Tag Archives: Musings from the Dream House

Nature v Nurture

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As I was strolling arm-in-arm down the street with Miles Redd the other day he was reminiscing about his childhood. Oh, wait. Perhaps it didn’t go quite like that.

Redd and I did have an exchange about his childhood, but it was more like this – I had the enormous pleasure of interviewing Thomas Britt a few weeks ago. In my living room. Britt is from Kansas City and was in town to see friends. My editor and I thought it would be interesting – great fun, really – to interview him for the magazine. Beyond interesting, it was fascinating and immensely entertaining.
He told me stories of Studio 54 and maharajahs, but some of his most interesting tales were of his growing up. He told me of redecorating his parents’ dining room while they were out of town. Really redecorating. Painting the floor and walls and installing salvaged columns and moving things around. “How’d they take it?” “What?” “The redecorating, when your mother came home from her trip, how did she react?” “React?! She loved it, of course!”
Of course. That is the kind of mother I want to be, but sometimes fall short. The kind of mother who would come home to find that her incredibly talented son had redecorated the dining room, better than she, and celebrate it. It got me thinking.
So I shot Redd an email. Did he, I wondered, begin showing an interest in lacquer and lamps while knee-high? And if so, did his folks just hand him a paint brush and go back to the Journal Constitution? Pretty much.
“As a child I had a fascination with with front doors and chandeliers,” said Redd,”the grander the better. My bedroom was an ever-evolving canvas. I remember arranging stuffed animals and was always into the arts, painting and drawing.
My parents were very supportive. My mom, ever clever, would get me to decorate the house for Christmas. I would slave on pomanders and polish all the silver, but she had a strong sense of her own style and we did not always see eye-to-eye. I wanted ball fringe on everything, and my mother had a very colonial approach to things. She loved that scrubbed, Spartan look – polished mahogany, hemstitched linen, very plain silver, air twist glasses. She taught me restraint and understatement, and I suppose I teach her about a certain grandeur.
My mom has [my] Christmas list from age five requesting a fire place in my room. I thought falling asleep to the dying embers would be nice.”
If only one of my boys would refer to me as “ever clever,” I’d be quite content.
Image courtesy of Miles Redd.
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Shaken Not Stirred

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Friday, when I was leaving to take the middle Blandings boy to basketball practice, Mr. B asked me if I could stop at the hardware store and pick up more Christmas lights. Of course. Be right back.
Two hours later I arrived, lights in hand. “I got side tracked.” I had made a quick stop at Mission Road Antique Mall. There had been some vintage seltzer bottles at Suzanne Cooper’s booth at the amazingly low low price of $38. I’d seen them last week and could not get them out of my head.

I ran like a crazy reality show contestant to her space at the back of the mall. Still there. Hooray. As I meandered back to the front I saw two vintage shakers, both at great prices, and I thought they might all be a happy trio, a merry menage. Arms full (the seltzer bottle is heavy) I made my way back to the desk. “Are you finished shopping?” Well, come to think of it, maybe not.

While browsing, I happened upon a charming ruby glass shaker and matching glasses. As I lifted the shaker from the shelf it slipped from my grasp and crashed to a million pieces at my feet. The base remained, presenting a scary and jagged edge. I gathered as many shards as I could and carried the corpse to the desk. I had a brief image of tripping on the stairs and impaling myself on the shaker, a flash of an unfortunate antique dealer having to tell my husband of my death by ruby glass. I can’t help it; I’m wired that way.

Fortunately, my fate was nothing worse than having to stand at the desk and confess my clumsiness. The men behind the counter blanched when I explained that six glasses remained, orphaned, no longer a “set” but just six small glasses desperate for a home. I made amends, but we all felt the despair of the tragic situation.
There was nothing left to do but go home and mix myself a good strong drink.
I hate to talk money, but there was one more seltzer bottle at Suzanne’s booth when I was there; it may be there still if you are interested. Images of London-based architect and designer Philip Wagner’s Sussex cottage from the Perfect English Cottage by Ros Byam Shaw; photography by Jan Baldwin. Look closely and you will see that Wagner has quite a collection of shakers and seltzer bottles.
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Kiss the Cook

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As I said, on Thanksgiving I have few duties. I set the table, I buy the ornaments and I make dessert. Sometimes I don’t get to make dessert, but that is another story for another day.

This year Mr. Blandings was hunting for recipes for pumpkin creme brulee, but I intervened. “You know your mother really just wants pumpkin pie. I think we should make her a pumpkin pie.” “Will you make your pumpkin chiffon pie?” “Um. Sure. You know that recipe is a little wonky.”

The recipe comes from a book that I started during a period of passing interest in cooking during my girlhood. (My friend, Stu, is laughing at the misspelling of “abbreviations.” She had a front row seat to the year that immediately followed my tenure in a progressive school that found spelling irrelevant. Turns out it wasn’t.) Thank heavens for the abbreviations page as these are clearly incredibly obscure shorthands.

Mr. Blandings loves flipping through this book, “What in the world is Coke Salad?” Really, I have no idea. I have absolutely no memory of Coke Salad, though Grandmother Rassmussen’s Doughnuts and Five Cup Salad are crystal clear. “Seems you had a bit of a sweet tooth.” Not had, have. Still, there is not one savory dish in the book.

Both my grandmother and my mother made Nana’s Pumpkin Chiffon Pie. When I made it for the first time as an adult, I was skeptical that my mother actually made this recipe. It calls for the use of a double boiler. I have no recollection of my mother ever using anything as sophisticated as a double boiler. Still, I forged ahead.

There are all kinds of weird things about this recipe. It calls for three egg whites, but later refers to beating the yolks. I have to guess a little. Oddly, the pie turns out great.

Mr. Blandings is particularly charmed by my review at the bottom of the recipe, “Delicious!!!!!!!” “Seven exclamation points. You must have really liked it.”

Which reminded me of my copy of Dorothy Rogers’s The House in My Head. The book is a wonderful, well, not peek, but full-on expose of a couple building a very thoughtful house. Even if the house they built is not your style, the effort that went into it will garner your respect.

At the back of the book is a collection of Rogers’s recipes. In my copy, the book’s original owner has written notes on the recipes. “This is perfectly elegant prepared and served in fresh tomato shells.” “The flavor is so mild and delicate, the sauce kills it.” “This had a rare and tangy flavor we both liked.”
Charmingly, I feel like Mrs. Sandy was writing these notes for me. Not the notes she has made of substitutions and how to reduce the recipe, not the cook’s tricks, but these reviews feel like something she was providing for the cook who came next. For me. These are absolutely delicious.
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Thankful

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We wrested control of Thanksgiving from Mr. Blandings’s mother several years ago. We had a beautiful meal at a lovely table the last time she hosted, but the entire evening was peppered with comments like, “It’s so much trouble,” and, “Next time maybe we should just go out.” As she apologized about the pile of dishes I was gladly tackling (when you don’t cook, you should clean up) she said, “I noticed at the grocery store that you can just tell them the number of people and they will make the whole thing. You can pick it up until noon.” In a moment of pique, up to my elbows in soap suds I said, “Even better, we could just eat at the cafe tables by the deli and throw the whole mess in the trash when we’re finished.” Mr. Blandings, ever even, intervened, “Mom, you’ve done a lot of work for a lot of years, maybe next year we will have Thanksgiving at our house.”

There is a time worn tale about Mr. Blandings, who endured many dressed up and formal Thanksgivings at his grandmother’s, wondering, “Why can’t I have Thanksgiving on my own table?” And now he does. It is the best holiday for cooking. It allows him to plot and plan and test and taste. Our Thanksgiving dinners are not large, but they are homey.
Thanksgiving at my dad’s house is very casual and very big. My step-mother comes from a large family and most of her siblings and their spouses and children are there. In addition, my step-mother is one of those women who collects people, so there are usually five or six holiday strays who join in as well. The first Thanksgiving after we were married, Mr. Blandings and I went to Texas to spend Thanksgiving with my folks. Because of the number of people coming in from out of town, the last couple of times that I had been home I had been farmed out. It just seemed that if we were coming home, we should stay at home.
My dad picked us up at the airport and we caught up on who was coming and what was cooking. “We’re staying at the house, right?” “Uh, yeah.” But there was something. A hesitation. A slight narrowing of his eyes. As we pulled down the windy street and approached the house my pulse began to jump. There was an RV in the driveway. There was an RV in the driveway. “What’s that?” “Why don’t you just leave your bags in the car for now; I’ll bring them in in a bit.”
Seething. Furious. Nearly unable to speak, and frankly, a little embarrassed, I led Mr. Blandings into the house. “I simply cannot believe…” But I turned to him and his eyes were sparkling, “You were the one who said you had to stay at the house. Besides, I’ve never slept in an RV before.” No kidding.
So, our Thanksgivings, the Thanksgivings on Mr. Blandings’s table, fall somewhere in between. We are not in sweats, but neither are we in coat and tie. He cooks the meal and I bake the pie and set the table. We have a Thanksgiving tradition of giving each person at our table a Christmas ornament with dessert. It kicks off the next holiday. I’m in charge of these too, though this year I forgot. I’ve had a couple of big projects in the works and, well, I forgot. Until yesterday when I remembered.
I dashed out to find flowers and ornaments. The last couple of days have been fraught with an odd frustration which has led to an unusual holiday ennui. Dissatisfied with autumnal flowers, I stood at the florists with my arms crossed until I left apologetic and empty handed. The ornament search, which is usually a delight, was illogically frustrating. How could there not be a bear ornament to celebrate the youngest’s part in a school play? What could possibly take its place? All was lost.
And so it went until, home again, I began to bring linens from the closet and china from the cabinet. “It’s so much trouble,” I fretted. “No one notices but me anyway.” I set the entire table on a slightly rumpled tablecloth. Not badly rumpled. Slightly. Who would care?
And since yesterday I had been walking past it. Not only un-ironed, the cloth hung a little longer on the right side than the left. Before I went to bed I tucked it behind a chair.
Up early, I stood in the dining room in the dim light with my coffee cupped in both hands. Nonsense. Completely ridiculous to unload all the plates and silver and glasses. Folly. No one would even know. And then I began to stack the place settings on the window seat in the bay and pull the cloth and napkins to take them upstairs to iron them. It does matter. It matters to me, even if the members of the fraternity with whom I reside never notice. This is just where I want us to be, somewhere between a coat and tie and sweats. Somewhere between the country club and an RV.
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