It would be helpful to have your comments on "mental." Language about mental health and illness has become quite odd. "Mental health" itself is becoming a contronym, at least as an adjective. It is not unusual to come across a news item about someone violent who has suffered a "mental health episode," which obviously does not mean that the person briefly came to their senses.
And I do think that I’ll get to it eventually, though it is indeed a heavily freighted subject and not one I want to treat hastily or flippantly in an article about, well, guacamole.
A contortion I’m seeing more often lately, including in the Toronto Star (Canada’s largest newspaper): “[The person] suffered from mental health” (to avoid the supposedly pejorative “mental illness”).
I guess if I'm going to write about this, I'm going to have to actually do a little research and not just, in my tried-and-true fashion, riff and make stuff up.
Thanks for today's chuckles and arcane info. I had no idea about the relationship between Anna and Boris. Strange world. Not that you asked, but for my money, the best version of The King and I story--much as I love the musical--is Anna and the King with Jodie Foster and Chow Yun-Fat. I don't believe the supposed romance, but it's a sweet story.
Also, I knew that Boris had moved back to England in the late 1950s, but we of course know that he was back in Hollywood any number of times in the years afterward to make movies. And even I know when a detail is one detail too many.
Perhaps it's already within your ken, but the "Bela and Boris" season of Karina Longworth's podcast You Must Remember This is worth a listen on the topic.
Notably for completists, the Mayfair at Franklin and Bronson became a Gelson's in the 2000s. Love the home listing--upward mobility, literally, as he ends up on Mulholland before flying off to England.
Actually I knew he meant dry sherry, not that Bristols stuff. However, I am stuck on the "2 avocados" - is that the very small grocery store Haas avocados, or our giant avocados we grow in Florida? 1 Russell avocado is equivalent to maybe 5 Haas.
I have answered my own question I suppose. My quick search provided that Fuerte was the dominant variety in the 60's. They appear larger than Hass. The amount of other ingredients made me wonder about their size. Now I can make this to celebrate Guac Day, with a tipple to Boris.
I'm with the "acid is acid" folks. Laura Bush famously makes her guac with lemon juice not lime. I can vouch for it.
Coincidentally, I make a drink I call Jalisco Rainwater which is like a dry martini only anejo and Grande Marniere (just a burn - you want it floral not orangey) that benefits from a drop of fino sherry if you have it handy so there you go.
So happy to find you mentioned the “emergency” scalloped potatoes. It stood out to me too. Just when does one feel the need to break the glass on that one?
As a New Mexican, I appreciate that the L.A. Times corrected Ms. Margulis's ingredient list, changing to "green chili peppers" to "green chiles." I don't know that I'm prepared to defend the distinction in a technical or historical way, but we're quite proud of our green chiles here and we would never call them "green chili peppers."
At least for green chiles! Speaking of first encounters with Mexican food, I'm always fascinated by Charlotte Greenwood and her red "guacamala sauce" in Moon Over Miami. Was that carelessness or ignorance on the part of the filmmakers, or are we meant to understand it's a joke? The character is supposedly famous for her recipe, so presumably she knows what it's made of? I assume that in 1941 guacamole would still have been largely unfamiliar to most Americans. (And yes, I have indeed watched Moon Over Miami enough times to be "always fascinated" by that bit.)
Somewhat hilariously, the only allusions I can find to anything called "guacamala sauce" are, indeed, references to Moon Over Miami! Perhaps we should take it as an inadvertent joke made by a writer who'd once half-heard the term "guacamole" and then, needing an exotic name for a sauce, unconsciously came up with "guacamala"?
That said, I find that there are Mexican restaurants still open in Los Angeles that have been there since the late 1920s. The question, then, is whether any of the Moon screenwriters had ever been in any of them.
I mean, you’d think they would have been, right? So they’d know guacamole is green. On the other hand, maybe green just didn’t photograph well. It’s well known Hollywood lore that Dorothy’s slippers, guacamole-colored in the book, were ruby red in the movie because it looked better.
You capitalization of "Guacamole" jarred me, then I realized you capped it because it was capped in the recipe title. That used to give me trouble—what to do when a generic term was used as a recipe title (in, say, a cookbook I was working on). Thank heavens I don't have to work on those anymore!
Peg Bracken suggests that when you see a recipe called, for instance, Guacamole Boris Karloff, that means it’s to be taken as much fancier than a recipe called, simply, Boris Karloff’s Guacamole.
Then thanks to Substack for helping me find my way back home after enjoying a wonderful digression. Yours may be the only pieces I always read twice; once for the main text and a second time for the footnotes.
I will always remember the time my sister Robin, in maybe 6th grade, wanted to cook something but was put off by various complex recipes in my mother's cookbooks. But she selected one that required no cooking, arranged to get the ingredients and surprised us one day, announcing proudly, "I made Gukka-mole!"
We had no "fried tortilla wedges" or anything else, really, to put it on, and weren't sure how to eat it in the first place, so we dutifully sampled spoonfuls of it, and the general reaction was "yuck," which didn't do Robin's spirits much good, that afternoon. But then, she didn't like it either.
I think that was my first encounter with Mexican food. Luckily, later encounters went much better.
I hadn't known about Tales of Terror. Until this moment I was only familiar with The Comedy of Terrors, which came out the following year with much the same cast.
But the most surprising thing I've learned today is the Karloff (Pratt) connection to Anna Leonowens.
And of course I meant The Comedy of Terrors! Boris isn’t in Tales of Terror! Gotta fix that! (All these not very good 1960s horror movies and horror spoofs: After a while, you can’t tell them apart.) And most important: Thank you for the catch!
I watched The Raven for the first time relatively recently, and just when it was beginning to wear me out with its effortfulness, it decided to actually be fun and I ended up enjoying myself.
Thank you, Benjamin. I don’t want to tigger you, but one of the ingredients in the recipe clipping was not accepted in today’s Spelling Bee.
Trust me, I was already triggered by that.
I might even have been tiggered by it. 😉
Oops! I have that same typo problem. Grrr®
It would be helpful to have your comments on "mental." Language about mental health and illness has become quite odd. "Mental health" itself is becoming a contronym, at least as an adjective. It is not unusual to come across a news item about someone violent who has suffered a "mental health episode," which obviously does not mean that the person briefly came to their senses.
And I do think that I’ll get to it eventually, though it is indeed a heavily freighted subject and not one I want to treat hastily or flippantly in an article about, well, guacamole.
Agreed. But there’s something about the contortions of euphemism that tempt one to at least a little mockery.
A contortion I’m seeing more often lately, including in the Toronto Star (Canada’s largest newspaper): “[The person] suffered from mental health” (to avoid the supposedly pejorative “mental illness”).
Well, that's not good.
I guess if I'm going to write about this, I'm going to have to actually do a little research and not just, in my tried-and-true fashion, riff and make stuff up.
Or, y’know, just put it on your radar. Serendipity will deliver examples worth musing about.
It usually does!
Thanks for today's chuckles and arcane info. I had no idea about the relationship between Anna and Boris. Strange world. Not that you asked, but for my money, the best version of The King and I story--much as I love the musical--is Anna and the King with Jodie Foster and Chow Yun-Fat. I don't believe the supposed romance, but it's a sweet story.
Although, depending on where the Karloff menage was located, the Gelson’s might well have been a Mayfair.
Ha ha ha! I was taking a leap into the only old-school L.A. supermarket I could think of.
Also, check this out!
https://www.morethanamonster.com/the-american-homes-of-boris-karloff.html
Also, I knew that Boris had moved back to England in the late 1950s, but we of course know that he was back in Hollywood any number of times in the years afterward to make movies. And even I know when a detail is one detail too many.
Perhaps it's already within your ken, but the "Bela and Boris" season of Karina Longworth's podcast You Must Remember This is worth a listen on the topic.
Notably for completists, the Mayfair at Franklin and Bronson became a Gelson's in the 2000s. Love the home listing--upward mobility, literally, as he ends up on Mulholland before flying off to England.
Actually I knew he meant dry sherry, not that Bristols stuff. However, I am stuck on the "2 avocados" - is that the very small grocery store Haas avocados, or our giant avocados we grow in Florida? 1 Russell avocado is equivalent to maybe 5 Haas.
"The past is a foreign country," as they say.
So, I guess, are avocados.
I have answered my own question I suppose. My quick search provided that Fuerte was the dominant variety in the 60's. They appear larger than Hass. The amount of other ingredients made me wonder about their size. Now I can make this to celebrate Guac Day, with a tipple to Boris.
I'm with the "acid is acid" folks. Laura Bush famously makes her guac with lemon juice not lime. I can vouch for it.
Coincidentally, I make a drink I call Jalisco Rainwater which is like a dry martini only anejo and Grande Marniere (just a burn - you want it floral not orangey) that benefits from a drop of fino sherry if you have it handy so there you go.
I also use lemon not lime in guac.
😂❤️🥰💚🥑
Mmm, guacamole made with dry sherry. My mouth is watering.
So happy to find you mentioned the “emergency” scalloped potatoes. It stood out to me too. Just when does one feel the need to break the glass on that one?
As a New Mexican, I appreciate that the L.A. Times corrected Ms. Margulis's ingredient list, changing to "green chili peppers" to "green chiles." I don't know that I'm prepared to defend the distinction in a technical or historical way, but we're quite proud of our green chiles here and we would never call them "green chili peppers."
How sharp-eyed you are!
At least for green chiles! Speaking of first encounters with Mexican food, I'm always fascinated by Charlotte Greenwood and her red "guacamala sauce" in Moon Over Miami. Was that carelessness or ignorance on the part of the filmmakers, or are we meant to understand it's a joke? The character is supposedly famous for her recipe, so presumably she knows what it's made of? I assume that in 1941 guacamole would still have been largely unfamiliar to most Americans. (And yes, I have indeed watched Moon Over Miami enough times to be "always fascinated" by that bit.)
Somewhat hilariously, the only allusions I can find to anything called "guacamala sauce" are, indeed, references to Moon Over Miami! Perhaps we should take it as an inadvertent joke made by a writer who'd once half-heard the term "guacamole" and then, needing an exotic name for a sauce, unconsciously came up with "guacamala"?
That said, I find that there are Mexican restaurants still open in Los Angeles that have been there since the late 1920s. The question, then, is whether any of the Moon screenwriters had ever been in any of them.
I mean, you’d think they would have been, right? So they’d know guacamole is green. On the other hand, maybe green just didn’t photograph well. It’s well known Hollywood lore that Dorothy’s slippers, guacamole-colored in the book, were ruby red in the movie because it looked better.
I thought they were silver in the book.
You capitalization of "Guacamole" jarred me, then I realized you capped it because it was capped in the recipe title. That used to give me trouble—what to do when a generic term was used as a recipe title (in, say, a cookbook I was working on). Thank heavens I don't have to work on those anymore!
Peg Bracken suggests that when you see a recipe called, for instance, Guacamole Boris Karloff, that means it’s to be taken as much fancier than a recipe called, simply, Boris Karloff’s Guacamole.
Thank you for embedding links to the footnotes in the text!
All credit to Substack and its mechanisms. I just press buttons and type.
Then thanks to Substack for helping me find my way back home after enjoying a wonderful digression. Yours may be the only pieces I always read twice; once for the main text and a second time for the footnotes.
I’ll take it! (Happily!)
Let’s not forget that a compatriot of Karloff in the horror biz was Vincent Price who wrote a rather good cookbook …
Footnote 6.
Obviously I posted (about Vincent Price) before I got to the footnotes. Indeed, the Price books are quite good.
I will always remember the time my sister Robin, in maybe 6th grade, wanted to cook something but was put off by various complex recipes in my mother's cookbooks. But she selected one that required no cooking, arranged to get the ingredients and surprised us one day, announcing proudly, "I made Gukka-mole!"
We had no "fried tortilla wedges" or anything else, really, to put it on, and weren't sure how to eat it in the first place, so we dutifully sampled spoonfuls of it, and the general reaction was "yuck," which didn't do Robin's spirits much good, that afternoon. But then, she didn't like it either.
I think that was my first encounter with Mexican food. Luckily, later encounters went much better.
I’m glad that things improved!
I hadn't known about Tales of Terror. Until this moment I was only familiar with The Comedy of Terrors, which came out the following year with much the same cast.
But the most surprising thing I've learned today is the Karloff (Pratt) connection to Anna Leonowens.
And of course I meant The Comedy of Terrors! Boris isn’t in Tales of Terror! Gotta fix that! (All these not very good 1960s horror movies and horror spoofs: After a while, you can’t tell them apart.) And most important: Thank you for the catch!
They're somewhat slipshod, those spoofs, but I still loved Comedy of Terrors. I think Karloff, Lorre, Rathbone and Price had fun making it.
I watched The Raven for the first time relatively recently, and just when it was beginning to wear me out with its effortfulness, it decided to actually be fun and I ended up enjoying myself.