Phila Hach

[source Peabody Reflector, Spring 2009]

 Here she is, one of my most admired women,

Phila Hach!

In my last post I promised to tell you about this amazing woman who has lived her life with passion. 

A "stewardess" for American Airlines in the 1940s.

Degrees from Ward-Belmont College

and Vanderbilt University.

Host of Nashville's first televised cooking show.

Pastry chef at Princess Diana's wedding.

At 83 spoke in Las Vegas to 4,000 caterers.

Has written 17 cookbooks. 

Has owned and operated a corporate retreat

with her son for almost three decades.

I've been an ardent fan of Phila Hach's since the early 1970s and my mother was one long before me, watching her Kooking Kollege on WSM-TV in the 1950s.

In the 1970s The Tennessean newspaper used to have weekly columns featuring local cooks. I still have notebooks full of my favorite clippings. In this one beautiful Phila and her handsome husband Adolf showed what was a true Southern ladies' luncheon of the time with this menu:

Original Chicken a la King

(nothing like the dish comedians make fun of)

Sally Lunn Muffins

Frozen Fruit Salad

Pickled Vegetable Marinade

Bavarian Cream

Butter Cake

French Water Mints

These old newspaper photos were from the February 13, 1975 Tennessean. 

When this next picture and article came out, I was determined to visit the Hach's restaurant in Clarksville, Tennessee.

One night R.H. and I, my mother and father and if I remember correctly at least one of my sisters, went to Hachland Hill for one of the best country ham dinners of my life.

Dining there was by appointment only and you chose your dinner when you called to make the appointment. We had the country ham and all its Southern side dishes and dined in the Garden Room of the Spanish Colonial home.

There was also the Ballroom, the Terrace Room, the 1790 log house, which we toured with Mrs. Hach after dinner, her telling us the story of some of the antiques furnishing it. It was a glittering evening and I still remember the sweet smiling faces of Mr. and Mrs. Hach and the welcome they showed us. 

They looked exactly like they do in this old newspaper photo, only much more beautiful.

 

Fast forward almost 40 years, and who do you suppose I saw as I sat in our car outside our small neighborhood grocery store a few months ago when R.H. was inside shopping?

It was Phila Hach herself, leaving the store with a few bags of groceries in her cart, driving herself. I instantly recognized her and wanted so much to run over and say hello. But I didn't, just felt as if I'd seen an old friend, one I rejoiced was still active in the corporate retreat and bed and breakfast her family operates near us.

Then one day in November R.H. showed me a magazine that had just come in the mail, Tennessee Home & Farm. 

R.H. said, "Remember her?" 

[Tennessee Farm & Home]

I squealed, "Of course, it's Phila Hach! I saw her at the grocery store not long ago!"

Friends, at 87 this wonderful woman is still cooking! In many, many ways! No more pictures now, but please take time to read her quotes from the magazine article.

Talk about passion for life, see if you agree that Phila Hach has it!

"If people could just open the door to opportunity, it's there. You don't do it; it comes to you. If I had known there was a television show coming, I could've worked my behind off trying to get it, but you have to live your life so that what you do makes people stop and look."

"My message in life is to keep it simple, to keep it beautiful, to keep it honorable, to keep it real."

What a fine challenge that is: "Keep it simple, keep it beautiful, keep it honorable, keep it real."

If I see Phila Hach at the grocery store again I'm going to go over and say thank you.

[Here's a link to some of Phila's cookbooks on Amazon. 

And a link to her business, Hachland Hill, Countryside Retreat. ]

Monday January 19: Please visit today's guest writer of Jemma's Passion, Purpose, and Productivity Project, Honora of Pondside, for a post that will remind all of us of times in our own lives.

And here is a link to Jemma's eloquent post today as she introduces Honora, and writes herself of choices to let some things go so that there is more time for living a life with passion, purpose and productivity.

I'm Still Going to School

When another amaryllis lover, Jemma of At Home with Jemma, wrote and asked me to write a guest post as part of her Living with Passion series, telling how I live my life with passion and how it affects my life, I started to run scared.

What grand results do I have from living my life with passion?

Where are the published books that are living proof of my passion for writing? When am I going to wipe the dust off the manuscript I put aside for the holidays, two months ago? The book I've been writing about three families, following them from 1840 to the early 1950s. I'm only at 1911 now. Or the completed manuscript that lies in a chair, in my line of vision right now, that had been undergoing its seventh revision?

What interferes with this grand passion? 

Life does, my friends, everyday life. Because it does go on, a miracle I don't often enough get down on my knees and give thanks for, and not just because it hurts my arthritis too much.

Everyday Life. What would I set aside? My family, my dogs, Judging Amy while I eat lunch?

Laundry, cooking, bill paying, housework?

Not blogging, certainly. I tried that once and lost something I looked forward to.

I just finished rereading, for about the 10th time in as many years, my very favorite novel, bar none, of all time, Rumer Godden's China Court. If you love books in which the main protagonist is a house, a wonderful, quirky, house with a heartbeat, then this is the book for you.

In the book, an exasperated aunt says of her niece Tracey who has inherited China Court instead of her and insists on living in the old ark of a house, not selling it as her aunts wanted to:

"'The child is obsessed with living, daily living,

that's all you can call it,' said Bella,

more than ever incensed."

Tracey herself admits:

"'I like living,' she said.

'Cooking and doing the flowers

and having animals.'"

Maybe for me, now in my seventh decade of life, I've become more like Tracey and her grandmother, Mrs. Quinn. Absolutely, writing is my passion, but so are my family, my dogs, my house.

Cooking, decorating, blogging.

          Nature, Nutella, and Inspector Armand Gamache.

                    James Beard, Vincent Price, Downton Abbey.

I want it all!

Each of them, at different times of my day is my grand passion.

I wrote Jemma that I was going to post about a local celebrity, a woman in her late 80s, about how she inspires me to live my life with passion. And I am going to do that in a post soon.

But not today.

Sure, I want to get those characters in my manuscript past 1911, but I also want to become an inspired cook, tweak my rooms until I no longer have the health to do it, be as excited about a new season of Downton Abbey as a child waiting for Santa, learn how to appreciate art half as much as Vincent Price did.

That's exactly why I loved the post Jemma wrote called "Aging with Style." Please read her post  at http://athomewithjemma.blogspot.com/2015/01/aging-with-style.html.

Jemma, I'm excited about learning what you and other guest writers have to say about Living with Passion and Purpose in this series. Because honey, I'm still going to school, still wanting to learn, more now than when I graduated from school all those years ago.

No words of wisdom here, Jemma, just another person wanting to be brave enough, wise enough, hardworking enough to live her life with passion.

And that octogenarian I started to post about, that I spent two days trying to make her fit this post? She says:

"To enjoy life, you have to have passion for it,

and then it isn't work."

Isn't she beautiful! Oh, yeah, I've got to tell you about her soon!

Meanwhile, I invite you to visit Jemma, again HERE, as I will be doing, to learn more about "The Passion, Purpose, Productivity Project."