All Dressed Up

 

                                            [ad from Harper's Bazaar September 1942]

 

I'm all dressed up with no place to go.

      Even put on my favorite chapeau.

No church, no theater,

     No Frist Art Museum.

Can't visit Mamam and Papa,

     Not in this world, dear me.

So I'll fly away to Paris

     And join Armand and Reine-Marie.

I'm told they're wise as ever

     Via mon cher Louise.

Home sweet home is nice for PJs and jeans,

     But for really dressing up there's always Paree.

 

Wishing you all a good book and time to read it.

 

 

     

I'll tell you mine if you'll tell me yours...

Those of you who have visited me here and at my other blog for almost five years now might think I'm slightly obsessed with the 1950s and earlier, and you wouldn't be far wrong.

There is one subject I cannot get enough of, am besotted with, and that is:

The Life of the American Family

in the 1950s and earlier,

as portrayed in vintage women's magazines

A sure cure for the blues for me is pulling out a few of the old magazines from my collection and sitting down to lose myself in the pages.

These old magazines inspire me and I get up a better and happier woman after my time with them, more cheerful, more optimistic, more motivated.

I know that sounds crazy but Jane Davison and Lesley Davison understood the popularity of the early women's magazines in their book How to Make A House A Home:

And all of us who were turning the pages were receiving parts of the same message: we can make ourselves, our homes, our lives better by working and buying, by caring enough."

I get up from reading a vintage issue of Woman's Home Companion or Ladies' Home Journal or McCall's or more obscure magazines feeling that I've taken a magical antidepressant--without any bad side effects!

And sometimes I am inspired to cook a meal or even bake a cake.

This Brown-eyed Susan Cake from the September 1937 issue of McCall's magazine was fun to make and decorate.

Guess who made the brown-eyed Susans on it? RH did! He used almonds for the petals and chocolate covered raisins for the eyes.

But I'm not going to give you the recipe here because it was not that great. After all, it is a recipe from The Depression years, and recipes from those years are often very skimpy on sugar and other ingredients. So this is what I'll do when I make another one.

I'll take my best Devil's Food Cake recipe, which happens to be a fabulous one from RH's mother and has buttermilk and twice the sugar, and bake that.

The banana cream filling was okay but nothing to write home about so nix that. The coffee icing that I boiled to a soft ball stage was not sweet enough or intensely flavored enough so next time I will find a richer recipe for that online and use it for both filling and icing.

Because we can keep the good things of the old days and discard the bad. It's just deciding what is good and what is bad that's sometimes difficult, isn't it?

I made this cake and shared it with a brother-in-law and sister-in-law, along with a dish my mother often used to make when I was a child, Swiss Steak. As good as my mother's Swiss Steak was, 

                           I used Alton Brown's recipe instead.

I've never had an Alton Brown recipe to fail and his Swiss Steak is fork tender and full of flavor. 

RH helped me make it because we doubled the recipe so we could share it, and it required trimming the fat from two large bottom round roasts and then slicing them in 1/2 inch slices, dredging them with flour and seasonings and browning them for a few minutes on each side. That took some time, and knife skills.

Then we had two pan loads of thin sliced onions to sauté, next celery and garlic.

(And yes, I'm a messy chef.) Then we cooked the sauce, tripling it because the leftovers from this dish make the base for a wonderful vegetable-beef soup.

The day after I made the cake and Swiss Steak, I found a recipe for Swiss Steak in the October 1951 issue of Ladies' Home Journal. It was identical to Mama's, good but not as fabulous as Alton B's.

What was fabulous though was the pretty presentation of the dish, of the entire meal. The picture sure makes my Swiss Steak look pitiful. I hadn't even put a sprig of parsley on to serve it.

Get my point? That recipe needed improvement but a 1951 magazine inspired me to next time put more effort into the beauty of my meals because we also eat with our eyes, don't we?

Yes, I adore my old magazines, even though not everything in life then was as good as it is today. We have to take the good from those days for our lives now and change what was bad, I believe. And we certainly could take some of what is bad now and return to what was good in The Old Days, amen?

I admit that I am obsessed with The Old Days, the 1950s especially.

Evan Jones, in his biography of my favorite chef from that time, James Beard, quoted this from the New York Times:

"A typical American family then could afford three children, a house, two cars, three weeks at the seashore, a television set, and meat seven times a week, all on a single wage earner's income."

Ah, those were the days, my friend...

So I will continue to read and research and dream about the 1950s and earlier. I think that in my retirement years I've earned the right to immerse myself in the study of this time period. And often I will share my passion here at Dewena's Window.

Are you rolling your eyes at me?

I could pick a stranger topic to be passionate about, for example:

"ancient Scottish grasses"

That's what a minor character in one of my favorite Louise Penny books, Bury Your Dead, was passionately interested in and spent his days in the library studying. The elderly man told Chief Inspector Armand Gamache:

"Ironically, now that I'm so near the end of my life

I seem to have all the time in the world."

I've adopted that stance too. I have all the time in the world now, and if I want to spend it in the first half of the 1900s, that's what I'm going to do, by golly.

Now, my very dear friends who are reading this, I shared my passion with you. Would you please share your passion with me?

What is your "ancient Scottish grasses"?

And many many thanks to a dear blog friend, Peggy of Season to Season,

who sent me some delightful magazines from the 1920s--Modern Priscilla--for my collection....just because she felt they wanted to be with me.

Wasn't that nice!

See there, if people know what your passion is they just might send you a gift of it sometime........

Unless your passion happens to be George Clooney, maybe?

Oh, dear...

[Note of 8/18/23: Before anyone perhaps reads this blog post in the future, I must profusely apologize to author Louise Penny for what I wrote here six years ago. What was I thinking? While I never intended to criticize her tremendous talent and only meant to say that it was her moving away to a different type of mystery book that disappointed me--one more intensely action packed--it was ridiculous for me to presume any criticism at all. 

I did skip her novels these last few years because of that disappointment but in June this year I began  listening to all of Penny's books on audiobook with a  free library app as I realized my eye problems were cutting down on the number of books I could get through. 

I decided to begin with the newer Penny books I had missed and I must tell you that listening to them was a revelation for me. I realized that the author is a  master at writing a book series that is a delight to the ears as well as to the mind. I'm saying this because I've sampled other of my favorite authors on audiobook too this summer and so far none can compare. So much so that after listening to the three new books I had missed I began all over again with Still Life, the first novel in her Three Pines series.

Again, with all my heart I apologize to the brilliant author, Louise Penny.]

 
Last week we had dark and stormy nights, days too, here in Nashville with record cool temps. Perfect for reading Louise Penny's newest book, Glass Houses featuring Armand Gamache, now promoted to the Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté du Québec. 

I am a longtime Louise Penny fan. So what did I like about Glass Houses?

I loved the last chapter.

It was exactly as I wished last chapters to be, the essence of Penny's core characters that I love dearly, even those I am beginning to like--Ruth and her duck Rosa. Ruth is beginning to grow on me but I still have reservations about the duck.

In the last chapter the core Three Pines villagers are safe, including my literary crush Armand who is in Montreal attending to...well, I won't reveal that.

In Olivier's bistro in Three Pines, the villagers are gathered to view Clara's newest odd paintings of...well, I won't reveal that. Suffice it to say that I cried in the last chapter with love for Clara and Myrna and Ruth, maybe even a little for the duck.

What didn't I like about Glass Houses?

I'm sorry to say that the last few Penny books have let me down. To me it seems that they don't have the rich character development of the early books. This was an action driven book, which I guess is what sells to a wider demographic as this author has only grown in popularity with the majority of fans. Penny's style seems to have changed, many more sentences become choppier. Maybe this is on purpose? What readers want now? Or how the author wants to write now? So who am I to question that?

Still, let me show you a passage from Penny's Trick of the Light as this is an example of what I've missed in the last few books:

As far back as she could remember Clara wanted only one thing, even more than she'd wanted the solo show. It wasn't riches, it wasn't power, it wasn't even love. Clara Morrow wanted to belong. And now, at almost fifty, she did.

And from A Rule Against Murder:

Was there an invisible world, Gamache wondered. A place where diminished people met, where they recognized each other? Because if he knew one thing about Julia Martin it was that she too was invisible. The sort others cut off in conversation, cut in front of in grocery lines, overlook for jobs though their hand might be raised and waiting.

And from A Fatal Grace:

Saul Petrov sipped his beer and took a bite of his roast beef sandwich on a baguette with melting Stilton cheese and arugula. Beside it on his plate was a diminishing pile of shoestring fries, lightly seasoned.

It was perfect.

For the first time in years Saul felt human. He wasn't quite up to approaching these friendly people but he knew when he did they'd ask him to join them. They just seemed that sort. Already a few had smiled in his direction and lifted their drinks, mouthing 'Santé' and Joyeux Noel'.

 They seemed kind.

No wonder CC loathed them.

See what I mean?

Will I buy next year's Louise Penny mystery? I will. I remain ready to pack my luggage for a trip to Three Pines, hidden away in the Quebec countryside near the Vermont border. 

While I'm there, if I'm lucky, a near-perfect murder will take place and I will gather at the Bistro with Armand and Reine-Marie, Olivier and Gabri, Ruth and the duck, and Clara.

And with Myrna:

Three Pines had what she craved. It had croissants and café au lait. It had peace and stillness and laughter. It had great joy and great sadness and the ability to accept both and be content. It had companionship and kindness.

And it had an empty store with a loft above. Waiting. For her. Myrna never left.

In just over an hour Myrna had gone from a world of complaint to a world of contentment. That had been six years ago. Now she dispensed new and used books and well-worn advice to her friends.

                               From A Fatal Grace

Indeed I will return to Three Pines. But oh, dear...please Ms. Penny, please give me more of Myrna's story along with the action.

Are any of my visitors here at the Window Louise Penny fans? Have you read Glass Houses yet? Want to know who the bad guys are?

Now you know I'm not going to reveal that!

[source here https://www.pinterest.com/pin/263249540694841814/]

The Grocery Cart Mysteries

Any other Louise Penny mystery fans out there?

This is the time of year we await her latest Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novel.

My copy of A Great Reckoning: A Novel was pre-ordered and is due to arrive on August 30. That means I'll be pretty much incommunicado from then until I finish it. 

[April 2016 when I'm still on a no dessert diet.]

Here's hoping all my favorite characters will still be alive--and not arrested--in the new novel, including and most of all, Armand himself. Don't tell R.H. but Armand does make my heart go pitter-patter.

[Memorial Day weekend.]

But one other character from the hidden village of Three Pines most intrigues me, that is a bookshop owner named Myrna. I hope her whole story will be told in a future Penny book.

[Late July, pre-doctor appointment grocery cart.]

Myrna is wise and intuitive but most likely as flawed as most of us are. Myrna feels that "if she could just get a good look at a person's bookcases and their grocery cart, she'd pretty much know who they were."

[Same grocery cart as above;

what item did I break before this 

grocery trip? And what "school supply

can I absolutely not run out of?]

Would Myrna have you figured out if she saw yours? Your bookcases and your grocery cart?

My bookcases might be fairly easy for Myrna to sum up since I winnowed my books down to my bare bones essential self when we moved from Tennessee to Florida this spring. Let's save bookcases for another post and focus on grocery carts now.

[August; after hearing lab report at

doctor's appointment.]

Can you put on your detective hat, look at four of my grocery carts since we moved here, and tell me what you know about me?

[Same grocery cart as above, but some

ingredients might mean a TN son is coming

to see us--just saying.]

And what about you? What would your grocery cart tell us about you? 

[These did not get put in my grocery cart

even though I lusted after them.

Can you tell me why?]

I'll start you off by telling you one thing that is always in my grocery cart here in the sunny state of Florida--my pale yellow Sunbrella! I don't leave home without it.

[Saturday's loot from Atlantic Beach

Farmer's Market. There's homemade sun-dried tomato/basil pasta there and rosemary olive bread. Small coconut-pineapple loaf for R.H.

Blistering hot day, 

very grateful for my Sunbrella.]

Are you as sharp as Myrna? Can you solve the grocery cart mysteries?

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?

  

 

  

Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Armand Gamache Books

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is the main reason I'm completely enthralled with the mystery writer Louise Penny's books--and that her literary books have a quality that ranks high with me, namely that they don't belabor the point. 

Here is a link to the official Louise Penny website.

If you like mystery books go to her site for a list of all 10 books in the series so far. I've never been hugely into the mystery genre since it seemed as if no one could compare to Dorothy Sayers, especially her Gaudy Night. Louise Penny has won me over with each successive book. I'm more in love with Armand Gamache with each book and with the characters of Three Pines in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, even with my man Armand's wife, the lovely Reine-Marie Gamache. After getting to know Reine-Marie in the books it is easy to see why Armand is such a happy, content and kind man.

"Watching Reine-Marie as they sat on the balcony,

Gamache was once again struck by the certainty he'd married above himself.

Not socially. Not academically.

But he could never shake the suspicion he had gotten very, very lucky…

none more than having loved the same woman for thirty-five years.

Unless it was the extraordinary stroke of luck that she should also love him."

[Trick of the Light]

Place is important in Penny's books and important to Gamache as he solves the mystery mainly by sheer listening, listening to possible suspects and listening to what their homes say about them.

"Gamache loved to see inside the homes of people involved in a case.

To look at the choices they made for their most intimate space.

The colors, the decorations. The aromas.

Were there books? What sort?"

[The Cruelest Month]

Food is important in Penny's books, some of the best of which is served up at Olivier's Bistro in Three Pines, the kind of restaurant we all look for, trying to find one where we belong. Another Cheers--where everybody knows your name place. The second time I read the series I kept a notebook of the mouthwatering food served to guests of the Bistro. 

One meal Armand had there: Lobster bisque flavored with cognac, coq au vin with a hint of maple, young beans and glazed carrots, creme brûlée. [The Cruelest Month] Order me that please!

Jean-Guy, Armand's second in command ordered: Filet mignon with cognac blue cheese sauce. [Bury Your Dead] Jean-Guy is the man younger readers have a crush on. 

Clara orders: Creamy seafood chowder with chunks of salmon, scallops and shrimp, baguette and sweet butter. [Cruelest Month] Who is Clara, you ask, if you haven't read the books yet? Ah, Clara, she's another part of the stories.

"For many years Clara would remember how it felt standing there.

Feeling again like the ugly little girl in the schoolyard.

The unloved and unlovable child.

Flatfooted and maladroit, slow and mocked.

The one who laughed in the wrong places and believed tall stories,

and was desperate for someone, anyone, to like her.

Stupid, stupid, stupid…

the balled up fist under the school desk."

[Still Life]

Armand Gamache understands Clara, and others like her.

"Was there an invisible world, Gamache wondered.

A place where diminished people met,

where they recognized each other?

…The sort others cut off in conversation,

cut in front of in grocery lines.."

[A Rule Against Murder]

Can you tell that I'm a fan of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache? I'm also very much a fan of the lovely author Louise Penny, who wrote these characters to life. I hope she keeps them coming our way. On her website she says: "If you take only one thing away from any of my books I'd like it to be this: Goodness exists." 

As with all books in a series, I've loved them to a lesser or greater degree but I cannot resist committing myself to my very favorite of all. I could not put down number nine in the series, How the Light Gets In. It even rivals Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night. I can't give much higher praise than that, and it was named by the Washington Post as one of their top five fiction books of the year. 

Good reading, everyone!