This week I'm showing off this lovely tea cup and saucer by the Royal Dover China company.
The background is slightly off white with white flowers and a plethora of colored leaves (aqua, gray, brown, gold and blue).
The tea cup is ribbed about three-fourths down toward the bottom. It was very sunshiney when I took these photos! The saucer is ribbed all around its edges.
The backside of the cup.
The cup and saucer are both trimmed in gold trim.
For some reason, the handle only has gold trim on one side.
The cup and saucer are both marked on the bottom: Royal Dover China, Bone China, Made In England.
I love to cook, but I love, love, love to bake! I can easily spend hours in the kitchen either cooking or baking, especially during November and December. The only thing I don't like is the clean-up!
Way back in the 1990s, I made countless chocolate chip cookies in my search for the perfect recipe and never found one I truly liked. So I played around in the kitchen and came up with my own recipe.
I've been sharing this recipe for years with family, friends and co-workers. If you decide to make these, I hope you enjoy them!
Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
1 bag of chocolate chips
hot water*
1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix together the two sugars.
3. Add butter and mix until smooth.
4. Stir in the flour.
5. Add eggs one at a time, stirring well after each addition.
6. Stir in vanilla
7. Stir in baking soda and salt.
8. Add chocolate chips and mix well.
Round the cookie batter into desired sizes and place on an ungreased cookie/bake sheet.
Bake for 10 minutes.
Let the cookies sit for about 1 minute after removing from oven.
Move cookies from hot sheet to cooling rack.
*If the dough becomes too dry, add 1-2 teaspoons of hot water to the mix.
I get about 4 dozen or so cookies from this recipe. If you enjoy a nutty kind of cookie, then don't be afraid to add walnuts, macademia nuts or pecans to the mix. If you like salty cookies, then increase the amount of salt. Don't go too crazy on the salt, though, as a little goes a long way.
"Fifty Shades of Grey" is the first book in a trilogy by E L James. The other two books are "Fifty Shades Darker" and "Fifty Shades Freed". I read the first one and about half of the second one in this series.
These books read like badly written Harlequin Temptations. This trilogy started out as fan fiction for the Twilight series, entitled "Master of the Universe", with the names of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan as the main characters. Under the 50 shades umbrella, the names were changed to Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey.
Ana is a college student, near graduation, when she meets Christian Grey, a billionaire at the age of 27. Christian has her sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement. After she signs the NDA, Grey gives her a contract to sign. He wants her to be his submissive, which means during their sexual encounters, Ana would be obedient to Grey, her Dom. So if she's disobedient, then she'll be punished as he sees fit. Grey wants to do things to Ana like tie her up, blindfold her, spank her, etc, during their encounters. This is where all the book's hype comes into play. Some people may be offended with these descriptive encounters, but it's hardly anything more than what you may find in a Harlequin romance novel.
In book two, "Fifty Shades Darker", I only made it about half-way through. It's horribly written, worse than the first book. If possible, the heroine, Ana Steele, becomes even more wishy-washy.
Paraphrased examples of sentences from EL James:
Example 1: He takes off his shoe, he takes off his sock. He takes off his other shoe, he takes off his other sock. He takes off her shoe, he takes off her sock. He takes off her other shoe, he takes off her other sock. And these sentences do not occur just once, but almost before every sexual encounter.
Example 2: Ana's inner goddess: I don't know why, but anytime Ana is experiencing an emotion, her inner goddess pops up into the moment, which does nothing but distract the reader from the action (such as it is). Ana's inner goddess sits up on her chaise lounge and takes note. Ana's inner goddess' mouth falls open. Ana's inner goddess starts dancing. Then somewhere along the way, "inner goddess" gives way to "my sub-conscious". Quote from book II: "My sub-consicous stares at me over her half-moon specs."
In addition to the bad writing, there are far too many ridiculous, unbelievable things happening to the characters. I don't want to spoil the story for someone who may want to read this series, so I won't go into detail. I did like the flirty exchange of emails between Ana and Grey. However, in today's age, I believe text messages would've worked better.
.JPG)
