Going to see The Cure in Austin next Sunday!!! SOOOOOOOO jazzed! They're playing Dallas on the 6th, but American Airlines Center is just too damn big. So me and my buddy bleebers are heading down to Austin to see the show at Austin Music Hall, which is a smaller venue.
The Spy is the 3rd novel in Celeste Bradley's Liar's Club series of regency spy romances. This is the story of James Cunnington, whom we met in The Pretender (he's Agatha's brother), and Phillipa Atwater, the daughter of a former Liar's Club cryptologist.
Synopsis: Phillipa, penniless and destitute, is looking for her father who has been abducted by French spies. The only clue she has is a note in her father's notebook about a man named James Cunnington. In order to investigate Cunnington, she poses as a young man and takes a position as tutor to James' adopted son. The spies in the Liars Club believe that her father has changed sides and is now working for the French. James, meanwhile, is trying to settle a personal vendetta against a woman who betrayed him (see The Pretender). He feels responsible for the secrets he allegedly divulged while under the spell of his former lover. To top it off, he's been taken off the
I liked James' character when we first met him in The Pretender. He was kind of funny (in a sardonic sort of way). You could really sense his regret for the secrets he feared he had spilled, and also for the way that he had neglected his sister for all those years. By the time we see him in The Spy, his regret, self-loathing, and general mistrustfulness (is that a word?) have made him a remote and unaffectionate man. Afraid to attach himself to another woman, he has taken in a reformed young pickpocket and named him as his heir so that he won't have to marry to produce an heir of his own. And not only does he not want to have anything to do with women, he also withholds affection and attention from his young "son." Starved for attention, the boy naturally turns to Phillipa, who begins to fulfill a motherly role in the child's life.
James, too, begins to feel a closeness to the young tutor. He feels comfortable around "Phillip" and opens up to him, revealing his feelings of guilt and betrayal. Poor Phillipa longs to comfort him, but has to maintain her disguise. The longer she is with him, the more she comes to realize that James is not a villain and the more she comes to love him. I kind of felt sorry for her. I mean, here she is this poor girl with no family, no money, a lost father, the French and English both are trying to hunt her down and kill her for what she might know, and the man she's in love with is emotionally wasted and thinks she's a boy.
I liked this book for the most part. However, I felt like the "woman posing as a man" thing went on a little too long. I don't generally have a problem with that particular plot device so long as it doesn't go on forever. Because if you wait too long before the other party discovers the truth, then there is not enough time left in the story for that person to believably fall in love with the other person. I think that happened with this book. I also would have liked a bit more excitement on James' end over his perceived betrayal by Phillipa. He gets mad, but he gets over it pretty quickly. Where's the misery? the rage? the oh-no-I've-been-betrayed-again-by-someone-I-love torment? I must confess that I like a little melodramatic anguish in my romance.
So in the end, I gave it 3 stars in my LibraryThing catalog.
Once the jam is done cooking, you are ready to start filling your jars (aka: canning). Turn off the heat under your jam. Using a biggish spoon, skim off the foamy stuff from the top of your jam and just dump it into a cup or bowl.
Using your tongs, pull a jar out of your hot water pot and set the jar upright on the kitchen towel you laid out earlier. Set your funnel into the mouth of the jar. Then take your ladle and scoop up some jam and pour it into the jar until the jar is full. Do not fill the jar to the brim. Instead, you want your jam to come 1/4 inch from the top (this is called "headspace"). Then poke your little plastic knife thing down into the jar and all around the sides a few times to release any air bubbles that may be hiding down in there. Now you're ready to fill the next jar. Repeat the above process until you run out of jam and all the jars are full.
Using a damp cloth, carefully wipe the rim and threading of each jar to get any jam residue off. Next, fish a lid out of the hot water pot and place it, sticky side down, on top of the first jar. Screw a band on over the lid until it fits snugly (not too tight). Repeat this process for the rest of the jars.
Now just leave your jam alone for a few hours. You will hear little satisfying popping sounds coming from the lids as the jam cools. I let mine cool overnight before moving it around. Then you can label the lids with the contents and date.
Once you're all set up, fill up your big pot with water and stick all your jars in there on the rack. You want them upright and the water level in the pot needs to cover them by at least an inch or more. Try to keep the jars from touching one another or the sides of the pot. Find a burner that it will fit on (mine is so big, I can only fit it on the front of my stove). Then turn on the burner to get the water started boiling. This is going to take a long time, so you will want to wait a few minutes before starting to cook your fruit.
While the water is getting going, you'll be cooking your jam. The goal here is to get your fruit to boiling. Turn on the burner to a medium heat setting. The nice thing about Dutch ovens is, you don't need to use high heat to get things to boil in them. In fact, you want to keep your heat as low as possible while still maintaining a boil in the fruit. Once you get the fruit boiling, stir it every few minutes and make sure that the heat is not too high. If your heat is too high, the jam will scorch a little on the bottom and you will get these icky scorched floaties in your jam.
The jam needs to boil for about 25-30 minutes. You're looking for it to reduce down and get a little thicker. The peaches took a little longer to cook than the strawberries did; I think this was because the peaches have more juice in them. You'll get this foamy stuff on the top of the jam as it boils; that's normal. Just keep stirring it and checking on the heat periodically.
Meanwhile, your water will finally start boiling at some point. It needs to boil for at least 15 minutes. Then turn the heat down to a low setting. You want the water to stay hot (180 degrees). Now take the jar lids and drop them down into the hot water. Just let all that sit until your jam is finished cooking.
Once your fruit is ready for action, it's time to set up all your canning gear.
Jam-making is a kind of process, so you will want to lay out your stuff accordingly. The basic process for all of this is going to be:
1. Boil the jars for 15 min. to sterilize
2. Boil the jam for about 25-30 min.
3. Pour jam into hot jars; seal with lids
You will need to put either a wire rack or some folded kitchen towels into the bottom of your giant boiling pot. Mine came with a nice wire rack, so that is what I used. Regardless of which one you use, the main thing is that you want to keep your jars at least an inch or so off the bottom of the pan and you don't want them to touch the sides of the pot. This keeps the jars at an even temperature throughout the process and it also keeps the glass from coming into contact with the metal of the pot and shattering them. (I shattered a couple of jars this way when I first attempted to can all those years ago. It turned me off of the canning process. Fortunately, I am older and wiser now!)
So anyway, wash all those jars, lids, and bands in hot, soapy water and then rinse. Set the bands and lids aside. Next, put the Dutch oven on the stove top and pour your fruit mixture into it. You will not use the lid. Go ahead and lay out some kitchen towels flat by wherever you're planning on dishing out your jam when it's ready. The towels will keep all that hot jam you're going to be accidentally dripping everywhere from getting on your nice countertops. I laid mine out right next to the stove by the Dutch oven. This made it easier to get the hot jars onto the towels and then fill them from the Dutch oven. Now put your jar bands, funnel, and plastic knife next to the towels. Everything is right there and within easy reach.
The first thing to do is prepare the fruit. If you are doing berries, all you really have to do is wash them and then cut off the stems (if any) and maybe slice them a bit. With peaches, you have to take the skin off and pit them. So what you do is, you boil some water and put some of your peaches in a few at a time. Boil them for about 45-60 seconds and then take them out and put them in a big bowl of ice water. (This is called "blanching.") After a minute or so, you take them out of the ice water and the skins are easy to slip off. Once the skins are removed, you just cut them up, taking out the pit.
Now. I won't lie to you. This is a very messy business. My peaches were very ripe and got a bit, uh… pulpy. It made it kind of time-consuming to get all the pits out. However, since peach jam is like manna from heaven, it is well worth the effort. And I now have a new appreciation for my Gran, who puts up like 60 jars of peach jam every summer but only lets me have one little half-pint jar when I come to visit.
Once you get the fruit prepared, get out your potato masher and mush it all up. When it's nicely mushed, you can go ahead and dump in the sugar and lemon juice. Mix it all up and it's ready to go.
I was really intimidated about canning at first. It seems like there are all these steps and everything and it looks Way Too Complicated. But really, it is pretty easy.
This is a super-basic recipe for jam (I got it from my Betty Crocker Cookbook):
4 pints (8 cups) fresh, ripe fruit
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
5 cups sugar
Yes, the fruit must be fresh. And yes, the fruit must be ripe. You don't want to use under-ripe fruit for this. It's tempting, particularly when you see just how much sugar you're dumping in there. Hell, just about anything tastes pretty good when you mix it with 5 cups of sugar. However, the jam will give you a lot more of your fruit's flavor if you use only the ripest fruit. Also, it is very difficult to mash up under-ripe fruit. It makes for hard, crisp bits in your jam and who wants to spread crunchy jam on their biscuits?
Of course, this means that you'll need to select fruit that is in season. I'm making this jam in the summertime, so I'm using summer fruits like berries and peaches. I'm looking forward to making jam out of pears in the fall. (Can you make apple jam, I wonder?)
For these posts, I've used peaches (because peach jam is the best thing EVER!!!). They are just starting to come into season here in
This recipe yields about 3 pints of jam when done with strawberries and 4 pints when done with peaches. I'm thinking that this is because peaches have more juice in them maybe… At any rate, use this as a guide for what size and how many jars you want to buy. I used half-pint jars for most of the batch (for giving away to family and friends) and then used pint jars for the rest (for hording for my greedy self).
The first thing I learned about all this is that you need a lot of crap to make jam. The nice thing is, you just have to invest in it the one time - and really, it's not all that expensive. Most of this stuff will probably last forever.
Here is a basic list of the equipment:
Dutch oven (at least 3.5 qt size)
Big metal pot for boiling (mine is 16 qt)
Some large bowls for preparing & mixing fruit
Wooden spoon
Potato masher
Tongs for taking jars out of hot water
Funnel
Large ladle
Plastic (or other non-metal) knife type thing
A bunch of measuring cups
Canning jars with lids and bands
A whole mess of kitchen towels
I didn't have hardly any of this stuff around my kitchen (except for a few of the utensils), so I had to go shopping. And in case you don't know what a Dutch oven is (I didn't either), it is basically just a big cast-iron pot with an iron lid. I got one with an enamel coating for easier cleanup. I wish I'd bought a bigger size, though. The one I got is only 3.5 quarts and I worried a couple of times that my jam might boil over (luckily, it didn't). And the big metal pot is for boiling your jars in. You don't want to use one of your nice non-stick coated pots for this. All the repeated water boiling is just going to mess up your good pots. I got a cheapo one with an enamel coating and it works just fine. You want to get one that has a broad, flat bottom. Mine also came with a wire rack inside, which is very handy.
I also got this handy little canning toolkit for about $6 at the Wal-Mart. I debated whether I really needed it or not, and I am so glad I got it. All of the tools were really helpful and I would strongly recommend getting this set.
I loves me some jam!
I decided that this summer I would learn to make jam and possibly even do some pickling. All the tasty summer fruits are finally starting to come into season, so I decided to get started this week. Now, I did some canning one time about 15 years ago and it turned out awful. And I have never made jam before. So this week's jam-making has all been a fun learning experience.
Time to get started!!
The Impostor is the 2nd novel in the Liar's Club series of regency romances by Celeste Bradley. We met both Dalton and Clara in the first book in this series, The Pretender. I was very interested in Dalton and was pleased that his story was next.
Synopsis: Dalton Montmorency has a secret identity: he is the new leader of a group of spies known as the Liar's Club. His mission: to ferret out the mysterious cartoonist, Sir Thorogood, before his cartoons can cause any more political havoc. In an effort to flush the man out, Dalton puts on his tackiest waistcoat and his highest heels and enters society claiming to be the cartoonist himself. The widow Clara Simpson also has a secret identity: she is the real Sir Thorogood. And she's mightily annoyed at the dandified impostor. Pretending to be an uncouth simpering bimbo, she sets out to unmask him and prove him for a fraud.
This book is chock full of secret identities. Both hero and heroine assume many different identities as they make their way through the puzzling plot to find the truth. I think the author sets these multiple roles up as a way to allow the characters to display their many facets. Dalton is one of my favorite kinds of hero: very driven and completely emotionally closed off. But when he is posing as a common thief, he can open up a little and let himself express his feelings. Clara also experiences a kind of freedom when posing as a ballsy housemaid. She is free to explore the daring, passionate woman inside. It is when they are in these roles that they allow themselves to explore their feelings for one another. And when their myriad identities are at last revealed, each of them must reconcile these different facets with themselves and with the person they fell in love with.
Favorite Part: It's not so much a particular scene, but I loved how Clara kept drawing and doodling Dalton over and over, sort of as a compulsion.
I gave this book 5 stars in my LibraryThing catalog.
The Pretender is the 1st book in Celeste Bradley's series of regency-era romances centered around a group of spies known as the Liar's Club.
Synopsis: Agatha Cunnington has come to London determined to find her missing brother, James. Though James has grown distant over the past several years, he is all the family she has left and the sheltered country miss is willing to risk whatever it takes to find him. Agatha's got problems, though. She has a conniving neighbor back home who wants to marry her off to his slimy son at the first opportunity. On top of that, a young unmarried lady cannot simply go gallivanting around the capital alone. So Agatha concocts a fake identity for herself: one Mrs. Mortimer Applequist. To make her disguise complete, she enlists her handsome new chimney sweep to pose as Mr. Applequist himself. Simon Raines, spymaster and chimney sweep extraordinaire, cannot believe his good fortune. As the leader of the Liar's Club, a secret ring of spies working for the Crown, he too is searching for James Cunnington. He believes that James is responsible for the recent deaths of several Liars and the leaking of critical information to the enemy. Believing that Agatha is James' mistress, he tries insinuate himself into her confidence while posing as her "husband."
This author came highly recommended to me and I was delighted with this first book. The plot is exciting and I got caught up in the drama involving the secondary characters. Bradley does a good job with character development. Often in romance, one or both of the main characters are really just character archetypes with little depth and simple motives. Bradley's heroes and heroines are complex, with many different emotional motivations based on their unique experiences and needs. Both are wary of telling the truth, but for very different reasons. Agatha is protecting her beloved brother while Simon is duty-bound to keep his mission secret. Then, when it all comes out in the open, Simon struggles with balancing his love for Agatha with his need to protect her from the dangers of being involved with a spy. For her part, Agatha is a very determined woman who selflessly loves her man. I think that's a really admirable quality. When he tries to push her away, instead of taking what she can from him and then letting him go, she focuses all of her energy on loving him and helping him to face his demons.
Favorite Parts: When Agatha "kills off" Mortimer. It's priceless. Also, the scene where "Repulsive Reggie" shows up and Simon nearly annihilates him.
I gave this book 5 stars in my LibraryThing catalog.
For the past few weeks, I've been reading Celeste Bradley's "Liar's Club" and "Royal Four" series of regency-era romantic spy novels. These books contain a continuing storyline with a definite chronological order. The order of each series is listed on the author's web site but, over the course of reading them, I'm finding that the second series actually begins in the midst of the first. There is also a short story thrown into the mix. So. I'm putting down the proper reading order of the books here so I can better keep track.
1. The Pretender (Liar's Club #1)
2. The Impostor (Liar's Club #2)
3. The Spy (Liar's Club #3)
4. "Wedding Knight" in My Scandalous Bride (short story)
5. The Charmer (Liar's Club #4)
6. To Wed a Scandalous Spy (Royal Four #1)
7. The Rogue (Liar's Club #5)
8. Surrender to a Wicked Spy (Royal Four #2)
9. One Night With a Spy (Royal Four #3)
10. Seducing the Spy (Royal Four #4)
I suspect there may be another Liar's Club book forthcoming because of certain plot elements that have not yet been resolved. However, these things may all be resolved in the remaining Royal Four books - I don't know yet. I'm also planning to review all of the books in this series (they really are all excellent); I just have to overcome my laziness and do it.
