September

 

 I'm a little surprised to find myself blogging at Dewena's Window again but life has a little something missing without it and September 1st seemed a good time to try. Maybe I can hit publish by midnight tonight even though it's been around Robin Hood's barn to pull it off after my Mac Pro decided to punish me for ignoring it all summer. 

Back in May I made like a flying squirrel who lost her footing and glided to the ground a tad bit harder than intended, which was not at all. Majorly bruised from broken toes to not broken shoulder, my knee taking the brunt of it, I spent three months visiting my favorite physical therapist. Thank you, Patrick! 

But late spring and summer compensations were plentiful, as when our firstborn brought me enough beautiful yellow roses for the whole house.

And even trimmed and arranged them for me!

Our lives have been quiet here this summer but many joys are constant. There's always the fun of cookbooks and cooking.

I'm so sorry for poor picture quality! Not only do I have shaky hands and worsening eyesight but BeFunky decided to make changes too that I can't figure out. 

Judith Huxley's Marinated Olives with Citrus and Fennel (seed) lured me into making them even though I felt a little guilty because I usually only make them when a certain daughter-in-law comes to town.

I think there's a recipe for this in my Judith Huxley label but I'll never hit publish on this post by midnight if I try to find it and link it. After the olives chill in fridge for a week or two I make Alison Roman's Vinegar Chicken with crushed olives. I shouldn't have skipped crushing the olives this time but it was still delicious.

There have been meals to cook and pretty tables to set and I kept taking pictures of them even though I wasn't blogging. And there have been good books to read before bed and books to listen to on my free library app while I wash dishes and fold laundry. 

Right now it's Edith Wharton's The Buccaneers, an old favorite about American heiresses hunting for husbands among the financially strapped British aristocracy.

 Quite a different recent one was Playin' Possum.

It's about the Possum himself, country music star George Jones. The early chapters were frankly depressing due to his cocaine addiction and domestic violence, the book written by Nancy Jones, his fourth and final wife. If I had been actually sitting down reading the book I would have returned it to the library early but listening to it while I worked I kept on listening and was glad I did because it was good to know George and Nancy were happy in his later years.

You see, we old timers here in Nashville love George Jones who was a mighty sweet guy when he was sober. And that voice still gets to me and I agree with writer Julia Reed that George's "He Stopped Loving Her Today" is the "Best Country music song ever made."

I miss George Jones and I miss Julia Reed.

And now that I'm 81 and no longer wish away my least favorite month, August, I'll probably even miss the summer of 2024.

Still, I am more than delighted to welcome September and the hope of cooler temperatures. There's just something promising about September, isn't there? If I could remember how to embed, is that the word for it, videos from YouTube here I would end with a link to Walter Huston singing "The September Song." 

Do you know Walter Huston, Canadian actor of silent films and the talkies? Father to director John Huston, grandfather to Angelica Huston and Danny Huston? And I think there's an uncle somewhere in the mix.

"The September Song" that we love sung by so many wonderful singers was actually written for Walter Huston and he sang it in a play on Broadway and if you go to the trouble to find it on YouTube these September days you might see, as I did that he can tear your heart out with his poignant interpretation. 

I recently fell down the Walter Huston rabbit hole after watching a 1950 movie called September Affair with Joan Fontaine and Joseph Cotton. With dresses by Edith Head! And Walter Huston sings The Song! 

Sorry about the length of all this. Rabbit holes are my favorite pasttime now in my 80s and I give myself permission to indulge but I do feel sorry for any reader here. 

 A long long time from May to September,

September. November.

These few precious days I'll spend with you!

      And I'm mush. Every single time.

Labor Day Recipes

 

For the family cookbook I'll probably never get around to compiling, here is a Labor Day barbecue recipe that we love. Also for Independence Day cookouts along with the salmon that my wannabe New England side loves.

Barbecue Spareribs prepared following Judith Huxley's superb method in her Table for Eight...

 But following the recipes in Mary Emmerlings' American Country Cooking for the sauces...

I begin 3 days ahead by making the Mopping Sauce:

Combine and simmer over low heat in non-aluminum saucepan for one hour, stirring when you think about it:

2 sticks unsalted butter

4 cups apple cider vinegar

2 cups vegetable oil [I now use avocado oil]

2 cups fresh lemon juice

2 cups Worcestershire sauce

1 cup prepared mustard

1 medium onion, minced

2-3 garlic cloves, minced [germ removed]

1 tablespoon cayenne pepper

2 tablespoons salt

1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper

That is the only sauce we mop the ribs with while cooking and if it's just RH and I eating we no longer make the sauce below to serve with it. I'm including it here because everyone loves it.

Barbecue Sauce for Eating, makes 2 quarts:

Melt 1 stick unsalted butter in non-aluminum saucepan over moderate heat and sauté 1 medium onion, minced. Then add 1 garlic clove, minced.

Add: 2/3 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

2 tablespoons prepared mustard

1 5 oz. bottle of A-1 sauce

8 oz. tomato sauce

14 oz. ketchup

Cook, stirring occasionaly for at least 3 hours.

Cool both sauces, cover and refrigerate. Warm both up to use. 

 

Now to Judith Huxley's directions. Her wonderful book, which I wrote about on another post here, is a little pricey now. If you can find one for less than $50, grab it even if the cover is missing as the hardback is beautiful.

The 2nd day: wash the spareribs, as many as 7 pounds, pat dry with paper towels. Marinate in stainless steel roasting pan, or enamel bowls, with:

2/3 cup fresh lemon juice, about 6-7

2 teaspoons Hungarian paprika

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Cover pan with plastic, not foil, and refrigerate overnight, turning the ribs as you can.

On morning of 3rd day: Remove the ribs from the pan or bowls and drain marinade into a saucepan. 

Put metal rack in bottom of large roasting pan and arrange ribs in single layer if you can, fat side up.

Bake uncovered in 250 degrees F. for 3 hours. Remove from oven and let cool.

Very important--cut into SINGLE rib portions! The picture below is before they were cut. You want all the crispy edges you can get.

Finish over a charcoal fire on medium heat, basting often with the Mopping Sauce and turning with tongs for about 40 minutes. 

One rainy day I did skip the grilling and finished them off in the oven at 350 degrees F. for an hour. 

Serve with the Eating Sauce!

When RH and I are eating these by ourselves now we just fix corn on the cob to go with the ribs and I make a wedge salad based on Xavier Faucan's famous recipe that is still served at Jimmy Kelly's and Belle Meade Country Club here in Nashville. 

I wash Iceburg lettuce and soak it in ice cube water early in the morning, drain and refrigerate, wrapped in towels.

The Faucon Salad has traditionally been served with blue cheese or Roquefort dressing. I used to make a wonderful Roquefort dressing but RH can no longer eat it so instead I mix up a dressing that was in the Tennessean newspaper, I think back in 2008. It is by Elizabeth Cole and Kris Geist who served it with their Tomato Salad at the Tomato Arts Festival in Nashville. It is our favorite mayonnaise based dressing.

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1 1/2 teaspoons Maille mustard

1/2 teaspoon curry powder

1 1/2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

1 small garlic toe [germ removed], minced.

Then I prep the rest of the ingredients of the wedge salad:

hard-boiled eggs, crisp bacon, minced green bell pepper, sliced scallions, thinly sliced radish, sliced long sweet peppers, tomatoes

A well-deserved Labor's Day rest to my U.S. and Canadian friends and others enjoying holidays around the world. We all need them, don't we?

My apologies for a long post that perhaps no one but myself may be interested in. I've felt as if I couldn't stop writing simply because there was one subject, one dear lady, that I couldn't yet bring myself to write about. 

This has been a brutally difficult week for friends of my dear friend Tammy who has commented here and at my other blog for almost ten years now. Poppy and I and other blog friends are trying to adjust to a world without our dear Tam who passed away after a recent stroke. 

As her wonderful brother kept a group of us informed and updated we truly felt that our feisty friend would have the strength to fight her way back to our world once again. It was not to happen this time. 

Tammy was a loyal little soul who championed those in pain in our world, whether animal or human. Sometimes she had to withdraw even from us for a short while when the world's pain became too much for her.  

Tammy might have even skipped commenting on this post because she just could not have let herself think about an animal having given its life to provide our Labor Day menu. I always wanted to apologize to her when I published a post like the one above. 

I miss Tammy so much. I miss knowing that she's there, a few states away from me. I miss getting emails that nearly always ended in her asking me to hug BreeBree and James Mason. 

In the group of friends of Tam who got emails from her brother about her progress or lack thereof, one thing that we all told him (the brother Tam always called the Marine) was that our world, each of us, would not be the same without his precious sister but that we would treasure the sweet memories of what she meant to us.

Please forgive the mixture of the mundane of this post with the message of loss. I didn't think I could yet write about my friend and then I went ahead and did it and I don't have the heart or brain energy to do them both over separately. 

It's been that kind of a week.

 

Tea and Sympathy

My post title is misleading as there's no tea here--I don't drink it, wish I liked it. There may be some sympathy simply because you may understand that my mind is wandering and can't seem to focus lately. Maybe Miscellaneous would be a better title.

One of the highlights of my recent days was watching 1956's Tea and Sympathy starring Deborah Kerr and John Kerr (no relation) on Turner Classic Movies. 

Do you see that kitchen? 

The wall of copper? The wood dresser with white knobs? And there's a curtain under the sink and several other pieces of furniture in the room and pretty china in the cabinets and a darling white stove. 

Deborah Kerr was delightful as the wife of a house master at Chilton--get that? The prep school was named Chilton. I had to Google to see if it was real but no, it was made up just like Rory Gilmore's Chilton was. 

I won't go into much of the plot here but it was timely as to the prejudice there was in 1956 against people who were different as was John Kerr's 17 year old character who was hounded by the other teenage boys and called "sister boy." The house mistress's heart went out to him and she offered tea and sympathy on Sundays to the boy who was more interesting than all the other so called manly boys put together.

And talk about men back in the 1950s not being able to talk about their feelings, her husband is the poster child. But on to other things...

Old movies have been a respite from the news lately and so have family and dear pets. I'll try to write soon about the gift of seeing family again but for today, here are two pictures of new family pets.

Can you believe that head?

Dear Bridger, named for the Bridger Mountains in Montana, has visited us often the last few weeks. He is our daughter and son-in-law's Giant Schnauzer and he's only one year old! He and I fell in love with each other and I could look into those beautiful eyes for hours. My photograph doesn't let you see them but they're under all that fur. 

And here's my new grandkittie that I haven't met in person yet but my little granddaughters are so in love with her. Isn't that a sweet face?

Jumping to my next disjointed thought, if you read my bedroom post a few weeks ago you might remember that I hoped to find pictures for the blank wall behind my bed. I found the first one!

The first week that one of our local antique malls reopened I was there and spotted this beauty. The label said it was a watercolor and I thought I was stealing it as I handed over a Benjamin Franklin that was a birthday gift from my firstborn and his wife. I felt almost guilty leaving with it but when I was cleaning it before hanging I saw that it was a numbered print of a watercolor--in the 900s even.

Still not sorry I got her though. I think she's lovely and she holds a pink rose, just like the pink rose lamp on the table by her. I'm hoping next to slowly add a group of smaller pictures on the other side of the clock to make up my art gallery for this side of the room.

Here's two other antique mall pre-pandemic finds that were such a pretty blue that I had to show you.

  
These blue and white napkins are a perfect blue for my wedding china, Spode's Blue Bird. 

And I couldn't resist this blue pitcher that's a planter with a drainage hole to the attached saucer. Now if I can only find the right houseplant for it.

Next thought...

Here's how I used some of the olives from the recipe on my previous post--in Jan's recipe for Balsamic Pork Chops with Olives, found here at The Low Carb Diabetic blog. They were delicious! 

Every morning I take my clippers outside to deadhead plants in the garden but I'm saving those pictures for a post to show what my new gardeners have accomplished. They are Bridger's mom and dad and RH and I are so thankful for all the gardening help they've given us lately. 

But late in the afternoon, after I've fed BreeBree and James Mason, I go back outside just to stroll around with them and one day I went over to the far side where a large hydrangea has given us a beautiful view from our bathroom window. 

First I had to take a picture of the bark on our one large locust tree.

And here's the pretty hydrangea. We planted two more in the main garden but this one is only seen mainly from the bathroom window. 

And look who accompanied me on my garden stroll, Mr. James Mason, himself!

And then it's back inside to get supper on the table. My meals these days seem to be getting simpler and simpler. Here's a soup from the cookbook I featured in my last post, Judith Huxley's Table for Eight. 

Her Consommé Belleview is so simple and refreshing!

You just combine some chicken broth (I used two jars of homemade broth I'd made from chicken bones and skin I had in the freezer) and 2 8oz. bottles of Clam Juice, a couple of minced garlic cloves and a pinch of cayenne in a saucepan, simmer and cook for about 10 minutes or so. Then you add 2 tablespoons of dry sherry if you have it--sherry is good added to lots of soups. Serve with minced parsley and lemon in bouillon cups. 

I had a whole set of thin Austrian bouillon cups but only kept two when we moved. For some reason clear soups do taste better out of a thin cup, although I have to admit that the mug of leftover soup I had for breakfast the next morning tasted mighty fine, too.

All I served to go with the consommé was open-faced tuna fish and pimento cheese sandwiches on luncheon plates of the French faience that I found one summer at a Goodwill store. Twelve plates taped together, marked Martres and France! 

Here's a picture of them from an old post. I use them constantly, just as I use all my vintage silver, even keeping it in kitchen drawers so I won't forget to grab it instead of the stainless. 

From what I read on Facebook, the younger generation is just going to get rid of all that stuff when we're gone so why not enjoy it myself, right?

And that's it, folks. No quotes this time, no inspiring message, no rough draft worked on for hours. Those days may never come again, or sometimes I feel that way. 

And no tea even though I'm so envious of the pleasure tea time gives many of you. 

Any sympathy out there? How does a regular day go for you now? Are you mingling in public much? I went to the grocery store with RH for the first time in almost three months last week. It was wonderful!

Judith Huxley's Marinated Olives with Alison Roman's Vinegar Chicken

It was a happy merging!

I wanted to try Alison Roman's Vinegar Chicken with Crushed Olive Dressing that was a most requested New York Times recipe after seeing it here on Ted Kennedy Watson's beautiful blog. Every recipe I've tried of Roman's has been delicious and I knew this one would be, too.

But as I read the recipe I thought of the partial jar in my fridge of Judith Huxley's Marinated Olives with Citrus and Fennel, the olives that my daughter-in-law loves and helps make when she visits. 

All of the ingredients in Huxley's recipe from her wonderful cookbook, Table for Eight, could only enhance Roman's recipe so I stirred them into all the good drippings of the chicken dish, the olives and remaining liquid in the jar.

It was amazing! 

I wanted to share this recipe with you so this week I made up another jar of Judith Huxley's marinated olives so I could take a picture of it. We'll snack on the jar of olives until there's about half left and then I'll once again use the remainder for another recipe of Alison Roman's Vinegar Chicken with Crushed Olive Dressing. 

 You'll need:

1 pound jar of olives, drained and rinsed under water.
     (She calls for calamata but I use these pitted Sicilian olives.)

2 garlic cloves, peeled and lightly crushed.

Rinds of 1 orange and 1 lemon, peeled with a citrus stripper in long, thin strips. (I just zest the lemon and orange but I'm sure the strips would be even better.)

Juice of the lemon and orange.

2 tablespoons of fennel seed. (And I use a little  oregano from Crete that is wonderfully aromatic.)

Pack the drained olives, crushed garlic cloves, strips (or zest) of citrus, and fennel seeds in a pint jar.

Add citrus juice and then fill to the brim with olive oil. Cover, refrigerate, and shake the jar when you think of it. Wait a day or two to use, bringing to room temperature before serving. 

I used this beautiful vintage pink Italian jar marked Abagal's Useful Jar. Isn't it pretty? I badly need a rubber gasket for it. 

 Again, the recipe for the chicken is here.https://www.tedkennedywatson.com/2020/01/02/vinegar-chicken-with-crushed-olive-dressing/ 

And a little extra cooking note--if you ever see this olive oil for sale, snap it up. I sipped this olive oil by the spoonful as well as making salad vinaigrette with it.

RH bought it at Costco around Christmas for about $14 and it was wonderful! Naturally they were out of it when he went back and I found it on Amazon for $40 a bottle. I just can't justify that but we will be watching for it next Christmas. 

And I hope that someone tries Alison Roman's chicken dish. With beef prices soaring, chicken is a good choice now. And I wish I could suggest Judith's Huxley's olive recipe to Alison Roman as it is a match made in heaven with her chicken dish.

Huxley's one and only cookbook was published posthumously. I read it year round as it is organized by the month. She was food columnist for The Washington Post and was married to Matthew Huxley who was an epidemiologist. And Matthew was the son of Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World and screenwriter for 1940s Pride and Prejudice. 

All of that has nothing to do with these recipes but I found it interesting.