When I heard that two cookbooks owned by Marilyn Monroe were up for auction (thank-you Di and Amy for the tip-offs)
I immediately went down an enormous rabbit hole of research.
I was here, there, and everywhere in the Google Machine finding out what time the auction was, what was included in the lots, and how I could register to attend online. My friends, I registered as a bidder.
I knew I would have to sit on my hands lest I accidentally bid. When these two books were bought in 1999 they went for $45,000.
Naturally when I discovered that inside one of the books was Marilyn’s meal plan for a whole day
I immediately decided to follow it, just like I did one day back in 2019 when I lived my life like Angela Lansbury for the day.
I ate like Angela
I exercised like Angela.
and I relaxed like Angela
Man, that was a GOOD DAY!
Naturally, the thing that most excited me about Marilyn’s menu plan was the idea of staying up until 11pm to have an eggnog. I’m usually in bed with a book at 9!
Talking of books, on the internet, there are almost as many photographs of Marilyn reading
as there are of Sophia Loren cooking.
I decided that alongside the dedicated following of her menu, I would take the whole day off work and spend the run-up to the auction reading. I really wanted to get hold of a copy of this…
but this is one hell of a pricey purchase and besides, it wouldn’t have got to me in time…
But in a lovely moment of serendipity, in a second-hand bookshop in Camden on Saturday the man behind the counter knew exactly where to find a copy of this…
…so I was all set for a day of reading and possibly listening to a few records…
My research rummaging led me to the Christies auction house site and I spent ages gawping at everything listed in their big sale of Marilyn’s belongings in 1999. Here for those of you who are as nosy as I am is a glimpse of her pots and pans, kitchen gadgets, and lovely glassware. She obviously had good taste and naturally now that I know she had a set of Elysee Yellow Le Creuset pans, I want some too…
One of my other obsessions is searching to find the knitting pattern for Marilyn’s iconic hand-knitted cardigan, so I was fascinated to see that this sold for $167,500.
because that is next on my “to-knit” list after this one which had a starring role in Murder, She Wrote…
I have spent HOURS on the internet trying to find the knitting pattern for Marilyn’s cardigan to no avail. I’ve found similar ones but not THE one.
as I don’t think I’ll have the same kind of luck the brilliant Thom Kofoed did, finding this in a charity shop…
Thom is the artist who created this beautiful pic of Marilyn which I have on my bookshelf…
You should go immediately to his Etsy shop because everything he does is divine. I have this sticker of Cher on my toilet….
I went down yet another research rabbit hole when I discovered a website called The Girl Loves Vintage. Jessamine who runs the site is a seamstress who recreates vintage garments – WHAT ABSOLUTE HEAVEN. She also knits and has worked out the pattern for Marilyn’s jumper
She takes commissions for these, and I am SORELY tempted! Watch this space…
OK, enough rambling. Want to know how my day following Marilyn’s meal plan went?
I took a punt that Marilyn (or whoever put this meal plan together for her) meant something like Cream of Wheat for her “Cereal, well cooked” and luckily I’d bought a box several years ago (this is an unknown foodstuff here in the UK) for an Angela Lansbury loaf of bread experiment (it’s well past the use-by date but who cares?!)
I added stewed prunes to score 2/3 on the Marilyn breakfast front.
My bread was huge so for the “Toast (white) 2 slices, crisp with butter” I thought that one slice would probably do.
Served with a mug of weak cocoa to my mind that was all in all a pretty substantial breakfast. I was surprised that I really liked the Cream of Wheat – I thought it would bring back memories of a childhood food I disliked – semolina – but it was much nicer than that.
Before I knew it, 10 am rolled around…
Lunch was pretty substantial too.
I may have misinterpreted the selection process involved in the “either/or” way this schedule is typed up but here’s what I went for. I didn’t have any stale bread (why stale Marilyn, why?!) so I decided to have a slice of fresh bread, toasted, with a hard-boiled egg
and some spaghetti with tomatoes.
This was a bit of a revelation. I just chopped up a few cherry tomatoes and sweated them down with a tiny bit of olive oil, a pinch of salt, and lots of black pepper. That was surprisingly delicious. A lovely easy and tasty lunch dish. Thanks, Marilyn for that idea, I may do that again sometime soon.
For dessert, I took Leaves of Grass out into the garden with some jelly…
I cannot remember the last time I had jelly. It might have been when I made William Holden’s Lime Gelatine With Carrot, Olives, and Nuts (no kidding)
Can you guess who I am supposed to be?!
At 3.30 pm I was still completely stuffed from lunch and I couldn’t face another cup of milk and a cracker so I skipped that.
To be honest, I was still full when it came to thinking about getting the dinner on, but I took one for team Marilyn and got amongst it.
I am so glad I’d chosen fish ahead of time, it was the lightest of all the options and I had a lovely lemon sole fillet with half a jacket potato and some pureed carrot.
No need for the bread (man I can’t believe the APPETITE Marilyn had) but I had a clotted cream rice pudding specially purchased from Ocado so that was definitely happening.
And the thing that I’d been looking forward to all along…
MARILYN! I am going to call you Marilyn Milky Monroe from now on. SO MUCH MILK IN THIS MENU. 2 cups of milk, milk in the cereal, milk in the rice pudding, and milk/cream in the eggnog. An egg heavy menu too. CRIPES. But hey, it worked for you baby!
The bedtime eggnog is definitely a ritual I might adopt…
I felt absolutely STUFFED all day and was sure that when I stepped on the scales all that milk and bread would have bumped up the numbers but no. According to the bathroom scales I lost 1½ pounds. I do not understand this AT ALL. But maybe this kind of eating schedule helped Marilyn retain those curves?
I read about 100 pages of Leaves of Grass throughout the day. At first, I thought I wouldn’t understand ANY of it, but then it all got quite sexy so I got into it. Here’s my favourite line, “Root of wash’d sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall be you!”
Like me, Walt loved an exclamation point!
To round the evening off I watched Marilyn in Niagara (1953) oh man, the outfits!
I am going to adapt that left foot forward, right hip popped stance next time Mr R takes a full length photo.
At the weekend, I was telling Mr Rathbone Sr. about my plan to live like Marilyn Monroe for the day and he asked if I’d be rounding off the day posing for a nude calendar – haha! I’ll have to draw the line at that.
And the auction? I didn’t have the credentials to get in (no rubbernecking I guess) and I thought I would be waking up to see how much the books had sold for this morning but no. The auction is ongoing – they are up to lot 186 and Marilyn’s books are lot 618 I will report back.
I really, really, really enjoyed my day of reading with the occasional trip to the kitchen, but I’ll be very, very happy not to see any more milk for a while…
I suspect with a full day of running around on set, endless milk and crackers might be a little more necessary to keep one’s energy up. What a fun day you had!
I loved the whole experience miss dove! Milk and crackers is such an odd concept to us here in the UK. I’ve never had that in my life before and I’m not sure I had the right kind of cracker… But it’s all in the name of research – and jolly good fun too!
An epic blog and what fun ! Yes a lot of milk, but it was wasn’t egg white omelettes and quinoa & buckwheat protein shakes that gave her those curves ! One of these days I keep thinking I am going to Live my life like William Powell – martini’s from noon to night, until I realised that’s pretty much been my lockdown at times and, if truth be told I prefer a Gimlet !
Hahah – Mark, that’s a brilliant idea! Shall we do a William Powell Day sometime, each in our own homes, and exchange photos?! I still don’t feel ready to socialise properly but we could watch ALL the Thin Man films and send each other pix throughout the day of our steady decline… On the menu we could choose from the following dishes – Scalloped Spinach and Tomatoes, Upside Down Cake, Artichokes Baked With Cheese, Sweetbreads en Brochette, Vastrouskis (these are ACE), Beets Piquant (I love these too) and Sauteed Kidneys. I’ve never lived my life like a MAN for the day before, I’ll have to get myself a tailcoat x
It reads a bit like an invalids menu to me, mostly nice soft, relatively bland food with lots of protein/calcium/vitamins in the milk. And I believe milk was considered to be soothing for stomach problems, although I also think that has been somewhat disproved now.
While I was cooking for my grandmother early during her palliative care I was told to shake some dry milk powder over her meals.
But I’ve never really heard of milk and crackers as a common pairing. Cookies/Biscuits and milk, sure. But crackers? Huh.
I know there’s a magazine photo somewhere, possibly as part of some kind of advertisement, of Alan and David Ladd standing in the kitchen about to drink milk. I went looking for it and couldn’t find that, but I did find this blog post which claims to be another Ladd recipe, which might require further research – https://anyone4curryandotherthings.com/2020/02/20/alan-ladds-kidney-deluxe/
I think the sweater somewhat resembles Cowichan knitting – what do you think? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowichan_knitting
This comment made me so sad because you’re right. She grew up in and out of foster care and orphanages. Her mother was committed to a mental institute. So institutional food is probably what she knew the best.
VT! Yes, you are quite right, a menu for someone convalescing perhaps? It was indeed a very comforting menu, but as someone who hardly ever has milk apart from in cups of tea now and then, it was pretty hardcore on the dairy front!
Oooh, that Alan Ladd recipe is a good find. Are you thinking of contacting the blogger to see if there are any clues as to where that recipe was clipped from? I had a search on newspapers.com which sometimes yields results but not this time. I quite fancy Kidneys Deluxe, are you going to try it?
You took me down yet another research rabbit hole with your link to Cowichan knitting – YES! My goodness this makes me want to get on with the socks I have on the needles so I can start a BIG JUMPER!
Thanks for stopping by and here’s power to your writing elbow! Jxx
I’ve got asking the blogger questions down on my lengthy “eventually get around to doing this” list 🙂
I think I’ve had kidneys once in my entire life. Don’t remember if I enjoyed them or not. The recipe might be something to try some day. I doubt I’d be able to find lamb kidney.
Anyway I need that writing elbow power! Thanks! Back to the novella editing I go!
Go VT, go!!!!
We must .. But I think i will pass on the Artichokes . And give me some time to save up for all the booze I’ll need ! I have The Thin Man box set and always play The Thin Man at least on New Year’s Eve. I remember the first time I saw it, probably as a v.young teenager and thinking it was the coolest thing ever to send out for sandwiches and coffee ! So we might need to have ‘ a whole flock of sandwiches and plenty of onions’ as ordered in the movie. .. I don’t know what Vastrouki is, but as I love my offal I’ll be there with the Sweetbreads and you can bet I’ll be making Alan Ladd’s Kidney Deluxe some time soon !
Yay yay yay!!! I will get the box set in anticipation and I too love the idea of sending out for sandwiches and coffee. I did that once during the pandemic when I had some chums over for a picnic in the garden. It felt like the height of luxury to have a man bring us bags of bagels and coffee! Jx