10/11/2023 0 Comments Butternut wisdom gladys taber![]() How nice to discover someone who was writing about gardening, cooking, country living, the coziness of home and family, and the beauty of nature - and was doing it decades ago - during the suburbanizing 1950s, the plasticine 60s and wrapping up her career in the 70s, when there was finally a turnabout in the appreciation of Mother Earth. Her Fried Red Tomatoes Recipe is simple to make, yet gourmet to the taste buds. Serve immediately.Ĭountry cookin’ Gladys Taber is a little-known American gem. Add another 2 tablespoons of butter to pan and heat butter to repeat the process for additional tomatoes, if needed.Fry an additional 5-7 minutes, testing with fork to see if tomatoes are tender. Gently turn each with a large fork to fry on the other side.Once butter is hot, place tomatoes in a single layer in pan and fry, uncovered, until golden brown, approximately 7-10 minutes.Dip each tomato slice into cream, then dip into cornmeal mixture and coat thoroughly on both sides. Mix cornmeal, tarragon leaves and salt in a shallow bowl and stir to mix thoroughly.Heat butter on medium low heat in a heavy skillet.Sometimes her short, soft upper lip came out read as fire and her underlip would be spotty.” Being farsighted this meant that she could barely see what she was doing. She had to take her glasses off when she put on her make-up. Hr round, rosy face was no better, no worse than usual, she thought, dabbing on rouge. Her light brown hair had lost last week’s wave and flew about. The dress, bought when she was thinner, barely zippered up. She was between diets, so she was plump as a partridge. Daffodil’s weight yo-yos up and down–we live with her through many diets–because she loves to cook and constantly reads recipes in women’s magazines that require a container of sour cream. Daffodil is not good with money: sometimes she absent-mindedly sends two checks to the electric company. And through this writing, she supports herself, her married daughter and graduate student husband, and presumably her housemate, Kay, a widowed college friend who agreed to share the country house after her husband died. Daffodil, writes a syndicated column called “Butternut Wisdom.” She also writes short stories about young love, because she has discovered people are less interested in stories about ordinary older people like herself. It is obviously autobiographical, or at least parallels the Stillmeadow journals (which may be slightly fictionalized I can’t find much information about Taber). I simply fell into this novel and loved every minute of it. Tim books and Cornelia Otis Skinner’s humor books. When I recently found a copy of her autobiographical novel Mrs. According to one online article, she and her husband bought Stillmeadow, a country house, in 1943 with another couple. Taber (1899-1980), who graduated from Wellesley and earned a master’s at Lawrence, wrote 50 books and was a columnist for Ladies’ Home Journal and Family Circle. Taber balances her lyrical vignettes about the changing seasons with wry descriptions of skunks living under the storage house, and her forgetting where she buried the jar of homemade brandied peaches (a treatment that was supposed to improve their quality). Move to the country and you will appreciate nature, but it will not prevent the well from drying up, the septic tank from leaking, or the dishwasher from breaking. ![]() These slight, charming essays are not in the same league as Wendell Berry’s or Annie Dillard’s, but they are plain, restful observations of the country that will delight readers who understand there is no such thing as a quiet life. ![]() Gladys Taber’s Stillmeadow series, which are collections of columns and essays about her life in a 1690 farmhouse in Connecticut, were published in the ’40s, ’50s,and ’60s. Aha! Gladys Taber’s The Stillmeadow Road looked soothing. And the next day I did find myself falling knee-deep in snowdrifts, gliding across glaciers in the street, and the city closed down around me.īefore the blizzard I decided to fortify myself with comfort books. Yes, the snow was beautiful falling under the street light, but the TV reporters assured us that the next day would be a disaster, the National Guard probably called in to deal with the snow, etc., etc. I was out of town, rather anxiously watching a blizzard in progress. I discovered Gladys Taber’s books last winter.
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