Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
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author
Alice H. Green
Alice Herlihy Green, author and my mother, lived from 1913 to 1982. If you read this book, you will know know her biography, as true to life as we could make it. However there are many more subtle ...view moreAlice Herlihy Green, author and my mother, lived from 1913 to 1982. If you read this book, you will know know her biography, as true to life as we could make it. However there are many more subtle details outside the narrative stream of this story worth knowing about her. Beside her reputation as the free spirit in our extended family, an Auntie Mame character, which this book should make evident, she had many domestic talents. This vocation began with the recipe for her mother's tasty apple pie. She took great pride in cooking special dishes for her family, personally preparing food for large par-ties. For Dad she perfected a Hungarian goulash—round steak cooked in a rich, red paprika sauce and served over flat noodles: I have never found an equal. Other specialties included beef, green pepper and toma-to, prime rib roast with popovers made in the drippings, fish chowder, split pea soup with ham and a superior pork sausage turkey stuffing.During World War II she learned to “can” fruits and vegetables, not in cans but in dozens of Mason jars: fresh peaches, pears, whole tomatoes, blanched and skinned in soup kettles, recapturing the flavors of the har-vest on a chill winter night. She mastered her Singer sewing machine's many moods and quirks and could recreate the fashions she saw in a film, make the pattern and sew up a beautiful dress for her next party. She was fond of copying Debbie Reynolds’s cutest styles and re-creating them in special prom dresses for my sister Linda She also knitted us all Irish fisherman’s sweaters of white boiled and oiled yarn, featuring a central panel with the rare and difficult blackberry stitch.Clearly, she was accomplished in all the home arts and crafts, like so many other American women in the mid-twentieth century. And yet, she rose above these talents and created something uniquely her own.view less