The Keeping Room: A Beginning

Friday, March 13, 2009

A Beginning

A keeping room is a small place in the home just off the kitchen, a warm, inviting nook where one may settle in front of the fireplace and be alone or with a friend...a space in which to think and muse and reflect. Here is a corner of mine...the teapot is filled and wearing its cozy! Cup and saucer or a mug? Milk and sugar?

6 comments:

Tom Atkins said...: Welcome to the world of blogs and blogging. It will be interesting to see where your minds and thoughts take us!; March 15, 2009 at 7:06 PM
FireLight said...: My minds, Tom? You can see right through US...what is know in medical terms as multiple personalities!(chuckling)
Thanks for your kind welcome and encouragement!
You are Number 1!; March 15, 2009 at 8:32 PM
Rowan said...: I love your Keeping Room, it looks very inviting to a domesticated soul like me. Welcome to the land of blogging:); March 17, 2009 at 3:04 AM
Mark said...: I love the idea of a "keeping room". Thanks for sharing.; March 18, 2009 at 1:25 PM
Tess Kincaid said...: Congratulations! And welcome to the bloggyhood (although you've been a visitor for some time now)! Your blog is WON-derful, like I knew it would be. You know I'll be a regular at your cozy keeping room.; March 23, 2009 at 7:11 AM
FireLight said...: Thank you for stopping by! You are my inspiration. Yes I have been reading about six weeks now! And thanks to Life at Willow Manor, I am totally hooked! I did change the photo last night to one in my home. This is where we gather, read, and dine most evenings.
My original photo was from an inn in New England. I am currently "taking lessons" on all the fancy cameras that the guys have. This shot was made with my Blackberry.; March 23, 2009 at 8:41 AM

Here is what I often call Crumbly Gingerbread

I found the recipe on a postcard I sent home to a friend when I visited Grasmere in 1986. This is very close to the gingerbread sold at St. Oswald's church there in Grasmere. This is marvelous with your hot tea. The real secret is adding the sugar at the very last-not blending it with the margerine. I use either a fork or pastry blender to "rub" in the margarine with flour and oats. I have copied it as it appeared on the postcard and added my American interpretation of measurements for certain ingredients.

9 oz brown wheatmeal flour
(1 rounded cup wholewheat flour)
3 oz porridge oats
(1/2 cup Three Minute Quaker oats)
3/4 level tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 1/2 level tsp cream of tartar
3 level teaspoons ground ginger
9 oz hard margarine
(1 to 1 1/2 sticks od Parkay-the less you use, the more crumbly the texture)
9 oz soft brown sugar
(1 rounded cup)

Set oven to 325 degrees or Mark 3. Well grease a shallow tin 14" by 9". Put flour, oats, bicarbonate of soda, cream of tartar, and ginger in a bowl. Add the margarine cut into small pieces. Rub in well with fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in sugar. Put into tin and press down firmly with a floured fork. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes until pale brown. Cut into squares whilst warm and leave in tin until completely cold. Keeps well in airtight tin.

The Secret Heart

Here is my Valentine to every parent who remembers looking on a sleeping child...and lingering in the moment....
Enjoy & linger,
Firelight

by Robert P. Tristram Coffin

Across the years he could recall
His father one way best of all.
In the stillest hour of night
The boy awakened to a light.

Half in dreams, he saw his sire
With his great hands full of fire.
The man had struck a match to see
If his son slept peacefully.

He held his palms each side the spark
His love had kindled in the dark.
His two hands were curved apart
In the semblance of a heart.

He wore, it seemed to his small son,
A bare heart on his hidden one,
A heart that gave out such a glow
No son awake could bear to know.

It showed a look upon a face
Too tender for the day to trace.
One instant, it lit all about,
And then the secret heart went out.

But it shone long enough for one
To know that hands held up the sun.

May 20th is the 400th Anniversary of the Publication of Shakespeare's Sonnets: Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! It is an ever fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
William Shakespeare

Friday, March 13, 2009

A Beginning

6 comments:

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