"Never touch cake? Pathetic!"

In Jan Karon's In This Mountain, Esther Bolick thinks:

It was hard, very hard, when people couldn't--and, in today's world, wouldn't--eat cake.

When she was coming up, families lived from cake to cake. A cake was a special event, it meant something. Now a homemade, baked-from-scratch cake meant next to nothing.

For one thing, most young people had never experienced such a thing. All they'd ever known was bought from a store and tasted like hamster shavings, or had been emptied from a box into a bowl, stirred with low-fat milk, and shoved into an oven that nearly blew a fuse from being turned on in the first place.

Such a cake could never be your cake, no way, it would be Betty Crocker's or Duncan Hine's cake, and the difference between yours and theirs was vast and unforgivable...

Worse yet was the inevitable declaration: I never touch cake!

 Never touch cake? Pathetic!

I had to bake a cake. No birthdays, no parties, no company. Still, I had to bake a cake. I had everything I needed for Silver Palate's Williamsburg Orange-Sherry Cake with Orange Frosting.

Rather than type the recipe, I found a link (click here) where you can print it, with their link to the frosting.  

Be sure to soak the raisins in sherry the night before you want to bake the cake. 

Esther Bolick will be so proud of you if you do--if not hers, any cake. 

I wanted this to be a short post but couldn't end without showing you the milk glass cake stand we found last winter during those wonderful carefree days when we could wander crowded aisles of an antique mall without worry. Remember them?

It is a Pitman Dreitzer cake stand in Lace pattern that was under $30, found on Poshmark for $100. It's my only piece of milk glass but I think of dear Gladys Taber's milk glass collection when I see it in my kitchen every day.

The milk glass fills the corner cupboard and the old pine cupboard across the family room and at night when the fire burns on the hearth, it sends a pearly glow over the room.

Gladys Taber

 Stillmeadow Album

 

 

Does this look like Cameron Mathison?

I don't think so.

But this is how I picture Father Tim from Jan Karon's first book in her Mitford series, At Home In Mitford, especially before he was diagnosed with diabetes and began to eat healthier and take long walks to view his Land of Counterpane.

Hallmark channel thinks differently and has cast Cameron Mathison as the portly priest for their upcoming movie. 

Aarrgghh!!!!!!!! [great angst here]

I love you, Cameron, but get thee back to Murder, She Baked, etc!

I must save my breath to cool my porridge and just get over it. I and the other Mitford fan base have been arguing out what actor should have been cast for the role for a month now.

We do agree that not one single person has been cast accurately for this movie, especially Father Tim and his wife Cynthia who will be played by Andie MacDowell. 

We're very afraid that Cynthia is going to take center stage in this movie, we adore Cynthia but the main role should properly belong to Father Tim, our beloved Episcopalian priest.

We're disappointed that Barnabas is going to be a large brown dog with a black head instead of a solid black dog. We can't imagine them not having Dooley being a eleven year old red head, but we're not holding our breath on that one either.

Some of us say we refuse to watch it. Others are complete Jan Karon fans and if she sold it to Hallmark, then that's good enough for us. I, by the way, am of that persuasion. 

So Sunday night August 20, 2017 at 9 p.m. central time, please don't phone me. I will be glued to the Hallmark channel to watch this perhaps very loosely adapted movie. 

I owe it to Jan Karon who has given me so many hours of pleasure and inspiration while reading her books about the portly priest of Mitford, North Carolina. And he no longer is portly after landing in two diabetic comas from eating such things as Mitford's world famous Orange Marmalade Cake.

But he still doesn't look anything at all like Cameron.

And that's just fine with Mitford fans.

Here's a link to our esteemed author, with news of her latest book to be released in September,

To Be Where You Are

And my model for Father Tim, top of page, is actually Carl A. Peterson of Boston in an ad for Macmillan Oil in Life magazine, August 1948. 

A plump Michael Kitchen would have been my choice for Father Tim's role but Hallmark forgot to check with me when casting the role.

Any Mitford fans among my readers? What do you think about my Father Tim?

Ads That Sold -- Thermador

1960

I never thought I would be cooking with gas,

and I never thought I would be using

Thermador appliances.

But I am, if only temporarily.

Refrigerator, dishwasher, microwave

and convection oven are all Thermador.

But it is the 6-burner gas range that has been my...

my nemesis.

I have burned 80% of all I've cooked

on these burners.

After all, below is the stove I've been used to...

Cozy, friendly, known.

But I am learning to tame this monster.

How?

Unless I'm boiling water,

this is the only setting I use...

And even then I don't dare turn my back on it.

My green Le Cruset sits on top of it all the time,

it's too heavy to try to store.

I use it for pot roasts and Bolognese sauce,

but mostly I use it for soups.

Leftover chicken and broths turn into one of

many favorite chicken soup recipes,

enriched with a box of my favorite broth.

This time it was a Congee, 

an Asian porridge that is pure comfort food.

Recipes abound online but be sure to

allow plenty of time for the rice to cook

almost to a gruel.

Soups are my favorite meals and I love soup pots.

I use this smaller All-Clad soup pot too.

This large pot doesn't get as much use

now that we've moved, no son living right next door to share pots of soup with.

But its pasta inserts came in handy for many

pasta-based meals in past years.

Good tools last forever and this Thermador

range will last long after we've moved

to the small house we're looking for.

As long as I keep it on simmer.

Next to tackle the oven.

I've only used it three times.

Those whoosh noises emitting from its depths

make me jump every time.

I'll get used to this Thermador range--

I even smiled when I spotted

the Thermador ad in this fabulous1960

House & Garden the other day.

It's kind of nice getting to use these

Thermador appliances.

But about the time I catch on,

we'll be moving to a small house,

small kitchen.

I'm already studying ideas for small kitchens.

But where will I store all these big soup pots?

He'd never messed with gas stoves. While chefs were commonly known to prefer cooking with gas, he'd always feared it might blow his head off. Dangerous stuff, gas, he could smell it in here more strongly than in the rest of the house. If he lit a match they could be spending their honeymoon in Quebec.

Father Tim in Jan Karon's
A Common Life 

Books & Bed

I would love to wake up like this in the morning

and all would be right with the world. 

It won't be, will it?

Not with many hurting people.

But it is the most beautiful month in the year to me.

It is October.

And so I replace my spring and summer bed linens....

With autumn and winter's colors.

Can you tell that I don't like for my linens to match?

Comfort to me is an odd assortment of bed linens.

And comfort is a good book taken to bed.

There's not a better comfort book, for Jan Karon fans,

than her newest book, Come Rain or Come Shine.

This book is pure happiness.

And the voice that Karon gave Lacey in it, the one main character who I had 

never really connected with, was pure magic,

so completely right that she was as real to me as one of my own children.

 I will buy any book that Louise Penny writes.

The Nature of the Beast is a good mystery book.

 And Penny did take her fans back to the hamlet of Three Pines.

Hurrah!

Please forgive me though, fellow Penny fans, if I say that this book

missed the mark of earlier Penny books that were my favorite.

It just didn't have the wonderful literary writing.

It didn't have the deep, compelling  character development of earlier books.

It has not been an easy personal year for Penny,

as any of you who follow her on FaceBook know.

Her dear husband, who was the model for Chief Inspector Armand Gamache,

has been in poor health.

So I will continue to read anything written by this super talented author.

One book that really disappointed me?

Go Set A Watchman was built up as "the book of the summer."

Having lived during that time of the 1950s, in the South, and remembering it well,

I doubt it would have caused a ripple if it had been released first,

instead of To Kill A Mockingbird.

 Scout's uncle, Dr. Finch, was my favorite character in this book,

my only favorite.

And I sure did miss Gregory Peck in this book.

  Sometimes, for comfort, I just take a good magazine to bed.

I suppose if R.H. and I were only allowed one magazine in the house,

it would have to be Yankee.

When I read this magazine I forget that I was born and bred in the South--

and love the South with a passion--

and feel I'm a true New Englander at heart.

Have you read any of these books yet?

How about Yankee magazine?

These are troubled times, even if everything is going well in our personal lives.

Do you feel like telling us about your own comfort books?

We all want to wake up in a glow after a good night's rest, don't we?

 And feel like this?

  

 

  

Father Tim

I felt that I was "somewhere safe with somebody good" reading Jan Karon's latest and long-waited for novel about Father Tim and his wife Cynthia.  In times when news about church leaders is not always good--and Karon tackles the very subject superbly in this book--Father Tim represents the many who year after year continue to serve God and their flock.

Years ago I was reading a small book by Phyllis Nicholson, written in 1947, called Country Bouquet. I was reminded of Father Tim then when Nicholson wrote about the contribution a member of the clergy has on the village where they live, and even more so after reading Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good.


"How profoundly clergymen affect the parish in which they work, and how subtle are the secrets of their influence. To be good is not enough; goodness, without the backing of personality, seldom attracts or holds the interest of a mixed body of persons. What, then, does? A standard of living and appearance to command respect and invite imitation. Unfailing endeavor to put the crooked straight. You can't 'look up' to any individual who is carless in dress, or gobbles their soup and frowns upon black sheep. Almost everyone admires and responds to a practical attractive manner of living. They appreciate a well-cared-for home, good food, the kindness and understanding that lifts every day life from drabness into worthwhile experience."

From Phyllis Nicholson's Country Bouquet

Wow! That's a lot to live up to, isn't it? But fans of Karon's Mitford books probably all agree that Father Tim lives up to it, could be true of him, personifies him.

What? You say that Father Tim is not real, he's a fictional character? Not to me, he's not, not to a true Mitford books fan! 

Although some Mitford residents do take objection to the sight of Father Tim running down Main Street in his summer jogging gear. 

Well, nobody's perfect, are they? Not even the clergy. Why do we expect them to be?

Wasn't there only One who was perfect?

Jan Karon & Ham

[Jan Karon's Mitford Cookbook & Kitchen Reader]

Plans are moving ahead for the wedding of Jan Karon's Father Tim and Cynthia. Hessie Mayhew is ready to raid the gardens and byways of Mitford for her floral arrangements. 

The whole parish is pitching in to make the wedding perfect for their, and our, beloved Father Tim and his fiancé Cynthia.

"And what," inquired Hessie, "are you

planning to do, Father,

other than show up?"

"I'm doing the usual," he said…

I'm baking a ham!"

[from Jan Karon's A Common Life]

[from Jan Karon's Mitford Cookbook & Kitchen Reader]

A picture is worth a thousand words, dear reader and dear husband. There it is in the picture above, the ham mahogany red--not pink. Father Tim says so. 

Author Frances Gray Patton said so in my previous post and my next post will include more proof from one of my favorite Southern cookbook authors.

Below is Father Tim's recipe:

Father Tim's Baked Ham

[from Jan Karon's Mitford Cookbook & Kitchen Reader]

Vegetable oil for greasing the pan

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup molasses

1/2 cup bourbon

1 cup orange juice

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon whole cloves

1 (6 to 8 pound) smoked ham

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a large baking dish and set aside.

Combine the brown sugar and molasses in small saucepan and melt over low heat.

Remove from the heat, add the bourbon, orange juice, mustard, and cloves and mix well.

Remove the skin and fat from the ham and place in the baking dish.

Make 1/4-inch cuts in the ham in a diamond pattern. Pour the glaze over the ham.

Bake for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thicker portion 

of the ham registers 140 degrees F, basting every 15 minutes with the glaze.

Remove the ham from the oven and cool in the pan. Remove from the pan and refrigerate.

Pour the pan drippings into a bowl and refrigerate. When ready to serve the ham, remove

the fat from the top of the drippings, remove the whole cloves, warm it up, and serve it with the ham.

If you're a Jan Karon and Mitford fan, this cookbook brings to life all the delicious food in her novels. I love what Karon ends her introduction with:

"Draw close.

Hold hands.

Life is short.

God is good."

Amen--regardless of how you like your ham!