoint. Why did she have to die? Where was the body? Was this blog finished being guided by an undead brain. An occult adventure on every page. WARNING: not to be read in bed before sleeping.

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WordPress Daily Prompt: Bookworms

Grab the nearest book. Open it and go to the tenth word. Do a Google Image Search of the word. Write about what the image brings to mind.

Photographers, artists, poets: show us BOOKS.

Stewed apples on waffle with whipped cream

As the weather has cooled down I usually sit in the kitchen after my golden oldie sleep at midday, the result being that I am surrounded by cookery books. On top of this non-literature result, most of the cookery books I have are in the German language. For this reason I chose the first cookery book I saw in the English language, Roast Chicken and Other Stories by Simon Hopkinson. You can actually read this book like a normal book although there are not heroes, just the chicken and other food items, but undaunted I opened this masterpiece of literature at a random page titled with “Parmesan Fritters” and selected the tenth word was “flour”. I turned to Google who shows me approximately 100 photos of flour packets. Basically I never use photos from Internet, so chose one of my own as above. All made by myself, down to the waffles. The waffle form was a special offer from Betty Bossi, a Swiss cookery organisation and this was the result.

I like to dabble in cooking, I quite enjoy it. Since the invention of the dish washer I even enjoy it more. Memories of my mum in her somewhat basic kitchen years ago live again, where she never had scales to measure the ingredients and everything was washed up manually. She always made her own pastry and cakes, each time it was a little different, but so was her judgement of how much to use. Today we have a perfect weighing system and all ingredients are available at the local supermarket.

Flour is not just flour. This was one of the first discoveries I made when arriving in a Swiss household to bake my first cake. I discovered that Swiss flour does not have baking powder included. Self-raising flour does not exist in Switzerland (and France as well it seems and no-one knows why. Even aunty Internet does not have the answer. There are many questions why from disturbed anglos such as myself about this problem. So my fate was sealed: for every cake that should rise I had to add the baking powder myself. If you are in the process of making pastry, baking powder is that mysterious ingredient that ensures that your cake rises, so if this is missing your cakes result in something like the unleavened bread from the biblical days of the hasty departure from Egypt to somewhere else, although I think the problem there was the missing yeast. If my cakes had been baked with Swiss flour, there would have been a hasty departure from the table when served, so I had to start at the beginning.

To bake a cake in Switzerland you have to add the baking powder yourself. For pie pastry backing powder is not necessary. To be quite honest I know no average housewife that makes pastry herself. You can buy it ready made in the supermarket, sometimes even already pre-rolled. Oh the joys of modern cooking.

As this is supposed to be a homage to flour, according to the directives of WordPress, let us begin at the beginning. Where does flour originate – see photo

It grows in fields. I am surrounded by these sort of fields at harvest time. I never even knew what wheat looked like until, at the age of ten, when I was on holiday in England where there were wheat fields.

“Dad, what is that growing in that field?”

“I am not sure, I suppose it must be wheat.”

What a deprived childhood I had. To continue, the ears of wheat have to be milled and processed and the white familiar powder is the result. There are various kinds of flour, different colours, different types according to from what seed it is milled. It seems you can mill any seed to make flour, even cannabis seeds, the result being hash or space cakes. Before you ask, no, I have never made them, my supply from my plant in the garden was no enough and I only grow them because of their pretty five fingered leaves. Does WordPress really expect me to be a flour expert. I just buy it and use it.

I decided this blog is becoming boring so I had another look in my cookery book. If you remember, the recipe was for parmesan fritters, not that I have ever made them. It seems you make a white thick sauce, adding egg yolks, parmesan and mozzarella cheese and then … are they crazy? You leave it in the fridge for four hours, overnight would be better. Thus do not make these if you are in a hurry. Eventually you cut up the mixture in squares (is no longer liquid it seems) and fry them in deep hot oil. The author says do not overcrowd the pan, seems that parmesan fritters are a little claustrophobic. Ah, and do not forget to sprinkle them with the extra parmesan and parsley and tuck in the lemon wedges when they are finished.

So there we have it, another masterpiece of literature from the keyboard of Angloswiss, and now I think I have to take another golden oldie restful hour to recover from the exhaustion.


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WordPress Daily Prompt: Bookworm

Tell us about the last book you read (Why did you choose it? Would you recommend it?). To go further, write a post based on its subject matter.

Photographers, artists, poets: show us WORDS.

The Alsatian in the photo belonged to a late friend of mine. It was her guard dog as she was handicapped, a dog to be proud of.

So what does the dog have to do with my daily prompt blog. To start at the beginning, I have a very good colleague on another blogger site, Mitch. He comments on my work, I comment on his and we once had a small discussion about  the late James Herbert, a British author. James Herbert writes normally so-called “horror fiction” and often centres his stories in the east End of London, where my origins are. This is not surprising as he also grew up in this area, his parents having a stall in the local market. He was only a couple of years older than me, but I never met him although probably knew his parents from local visits to the Bethnal Green Road market.

I have not yet read all of his books, but am on my way. Mitch recommended reading the book “Fluke” telling the story of a dog that was once a human. Generally I do not like reading books about animals. I just get too emotional if anything negative happens to the animal. I am an animal lover and one of the reasons I would never want to work at a vets is because I would be too much involved with the animal feelings. I have three felines, my trio infernal, but no dogs. I like dogs, but my felines have a sort of thing about dogs. They run away when they are near, I wonder why?

So I decided to read “Fluke” by James Herbert and found it one of his best books. Just two hundred pages, but packed with stories and emotions, both human and doggy. Fluke was born in an animal home where he was up for adoption. At the beginning he tells of his life snuggled up to other furry creatures like himself. He is eventually adopted but did doggy things his new family did not like (he was a bit careless about where his toilet was) and returned to the home where it was decided he was unadoptable and was on the death list. Fluke ran off and then the adventure starts. He is “adopted” by a large street dog who lived and was a watchdog on a site where cars are dumped. This is somewhere in the South of London and the man in charge appears a dubious character. Fluke’s settles in with his new friend Rumbo. Rumbo is a perfectly trained street dog and always seems to know where his next meal is. Needless to say Fluke learns a lot of doggy tricks from Rambo.

All good things come to an end and one day Fluke finds himself again on the road, but now a fully grown dog and no longer a puppy. He finds a few humans that take him in, for better or worse, wanders off again, and spends life living rough in forests and where he finds shelter. In the meanwhile he realises that he was once a human and finds his way to his human origins. I do not want to make this blog one big spoiler, so read it all for yourself. I can only say that Fluke’s human life does not turn out as he thought it was.

There are a few sentimental moments in the story, but I could live with them. It does not have a happy end or a sad end, but just the life of a roaming dog that wanders on his way. Fluke I grew to love you and your story.