A Rainy Afternoon with Vincent Price

The weather is dreadful, slushy and gloomy.  But that's OK, because I have a few Vincent Price products to keep me entertained.  We'll start with A Treasury of Great Recipes, a cookbook written with his second wife Mary.  This is a round-the-world tour of the best restaurants and includes (in addition to the washable vinyl cover) full colour plates of the couple cooking and eating their way through exciting mid-60s dishes.  I hate to say, this cookbook makes me feel hugely inadequate.  I have never dined in Paris' oldest and best restaurants!  But never mind, he's generously shared the menu and a selection of recipes I can attempt to recreate.   I especially love the personal touch: views of their kitchen and of course here on another page we have the Prices hosting a dinner in a mobile home.  "We drive out into the country or to the seashore, park where we please and picnic in style," he writes.  Generous to share the world's bounty but not a snob, the Prices' book includes homestyle American recipes alongside those of the grand cuisines of old Europe.  Let's put the cornish game hens on, from the Hostellerie de la Poste restaurant in Burgundy.  Basically you dunk two birds in cream, butter AND bechamel sauce.  But this is also an era where, apparently, you put mayo and Worcestershire sauce in the guacamole, so I'm up for the challenge.

Dining aboard the Clark Cortez "mobile home".  I guess fine dining includes a standard poodle! 

While the birds are cooking, I'm going to rehearse a few lines with Mr Price.  This is so dreamy I can't get over it, thank goodness I lust after debonair, middle-aged ham actors and not that teenaged shirtless werewolf from Twilight.  Gosh, to be going over my enunciation skills in the privacy of my own rec room.  

But my basement has always been a bit drab, I guess I never gave too much thought other than a coat of paint and some posters.  That must change!  Luckily, I can learn about purchasing original artworks from Mr Price.  1962, Price personally selected a number of affordable but original artworks to be sold through Sears Roebuck.   I guess the business model was hard to sustain, but I'm going to take a few notes anyway and see if I can find anything decent in the local art gallery.