What is it?

 

 

Care to take a guess before reading further?

 

It was our supper one July night of 2022 that I never posted. July is past again but I'm posting it now as July of 2024 is too far away to risk waiting again.

 

 

We had this odd meal with french bread and smoked salmon leftover from the salmon RH usually smokes for Independence Day.

 

That's a tiny oil painting I did almost 50 years ago inspired by Childe Hassam's flag paintings. It comes out every July and goes back in the cupboard in September.

But what is in my glass soup bowl?

 

The soup is cucumber and the two red circles in it are Watermelon Gelée, both recipes by Greg Atkinson, chef and proprietor of Restaurant Marché on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

I couldn't find a recipe link for the typed copy I've had in my files for years and can't remember where I first found it. The Watermelon Gelée was delicious but the next time I make the cucumber soup I'll use Vincent Price's recipe as it really needs Vincent's cream, chicken broth, and a leek to enhance its flavor. 

The gelée--pronounced huh-ley--has 3 cups of watermelon chunks, 2 tablespoons of sugar and 2 teaspoons of lemon juice pureed, strained, 1/2 cup of the liquid put in a saucepan and 1 envelop of gelatin sprinkled over it. Soften 5 minutes then put saucepan on high heat and stir until gelatin is dissolved and juice begins to boil. [I stirred in some Trader Joe's Chili Lime seasoning.]

Put a pinch of black sesame seeds in each of 4 paper cups [or foil cupcake liners] then stir the hot gelatin mixture into the remaining juice and distribute evenly between the four cups, over the sesame seeds. Chill till firmly set then tear the foil away from the gelée and put on top of the cold cucumber soup. 

 

 
This was a fun and pretty meal so I hope you'll understand why I didn't want to waste my year old pictures. My room in the picture above has had some small changes this summer when I began taking some things away from it. I moved all the Blue Delft and Royal Copenhagen out of the room and put it all into the 10 x 12 room outside our bedrooms that I call the antechamber where I have more blue and white china.

Two more pictures  to show. You can't have a light meal such as this without having a good dessert.

 

 This delicious thing was a Lemon Cornmeal Cake with Lemon Glaze and Crushed-Blueberry Sauce from Bon Appetit that I did find a link for. Here!

Be sure and notice the pretty vintage silver spoons I used. They're monogramed but I've never been able to figure out what the initial is. 

 

 Are you ever tempted to cook an odd recipe? I do it all the time even though sometimes they don't turn out well and RH says: "Why don't you just cook your old recipes that we know we like?"

I ask you, "Where's the fun in that?"

 

Sometimes You Just Gotta Laugh

 

 

Sometimes all you can do is laugh. 

You get up that morning with the best intentions to make a special dinner and set a pretty Christmas table for the two of you.

 

 You hand wash the old Spode Christmas Tree plates and the pretty glasses with white Christmas trees and take out your wedding silver.

 

 

You spend hours chopping three kinds of peppers, celery, scallions, Italian salami, capers, and garlic, and boiling, peeling and chopping eggs, thawing shrimp, washing and drying lettuce, mixing a dressing. You both have a hankering for Mama Leone's Shrimp Salad and the special shrimp sauce that she was famous for in NYC since 1906, ever since Enrico Caruso urged Louisa Leone to open an Italian restaurant in her living room. 

It is the salad you made so often back in the 1960s when you were young marrieds. 

 

And you make another old favorite, Cucumber Aspic, more chopping, another dressing. You feel so lucky that your husband loves aspics as much as you do.

And you sit down to eat after taking hot French bread out of the oven. This is going to be so good. And there will be leftovers for your lunch the next day.

 

Your husband prays, giving thanks for the meal you're about to eat and then he takes the first bite.

You put a bite in your mouth and then your husband asks: "Did you cook the shrimp?"

You spit your bite out on your Spode Christmas Tree plate. 

You don't cry. Not like the time you were eight months pregnant with your third child, and your daughter and husband go to the best pizza place in town and they come home without the best pizza in town and say they dropped it on the sidewalk. 

Now you groan, thinking about all that time spent in the kitchen when you could have been working on a blog post. 

And then you just laugh, dump it all in the trashcan and eat all the French bread and lots of the Cucumber Aspic and wish you'd made baked potatoes to go with the meal.

And you remember that it is 2020, after all.

 

1968 House & Garden December Issue

This 1968 House & Garden magazine is a star in my large collection of vintage magazines, although it's difficult for me to think of anything 1968 as vintage. if you were born as early in the 20th century as I was, you would understand what I mean.

I thought it would be fun to show you a few things featured in this December 1968 issue.

There is a fabulous article on Christmas tables done by designers--we used to love those before bloggers took the world by storm with their own tablescapes.

This pretty one above is a Christmas Eve supper done by interior designer Chessy Rayner and Mica Ertegun of Mac II. I'm afraid I didn't even get to Mica as I completely fell down the rabbit hole researching Chessy Rayner. Just google her name and you'll find lots of photographs of her interiors and the newspaper account of her life as a fashion and designer icon. 

Her table above brought to mind one I did, among three others, in a December 2013 post called 'Tis the Season to Set the Stage.https://awindow-lookacrosstheway.blogspot.com/2013/12/tis-season-to-set-stage.html

I went back myself and read the post again--do you bloggers ever do that?--and saw sweet comments from many of you there.

RH and I had so much fun doing those four tables for a Christmas link party, but I have to confess that I've not done a single holiday table yet this month. I know some of you have, I've seen some lovely ones.

I may not follow through on everything that inspires me from my vintage women's magazines anymore but I love to spend an hour at night looking through them, notebook and pen in hand, jotting down ideas, ideas that I may never get around to doing. 

These old magazines are as comforting to me as a beloved classic holiday movie. 

This issue had a section on seasonal light displays across the U.S., like this one on Alamitos Bay near Long Beach, California. Do any of you readers live near that and know if the annual practice has been continued?

There was a fascinating article about Broadway star Joel Grey showing his apartment in Manhattan designed by Albert Hadley, who grew up in Nashville, while Grey was starring in Cabaret. 

Zebra rugs, chinoiserie, and trellis design must have been very popular that year. 

I loved the bedroom of his eight-year-old daughter Jennifer--didn't she star in a little film with Patrick Swayze when she grew up? 

The magazine also featured a beautifully iced fruitcake, something I've been researching because RH and I love good homemade golden fruitcake (well, he'll eat almost any store-bought fruitcake too, not me) and this year I really want to ice mine.

Maybe try something simple like this one I saw on Pinterest...

I'm smitten by the ones on Pinterest that use marzipan and then fondant icing, the only problem being that I've never used either of those products before.

Have any of you ever baked with them? Would a novice make a complete mess of it? And I also have to think about this fruitcake lasting us a long time, at least until Easter, because no one else in our family will eat fruitcake. How will the icing hold up with the cake refrigerated? I welcome any advice from you!

Meanwhile, it's getting drizzled with Calvados every few days and kept in a cool room. I'm thinking that we'll save it for Epiphany to let it season longer so maybe I have time to watch a lot of fondant videos before trying it.

How about you? Do you like, love or loathe fruitcake?

If you don't care for it, maybe that's because of the citron in it. I never put citron in mine, citron should be banned from the planet! And I buy my cherries from the King Arthur people.

I hope you liked a glimpse into what the magazines were like in December of 1968. I got out my first Christmas family scrapbook and found only one page from 1968, we just didn't take many photos back then. And our little girl was almost hidden by the toy box, her older brother with a big smile.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Pinecones and French China

I've long wanted to do a table around this pinecone pitcher we

found years ago in the mountains of East Tennessee.

These pinecone hurricanes that we got years ago in the

Bob Timberlake store in Blowing Rock, NC go nicely with the pitcher.

I use battery operated candles with them now.

Why buy flowers when the Kousa dogwood outside is still glorious?

But pinecones and fall leaves aren't all I'm thinking of as I set this table.

As we all have been, I'm thinking about Paris too.

I don't have many French dishes but I pull out what I do have.

These French faience plates we found in a Goodwill one day go on the bare table.

I posted about finding them one serendipitous day HERE.

We found these little bowls over 40 years ago in a restaurant supply store.

They aren't French but they read Petite Marmité Restaurant

and are perfect for the first course of Consomme Creams.

It's from Mildred O. Knopf's excellent 1986 Memoirs of a Cook.

She was wife of movie producer Edwin H. Knopf who was brother to

Alfred A. Knopf who published the cookbooks of a nice lady by the name of

Julia Child. Mildred was a star in the kitchen too.

We must have bread, so let's have a baguette.

And let's make it a baguette from France, non-gmo

with only flour, water, yeast and salt in it.

Costco carries it!

For our entree I followed Dorie Greenspan's recipe for Sheet Pan

Chicken with Apples and Kale.

The pictures on the right are before it went in the oven,

and the finished dish was delicious, as are all of Greenspan's.

She and her husband landed in France the night of the horrible attacks

and only heard the news when in their taxi.

HERE is a link to her recipe.

For our salad we'll have an avocado bacon salad from one of my favorite

regional cookbooks, Southern Sideboards. It's served on a French ironstone platter.

The dressing is yummy!

Juice from a lime or two, 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/2 cup of sour cream,

1/4 cup mayonnaise, and 2 cloves of garlic, minced.

Thank you for letting me make like a tablescaping and food blogger!

Don't you find that it's comforting to lose yourself in homey things

when your heart is heavy? I do.

I hope to post the dessert to this meal next.

It's by a French actress who is not so well known in this country.

I'll save her name for the post but she was "strongly considered for the lead

in Casablanca."

I'm Trying

It's not that I don't try to eat healthier.

I've been trying to eat more fresh vegetables and lean meats.

I do best when I start preparing supper early in the day.

I turn on HGTV and start chopping.

Is there anyone other than R.H. and me who likes sardines?

They are as good for you as wild caught salmon, and cheaper.

I put them in pasta salad for protein.

I watch television and chop away,

keeping an eye on Katie Belle right outside.

What is she up to?

It's the continuing game of Catch Me If You Can.

Guess who always wins?

The show outside is even better that HGTV.

Back to my salad.

Adding fresh herbs now is only a matter of going to the front porch.

And pasta sardine salad is ready for supper.

I'm going to try red lentil rotini the next time I make this

as so many of you are having success cutting out wheat.

I don't think I'm willing to give up homemade bread yet,

but I could pass up grocery store bread.

I made Mireille Guiliano's recipe for Chicken au Champagne one night,

from her French Women Don't Get Fat book.

It was amazing with mushrooms and rice!

Even if my champagne wasn't French.

Having to fix supper at the last minute causes me the most problems.

I try.

I start some chicken breasts in the oven.

Then I wash my favorite frisee--

most people just put sprigs of this in a salad,

but I love it so much I use it for the whole salad when I find it.

I serve the chicken breasts on the greens with a vinaigrette

and the chicken drippings.

Healthy so far, right?

But then what do I put on the table?

A baguette and Irish butter.

And a big baked potato and sour cream.

Could I have given up the baguette? Absolutely.

The baked potato? 

I don't know but maybe a smaller one next time.

Some last minute healthy suppers are a cinch.

Anytime I can buy wild-caught Copper River salmon and fresh spinach,

I have no problem fixing a quick and healthy supper.

It's just those frequent nights when I have no idea what to cook,

and R.H. suggests chili dogs,

that we end up eating junk food.

And no, I didn't take a picture of that meal, or others like it.

Last minute cooking is a problem for me.

Giving up bread and pasta and potatoes is so hard.

And come Friday nights, which when our kids were young was 

always pizza and a movie night, 

guess what I crave?

It comes from this….

Yes, that's what I really want.

What do you throw together at the last minute for a healthy supper?

When I can plan, shop and begin early,

even I can fix a healthy supper.

But what are some easy last minute, satisfying suppers?

I'm just not an eat a bowl of cereal and go to bed kind of girl.

Help?