Give me books, chocolate, & Spectra Soldiers!!!

Journaling prompt: What are your favorite summer-associated foods?

Creative prompt: Draw art of or make graphics of summer foods, or post your favorite summer recipes. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

My favourite sumer food probably sounds very boring, but if one takes care to use the best quality possible, it’s delicious. Boiled white fish with new potatoes, clarified butter and chopped hard-boiled eggs. When I was a child the fish we used was northern pike, which my father or grandfather had just caught, but nowadays we usually buy fresh cod. The new potatoes come from the garden. The clarified butter must be real butter, and organic eggs taste the best. One can mix the butter and the eggs, but we prefer to keep them separate, so each can take after taste.

Also, for me this tastes best eaten outside the summer house, on dishes called “Grön berså” (green bower) by the Swedish designer Stig Lindberg in 1960.

This is a spoiler-free post.

The Hollow was first published in 1946, during Agatha Christie’s Golden Age. It’s not one of her more well-known mysteries, which I always thought was a bit strange, because it’s my favourite Christie. On the surface the plot is typical for her: A murder in a stately home where several guests have gathered for the weekend. Hercule Poirot investigates. Personally I think this book is rather invisible because it belies a very common statement about Christie, that she only writes cardboard stock characters with no depths and complexity. In The Hollow we have plenty of complex characters and I would say the main theme in the book is obsession. Obsessive love, obsession for science, the artist's obsession towards their work, and so on. If you wanted a stock Christie, you may be disappointed. There is also the fact that even if this is a Poirot novel, he doesn’t enter until halfway, and he is actually not the first to figure out who the murderer is. In fact I’ve always felt this book may have been better liked if there had been no Poirot in it at all. Checking the publishing order, this was the first Poirot since 1942, and Christie had written five books in between. I wonder if the publisher put pressure on her to include Poirot in this one… You also get the POV from more characters than usual. I have never read any of Christie's Mary Westmacott novels, but I’ve read that The Hollow is more like them in writing style.

Journaling Prompt: Light up your journal with activity this month. Talk about your goals for July or for the second half of 2025.

Creative Prompt: Shine a light on your own creativity. Create anything you want (an image, an icon, a story, a poem, or a craft) and share it with your community.. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Journaling: I will try to actually write the posts about the Agatha Christie books I’m currently rereading. As well as continue talking about books that have special meanings for me.

I have lots of things to sew. Currently a Regency petticoat, and after that a Regency ball gown for a ball at the end of August. I’m also working on a Liberty of London aesthetic dress. I also need to change a couple of everyday clothes that don't fit me anymore.

Creativity: I’m still trying my way in making paper flowers. Here, have a tulip.