Pearls of Wisdom from Norah Ephron Part 2

NEW YORK - May 5, 2014 - PRLog -- .    Long before I knew this would be one of her last books, I was taking notes, i.e.

“Never marry a man you wouldn’t want to be divorced from.

You can’t be friends with people who call after 11 pm.

Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age of thirty-five, you will be nostalgic for at the age of forty-five.

At the age of fifty-five you will get a saggy roll just above your waist… even if you are painfully thin.

The saggy roll just above your waist will be especially visible from the back and will force you to reevaluate half the clothes in your closet, especially the white shirts.”

There’s more!

“The empty nest is underrated.

You can order more than one dessert.

You can’t own too many black turtleneck sweaters.

Overtip.

Never let them know.

There are no secrets.”

And she ends this book with the following:

“I use this bath oil I happen to love.  It’s called Dr. Hauschka’s Lemon Bath.

It costs about twenty dollars a bottle, which is enough for about two weeks of baths if you follow the instructions.

The instructions say one capful per bath.  But a capful gets you nowhere.

A capful is not enough.  I have known this for a long time.”

And listen to this!

“ And if the events of the last few years have taught me anything it’s that I’m going to feel like an idiot if I die tomorrow and I skimped on bath oil today.  So I use quite a lot of bath oil.  More than you could ever imagine.

After I take a bath, my bathtub is as dangerous as an oil slick.

But thanks to the bath oil, I’m as smooth as silk.

 I am going out to buy more, right now.

Goodbye”          The End of this quote…

We, of course, are not going to say “Goodbye.”

We are going to move on to an even more recent book

I Remember Nothing which was published in 2010 and which I studied innocently in 2011, just for the following tips which I will share with you.  Gleaning the best…

Page 65 – “For example, here’s how we cook steak in our house:

First you coat the steak in kosher salt.  Then you cook the steak in a very hot frying pan.

When it’s done, you throw a huge pat of butter on top of it.

That’s it.

And by the way, I’m not talking about sweet butter… I’m talking about salted butter.”

Page 67 – “So this is my moment to say what’s been in my heart for years:

It’s time to put a halt to the egg-white omelette.

I don’t want to confuse this with something actually important, like the war in Afghanistan.

However, I don’t seem to be able to do anything about the war, but I do have a shot at cutting down consumption of egg-white omelettes.

You don’t make an omelette by taking OUT the yolks.

You make one by putting additional yolks IN.

A really great omelette has two whole eggs and one extra yolk.

As for egg salad, here’s our recipe:

Boil eighteen eggs, peel them, and send six of the egg whites to friends in California who think that egg whites matter even slightly in anyway.

Chop the remaining twelve eggs and six yolks coarsely with a knife, and add Hellmann’s mayonnaise and salt and pepper to taste.”

I can testify personally…this is Yum.

Page 70 – After a long treatise about the well documented dangers and evils of Teflon coated pans, she says:

“I love Teflon.  I love the no-carb ricotta pancake I invented last year which can be cooked only on Teflon.”

Here is the recipe:

Beat one egg, add one-third cup fresh whole-milk ricotta, and whisk together.

Heat up a Teflon pan until carcinogenic gas is released into the air.

Spoon tablespoons of batter into the frying pan and cook about two minutes on one side, until brown.  Carefully flip.  Cook for another minute to brown the other side.  Eat with jam!  Serves one.”

To tell the truth, much as I have enjoyed these recipes, reading them, making them, and eating the results, we have to wonder if this wildly cavalier way with butter and Teflon might not have actually impacted Nora’s health.

As Ludmila shared the food in her barn in Suzdahl Russia, so Norah shared her food with friends and the world.

More to come.