Nanny Ogg's Cookbook: a beautifully illustrated collection of recipes and reflections on life from one of the most famous witches from Sir Terry Pratchett’s bestselling Discworld series

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You’d think, on average, that some of these lost fountains of youth, tree of life and cities of gold would be really close, but they never are. As skilled a witch as Granny, but in other ways, able to manipulate events and people (even Granny) by being herself – in capital letters – fond of a dram, or three; fond of a lad, or three; she is Granny's connection to a different world. Nanny Ogg is very funny and has a tremendous laugh that, as Terry Pratchett put it, "could even have embarrassed the little, wooden man".

Jason is something of a gentle giant (somewhat like Constable Bluejohn), and very deferring and respectful to his mother and other witches. Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike unless otherwise noted. Nanny Ogg embarrasses Tiffany by talking about Roland, Tiffany's nervous pen-pal, and other romantic prospects. Terry worked for many years as a journalist and press officer, writing in his spare time and publishing a number of novels, including his first Discworld novel, The Color of Magic, in 1983. Once you start paddlin’ with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you’re believing in gods.In any case, the result is that it is difficult to knock Nanny out by hitting her on the head, an option not often contemplated but attempted at least once (see Maskerade) - even having a house drop on her head has not knocked her out (see Witches Abroad ).

And if Nanny Ogg had been listening, she would have resolved as follows: that no maddened cackle from Black Aliss of infamous memory, no evil little giggle from some crazed vampyre whose morals were worse than his spelling, no side-splitting guffaw from the most inventive torturer, was quite so unnerving as a happy little chuckle from a Granny Weatherwax about to do what’s best. While Nanny Ogg's bawdy sense of humor and sexually active past "would seem to contradict her association with the role of Mother", Nuttall points to this as evidence that Nanny "never truly fitted the role of Maiden" and that the character "represents female sexuality as powerful, natural, and something to be celebrated". Nanny’s philosophy of life was to do what seemed like a good idea at the time, and do it as hard as possible.Nanny Ogg claims, in Lords and Ladies, that her ancestors invented the ancient language of Oggham, the Discworld equivalent of the ancient Irish alphabet Ogham. She shares this home with Greebo, a tomcat of evil aroma and astonishing viciousness, whom she can see only as a fuzzy harmless kitten. He is also the leader of the Lancre Morris Men, who treat Morris dancing as something between a contact sport and a martial art.

Three marriages and an adventurous girlhood had left Nanny Ogg with thigh muscles that could crack coconuts .Agnes was, Nanny considered, quite good-looking in an expansive kind of way; she was a fine figure of typical Lancre womanhood. In The Art of Discworld, it was also revealed that in her youth, she had dated Leonard da Quirm, resulting in his painting Mona Ogg. Her singing voice, when echoed by a half filled bathtub, causes birds to fall from the sky and goat milk to turn into yoghurt while still in the goat. Enough” wasn’t really a long enough word to describe the numerous little tasks any young woman marrying into the Ogg family found were expected of her.

Nanny Ogg found herself embarrassed even to think about this, and this was unusual because embarrassment normally came as naturally to Nanny as altruism comes to a cat. People didn’t take any notice of little old ladies who looked as though they fitted in, and Nanny Ogg could fit in faster than a dead chicken in a maggot factory.

If you don't go away," she said gravely, "I will personally rip your head off and fill it with snakes. Nanny Ogg had a pragmatic attitude to the truth; she told it if it was convenient and she couldn’t be bothered to make up something more interesting.