Cottage Memories: Food

I've spent a lovely evening watching Bette David in A Stolen Life (1946). I'd never heard of it. She could just sit and recite the phone book and I would be mesmerized. In this movie you get two Bette's for the price of one, as she plays identical twins who are very different personalities. The special effect split screen of the time is very impressive. My friend J recommended the female impersonating stylings of Charles Pierce on YouTube and I've been enjoying them.

Was it only three weeks ago that we were cottaging? After a cool, grey summer, it was a stroke of luck that we had 15 days of undiluted sunshine. I'm an official cloud appreciator, but this was a treat. It's been tricky sifting through the many pictures. But here are some... food first. So much kayaking, swimming, and fresh air, that everything tasted extra good.

Oh, so did the wine.




Salmon and buttered brown bread.

Prosciutto panino after swimming.

Prosciutto makes an encore.

One of the guys made this magnificent comfort food, a sort of chicken orzo bake. I've received the recipe!

No holiday would be complete now without Betsy's chewy pecan cookies. So good, especially with maple-walnut icecream.

These pork chops were the best ever: marinaded in olive oil and some pounded anise seed, salt and pepper, then grilled. The tomatoes were heirloom varieties brought by a friend who lives year-round locally. Grown in her garden, they were scrumptious.

I took a small round box of camembert, punctured the top rind with a fork, soaked it in chardonnay, sprinkled fresh thyme over it, then sealed it up again and baked till all melty and wonderfully winey. Best eaten next to a large body of water in the company of excellent friends. Note to self: make about 5x the amount next time.

I'll Take One Super Power Please

And if I could it would be time travel, although I'm unlikely to be blessed in that particular respect.

The young 'uns have Harry Potter... well, the old ones do too for that matter, I've read them all... but the grown up ladies have an equivalent, a series of books, each new instalment of which we lay in patient wait for. (Boy, that was an awkward sentence). And our wait, for now, is over. Diana Gabaldon's Echo in the Bone, the seventh novel in her Outlander series is out as of a couple of weeks ago. Hooray! I am in the midst of it. 120 pages in and two saucy scenes to offset too much military action, so all is good. And yes, time travel is at the heart of this book. Also full of action, violence, sex, and heartache: what's not to love?

I saw The Time Traveler's Wife (2009) last week, at last, just before it disappeared from movie theatres. This adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger's novel (which I loved) was a bit lighter than expected and I don't like what they did with the ending, but it was well done, and visually stunning. It was fun to see bits of Toronto playing the part of Chicago. If you see it, in the scene after Henry first meets Clare in the library, and they're sitting in a park gazebo kissing, well, they're right here, in the gardens of St. James Cathedral.

Mangia e Bevi!

The exhortation is one I am obeying, frequently, as this fabulous Italian hole-in-the-wall is a local of mine.

Recently Libras congregated to celebrate their birthdays (three of us all born within the same week of each other, the same year) and we did so here. Mmmmmmmm. Heavenly scents and tastes. Unpretentious and genuine, it gets my two pizza-stained thumbs up.

We were too excited with hunger for me to get pictures of everything... but you get the idea I think. And, note to self and you all out there: a salad and a pizza between two is PLENTY of food!
There were five of us and we did ourselves proud with a lot more than that.

This anchovy pizza was sublime.

Little semi-freddi:



We knew we had to have the tiramisu, but were so stuffed, we took this way out, which is my favourite way to eat dessert, it not being my favourite sort of food, believe it or not.



And yet, one more morsel, the bocca dolce, to indulge my inner child, because - as a child - that romantic couple kissing on the front of the Baci box, was the ultimate in glamour and romance.

Food

While cottaging last month, I finally finished reading Lisa Chaney's wonderful biography of the English food writer, Elizabeth David. (My dragonfly friend quite liked it too. They have become my favourite insecty reading companions.)

Not an easy woman to like, she nonetheless attracted some loyal friends, and - of course - led the post-war English to garlic and olive oil through her beautiful food writing.

I've certainly been in food mode (shocker!) and was very excited to see the new movie, Julie & Julia (2009). I was disappointed. I didn't know going in that Nora Ephron had directed it. Not my favourite director, but I'll leave it at that.

As probably most know by now, the film tells a dual story. The first is Julia Child's life in Paris in the 1950s and her quest to write and publish her Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The other story tells of Julie Powell, a young, contemporary New Yorker, working a soul-destroying job, who decides to cook her way through Julia Child's book in one year, and to blog about it. The two feats are so different: as much as Powell set herself a hell of a task, it can hardly compare with actually creating the book, yet from a marketing perspective I can see the cuteness of the idea, and certainly the cross-generational appeal widens the film's audience.

But this is not a film for food lovers. The food looks tempting in parts but is hurried through. Powell's uncouth husband shovels mouthfuls of it in, swilled immediately down by gulps of wine. He serves himself, and offers her none. He does - it seems required in a lot of Hollywood movies - the obvious and breaks into a freshly-iced cake with his hands, smearing it on his wife's face. Ugh.

Tantrums, lots of mugging for the camera, and several bad cases of the cutes were once the domain of Meg Ryan in Nora Ephron's films. Thank goodness that era is over. Amy Adams plays Julie Powell, the part Meg Ryan would have done 15 years ago. I really enjoy Amy Adams and I can't imagine Julie Powell being played more sympathetically. All the actors were so good. Meryl Streep is a goddesss and always will be one. Damn, I wish they had just let Julia Child been the subject of a full bio-pic, and really got into the meat (pun intended) of Julia Child's life. For a fine review that expresses my feelings more eloquently than I have, read Laura Shapiro's review of Julie & Julia for Gourmet.

In a spirited post-film discussion my companion waxed lyrical for Big Night (1996) and, the following week, succumbed to my pleas to let me show him Babette's Feast (1987), which - for me - is the ultimate food film. The sublime Stéphane Audran conquers the hearts and stomachs of a small sect of Danish villagers in the 19th century. I won't go on. If you haven't seen this gem, treat yourself. And there's no food to follow it. You can't possibly try and experience Babette's feast itself, so we were well prepared with pizza before hand and lots of wine.

Quote of the Day

"I am not in love
But I'm open to persuasion"

From "Love and Affection", a song by Joan Armatrading.

Mm Mm Mmmmmmmmm

It started off with a sublime performance of Madama Butterfly at the Four Seasons Centre and the wonderful duo of Yannick Muriel Noah and Brian Hymel as the doomed pair. I was awash in the most satisfying tears. I can never get over Act II, which is like a never-ending aria for the soprano, and Noah is heart-breaking. Then I floated home and lay about listening to Elvis Presley sing one of my favourite songs of all time, in my favourite rendition. This might seem an odd combination, but it works for me. I feel completely soaked in heady, neurotic, heart-aching pleasure.


Are You Lonesome Tonight?
(Music by Lou Handman and lyrics by Roy Turk, pub. 1926)

Are you lonesome tonight?
Do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorry we drifted apart?
Does your memory stray
To a bright summer day?
When I kissed you and called you Sweetheart?

Do the chairs in your parlor
Seem empty and bare?
Do you gaze at your doorstep
And picture me there?

Is your heart filled with pain?
Shall I come back again?
Tell me, Dear,
Are you lonesome tonight?

(Elvis speaks this next part:)
I wonder if you're lonesome tonight.
You know, someone said that the world's a stage,
And each must play a part
Fate had me playing in love, with you as my sweetheart;

Act one was when we met.
I loved you at first glance.
You read your lines so cleverly,
And never missed a cue

Then came act two.
You seemed to change;
You acted strange,
And why I'll never know.
Honey, you lied when you said you loved me,
And I had no cause to doubt you.
But I'd rather go on hearing your lies
Than to go on living without you.

Now the stage is bare,
And I'm standing there
With emptiness all around,
And if you won't come back to me,
Then they can bring the curtain down

(Sung:)
Is your heart filled with pain?
Shall I come back again?
Tell me, Dear,
Are you lonesome tonight?


Which reminds me of how much I love satellite radio, and how I'm torn continually between the Met Radio station and Elvis Radio (live from Graceland and hosted by someone called "Big Jim").



(Note to self: Take a lint brush to Bruce)

Beautiful Coincidence

I still haven't got back into regular blogging yet, but last week's excuse was my birthday (45). If that wasn't pleasing enough, imagine the delicious frisson that overtook me as I learned that I share my birthday with that of the Guinness brewery in Dublin. It was on September 24, 1759 that Arthur Guinness signed his 9,000-year lease.

And I had no idea as I started the celebrations with a tall glass of the black stuff.

Quote of the Day

"Dispensing with the endless instructions for lettuce salads in cookbooks she says that “It seems to me that there are only three absolutely essential rules to be observed: the lettuce must be very fresh; the vinegar in the dressing must be reduced to the absolute minimum; the dressing must be mixed with the lettuce only at the moment of serving”. An admirably concise and succinct description of a much mangled task. Her friend Sybille Bedford noticed that “she always mixed salad with her hands, saying that this was the only way that every leaf was properly covered with dressing”. As for dressings; “however mild the vinegar, I prefer lemon juice, and very little of it”. Elizabeth next makes a swingeing attack, concluding with a typically tart finale: “The grotesque prudishness and archness with which garlic is treated in this country has led to the superstition that rubbing the bowl with it before putting the salad in gives sufficient flavour. It rather depends whether you are going to eat the bowl or the salad.”

From Elizabeth David, the superb biography by Lisa Chaney

Quote of the Day

“A handsome white round dish, quite flat, entirely covered with pale rose slices of Parma ham, cut so thin as to be almost transparent, with edgings of opaque silky white fat; in the centre a little pyramid of purple figs fresh from the tree, their honey-sweet flesh bursting here and there through their skins; a glass of fresh, cool white wine.”

Elizabeth David describes her idea of the perfect starter. (I was trying to write hors d'oeuvres but I can never remember how to spell those two words and I always have to look them up and they never look right to me anyway, the buggers.)

Quote of the Day

"As time goes on you accumulate your personal gadgets, things which graft themselves on to your life; an ancient thin-pronged fork for the testing of meat, a broken knife for scraping mussels, a battered little copper saucepan in which your sauces have always turned out well, an oyster knife which you can no longer afford to use for its intended purpose but which turns out to be just the thing for breaking off hunks of Parmesan cheese... an earthenware bean-pot of such charm that nothing cooked in it could possibly go wrong."

From French Country Cooking by Elizabeth David


At the cottage two weeks ago I found myself without a rolling pin and a box of ripe Ontario peaches. A heavy, unopened bottle of wine filled in nicely.

This is the One

Several years and experiments later, I have found my favourite chocolate chip cookie recipe, courtesy of Ontario's own Anna Olson, host of the Food Network's "Sugar" and "Fresh".

They're chewy and delicious. Apparently it's the cornstarch that keeps them chewy inside. I use mini Callebaut 70% chocolate chips and am very careful not to overcook as that seems to be an easy thing to do.


Anna Olson's Chocolate Chip Cookies

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp cornstarch
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
8 oz bittersweet chocolate, cut into chunks (n0t me, see note above)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Cream together butter and sugars until smooth. Add egg and vanilla and blend in. Stir in flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt. Stir in chocolate chunks. (BPG: I'd put the kettle on at this point). Drop by tablespoons onto a greased baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes, until just golden brown around the edges.

Yarrrrrr...

It be a grand day for celebratin' and droppin' our "g"s, and unlike last year, when we was escapin' foreign waters, Dreade Pirate Bruce the Bat and myself are in our home bay. The wee matey has bin enjoyin' some precious swag in the form of Marmite-flavoured breadsticks, fetched from across the dreade Atlantic waters by this blog's favourite newly-wed couple. We be brandishin' said breadsticks while gnashin' our teeth and dippin' them in some soft-boiled eggs (it be hard to admit that dreade pirates like us like coddled egg brekkies).

Bruce also be growin' his own dreade pirate pet, booty given the wee matey by his friend Dreade Pirate Capitano Martino.

Tonight we be celebratin' alone, the wee bat and meself, with some gold-wrapped chocolate doubloons, some ill-gotten Guinness, an' some fine cinema.

YARRRRR!!!

Gone to the Lake

No computer, no tv. I can't wait. See you in two and a half weeks.

Catching up with Tibby

These are for the fans (and I know at least three of them out there!)

Fruit Bat

This Place Smells Great!

So, needing to roast a chicken, and inspired by Marie's technique, I proceeded with this flattened bird, laying it on a bed of lemon, onion, rosemary and tarragon:




Done, and delicious:

Slurping Noises

I was struck by the urge to make my own pasta today, for the first time ever.

The banks of my flour well broke and the egg rushed out. Eep!




With pirate cries I stemmed the flow, and soon had an assembled dough. Blimey, that rhymes!

Kneading took place and soon a smooth dough ball was in my proud possession:

After resting (both me and the dough), I did some rolling out.

My inexperience showed in in the tagliatelle that came out uneven and a bit too thick. I hadn't realized how much the strands would swell during cooking. Here they are, uncooked:

But, boy were they good when they were cooked! I served them with a fresh sage/butter sauce tossed with the pasta, then topped with lashings of finely shaved parmigiano and ground black pepper. My two human guinea pigs were very happy with the result.

And speaking of sage, I think it's time for a "quote of the day":

"Wisdom is the providence of the aged,

but the heart of a child is pure."

Peter Sellers as Hrundi V. Bakshi in The Party (1968)

//UPDATE: I was on the phone with a friend who asked me why the noodles appeared to be such different colours pre-cooking and post. Answer: they were photographed in different rooms. The cooked noodles look more like they did in real life.

Quote of the Day

General Lorenz Lowenhielm: I have been with you every day of my life. Tell me you know that.

Martina: Yes, I know it.

Lowenhielm: You must also know that I shall be with you every day that is granted to me from now on. Every evening I shall sit down to dine with you. Not with my body, which is of no importance, but with my soul. Because this evening I have learned, my dear, that in this beautiful world of ours, all things are possible.

Jarl Kulle as General Lorens Löwenhielm and Birgitte Federspiel as Martina in Babette's Feast (1987)

Soon...

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

From Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Photograph from last year's cottage trip.

Something Else I did on Blogging Hiatus

I love boxy handbags, usually 1950s in style. This white wicker basket bag was picked up in a little junk/antique shop. It had a very nasty old lining but a cute wooden handle and brass lock. It's 8" wide to give you some perspective.




Here it is with a spiffy new lining:

Bruce!

Song of the Day

I am Calling You
(Bob Telson)

A desert road from Vegas to nowhere
Some place better than where you've been
A coffee machine that needs some fixin'
In a little cafe just around the bend

I am calling you
Can't you hear me
I am calling you

A hot dry wind blows right through me
The baby's cryin' and I can't sleep
But we both know a change is comin'
Coming closer, sweet release

I am calling you
I know you hear me
I am calling you


This song, sung by Jevetta Steele, is one of the many memorable things from the film Bagdad Cafe (1987). So many more, including C.C.H. Pounder and Jack Palance. The luminous Marianne Sägebrecht is a German woman who emerges from the California desert in a way that brought to mind Harry Dean Stanton in Paris, Texas (1984). (I think it's because I spent formative years living in the desert that draws me to it over and over). But here's the thing: Bagdad Cafe was directed by Percy Adlon (German, although I wouldn't have guessed from the name) and Paris, Texas was directed by Wim Wenders. Strange and delicious.

Stowe White and the Seven - make that Twenty-odd - Plums

It's too hot to do anything. So first of all I admired the paint job in my home (I did the whole thing this summer; amazing what you can do when taking a blog hiatus) and remarked on the many different hues that Stowe White paint can take in late afternoon light. Then I admired one of my hanging Jack Pines.




Then I lay on the carpet and considered dinner. Too hot to cook. Almost too hot to eat (let's not get carried away) so I consumed a bowl of yellow Ontario plums. A big bowl.

Stomach pains! Why do I do this? I cannot resist the lure of summer fruit. Sigh... OW!

Quote(s) of the Day

"Excellence does not require perfection."

Henry James


"That's a mercy."

BPG

It's Been a While...

... but tea time is always worth the wait. We consumed the entire batch of fresh-from-the-oven scones with lashings of butter and black cherry jam. Oh, and lots of tea.

Dainty half-scone:




Mmmmmmm...

Quote of the Day

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars."

From Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Quote of the Day

"The strange effect of this incident was that when they met that evening at dinner both Mrs. Fisher and Lady Caroline had a singular feeling of secret understanding with Mr. Wilkins. He could not be to them as other men. He could not be to them as he would have been if they had met him in his clothes. There was a sense of broken ice; they felt at once intimate and indulgent; almost they felt to him as nurses do – as those feel who have assisted either patients or young children at their baths. They were acquainted with Mr. Wilkins’s legs."

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

Quote of the Day

"My feelings for you, Hank, are like a big bowl of... fish hooks. I can't just pick up one up at a time. I pick one up and they all come, so I just had to leave 'em alone."

Meryl Streep as Lee in Marvin's Room (1996)

39.04%... and counting

Quote of the Day

The Organic Commandment

Love is the virtue of the heart
Sincerity the virtue of the mind
Courage the virtue of the spirit
Decision the virtue of the will.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Waving Vigorously

Hello! I'm hoping to start blogging again soon. In the meantime, I'll get myself back into the swing with a new "Quote of the Day" feature on the top of the right-hand column. Also, my top ten movie list is now up to twelve. Can you spot the latest addition?

Hey, have other bloggers noticed that the search feature on the top left doesn't seem to work any more? Also, the profile views counter seems to have frozen but I've heard that's pretty common.

Hope you're all well!

Hiatus Continues... but Welcome!

Yep, I decided that "Film, Food, Fiction" was a little limiting, especially as I've been such a poor reader of late.

So here it is... da new blog. And I'll be back to full blogging power ere long. Of this I am sure.

Food Film Fiction on Hiatus

All is well in the realm of Blog Princess G... but this blog will be on hiatus for the next little while...

I will be around to visit my favourite blogs whenever I can.

28.87%... and Counting

Song of the Day

Lullabye (Goodnight my Angel)
(Music and words by Billy Joel)

Watch below, or, for a much better version, click here and make sure you watch the high-quality version (just to the bottom right of the screen).



Good night my angel, time to close your eyes
And save these questions for another day
I think I know what you've been asking me
I think you know what I've been trying to say

I promised I would never leave you
And you should always know
Where ever you may go
No matter where you are
I never will be far away

Good night my angel, now it's time to sleep
And still so many things I want to say
Remember all the songs you sang for me
When we went sailing on an emerald bay

And like a boat out on the ocean
I'm rocking you to sleep
The water's dark and deep
Inside this ancient heart
You'll always be a part of me

Do do do do...

Goodnight my angel, now it's time to dream
And dream how wonderful your life will be
Someday your child may cry and if you sing this lullaby
Then in your heart there will always be a part of me

Someday we'll all be gone
But lullabies go on and on
They never die that's how you and I will be.

At Lunch with Bruce the Bat

This blog's favourite bat does get out and about and here he is at lunch with his friend, Dr. M. at our local Distillery District.

First, steak, stout and stilton pie at the Mill Street Brew Pub. Yum. Accompanied of course by Mill Street's own Cobblestone Stout.

We traditionally forgo dessert and stumble across the cobblestones to Soma Chocolatier, which is not unheard of on this blog. AND... they finally have a groovy new website.

And... here it is: dessert. A cup of warm Mayan hot chocolate, the "Drink of the Gods."

Is it any wonder I didn't weigh in last week?

Quote of the Day

"Soli d’inverno e cosa da morire… Ci lasceremo alla stagion dei fior…"

"To be alone in winter is death… we’ll part when the flowers bloom once more…” (from La Bohème, words by Illica and Giacosa, music by Puccini)

In the Busyness... a Comfort Food /Sound Moment

Here is my favourite dessert, Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Cherry Trifle - last seen in my homely old glass bowl - and making its first appearance in the new trifle bowl.

The bowl has just been washed up, and the chicken is roasting, releasing its heavenly scents.

In the background, I'm listening to Galaxie Nature, one of CBC's digital stations on my tv. Now, the point of this particular channel is to fill your living room with the sounds of nature, so you can imagine how I pounced on that. Ocean sounds, rain, waterfalls, birds, the works. The only problem is, it often intersperses or incorporates "gentle instrumentals" which are usually really bad. I mute the channel at that point. But for the most time, it provides the most heavenly and deeply relaxing sounds... and I can imagine I'm in the forest or by a lake, or walking a trail, or laying by the ocean, always in nature and basically where I want to be right now. It's a good feeling.

Ha Ha! Take THAT Acute viral rhinopharyngitis!!!

Not wanting a repetition of last year's The Worst Cold I've Ever Had, when the symptoms descended on me Friday night, I took action. Yesterday was hell. Today, I'm 95% better! And so, for your queasy reading pleasure, I present to you:


Top Ten Things I Did to Show That Cold Who's Boss

10. Inhaled a Vicks steam bath.
9. Quadrupled my daily doseage of vitamin C.
8. Continued taking my usual daily supplements.
7. Used a netipot to give my sinuses a saline rinse... a pretty glamorous process!
6. Cooked and consumed organic chicken soup.
5. Practiced yogic breathing.
4. Slept and slept till I thought I would go mad with sleep boredom, then forced myself to sleep some more.
3. Took aspirin.
2. On several occasions I placed two droplets of oil of oregano at the back of my tongue swiftly washed down with water to minimize gagging potential. Damn, that's foul stuff. This is the first time I've tried it, on the recommendation of three friends. Readers, it helped!
and...
1. Took several nips of scotch. Ahhhhhh.