Decoration

While moving books around, as we so often do, this lovely Rex Whistler cover popped out at us. A comfy chair, a window open to the courtyard, some books and a banjo for our knee.

I believe the best thing about this book might just be Rex Whistler's cover art, buy Mrs. Lockwood offers us a brief and concise history of house types from ancient Egypt to those available to the future homeowner of the early 1930's. She seems most at home with the Colonial period. The book is a fine little primer on style through the ages. Her introduction to Decoration and beauty are as modern as anything one might fine in any coffee table book of in this century.

Mrs. Lockwood tells us, "Details are the stuff that dreams are made of."


There is not a decorator out there who could have said it better, and she seems downright modern and quite to the point in her introduction to why we decorate. Why do we decorate?

"We are born that way. fundamentally, it is the universal impulse to express the things of the spirit in visible form, the divine urge( or its devilish perversion) that sets mankind apart from his fellow creatures on this earth and denies him their peaceful existence."

Here's to opposable thumbs.

Famous Food Friday -- Eugene Walter

OK, some of you may not think Eugene Walter is that famous, but I do. It is one of my greatest regrets that I never met Eugene Walter. In a previous post at Lucindaville, we extolled the copious adventures of Mr. Walter. At Cookbook Of The Day we have featured several cookbooks from Eugene Walter. If ever there was a Renaissance man, it was Eugene Walter who was at varying time in his colorful life:

cryptographer

writer

poet

artist

founder of a chamber orchestra...
...and the Paris Review

winner of a Lippincott...
...an O’Henry...
...a Sewanee-Rockefeller fellowship...
...the Prix Guilloux

puppet maker

music composer

opera singer

actor (including Fellini’s 8 1/2 and Lina Wertmüller’s Ballad of Belle Starr and 100 others)

cookbook author

legendary party-giver

consummate Southerner

They just don't make them like this anymore. For much of his later life, Eugene Walter talked of writing a book about gumbo. It is the great "lost" book of Eugene Walter and the first question everyone asks his executor, Donald Goodman. Goodman says the book never existed. I have asked him repeatedly. One day last year, I got an e-mail form Goodman. While there wasn't a gumbo book, there was a manuscript that never got published. The University of North Carolina Press was going to publish the cookbook and Don wanted me to know. I immediately pre-ordered the book. The Happy table of Eugene Walter arrived last week. First I just looked at it for a couple of days and finally I sat down to spent the day with Eugene. It was the next best thing to meeting him.


The first thing one notices about the book is its division. The first, substantial section, is on drinks. Southern drinks, of course. There are 5 juleps, 7 eggnogs, 13 punches, two pages of instructions on iced tea and 9 hangover "cures" all with a proper history and introduction.

The second section is on victuals. And what victuals they are. Walter offers up a favorite from the famed creole cookbook author, Celestine Eustis. The recipe is a basic bread pudding recipe titled "Monkey Pudding." The recipe calls for stale bread, milk, cream, sugar and spice, but it is the actual baking instructions that caught Walter's eye. According to Eustis the pudding is cooked until... "it looks like an old monkey."

Water loved monkeys and one can just see him laughing at as he pulled that monkey pudding from the fire.
Walter never looses his humor nor his writing style when introducing a recipe. Here is his introduction to Sunday Supper Onion Pie:

"Okay, you have the wreckage of a baked ham, roast beef, or pork. So prepare your favorite flaky pastry for a deep pie pan --not a casserole, not a shallow pie pan, but a deep pie pan. Bake it; chill it.
Then make your onion pie filling. There are dozens of recipes. And, just like the 2,000 green tomato pie recipes are about evenly divided between sweet versions and savory ones, same's true of onions. Many eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century green apple pie recipes were simply northern apple pie recipes with, in the apple-less south, green tomatoes substituted for Eve's preference."

Walter's description of learning to make rice from Marie Honorine Julac is worth the price of the book.


Here is a little recipe Walter calls, "a mad dish from the 1920's."

Whoopsadaisy Toast

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 pound grated Cheddar cheese
1/4 cup dry Champagne
Dash of mace
Salt and freshly ground white pepper
Toast

In your chafing dish, melt butter over hot water, then add grated Cheddar cheese. As it melts, gradually add Champagne, Pit in a dash of mace, a pinch of salt, and a hint of freshly ground white pepper; serve immediately over warm toast. Chilled champagne, of course, with it.

Cheese toast. Every kid has had it at one time or another, yet, in the hands of Eugene Walter it becomes an elegant and delightful luncheon. "In your chaffing dish..." because everyone has a chaffing dish, really what kind of Southerner are you? "A dash," "a pinch," "a hint," all less than a 1/4 teaspoon, but important measurements to be learned through a culinary osmosis. Chilled champagne-- "of course" -- because what is the point of whoosadaisy toast without a little champagne on the side.

I said it before and I will say it again, I am very sorry that I never met Eugene Walter. But, I am grabbing a bottle of Champagne and making Woopsadaisy Toast for lunch in his honor.

Ballet & Pork

Two things we love here in Lucindaville -- ballet and pork. We were overjoyed the other evening while we were watching a documentary about the legendary ballerina, Maria Tallchief. Many people fail to realize that Tallchief was America's first prima ballerina and she was the original Sugarplum Fairy for George Balanchine, to whom she was married for a while. She was wife #3.

Anywho...in this documentary, Tallchief talked about taking Mr. B to visit the folks in Oklahoma. The above picture was snapped of George Balanchine toting a pig! Incongruous yet cool...

Women Reading

The Morning Paper by Sir James Guthrie, 1890.

Way Down Yonder In The Pawpaw Patch

It's pawpaw season and we are...

Pickin' up pawpaws, puttin' 'em in your pocket
Way down yonder in the pawpaw patch

University of Arkansas

If you are familiar with the song or with the pawpaw, you know that it won't fit into your "pocket" unless that pocket is an old-fashioned apron to which the song refers. You may not find pawpaw (Asimina triloba) fruit on the grocery shelf because the season lasts a short time and the fruit lasts only a few days. It makes for a temperamental harvest. Full disclosure: I was nowhere near the pawpaw patch.

Living in a small town, and having a reputation for cooking and eating ANYTHING, I am often the recipient of foodstuffs that no one else want to bother with. Yesterday I got three bags of pawpaws in various states of ripeness. One school of thought would have you believe that you need to wait till the pawpaw falls from the tree, but frankly, by that time they are over-ripe. Pick them when they have that "avocado" feel to them - a few brown spots and a gentle give should put them about ripe. Alas, most of bags were filled with the over-ripe variety, but I was able to salvage about 4 cups of pawpaw pulp.

The pawpaw is often called a Custard Apple because of its soft, custard-y flesh, but actually the custard apple is the same genus -- different species as are the cherimoya and the sweetsop. The name is probably derived from its similarity to the word papaya and the belief that the pawpaw was a similar type of fruit though the papaya is a different genus.


The pawpaw has many a banana nom de plume including the Poor Man's banana, the Hoosier banana, the Indiana banana and the West Virginia banana. Mashed up it does have that over-ripe banana consistency, though the taste of the pawpaw is a bit more melon-y. The pawpaw is the state fruit of Ohio and the largest edible fruit native to North America.


With this plethora of pawpaw goodness, I made a cake and some preserves. The cake was my usual kind of moist, fruit cake made in one of my cake boxes. The recipe can be made in loaf pans or any pan that is about 8 inches across and lined with parchment or brown paper.

Pawpaw Cake with Candied Lemon and Sultanas

1 cup sugar
1 stick (1/2cup) butter, softened
3 eggs
1 cup mashed pawpaw pulp
1/2 cup milk
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons quatre épices
1 cup sultanas
1/4 candied lemon peel, dredged in additional flour


1. Cream butter and sugar.

2. Add eggs, one at a time, until fully incorporated.

3. Mix the pawpaw pulp and the milk, in a small bowl.

4. In another bowl sift the flour, salt, baking soda, and quatre épices.

5. Alternate the pulp mixture and the flour mixture into the batter until fully incorporated.

6. Fold in the lemon peel and sultanas

7. Pour the batter into a prepared Lucinda's Wood Cake Box.

8. Bake at 300 for 90 minutes.

My other recipe was for pawpaw jam. This jam has an "order-by-mail" ingredient in the recipe. I live in a remote area and often get ingredients through the mail. This recipe calls for a soft diced ginger available at King Arthur's Flour. I love ginger. It is fairly easy to find candied ginger, but this product from King Arthur is sublime. Seriously, it is one of those things that one might be tempted to eat right out of the carton with a spoon. It is beyond versatile. A teaspoon in a cake, cookies, marinade, salad dressing... the list is as long as your imagination. If you love ginger and cook with it often, this is a must have!

Pawpaw Jam with Ginger

3 cups pawpaw pulp
2 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup soft diced ginger

Mix all the ingredients into a confiture pan or other non-reactive pan. Bring to a rolling boil. When a candy thermometer reaches 220 F., remove from heat and pour into sterilized jars. Process for 10 minutes.

Still want more pawpaws? Check out Cookbook Of The Day.

Cocktails at the Burn Pit -- Blueberry Vodka Tonic

This installment of Cocktails at the Burn Pit comes to you from the sunny shores of Delaware. At the beach, the only thing that gets burned is one's soft and white underbelly. (I did use that SPF stuff and a shirt, but I just felt I wasn't getting enough sun and then...but I digress.)



So there was no burn pit but as always there were cocktails. The house drink, where I was a guest, was the ever popular G&T. But when I arrived, the G&T got a little twist.

This summer, I was inundated with blueberries, a very great thing to be inundate with, so I made jam and pies and ice cram and salads. I froze bags of blueberries, so in the darkness of winter, I could make more jam and think of summer and still, I had blueberries. The last few handfuls that I thought might get all gunky before I could deal with them, got dealt with. I dropped them into a partially full bottle of vodka and set out to make blueberry vodka.

Blueberry Vodka

1 partially consumed bottle of vodka
2-3 cups of blueberries

Drop the blueberries into the vodka. Shake on occasion. Wait a month or so. Strain.

I took my blueberry vodka to the beach where it received a less than enthusiastic reception. Finally, it rose to the head of the cocktail list and got the opportunity to shine. I took a few blueberries from the house and dipped them in an egg white wash and rolled them in sugar for a garnish. And then...

Blueberry Vodka Tonics

1 ounce blueberry vodka
4 ounces tonic

Fill a glass with ice. Pour in one ounce blueberry vodka. Fill with tonic. Give it a quick stir. Garnish with blueberries.

Beach, burn pit, breakfast nook, it really doesn't matter. This one is a keeper. And to think I wasted all those blueberries on pie when I could have made vodka!

Root Vegetables

This happens every year. As soon as the garden starts to wane, I start thinking about the next garden. Last week I dug potatoes and onions and this week I was thumbing though a vintage copy of Alexander Dean’s Root and Stem Vegetables.

I just adore root vegetables. I have a green thumb when it comes to beets, turnips, carrots and onions.

My thumb is totally black when it comes to parsnips, one of my favorite vegetables. I am starting early, reading all the pertinit info so that perhaps next year, I will finally grow a parsnip or two. Till then, I’ll keep reading.

Sour Cherry Preserves

This summer I got a new cherry pitter. Some girls like shoes, I like kitchen gadgets.



Having a new cherry pitter meant procuring cherries to pit with it. So I got 8 cups of sour cherries and pitted them. I like my preserves and jams to a bit on the loose side, so I try not to use pectin.


Sour Cherry Preserves

8 cups pitted sour cherries
1/2 cup lemon juice
6 cups sugar


Put the cherries, juice and sugar into a nonreactive canning pan. Cook slowly until the sugar has dissolved. Bring the mixture to a rolling boil and cook until the temperature on a candy thermometer reads 230 F. Fill sterilized jars to with 1/8 inch of the top. Screw on the sterilized jar top and ring and hand tighten. Place in a canning pot of boiling water an inch over the top of the jars. Process for 10 minutes. Remove and cool.


Now make some biscuits and sit out on the porch and enjoy.

Stettheimer Dollhouse

Portrait of My Sister, Carrie W. Stettheimer, 1923 by Florine Stettheimer

The other evening I was sitting at my desk with he television on in the background when Dr. Who came on. I know very little of Dr. Who. Suffice to say, I am aware that the show has a huge following and even the people who follow it with great vigor, the so called Whovians, sometimes find themselves lost in Who-ville. I began to pay attention when I saw that the time travelers were abducted by a child and sent to live in a dollhouse with some really creepy dolls.




This made me think -- If I were to get trapped in a doll house by some weirdly alien child, which dollhouse would I want to get trapped in. Clearly the question was a no-brainer. Carrie Stettheimer's Dollhouse, of course.




The Stettheimer Sisters were an interesting bunch. (As an only child, I never could grasp the concept of siblings, and while I can think of nothing worse than "sisters", I do admit an unnatural fascination with them.)

In the Stettheimer household, there were three sisters of note.

Florine, Carrie, and Ettie Stettheimer

Florine was a painter who refused to sell or show her work.

Carrie managed the household and spent somewhere between 18 and 25 years building a dollhouse.

Ettie was writer of overwrought, slightly feminist, lovelorn novels.


Carrie Stettheimer filled the dollhouse with recreations of the rooms in the Stettheimer house. The sisters used their house as a salon and the numerous painters and artist who visited, joined in Carrie dollhouse fantasy by painting tiny replicas of some their most important works. Even Marcel Duchamp made Carrie a tiny Nude Descending a Staircase.

The Stettheimer dollhouse is roughly 28 inches tall, 50 inches long, and 35 inches wide and it resides at the Museum of the City of New York.


So if, perchance, you run into Dr. Who and you have to be sucked into a dollhouse, this is the one. I could definitely live there, if the sisters moved out.

Grind Your Own

My friend, Ann, decided to enrich the cooking environment of Lucindaville with a grain grinder for Christmas, as we always wanted to make our own grits. However, grain grinders are ghastly expensive, so I promised to keep a lookout for scratch-and-dent model. Of course I found one and Ann came through, though it was a bit before the Christmas deadline. We couldn't resist giving it a spin.

First we ground some blue corn. Since this was our first experiment, our grits came out more of a cornmeal. Grits -- cornmeal who cares, they were our cornmeal. So we took the cornmeal and made cornbread. We made the cornbread with the cornmeal and Doe Run eggs. Just a reminder, the eggs at Doe Run Farm have the most vibrant orange yolks, so the eggs acted, not only as a binder, but as a food coloring. So the blue cornmeal and orange yolks made for a strangely colored cornbread.


But still, beyond yummy. By Christmas, we should have the kinks worked out.