Birds of a Feather Trim Hats

Mary Reporting. My mother’s mother, called Grandy by her five grandchildren, loved hats, particularly wide-brimmed, plumed and variously ribboned ones. She rarely left the house without one. As the family story goes, when I was three, I eyed my grandmother in a wide-brimmed hat decorated with a stuffed bird nestled in a circle of tulle and […]

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Grandmere’s Cheese Souffle

A cheese soufflé is a comfort food, perfect in the cold weather we’ve had in New Orleans lately. What’s more, the ingredients are probably in your refrigerator—milk, butter, sharp cheese, bread, and eggs—so you don’t need to venture out to the store. The word soufflé means breath, so named because it depends on the air […]

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ursula lecoeur

Dining on Haviland

Mary Reporting. Tour any Victorian home and invariably there’s an elegant dining room, with every inch of the table’s surface covered with fine china and silver flatware. In the adjacent butler’s pantry, the guide never fails to note that the lady of the house generally washed her own dishes and put them away. She took […]

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