Beauty, When You Can

This is a last minute effort to post here at Across the Way before October is gone as it's been almost two months since I've been here. 

The pretty pumpkin placemats that I only use in October, and only for non-messy meals were perfect to illustrate a point that's dear to my heart from one of my favorite books, No Trumpet Before Him by Nelia Gardner White. 

I have ten other posts here with White's label and I even posted about this book here in 2019 when we discussed reading depressing books. I pulled out this book once again this month when I needed a book to comfort me. 

Every time I read one of her books I get something different from it and this time it meant even more to me than before. This time I needed the Methodist bishop's wife, needed her positive but not Pollyanna personality. 

Maisie Fellowes, an author as well as Bishop Fellowes' wife, puts her husband's apple on a pretty blue dish before taking it to him. It's important to her. Beauty is important to her, in her garden and her home. This one little detail about Maisie has stuck in my mind for a decade or more since I first read it. 

I had a post planned for this with pictures of my table set prettily for a plebeian supper of Tuna Fish Casserole and spinach. I took the first picture above but then put my phone on to charge and used RH's phone for pictures of the meal on the table. Little did I realize that RH's iCloud was full and when I went to send them to my phone later there were no pictures. 

So without Maisie's touch of beauty, here is my meal, in the kitchen, on the stove, not on a pretty autumn table.

There, how inspiring is that?

But I did manage to change my current post from Back To School clothes, so there's that. 

Maybe, just maybe, the plainer the meal, the more important beauty is. 

Back to School Clothes, 1965

 

From this picture can you guess which movie influenced back to school clothes in 1965?

Another clue...

And this darling third clue?

Naturally, it is the movie that for five years made more money at the box office than even Gone with the Wind.......

The Sound of Music!

I remember seeing the movie when it premiered at Nashville's nicest movie theater in 1965. How I loved it! RH and I had only been married a few years and didn't have any children yet but if I'd had school age children I most likely would have been wanting to dress them this way for the first day of school.

And that first day of school back then was always the day after Labor Day, not some barbarous day in August when we would have still been at Pleasant Green swimming pool or Myrtle Beach.

I loved the songs from the movie, still do. You still hear These are a few of my favorite things on Instagram, don't you? I think one of the most memorable scenes from the movie was So Long, Farewell when the von Trapp children bid adieu to their house guests one evening and disappeared one by one up the staircase, cute little Greti  going last. And then of course when the song is repeated at their performance at the Salzburg Festival when they bid adieu to the audience and escape  through the Alps to Switzerland. 

But back to fashion! Here are two more fall fashion pictures from my August 1965 issue of Ladies' Home Journal.

 

 and...

 I see a slight influence of the movie in the second woman's dress, do you? 

Would school children today be caught dead in these clothes?

Do you think the style will ever come back?

Did you ever wear a dress similar to these, as a child or as an adult?  

 

September

 

Back once again, practically the whole summer season gone. While it's not officially Autumn, it is September and that seems wonderful in itself. 

I began Louis MacNeice's Autumn Journal recently in its August pages and now have arrived at MacNeice's lines I first read in Rosamunde Pilcher's The Shell Seekers back in the late 1980's--how could it have been that long?

September has come, it is hers

     Whose vitality leaps in the autumn,

Whose nature prefers

     Trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace...

When I read those lines of Louis MacNeice that Richard Lomax was reading to Penelope Keeling, and the lines...

And all of London littered with remembered kisses

I just knew in my heart that Richard would die in the Invasion of Normandy and that Penelope, at war's end, would end up returning to Ambrose, poor woman.

It took me until this summer thirty something years later to order MacNeice's  Autumn Journal but perhaps it suits my mood at this age better. 

I feel a little differently about autumn this year. At my age I no longer wish July and August away in a pell-mell rush toward the season that is my favorite, but I am ready for it. 

 

I'm ready to put a few autumn touches around the house, even the browning hydrangea blossoms that I waited too long to harvest.

Should I be concerned that these brown blooms seem beautiful to me?

Or that MacNeice's foreboding poetry of 1938 both makes me quietly happy and particularly sad?

That's okay, I reassure myself.

It is September and I will savor every day, maybe even sparkle a little bit the way the chandelier does on the Karen Adams calendar that my daughter Christy gives me each Christmas. 

 

I hope you sparkle this September too!

The Sunday Egg

 

 

We look forward to something all week, like The Sunday Egg.

 

 It comes without fail and we gulp it down.

 

 Sometimes we even share.

 

And then it's gone and we have to wait until The Sunday Egg comes again. 

 

BreeBree: "I gobble it down!"

James Mason: "I savor it. I even share it."
 

Doggy Tales

 

I love this picture of our BreeBree even though it doesn't show much of her beautiful brown eyes. For months we've had her on a prescription for her allergies causing sneezing and wheezing.

It turned out that all of that really wasn't allergies. We had put off her dental for two years and when she went for it the other day they found more teeth that needed to come out. Even some of the bone in the gum had disintegrated.

Guess what? She no longer wheezes and sneezes! 

 

James Mason was so forlorn while she was gone that day, much more than I would've ever thought he would be as she is the one who acts the most loving. He's always too cool for Sunday school.

He whimpered for an hour after we came home without her.

To top it off, his birthday was that day and he was 13! Next month she'll be 11.

 

He was perfectly happy to snuggle with her when we brought her home even though what he really wanted to do was play. He was so excited and tried his best to get her to run circles like they usually do but after her meds that we managed to get down with some peanut butter, and a spoonful for him of course, all she wanted was a deep nap.
 

Then it was out to potty in the garden where he never left her side. She was pretty pitiful for a few days and he was very patient with her, adjusting himself to her pace.

But this morning when she gobbled her breakfast down and then tried to eat his, RH and I looked at each other and said, BreeBree's back to normal! 

And a big sigh of relief from both of us. 

Bay Leaves and Bowknots and A Doughnut for Dessert

 

Once again trying to play catchup with planned posts, here is an early March picture of the hyacinths from our garden. 

And three books I recently enjoyed.

 I featured the middle one in the stack, Confessions of A Closet Master Baker by Gesine Bullock-Prado at my other blog, Dewena's Window link here.

The second one, The Quality of Mercy (1963) is the latest book by Margaret Culkin-Browning that I've read (others here). 

 Honestly, I didn't enjoy this book as much as the other ones by Culkin-Browning although I do love the writing of this author who lived at her estate called Friendly Hills in Tyron, North Carolina until her death at 92 years old. I think her later books were on social consciousness themes and they have begun to pale on me. I don't like my novels wrapped up into a social consciousness package anymore. After decades of reading serious subjects, now  in my dotage I just need to read a relaxing book. 

There was only one paragraph in this book that called my name and kind of shows what I enjoy reading now.

 Leaving America for "war-blitzed London to serve the displaced and dispossessed," Pamela falls in love with an Englishman and goes home with him to meet his mother who shows her to her bedroom. 

She closed the door of the Jade Room and left Pamela alone. It was named because of the color of the velvety rug, the faded green of the wallpaper, and the leaf green outside the opened casements carried on the harmony. Guests who surely had been comfortable here had almost worn through the pattern of bowknots and bay leaves on the linen slipcovers of the chairs, had softened the cushions on the rosewood sofas and made it necessary to mend the silk coverlet on the bed. It seemed to Pamela that the room accepted her, offered comfort.

See what I mean? Give me a whole book of an English country home and I'm happy. 

Now this last book, Full Cry (2003), beckoned to me at Goodwill because I used to read Rita Mae Brown's other Sister Jane's Virginia Jefferson Hunt club mysteries, such as Outfoxed and Hotspur. I also have read her Mrs. Murphy mystery series too.

 Brown's Sister Jane--her nickname, not her religious calling--is the 70 year old hunt master, at one with her horse and loving the hounds with a passion. 

In know, I know, the poor fox. RH and I love them too and leave food out for ours but I block that out when reading these mysteries because Rita Mae's wise foxes talk to each other and are elusive heroes in the books. The hounds and horses talk to each other too and no, it's not corny any more than her cat and dachshund talking in her other series is.  Not to Rita Mae Brown's faithful fans.

This is what draws me:

The American way of hunting, most particularly in the South, involved manners, hospitality, and strict attention to the pleasure of one's guests.

And truthfully, I enjoy the food, especially the Hunt Breakfast.

Three different types of grits, succulent ham, roast turkey, and a joint of beef crowded on the long hunt table, along with salads, breads, hot buttered carrots, squash and the ubiquitous deviled eggs. The special dessert consisted of a hot glazed doughnut with a huge scoop of vanilla ice cream plopped in the middle, fudge sauce drizzled over that.

Lord have mercy, this breakfast lover would be in line around the Jefferson Hunt Breakfast table.

If I could ride a horse in my 70s. 

If I could afford to join a Virginia hunt club. 

If it didn't involve killing foxes.

If, if, if.

Otherwise I'll sit in a sunny corner and read about Sister Jane and hope she doesn't break her neck before her next birthday.

 

"You know, Jane, I think aging is a return to your true self" her close friend Tedi tells her.

 I think so too so let the foxes talk. 

 

 

 

Dumping some pictures of my winter meals on my blog.

Spring is here, which means Tennessee weather can't make up its mind. Three nights of hard freeze means the buds on our one lilac bush are freezer burned and probably the crabapple trees out front.

It seemed a good idea to cut some of the beautiful spring bulbs before 17 degree lows arrived. 

 

I wish so much that I had our daughter's talent for arranging beautiful vase bouquets but I usually just plonk them in. These went right on the dining table where  we can enjoy them at meals and on the bathroom sink in the old Jersey Farms milk bottle that has held my bathroom bouquets for decades.

Now that I've shown some pretties I'll slip in this one of raw New York strip steaks because I have a whole winter of meals I took pictures of and never got around to using. My apologies to my vegetarian friends!

I fix less and less beef these days but twice this winter Publix had their Greenwise strip steaks on sale and this is my simple way of prepping them, whether cooked inside in a black skillet or if RH grills them out. I salt and pepper them, rub with brown sugar and leave them uncovered in fridge on an old enamel pan for 24 hours.

The steaks always have to have mushrooms (Shitake are my favorite) and this time I remembered to get a log of my tarragon butter out of the freezer to top them with.

And yes we both like it medium well now. When we were first married I would order steak rare and love every bloody bite. I don't know what happened. And I always try to have fresh parsley simply because I learned years ago from James Beard that mushrooms need to be topped with acres of fresh parsley.

And I try to remember to drizzle on a little of this balsamic reduction sauce that is wonderful on so many things, just a little sugar stirred into balsamic vinegar and cook till reduced. I don't use my expensive balsamic for this.

My life is becoming all about simple meals now so if we have hot bread with steak we don't have potatoes, and vice versa.

 

But there always has to be a salad. (I love the taste that a little bit of heavy cream gives when stirred into a vinaigrette.)

That is, unless there's fresh asparagus and Mama is too tired to make a salad. (And if there's no fresh parsley on hand, oh I miss my big summer pots of herbs on my kitchen porch!)

 Most of the time RH and I both leave enough steak on our plates to make hash for an easy supper the next night.

With enough potatoes and onions and all the leftover mushrooms and drippings from the steak pan the night before (the tails, Tamar Adler calls these little spoonfuls left in the pan), it doesn't take much meat to make a good meal for two. 

But always a salad, even a thrown together one.

By the way, have you ever tried Stonewall Kitchen's Country Ketchup? It is so good and no high fructose corn syrup in it.

Most of our meals though are either chicken or fish/seafood. Pacific Wild caught sockeye salmon is almost always in my freezer, from Costco, and I have a dozen ways of fixing it. This looks like one of my easy ones.

You probably can't see much of it in the picture above but I'm using my Wallace LaReine wedding silver there after hearing on a food podcast that a study showed that when people ate their meals with heavy silver they enjoyed their meal more. So maybe we should use our good stuff for our everyday meals, right? I keep a place setting for two on an easy to grab shelf in my china cabinet now--not that I always remember to get them out.

Here's one of my favorite recipes, Shrimp with Scallions and Orzo.

It may not look very pretty because a food stylist I'm not, but it is delicious. Here's a link to the recipe. 

And here's what I add to Bon Appetit's recipe:

a tablespoon of soy sauce

a bottle of clam juice

fresh chopped cilantro 

red pepper flakes

a teaspoon of tumeric

a little vegetable broth to make it a little more risotto like

and lemon to squeeze over it

It's so good cold the next day for lunch too!

You can tell how exciting my life is now when I dump a bunch of meal pictures on my blog with no real story to go with them so thank you to anyone who read through this.

Actually, I have a bunch more. About a half dozen of Tieghan's Half Baked Harvest recipes that I've made this winter. Maybe I'll share them at Dewena's Window soon. 

Many thanks to blog friend Melanie for leading me to Tieghan on Instagram! Melanie, have you listened to The Skinny Confidential podcast where Tieghan was guest? She was delightful! When I learned that she's a Gilmore Girls fan I knew we had one thing in common. That's a start, right?