A single Delta girl, no matter where she wanders, expects to receive a constant stream of wedding clippings from the local newspapers, courtesy of Muh-tha. Mother has not sent these clippings with an eye to sharing another girl’s joy. No. A wedding clipping, unless it happens to be your own, is accusatory by nature. One featuring the happy bride-to-be of a spurned suitor is particularly punitive. The only reason Mother does not scribble “See what you let get away, you silly little fool!” is that she doesn’t have to.
There is only one thing worse than this gushing river of wedding write-ups: when it stops. When it slows to a trickle and then ceases altogether, there is only one inference possible: You’re on the shelf. All the cute girls are married and the supply of eligible bachelors is running as low as Mother’s standards have become. The silver and china are destined for the good daughters, the ones who loved Mother enough to get married. Spinsterhood looms. The only way to avert this fate is latching on to the next male with a discernible pulse and joining the ranks of mature brides.
What constitutes a mature bride? Delta girls today are fortunate in having more time to escape this shame than their mothers and grandmothers. Twenty-one was once considered hopeless. If you weren’t married by then, you were ashamed to go out in public, which made dating a lot harder. We know a matron, now in her eighties, who skidded dangerously close to her thirtieth year unwed. She was fortunate in her employment—she was the telephone operator. Whenever her reluctant swain attempted to call another love interest, she disconnected him. Unable to make contact with other members of the fair sex, he threw in the towel and married her.
Today there is probably only one group of Delta girls who always get their ring-by-spring: the education majors. There is something about knowing everything there is to know about construction paper and glue that drives the men wild. Other majors may produce degrees, but not the coveted Mrs. degree. Higher education isn’t the only impediment to happiness. In the olden days (like a few years before we came along), fathers of daughters spoke of the necessity of having “something to fall back on.” It is what today would be called a job. A job would be Precious Baby’s last resort if her most promising matrimonial candidate turned out to be a dirty, rotten son of a gun, who left her high and dry. But times—and economic realities—have changed. Delta girls today are encouraged—nay, poked with a cow poke—to enter the job market. Some carry this to extremes, becoming successful executives, who, much to Muh-tha’s chagrin, fail to marry at a respectable age. The average age for a first wedding now hovers around twenty-seven—after thirty, the clippings are but a memory. “When sending your children to college,” sighs a frustrated mother, “I advise parents to look at the boy-girl ratio. [Pause] We forgot to do this.”
Olivia Morgan Gilliam had reached the ripe old age of twenty-four, incipient spinsterhood in her day, by the time of her first marriage. Despite being boy-crazy—she used to talk about SA, which meant sex appeal, but she’d never say anything so vulgar as the s-word—she didn’t seem to notice her humiliation. When asked how she had occupied her time between dropping out of All Saints Episcopal High School, where she had elaborately decorated her textbooks with the names of her suitors, and her first special day, Olivia Morgan flashed her what-kind-of-idiot-are-you?-do-you-think-I-went-to-India-to-hep-the-poor? look. “What do you think I did?” she replied somewhat condescendingly. “I went to paw-ties.”
Why did we bother to ask? Miss Olivia had such a good time at paw-ties, which were mostly of the dancing sort in her day, that nobody noticed that she was becoming older than the other girls. She eventually fell madly in love with a young man she spotted at a garden paw-tie. The marriage didn’t last that long after Herbert got tipsy and stripped nekkid in broad daylight on Main Street.
Before espying Herbert standing by a bed of prize-winning camellias, Olivia Morgan had taught Sunday school at St. James’ (where she explained to the children that Jesus was the sort of nice young man who would most certainly have gone to Sewanee, as we call the University of the South, if He’d had the good fortune to be born in the Delta). The children adored her. When they learned that she was engaged, they threw a surprise handkerchief shower, with each child bringing a nice hanky to Sunday school that day. A Southern lady can never have too many fancy handkerchiefs. To the day she died, Olivia Morgan’s eyes misted over and she had to dab her eyes with a lace hanky whenever she thought about her handkerchief shower. Thoughts of her husbands produced angrier tears.
Another unmarried belle remained on the dance circuit even longer than Olivia Morgan. Nobody could muster the courage to tell this rapidly aging Isadora Duncan that she was embarrassing herself. Finally, a prominent matron took matters into her own hands. She sent a handwritten note asking the not-so-young thing to serve as a chaperone at the next dance. Chaperones are eagle-eyed older ladies who group themselves around the edges of the ballroom, watching for signs of drunkenness or, worse, faux pas. They are not spring chickens. An invitation to join their ranks was most unwelcome, but the aging belle got the message. Her dancing days ended; her cocktail party days began, proving that there is life after your dancing days are ended. Everybody rejoiced—even in the Delta, where entertainment opportunities are perhaps more limited than in New York City, we eventually tire of watching somebody make a fool of herself.
One Delta family is famous for marrying late. The male members of the Jeffreys family, which has farmed the same plot of land since Methuselah was a boy, always married late. They were always just in the nick of time to produce a lone heir. When Archer Jeffreys III married—after a comparatively brief courtship of fourteen years—his bride produced not one, but two heirs.
The embarrassed Jeffreys family acted as if she had given birth to a litter. Older brides, of course, mean older bridal attendants. The matron of honor at the Jeffreys wedding (a small affair at St. James’, of course, followed by an at-home reception) was visibly with child, her third. When the officiating clergyman asked the wedding party to kneel, he shot a glowering look at the matron of honor. “Not you,” he hissed. He was just being careful. The only thing that might have shocked the Jeffreys more than a litter of human children was a matron of honor giving birth during the nuptials.
Unmarried girls past the blush of youth become deeply aware of their plight.
“We’re all needier than the United Way,” Roberta Shaw, pushing thirty-five, opined as she prepared to leap for Anne Epps Highsmith’s bridal bouquet. Precious Billups tripped her and caught it, but Roberta needn’t have fretted: Her storied bachelor days were drawing to a close. Roberta was a party girl of wide renown. Dancing on tables at low-down French Quarter bars all hours of the night and day, she’d reiterate her motto, “Eatin’s cheatin’,” (eatin’ is cheatin’, because it sobers you up). Some tacky older brides can’t resist the allure of a big church wedding with fifty-seven bridesmaids creaking up the aisle. Roberta was not one of these. Having fun until the wee hours doesn’t mean you’re not a lady. Roberta knew that a small wedding, with the Presbyterian minister performing the rites in the living room, was suitable for a bride in her advanced state of decay. She knew, too, that the invitations should be handwritten. She knew that using a ballpoint pen or anything other than jet-black ink, preferably from a fountain pen, would have made her late mother, the redoubtable Mrs. Robert Shaw, turn in her grave. She knew the correct style of an invitation to the wedding of a mature bride (“Percy and I are to be married at such and such a time, on such and such a date, at such and such a place”).
What she did not know was that one person on the guest list, Mrs. Charles Edgar Swain, the most prominent citizen of Alligator, Mississippi, was not a widow. Mr. Charles Edgar Swain was very much alive, though rarely seen in public nowadays. Because of circumstances beyond his control, he was obliged to pass pleasant hours in the attic, with only his dear companion, Mister Jack Daniel’s, to help him while away the time. “If you call my house after seven thirty,” he used brag, in his freer days, “you’re not talking to Charlie Swain—you’re talking to Jack Daniel’s.” (We positively reject the unkind rumor that there was a lock on the attic door.) Having been away from the Delta, Roberta ignorantly addressed the invitation to Mrs. Swain alone. Mrs. Swain may not have entertained the slightest intention of letting Charlie out for a wedding, but she did not look kindly on those who slighted her husband, and—by implication—herself. Her regret arrived by return mail, and Roberta didn’t even get so much as a dinky little ashtray from the first family of Alligator.
Spouses seemed to give Roberta particular trouble. While helping her with the invitations, Roberta’s friends fell into the bottle. Perhaps this is why one of them inadvertently invited the local clergy without including their wives. (This was back when we had only men of the cloth.) Unlike Mrs. Swain, however, they refused to succumb to false pride. Wild horses can’t keep our holy ones away from good food and drink.
Some mature brides are not first-timers. They were not left on the shelf—they got on the wrong shelf. Divorce has always been our dirty little secret in the Mississippi Delta. “When I got my first divorce,” bragged Olivia Morgan, a self-described pioneer of divorce, “ladies just weren’t getting divorces.” Or so we pretended. In truth, more ladies than we cared to admit were getting divorces. Many of us, now in our fifties, sixties, and seventies, grew up with half siblings—and our half brothers and sisters didn’t fall from the skies, even though Mama told us that they had. The difference now is that divorce is more open—and more frequent. Some brides and grooms part company by the time their write-up appears in the Mississippi Magazine bridal issue. We can’t help thinking that, like the tacky groom’s cake, this is not necessarily an improvement.
If you marry more than once, the correct wedding order is: First wedding at the church, with all the trimmings; second through third at home; and all subsequent ones at the county courthouse. You might want to go to another county, if the number of weddings is getting really high. Anne Dudley’s last wedding—was it four or five?—was joyful but appropriately ill-attended. She chose a courthouse in an undisclosed county. “I certainly couldn’t ask anybody to come,” averred the always considerate Anne Dudley. “My friends were sick and tired of coming to my weddings.”
“We had to be married by a judge, but I didn’t care as long as he read the Book of Common Prayer,” said another mature bride. In keeping with the dictates of good taste, her wedding—the second for both bride and groom—was held at a friend’s house, way out in the country. They recited their vows on the front porch. The host made one big mistake—planting rare azaleas, ordered specially from a florist in another state, in honor of the wedding. They cost an arm and a leg. Even if we could remember for sure who it was, we’d never reveal who was found passed out—we mean napping—in the rare azalea bed the next morning. The bride was nowhere to be found. Her frantic new mate called his new stepson to inquire about her whereabouts. “I reckon she’s with you ’cause you married her last night,” he replied unhelpfully. A search of the premises turned up the bride: on the sofa in the living room. She, too, was napping. Only one task remained: bailing the wedding guests out of the pokey. The host had supported the wrong candidate for sheriff, and the winner was going out of his way to enforce the drunk-driving laws.
Sad to say, bridegrooms with one foot in the grave are every bit as hard to find as the more sprightly specimens. Old coots as mean as yard dogs get to play the field and date the cutest widows, while women have to pore over the obits to see who’s available within courting distance. The Greenville widows are like vultures: When some elderly Adonis loses his wife, the casseroles start pouring into his house. One grumpy old man opened his hand, after shaking hands with a widow, to find she had slipped him a piece of paper with her phone number on it—this was at the funeral parlor.
When Mr. Dick Reeves, who looked like Ichabod Crane, lost his first wife, he became an instant widow heartthrob. Asked to dinner almost nightly, he always showed up with his famous home-baked rolls. The widows oohed and aaahed over his culinary talent. His sister got sick and tired of listening to the widows’ raptures. She let slip the truth about Mr. Dick’s perfect rolls: “They’re Pillsbury,” she smugly informed some well-meaning widow. Did this shove Mr. Dick off his pedestal? Not a bit. He had a pulse and could drive. That’s about all it takes to set a widow’s heart aflutter. The widow set continued to swoon over Mr. Dick’s crusty rolls, trying to forget that the only thing crustier was grumpy Mr. Dick.
The thing that took Mr. Dick off the merry-go-round was not coronary failure brought on by hot-buttered Pillsbury rolls. It was his second marriage. It is painful to record that it did not last long. But it was Mr. Dick’s own fault: When he drew a map of Greenville for his new bride, a seventy-something newcomer to town, he drew the route to the post office right past the liquor store. When she went to put in her change of address card so her Social Security wouldn’t be late, the liquor store was as far as she got. It seems that Mr. Dick’s blushing bride liked to tipple. After a speedy divorce, followed by another Pillsbury phase, Mr. Dick at last found true love. This time it was a perfect match: She moved to Greenville, got in the garden club, and gave up all pretense that she gave a big whoop-de-doo about Mr. Dick’s silly rolls.
Old Mrs. Bates set her cap for Dr. Henry George, who was a strict, teetotaling Methodist. Mrs. Bates had a sure-proof way of getting him to the altar: seduction. He may have been seduced, but he was still a strict Methodist. Whenever anybody stopped by to see Mrs. Bates after dark, he hid in the hall closet. That way nobody knew they were elderly sinners. “She was cross-eyed and fat, but she had good taste,” said a friend of old Mrs. Bates, who was very popular, despite her lack of female pulchritude, and who, by then, was old Mrs. George.
One of our older brides went all the way to Europe to find a groom—but it must have been worth it because she found a handsome one, twenty years her junior. Alice Worthington, an arty divorcée and scion of one of our FFG (First Families of Greenville) families, was traveling in Spain. She had gone to soak up the culture. Not in the first blush of youth, she had a heart attack while walking down the street in Madrid. She collapsed into the arms of a dashing violinist named Jose. He loyally nursed her back to health, returning with her to her native shores, which he loved. Jose wanted to stay in America. Alice consulted the family lawyer. “You have two choices,” he told her. “You can adopt him, or you can marry him.” It took her about three seconds to make up her mind.
Olivia Morgan did not have to go to Europe or even Sewanee to find her second husband. She found a man closer to home: He was dating her next-door neighbor, Amelie Plunkett, who, like Olivia Morgan, was getting up in years—she was thirty. She had never been married, and this raised Olivia Morgan’s sporting instincts. The temptation was irresistible: Why let another girl keep her beau? Olivia Morgan was not above trickery. Every afternoon, at just about the time the gentleman caller, a bald-headed man from Tennessee, was arriving, Olivia Morgan gathered the neighborhood children (including Little Olivia, ten) to play Devil in the Ditch on the front sidewalk. This is a children’s game that consists of running back and forth across the sidewalk; it was advantageous in that it allowed a young divorcée to display the gams of which she was so intensely proud, without abandoning the pretense of maidenly modesty. It was a successful maneuver. “Pretty soon I saw the bald-headed man smiling at me,” she recalled, remembering yet another triumph over a member of her fair sex. Unfortunately, she got carried away and married him, something she could never quite explain, beyond reporting that he was “very insistent.” They married the same weekend her parents had gone to her brother’s wedding in Kentucky—she knew that they wouldn’t give her permission to marry a total stranger. Making life-changing decisions was not her forte; still, her younger daughter always felt she owed her very existence to Miss Plunkett.
One of the good places to look for an older groom, particularly after the child-bearing years have passed, is in the bosom of your own family. Don’t believe it when Yankees sneer at marrying into your own family as something that only happens in Arkansas. Nice people in the Delta are kin to all the other nice people in the Delta, including being kin to themselves. “My grandparents were double first cousins,” one of our friends noted, as rude Yankee visitors searched her visage for a twitch or some other telltale sign that what’s good for the Hapsburgs might not be as good for the Delta.
One of our most famous mature brides was Mrs. Alcorn Dudley. Mrs. Dudley was a prominent widow whose grandfather had been the governor of Mississippi during our troubles. The Dudleys had more silver than any family in the state being the governor had written to Ulysses Grant a demanding the family silver be returned—it was returned, but the governor’s friends were miffed that he addressed Grant “gentleman to gentleman.” Mrs. Dudley wasn’t looking for a husband, for herself or her daughter, Capitola, who was safely married to an Episcopal clergyman named George Neville. The Nevilles must have been very devout, because George’s little brother, Ned, was also studying for the ministry. He was also studying Mrs. Dudley. “I think Ned is infatuated with Mrs. Dudley,” Olivia Morgan mused aloud one afternoon as she and her two brothers, also men of the cloth, sat on the front porch in Sewanee. This made the brothers jump up from their chairs and wave their arms in the air. They also ordered her never to say such a thing.
Olivia Morgan didn’t have to say it again—it was soon obvious to everybody. Not long after Olivia shocked her brothers, Mrs. Dudley and Ned announced their engagement. Even by Delta standards, it is considered mangling the family tree when a mother becomes her own daughter’s junior sister-in-law.
After taking his brother’s wife’s mother as his lawfully, if highly unusually, wedded wife, Ned did have to confront one serious problem: His bride drove like a bat out of hell. Covering his eyes to avoid the sight of oncoming traffic, he would beg her to slow down—if she was old enough to die, he certainly wasn’t! “Oh, hush, Ned,” the blushing bride would retort. “I was driving before you were born.” Unfortunately, while serving a parish in Alabama, Ned fell head over heels in love with a damsel a few years older than his wife. It was a stuffy era, and Ned was defrocked on account of his divorce.
Another famous mature bride was Weezee Davis of Leland—we have to admit that she was an immature bride, no matter her age. She wasn’t a mature bride, even chronologically, the first time she and Sonny Lloyd married each other. Even the second time they wed each other, she wasn’t all that ancient, though by the time they tied the knot the third time, she was a mature bride in every way, except for the way she still behaved. Sonny and Weezee had their ups and downs, in every one of their marriages. One down was the time he passed out—or rather took a nap—on the sofa and Weezee was so angry that she came up with the perfect retaliation: She buried his false teeth in the front yard. He never found them. During another of Sonny’s alcohol-induced naps, Weezee stripped the recumbent Sonny nekkid, painted his body blue, and arranged him artistically in front of the picture window. A traffic jam on Deer Creek Drive ensued. It must be admitted that Weezee’s and Sonny’s dress standards slipped with each succeeding marriage; the third time, she wore red tennis shoes, and he wore boll weevil poison. It was crop dusting season. It is a good thing they didn’t divorce after that—Mississippi law doesn’t allow you to marry the same person more than three times. If the third time hadn’t been a charm, they would have had to go to that anything-goes state of Arkansas to get married.
“We never had a cross word,” Weezee reminisced after Sonny unexpectedly keeled over dead one day. Some of us had a hard time keeping a straight face. But she was just being smart. Tip to grieving widows on the prowl: Never say that your last marriage was a living hell, even if it was. That is bad advertising. Weezee, by the way, still wears her red tennis shoes, but now she kicks up her heels in Memphis, where she lives happily with her much-younger husband.
As much as we advocate quiet weddings after the first one, some brides just can’t control themselves—especially if she happens to be a seventy-something demoiselle engaged to a spry gallant of sixty-three who delights in refilling her whisky glass and lighting her cigarette. Buddy and Eleanor Griffin were such a couple—he’s a restoration architect, and Eleanor hoped he’d keep her restored. Like Weezee, Eleanor had married at least one of her husbands more than once. But who’s counting? This time it was the real thing. Nothing would do but a wedding at sea in the form of the “wedding package” on a “celebrity cruise,” whatever that means. At eighty, Lavinia Highsmith, the senior member of the wedding party (but not by much!), was matron of honor. She was impressed with the ship. “It was the original Love Boat,” she boasted. She added, “I’m too old to swim, but I can shop and eat.”
The wedding package included the rehearsal dinner, the wedding ceremony, performed by the captain, and a wedding dinner. There was only one thing amiss—thrifty Eleanor refused to buy a new dress. As the mature bride glided up the aisle, given away by a young man who’d left his own young man behind in Houston, it was obvious to all that she had not been on wartime rations since last donning her peach satin wedding frock. “I thought it might split,” reminisced the matron of honor. But it didn’t. In a moving ceremony, the captain of the ship married them—or we think he did; the captain didn’t speak word one of English. Mature brides seem to like exotic locales. We know one who planned a scenic wedding at the Grand Canyon. The couple picked up a minister in Las Vegas, the first leg of their journey. As the bridal party descended into the canyon on donkeys, the bride thought to ask the reverend, “What denomination are you, anyway?” “Lady,” he replied, “I’ll be any one you want me to be.”
Before we close, a few words must be said about Anne Dudley’s weddings—she could not have been more wrong in saying that we were sick and tired of attending her weddings—at least, we were always willing to attend the receptions. “If only her marriages were as nice as the receptions,” said a friend, “everything would have worked out well for Anne Dudley.” If anybody knows how to get married, it’s the well-practiced Anne Dudley. Her first was a church wedding, followed by a blowout in the backyard on Deer Creek Drive. She received so many wedding presents—we didn’t know there would be future opportunities—that a guard was hired to protect them while the wedding party was at the church.
A high-noon wedding—considered the height of elegance in the Delta—was briefly a possibility for Anne Dudley. But few Delta brides (and especially Anne Dudley) are able to get up this early in the morning, even to get married. The noon wedding therefore remains more of an ideal than something we are actually able to experience. So it was a white-tie affair at eight o’clock. It was the wedding to end all weddings—except that the marriage ended, too. We had such a good time at Anne Dudley’s second reception, at her sister’s house, that thirteen of us boarded the plane with the bride and groom. Did you have to be a newlywed to want to go to New Orleans?
If anybody has a sense of propriety, it’s Anne Dudley—so we were surprised that she chose to marry her third husband in a ceremony at the church. This is against the rule, but maybe it could be justified on the grounds that, as has been noted, Anne Dudley found him at her Bible study class. Perhaps, in addition to Scripture, they bonded over their past marital misadventures—he’d been married and divorced twice, too. During the Communion (not the done thing in the past, but the modern Episcopalian will do anything to add the panache of more ritual—especially the ones who grew up Baptist and are fascinated by ceremony) Anne Dudley plunked herself on the bishop’s throne. Somehow this just didn’t seem right, though Anne Dudley looked as saintly as if the heavenly hosts were coming to waft her to marital heaven, which was certainly not the case. But the marriage didn’t last long, so why carp?
And the reception, like all of Anne Dudley’s, was more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
Candlelight and white roses were used to decorate for the reception, held at the home of a childhood friend. Candles are an inspired choice for mature guests, because we all look a lot better at our tender ages in the dim flickering of candles.
The cut glass also sparkled. Anne Dudley’s own white linens added a nice touch—the hostess was careful not to use any bearing monograms of former husbands! We did use a silver bread basket with a monogram from one of Anne Dudley’s previous marriages—but, with a damask napkin lining it, who could tell?
Anne Dudley’s sister and brothers sang and played their guitars. Everybody danced. It is no wonder that many say this was Anne Dudley’s best wedding reception.
There were three round serving tables. Tables one and two had the same layout: big silver tray, big silver chafing dish. The third table was sweets. At the last minute, we hurriedly arranged kumquats around the wedding cake. Rapunzel, a black and white cocker spaniel, loves chocolate (which isn’t good for dogs) and had taken nibbles here and there. The kumquats concealed his depredations nicely.
Pasta anything was so un-Delta a few years ago, except for spaghetti with red sauce, which is popular at the Delta’s Italian restaurants. Now we go to receptions with huge pasta “stations”… we guess to feed the hordes.
Pasta bars fit right in with the horrible invention of the sushi bar, martini bar, mojito bar… all too often seen at Delta weddings. For a third wedding reception, however, black pasta is fine.
We chose this pasta because it was black—black squid, to be exact and, with the white sauce, it would look beautiful. One pound of pasta will generously serve six as a first course. Of course, served from a chafing dish, it goes a lot further. Cook your pasta al dente and do not rinse. Toss the cooked fettuccini with a bit of cream, at room temperature.
Transfer to the chafing dish and cover with the following sauce.
2 cups heavy cream
6 tablespoons butter
2 cloves minced garlic
Salt
White pepper
Nutmeg, freshly grated, i.e., from the nut
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese, the fresher the better, no Kraft’s (We’re not sure the stuff you find in the dried food section is even cheese!)
Warm the cream, butter, and garlic over a low flame. Add the salt, pepper, and a few gratings of nutmeg. Simmer for about 10 minutes or until well heated and slightly thickened.
Stir in the Parmesan and toss gently with the pasta.
Garnish with extra Parmesan and a grating of nutmeg.
(If you must go to a kitchen shower—and we pray nobody will give one for a mature bride!—a nutmeg grater and box of whole nutmegs make a nice present. A grating of fresh nutmeg adds another dimension to almost anything… particularly brandy milk punch. It also gives the impression that you know what you’re doing!)
Serves six.
Down here, Mrs. Cheney also means the late Winifred Cheney, one of the best cooks in Mississippi, a Jackson native, and the mother of the Reverend Reynolds Cheney, for years the popular rector of St. James’. Mrs. Cheney’s roast was served on the biggest silver tray we could find, with tons of fresh rosemary as a garnish. Of course, rosemary is the herb of remembrance; fondly as we remember the party, we’d like to forget Anne Dudley’s third marriage.
This is a marinated roast that must not be overcooked. The original recipe called for a brisket but we have always used a rump roast. Of course, nothing beats a tenderloin, but this is delicious.
2 envelopes (0.75 ounce each) dried Good Seasons garlic and herb salad dressing mix
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons water
1 bottle (24 ounces) of ketchup (Use the one that won the race)
14 drops Tabasco
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
Freshly ground pepper
1 pound rump roast, 10 to 12 pounds
Combine the salad dressing mix, vinegar, oil, and water. Stir or shake until blended.
Add the remaining ingredients.
Place the roast in a large roaster or bowl. Pour the marinade over the roast and refrigerate (covered) at least 24 hours. Turn frequently.
Grill outside. Allow the roast to “sit” for 20 minutes before carving.
Slice thinly and serve with homemade rolls.
Serves forty.
2 cups homemade mayonnaise (see Gayden’s mayonnaise, here)
2 green onions, chopped
2 avocados, diced
Lemon juice
Put mayonnaise, green onions, and avocados in a food processor. Process until the avocado is mixed into the mayonnaise. Add lemon juice to taste—about a tablespoon. Chill in an airtight container. If you plan to refrigerate for a while, add the avocado pit to the mayonnaise to prevent it from turning brown, and remove before serving.
Makes two cups.
1 large egg
1½ cups vegetable oil
1½ tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1½ teaspoons Tabasco sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon white pepper
Put the egg in the food processor and pulse for 30 seconds. Add the oil slowly, while pulsing. When the desired consistency is reached, add the other ingredients until they are blended. This doesn’t take very long. Taste and adjust seasonings to your liking. If you blend too long, your mayonnaise will be too thick. Refrigerate at least an hour. This will improve the taste.
Makes about two cups.
½ cup homemade mayonnaise
½ cup sour cream
cup horseradish (from a jar) or to taste
Combine these ingredients and allow to sit in the refrigerator overnight. Taste and correct the amount of horseradish… you might want more!
If using freshly grated horseradish:
2 cups heavy cream, whipped
2 to 3 tablespoons horseradish
Lemon juice
Fold the horseradish into the whipped cream and season to taste with freshly squeezed lemon juice. There is simply no excuse for a bought sauce! This is so easy and delicious.
Makes one cup.
On the second table, we served smoked salmon on a silver tray, with individual compotes containing finely chopped red onions, tiny capers, finely chopped eggs, and whipped and flavored cream cheese. We put the wrapped, seeded lemon wedges in a Revere bowl. Black bread had been cut into heart shapes.
Also on this table were…
Hmmm. This reminds me of the old slogan: Eat fish and live longer; eat oysters and love longer. So maybe this isn’t the most appropriate choice for a third wedding reception… but too late now.
1 jar fresh oysters
1 stick unsalted butter
1 teaspoon chervil
1 teaspoon fines herbs
Drain oysters well. They must sit in a colander for a while. It is essential they be free of any extra juice.
Sauté the oysters in the butter. Add the chervil and fines herbs.
Cook the oysters until the edges curl.
This recipe can be doubled.
Makes eight.
We didn’t actually serve this, because we had avocado mayonnaise. But this is also delicious served with pickled shrimp. Make this the day before… it’s better!
4 cups chicken broth (use the 32-ounce boxed variety if you do not have homemade, but a well-seasoned homemade broth is much better)
4 envelopes unflavored gelatin
4 tablespoons red wine vinegar
6 tablespoons chopped green onions
½ cup lemon juice
6 soft avocados, peeled and seeded
1 cup homemade mayonnaise
2 teaspoons Tabasco
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon white pepper
2 teaspoons Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons minced parsley
2 cups heavy cream, whipped
Using a small saucepan, warm chicken broth over low heat. Sprinkle (do not dump or you will get glue balls) gelatin over the warming broth. Stir until dissolved.
Add vinegar, green onions, and lemon juice. Refrigerate.
In a food processor, process avocados until barely creamed. You want a few pieces of avocado to remain. Do not puree the avocados.
Add the chicken broth mixture, being sure to stir until incorporated.
Add the mayonnaise and seasonings.
Fold in the whipped cream. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary.
Grease a 12-cup Bundt pan with mayonnaise.
Pour in the mousse mixture and refrigerate overnight.
Makes forty servings for a cocktail party.
When potpourri first hit the scene, one of our most savvy cateresses put some in a bowl by the wedding book, only to look up and see a male guest putting a big handful in his mouth. Talk about roughage! White candied almonds are traditional at weddings, and they are not only beautiful, but a lot easier to digest! They are also said to be good luck for the guests. We had two compotes, one with white candied almonds, and one with slivered almonds, which are called dragees. For white candied almonds, the number is the Central Grocery in New Orleans: (504)-523-1620. They are also nice as party favors, tied in little silk bags. For silver almond dragees: Diane’s in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her number is: (501)-224-2639.
We drove all over the country with fried walnuts (and a nut spoon!) after our first book came out. We briefly lost the nut spoon at the Margaret Mitchell House in Atlanta (if we wanted anybody else to have it, it would be Miss Mitchell’s ghost), but it was retrieved for us. The recipe comes from the Beyond Parsley Cookbook, which was put out by the Junior League of Kansas City.
8 cups water
4 cups English walnut halves
½ cup sugar
Cooking oil
Salt
Bring water to a boil, drop in the walnuts, and boil for one minute. Drain the nuts in a colander. Have water running very hot, or use a kettle of boiling water, and rinse.
Drain the nuts well a second time, immediately place them in a bowl, and coat with sugar.
Heat the oil and place the walnuts in the oil about 1 cup at a time, depending on the size of the pan. Fry until golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon, drain, and place on waxed paper in a single layer. Sprinkle with salt. These can be frozen in an airtight container. Left at room temperature, they remain tasty for a week.
Makes four cups.