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Beginning in 2018 "Ruth's Neighborhood" entries were also posted on Ruth's FACEBOOK page where her entries (usually weekly, on Sunday mornings) usually lead to lively conversations.

This Page: October - December 2024

   D-H TRIP

December 8, 2024

In New Hampshire we had a seductive November full of sunny days warm for the season until a Thanksgiving snowstorm shocked us back to reality. The morning temperatures have got down to 17 degrees, the number at which I used to decide against snowshoeing and such.

But last Tuesday as Wanda and I set forth at 8:30 a.m. on our latest two-hour trip to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center the sunny morning was up to 20 degrees and when we reached New Hampton it had reached 30. Balmy! The Route 104 Diner’s sign said:

Brr! It’s
Winter Thyme

On along Route 104 we went past the now-familiar scenes, such as the River Road wiggle-waggling alongside the Smith River. At the junction with Route 4, I again enjoyed the Danbury Country Store’s Sign: “Gas Diesel Deli.” Another sign said, “Voted NH’s #1 Country Store. Thank you.” And another sign, “Established 1875. Re-established 2013,” had eventually made me Google the store’s website to read about the store’s history.

Onward on Route 4. Christmas decorating of homes and businesses had seemed sporadic and continued to be, a Santa here, some Christmas lights there; too soon after Thanksgiving for more? A sign in front of a church said:

What the World Needs Now
Is Love

As we neared the Connecticut River Valley, Wanda and I estimated that over here they’d got less snow than we had during the Thanksgiving storm. The clouds increased. In Canaan I couldn’t see a favorite summit, the summit of Mount Cardigan. I’ve quoted  before my father’s description of it in 50 HIKES IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. I can’t resist quoting it again:
“A crown of solid rock forms the top of Mount Cardigan. As you approach the fire tower lookout exposed to the open sky and wind, you are taken by the illusion of climbing on the barren rock of some remote and mightier mountain; instead, you are on an outpost of the White Mountains at only 3,155 feet elevation.”
In Enfield I waved at the Dunkin’ Donuts. And in the last stretch before the road to Dartmouth-Hitchcock, in front of some establishment we saw a huge inflated Santa.

After the rejuvenating steroid shot in my right knee, back we went to Dunkin’ Donuts for our car-picnic lunch. I realized I’d never had a Dunkin’ wrap, so that’s what I chose, a bacon-and-egg wrap, while Wanda chose a sausage-egg-and-cheese sandwich. Hash-browns for both of us!

The day was getting cloudier. But in Canaan the sun behind the clouds aimed a spotlight down to show us Mount Cardigan’s snow-covered summit. As we continued on, the sky began doing what’s inelegantly called “spitting snow.”

I told Wanda about a Food Network “Holiday Wars” show I had recently watched with supper. I’d enjoyed most the names given to the teams competing: Best in Snow; Yule-igans; Rebels without a Claus; Fab-yule-us.

Then the spitting snow turned to a light flurry through which we saw the other side of the Route 104 Diner’s sign:

Happy Hollandaise!

©2024 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

   GATSBY AND ICARUS AND PUDDING

December 1, 2024

Recently two of my “bedtime stories,” i.e., audiobooks, have sent me to my bookcases to fetch a novel and a poetry anthology. I’m now rereading the former; in the latter I rediscovered a poem that I’m still pondering.
The first audiobook was the latest Maisie Dobbs mystery by Jacqueline Winspear, THE COMFORT OF GHOSTS, set in England right after World War II.  A house has been taken over by a group of teenage “squatters” and one of the girls, browsing in its library, reads THE GREAT GATSBY and likes the book a lot. Right after I heard this I heard another mention of GATSBY when on a HGTV show the hosts aimed for a “Gatsby look” to their décor. And soon afterward I saw in PUBLISHERS WEEKLY an announcement about a new edition GATSBY.

I decided it was time I reread THE GREAT GATSBY!

I used to reread it occasionally but I hadn’t in recent years—except for its first sentence. A dear friend had given me a coffee mug decorated with the first lines of famous novels; it’s too much fun to be used for coffee so it had to be on my desk fulltime, holding pens and pencils. Thus at my desk I often read, “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.”

After the GATSBY coincidences I got out my copy and read the first pages further, into what at one stage of my life I could almost recite: “If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life . . . ”

After I finished the Maisie Dobbs audiobook, I began an Inspector Banks audiobook, Peter Robinson’s SLEEPING IN THE GROUND. It starts with a mass shooting when a wedding group leaves a country church. Robinson describes the scenery near the church, a field of grazing sheep who were as unconcerned as “Auden’s horse scratching his behind on a tree while Icarus fell to earth.”

Huh? W. H. Auden? It seemed like a line I sure would remember after reading his poems but I didn’t. So I Googled and found the title of the poem, “Musee des Beaux Arts.” Wanting to read the poem the “real” way, not on a screen, I got the anthology we used in Bennington’s “Language and Literature” course (“Lang and Lit”!): THE MAJOR POETS: ENGLISH AND AMERICAN, Edited by Charles M. Coffin. There I  read:
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel’s ICARUS, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
After reading the poem I went back to the computer screen to read Wikipedia’s analysis, including a confusion of Brueghel paintings. Then in the anthology I looked at the other Auden poems and saw from my margin notes made during class (in the living room of a house/dorm) that the poem we’d studied was “Look, stranger, on this island now.” And I burst into much-needed laughter when I saw one of the notes I’d taken, quoting our teacher: “In some instances, author just showing off.”

To continue on a lighter note: in the Maisie Dobbs novel Maisie admonishes wryly, “Don’t over-egg the pudding.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard this before! So I Googled and learned a definition that I’d guessed from the context of the scene: “(Mainly British): to try so hard to improve something that you spoil it, for example by making it seem exaggerated or extreme.”

I’ll now always remember this while enjoying a pudding.

©2024 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

   YANKEE

November 24, 2024

After our errands last Monday Wanda and I got two doughnuts at the Moultonborough Dunkin’ Donuts (Glazed for Wanda, Old Fashioned for me) and she drove us to the Center Harbor town dock. When we last had a car picnic here the October day had given us autumn foliage and migrating geese basking in the sun on the town beach beside the dock area. Now the trees were bare; there were no geese. But as always Lake Winnipesaukee was beautiful.

On Maine’s PBS on weekends there’s a show called “Weekends with YANKEE,” with co-hosts Amy Traverso, Senior Food Editor at YANKEE magazine, and Richard Wiese, “Emmy Award winner, TV travel host, and explorer.” They travel around New England and a recent show started off with Amy in Stonington, Maine. I was delighted: Stonington! I’ve written here about the town of Stonington on Deer Isle, which is connected to the mainland by a looooong bridge. For our 1990s vacations Don and I took the mail boat from Stonington out to Isle au Haut. One year we spent Christmas at an inn in Stonington.

On what Amy called “an ultimate Maine Day” she set forth with Marsden Brewer aboard his boat. He has been farming sea scallops instead of dredging them and he showed her the project. Afterward Amy went to a Deer Isle restaurant, Aragosta (“aragosta” means “lobster” in Italian, I learned), where she helped the chef make their dinner of raw scallops and a lobster pasta. I love scallops but I’ve never (yet) eaten them raw.

Then came Richard Wiese’s segment. Lo and behold, he was on Lake Winnipesaukee—and trying to learn to use something I hadn’t heard about before, an electric surfboard. His teacher told him, “It’s all Zen.” I imagined what Don would say about another modern invention sullying HIS lake; he’d be ironic, funny, and inwardly wanting to give it a try himself. Richard’s attempts were predictably comical as the surfboard glided along and he tried again and again to get onto his knees—much falling, splashing, and a runaway board. But at last, hooray, onto his knees, then hooray, hooray, standing, skimming the lake. Afterward he called the surfboard “a magic carpet.”

In the November/December issue of YANKEE magazine the title for Amy Traverso’s food pages is “Thanksgiving in 7 Ingredients or Less.” She writes, “In all the years I’ve been developing Thanksgiving recipes, no one has ever demanded, ‘Give me a fancy menu with hard-to-find ingredients that will really show off what a sophisticated cook I am.’ There ARE people who treat their holiday meal as a tour de force, but most of us are looking for a delicious menu that’s familiar ENOUGH and interesting ENOUGH and won’t drive us crazy in the making. That’s what I offer here.” She adds that salt and pepper aren’t counted in the seven ingredients.

Of her 7-ingredients recipes, here’s the one I’d try if I were still baking:

Impossible Pumpkin Pie
“Anyone remember this retro pumpkin pie? It doesn’t have a pastry crust, but the Bisquick gives the custard enough structure that it slices easily and feels substantial.  For the perfect finish, top with whipped cream and a sprinkling of pumpkin pie spice.”
1 can (15 ounces) pumpkin puree
¾ cup heavy cream
½ cup water
2 large eggs at room temperature
½ cup firmly packed light brown sugar
½ cup Bisquik baking mix
2 ½ teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
½ teaspoon kosher salt
Preheat your oven to 350 F and set a rack to the middle position. Spray a deep 8-inch pie plate with cooking spray and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together all ingredients until blended and smooth. Pour into the pie plate and bake until a knife inserted into the center of the pie comes out clean, 55 to 60 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for at least 30 minutes before serving. This pie may be served warm or cold. Yields 8 to 10 servings.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

©2024 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

 

SIDES

November 17, 2024

’Tis the season for holiday cooking on the Food Network, isn’t it, on the usual shows and on “Holiday Wars” and “Holiday Baking Championship” and “Kids Baking Championship” (talk about precocious!), etc. I’m fascinated by the cooking and I also enjoy the cooking interspersed with jokes to relieve the stress, such as:
         
             Q. What do vegans sing at Christmas?
              A. “Soy to the world!”

And I’m fascinated by the interest in side dishes, which nowadays are nicknamed “sides.” For the hell of it I Googled “Sides” and was dazed by the numbers, “103 Classic Thanksgiving Side Dishes You’ll Make Every Year” and “Pioneer Woman’s 110 Best Thanksgiving Sides for the Ultimate Holiday Menu” and much more. I remembered that four years ago I wrote here about learning on Maine’s WCSH-TV “Morning Report” that Google’s most-searched Thanksgiving side-dish recipe was for—side salads!

What are nowadays called “home cooks” have to cook like professional chefs at Thanksgiving without the help of a professional setting. Growing up, I watched my mother or my grandmother create Thanksgiving dinners in their kitchens (in Laconia or Lexington, depending on whose home Thanksgiving was held at that year) where the only true counter space was in the pantries, and there it was diminished by canisters and cookbooks and clutter.  When Penny and I were old enough we helped in the hectic scene (Penny became the gravy expert; I put boiled potatoes through the ricer) and to my anxious surprise all this seemingly confused work always produced the feast.

The “sides” were mashed potatoes, mashed squash, sometimes boiled onions, homemade cranberry sauce, sometimes store-bought dinner rolls. And of course stuffing and gravy.

In later years as I began to hear about more “sides”— green bean casserole, macaroni and cheese—I was intrigued, wondering how there was time to add them to the work. Not to mention full tummies getting fuller! Full? I remembered that after the dinner Penny and I had a supper we’d been anticipating, “bread and gravy,” leftover gravy poured onto buttered slices of white bread.

And of course there were desserts made ahead, always pie, pumpkin pie and mince pie and sometimes apple, though that was apt to appear earlier in the autumn. Desserts seem to be on Dudley’s mind in this exchange about Thanksgiving he and Snowy have in THE CHEERLEADER:

[Dudley said,] “You need a vacation.”
“And lots of turkey,” she said.
“And pumpkin pie.”
“And cranberry sauce.”
“And mince pie.”
“And boiled onions.”
“And apple pie.”
“And a ton of stuffing,” she said, “that’s the best par
Happy Thanksgiving-planning, everyone!

©2024 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

  

E-BLAST AND SANDWICH BOARD

November 10, 2024

Jennifer Davis-Kay has created another wonderful E-Blast about Snowy and friends. If you’d like to be added to my newsletter mailing list, please email her at: RuthDM.E-Blast@frigatebooks.com

On our online Sandwich Board, posts about politics are forbidden. Here are some   November posts that I found to be helpful distractions:

November 1:
Sewing Pattern. Amy Butler Barcelona Skirts pattern. Free.
 Photo: the pattern package, front and back, illustrated with an olive-green skirt against a background of yellow field grasses. “Layered skirt. A-line skirt and apron overlay.”
[My Grandmother Ruth was known for her sewing skill. One smallish room in her Lexington home was filled with her accumulation of sewing materials so I called it “the cloth room.” There were also of course stacks of patterns.]

November 1.
“Thoreau Comes to Sandwich” posted each morning by Allan DiBiase with one of his photographs.
November 1, 1851 in Thoreau’s JOURNAL:
“It is a bright, clear, warm November day. I feel blessed. I love my life. I warm toward all nature. The woods are now much more open than when I last observed them; the leaves have fallen and they let in light, and I see the sky through them as through a crow’s wing in every direction.”
Photo: bare woods through which we see a dark blue mountain and pale blue sky.

November 2.
Chicken Paprikash at Bearcamp Center. Roasted bone-in chicken slathered in a smoky paprika sauce with a dollop of sour cream served over egg noodles. In the Bearcamp Center fridge! Enjoy!

November 4.
Singer Sewing Machine. This is a great old Singer. 18 years ago it was tuned up, oiled, and repaired and never used after that. Would love for it to have a new home. $50.
Photo of the Singer. [More memories of Grandmother Ruth!]

November 4.
This Saturday! November 9. Geology Walk and Talk, Sandwich Historical Society. We are excited to announce the fourth in a series of Geology Walks and Talks, which have taken participants to a variety of locations over the last few years. . . [This one] will traverse the Sandwich Notch Road to the crossroads. [I’ve written here about this narrow old road, quoting from my father’s Mount Israel hike in 50 MORE HIKES IN NEW HAMPSHIRE: “Chopped from the forested north about 1800, the road became a thoroughfare for the people of remote northern settlements . . . By 1850 well-established families occupied the road’s 8 miles. They logged and operated farms, sawmills, a tavern, a whiskey still, and schoolhouses. Now all that remains are a cemetery and cellar holes beside the road.”]

Ah, Sandwich! On November 6th I celebrated the 48th anniversary of our move to this town.

©2024 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

   SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

November 3, 2024

Last weekend I began singing:
       Gonna take a sentimental journey,
       Gonna set my heart at ease.
       Gonna make a sentimental journey,
       To renew old memories.

And Monday after Wanda and I did an errand in Meredith we went onward to Laconia. This summer we had talked about doing a sightseeing trip to my hometown after the busy summer and foliage seasons were over and things were quieter.

First, the Weirs. It’s a very touristy part of Laconia and inspired the “boardwalk” section of my fictional Gunthwaite. I had a special mission here today. In a brochure about New Hampshire’s Lakes Region I’d seen an ad for Sawyer’s Dairy Bar in Gilford, where my best friend Sally and I spent the summer of 1955 scooping ice cream. The ad stunned me by also advertising a new (to me) branch in the Weirs, Sawyer’s on the Pier. I knew I MUST see this.

First we pulled in to the beach area, blond beneath the intensely blue October sky, and I reminisced about how it wasn’t a natural beach, it had been created, which seemed quite an accomplishment to us kids. Then Wanda drove along the boardwalk and up ahead I saw the pier that used to lead to a dance hall—and there amid the pier’s signs there was a Sawyer’s on the Pier sign! I’d Googled; closed for the season, so no ice cream for us.

I judged that this Sawyer’s pier location could be where the Karamel Korn shop had been; Don had worked there. As I’ve written about before, Don lived in the Weirs from age six to age twelve. When his father had enlisted after Pearl Harbor his parents decided to rent their River Street house; his mother and Don and his brother moved to the Weirs, renting a house opposite his grandparents’ boarding house. So I gave Wanda directions up the street to Foster Avenue and these two houses, remembering Don’s memories. Lots of summer days spent swimming! His aunt and uncle lived in the neighborhood. His mother and grandmother and aunt were good cooks; Don claimed he ran from cookie jar to cookie jar to cookie jar.

Then Wanda and I went back down to the main street and on to the nearby cabin colony that had belonged to his grandmother, the cabins built by her brothers. After his grandmother sold it, a motel joined the colony.
As we left the Weirs, I saw that what I’d read about in the LACONIA DAILY SUN had really happened: the drive-in theater had indeed closed. The Passion Pit!

Along Paugus Bay we went, past old motels, fixed-up motels, and looming condos. The latest expanse of condos blocked a view of the bay.

Lunchtime. I’d never been to the McDonald’s here. At the drive-thru we ordered chicken nuggets and French fries—and Wanda drove us across the street to a parking area in front of the bay under that blue, blue sky. I reminisced about how Jerry’s Shore Diner used to be here. Its renowned short-order cook was nicknamed Spider because of his skillful antics, which inspired those mentioned in Jimmy’s Café in THE
CHEERLEADER.

Back on the road, we soon reached Laconia High School. I managed not to sing the school song.
Then we were in downtown, and I was distracted from the sadness of the 1960s urban renewal that destroyed half of Main Street—by pumpkins, there were pumpkins everywhere! In recent years Laconia had a Pumpkin Festival; it returned this year. I’d only seen photos of it in the Laconia newspaper; because the festival had been this past weekend, had ended yesterday, I was seeing in real orange the real thing, 1,500 pumpkins, pumpkins carved with faces, with lettering, along the sidewalks and stacked high in towers!
I gave Wanda the directions to River Street. This was the conclusion of our sightseeing, Don’s family’s home.

Since then I’ve been humming:
       Gonna take a sentimental journey,
       Gonna set my heart at ease.
       Gonna make a sentimental journey,
       To renew old memories.

©2024 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

   AN ANNOUNCEMENT AND CREME TEA

October 27, 2024

Announcement!
           Pre-order links are now available on the Frigate Books website (https://www.frigate-books.com) for ordering OFF SHORE, the final sequel in The Snowy Series. Publication date will be November 12, when Frigate Books will begin shipments. The website also offers details for ebook purchases. Amazon.com will accept pre-orders as well, but they do not yet have copies to ship.
           Major updates have been made to this websitewhere you’ll find that several old favorites, including the Trivia Quizzes for the first four titles (thank you, Jen and Jan!), have returned.

           This announcement is, of course, an emotional milestone.

           Here are some soothing images and memories—and, needless to say, food:
           Recently on a chilly morning that had warmed up with sun, after Wanda and I did errands she drove us down to the Center Harbor town dock for a car-picnic snack and the autumn view of Lake Winnipesaukee. And there on the beach like a multitude of sunbathers was a big flock of geese, sitting and sunning. We could imagine their quacks of joy when up in their V they had seen the beach below and descended to rest before flying on south, eventually reaching winter quarters.
           Speaking of travels, I continue enjoying armchair-travel with the British magazines I was given. In the June 2023 issue of DISCOVER BRITAIN devoted to “The Beautiful South West: Quintessential English holidays in Devon, Dorset & Cornwall,” I turned first to an article titled “Time for Tea: Few things are more English than tea and scones, but, ponders Henrietta Easton, should the jam go on first or the cream?”
Ah, that age-old question.
           In September 2021 I wrote here about having recently had an “English Cream Tea” with Penny in America, at Tarbin Gardens in Franklin, New Hampshire, where we reminisced about cream teas we’d had in the Cotswolds in 1990. When Penny had been in England earlier to study cottage gardens she’d learned about cream teas. During the two years Don and I lived in England we’d had scones and tea but we’d never had a cream tea, not even on our sightseeing trip to Devon and Cornwall.
           So I had my first cream tea in 1990. Penny and I were moving from a week in the self-catering cottage in Purton to a week in one in Evesham when, according to my journal, “We stopped at a Hickory’s on a roundabout, an American Howard-Johnson/McDonald’s establishment, part of the Road Chef chain. A sign in the lobby told us it had won a Clean Loo Award and had baby-changing facilities.” We ordered cream teas.
“Penny showed me how to go about eating mine, splitting a scone (two each), spreading it with strawberry jam from the tiny glass pots, topping it with whipped cream [not clotted] from the individual containers. Oh, bliss.”
           Penny had learned to do this the Cornwall way, jam first, then cream. And it seemed to us the best way, the one that came naturally.
           In the “Time for Tea” article, Henrietta Easton wrote, “Although the origins of cream teas are often disputed, according to local Devonshire historians the act of adding jam and cream to bread was first concocted in Devon in the 11th century by the monks of Tavistock Abbey. Now, an indulgent cream tea is a British institution, and really what could be better than a freshly baked scone (plain or fruit, the choice is yours), with lashings of strawberry jam and a huge dollop of clotted cream, all washed down with a refreshing pot of tea?
          “Best associated with Devon and Cornwall, there is, however, an ongoing debate as to which is the right way to enjoy your cream tea. Although we think it is probably just a matter of personal preference, those in Devon and Cornwall would strongly disagree. In Devon, the cream is smoothed on the scone, with a dollop of jam on top, while in Cornwall it is the other way around. Whichever you prefer, what we do know is that the late Queen Elizabeth II was a fan of a cream tea and was known to take hers the Cornish way, with jam (Balmoral jam of course) first and then cream—surely the Queen of England herself must be right?”
           A few days after I had my first cream tea I had my first clotted cream. Penny and I were in Bibury (called by our guidebook one of the prettiest villages in the Cotswolds) en route to visit famed gardener Rosemary Verey’s gardens at her Barnsley House. After walking around the village we stopped at the Jenny Wren Restaurant and Tea Room. As I wrote in my journal that evening, “With our coffee Penny had an almond-y Congress Tart and I could not resist a slice of Treacle Tart, which came with clotted cream, my first clotted cream—like butter!”

©2024 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

   ROSEMARY SHRAGER

October 20, 2024

          Last week I mentioned that a friend has given me a stack of beautiful British magazines.
          In the July 2023 issue of COTSWOLD LIFE the introduction to one article got my attention because (naturally) of the word “Pudding.” And then came “murder”!: “The Proof is in the Pudding. A bit of advice. If you’re going to the Three Counties Food and Drink Festival this July, don’t commit a murder—because the most unlikely detective will be on hand. Katie Jarvis speaks with Rosemary Shrager, TV chef and crime-novel author.” I had never heard of Rosemary Shrager. Avidly I read on.
          Katie Jarvis wrote that Rosemary Shrager “is delicious Like steamed treacle pudding or rich stew with dumplings (as always, no euphemism) . . . She is one of the nation’s favourite chefs . . . But I’m actually speaking with her about her latest book—THE PROOF IN THE PUDDNG—her second Prudence Bulstrode (sidekick: granddaughter Suki) detective novel . . .
          “I’m not surprised Rosemary Shrager writes fab crime novels. Constructing them must be a bit like putting together a recipe?
          “‘You’ve got the whole point! That’s exactly what I did. I took the whole feeling of recipes—that something wasn’t quite right in here. There’s something really missing. This is not correct and we have to go back and find out. It’s layer after layer, which is exactly like cooking . .. Except that with recipes, one rather hopes no-one dies’ . . .
          “ . . . though her novels are beautifully light-of-touch—any murder story by default has to flirt with the fragility of life; the resilience of human beings left behind.
          “The knowledge that, out of the blue, one event can change a life in the blink of an eye. Something that           Rosemary knows from (I would say ‘bitter’ but she’s so not) personal experience. Because overnight in the 1990s, her husband went bankrupt. Interest rates shot up; the bank called in loans.
          “They lost everything . . .
          “They had assets but no cash.
          “They’d sold everything they could. She and her husband—who never got over the shock of that financial crash—separated; and Rosemary did the only thing she could think of.
          “She decided to cook her way out of it. To leave Cornwall, where they lived, for London; to work night and day for herself and her family to salvage something from those burnt, lumpy ruins . . .
          “‘So, on one hand, I had this desperation. On the other hand, I thought: I am so fortunate. I’ve got friends; I’ve got friends with houses; spare rooms; they all took me in.’ . . .
          “It isn’t only financial adversity that Rosemary Shrager has turned around. When her husband, Michael, was dying just before lockdown, she was by his side, despite their separation. In a sense, I think, she’d never really left . . .
          “I feel I’m intruding. Yet I also feel she wants people to know about her husband; how she never stopped loving him.
          “That she had to separate to survive. And that—even to this day–the separation hurts . . .
          “You know, I think that’s another reason why Rosemary Shrager is so open about her failures—maybe even more than the impressive successes she has notched up. Cheffing her way—through challenging, top-class kitchens—to the top. Because her experiences have given her a compassion she might not otherwise have had.”
          Note at the end: “You can see Rosemary Shrager on stage in a live cookery demonstration at the Three Counties Food and Drink Festival on Saturday, July 29.”
          I’ll be asking our library about her murder mysteries.
         
          To close on a lighter note (but still with food involved): Last Monday I learned on Maine’s WCSH-TV “Morning Report” that October 14 is National Dessert Day. This inspired the Daily Stumper: What is the most bought dessert in Maine?
          Answers: a. Whoopie Pie; b. Maple Fudge; c. Blueberry Pie; d. Chocolate Chip Cookies.
          I pondered; Whoopie Pies aren’t really a dessert and haven’t they been declared Maine’s State Treat? So I guessed Blueberry Pie. So did the show’s anchors, Sharon and Lee, and meteorologist Todd—and we were all correct! Indeed, I learned that Blueberry Pie made with Maine wild blueberries is officially the Maine State Dessert.
 ©2024 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

   BRITISH PICNICS

October 13, 2024

On October 1, 1990, Penny and I took off for three weeks in England to visit gardens. Penny, recently widowed, was a landscape designer and our father and stepmother gave us the trip in hopes it would help put the roses back in Penny’s cheeks, so to speak.

As I’ve written about before, Penny and I decided to spend these precious three weeks in the Forest of Dean and the Cotswolds. We also decided to stay in a “self-catering” cottage because when we were recalling separate trips to England (mine with Don in the 1960s, Penny’s in the 1980s) she agreed when I said wistfully, “I like to make myself a cup of tea whenever I get urge and you can’t do that in a guesthouse or inn.” But we couldn’t decide on a cottage in the Self-Catering Holiday Homes book. Then Penny had a brilliant solution: “We could stay in three, a different cottage in a different town each week!”
I have been thinking about our adventure because of its 34th anniversary this month and because this summer a dear family friend gave me a stack of British magazines that I’ve been deep in, absorbing, remembering, and learning.

In July I wrote here about picnics. Thus I especially enjoyed an article in one of these magazines, last October’s issue of DISCOVER BRITAIN, “Picnic Etiquette” by the editor, Sally Coffey, “about the British obsession with picnics.” She wrote, “Much like beach days in Britain, picnics don’t require a cloudless blue sky or guaranteed temperatures of over 25 degrees Celsius. No, all we really need is a hint of sunshine—even just a good bet of no rain—between the months of April and September and we’re good to go . . .

“English writer W. Somerset Maugham may have pronounced that there are ‘few things so pleasant as a picnic lunch eaten in perfect comfort,’ and picnics may feature in many English literary scenes . . . but the truth is that we owe their existence—even their name—to the place of Maugham’s birth: France. The term first appeared as the title of a rather gluttonous protagonist ‘Pique Nique’ in a French burlesque comedy . . .
“The French Revolution and the exodus of many French nationals, a large portion of whom fled to London, saw the pique nique cross the Channel. In 1801, the Pic-Nic Society launched in London . . .
“By 1861, the picnic had become so popular among the upper and middle classes in Britain that Mrs. Beeton dedicated a whole section on catering for a picnic for 40 people in her BOOK OF HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT, which shows that not much has changed in terms of the food we bring today compared to the Victorian era.

“Then, as now, sandwiches featured heavily, as did cold cuts of meat, though today we’re more likely to pack a few slices of ham and some pre-cooked chicken drumsticks than the roast duck and roast fowl that Mrs. Beeton recommends . . . Another addition to a modern-day picnic that seems almost compulsory today is Scotch eggs . . .

“Wherever you choose to picnic, soak it up and enjoy the feeling of being outdoors, because in Britain, you never know when you might be able to do it again and it’s that sense of now or never, which makes us love picnics ever so.”

After Penny and I landed at Heathrow we took a bus ride (eek, on the left!) to Cheltenham where we picked up our Budget Rent-a-Car. Penny, a far better driver than I am in the United States or Britain, drove the little Metro to Purton and our white stone cottage on the Purton Manor farm. We settled in. The next day was rainy and windy. When we set off to do errands in Lydney, Penny drew an arrow in lipstick on the windshield to remind herself to KEEP LEFT. At a supermarket and greengrocer’s we bought supplies and treats, from toilet paper to ginger crisps.

The next morning, sun! We made a picnic to take on our day’s explorations. Penny drove up the Wye Valley, where we visited Tintern Abbey (and of course I quoted Wordsworth), onward. In Ross-on-Wye we realized we were hungry, ready for our picnic. So we had what I wrote about this July, a car picnic: Penny pulled into a parking spot on a main street and there we ate our cheese-and-cress sandwiches.
But when we got out of the car to go exploring we realized we’d parked at a taxi stand! Crazy Americans! Laughing, we got back in and Penny drove on, keeping left.

©2024 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

   FALL FOOD

October 7, 2024

In THE HUSBAND BENCH I wrote,

Snowy said, “You make a great meat loaf, Bev.”
Which was true, Bev knew . . .
Trulianne said, “It’s terrific.”
Carving more slices, Bev explained, “My secret ingredient is pork sausage, half a pound of pork sausage to a pound of ground beef. The rest is some chopped onion, a can of tomato soup, a cup or so of bread crumbs, an egg, and some milk if you like it really moist—”
Trulianne jumped up and grabbed the memo pad and pencil off the counter under the wall phone. She sat back down and scribbled.
Tickled, Bev served Clem a slice, then Trulianne. “Cook it at three hundred and fifty degrees for an hour and a half. If necessary, pour off the fat after an hour, but if the sausage is lean you don’t have to.”
Snowy added, “The cold leftovers taste like pate. Delicious.”

When I wrote the first draft of this scene I left the recipe blank while I tried to decide what Bev’s secret ingredient could be. Then during a visit with the Motherwells from Michigan Winifred’s daughters (Molly and Lisa) happened to mention how good Winifred’s meat loaf is. Aha! I asked and dear Winifred gave me her recipe.

As I’ve written about here, Winifred’s fondness for autumn is helping my “autumn anxiety.” Recently she listed fall food to look forward to, “chowders with brown bread, minestrone with garden vegetables, beef stew with dumplings, and pot roast with vegetables. And then there are the pies, meat pies and cottage and chicken and apple and pumpkin. And apples themselves, fried and stewed and in applesauce. I won’t even begin on Thanksgiving dinner.”

This inspired me to browse through my recipe file boxes for favorite fall food.  I asked Winifred if she could browse through hers for a favorite to post here with one of mine.

And here they are.

From Winifred:

Hamburg Rice One Pan Meal; a magazine recipe, “How I Feed My Family”
          ½ lb. ground beef
         1 c. uncooked rice
         1 medium onion chopped
         1T. oil
         2 cups water         
         One can (8 oz.) tomato sauce
         Salt and pepper to taste
         2 oz. processed cheese sliced thin
         Brown beef, rice, and onion in oil, drain fat, add water, tomato sauce, and seasonings. Mix well.
         Bring mixture to a boil and simmer 15 minutes, stir and top with cheese.
         Broil until cheese melts.
Winifred noted, “This one I have extravagantly adapted to a whole pound of meat and real cheese and I found 15 minutes wasn’t long enough to simmer, at least on an electric stove. The main thing is that the rice be done so be sure to check it before adding the cheese and sticking it under the broiler because after that it can’t be adjusted. I use shredded cheese, not sliced.”

From Ruth:
(Jane Wingate, a friend from our 1970s Farmington, NH, years, found this recipe in A WORLD OF BREADS by Dolores Casella.)
Apple Muffins         ¼ cup soft butter
         1/3 cup sugar
         1 beaten egg
         2 ½ cups sifted flour
         ½ tsp. salt
         4 ] tsp. baking powder
         1 cup milk
         1 cup peeled and diced apples (1/4” cubes) [I like Granny Smiths for cooking.]         
         Sugar and cinnamon for topping         
         Cream butter and sugar. When mixture is light and fluffy, add the beaten egg.
         Sift dry ingredients.
         Add dry mixture to the butter-sugar-egg mixture alternately with the milk.         
         Fold in the apple bits and fill greased muffin tins 2/3 full.          
         Combine the sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle on top.
         Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes.  
          Cool five minutes in the muffin tins and then transfer muffins to a cooling rack.
         Makes 1 dozen.

I’m not baking nowdays so the muffins are a happy memory. But of course apples themselves are still very real. Last Monday when Wanda and I went to the Center Harbor supermarket its outdoor farm stand had an autumn array of local apples. Rapt, I tried to decide amongst the varieties. Don and I had settled on Macouns as our favorite; none here yet. So I began bagging some of our second favorite, Honeycrisp. When I got home I washed one and bit in, savoring the season. 

©2024 by Ruth Doan MacDougall; all rights reserved

 

 

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