Our Thanksgiving Day

 Oh dear, looks as if I'm once again slipping in an only post for the month at the tail end of the month. This November calendar page is too pretty not to share.

I know Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. is over and Christmas in our friendly skies of social media has long begun but I'll stop to record our Thanksgiving Day and then try to get with the program.

Our Thanksgiving Day:

There were lots of dishes to wash, even for dinner for two. This was not the year for the clan to gather, due to one thing or another. 

I made buttermilk biscuits to go with our breakfast and saved four of them for my cornbread dressing, making the cornbread the day before and thawing out a few slices of sourdough bread. And my cranberry sauce was waiting in the fridge. 

After breakfast I made the pies up quickly. Pecan, an old favorite recipe that doesn't call for any corn syrup, only a pound of brown sugar, 3 eggs beaten, 2 eggshells of milk, a big splash of vanilla, some salt and lots of pecans. And a chess pie, of course, RH taking some of both to share with family. 

Next we put a turkey breast in to roast, but used my old Bon Appetit recipe where I baste the turkey with a mixture of maple syrup and Calvados. Then I mixed up the cornbread dressing (the onions, celery, and parsley chopped after breakfast) and popped it into the oven as soon as the turkey came out, adding in the drippings from that.

I ended up deleting all my food pictures I was going to use here because, well they were just food, but have to show you my dressing because it was so pretty this year. And so delicious!

We really fudged on the rest of the meal, no homemade rolls, only a partial package of Bridgport rolls in the back of the freezer that I put out to rise after breakfast, brushing them with butter and sprinkling celery salt on them. Try that on your rolls sometime!

There were no family casseroles, something that would have been unthinkable in the old days. I didn't even have the energy left to put the fresh asparagus I'd bought into the oven. By afternoon I did well just to set the table for our Thanksgiving for two.

My vintage damask tablecloth with beautiful pheasants on it was left hanging in the closet and two placemats went on the table instead.

But my very old Spode dinner plates were a given. Here's a good picture of them.
 

Aren't they gorgeous? I found 11 plates of them on eBay over fifteen years ago. Oh wait, here's a picture of the damask cloth and the plates where I set the Thanksgiving table many years ago at Valley View!

And another year there when some of our children must have been dining with the in-laws so a smaller table was set in my kitchen. Looks like a pumpkin tablecloth was used that year.

 Now I'm going all mushy missing those days at Valley View and the kids that sat around the table. Must get back to our 2022 table au deux.

I simply must point out my favorite autumn glasses with pheasants. I dearly love them!

And the cranberry sauce went into the two little bouillon cups that I saved from a whole set of them when we downsized. They're Royal from Austria.

And that's it, folks, our Thanksgiving Day meal, without the casseroles or fresh broccoli or asparagus or homemade rolls. I truly didn't mind because my dressing and the cranberry sauce is always my favorite part of the Thanksgiving dinner.

 We'd kept the dishes washed all day and the dishwasher empty so we put the food away and cleaned up the kitchen quickly, washed up the pretty pieces of china, etc., that I wouldn't put in the dishwasher come hell or high water, and we were done.

Ready to snuggle with the dachshunds in front of the television. Don't ask me what we watched. I'm still too tired to remember.

Don't shake your head. Some day you too might be too tired at the end of the day to do anything other than stare at the television and not remember what you watched. 

In my defense, I've been through two months of worsening back pain, until I can honestly claim it was excruciating. To the orthopedist where an X-ray showed a compression fracture and all the worry that went with that possibility. Next a MRI and then two weeks later a followup appointment where I thankfully learned that it was not a compression fracture! Just arthritis and some degenerative disc damage. My physical therapist was glad to hear that and now has me on more aggressive therapy.

RH will be very glad when he no longer has to unload the bottom shelf of the dishwasher, get the laundry out of the dryer, and vacuum--what am I thinking? There's no way I want to start doing the vacuuming! Not when he's so good at it.

Men should always do the man stuff, don't you think? Like fishing and hunting and vacuuming?

Atuumn Longings

 I never buy novels like this one, about men and written by a man.

The cover caught my eye at our local antique mall. I picked it up and found that The Hardhats, a 1955 fictional book by H.M. Newell, is abut the construction of a huge northwestern U.S. dam.

I had to buy it because one of my many unpublished novels is about a man who works for the Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C. and as part of his job he visits the national dams each year.

You can be the first to read my first page, below, and probably the last to read it! [And spot the cobweb on my lamp.]

Oddly enough, I enjoyed the story of the characters in The Hardhats who are part of the temporary town of construction workers building the fictional dam.

A young woman named Margaret works in the office of the top staff and I recognized her autumn longings as something I experience myself. Perhaps you do too.

...suddenly now the deadening weight of summer was gone too, folding away into the haze of the hills and here were these longings come on her again, sharp and sad and sweet and bitter.

Margaret thought, if it were a thing one could understand about!

But her mind went groping and searching and could put no name to what it was she wanted. She thought of each dessert of which she was especially fond, and of the separate pleasure of sun and rain and breeze on her face, and of country fragrances and sounds she loved and she thought about the voice of Marian Anderson on the radio, and the holy face of Saint Margaret, and she thought about all the beautiful things she had ever seen and some she had never seen at all but only knew by instinct must exist.

...And she thought, exasperated, Whatever is it? What are these cravings so sharp in me?

She thought the gnawing nameless ache was hers alone.

 It's not hers alone, I believe. Margaret's autumn longings may be universal when autumn arrives, even among those of us who claim autumn as our favorite season. 

I love autumn so much and yet there always is that "nameless ache" that Margaret describes. I have made friends with it in the later years of my life.

When I turn my calendar to October it's always true autumn for me. [And here, dear family and friends, is where I ask you to pretend it is early October, when I first began to write this!]

 I go on to do certain things I know will make me happy beyond understanding. I hang up autumn tea towels in the kitchen.

And wash a few autumn pretties.

[That's my October plate in the kitchen, Spode Blue Bird, my wedding china and October is our anniversary month. RH out in the garden watering.]

Unlike years pre-pandemic, RH and I no longer drive to the Nashville Farmers' Market and load the car with beautiful pumpkins and gourds. This year I settled for a few from the grocery store for outside and just sprinkled a few cheery items from the attic around the house. 

 

I make time in autumn to simply stand and watch the trees around the pond in their daily journey to their autumn finery.
 

And I guard the Virginia creeper vine from a husband whose inclination is to tear it down.

[A hard frost stripped the orange leaves from the vine but has turned the huge maple gold.]

I cherished the last few bell peppers growing in large pots on the kitchen porch.

And we pickled the last few jalapeños for vinegar hot sauce for winter pots of pinto beans.

And in October I listen to the music of Marian Anderson and other opera albums that autumn calls for.

Although last week I listened to the music of the legendary country music star Loretta Lynn after her passing. This album done with Jack White, The Van Lear Rose, is a favorite of mine.
 

I've never met Ms. Lynn in person but feel that we're old friends since I claim a "by marriage" relationship to her and her sister Crystal, who I have met, through sharing grandchildren and great-grandchildren with their sister. And I'll miss knowing that she is here, still writing her authentic songs.

Of course in October I bake apple desserts.

And I light my two favorite fall candles from Milkhouse Candle Co...Rake, Pile, Leap!

 And Brown Butter Pumpkin.

 Every couple years I order a fun fall perfume, Demeter's Mulled Cider, not able to afford one I would love from Jo Loves. Although if Santa ever wants to bring me Jo Loves' Advent Calendar at 350 pounds (can't find the symbol for that!], I would not turn it down.

 I turn to seasonal mysteries in October. I think I own every single Charlotte MacLeod mystery ever published, including those under her two non de plumes. But her Peter Shandy mysteries are my favorite. I love the professor detective.

And I dip into my favorite nature book, Edwin Way Teale's Autumn Across America, with the most beautiful prose about nature ever.
 

I also lost an hour of my morning falling down a rabbit hole learning about the fascinating Saint Margaret of Scotland that Margaret of The Hardhats lured me to. I'm an inveterate researcher and she's well worth the time! 

 

And I indulge in another gift of time, curling up with the Harvest Holiday issue of Old World Design Society where creator/curator Angela brings her Door County home to those of us who love antiques and rich layered colors.

The quarterly magazine and being part of the online Old World Society group is my gift to myself year round. It's so much fun and inspiration to see what other members post about their own homes from around the world, many who have been featured in the magazine. Members who post pictures in the group and ask design questions get great advice from other members, many of them professional designers. I admit I've rarely posted there myself because my own cottage is humble compared to many in the group. 

I am madly in love with Angela's huge old copper butler's sink that sat in her barn for two years until they moved to Door County, Wisconsin.

 I get so much pleasure from the Old World Design Society that I'll link to a page about it in case someone is interested. I believe there are three price options for the group. Here!

I guess that the autumn longings that Margaret muses about in The Hardhats is actually a longing for beauty. Why that is more prominent in autumn is something I don't understand but I experience it in my own life.

Do you ever experience any of this?

 

Maybe I'm longing for an Autumn Tree like I used to make at Valley View. It was magical but I guess I'll wait and put up a Christmas tree. 

Do you think November 3rd is too early? If I haven't put you to sleep with this extremely long post!
 

 

Guess who came to breakfast?

 

Who could it be here at our waffle breakfast?

 

You guessed right, it's our sweet beautiful granddaughters!

They and their wonderful parents came in on a Friday night and after a precious weekend, all too soon it was Sunday morning when they packed up after a waffle breakfast and it was time to say goodbye.

 

Goodbye until the next time and thank goodness we live in an internet age so I can keep up with them online.

 And while I have some gardening friends that may be viewing the above picture of our elder granddaughter, do you see the two purple plants, volunteers growing in the path behind her? I've forgotten what they are and need help identifying them.

Here they are, cut before the frost got them...

And a closer view of the plumes that were much longer last summer in a pot nearby this year's volunteers...

Anyone know what they are? I sure would love to have some again next summer.

My last vase of zinnias before the frost and one lone echinacea bloom...

And we just had to bring in the pot of pink geranium. Don't know how long it will last as it only gets bright light all day until afternoon sunshine. I've kept small pots of geraniums blooming in the sunny kitchen window all year but didn't have room for this pot in the there.

Some wonderful things you just have to enjoy in the present. Some wonderful things you just have to wait for, right? Like special breakfast guests.

 

 

Paying my respects to the Queen.

 

BBC News has been on every morning here these days since the passing of Queen Elizabeth II as they have had live coverage in Scotland and then today in Northern Ireland.

I am, quite simply, a royalist and Anglophile. 

And I have never been able to visit the UK so the history being revealed, the scenery, the somber ceremony, the bystanders being interviewed--especially the children--have all touched me.

Most of all, the services at the church in Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as the first one in London, with their beautiful music and Scripture readings has been a balm to my spirit.

Recently, when our son Daniel and his family came to visit they brought me a thrift store copy of Sally Bedell Smith's book Elizabeth the Queen and I have been enjoying reading my way through it. 

I love this 1965 picture in the book of the Queen on horseback at Balmoral with one of her corgis. We had two corgis for many years because of Tasha Tudor but I loved knowing that corgis were a passion of Queen Elizabeth.

 

The other day RH stopped by a bookshop and bought me two of my four favorite British magazines, something he treats me to whenever he thinks about it and especially in December. 

I sat down to sink into the beautiful magazines full of my favorite interior designs and gardens and was thrilled to discover that the October issue of The English Home had a beautiful article, "Regal Retreats."

One of the homes shown is Highgrove in the Cotswolds, retreat of who was at the time the magazine was printed, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.

 

I'll admit it, I am a staunch admirer of Charles and wish King Charles III a long healthy successful reign. 

And I have a copy on the way of Sally Bedell Smith's  Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life. 

As I finish writing this, Queen Elizabeth's casket is now leaving the Royal Norfolk AB on the way to Buckingham Palace for one final night. It is dark and raining there and I am very glad it is sunny here, even if the sun does show up that I badly need to dust. 

 

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.