I’m having a day off work to fiddle around with plans for the Vincent Price Treasury Cookalong, and work on other bits and pieces of writing. As is tradition for a spinster’s day off, I made Buckingham Eggs for my brekkie. Mmmm. I’ve just signed up to Lightroom so I can fiddle around with...
Now then. If you ever invite me round to dinner (and I wish you would), if you ask me if there is anything I prefer not to eat, I will say mushrooms, aubergines and seafood. With a caveat. I don’t mind mushrooms and aubergines if they are cut up small and not the main event, but...
Ooh, I think I have perfected the non-cup measurements, for this best of all cakes. I misread my scribbled post it note, stuck on the page of The Treasury of Great Recipes, from when I made it last time. I used a lot more flour than in theory I should have. The texture of the cake...
I am drinking champagne alone, on a Monday night, in bed. How decadent. I have good reason though, honest. Tonight I cooked dinner for someone very dear to me, who almost snuffed it a couple of weeks ago. So champagne seemed to be appropriate. A toast to LIFE! I love this recipe, not least because...
Something weird has happened to my emails and I’ve lost the request for the recipe for Ross Martin’s Chocolate Mousse that came via the contact page. So I do hope that the person who requested it, will read this and forgive me for not responding directly. Mind you, I might have imagined it… Still, it’s such a...
I’ve been craving this for ages and as I’m testing recipes for the forthcoming Vincent & Mary Price’s Treasury of Great Recipes Virtual Reality Book Launch Party Cookalong, I made it tonight for my din dins. If anyone can think of a catchier title for my cookalong than the Vincent & Mary Price’s Treasury of...
This soup has been a long time coming. Like a bit of homework I’ve been putting off for months and months and months, it’s the penultimate Joan dish from the book to be photographed. So here it is, in all its splendour, Joan Crawford’s Almond Soup: I did float some almonds on top, as Joan...
Had a wonderful time in Stroud last weekend, staying with my gorgeous chums Gary and Colin. Gary is the BEST COOK and he cooked three incredible meals for us, such a treat to be cooked for… On Saturday night I was sous-chef as the King of Canapés prepared these gorgeous extravaganzas… Mmmmmm – scrumptious. We...
Cripes. This party took place in September 2014, so my memories are now pretty dim, but this has just got to come off my “to do” list… The first part of my report was written soon after the party (sensible) and is here… My notes don’t help much as many Betty Balfour cocktails had been...
It’s salad time here in the UK. It’s like a bakehouse in my flat as there is scaffolding all over my building which means I have to keep the windows closed. I cannot think of cooking a thing, so Deanna’s dressing is adorning a vast amount of saladings this week. It is the kind of...
I had an absolutely wonderful day yesterday at The School of Artisan Food, learning all about food photography with the fabulous Joan Ransley. I learned LOADS. If anyone can convince me that I have it in me to take half decent food photographs, it’s Joan. She really does have an amazing ability to make this...
This has been the biggest week *ever* in my career as a film archivist. It’s been fab! Here I am on TV with the big news from AP and Movietone… Oooh, soooo exciting! Here are the links to the channels if you want to have a mooch around: AP Archive YouTube British Movietone YouTube I’d...
The Muswell Hill and District Horticultural Society Summer Show was loads of fun. It’s not as mad as the Spring show, as there are less cooking categories, nevertheless there was some bonkers last minute rushing around yesterday morning to get everything ready. I got two firsts, one for my greengage jam (recipe from The Cottage Smallholder)...
My July column for Eat Drink Films is up and it is all about the glorious baked bean. There are three recipes there, one from the gorgeous Corinne Griffith: one from Elsie Janis and one from Josh White: So if you like beans, and fancy checking out the recipes, skip on over to...
Joy of joys! A new pickled onion on the loose. Legendary film critic Barry Norman is producing some delicious spicy numbers, from a handed down family recipe and you can get them in most of the big supermarkets here in the UK. I say new, but according to Wikipedia, these have been on sale since...
Ooh, I meant to pop this one up on June 24th which was National Pralines Day in the US, but forgot! So here’s a link to my June column for the lovely Eat Drink Films… It’s all about the fabulous ZaSu Pitts and her brilliant book Candy Hits. I first heard about this book waaaaaay back...
The last time I made James Garner’s Oklahoma Chili I was thrilled that James’ daughter Gigi got in touch via Twitter about it. However, Gigi wondered if the recipe might have been her grandfather’s recipe rather than the personal recipe of the James we know from movies and TV. Gigi was dubious about the recipe...
Before we start, I’d better admit that I am squiffy. I’ve drunk a whole bottle of Prosecco, plus some Amaro, brewed by the mysterious Asterley Bros… So here’s the scoop. I was sent in the post a lovely dinky bottle of Amaro, hand crafted by the Asterley Bros. I do not know these boys, I...
The Strolling Supper Club was a resounding success and made a whopping £850 for Alice’s Youth Music Memorial Fund. We were so pleased with how it all went. Davie took a nice pic of me preparing everything in my kitchen, he’s managed to make it look MASSIVE! Here are folks gathered in my garden having Vincent...
Tonight I’ve been practising my mini toad in the holes for Saturday’s Strolling Supper Club. I’m joining forces with Battenberg Belle and Davie from Seven Songs to raise money for the Alice Youth Music Memorial Fund. We’ll be having cocktails and canapés in the “secret garden” behind my flat, then strolling round to BB’s for...
Ooh! I was at the Guild of Food Writers Awards on Tuesday, and not only did I score some free Tenderstem Broccoli, but my food idol Yotam Ottolenghi SQUEEZED MY SHOULDER. Yes, I am not joking. I was chatting to Sarit Packer & Itamar Srulovich of Honey & Co and Yotam came up to talk to them too,...
Chums. It is Peanut Butter Cookie Day tomorrow. So here’s something I wrote for the gorgeous Bibelot Magazine including a recipe for some. The Peanut Butter Conspiracy were never in a movie as far as I know, so they don’t really belong here at Silver Screen Suppers, BUT, if you love peanut butter as much...
Greetings if you are stopping by on a tour of the Pieathalon #2 posts. I am an awful eejit and I posted mine too early, so please click here for a link to my Pieathalon post. My pie was a Magic Cream Pie and it was a doozy!
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Sunday marked the fifth anniversary of my move to spinster bliss at Silver Screen Suppers Towers. I count the decision to move into my own place as the best thing I ever did. If you are living in a shared house and getting fed up with it, I say take the plunge and go solo. ...
The Diana Dors diet continues. I love tuna, and I love beans, so therefore this was a hit with me. The dressing was surprisingly lemony and it’s a nice sturdy portion for one. Very satisfactory indeed thanks Diana! Finely grated rind of 1/4 lemon 3 tablespoons Slimmer’s Oil-free French Dressing 1 teaspoon snipped chives 75g...
I am back from my divine holiday and about half a stone heavier than when I left. Therefore, I am on a diet. But not just any diet, the Diana Dors Diet. I’ve been eating everything under the sun, including delicious seafood from the legendary Company Shed: and boozing it up with endless glasses of...
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the Mersea Island fishermen sell some of their catch directly from the quayside between 2.45 and 4.30pm. So we bundled down there to get ourselves some fresh fish. There were some lovely looking flat fish such as lemon sole, dabs, an unidentified thing with claws, skate wings, sea bass and lots...
I was dreaming of being in San Francisco this weekend as there was a screening of Flesh and the Devil with the great screen lovers Garbo and Gilbert at the Castro cinema yesterday… Gad, how I would have loved to be there! Instead, I wrote a column for the wonderful EatDrinkFilms magazine about what these...
I am on holiday! Spending my days sitting in the garden of a little bolt hole on the edge of Mersea Island watching the boats go by… We have an adopted pet for the week: Gunwale (pronounced Gunnell): Mr R is having a lie-in after being kept awake for hours by a noisy cock-a-doodle-do-ing cockerel. ...
Exciting plans are falling into place for Victoria Price’s visit to London in November, to launch the 50th anniversary edition of her parents’ wonderful book; A Treasury of Great Recipes. I’ve been helping to organize a couple of events for Victoria and her VIP guests, and it’s going to be just fabulous. The lovely Bruce...
Until I received my Pieathalon challenge, I’d never seen a Burns and Allen Show. I totally understand now though, why it’s an institution, for those who are into their retro classics. I made my acquaintance with George and Gracie last weekend because of this: a page, not strictly speaking related to the recipe, but full...
On a Spinster’s Sunday there must be eggs too… So here is what I had for my breakfast today. Mmmmm – beans, eggs, bacon (well ham this time…) all in a fluffy package. I’ve written about the Diana Dors diet here before, it’s such a genius multi-media plan and I love it. I might make...
On a Spinster’s Saturday there must be eggs. And here’s what I had yesterday for my breakfast. Oh yummy! These are so easy, and the recipe can be adapted for one, by making these in ramekins (I just had one, but wish I’d made two). This is a bit like a photo in the section...
I am at Brixiefest – Mr R’s new term for my self-imposed weekend of solitary writing and cooking. I have a lot to do, not least make a PIE for Yinzerella’s annual Pieathalon challenge. For the first of these last year I made Mile High Lemon Chiffon Pie and played the Vincent Price Co-Stars game...
Oh, I forgot to say, I won the Guy Chester cookery cup! I don’t want to rub it in too much with Battenburg Belle, as by rights, she should have scooped it. We do not understand the scoring system and she got more firsts than I did. But I guess the seconds and thirds added...
Mmmmm – delicious! My latest column for Eatdrinkfilms is all about grilled cheese sandwiches. A staple in the States, but a mystery to me until recently. Frying a sandwich in butter? Outrageous! But the first one I tried, Anne Baxter’s Mexican Cheese Supper Sandwich, was really, really delicious… The recipes for Anne Baxter’s version, and...
“That is chicken supreme”, said Mr R about this dish, and he also pointed out that there’s no need to panic about it, if you have left it overnight in your fire escape. I shall explain. I made this on a Saturday as I had 5 guests coming for dinner on Sunday and I wanted...
I loved Steve’s burger, and I really love this picture of him with a chafing dish. A chafing dish is the “most-wanted-but-not-in-the-least-bit-needed” thing on my wishlist. Joan Crawford loved hers… and I would love mine. If I had one. Where I would actually store it, I don’t know. But I’ll cross that bridge if...
I’m a sucker for any recipe that includes the word “supreme” in the title – it’s got to be good, right? This one was. The Savory Sauce was the kind of thing that has you smacking your lips for a good half an hour after dinner is done. Vinegar, ketchup, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, garlic...
I’ve been a bit quiet in April because of Camp NaNoWriMo. I’ve been doing less cooking, less boozing and more writing…. This time around, I’ve been working on my new project, the Cooking With Columbo cookbook. Yep, you heard it here first! Well, unless you subscribe to my newsletter, as those folks will have heard...
When you buy meat from the butcher, it’s only when you get it home that you see how HUGE it is compared to what’s on offer at the supermarkets. My tenderloin pork chops from Midhurst Butchers in Muswell Hill were mahoooooooooooooooosive! Hence, I only did half of Peter’s recipe as it was for a spinster’s...
Ooh, it’s been quite a week with two hangovers involved, both due to nights out with Battenburg Belle. On Wednesday night we had an amazing time at the Silver Screen Cuisine event at the Everyman Cinema in Islington. Others have written about it more eloquently than I could, and some great pix are here… It...
The name of this cake doesn’t do it justice. If I had the power to go back in time, I might suggest to Mary and Vincent that it should be known as “The Price’s Divine Pineapple and Macadamia Nut Cake”. It’s my favourite film star cake. I love it. It was the first cake baked...
Just before Easter, the lovely Matthew Coniam tipped me off to the fact that there was a copy of Sophia Loren’s Eat With Me cookbook on ebay for a reasonable price. I was on it like a car bonnet. I scored it for £6.99 – the only other copy on there at the moment is...
Cheesetastic! I didn’t want the chillis that were left over from Anne Baxter’s Mexican Cheese Supper Sandwich to go to waste, so during my weekend writing marathon, I took a break and had a go at Vera’s Cheese Casserole. When I saw the recipe, it put me very much in mind of John Wayne’s Cheese...
Stop press! James Garner’s daughter Gigi got in touch via Twitter about this recipe. She thinks it may be her grandfather’s recipe rather than her father’s. I am devastated! I knew JG was a judge for the National Chili Championships so assumed that this recipe (published in several newspapers in the 1980s) with his name...
I hear that it’s Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month so I made my first one EVER last night to celebrate… I guess in the UK we’d call this a Cheese Toastie, although I’ve never cooked one in a frying pan before. Only in my mum’s Breville sandwich toaster, back in the early 1980s… I guess confusion...
Ooh, I forgot to put a link up to the William Shatner recipe after a flurry of excitement, when the great man himself gave a name check on Twitter to my local butchers! We all got a bit star-struck. Anyhow, the recipe is here…. (click on link) and the photo is below. A very spring-like...
In my dreamworld it is the early 1960s, and I’m partaking of an ice cold Mai Tai at Trader Vic’s… with Roger Stirling to my right… and Mary and Vincent Price to my left… For not only was Trader Vic’s a favourite haunt of the lovely boys and girls of Madison Avenue, it had a...
Those lovely folks at www.eatdrinkfilms.com have again made my column look super dooper with great photos of various Marx Brothers with various foodstuffs. This was my favourite: If you fancy having a Marx Brothers dinner party, skip over to Eat Drink Films for the recipes – Groucho’s favourite Date and Pecan Pie and his recipe...
In the queue for the closing screening at the Silent Cinema Festival in Bo’ness, Mr Rathbone said: “Hippfest is everything I like about the world.” I knew exactly what he meant and heartily agree. We had an absolutely wonderful time at the festival. The Hippodrome in Bo’ness is the loveliest cinema in the world, and...
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. I mean Bibelot, Bibelot, Bibelot… My new guest post is up on the lovely Bibelot blog this week…. These little crispy celery sticks are really, really tasty. Surprisingly so… So if you’d like to know how to make them, nip over to Bibelot…
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It was lovely to get a mention in The Scotsman last week… it put the wind up me a bit though… I have no idea where they got the notion that I’d be making a Bette Davis Marmalade cake! It’s not exactly going to be a “retro afternoon dinner party” either but I do like...
I’m getting very excited about my Taste of the Silver Screen workshop at the Hippfest Silent Cinema Festival in Bo’ness in Scotland on Sunday. I’ve been doing lots of maths to work out how many slices of bread I need for 250 canapes, and roughly estimating how many capers are in a standard sized jar. ...
My penpal and fellow film star recipes fan, Greg of Recipes4Rebels, sent me a meat loaf recipe recently that had raisins in it. I was a bit alarmed. Still, as I have discussed here at length previously, we Brits don’t know anything about meat loaf, apart from what we have learned from Joan Crawford and...
I’m often asked what my favourite film star recipe is. This one would be in the top ten for sure. It’s so easy, and so delicious. It’s absolutely fail-safe, so I chose it for the book group when I couldn’t find my Cooking Price-Wise book… Becky had requested that I make Vincent’s Chicken in Vermouth...
Straight in with a bullet to NUMBER ONE in the Silver Screen Suppers Hit Parade, is Jocko Marx with his Herring Potatoes. I really think that is the most delicious dinner I have made in over 9 years of cooking film star recipes. It’s one of those recipes you look at and think, “this could...
My lovely chum Nathalie Morris has written a fab piece on the bfi website about Katharine’s Brownies. Check it out here… Katharine Hepburn’s Brownies I’ve had variable results with Katharine’s recipe (good batch – bad batch) but this might be due to the fact I use the Ladies Home Journal version of Katherine’s recipe, in...
March already tomorrow? Crikey! Sophia was pulled out of the pack for this month’s recipe: and there were plenty to choose from. Sophia is definitely an expert cook, she’s written several cookbooks… The one below I really want to get hold of, the cover is so lipsmackingly gorgeous… and this more recent one, which is...
I can’t tell you too much about this chicken apart from that it was GOOD. The moral of the story is, if you don’t write about it soon after you have cooked it, you won’t remember a blinking thing about it. I made it for “me, myself and I” one weekday night after work, what...
Bibelot, bibelot, bibelot. What a lovely word. And what a lovely magazine my fabulous matchmaking neighbour Chloe Owens has created… It is absolutely gorgeous – check it out – Bibelot – mmmmmmm. I’ve written a little something for the magazine, it includes a recipe for Canapes D’Amour from the Hollywood Glamour Cook Book. Look...
I had my stopwatch out last night, timing Mr Rathbone making some of these as I’m going to be showing folks how to make them at a Hippodrome Festival of Silent Cinema event on Sunday 22nd March – can you come?! It’s in Bo’ness in Scotland. I cannot WAIT! Look how beautiful the cinema is…...
What springs to mind when you think of Dick Van Dyke? Is it this? Me too. Until recently. Now it will be this: Dick’s chicken recipe was tops. It led to a rousing rendition of “Chick-Chick-eree, Chick-Chick-eree Chick-Chick Che-roo” from Mr Rathbone and a puffed up chest by me, as it turned out so well. ...
This recipe and over 30 more of Joan’s favourites can be found in Cooking With Joan Crawford – only available from Blurb. Are you having an Oscars party? Here in the UK it starts around midnight but I know quite a few people who will be pulling an all-nighter to watch the antics. I might...
This was fab. Really refreshing and zingy. Mmm. Cucumbers are a fruit! (said in a Vincent Price voice…) This recipe came to me via a reader of the Silver Screen Suppers blog who is now a penpal – Greg Swenson. Greg is as obsessed with film star recipes as I am. He’s writing a James...
Oh the folks over at www.eatdrinkfilms.com have made my column this month look utterly terrific! Nip over there and have a look – Eat Like the Stars. The recipe for this delicious cherried brownie-type cake is there in all its glory, and here’s how mine turned out… Whoever is in charge of selecting the photos...
I was single for 8 years (with some little hiccups along the way) so I do know what it’s like when Valentine’s Day is on the horizon and you haven’t got a significant other. But this year, as last, I do have a lovely Valentine and I’m very happy about that. So tonight I made...
It’s my annual spinster’s day! I do so love to have a day to myself now and then, doing exactly whatever the hell I like. Today is such a day. I am on annual leave, and still in my pyjamas at 1pm with no intention of getting out of them. I’ve done my weekly drawing. ...
If only I had the plane fare to Los Angeles I would be there… For more details about the 50th Anniversary Edition of the Treasury of Great Recipes, register with the Cooking With Vincent website… Soooooooooooooooooooooo excited!
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Here is a really good chicken recipe from Lee, who I love. Soon after I’d cooked this I did some rummaging around on the internet and I discovered that she had recently published her autobiography. I snapped it up, raced through it and heartily enjoyed it. Lee was blacklisted for years during the McCarthy era...
My dad once told me that when he was younger, Sophia was his favourite pin-up. Is it any wonder? There are probably more photos of Sophia Loren with food knocking around the internet than any other actress. This is partly of course because she loves to cook, and has written a couple of cookbooks… Those...
Have you ever gorged on fondue and woken up the next day feeling as though your whole body is composed of cheese? I have, a couple of times. Tonight I went to a fantastic “Butter Workshop” organised by the Guild of Food Writers and have eaten my body weight in butter. Yum yum. I will...
