Monthly Archives: December 2013

ursula lecoeur

New Year’s: Will You Go to Your Cellarette?

Mary Reporting. What more fitting day than New Year’s Eve to discuss the cellarette, that piece of furniture once found in American homes to house adult libations under lock and key.  Today, we might grab a bottle of champagne from the back of the fridge rather than opening an elegant mahogany or burled walnut cabinet. […]

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ursula lecoeur

Christmas Tradition: Sour Cream Coffee Cake

Mary Reporting. Sour cream, made by fermenting cream with harmless bacteria, has more uses in the kitchen than topping baked potatoes or nachos. It’s a terrific substitute for milk in cakes. Years ago, I found this coffee cake recipe in the Century of Success Cookbook: The Best Gold Medal Recipes of 100 Years, published in 1979. […]

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Ursula LeCoeur

Harper’s Bazar Takes Me Back 127 Years

Mary Reporting. My mother once accepted a phone solicitor’s offer to receive 15 magazine subscriptions for three years for only X dollars a month. My father was horrified by the expense, but we soon became a family of magazine readers. Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Esquire, The Saturday Review of Literature (remember that […]

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