Etiquette Wednesday -- Elsa Maxwell

Since it is the day before Thanksgiving and also Wednesday, we thought we would provide you with etiquette and entertaining as you approach the holiday. Actually, it might be more “entertainment” than entertaining. If you are facing a family fiasco or “your” friends are bringing “their” friends, just close your eyes and think, “What would Elsa Maxwell be doing…”

Simon Doonan wrote of Elsa Maxwell:

"Even if you took Martha Stewart, Julia Child, Two Fat Ladies, Regine, Suzanne Bartsch, Nigella Lawson, Diane Brill, Carmen D’Allessio, Pat Buckley, Amy Sacco, and Phyllis Diller and threw them all into a gigantic blender, you would still fall short of producing anyone as compelling and scrumptious as the late, great, über-hostess Elsa Maxwell."

While Miss Maxwell is no longer with us, she has left us with the blueprint in How To Do It.



Here is a typical seating arrangement at one of Miss Maxwell's parties.



It seems Stavros Niarchos wasn't invited to the above party, but he did make it to her Tiara Ball.



Here are just a few party pointers from Miss Maxwell that I have translated for Thanksgiving:

Avoid people with causes to boost or grievances to air.

(Since it’s Thanksgiving and you are probably having the family in, rest assured there are grievances and at least one PETA pushing adolescent. Sorry)

Avoid the very shy, uncertain, introverted types.

(Seat them at the kids table.)

I always make it a point, for instance, even in a predominantly eggheaded group, to have a smattering of beautiful women regardless of whether they are dumbbells or not (and
most beautiful women are not very bright.)

(Remember, Elsa Maxwell tipped the scale at about 300 pounds, so she might be bitter, still when you tell this story and your brother’s girlfriend asks, “Who is Elsa Maxwell? “, feel free to move them to the kids table.)

As for the limits of age, there are none.

(Bravo Elsa. Feel free to move two young folk from the kids table to the big table. Pick the boy who laughed when the girlfriend asked “Who’s Elsa” and the overweight niece who can program your Blackberry.)


Miss Maxwell called on some of her friends to provide the recipe selections in How to Do It. The ever-emaciated Mrs. T. Reed Vreeland (Deeeahhna to her friends) actually stole this recipe from Elsie de Wolfe.

Consomme Vért-Pré

Make a very good rich bouillon. Add enough spinach to color it green, and just before serving add finely chopped fines herbes. Serve hot or cold.

(This is the perfect dish for PETA lovers and super-models. In a pinch, add one vegetable bouillon cube to a quart of hot water. When it is dissolved, add 1 oz. of green food coloring. Voilà, Consomme Vért-Pré. Don’t worry what people think. You know in your heart the model will dump your brother before Christmas.)


Now get out there and entertain!

Honest Scrap

Wow. Thanks, again, to little augury for thinking of us (and reading us.) The rules for this award are:
share 10 random facts about yourself and tap seven fellow bloggers in return.

About me...

1.

I am addicted to Tab.

2.

My IQ is 175; ironically, my income is $175.

3.

I have a collection of stuffed Tiggers. Many of them bounce.


4.

I once waited at a stage door to meet Vanessa Redgrave. She is remarkably tall and was very gracious.

5.

I am the seventh “Lucinda” in my family going back to the Civil War.

6.

The only Olympic sport I watch is fencing.

7.

I don’t always wear underwear, but I ALWAYS carry a “hankie”.

8.

In 6th grade, my favorite author was Andre Malraux. (Today, all my friends tell me that if they had gone to school with me as a child, I would have spent most of my time stuffed in a locker.) Later in life I found out Malraux was a bit of a sexist and I was bummed.




9.

My favorite fashion designer of all time is Elsa Schiaparellii. My mother had an old bottle of ”Shocking” with the perfume long evaporated. My mother was always dressed to the nines. On most days I am dressed to the twos.

10.

I am left-handed and dyslexic, therefore I spell like a demented and drunken Elizabethan typesetter. Those squiggly “PASSWORD” letters on comment pages are a disaster.

HERE ARE SOME INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT LEFT-HANDEDNESS

1.Left handed people are more likely to be on the extreme ends of the intelligence scale. Left-handed people have a higher portions of mentally retardation and they also have a tendency to have high IQ's. Left-handed people who have higher I.Q.s tend to have an I.Q. of over 140. (See #3)

2. Stuttering and dyslexia occur more often in left-handers. (See # 3 again)

3. 4 of the 5 original designers of the Macintosh computer were left-handed. I was not one of them. (See # 3 one more time.)

4. Left-handers excel at fencing. (See # 6)

I love food, the South, books, tunes and design, so here are a list of bloggers I love in no particular order; it was enough to be nominated.

Deep Fried Kudzu I lived for years in Alabama. Who knew there was such cool stuff there.
i suwannee Another Southern girl with high style.
Frognall Dibdin's Shelves: A Book Blog. Fine old books and a witty host.
Brilliant Asylum. Definitally brilliant.
Biscuits and Such. Food, food, food. Oh yeah and she's Southern.
ali mode. They have been busy lately, but we are hoping this will spur them along.
Late Greats. They always have great tune ideas.

Hunting Season

Today is the beginning of deer hunting season in West Virginia. Hunting is a polarizing issue.


One of the most vivid memories I have of being with my father was hunting with him. I was four-years-old and he got me up before dawn and we went off in search of pheasant. It was bitterly cold and the sun was blinding. The stood me in front of his body and aligned my shoulder to touch his thigh and braced my body. I had watched him enough to know how I was supposed to hold the gun, and being left-handed, mirrored his position. He checked everything with the gun and with me and told me I could fire when ready. Of course I fired immediately, because what I wanted to do, more than shoot an actual bird was to just shoot the gun. I bagged no pheasant that day, but I will never forget those moments with my father.


Last year a young man that worked for me off and on told me he was going turkey hunting. His cousin was going lend him a rifle so he could hunt. He wanted to shoot three turkeys, so he could give one to each of the mothers of his children and have his own Christmas dinner. He was hunting to put food on the table.
I don't believe that the NRA, with its lobbyist in Armani suits, speaks for my handyman, or for me. In Washington, D. C., a city with the strictest gun laws in the nation, barley a week passed that I didn't hear the fire of an automatic weapon. The people firing them were not looking to put food on the table.


In her introduction to Women on Hunting, Pam Houston wrote:

"To hunt an animal successfully you must think like an animal, move like an animal, climb to the top of the mountain just to go down the other side, and always be watching, and waiting, and watching. To hunt well is to be at once the pursuer and the object of the pursuit. The process is circular, and female somehow, like giving birth, or dancing. A hunt, at its best, ought to look from the air like a carefully choreographed ballet."

You don't have to go with me... but I thought I would share with you some of my favorite actresses and a former First Lady "packing" along with a lovely song from Hem...

A-Hunting We Will Go

Osbert Lancaster and Drayneflete Revealed

Osbert Lancaster was a cartoonist. That is kind of like saying Mrs. Beeton was a cook. Lancaster is best known for his work as a cartoonist, but he was also a student of architecture, a set designer, a bon vivant and wicked wit.

A large exhibition of his work, was organized in 2008 to commemorate the centennial of his birth, resulted in a biography/monograph, Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster.

He combines his love of architecture, his art and his wit in my favorite of works, Drayneflete Revealed,

a parody of the architectural development of an imaginary English hamlet. The endpapers feature a current map of the village attributed to the students of the Drayneflete School of Arts and Crafts,




no doubt a reflection of his memories of the Slade School. The rather elaborate joke moves from the early bronze age, to present day.

"There was a temple of Castor and Pollux occupying the site of the present Parish Church ... another temple standing on ground now covered by the offices of the Drayneflete and district Electric Light Co., that was probably dedicated to the worship if Venus suburbia, the Suburban Aphrodite, a cult very popular in Roman Britain. In the center of the market square there stood a gigantic statue of an Emperor, of which the head ( now in the Museum) was discovered by a Mr. Brickworthy in 1885, when clearing out an old cesspool in the Vicarage garden."

Gigantic head of an Emperor (Claudius? Caligula? Nero? Trajan? Vespasian?)

Drayneflete suffered considerably during the Medieval era:

"Gone is the exquisite old Custard Cross where the market price of custards (or costards) was regularly fixed by the masters of the Custard Makers' Guild....gone is the beautiful old Moot Hall, wantonly destroyed... to make way for the a heavy and ill-proportioned building in the Renaissance style, gone the fine fourteenth-century hall of the Worshipful Company of Drumstretchers. "

After the bombing in 1944 one shard of the medieval masonry remained standing. In my favorite cartoon we find a before and after illustration of a fifteenth-century wall-painting of St. George. The first panel purports to be the painting at its' discovery and the second, after a careful cleaning by a professor Isolde.



For anyone who has ever been appalled at a poor restoration, this image should leave you laughing.

The Young Visiters

Blogging is very fascinating to me. I follow about 20 blogs and I am always pleasantly surprised when they post about an item that is on my mind or on my bookshelf. For several week now, I have had my copy of Daisy Ashford's The Young Visiters on my desk. This week, The Persephone Post, posted about Ashford's book. It was one of the books they had wanted to re-publish, but a reprint already existed. Daisy Ashford wrote this novel in pencil when she was nine-years-old.



Young Daisy loved to talk to adults and read Victorian novels and both are evident in her slim novel. In 1952, an edition was published with an introduction by J. M. Barrie and the drawings of William Pène du Bois.



Pène du Bois was born in Nutley, New Jersey. At eight his family moved to France, only to return to Nutley when he was fourteen. At nineteen, he sold his first book, The Great Geppy. He abandoned college to continue his career as a writer and illustrator. Thought of as a children's writer, his books are wildly imaginative. The Great Geppy is a striped horse -- NOT a zebra, but a striped horse who solves crimes at a circus. My favorite, Squirrel Hotel, is about a squirrel hotel, elaborately appointed with doll furniture, electric lights and a circular staircase. When the builder disappears, a reporter looks for him by tracing his purchases for the hotel, including 48 four-poster canopied doll beds.



In 2003, a quirky adaptation of The Young Visiters was filmed starring Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent and Bill Nighy. It is well worth adding to your Netfilix queue.

Wednesday Etiquette

Today's etiquette tip goes out to you men who are in the market for seducing women. Now I am the first to admit that Quentin Crisp might not be the first name to come to mind when thinking of seduction (well the seduction of women), but his advice is spot on:

However feeble the excuse that may be given for saying 'no', a gentleman always accepts it. If a woman says, "I can't invite you in, the place is too untidy,' he does not say, "Oh I love untidiness,' because he ought to know damn well what she means. A gentleman doesn't pounce ... he glides.

If a woman sits on a piece of furniture which permits your sitting beside her, you are free to regard this as an invitation, though not an unequivocal one. If she sits in a chair, you are not really free to sit on the arm; the words, 'Surely you would be more comfortable over there,' mean "go away,' although whether they mean go away for ever or only go away for the time being you will have to work out later.

The Pounce is desperate; The Glide is calm. The Pounce is clumsy with frustration; The Glide is airborne with sangfroid.

Remember, "No" means "No." Now get out there and brush up on your sangfroid.

The Old Barber Shop

With considerable help from the many residents of Shirley, we have been sprucing up downtown. For those of you who have never ventured to downtown Shirley, WV, here are some highlights. This building used to house the barber shop. It is now empty. I rent the double red doors to a neighbor to park his tractor.

We have had a few complaints that the red is simply too bright. We disagree!

Wallpaper?

I know most of you follow An Aesthete's Lament, religiously. One of my favorite features is, "Why Aren't These Still Made? Well, I saw this design and thought, why wasn't this ever made?

The (badly reproduced) design is from the endpapers of The Gun Club Cookbook, featured earlier this month on Cookbook Of The Day. I just think these endpapers with their bright yellow background and crossed guns over a salt shaker would make a terrific wallpaper.

Though such a thing might have been unthinkable in the days of Elsie de Wolfe, today anyone, including me, can be their own wallpaper designer. In Canada, a company named Rollout Custom Wallpaper will produce wallpaper from your design.

I wonder if the The Gun Club Drink Book has crossed guns over a martini glass?

HOUSECLEANING at Lucindaville

First, here is a...

big kiss

to everybody who reads our blog. We love you! Next, we want to give a really big kiss and shout out to:

little augury

who has been our number one publicist, linking to our site on numerous occasions.


Here's to the "Good Life."

COMMENTS

We get some great comments on our site, but I am never really sure that people see them. I know sometimes I comment and rarely think to look back at them, so here are some you might have missed.

Barbara shared this story about Jane Goodall as a child after reading our post on Eggs:


I once heard Jane Goodall tell a story. When she was 4 she was fascinated by how an egg could come out of a chicken, since there were no obvious holes big enough. She sneaked into the hen house and spent a whole afternoon waiting to observe. During that time her family thought she was missing and were panicking they way you would if your 4 year old had disappeared. At the end of her vigil she did indeed watch a chicken lay an egg, upon which she stepped out of the hen house with wonder on her face. Her poor panicked mother saw her come out and instead of yelling at her, she pulled her gently on her lap and said "Tell me what you've seen," because she could tell from Jane's expression that she'd had a profound experience. What a great mother she had.


After reading my post on Oliverio’s Cash & Carry, an anonymous reader reminded me that the "souls" of shoes are "soles" but with Christian Louboutin shoes, one might actually argue that they are the "soul" of his soles!



Please continue to correct my spelling. Being both left-handed and dyslexic, I spell very much like a drunk and disorderly Elizabethan typesetter, and frankly the "spell check" on blogger sucks!

Anne tried my Sweet Potato Cake with Golden Mixed Berries and said: It IS luscious...addictive. And versatile; you can use whatever dried fruits you have on hand. The fact that it ages well is immaterial because it won't last that long@

I made one this weekend and in the hubbub of the kitchen, I left out the baking powder. The cake looked a bit like a floor tile. It still tasted quite good, though.

Keep those comments coming...

PHONE COMPUTER ELECTRICITY

I love living in the country, but there are inherent problems, especially where communication is concerned.

In the past two weeks my phone has been out for 5 days.

My electricity has gone off 4 days right in the middle of the day...

which in turn means my computer has been off in addition to the cloudy days where I suffer from satellite outages.

THEREFORE: We are often posting late and in clumps so we can get everything on. Do forgive us...


If you could see my house today, you would say, "She never wasted a moment" ... so I am off to clean.

Garden People

The above picture of Rhoda, Lady Birley, is a favorite of bloggers, as is Lady Birley, who is the perfect English eccentric, making lobster and feeding it to her garden.

What many people may not know is the name of the photographer who snapped this image -- Valerie Finnis. Finnis could also fall into the category of English eccentric, all the more reason to love her work.

In the rarefied world of “garden photographers”, Valerie Finnis is the exception to the rule. Most photographs feature the sprawling landscape, the individual plant, the over-styled architecture, but Finnis knew in her heart what made a garden – the gardener. Valerie Finnis never liked to take a garden photograph that was devoid of the gardener; one simply couldn’t capture the essence of the garden without them. Because of this, we have great images featuring many famous names in unlikely poses. Ursula Buchan assembled a wonderful collection of Finnis' photographs into a book: Garden People: The Photographs of Valerie Finnis.

And a glorious book it is; beautifully bound and small enough to hold and fondle without breaking either your arms or the binding. The cover features the inimitably Nancy Lancaster, watering away. My particular favorite is this photo of Anna Griffith, an expert in alpine plants.


First, I aspire to that exact greenhouse. Secondly, I want to look like that when I’m 80 or 60 or now! Many of the women who grace the pages of this book are out gardening in dresses. The one time this year I went into my garden in shorts, I turned the tiller over and burned my leg and I still have the rather nasty scar, so perhaps I will stick to long trousers. Though women weren’t the ones out there in dresses…


George Sherriff’s mama should have told him watch out when he was gardening in his skirt. (I know it’s a “kilt” and needless to say those Scots are right up there where eccentricities are concerned.) Here are Patricia Neal and her daughter Tessa Dahl in their garden. One a crisp winter day, Finnis had snapped Roald Dahl with their other children. She noted the difference in the garden from season to season and also noted that Neal’s hat exactly matched the tulips.


If you don’t have a copy of this little gem, do put it on your Christmas wish list.

Garden & Gun

Just got this e-mail from Garden & Gun:

Dear G&G Friends, Fans, Subscribers, and Club Members,

I don’t have to tell you that this has been a tough year for magazines and media companies. We have seen some great ones go down, including Gourmet and Southern Accents, among others. But we have built something special at Garden & Gun, and we’ve been determined to weather this financial storm by being nimble, creative, and aggressive in securing our future, and in continuing to deliver this great publication.

To help shore up our business for 2010 and beyond, we recently made the difficult decision to skip our October/November issue. This was a painful thing for the G&G team, and we hate to disappoint you, our loyal subscribers. However, please rest assured that you will receive the full number of copies you ordered when you subscribed or joined one of our club levels. (We will handle that for you, so no need to call our customer service.) And know this: We will never compromise on the quality of the writing, the photography, or the beautiful paper that Garden & Gun is printed on.

The next issue you receive will be a December 2009/January 2010 issue (above, right) that will be mailed to subscribers in late November (and that will appear on newsstands December 8). It’s an issue we’re very proud of, and it will be loaded with great writing, great photography, and timely content, including a special Southern holiday gift guide. In 2010, you (subscribers and club members) will receive a full run of six issues. And if you have joined the Garden & Gun Club at any level, you will receive all of the benefits and privileges for which you signed up.

We hope you understand the necessary steps we’ve taken to move into 2010 in a strong position, and we trust you’ll stay with us as we strive to capture the Soul of the New South in print, on the Web, and through an expanding array of auctions and events. Thank you for believing in the mission of Garden & Gun, and for your commitment to preserving the best of Southern culture.

Rebecca Wesson Darwin
President and Publisher

I can't lose another magazine! I'm taking it personally.

Remember Remember

Today is Guy Fawkes Day or Bonfire Night. I do love a holiday that allows for multiple celebrating in a single day.

Here's a synopsis. Guy Fawkes, a Catholic, was in charge of handling the explosives for the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, an attempt to assassinate King James I. It failed memorably. On 5 November 1605, the day the plot was discovered, Londoners were encouraged to light bonfires to celebrate the failed plot. The holiday took on a vaguely halloweenish bent as children donned Guy Fawkes masks and begged for pennies.



Like everything else out there, you can read all about it if you are interested. James Sharpe wrote an informative and fun book, Remember Remember: A Cultural History of Guy Fawkes Day.

Paul Melancon has a wonderful song for the event, which is featured on his disk, Slumberland. Give it a listen:

Guy Fawkes Day

Take Me To The Water

I have a profound love of "B" things: baking, Jane Bowles, books, Balenciaga, bees, Cecil Beaton, Bunnys (both Mellon and Williams) and baptism. Growing up in the South, people often wear their religion on their sleeves, and being surrounded by it on a constant level tends to leave you either repulsed or fascinated. I have a profound fascination. I love street preachers, snake handlers, prophetic painters, church architecture, and baptism.

As a child, my family lived in a series of houses beside a lake. My great-uncle Knox, named for the theologian John Knox, would often allow the small country churches in the area to bring their congregations to the lake to preform immersion baptisms. I would stand in the window of my house and watch as preacher and congregants waded into the water and were pushed below the surface to be born again. I regret that I have no photographs of those baptisms.


If you read my blogs you may also realize that I love music. Recently, Dust-to -Digital produced a book/CD that was made for me. Take Me To The Water features a collection of immersion baptism photographs from the collection of Jim Linderman and a CD of rare folk and gospel recordings from 1924-1940, recorded from original 78 rpm records. Dust-to Digital is the recording label from the rabidly tenacious and encyclopedic mind of Lance Ledbetter.


Ledbetter spent 5 years searching for old gospel recordings before compiling his first collection, Goodbye Babylon, a six-CD set that became a must have for anyone interested in religion, early music or Southern heritage. The CD were packed in a wooden crate complete with a 200-page book and bit of raw cotton.



No only is Dust-to-Digital concerned with the preservation of music that may soon be lost to us, but their sense of design is impeccable. While the old-fashioned music of the Deep South might not be to your liking, check out the offering of Dust-to-Digital for their sheer brilliance of design.

If you want to feel a bit washed in the blood, listen to Reverend Nathan Smith's Burning Bush Sunday School Pupils sing Baptism At Burning Bush.

And please, please, purchase something, anything from the Dust-to-Digital. This is one small business that makes the world a better place. Since the holiday season is approaching, might I recommend Where Will You Be Christmas Day?

All Souls Day

La Calavera Catrina by Jose Guadalupe Posada

Today is All Souls Day, a day of remembrance for friends and loved ones who have passed away. Not celebrated with much fanfare in the States, but in Mexico it is celebrated as El Día de los Muertos, Day of the Dead.

Actually, El Día de los Muertos covers both All Saints Day and All Souls Day. 1 November one prays for the infants and children that have passed over and 2 November is reserved for the adults. I spent El Día de los Muertos in Oaxaca one year and it was quite a party. We built altars offering up food and drink to the dead. We bought sugar skulls at the market and visited the cemetery where families gathered to have a meal with their loved ones, both living and dead.

A staple of the holiday is the Pan de Muerto, a sweet bread, shaped like skulls and bones and decorated with sugar.

Pan de Muerto

6 cups of flour
1/2 cup of sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of anise seed
2 tablespoons orange zest
2 packets of dry yeast
1/2 cup of milk
1/2 cup of water
1/2 cup of butter
4 eggs

Glaze

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup fresh orange juice

In a large bowl, mix together butter, sugar, anise, salt and 1/2 cup of the flour.

In a another bowl combine the eggs and the water.

Add the egg/water mixture and another 1/2 cup of the flour to the sugar mixture.

Add in the yeast and another 1/2 cup of flour.

Continue to add the flour 1 cup at a time until a dough forms.

Knead on a floured surface for about 1 minute. Cover with a slightly damp dishcloth and let rise in a warm area for 1 hour and 30 minutes.

When the dough is doubled, punch it down.

Use 3/4 of the dough to make a round or skull shape. Use the remaining dough to make bone-shaped decorations. You can also divide the dough into smaller pieces and create bone-shaped small loaves.

Let the shaped dough rise for 1 more hour.

Bake in at 350F 30 minutes for smaller loaves and up to 45 minutes for larger loaves.

For the glaze, bring the orange juice and sugar to a boil. When it has cooled a bit, brush on the bread. Sprinkle with additional colored sugar, if desired.

Here are some examples:

All Saints Day

Today is All Saints Day, the day the Catholic Church commemorates all the saints, both known and unknown.

It was on this day in 1512, Michelangelo's frescoes on the vaulted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome were first shown to the public by Pope Julius II.



Between 1508 to 1511, Michelangelo painted a series of nine paintings from the Old Testament which run from the altar to the entrance in this order:

God separates light from darkness
Creation of the sun and the moon
God separates land from water
The Creation of Adam
Creation of woman
Original sin
The sacrifice of Noah
The flood
Drunkenness of Noah

The most famous of the images of the Sistine Chapel is The Creation of Adam.

Ask yourself this: Is God reaching for Adam or is he pulling away?

BOO!

Teddy the Friendly Ghost

Unfortunately, he looks a bit like Teddy the Unfriendly Klan Wizard. He must have known this. Here he seems to be thinking, "If I just keep my eyes closed this will all go away."

Shortly before "kitty torture" we made Halloween cupcakes. These are Nutella Swirl Cupcakes. This recipes got it's start in Donna Hay, using peanut butter. Then, blogger, Nicole Weston tweaked the recipe and substituted Nutella. The recipe quickly made the rounds, appearing on numerous blogs, forgetting poor Donna altogether. And even forgetting Nic, who now blogs at Baking Bites.


We tried the original recipe, easily identifiable because it calls for 10 tbsp. of butter, but thought it a bit dry. We also wanted a larger batch, so we tweaked the recipe and here it is:

Nutella Swirl Cupcakes, with a Halloween Twist

3 sticks of butter, softened
1 1/2 cup sugar
5 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 1/2 cups AP flour, sifted
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 small jar of Nutella

Halloween Twist
1 ounce yellow food coloring
1 ounce red food coloring


Preheat the oven to 325F.

Line 24 standard muffin tins with cupcake papers

Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy, 2-3 minutes.

Add the eggs, one at a time, incorporating fully

Add vanilla

HALLOWEEN TWIST: Add the food coloring until you have a lovely orange

Add the salt and baking powder to the flour and whisk together to incorporate, then add flour mixture to batter.

Using a small ice cream scoop, add a scoop of batter to each of the lined tins, filling about 3/4 of the way

Add a teaspoon of Nutella to the batter and swirl with a toothpick

Bake for 20 minutes

Cool on a wire rack

This is a thick batter to hold up to the addition of the Nutella(or peanut butter), so it will dry out rather fast. It will take 20 minutes to cook the cupcakes, but don"t be tempted to leave them in any longer than that. Swirling the thick batter and the Nutella with a toothpick is easier said than done, so don't be alarmed if it doesn't work like a charm on your first try.

Have a Spooktacular Halloween.

The Larder Is My Favorite Room In The House

Yesterday I spent the day running up and down the highways and byways. Among my many accomplishments was a long overdue trip to the grocery store. It was after dark when I got home and I unloaded the bags rather unceremoniously and left everything that would not parish, sitting in the floor. This morning my larder was a disaster. I though of how lovely it was when I first built its shelves and stocked them.


After seeing a swatch of Benjamin Moore's Sweet Pea in Domino, I knew I would one day use that color. It took several years, but I finally got a single wall of Sweet Pea. Since you can see the larder from the doorway in the wall, I used the same color for the wrought iron shelf supports.


I then began adding supplies.

Soon my larder was a vision.

This morning it was a nightmare. So I off to bring order from chaos.

While I am organizing, you can listen to Lyle Lovett sing about the larder, well he calls it a pantry, but we forgive him.

Pantry (Acoustic Version) -- Lyle Lovett

Dangerous Muse

Girl In Bed Caroline Blackwood by Lucian Freud

I have a lot of books and one book leads to another. At Cookbook Of The Day, I was going to feature Darling, You Shouldn’t Have Gone To So Much Trouble, by Caroline Blackwood. Before I could write about it, I searched for my copy of Caroline Blackwood’s biography Dangerous Muse, by Nancy Schoenberger.


I searched for days and couldn’t find it and finally, it showed up. I read about the cookbook, and I continued reading, then I went back to the beginning and started re-reading all over again. Then I re-read Great Granny Webster and then I re-read Robert Lowell’s The Dolphin, about his break up with Elizabeth Hardwick and his relationship with Caroline. Then I moved on to In The Pink, Caroline’s book on fox-hunting. By now weeks have passed and the cookbook is still sitting on my desk.

So after all this, Darling, You Shouldn’t Have Gone To So Much Trouble is on Cookbook Of The Day and here are some highlights of all my reading.

The biography of Caroline Gordon was entitled Dangerous Muse because she was just that.
She was muse to three husbands:

Lucian Freud by Clifford Coffin

Lucian Freud – famous painter

Israel Citkowitz – famous composer

Robert Lowell

Robert Lowell – famous writer

Then, in no particular order, she was muse to several lovers:

Caroline Blackwood by Walker Evans

Walker Evans – famous photographer

Andrew Harvey – famous classics scholar

Cyril Connolly – famous critic

Ivan Moffat – famous producer

Many people believed that Evans was the father of her daughter, Ivana but it was actually, Moffat. Connolly tried valiantly to woo Caroline to no avail, and though he was married twice, Connolly was most probably gay. Andrew Harvey was definitely gay, but he was more than willing to have sex with Caroline.

While I am fond of Blackwood’s fiction, her prose really shines. My favorite of Blackwood’s books is her exploration of hunting, In the Pink. She looks at both sides of the fox hunting debate with humor and history.

“The rich are different, claimed Scott Fitzgerald, and if he had moved in English fox-hunting circles he might have had to say that the rich who fox-hunt are different from those who don’t.”

Of the vegan, anti-cruelty, bloke who refused to help an abandoned fox cub she writes:

“He was prepared to kill a huntsman because he hated the huntsman cruelty to foxes, but the following morning he was going to that the fox-cub out of his stable and send it off to almost certain perdition.”

On the Duchess who continued to ride side-saddle:

"Hunting in the 1930’s, the duchess of Marlborough could choose her saddle, and she accepted the responsibility if the love of the costume that went with it brought her unnecessary pain and unpleasantness.”

If you have never read Caroline Blackwood, give her a try. Or you could read Dangerous Muse, but be prepared to be enthralled and watch as your nightstand fills with additional reading.

Gossip

Do indulge me in a bit of ranting, but I feel that gossip, the way it is practiced today, is a mere shadow of its former glory. My mother didn’t like to watch Ingrid Bergman. “She left her husband and daughter and ran off and had twins,” my mother told me the story as if she had been left. Had she done the same thing today, Ingrid Bergman would have been made an Ambassador at the United Nations.

I inadvertently (honest it was inadvertent) saw the last few minutes of one of those “entertainment” gossip shows the other evening. It was appalling. I suppose we once gossiped about what went on behind closed doors because there was no access. Now we have access 24/7. We have lost the notion that to be a “celebrity” one should do something to be “celebrated.” Today if you can get naked and shout profanity, you just might get your own show.

To be gossiped about today you seem to need:

A grainy sex tape, to be sold at a later date on the Internet. It is best if the woman is under 20 or the man is a football player, or both!

A lot of children, all born with in the same 24-hour period. Frankly the Dionne Quints wouldn’t even turn a head today.

To be designated a “housewife” which seems to denote you are rude, profane, vulgar, tasteless, self-centered and greedy. You don’t actually take care of a “house” and you don’t really have to be a “wife” and on most days, you couldn’t tell someone which side of the plate a fork is placed. I believe that the housewives of American should band together and file a class action suit for defamation!

A father so intent on being on television that he has his profane, out of control children, lie on national television, pretending to be in danger and costing law enforcement nearly $20,000 and untold man hours that could have been spent looking for children who were really in danger.

I moved some books the other day and found Andrew Barrow’s Gossip. I remembered another book he did as a corollary entitled, The Gossip Family Handbook and I took them home for diversion.

Gossip covers the 1920 –1970’s and is drawn predominantly from British gossip. In my opinion, the banner decade for gossip was the 1930’s. Here are just a few of the tidbits.

Augustus John’s painting of Tallulah Bankhead scandalized the Royal Academy. (And she was fully clothed)

Sir Francis Laking, 26, died from drinking yellow Chartreuse. In his will he left all his motor-cars to Tallulah Bankhead. Alas, Laking was lacking any motor-cars. (I’m now thinking of willing things I don’t own to people. How much fun would it be to leave your Swiss bank account to your smarmy sister-in-law!)

Cecil Beaton acquires Ashcombe, home to a decade of merriment. (Madonna now lives in Ashcombe)

Wallis Simpson is presented at Court. With in five years, Edward VIII would give up his crown to “marry the woman I love.” (There is a “housewife” I would watch.)

Unity Mitford was reportedly “dating” Adolf Hitler. (Imagine a sex tape with Osama bin Laden, that’s gossip and National Security!))


With all of its tantalizing tidbits, the most intriguing thing about Andrew Barrow’s Gossip is the endpaper. The writer, Hugo Vickers, suggested that there was a way to form a “family tree” as it were, that linked people in a sideways fashion. He envisioned these endpapers.


For his next book, The Gossip Family Handbook, Barrows expanded Vickers’ idea and constructed just over a hundred pages linking 3,800 individuals through birth, marriage and siblings.


Here is an example with some well-known Americans in the mix.


The pages leave something to be desired in a blog, but on the page they are fascinating! I would love to see this book expanded into this century! In the meantime...

if a producer out there would like to do a serious, thoughtful, truly entertaining show featuring "housewives" they should look at blogs. How much fun would a show be featuring, Mrs. Blandings, Pigtown Design, little augury, An Aesthete's Lament and on and on...

I'll watch!

Blueberry Gingerbread

Kathy Edwards came up with this recipe to make in her Lucinda's Wood Cake Box. As always, Anne is is the kitchen baking. Harry Lowe headed over for a taste and to try out his new iPhone. He was a little too close, but he'll get better!

Blueberry Gingerbread

1 cup + 2 Tbsp. sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup dark molasses
2 cups AP flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
1cup buttermilk (or 1 cup fresh milk mixed with 2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice; allow to thicken before using)
1 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen), tossed lightly in 2 Tbsp. flour

Whip sugar and egg together until fluffy, and light in color. Slowly incorporate vegetable oil and molasses. Combine dry ingredients and add to egg mixture alternately with buttermilk. Combine until smooth. Fold in blueberries that have been tossed lightly in Tbs. flour. Pour into greased and papered cake pan (follow cake box guidance for prepping box).

Bake at 300 for 30-40 minutes, or until top springs back when touched lightly.
Cool completely before removing from pan.

When the gingerbread is baked, Kathy cuts it in squares, smears the top with some lemon curd, sprinkles that with some coarse sugar, and then lights her torch and brulees the top - it is magnificent according to her sister, Nanci.

Mastering The Art....

Julia Child with Ann Burrola at Julia's 90th Birthday Party

Today is Julia Child day around the blogs. Well, around my blogs and the one at the Smithsonian. Here's the timeline of how it came about.

The Smithsonian got Julia Child's kitchen.


Julie Powell wrote a blog about cooking every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Then she wrote a book, Julie and Julia.


Nora Ephron made it into a movie, Julie and Julia.


The Smithsonian blog, O Say Can You See?, decided to do a series called Julia Child Recipe of the Week and asked for staff to volunteer and cook a recipe and write about the experience, and my friend, Ann (seen earlier with Julia),volunteered -- she volunteered me.

Amy Adams as Julie Powell serving Pâté de Canard en Crouté

Ann, is not a cook. Her most famous dish, the one everyone still talks about, was boiled hamburger. She boiled balls of hamburger and served them with a side of canned, stewed tomatoes. She will never live it down!

My dish was one the more difficult dishes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Pâté de Canard en Crouté.

Ann made baked cucumbers, one of the easiest dishes.

Read about our exploits at the Smithsonian blog, October 19, 2009

Read the recipe for Concombres au Beurre at Cookbook Of The Day.

The House In The Country

Nan Fairbrother was an English writer who wrote extensively on landscape and land usage. While her most influential book was, New Lives, New Landscapes, which provided a visionary view of the future of land use in England, I think her most poignant book, is The House In The Country.

It is a familiar story, after living in London for many years, she and her husband venture out into the countryside to build their dream house. About thirty miles outside of London, she sees the chalky landscape of the Chiltern Hills and she finds her home.



The House In The Country details the trials and tribulations of building a house, but it at its best when she talks of building a home and the impact of that home on its surroundings.

"This house is much more than the shelter of walls we live in, and built anywhere else than here it would be a different house entirely. For more essential than even its walls is the landscape in the windows, the deliberately imposed consciousness of the countryside it is set in. This house now defines this valley for everyone who comes here, and the landscape radiates from its fixed focus as the world for each of us radiates from our own individual consciousness."

The David Hicks Book of Flower Arranging

This week has been marked by relentless, cold rain. It is hard accomplish anything. It is the kind of weather that lends itself to sitting inside and pouring through books. So that is where I am.


The generic boilerplate of jacket flaps of is either too simple or overstated or, as on the flap of The David Hicks Book of Flower Arranging, both:

“Flower arranging is probably the best loved and most widely practiced of the crafts.”

The qualifier of “probably” alludes to the fact that flower arranging is practiced because putting flowers on a table is considered part of setting a table. If it is considered a “craft” it bears a marked craft-like appearance. For those who do actually arrange flowers, it is an art. Alas, I fall into the “craft” section of flower arranging. David Hicks understands the art.

“For me, one of the greatest pleasures of flowers is their juxtaposition with furniture, objects, pictures and the general atmosphere of a room.”

“My love of flowers began in childhood. Although my mother did not arrange them, she was a very good gardener and so I grew up surrounded by plants and blooms. I remember, when I was about sixteen, doing a wildly elaborate autumn arrangement with apples and figs, gourds and berries and yellow and orange flowers with foliage, a crescendo of orangey-red colours at a time when I had certainly never seen anything like it done by anyone else. There was a container, but, by the time I had finished, it had vanished under the harvest extravaganza. Of course, in the exuberance of youth, I had gone too far, but I have never forgotten it and every autumn it is at the back of my mind as I do the flowers at home.”

Not a bad way to spend a rainy day.

Eggs

I love my eggs...

and the chickens who lay them. Here are Queen Latifha and Sister in their laying boxes.



I also love old poultry books like this one explaining how to make a glorious living selling your eggs for 4 cents a dozen. Well, here in the US, it might have been closer to 6 cents a dozen. Or you can buy them today for $4 a dozen.

Cornmeal Olive Oil Cake with Chile Spiced Mangos

Sometimes one goes to the market and is enamored of a new ingredient. That is what happened when I saw these chile spiced mangos. I immediately bought them, ignoring the fact that I am not a big mango person. After about a couple of months the bag of chile spiced mango was still staring at me. I had not a clue what to do with it. I had originally thought that I would add them to a cake.

I began thinking about this cake. It needed to be substantial to stand up to the chile spiced mango, so I thought of an olive oil cake. Then I thought that a bit of corn meal would be a great counterpoint to the spice. So I went to work.

The cake has a big crumb and the dried mango slices were embedded nicely in the cake. It needs a bold olive oil and as often happens with my desserts, it is not overtly sweet. It turned out nicely. Here's the recipe:

Cornmeal Olive Oil Cake with Chile Spiced Mangos

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup oil
4 eggs
1 3/4 cups flour
1 1/4 cup corn meal
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 scant cups chile spiced mangos, chopped into small squares ( if you can't find them pre-spiced, drege you chopped dried mangoes in a tablespoon of chile powder)


Pre-heat oven to 300 F

In a large mixer bowl, blend the sugar, milk and oil

Add the eggs, one at a time until fully blended

In a large bowl whisk the flour, corn meal, baking powder, baking soda and salt to mix.

Add the dry ingredients to the mixer bowl and just mix until all the dry ingredients are blended into the batter

Dredge the mango pieces and fold into the batter

Pour into a prepared Lucinda's Wood Cake Box and bake for 90 minutes

I mixed a teaspoon of chile powder and 1/4 cup of 10X and sprinkled the top to dress it up a bit. As I was trying to take a photo, my picture was interrupted by Teddy who was on the prowl for some leftover cake. Teddy loves anything made with cornmeal and this cake was no different.



A profound love of cornmeal happens when you are raised by chickens and Southerners!

Famous Food Friday -- Yul Brynner

He sings, he dances, he… cooks! Yes, I’m talking about Yul Brynner, author of The Yul Brynner Cookbook. Everyone knows Brynner as an actor, but did you know he was a polyglot (speaking 11 languages including Russian, Chinese and Romany), a nightclub entertainer, a musician, a trapeze artist, a member of a traveling gypsy troupe, a pro jai alai player, and a director, as well as the King of Siam?



So let the guy cook!

Brynner was born on Sakhalin Island, a slim strip of land off the southeastern coast of Russia and north of Japan. The island is sub-arctic and during the 1940’s both Japan and Russia claimed the island. His family took him to China when he was 6 months old. The cookbook features cuisines from his multi-ethnicity. There is a Russian section and a Japanese section. There are sections from his many travels featuring French and Thai cuisine. By far the most interesting section features his Romany or Gypsy heritage.

In his introduction to this section, Brynner tells us:

“My mother was a gypsy, and I spent several of my teenage years traveling through France with a gypsy troupe.

…there are inherent difficulties in constantly moving from one place to another. Just think of the everyday chore of preparing meals.

Gypsies have always favored soups and stews. These dishes are easy to make, and just about anything you put in either of them winds up tasting good. These marvelous concoctions also can be quite exotic.”

One of the more exotic soups is dandelion in cream, while one of the more traditional stews is pork.

Pork and Sauerkraut Ragout

1 1/2 –2 pounds pork shoulder
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 large onion
1 garlic clove
1 tablespoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon slat
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
1/2 cup water
1 cup beer
1 1/2 pounds sauerkraut, drained
1 cup sour cream

Trim excess fat off pork, and cut the meat into small pieces. It’s all right to cook this dish with pork bones included; they should be discarded before serving, but they add flavor to sauce. Set the pork aside, and heat the vegetable oil in a Dutch oven. While the oil heats, peel and chop the onion. Sauté the onion and garlic clove in the vegetable oil until the onions are transparent. Remove the garlic, add the pork, and brown well on all sides. Add paprika, salt, caraway seeds, water and beer to the Dutch oven. Cover, cook for one hour, periodically skimming fat from the top of the sauce. After one hour of cooking, add drained sauerkraut, cover, and cook another 45 minutes. Garnish with sour cream.

Whip up a cauldron of this Pork and Sauerkraut stew and pop The King and I in the DVD and make a night of it. To whet your appetite:

A Puzzlement - mp3

Christmas times a comin'...

First, let me preface this by saying I am not a real "Christmasy" kinda girl. Perhaps it is that "only child" thing, but I just never got into the big over-the-top decoration contest that has become Christmas. I start getting ready for Christmas mid December and on December 26th I want all evidence of Christmas decorating GONE.

For years I had a blow up tree that someone, I-know-but-I-have-no-real-proof-of, deliberately punctured so I couldn't use it again. My next favorite tree, seen above, was a string of lights in a realistic tree shape with a genuine "tree stump" for a stump. I will admit to a soft spot for weird Christmas music. My iPod Christmas folder runs the gamut from Andy Griffith to Yoko Ono, with RuPaul, Charo, and Mae West thrown in for good measure.

Secondly, let me say that I am a huge Bob Dylan fan. When I heard that Bob Dylan was going to release a Christmas disk, I did what most people did.

I laughed.

Then I found out it was true, Bob Dylan was doing a Christmas disk. Recently, the cover was releaased:



Today, I received an advanced copy and though it is still the first week in October, before Columbus Day, before Halloween, before Thanksgiving, before the middle of December... I have been listening to Christmas Carols ALL morning!!!

As I said, I am a huge Bob Dylan fan, but I am still a realist and I must say when I pushed PLAY, it sounded for all the world like a bad Saturday Night Live skit. After hearing it over and over and over and over, I will tell you that you simply haven't lived until you hear Bob Dylan break into a chorus of ...chestnuts roasting on an open fire. And his rendition of Adeste Fideles in its original Latin is divine.

So you heard me exclaim
on October 8, right,
Merry Christmas to all
and to all a good night....

Etiquette Wednesday -- Constance Spry

I do, one day, aspire to dress like this while doing my needlework! Today's etiquette tips come form Constance Spry, who virtually invented floristry as a profession. Hostess was Spry's last book, finished in rough form a few days before she died.

There is a short preface by the Countess of Home. Yes, there really is a "Countess of Home", Elizabeth Home, not to be confused with Elizabeth Home, who in the late 1700's, was known affectionately as "The Queen of Hell". The earlier Elizabeth Home built a house in Marylebone that was called "Home House" which is now a private club/bar. But I digress...The Countess of Home wrote this about Hostess,

"Mrs. Spry could never have anticipated all the pitfalls into which lesser mortals could fall, but with typical imagination she invited questions from succeeding generations of Winkfield girls, and so her advice ranges over being a good listener and making original tablecloths for a yacht to the ladylike eating of artichokes, and somehow her meticulous attention to detail is never dictatorial."

"Winkfield girls" is a reference to a Winkfield Place a school that Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume ran for many years. The school featured a yearlong course on how to cook, how to sew ones own clothes, and how to run a house. Including entertaining in the "homey" part of the house.

As Mrs. Spry tells us:

"The near disappearance of the professional cook and the advent of the cook-hostess has done much to change the face of entertaining in England. For example, the cuisine in the type of home in which the cooking was at one time left to people of mediocre attainments and limited imagination has changed greatly for the good."

For those who may be of "mediocre attainments" or who have never been seated at any event more formal than a buffet, the is a lovely drawing of a simple table setting.


I must say that I do love a book with a drawing of a table setting. Even though for years now, it is simply, fork to the left, knife to the right, I just love these diagrams. Speaking of the drawing in Hostess, they were done by none other than the wonderful Lesley Blanch, of whom I have written before.


My favorite drawing in the book is above and it shows everything an overnight guest might need. Notice the gun in the nightstand drawer. Ah, Lesley!

In her section on overnight guest, Mrs. Spry recounts her own visit to a rather formal house where...

"...the chatelaine...was known to be a real dragon...I asked about a convenient time for a morning bath, somehow indicating that I was thinking in terms of the bathroom, whereupon she glanced stonily at me and said: 'Your bath will be brought up to your room." And then in an aside all too clearly audible, she added: "Ladies do not use the bathroom.'"

The bathroom is one of my favorite rooms! In addition to Mrs. Spry's hostess tips, Rosemary Hume added a section of timely recipes since one no longer has those tedious kitchen folk to produce their uninspired fare. Head over to Cookbook Of The Day for the "cookbook" portion of Hostess.

The Formal Garden in England...

...or perhaps, West Virginia.


It is that time of the season when the garden is dying. Though it is still hanging on, much to my shame, I am already thinking of next year. I found The Formal Garden in England by Reginald Blomfield and illustrated by F. Inigo Thomas laying on top of a pile of books I moved and soon I was lost.



I am fond of this garden in Shipton Moyne...

and this one in Rycott...

but I am leaning toward this little number in Badminton.

It's never too early to dream...

or to get the tiller started!

RIP -- Gourmet

Seriously! This is the sixth magazine I subscribed to this year that has FOLDED. I am beginning to take it personally.

I am now getting Architectural Digest as a three year replacement for Cottage Living. I subscribed to Cottage Living because I am interested in small, well, cottages. I have no desire to ogle a 54,000 square foot mansion! Hello!!

Read about it here.

Meanwhile... Another One Bites The Dust -- Queen