The Last Day of the Year 2023

 

Yesterday I entered important dates in a new 2024 calendar, ready to be hung in the kitchen on January 1st.  

Early this morning I chose the book I'll use for my daily quiet time in 2024, God willing. I rotate between a few, this past year being one of C.S. Lewis's writings. All of December I've been using an Advent devotional of C. K. Chesterton's writings and will continue it through Twelfth Night. Some days the entries in this Advent book haven't seemed very relevant to me but others remind me of why I love Chesterton's pithy wisdom.

This year I'm putting this one on my desk, my beloved Richardson Wright's little A Book of Days for Christians, one I used in 2020. 

Wright, a cradle Episcopalian, editor in chief of House & Garden for umpteenth decades in the 1900s and author of a stack of my favorite books, keeps it short, a paragraph or two, leaving time for scripture reading.

After I hit publish on this post I've managed to squeeze in before 2023 ends, I will go to the kitchen and begin cooking the pastry cream for a dream recipe I've wanted to make for ages, Boston Cream Pie. 

Then I'll make and bake the two cake layers and next comes the chocolate glaze and into the fridge to chill for three hours, which may mean we'll be eating this pie/cake when the ball drops in NYC, as slow as I am.

My main dish for the evening will be easy, the salmon recipe I use half the time I cook salmon.

Starting with a beautiful side of wild caught Alaskan salmon...

and a scrumptious lemon/garlic/butter sauce...

I end up with my easiest favorite salmon recipe...

But tonight I'm going back to the first fantastic salmon recipe I tried decades ago from a Mediterranean cookbook for Braised Salmon with Caramelized Onions. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Yesterday I spent hours (I told you I'm slow) making a big bowl of potato salad loaded with celery, onions, olives, and eggs dressed mainly with apple cider vinegar/olive oil that soaks in the fridge with only a little mayo added in the end.

To me, salmon and potato salad with a little champagne is THE perfect meal and ending that meal with a sliver of Boston Cream Pie is a perfect end to New Year's Eve. 

So time to snap to it. If you happen to read this, please feel free to only say "Happy New Year," or nothing at all because with all honesty I have to say it may be Tuesday and Wednesday January 2nd and 3rd before I give myself the gift of two days off to catch up on my blog world buddies. 

Because there is that Boston Cream Pie to make today and a pork loin, collard greens, and black-eyed peas to cook on New Year's Day. 

This was my view from the kitchen window this morning before I sat down to write this post...

I do so love pink clouds!

A very happy and healthy and safe New Year's to all of you,

Love,

Dewena

"There now, we have reached the end of our year's eating and drinking. For 1,095 times we have sat down to refuel our bodies and cheer our spirits. Fats cannot harm us. We are ready for whatever the next year brings. Allons!" 

      Richardson Wright

Raise Your Glasses!

 

 

In November of 1905, Good Housekeeping magazine advised Americans on the order of toasts at Thanksgiving Day Dinner:

"The toasts should be in the following order:

Our Mother Country

Plymouth Rock

Oceanus--the Youngest Colonist

Our Indian Allies

Pilgrim Fathers

Pilgrim Mothers"

 

And my esteemed author Richardson Wright advised his readers in my first edition 1926 copy of his The Bed-Book of Eating and Drinking on the wines we could serve with our Thanksgiving Day Dinner:

If the purse and the menu allow, the climb up to this should be gradual. A cold, still wine could precede the march to the table. With the soup a glass of Sherry or Madeira. The heights of a good Claret or Burgundy type captured with the roast turkey, then you finish off, according to taste, with a sweet wine or a lively Champagne. Each of these plays a part in digestion. One rises from such a dinner glowing--granted you have had no second helpings--and a walk will finish off what has been well begun.

Thank you, my dear Richardson! Everything possible in 2020 should be glowing!  

[And my heartfelt thanks to the Steenbock Memorial Library of Madison, Wisconsin for my rare original 1926 copy of this book that I read month-by-month. There are very few of this book to be found online and they are 1943 editions. Here's one on Amazon.]

 

Mille Fleurs

 

 

 

Every year I read through Richardson Wright's day book called The Gardener's Bed-Book and every year I've wanted to replicate his mille fleurs, if not with the same flowers at least with his colors.

When you have tired of being "arty" in your house bouquets, try a mille fleurs, after the manner of the mediaeval tapestry weavers. Before me as I write stands a modernistic brass vase...and in it a loosely jumbled bouquet of white, cerise, plum and pink Cosmos, lemon yellow and orange Calendulas, pale lavender and white Larkspur, purple Asters, mauve and white Scabiosa, and burnt orange Zinnias.

Richardson Wright in 

The Gardener's Bed-Book

 

This year when I read it I decided to see what our garden had to offer.

 

 

 

 

 

Although the only flower I had that my favorite author listed was one burnt orange zinnia--and it was a volunteer...

And even though I didn't have a brass vase and had to use an old copper piece, I was pleased with how my own little mille fleurs turned out.

 

 

When I researched mille fleurs, that means "thousand flowers," I read that these were usually shown on green background, the flowers shown on European tapestries during the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. 

 

My flower arrangement rests on top of a stack of old interior design books edited by Richardson Wright when he was editor-in-chief of House & Garden magazine. These are treasures to me that I lose myself in over and over.

I also own five other books written by my favorite author and my top literary crush, and they stay out all the time for me to read and study, line by line slowly, pages of notes written down.

 

 

I count Richardson Wright as a blessing in my life, sent from the early 20th century to me, especially for such a time as this. 

How about you? Is there a special author who is your own Calgon, take me away blessing?  

 

  

An Iron Skillet

Just look at that skillet! Isn't it a beauty? I only use it for one thing--

Buttermilk Cornbread!

It belongs to me and me alone, at least in my lifetime. I alone cook with it, I wipe it out and leave it in the warm oven overnight and hang it back up the next morning where it waits until the next time I make cornbread. I will not risk that finish with any other cooking.

The other three skillets are RH's. He uses them, mostly for country ham or pork chops, and he cleans them. But I also get to use his skillets, which I do for steaks when he doesn't grill out. 

And after I use them, RH cleans them. Because...just because. 

He made sure the pot rack I asked him to make under the shelves he and his brother built for me was strong enough to support these heavy skillets. The shelves are bolted on the other side of the wall in my laundry room. An elephant could swing on this pot rack. Maybe.

The other pots and pans I use all the time hang on the opposite side and I love them the way copper owners love their copper.

My All-Clad pans are workhorses, too. They go in the dishwasher, a definite advantage over the iron skillets. We bought all of them when RH and our sons put Vermont slate on all the many buildings in the compound belonging to one of our famous country music stars.

She's known by her first name only and it has four letters and begins with an R. She's since then sold the property but I still think of her when I use them. I bet she loves good cornbread and probably believes it's no good cooked in anything other than an iron skillet. Look at how well mine is seasoned...

 

It's a number 8 skillet and for some reason the handle curves down at the end. And I just can't talk about my buttermilk cornbread without giving you the recipe for it.

 

 Buttermilk Cornbread:

Heat oven to 450 degrees (in my oven that is a little hot), putting iron skillet in while heating. 

Whisk 2 eggs in bowl and stir in 1 1/2 cups buttermilk. Gently stir in 2 cups cornmeal mix (I use Martha White Self-rising Cornmeal Mix).

Melt 1 stick of butter and stir half of it into above mixture. (You don't want to beat it smooth, cornbread batter should be a little lumpy.)

Drop a heaping teaspoon of solid Crisco or lard into the hot skillet in oven and let it heat about 3 minutes, being careful not to overheat it but hot enough so that the batter will sizzle when poured into the skillet.

Remove hot pan from oven and pour batter into it and return to oven for about 18 minutes.

Remove pan of cornbread from oven when golden and spoon rest of melted butter over top of hot cornbread, spreading it around the top. Split and butter cornbread while still hot.

That's some good eating, and our favorite thing to have with cornbread is a pot of pinto beans. I discarded my mother's recipe for pinto beans when I found Angela of The Parisienne Farmgirl's recipe here.https://www.parisiennefarmgirl.com/best-refried-bean-recipe/

She uses hers for refried beans but it also makes our favorite recipe for plain old pinto beans because of her three ingredients that my mother's recipe was missing. 

1. A bottle of beer--Angela doesn't specify Guinness but it is my favorite in pinto beans and in chili and in my Beer Braised Roast Beef (recipe here).

2. Fresh cilantro. I feel so sorry for people who think cilantro tastes like soap because I can't do without cilantro in my pinto beans anymore. No cilantro, no pinto beans for supper.

3. A whole lime, juiced and stirred in before serving. No picture of the lime, you'll have to use your imagination.

And if you want to try the Garden Tacos that Angela makes with her refried beans it's on page 97 of her beautiful cookbook, From France to the Farm.

Angela's YouTube channel is one of my favorites, found here--https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4P9zhII6woD8WriaQwk6bw 

My Garden Tacos aren't as pretty as hers but they were delicious!

 

Don't you love the pretty plates I serve all Mexican food on?

I only have two of these W. S. George Bolero Gracia plates but they're just enough for me and RH.

And be sure to save the beer bottle for a vase for the table for this meal, one zinnia is just right in it. I do regret the plain water glass in the picture. RH has several vintage pilsner glasses that would have been cute here.

Is there at least one iron skillet in your kitchen? 

Are you a cornbread fan? Please tell me you don't put sugar in yours! 

The one culinary mistake Southerners can never understand or forgive is to put sugar into cornbread. 

Richardson Wright

 

My Canna and Povel Wallander

[I'm sneaking one more summer garden post in before the calendar says Autumn is here tomorrow.] 

What possible link could my canna have with Povel Wallander?

Are there any Wallander fans out there? I watched it years ago and am now enjoying it all over again on Netflix.

Povel is the father of Kurt Wallander, played by Sir Kenneth Branagh, once married to Emma Thompson who he left for...wait, this is not a gossip blog so I'll get back to Povel and my canna.

Did you recognize David Warner, above, as Bob Cratchit in my favorite version of A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott as Scrooge? 

What is your favorite version? We'll be watching it soon, won't we?

David Warner has that marvelous craggy face that I'm sure any Star Trek fans will recognize--I had to throw that in for my Trekkie sons. 

And in the Swedish drama Wallander, he plays an important artist in declining health who is not on very good terms with his policeman son.

And every single picture Povel paints is the same scene of the rocky wooded coastline of Sweden where he lives.

Every single painting.

And now we come to my canna, the canna musifolia bulb (or is it called a rhizome?) that I ordered from 
Horn Canna Farm, a family farm in Carnegie, OK. 

RH planted it for me in a favorite heavy old concrete pot from the old house that had lost its bottom. It is beautifully aged, much as Povel's face is, and is sunk into the ground in the butterfly garden.

I've taken hundreds of pictures of this canna because I wanted it so badly. RH is prejudiced against cannas. He won't admit that but I know he is. Many people are, maybe remembering them planted in the middle of old tractor tires out in a farm yard. To me they always said, This is a farmhouse and so there must be cannas.

While a baby, my canna had to be protected from BreeBree jumping into it in her obsessive desire to catch a chipmunk, but it grew...

And grew until RH began to be fond of it too.

Finally it flowered...

Okay, the flowers aren't what sell cannas but the hummingbirds do love them.

We took pictures of it from every angle...

It put on more and more stalks...

Soon RH got used to me yelling to grab the camera and go get pictures of my canna, the light is just right.

I mean, is this plant not gorgeous with the sun shining through its bronze leaves?

This brown-eyed Susan has been a beautiful companion on one side, even though mostly finished blooming by now, the seeds drawing goldfinches.

And this Autumn Joy sedum has been a nice contrast on the other side. It's beginning to pink up for Autumn. [The plant is much more rosy now as I wrote this post a week ago.]The deer keep our other three Autumn Joy plants nibbled to the ground in our front garden but they can't get to this one.

I'm tagging my other canna lover...

                    Carla from The River 

before I close with a quote about cannas from a beloved book by Richardson Wright that stays on my bed table, The Gardener's Bed-Book.

Give a dog a bad name, and he may eventually retrieve his reputation, but let a flower suffer the sneers of the gardening cognoscenti, and all the fine hybrids of it that some faithful soul may create will flower to little advantage. Cannas are a case in point. Mention them, and across the mind flashes unlovely memories of dreary park, prison and hospital flower beds. For years the Canna was an institutional flower, and that's enough to damn any plant. Yet some very beautiful hybrids have been created and at the sight of them we waxed ecstatic over their subtle pinks and yellows. They have ceased being institutional.

Richardson Wright

The Gardener's Bed-Book

1929

 What about you? How do you feel about cannas? Or if not cannas, is there a plant that you just would not have in your garden?

if you've never loved cannas planted in the ground, have you ever thought about putting them in pots?

I keep imagining how magnificent two of these would be in large urns on either side of a path leading somewhere. What do you think?

And let me know if you want to see more pictures of my gorgeous canna that adds a vertical feature to our garden. 

Just like Povel Wallander, I have a million of them.

Hey, sweet readers, thank you so much for visiting me here at the Window! And thank you so much for your thoughtful and kind comments on my previous post about our darling granddaughters. 

You are the best!

"And what would life be like

if we paid one another no compliments?"

wonders Isabel in

The Careful Use of Compliments

by Alexander McCall Smith

August Celebration at TPC Sawgrass

Despite my personal agreement with Richardson Wright's view of August....

Were I running things

I would simply cut August

out of the calendar.

I'm stuck with August and it has held one big day for celebration.....

Happy Birthday, R.H.!!!!

And celebrate we did!

Our daughter Christy (above with R.H. overlooking the 18th hole) and son-in-law Bryan took us out for dinner at the TPC Sawgrass dining room, a short walk from their house.

That's a stock photo of the golf club above but I think the one below that I took with my phone out on the terrace is not bad at all.

The TPC (The Players Championship) is owned by the PGA Tour players. Our new town is home and headquarters of the PGA--and also headquarters of the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals). 

I guess we'll always miss Nashville but we're discovering that Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida is a pretty cool place too. And it was a genuine treat to celebrate R.H.'s birthday in this beautiful place.

Our meal was scrumptious.

For the birthday boy this watermelon salad was almost too pretty to eat.

Then he had a New York strip steak. He couldn't decide between the bearnaise sauce or the demi-glace, so ordered both as a birthday prerogative. 

Christy wanted steak too and chose a filet, potatoes and the vegetable du jour.

Bryan ordered the special, a pork tenderloin served with two beautiful porcini mushroom ravioli.

And I had grouper with yucca gnocchi and slaw. Yum!

R.H. loved his chocolate ganache birthday cake but I reminded him that I had a homemade coconut cream pie waiting for him at home. Then he let Bryan and Christy have a few bites.

Who could blame him for tearing into this chocolate delight, right?

I forgot to get a photo of the dining room, but here's another stock photo of it.

Very golf-club atmosphere, don't you think?

After dinner Bryan told us about the history of this golf club that is a crown jewel of pro golf and we viewed some of the memorabilia.

Jerome and Paul Fletcher sold the land for this 'Stadium Course' golf club for $1.00.

There are photographs of so many of golf's greats in these halls but here's one of a beloved celebrity.

On the far right, can you recognize this "thanks for the memories" entertainer to the troops?

The evening was such a treat for this couple from TN whose normal dinners out back home used to be at a little meat 'n three in the hills outside Nashville.

Thank you, Bryan and Christy! You scored a hole-in-one with this birthday dinner!

Then it was home for R.H. to cut into my coconut cream pie. Maybe in another post I'll tell you how I made sure that I wasn't tempted to break my diet and have a slice.

No, I didn't spit in it.