Aw Errol – you were such a softy really.  Are you on a BOAT with that cat?!

I’m recovering from a late night DJing job at probably the nicest wedding we have ever played at.  The bride was so HAPPY.  I’ve been to so many weddings lately where the bride just doesn’t seem to be enjoying the whole proceedings but last night’s bride was loving every minute.  It restored my faith in the possibilities of long term commitment.  As the only non-married Shellac Sister I am keeping my eyes peeled from now on.

My zoo-mate Kim sent some nice pix of her version of Errol’s baked fish – I’ve just popped them on the flickr site.  I must have another go at this one soon as it is delicious.  Kim liked it too saying, “I got an amazing taste of each layer of the dish with each mouthful” and her guest liked it too, being surprised how well the green pepper worked with the fish and banana.  It’s a weird combination but it just seems to work.  I’m intrigued as to who the dinner guest might have been…  She’s a mystery that Kim!

I am only going to forgive Joan for her Almond Soup because she is wearing such a nice hat.  What can I say about it without being rude?  It was not to my taste is probably the best way of putting it.

Still, Gary C is in town tonight and I’ll be serving this up (as Joan suggests with a cheese straw and some almonds floating on top) as an appetizer.  Let’s see what he makes of it.

I made a second batch of the Vatrouskis this morning and took them into work.  A big hit.  I may have to make another lot tomorrow as they went on the special “treats” spot around 9.40 and were gone by 9.45!  Might try a variation with filo pastry sometime.  Paulette’s suggestion that adding a few herbs might bring out the flavour was (naturally) quite right.  I found some thyme at the bottom of the fridge and that did the trick.

There is a pic on the flickr site – Vatrouskis – and also some great pix Miriam took of the Joan Crawford Pork Chops.  There’s a picture I am half considering using on my internet dating profile – this one – what do you think?  I love those gladioli in the corner!

Welcome to Joan Crawford month.  I’ve set myself the probably impossible task of testing all of her recipes except the Meat Loaf this month.  Still saving up for the legendary Meat Loaf – ingredients cost about £60!  Am planning to make it on my birthday in December.  I may run a competition for the chance to come round and help me eat it.  Serves TEN!!!

I have started – quite appropriately – with Salad Number One (so called because she had two salad recipes in the same cookbook in 1929).  It was YUMMY.  One of those classic combinations – pineapple and cottage cheese.  I always forget how much I like cottage cheese and now I have half a pot of it to play with.  Joan suggests serving her salad with Melba Toast – brings back memories of doing the Sylvia of Hollywood diet in Austin!  Did anyone hear the great documentary Karen Krizanovich did this week on R2?  It was so good.  When is the movie coming out?!

Anyhow, the salad was quite delicious and there is a picture on the flickr site – Joan’s Salad. Same for lunch tomorrow!

I’ve had an excellent response to this month’s newsletter from the Artist Formerly Known as Gene.  If any lady out there is thinking of having a Joan Crawford style dinner party, he has offered his services as the “bearded artist” she suggests inviting as the type of guest to make a jolly evening!

C. Aubrey reported back on Ollie’s spaghetti saying he’d “come up trumps” with this recipe.  A man after my own heart he added a glug of red wine to the sauce and sprinked some grated cheese on top.  “This was a smasheroo!” he said, and “Mrs F. thought it was very nearly the best thing she’d ever tasted.”  Crikey, that IS praise indeed.  I laughed at the fact that although Ollie says to remove the clove of garlic before serving, the chef and his missus couldn’t find it so played Russian Roulette with every mouthful.  It never did turn up.  Mysterious…

I’m in a drunken stupour at 8pm listening to Blur’s “Girls and Boys” on the radio and feeling a special relationship to the bassline just because I sat next to Alex James on Market Kitchen and absorbed some of his aura.  Oh how lovely.  Maybe this is what the fans of the stars of the golden era experienced.  Getting close to your idols is a weird and meaningful thing.  It’s personal, it causes vibrations in the ether you can’t control and it turns your head around.

OK, time to sober up.  It’s a weird feeling.  Bank Holiday Monday and a FEAST of large proportions at Paulette & Ivor’s of the kind you usually only have on a Saturday night.  After which you roll home to bed and then wake up to a hangover.  Instead, after many glasses of champagne, red wine and more champagne, comedy canapes (courtesy of William and Joan – both very nice), slow cooked wine infused beef daube (swoon), duck’s egg custard tart (yum yum) with spiced ice-cream (triple yum), coffee and chocolate – I got home in sunlight.  This seemed weird.

So now I’m trying to negotiate the last few hours of my long weekend, getting back to my “list of things to do” as my internet provider has decided that my dating site is an “adult” site and therefore I can’t look at it.  Nice to think that some computer generated programme somewhere out there thinks I am under 18…  Mind you, I looked up Vastrouskis too and the closest result was “Curd Pie (Vatrushka)” which the powers that be also decided was a link to an adult site so who knows?

How I wish I had one of the William Powell / Myrna Loy films on DVD to watch.  Wouldn’t that be perfect?

Charley was like a monkey at the zoo when he saw Joan’s Pork Chops come out of the oven!  I must admit they did look delicious all smothered with red onions and doused in 1/4 pound of butter.  They were really very good, top marks Joan.  Glad they were a success as they are the recipe of the month for September and those of you on the mailing list will be getting this direct to your inbox tomorrow.

I must give a mention to Corinna’s divine Apple Strudel which was a perfect dessert.  It was the first time she had made it and it was divine.  Lucky me, I have a whole chunk of it in my fridge that I’ll be tucking into later.

It’s Bank Holiday Monday here in the UK which is always a treat.  I’m going to lunch at Paulette’s and she has asked me to bring some “comedy canapes” so I’ll see what I can rustle up.  Apart from that I’ll be gathering up all my Joan recipes as I’m going to be putting something very special together for Christmas.  Yes, I know it is only August but you have to think ahead don’t you?!

I am not normally a jealous person but when a new test cook in the USA sent me a photo of the stove on which she cooks I went BRIGHT GREEN with envy.  A 1936 “Magic Chef” cooker that is a joy to behold.  Check out the picture on the Flickr page – Magic Chef.

Rebecca aka Alice emailed me out of the blue from Snowy Wisconsin when she stumbled on the blog and was very excited about the prospect of test cooking for us.  She tried August’s Recipe of the Month and declared the ribs to be YUMMY.  “The family ate every last bite” she said.  There is a pic of Alice’s ribs (if you know what I mean) on the Flickr page alongside that gorgeous cooker (bought for $100 I am told – CURSES!).

I just LOVE getting emails from people all over the world who are interested in the Silver Screen Suppers project so don’t hesitate to drop me a line.  I am such a nosey parker that I adore seeing pictures of people’s kitchens and finding out little bits of information about them. I know that Alice doesn’t like peaches for example and my powers of Sherlock Holmes deduction tell me that she may have an Airedale Terrier.

It’s like when I was a child and I had penpals.  I belonged to some kind of international penpal organisation – can’t remember what it was called.  Whenever I read letters from other children in different countries I would imagine them living their lives and daydream about what my life would be like if I lived where they did.  One of them send me a pendant their dad made from a piece of reindeer horn.  Wonderful.

So these reports from test cooks make me EXCEEDINGLY happy.  Keep them coming new and lovely Silver Screen Supperers!

Anyone who has read The Celestine Prophecy knows that coincidences can be meaningful.  Well, I’ve had a whole heap of them this evening.  Yesterday I felt that, almost a year after splitting with Sidney. I was ready to get back in the fray.  So I took the plunge and signed up to a dating site.  I got into a conversation with someone about ukulele playing and when I was cooking my dinner I started thinking, “I must tune my ukulele and start playing again” and at the very moment I was thinking it I got a text from my ukulele teacher (who I haven’t heard from in a donkey’s age) saying she had a gig with her new band on the 26th.  And if that wasn’t weird enough, I then put off tuning the uke thinking, well there is no point tuning it because I don’t know where the ukulele music is. Then, what do you know, but about 15 minutes later when looking for something else entirely, I found the folder of ukulele music.

For anyone who doesn’t know the way I live my life, this may not be surprising but let’s just say I’ve had a 40 foot lock-up with all my stuff in for about 5 years and about 3 months ago all that stuff came out of the lock up and into my new flat.  There are a million boxes and a million bags of stuff so actually finding anything I am looking for is highly, highly, highly unlikely.

And on top of the joy of finding the uke music folder, UNDERNEATH it was something I’d also been thinking about this evening (as I have on a regular basis) the printout of some recipe feedback I truly thought I had lost forever.

This is a very long post for me so I shall cut a long story very short.  The mother of my fabulous hairdresser in Primrose Hill – Lisa Hauck – did some test cooking almost a year ago. She printed out her lovely write ups and gave them to me when I went in for a radical trim and then I promptly lost them amongst my mountains and mountains of paperwork.  But now they are found!  Every time I go in to the salon there are gorgeous little cakes and savoury things to munch on so I am so happy to have found this precious document.  I’ll blog these gradually.  But first, Shirley’s GD Pecan Squares.  Ruth and I have had such trouble with these, but for Lisa’s mum Sabine, a genius cook, they turned out fine.  I loved the idea she suggested of sprinkling with sugar and cinnamon to give a christmassy touch and I so wish I’d been there at the opening party of the salon when I believe these were made.

Hurrah for the archivist in my soul which keeps every single thing that comes my way.  It means I live like some crazy old lady that can barely get to the bed for all the STUFF but it also means that eventually I will re-find everything I think is lost.

Well it took me almost all day to make Jimmy’s pie but it was worth it.   Utterly delicious.  I managed to break one of my favourite plates, cover the kitchen in home made chicken stock and smash a pyrex dish (which I thought was impossible) in the process but the result was pretty spectacular. My guests especially liked the little blackbird pastry prop I put in the middle of the pie to keep the pastry “hat” erect and let the steam out.

Charley and his flat mate Corinna were most appreciative of the pie, AND the Dorothy Lamour ice-cream (yum yum yum yum yum) and the last of the Ginger Rogers Coffee Parfait.  Charley was most vociferous about not putting the two deserts in the same bowl as he didn’t want the Parfait sullied by the ice-cream.  He’s VERY fond of Ginger’s dessert, that is for sure.  I am still partly amazed by the fact that all these 1930s ice-cream dishes require NO STIRRING – you just pop them in the fridge and they turn out like proper ice-cream should.  No stirring and no crystals.  Genius.

We discussed many things over the jigsaw.  What a shame it was that John and his girlfriend split up, as she and Charley were going to have a competition to see who could eat a whole chicken in the quickest time.  Whether we should start saving right now so that we could all live in the same retirement home.   Whether Charley should respond to a booty call from his vegan-ex.  How we were going to get hold of the episode of Columbo where he came to London to solve a crime for our New Year’s Eve extravaganza etc. etc. etc.

It was a most convivial Sunday evening of the type I like the best…