Miss Peekaboo let me down with her crazy recipe.  Bleah.  Hmm, it’s the only one we have for her in the collection and the question is, would this recipe be good enough for the book?  Answer no.  Veronica may be dropped.  Eek!  The call is out – does anyone have any other Veronica Lake recipes?  I do love her so…  There will be a photo of her evaporated milk infused beef on the flickr site but I’m not linking to it, too horrific.

Here’s a link instead to Veronica with two of my other favourites Paulette Goddard and Dorothy Lamour singing “A Sweater, A Sarong and a Peekaboo Bang”.  I’ve had an emotional gust this week and like Little Edie I have been a bit, “pulverised by this latest thing” but this clip always cheers me up.  I first saw this courtesy of Matthew over at Movietonews.  He will be pleased to hear that I watched Monkey Business last night and laughed out loud three or four times.  When I first saw Harpo playing the harp in this movie I was AMAZED that he could play the harp and it took me about 3 weeks to realise that this was why he was called Harpo.  Doh.

I haven’t spoken to anyone for two whole days.  Last person was the cowgirl T-girl who dropped me off outside my house at 3.30 am on Saturday morning, asking for my number and suggesting we go out for dinner sometime.  Next person will be the security guy at work tomorrow.  Is this a good thing for my mind?  Probably not.  I’ve been lounging around in my kimono all weekend waiting for the rapture.  Looks as though I’m not going up but staying down here with the other sinners.  Well good!  I’m going to make the most of it! Rapture! I’ve seen what I want to be, I’m going to have my party on TV,  I’m going to hip-hop and I’m not gonna stop, just blast off, sure shot…

It’s time for me to get back on track writing up test cook reports on recipes.  My mind has been scattered to the four winds with all this moving business but it feels like heaven to be in my new place and all kinds of new resolutions are being made.

So, as I am about to launch the 3rd round of testing (email me if you’d like to test something – silverscreensuppers – at – yahoo.co.uk) I should really start making my way through the “ready to blog” inbox.  First up is Will’s report on Veronica’s Spiced Beef.  I have chosen him as I am thrilled to hear he is coming to my housewarming (haven’t seen him for yonks) AND I am having a drink tonight with King – who is probably the only other person since 194o-something to have eaten this dish.

It’s going to be the momentous Gloria Swanson Competition Frock handover tonight.  King is unveiling his new painting a week on Wednesday and is going to run a silent auction so that some lucky lady (or gent I guess) can have their portrait painted wearing the aforementioned frock.  I’ll find out tonight how you can enter and will blog it.

Test cook Will suffered from the familiar confusion over shortening.  We are definitely going to have to use brand names to assist our readers in the book.  He also wanted some clarification on possible interpretation of “spiced beef” – I guess in the 40s people would have known what this was?  Or at least have known a friendly butcher they could have asked for advice.  As we have discussed here before, butchers are getting as rare as hen’s teeth around these parts so we are going to have to specify pastrami or whatnot.

I don’t think Will felt that Veronica’s dish was a great success so I’m going to have to tweak and make many suggestions if this one is going to make it into the book.  I’d like it to though – especially as it is the only recipe we have in our collection from the delightful Veronica.  At least Phil Oakey might buy a copy if she’s in it…