A Cake for "Bright Young Things"

If I had to pick one cake to represent England's carefree youth of the 20s and 30s, I'd have to choose a Fuller's Walnut Cake. It's mentioned in both Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate. That's a good enough pedigree for me! Turns out the original Fuller's Walnut Cake was two layers with buttercream between them, but the recipe I found was for a single layer cake. I'll definitely have to try it again. However, if you want something smaller and simpler than a layer cake, this recipe will work out just fine. It's subtly walnutty, not too sweet and delicious with a cup of tea and should definitely be eaten while curled up with an excellent book or DVD set. What an excellent way to spend Christmas vacation!

Vintage Movie, Vintage Recipe--It's Visions of Sugarplums!

If you're like I am and you get tired of all the "Christmas miracle" holiday movies, may I suggest Bachelor Mother?

Polly Parrish (Ginger Rogers) is a seasonal employee at Merlin's department store, wondering where she's going to find a job after Christmas. Due to an enormous misunderstanding, her boss David Merlin (David Niven) believes Polly is an unwed mother and can be convinced not to give up her baby if only she has permanent employment. While Polly gets to keep her job she also ends up responsible for a baby that isn't hers! It's really only a holiday movie in the sense that it's set around the holidays and it's more about the time between Christmas and the New Year than about Christmas itself (although it does start on Christmas Eve), but don't let that stop you. I don't think there are enough post-Christmas movies anyway. Bachelor Mother is available on DVD and will be on TCM December 20th at 10:15 pm (CST).

Sink me! -- The Scarlet Pimpernel, Blenheim Palace and a Treat for "That Sinking Feeling"

Last month, Paul and I spent a couple of weeks in England and, despite having no internet access, we had a great time. I mention the internet, because I had essentially done zero planning and was going to do it all on the fly with satellite internet. This way, we were flexible and didn't have to lug around any guide books. Surprise! Our phones didn't work (if only we'd had the iPhone 4S...) and there was no way to get a data plan for a smart phone there without paying for a year in advance. So, we relied on our wits, a London street atlas and an England road map purchased in Windsor (more about that in an upcoming post).

We spent a few days in the Wiltshire countryside and I had to go to Blenheim Palace, which wasn't too far away in neighboring Oxfordshire. Yes, I've watched all twelve episodes of The First Churchills, but really I grew up with a Baroque-obsessed architect for a father. I spent weekends when I was small looking through coffee-table books bigger than I was with fantastic photographs of houses like Blenheim, Castle Howard, Versailles and Vaux-le-Vicomte. (Still haven't been to Castle Howard...)

Blenheim Palace is, of course, beautiful but is also fantastically well-kept. (Poor Versailles and Vaux-le-Vicomte were a bit shabby when I saw them in 2006.) I took a lot of photos; the best are below. We had lovely weather for our trip--right until we started to head back to the car park. The sky opened up and it started hailing. Good thing we'd already gotten in the habit of wearing our raincoats every day, no matter what.

 

(click to enlarge)

Dinner and a Movie: The Postman Always Rings Twice

photos from Doctor Macro

This week, I'm bringing you more from Woman's Home Companion. The "Picture of the Month" (see below) is The Postman Always Rings Twice and there's a Lux ad featuring Lana Turner, as well. Based on James M. Cain's book, the film stars Ms. Turner and John Garfield as lovers who decide to get a pesky husband out of the way. Despite some sanitation for the censors, The Postman Always Rings Twice is pretty faithful to its source material. I enjoyed the book more (maybe because I read it first) but that doesn't mean the film isn't worth watching. It's really well done and thoroughly enjoyable, especially if you like 40s fashion and/or film noir. This was a great movie to watch en famille at my house, because Paul's really only interested in watching 40s films if they're "noir" or have lots of airplanes in them. He likes Casablanca, too, but I think that's just his soft spot showing.

Homemade Oatmeal Raisin Bread and 1946 Fashions

Generally, I make sourdough bread for breakfast to eat with a cup of yogurt or a couple of fried eggs and maybe some bacon or sausage. It's delicious but sometimes it's nice to change things up a bit. This Oatmeal Raisin Bread recipe is from the same magazine as the pork stew in my last post. I changed things up a bit to use my discarded sourdough starter (totally not required, see the "about ingredients" section). Despite some molasses and sugar in the recipe, this oatmeal raisin bread isn't overly sweet. It's perfect for breakfast (or tea) with a slathering of golden yellow, just slightly salty pasture butter.

Dinner and a Movie: Spellbound

For my version of this classic recipe, I used pork ribs instead of pork stew meat so that I could infuse the stew with all the fantastic minerals and gelatin/collagen from the bones. It's an easy switch that will add so much nutrition to your dinner. In "traditional foods" cookbooks, bone broths are typically cooked for hours and hours to get all the nutrients out of the bones. I found that just cooking this stew until the meat fell off the bones (about 2 1/2 hours) still gave me a huge amount of natural gelatin in the final product. (You'll notice that your leftovers will become the consistency of aspic.) It's worth it to hunt around for some really high quality pork. Keep an eye out for products that are Certified Humane or find local farmers who treat their pigs well. Happy pigs = tasty, nutritious pork.