Lilla's Feast by Frances Osborne

"You would expect from a wartime recipe book - all rations and digging for victory, or subsistence on rotting vegetables and donkey meat in a Japanese internment camp. However, this is a book written as if the war wasn't there at all. As if everyone was back in their warm, safe homes with their families and friends, the larder full and the table heaving with fresh, just-cooked food. It gives advice on how to make good things last longer, how to live and eat to the fullest. The pages are jam-packed with recipes with old-fashioned names: cream puffs and popovers, butterscotch and blancmange, galantine of beef and anchovy toast, jugged hare and ulligatawny soup. There are dinner-party menus, children's menus, cocktails, ice creams, sweets. Its a book for making the best of times in the worst of times, a book that makes you believe that if you could fill your mind with cream cake or anything delicious, then you could transform the bitterest experience into something sweet and shut out the things that you need to forget."

I picked up this book at the Laguna Beach library with no expectations or insight as to what the book was about. I just had a little curiosity. The insert above is found on the first page of the prologue, paragraph 3. I read these words and wasn't even able to continue to page 3 but for entirely a good reason! To be able to document recipes and give advice on how to enjoy life while living in an internment camp during WWII is truly inspiring. I had to set the book down and think for a moment. I admit one of the reasons I participate in blogging is for professional gain and I am currently on the quest to branding myself. Sometimes I drag my feet before writing a post because at that moment I would rather by lazy and let success find me instead. However, after reading what Lilla was able to do, I realized that my blog posts keep me searching for inspiration within the travel industry. As long as I am inspired and hopeful I am able to continue to happily (key word) work towards my goals.