Purity and Citrus Cheesecake

It pains me to say it, but a big part of why I did not blog for so long is the result of my inability to get through Jonathan Franzen's purity.  I am a big Franzen fan and was really excited when his new book came out this summer, since he takes his sweet ol time writing each masterpiece.  But Purity, in my opinion, despite the great reviews,  was just painful for me to get through.  Usually, when I am having trouble getting through a book I just put it aside and give up.  So many books in the world, why waste time on one that just isn't doing it for me?  But with a Franzen book I felt like I had to stick it out, I had to see if it turned around.  While it got a little better, enough that I could finish it, it took me several months to finish the book - this is NOT normal for me, I am through a book typically in a couple of weeks for a long one.  This one drained the joy of reading out me, that sounds deciceddramatic, but it just honestly turned me off reading for a bit.  That said, it did inspire this bright, pretty little cheesecake pictured above, so it wasn't all bad, right?

The Paying Guests and Pork and Apple Pie

I have been gone a long, long time.  Sorry for that.  Is it a particularly inspiring book that has brought me back?  Not really.  A fantastic recipe I have been dying to make for a while?  Nope.    I am not sure what it is, but the spark of inspiration to come back to bookcooker started earlier this week with the possibility of a massive snow storm.  What would I do stuck inside?  I would surely have work to do, but that's no fun.  My closets are starting to resemble a hoarders, I could tackle those - no thank you!  Curling up with my laptop and a slightly complicated recipe sounded like just the thing.  So the idea was hatched, I just finished Sarah Waters "The Paying Guests" which is a novel that, while I liked OK, managed to be both overly dramatic and a little boring.  The books takes place in the outskirts of London after World War I and follows a protagonist, Frances, that used to be well off and upper class and is now poor and upper class, which forces her to maintain her family's big fancy house herself.  As part of her daily tasks she must make the sturdy British meals that are also featured on Downtown Abbey - pigeons, pies and stews.  There is one pie in particular (or rather an unfinished one) that takes place at a particularly momentous moment in the book, and this inspired me to google british pies.  The first recipe to pop up was this Pork and Apple Pie from, in my humble opinion, a treasure of British reality TV  - Paul Hollywood. For those of you that don't know him, he is one of the judges on the best cooking competition show ever in human existence - The Great British Baking Show.  This show is great because there is no soap opera drama, the contestants are real every day Britons, but they are also in possession of incredibly impressive baking skills.  It is also fun because they make strange British desserts.  Anyway, highly recommend you check it out.  When I saw the Paul Hollywood recipe I was sold and determined to make a bookcooker comeback.  Of course in Boston the snow storm did not come (sorry DC and NY, good luck!), but my inspiration held out.