Peach Crisp and Murder

My recipe for Peach Crisp is adapted from the Apple Crisp recipe my mom makes. I had originally intended to wait and use apples, but I bought some peaches on sale at the organic market and they had gotten to the point where they had gotten super soft but weren't actually ripe.  I hate that--so I made them into a crisp and I'm so happy I did because this was soooo yummy. The simple flavoring of nutmeg works beautifully with the peaches and this comes together so quickly and easily, I'll probably find myself making it again and again!

Peach Crisp

*****

Mug of tea and my interlibrary loan books:

The Strange Woman and Murder at Shots Hall

I'd like to thank Yvette for recommending Murder at Shots Hall by Maureen Sarsfield. I was able to get it quickly from interlibrary loan and finish it even more quickly! If you like Agatha Christie or P.D. James, you'll probably like Murder at Shots Hall--it's set in a tiny, relatively isolated English coastal village during a patch of particularly wet and foggy weather. I particularly liked the humor sprinkled throughout the book, usually originating in the homespun observations of Sergeant Congreve and the crabbiness of Dr. Abbot, the medical examiner. On the subject of domesticity, Dr. Abbot complains, "There ought to be a law against it...I haven't got a wife, and I shan't ever have a wife. But if I had, and I had to watch her sitting there...year in year out, surrounded by yards of mending wool, knitting wool, needles, thread, pins and foully diseased paper patterns, being domestic, I'd kill her" (Sarsfield 105).

My only complaint was that I wanted to see more of Deputy Chief Constable Mahew and his wife, because they're rather like Nick and Nora Charles: "On the morning of December 2nd, at 8.30 A.M., [Mahew] stuck his head round the corner of Mrs. Mahew's bedroom door and said, 'Woman you will stay in bed till your cold's better, and to hell with you. Even with a red nose you look more beautiful than the rising sun'...They had been married for exactly twenty years and accomplished the impossible. They still liked each other enormously, admitted it, and never quarreled. This fact still astonished them" (Sarsfield 40-41).

I highly recommend Murder at Shots Hall, especially now that dreary weather is on the horizon--it's beyond-perfect fireside reading.