Rosalind Russell's birthday

Well, friends, Miss Edith threatened to do it. She was annoyed that no one else was doing it. She sent emails, she went shopping, she spent a day in the kitchen, and Sunday, she did it.
This past Sunday afternoon, far too many people crammed cheerfully and willingly into our humble apartment to celebrate Rosalind Russell’s centenary*. Hats were not required for admission.

I’d spent the last week busy with preparations for this event, which is in part why I hadn’t posted so much (I’m sure you needed the break, anyhow). I consulted at least five different cookbooks for recipes, and read several others merely looking for inspiration, including Elsa Maxwell’s wonderfully pragmatic yet simultaneously totally bonkers How To Do It, or The Lively Art of Entertaining. (This book is helpful if you want to take recipe recommendations from Diana Vreeland. Not that I’m sure I’d want to; I admire DV, I really do, but she didn’t look like a woman who really enjoyed her food, whereas Edith, I must admit, looks like a woman who enjoys her food. A slave to the scale, Edith is not.) I sent an email to Franklin Café, asking for help and advice – and the utterly wonderful general manager there replied to my email and solved my problem. (I had a question about the preparation of the drink du jour, which we’d decided had to be that Pimm’s and ginger beer drink I enjoyed so much when we were in Boston a couple weeks ago. I wasn’t sure about proportions; Franklin Café came through for me, god love ‘em.) Notarius and I flung ourselves across upholstered pieces of furniture, thumbing through books and making lists and finally, finally, it all fell into place. We cooked like crazy on Saturday, did a little more prep on Sunday, and then like clockwork, at four o’clock Sunday afternoon, the first guests arrived.
Things are kind of back to normal now; it’s Tuesday.

I had a number of requests for recipes that I used in preparation for this event. I’ve decided that the thing to do, for the common good, is to post the recipes here at Edith. Same bat time, same bat channel, but no pickled rattlesnake.

*Since scheduling this event, I’ve since read several different years cited as Ms. Russell’s birth year. I didn’t have the heart to reschedule fhe party. Maybe it’ll have to become an annual event so’s I can save face.