Entertaining

Margaret Cullison writes: My mother used few shortcuts when preparing food because she preferred the "real thing" to convenience foods that became more readily available in the mid-1940s. The popularity of canned soups was well established by that time. Quick dishes that relied for flavor on canned mushroom soup or dehydrated onion soup were much in favor after World War II but not by Mom. She may have fixed condensed tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches on a busy day for us kids. But I doubt she ever served such a meal to Dad, her champion and companion in their adventures in good eating.   more »

Casting is complete, filming has begun, and Downton Abbey's writer and creator Julian Fellowes is taking us back to 1922… but this time it's set in America, in his adaptation of Laura Moriarty’s best-selling novel, The Chaperone! Downton Abbey'‘s Elizabeth McGovern is Norma Carlisle, a Midwestern housewife whose life is forever changed when she chaperones a young and soon-to-be famous Louise Brooks (Haley Lu Richardson, Columbus, The Edge of Seventeen) to the 1920s in New York. Returning series include Poldark, Victoria, The Durrels in Corfu while the new entries include The Collection, Little Women and The Man in the Orange Shirt. more »

Julia Sneden wrote: Anyone who has ever hand-scrubbed a damask napkin across a washboard, rinsed it, set it in the sun to bleach, hung it on the line to dry, dampened it before ironing, and then ironed and folded it and placed it back in the drawer, is not about to take on the task more often than necessary. Unless there had been an utter disaster like a spill of grape juice, or an emergency napkin thrown on spilled gravy to keep it from flowing over the edge of the table, or an uncle who had had a bit too much Scotch and thoughtlessly blew his nose on the best double damask, we refolded our napkins at meal's end and placed them neatly in napkin rings that were clearly ours, each one different from anyone else's.   more »

Margaret Cullison writes: Other than my two grandmothers, we didn’t have any relatives living nearby. Most of my parents’ families had moved away from Iowa. This was not the norm in our small town of Danish and German families whose gatherings ran to thirty or forty family members. It made me feel slightly deprived not to enjoy the closeness of a large family like my friends did. But my parents had developed a circle of friends with whom we got together for family dinners. more »