Review!

As pointed out by durham_rambler, the review of House of Doors mentioned yesterday is now posted on the Publishers Weekly website, available to all.

Money shot: Brenchley clearly knows the language and motifs of gothic country-house horror; ... he turns genre conventions to his advantage with genuinely disturbing moments of terror and his complex, deeply troubled heroine.

They think the book will be out in the States in February; I'm sure Amazon.com would like me to point out that they have it already in stock. I can't speak for other retailers, who may or may not be available.

Busy

So far this morning I have:

baked bread;
boiled kidney beans;
put two trays of pork scratchings to, um, scratch;
prepared a giant pot of chilli;
and embarked on three separate culinary experiments.

Which it's kind of cheating to list that last, as they are all encompassed in the items above, but hey.

Thing is, I had this vast tureen of delishus ham stock, on account of having cooked a delishus ham a couple of days ago. And I'd already made a vat of pea soup with some of the stock, but there was still much remaining. And I am a virtuous soul in the kitchen, who takes on board what he has always been told and recycles it as gospel; and one of the things I have always been told is that you should never salt your beans before they're cooked, as salt toughens the skins, and another is that you should never salt your meat before you cook it, as salt toughens the fibres.

The thing about ham stock? It's delishus, but it's really salty.

So: I boiled my beans in the ham stock, and then I fried m'beef and chopped m'vegetables and put it all together in a giant pot with the remains of the ham stock for liquor, and we shall see. It only has to feed me, and I don't mind chewing.

The other experiment is that the chilli has gone into a Really Really Low oven, where I have set the scratchings to scratch. I'm not sure if that's actually going to be hot enough for long enough; I think it's cooler than the slow cooker (which is why I thoroughly boiled the beans first; undercooked kidney beans are no fun at all). I have the notion in mind that I might just leave it in there 24 hours, let everything really mulch together...

And now I have to change my clothes, which are all over bread-flour and splashes, and hie me to the Lit & Phil before it closes; and then to Canny Comic Con; and actually I might just not make it home at all, in which case the 24-hour thing will just happen anyway, and I shall come home tomorrow to the results of all my experiments at once.