This collection of animal stories is so depressing: every animal ends up dead in deeply unpleasant circumstances. I know nature is cruel and everything, but I could do with a bit of gentleness right now...

Franz Marc painted this fox in 1911, a year after this book was published. Just like the author, he died in WWI. Pic in the Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In 2025, I will be reading books set in, or written by authors with a strong connection to the Doubs département (nb 25), starting with the tagged title by Louis Pergaud, whose complete works I found on my grandparents' shelves when we emptied their house. In the book was a dedication dated 31-01-1975 I hadn't noticed before 😲

It received the Prix Goncourt in 1910, 5 years before Pergaud's death near Verdun, during the First World War.

Today is the anniversary of the first abolition of slavery in France, unanimously declared on the 4th of February 1794 (16 pluviôse an II) by the Convention during the French Revolution, before being rescinded a few years later by Napoléon. I would have liked more details to be included in the tagged book, but Eric Hazan makes it clear that the abolition was imposed by Haitian slaves rather than gifted magnanimously from mainland France, so👍

That Tom Gauld cartoon from the Guardian seems relevant to the book I am reading.

I *think* this is my last Dutch recipe: kibbeling: https://www.196flavors.com/netherlands-kibbeling/
They're basically bite-size battered fish. They're less of a faff than full-size battered fish and the addition of a spice rub was nice. The recipe called for a full tablespoon of ground bay leaf, which I felt was a lot, so I only put a fraction, and still it was all I could taste! Will make again.
#Netherlands #FoodandLit
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I watched La grande magie, a film adapted from Italian author Eduardo De Filippo's play The Great Magic & so wanted to read it to deepen my understanding. I enjoyed both, but I think I like what Noémie Lvovsky made of the play better than the original 😱 It's less farcical & more dreamlike.
https://www.advitamdistribution.com/films/la-grande-magie/
My copy (not in the database) also contained the 1-act play Sik-Sik.

Last week, I made kletskoppen, using this online recipe: https://www.thespruceeats.com/classic-kletskoppen-recipe-1128529 and not the tagged book. I divided the amounts by 10. The batter spread so much it ended up being 1 giant rectangular cookie, that I then cut into pieces. I was hoping they'd be like almond thins, but lacier. The flavour profile was v. similar, but they were thicker and really hard. I've got to try again and concentrate!

When looking for Dutch recipes, I came across a book that's unfortunately not translated (nor is it in the database): Couperus Culinair. Page sample here: https://issuu.com/lubberhuizen2/docs/ubl_couperus_lr_incompleet-tmp29
Having just finished Eline Vere by Couperus, I was interested but all I can do is look at the pretty pictures, which I suppose is better than nothing 😁
#Netherlands #FoodandLit
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I finished Eline Vere yesterday. It took longer than anticipated. I read the 19th c. US English translation available on Everand, and unsurprisingly, it was a little dated but perfectly readable. Eline is a good example of an ambiguous, often unsympathetic, character. Her flaws felt very modern and transposable to our society. She is immature, flighty, and lacks self-reflection, but at the same time she is sensitive, artistic, and she means well.

Here's my Christmas haul! It's a bit late because I took my time cashing in my Christmas gift voucher and the book that was a direct present was mislaid by the post office 🙃
So, I got:
The Book Censor's Library by Bothayna Al-Essa
L'énigme du nom propre (poems) by 15th c. Uzbek author Alisher Navoiy
Jâmi's Mejnun & Layla
Nezâmi's Mejnun & Layla
Palpasa Café (for #Nepal #FoodandLit)
Barzakh by Mauritanian author Moussa Ould Ebnou

Very happy!

Isn't it nice when you read today's date in your book 😁It feels so fitting...
Also, Happy Birthday Eline!

#Netherlands #FoodandLit
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As it's Sunday, I made Dutch Sunday Soup, from the tagged book. It is made with whatever vegetables are in season (I used leek, carrots, celeriac, celery, Jerusalem artichokes and romanesco), small pieces of beef, veal meatballs flavoured with nutmeg, and vermicelli. Perfectly fine.
#Netherlands #FoodandLit
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That was an uncomfortable read. The bleakness and feeling of unease were unrelenting. Some readers love it, but I'm a sensitive soul: it was too much for me and in the end, I just ploughed through as fast as I could to get it over with.
#Netherlands #FoodandLit
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Pic of a traditional Dutch farm by Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I made the tagged book's chervil pie. Nice. The dough was a bit hard - not surprising given that it called for just 50g of butter for 200g or flour - but at least, that made it a lot less caloric than regular shortcrust. The filling was cream cheese (I used fromage frais), eggs, chervil, chives (I used a bit of leek) and tarragon.
#Netherlands #FoodandLit
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For my first #classicschallenge2025, I am reading a 7th-century collection of love poems dedicated to Leyla by the poet/narrator Majnun - the Arab Romeo and Juliet.

And as it happens, yesterday was Epiphany, which we celebrate with a cake/pie with a small figurine hidden inside. Whoever finds it is the king/queen. I got it, and it's in the exact same colour scheme as the book's cover!

@Lunakay

Catalan magical realism set in the Pyrenees and centered on the women of a farming family, both living and ghosts. Quite dark and brutal, but also poetic. This is my second book from this author and I am looking forward to the next one.

Picked up the tagged book on Jan, 1st. It opened of its own accord on page 100: fosco (cold chocolate drink) and poffertjes (drop scones/thick pancakes made with plain & buckwheat flour), which apparently “were a traditional New Year treat in North Holland“. That was fate & obviously, I had to try them. Very nice! Will definitely make them again 👍

#Netherlands #FoodandLit
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This book's title (Le mariage parfumé - the perfumed marriage) sounds like it should be 19th-century orientalist erotica, but it actually is a collection of Portuguese nursery rhymes, paired with their French translation/adaptation, and full, or even double-page illustrations. Very nice, although no doubt more useful to a French/Portuguese mixed family (and there are thousands of those in France) than to me...

Last Sunday, I made salmon soup (very comforting) with rye crackers (probably thinner & browner than in the instructions, but when still warm from the oven, they're nicer than shop-bought ones) and rossoli, a beetroot, cooked carrot and potato salad that apparently is a Christmas staple (SO's judgment was “very German and quite nice“ 😏 😂)
#Finland #FoodandLit
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Well I know what I want to read for #FoodandLit #Netherlands: the French translation of the tagged book. There was an article about the 2 female authors here: https://www.liberation.fr/culture/livres/elisabeth-wolff-et-agatha-deken-quatre-...
But it looks like the book's OCR isn't ready so I'd have to read the PDF of the 1787 print, and I'm not sure I'm ready for this😅
@Catsandbooks @Texreader

After the end of WWII, various members of a German middle-class family (2 appalled by nazism, others former nazis, including passionate believers & 1 wartime criminal) all end up in Rome for a few days for different reasons. It's incredibly bleak & shows how the nazi ideology never went away: people were just more discreet & biding their time. I hope it hasn't come. Not good for my anxiety level but an important book, written in the 50s.

Another Finnish graphic work, this time about the author's grandmother. She tells her grandson about her life and her family in 20th-century #Finland - and then writes it down because he never stays long enough to hear all, despite all the coffee and pastries she serves him...
Clearly, they had a hard, hand-to-mouth life for quite a long time. This is quite a bittersweet book.

#Finland #FoodandLit
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Book's narrator is a Southern Finn with a fascination for Lapland (Sápmi) who finds a job as a librarian in a small Sámi community & becomes a local artist's boyfriend (the frog-woman of the title) as she spirals into a depression triggered by her grandmother's death & cultural alienation. Very literary & quite didactic, with lots of jumping-off points for further research, which I like. Sámi author.
#Finland #FoodandLit
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For lunch today, I ate the last of the Karelian pasties, and finished with a salted coffee. This is how one of the older characters who does things in the old-fashioned ways drinks his in the tagged book, and I was curious. I found it OK flavour-wise, but difficult mentally: to me it tastes of coffee-flavoured tears. It's reminiscent of heartbreak & funerals 😂
#Finland #FoodandLit
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Today, I made Karelian pasties, using mainly this recipe: https://www.saimaalife.com/recipe-finnish-karelian-pies/ I was very bad at shaping them 😞
I served them with mushroom soup, which although not specifically Finnish I thought would go well with them. Quite nice.
#Finland #FoodandLit
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I made pyttipanna (or pyttipannu) using the Moomins cookbook 😁: it's fish, potatoes and onions fried together, and served with beetroot, gherkins and a fried egg. Easy comfort food!
(French readers will notice a spelling mistake on the page 🙄)
#Finland #FoodandLit
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I found a book about Finnish female artist Helene (Helena) Schjerfbeck at the library. It feels extraordinary that in the 19th c. she was able to travel freely, receive grants to study in Paris, join like-minded painters, win medals. Surely, she should be better-known.
The book centers on her portraits, which I enjoyed, but I would have liked it better if some of her other work had been included...
#Finland #FoodandLit
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French Wikipedia says today (December, 9 - Saint Ann's day) is the day Norwegians and Finns start soaking stockfish so they can have lutefisk (called lipeäkala in Finnish) on Christmas eve. Making it from scratch is a deeper dive into Finnish cuisine that I am ready to commit to for #FoodandLit, but if I ever see lutefisk on a restaurant menu somewhere, I might order it. Did someone here try it?
#Finland
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I read The Last Book of Hope (not in the database) rather than the tagged book, but it'll have to do. Those comic strips are melancholic and rather obscure sometimes. I chose a quintessentially Finnish page, with sauna nudity cropped out. Most strips went over my head, but they were still interesting.
#Finland #FoodandLit
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Grandkid's haul for Saint-Nicholas's Day is a charming book about children helping Saint Nicholas, translated from Dutch. The pictures are cute, inclusive and detailed, and best of all, without a trace of blackface!
The Mexican hot chocolate cookies I made, inspired by @Bookwormjillk and @TheBookHippie were fabulous! The recipe is a keeper 😁

Today is #Finland's Independence Day!
“From the 1970s onwards, Independence Day celebrations have taken livelier forms, with shops decorating their windows in the blue and white of the Finnish flag, and bakeries producing cakes with blue and white icing.“
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Day_(Finland)
#FoodandLit
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The trailer for Stormskerry Maja (out Jan, 1st in France) was pushed to me on Youtube. I hope there's been some joined-up thinking & a translation of the Finnish book it's based on will be available soon.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22257924/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
trailer w/ French subtitles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aaAW10lJc4

#Finland #FoodandLit
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Bailing. A history of #Finland by an author who thinks nomadic tribes are uncultured and violent conquests are good for a country. Amateurish, unclear writing. You'd never think it was published in 2010 and not 1910.

#FoodandLit
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Pic of Olavinlinna by Mikko Paananen, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Sorted Food YouTube channel has just done a video for a Finnish tinned food challenge. Warning: it's fun, not informative, and it's possible Finn watchers will cry tears of frustration - or laugh 😋
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rnclkd5nwHo

#Finland #FoodandLit
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Fun fact: I think I sampled the reindeer meat tin once, bought by my mum from a Turku city/university stand set up in my (French) town's square 1 year

Glad I read it as it's a modern classic, but it wasn't really my cup of tea. The constant shop/product/celebrity name dropping was distracting. Sad that the slang has grown old but all the social issues (drugs, anorexia, paedophilia...) are just as current as ever.
I'll probably leave the book in a little library so it can go to someone who will appreciate it better.

Here's my pile of books for #Finland
- A kids' Moomins cookbook
- A history of Finland
- A novel (the French title means “The frog-woman“)
- A cheffy trilingual cookbook
#FoodandLit
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Starting my 1st Simenon ever, The Madman of Bergerac, as part of my 2024 Dordogne challenge. And since today (Nov, 29) is the day of juniper in the French revolutionary calendar, I am having juniper tea. I don't know why this berry is so underused these days: it's lovely and so fragrant!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar#Autu...

My last Canadian book: I'm now ready for Finland 😁
Amiante (Asbestos) is a poet's novel about a boy in 80s/90s Thetford Mines that punches you in the gut. I was surprised at how similar cultural references were to mine in France.

#FoodandLit #Canada
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Pic by Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/asbestos-bape-hearings-1.5386092

It's all in the title: Le nazi de ma famille : Enquête sur un SS français (The nazi in my family: investigating a French SS). Extremely well-constructed and finely-drawn, with constant backs-and-forths between then and now, family history and European history, today‘s nazis and yesterday‘s. Sensitive, empathetic and serious. A stand-out read for me.
Pic of Barnave, near the author's family home, from Wikipedia

@tournevis This is my attempt at pot-en-pot and I have the nagging feeling that I got it wrong, although it was perfectly nice to eat.
I am thinking that perhaps “big potatoes“ are bigger for the writer than for me because my dish looks stingey on the potato front.
I assumed the final stage was baking because we were told to layer the ingredients. So, I did it in a pyrex dish fitted with a lid.

#FoodandLit #Canada
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Here's my gâteau aux bleuets (blueberry cake). Nice but on the mushy side (there's quite a bit of milk) in it. I used a recipe from the tagged Acadian cookbook.
#FoodandLit #Canada
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From a fantastic poetry collection by Katherena Vermette, a Métis author. Found on Everand.
#FoodandLit #Canada
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Pic of St Theresa Point, Island Lake by Timkal, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24819273

This is the story of Elie, a young Innu convicted of murder & banned from his community who ends up homeless in Montréal (called Tiohti�:ke in Mohawk) - like many other First Nations men & women - before turning his life around. Not a masterpiece, but both moving & informative.
Written by a Mashteuiatsh Innu author

#FoodandLit #Canada
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The life of a young teacher in 30s Manitoba. Her pupils‘ poverty is incredible. Meanwhile, where I live, the fog outside is so thick right now it‘s like living in cotton wool...
#FoodandLit #Canada
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Cross-cultural fiction at its finest: a kid's chapter book about a young Korean girl who discovers Astrid Lindgren's books. They help her make sense of her life (her father is dead; her mother is sad, poor and has a short fuse), work through her emotions and relate to others. Maybe a bit too edifying for me, but I'm sure the child who connects with this book won't mind. I liked the sense of place and season.
#Korea

Since it is #Canada month and I'd never read it (it's not so well known in France), I thought now would be the time to see what the fuss is about 😋 I downloaded Anne of Green Gables from Project Gutenberg. 9% in: Matthew Cuthbert is thinking of keeping Anne. Oooh, what is going to happen? Will Marilla agree? 😂 😁
#FoodandLit
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A man in the final stages of cancer tries to reach his native #Montenegro to die. He is pursued in the forest and the mountains by a group 2 men soon to turn into a mob. This novella was a random find at the bookshop and I was bowled over.
#Serbia
Pic of Čvrsnica by Ante Perkovic, via Wikimedia bc I couldn't find one of Prekornica from a free source

Yesterday's poutine at a local Canadian-themed bar/restaurant. Followed by a very indifferent tea that did not taste at all of maple. The poutine was nice, though, and the portion was very generous. My toppings were smoked meat, onions, mushrooms and brown sauce. I felt full all day!

#FoodandLit #Canada
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I don't usually read murder mysteries, but I made an exception for this book because it the 1st time I came across a novel set in the Gambier Islands, French Polynesia. Only, the descriptions of the corpse & sea pollution combined with current news (the deadly freak storm in Spain and the US elections) to give me one hell of a nightmare, so I've been up since 3:45 AM & I am wary of picking the book up again.
Pic of Mekiro island by FRED, wikimedia

Today (November, 7) is International Inuit Day, a holiday established by the Inuit Circumpolar Council representing First Nations people living in Alaska, #Canada, Greenland and Chukotka.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Inuit_Day

And Sweetest Kulu is a lovely book for babies and young children written by an Inuk artist and writer from Nunavut.

#FoodandLit
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