home again home again

I know, I know, I am real­ly provin­cial and not very sophis­ti­cat­ed, but it just bog­gles my mind that I can be say­ing good­bye to Anne and David in Con­necti­cut one minute, and seem­ing­ly lit­er­al­ly just min­utes lat­er be descend­ing my Lon­don front steps on the way to Marks and Spencer for gro­ceries. Peo­ple do this all the time, I know! But it takes a long time for me to re-accli­mate. I feel for sev­er­al days as if all the beloved peo­ple on both sides of the pond are resid­ing in my pock­ets, or sit­ting on my shoul­ders, some want­i­ng to know why I’ve left and oth­ers not real­iz­ing I’ve ever been gone. “Why, you know on Tues­day…” No, I was­n’t here on Tues­day! “Over the week­end we…” Well, we were some­where else! And to think of our beloved Red Gate Farm fire­places dead and dark, our barns unlight­ed, the pond emp­ty of our skat­ing attempts, Rol­lie roof­ing the barn with­out us there to gloat, the snow melt­ing over our foot­prints. I hate that! And yet, to come home to Lon­don and see that our cats are thriv­ing, the oven still work­ing for a roast chick­en, “Top Gear” ready to be watched: that’s all to the good as well. It does make me laugh to hear Jere­my Clark­son say that the “right turn on a red light” is the only sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion of Amer­i­can cul­ture to the world. Thanks, Jere­my. I’ll be sure and log the inven­tion of pot­ted chick­en under YOUR nation’s cul­tur­al achieve­ments. Harumph.

I am total­ly inspired now, after our after­noon with Anne across the road, to begin work in earnest on my edi­tion of her grand­moth­er’s recipes. Over a love­ly lunch of oys­ter stew, we dis­cussed strate­gies for choos­ing, pre­sent­ing and updat­ing Gladys’s recipes. There are some love­ly bits, like “scal­loped oys­ters,” or “sweet pota­to souf­fle,” absolute mar­vels of sim­plic­i­ty and thrift. Then there are clas­sic bud­get-con­scious post­war gems like “Sour Cream Loaf” which fea­tures ground veal and chopped green pep­pers (an ingre­di­ent for which I feel a total­ly irra­tional hos­til­i­ty), as well as the epony­mous dairy prod­uct. That’s got to be a real­ly weird dish. Then there’s the recipe for lob­ster bisque, which involves mix­ing a can of mush­room soup and a can of toma­to soup, and a “No.1 can of lob­ster”. Now, I don’t know what a No.1 can is, but I feel cer­tain that no can should con­tain lobster.

Here’s one fas­ci­nat­ing thing about recipes from the past, I find: there is a curi­ous con­tra­dic­tion about sea­son­al­i­ty, and also afford­abil­i­ty, that per­vades many of the instruc­tions. On the one hand, old-fash­ioned cook­ery writ­ers are much more tol­er­ant of sim­ply not being able to get things at cer­tain times of the year (like fruit in snowy Con­necti­cut), or not being able to afford things (like a lob­ster fresh from the ocean). How­ev­er, they are per­fect­ly hap­py to use frozen straw­ber­ries, some­thing I have nev­er pur­chased, or canned cher­ries, or canned lob­ster. If I can’t have it fresh (whether from avail­abil­i­ty or from cost), I just skip it. What does that mean about me as a cook, and about Gladys? I have a lot to think about, before I can put togeth­er a decent analy­sis of the cook­ery mood of one New Eng­lan­der writer in the 1940s, and my own 21st cen­tu­ry urban atti­tude, in this era when one can get (if one can afford) almost any­thing, almost any­time of the year. I am incred­i­bly flat­tered that Anne thinks I am the right per­son to take on her beloved famous rel­a­tive’s work, and turn it into some­thing that new read­ers can approach with enthu­si­asm. Most impor­tant, I think, is to point out that Martha Stew­art did not invent domes­tic­i­ty, nor did Nigel­la Law­son, as won­der­ful as these peo­ple are. And there is a great deal to be said for a writer, and a per­son, who want­ed her writ­ing and her recipes to be acces­si­ble, not to scare peo­ple to death.

Anne feels that the best thing to do is to select a small num­ber of good recipes, and test them all, pos­si­bly bring them up to date with mod­ern ingre­di­ents, and sur­round them with some sort of text that will get across the enor­mous and last­ing appeal of Gladys’s writ­ing. That is a tall order, on all sides. Because the recipes are real­ly only the tip of her appeal. Of course that is in part because the col­lec­tions are pep­pered with items like this gem: “Boiled Tongue: raisin sauce makes a nice change.” I bet it does. No, the recipes are love­ly, some deli­cious, and all of them evoca­tive of a cer­tain era in home­mak­ing, but her real genius is in her gen­uine love for her farm, her friends, fam­i­ly, hos­pi­tal­i­ty and enjoy­ment of her rur­al life. And I must say her con­cern for the overde­vel­op­ment of the sur­round­ing coun­try­side res­onates awful­ly loud­ly today. So I must put on my think­ing cap and do her jus­tice. In the mean­time, you should give her writ­ing a whirl. I can only hope to pro­duce any­thing half so valu­able, but I’ll try.