Just Add Liver Hearts and Rasians
November 11, 2010 6:21 AM   Subscribe

Can't think of what to make for Thanksgiving? How about Marilyn Monroe's secret stuffing recipe.
posted by Xurando (26 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Was it a Kennedy?
posted by Astro Zombie at 6:24 AM on November 11, 2010 [15 favorites]


I am drooling. That looks wonderful.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:26 AM on November 11, 2010


No, cocaine.
posted by Old'n'Busted at 6:26 AM on November 11, 2010


I loved this. In fact, I was coming here to post it. Now I'm pondering if I can talk the hubs into making this for Thanksgiving. He's pretty protective of his grandma's stuffing recipe, but since this one involves sourdough, I might have a chance.

(The comments about it on Jezebel are good, too, one of which points out that the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook from the '50s advised sedentary women to eat 2000 kcal/day, and very active women to eat 3000 kcal per day. This made me think that 1950s sedentary is not the same as 21st century sedentary, and that trans fat, HFCS, and nonfat milk really are as bad as I think they are.)
posted by Leta at 6:27 AM on November 11, 2010 [1 favorite]


She was a good cook. It was hard for her to go out so she cooked.

It seems more parsimonious to point out she was born in 1926 and therefore would have been taught to cook just like all the girls around her.
posted by DU at 6:32 AM on November 11, 2010 [3 favorites]


Was it a Kennedy?

A friend once told me that she had, the night previous, shaken hands with Arthur Miller at a cocktail event following the premiere of a new regional producion of one of his plays. I immediately asked her to shake my hand. After she had done so, I explained, "Do you realize where his hand has been?"
posted by Joe Beese at 6:32 AM on November 11, 2010 [4 favorites]


I'm not buying it unless it has Quaaludes and scotch.
posted by The Whelk at 6:38 AM on November 11, 2010 [1 favorite]


Isn't it amazing how they get those big fish into those little glass jars?
posted by shakespeherian at 7:10 AM on November 11, 2010


It seems more parsimonious to point out she was born in 1926 and therefore would have been taught to cook just like all the girls around her.

That wouldn't make her a good cook or a person who enjoyed cooking though. She could easily have just had a chef or ordered out once she had the money. Biographers have indicated that Marilyn always took pride in domestic tasks though--there's a sweet story about Norma Jean mixing peas and carrots for her first husband, because she thought they looked so pretty together.

Man, am I glad I never knew her Le Creuset set went up for auction. I would have had so much explaining to do.
posted by padraigin at 7:11 AM on November 11, 2010 [1 favorite]


WARNING: THIS RECIPE IS NOT KOSHER
posted by hermitosis at 7:17 AM on November 11, 2010 [1 favorite]


Interesting that this recipe is getting way more attention than Fragments, the book that the recipe comes from. The book shows that she was as far as imaginable from the persona that she inhabited, although the dumbbells in the NYT article snark about "her poignant attempts to assert her intellectual side," as though she were merely a talentless bimbo whose every attempt to nurture an unmanufactured side of herself was doomed to failure.

I used to have skepticism about Marilyn Monroe until I saw her small parts in "All about Eve" and "The Asphalt Jungle," which are terrific, and a bigger role in "Niagara," which is even better. (There are "Some Like It Hot" and "The Misfits" too, although I have never really been a huge fan of those two movies.)
posted by blucevalo at 7:29 AM on November 11, 2010 [2 favorites]


That wouldn't make her a good cook or a person who enjoyed cooking though.

Relative to a person reading the article in 2010 it sure would.
posted by DU at 7:37 AM on November 11, 2010 [1 favorite]


I used to have skepticism about Marilyn Monroe until I saw her small parts in "All about Eve" and "The Asphalt Jungle," which are terrific, and a bigger role in "Niagara," which is even better. (There are "Some Like It Hot" and "The Misfits" too, although I have never really been a huge fan of those two movies.)

I think All About Eve is a pretty good primer for understanding the whole Marilyn thing: It's a tiny part, she's in like two scenes, and is basically just playing 'Anonymous starlet' at a party, but the charisma and energy just oozes off the screen and you can't take your eyes off of her.

Also, and I never do this, but how could you not love Some Like It Hot?
posted by shakespeherian at 7:42 AM on November 11, 2010


The Misfits is a great weird thing.
posted by keratacon at 7:46 AM on November 11, 2010


I'm not a big fan of the Monroe mythos, but this is a great food history story.
posted by Miko at 7:55 AM on November 11, 2010


you can't take your eyes off of her

The Norman Mailer book tells a story about the filming of The Misfits in which there's conflict over the decision to film a scene of her and Eli Wallach dancing in such a way that her back is facing the camera the whole time. She reportedly snorts, "The audience will find my rear more interesting to look at than Eli's face."
posted by Joe Beese at 8:02 AM on November 11, 2010 [1 favorite]


I have never been that sold on her as an actress until I recently saw "Don't Bother To Knock" (free on Netflix Instant!), a very early Monroe film. There is this wonderfully long scene in which all she does is furtively try on another woman's jewelry in a hotel room. Suddenly you hear the sound of a plane droning by overhead, and she rushes to the window to look. And as she gazes and listens she just starts to ooze tears in a way that seems so unconscious that you just ache. Her entire performance in that movie, playing a mentally unstable young woman hired as a babysitter, is just supernatural.
posted by hermitosis at 8:25 AM on November 11, 2010 [5 favorites]


OMG she cooks AND has a job? Scandelous.

I don't see the big revalation here. Seeing when she was born, married to a very traditional Italian man who did NOT want his wife working (let alone having her skirt blow via the wind; supposedly she got a few punches by him for that episode), what was she supposed to do?

I always found her amazingly beautiful but these little "OMG she actually cooked" just degrades her as a person. It's not like she was Joan Crawford w/ maids and cooks.
posted by stormpooper at 8:44 AM on November 11, 2010


No garlic?! Instant disqualifier!
posted by three bear minimum at 9:03 AM on November 11, 2010 [3 favorites]


Joe's not around to bitch at you if you include garlic, so go for it.
posted by maudlin at 9:25 AM on November 11, 2010 [2 favorites]


This looks and sounds awesome.

I said since I was going home early for Thanksgiving that I would try to make something for the big day in my mom's newly remodeled kitchen.

However, with both sons bringing home their boyfriends for the same holiday for the first time, Andy and I in the kitchen making Marilyn Monroe's stuffing just might be just a skosh too much gay.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:09 AM on November 11, 2010 [10 favorites]


I'm sick of how her heirs keep making money off every tiny thing related to her. I doubt that Lee Strasberg would approve, but he's dead.

I doubt she learned to cook from her addled mother, but she probably did cook. I think the stuffing recipe is from her 9 month marriage to DiMaggio. (Life magazine made up the "no garlic" story--even his family said it was fiction.)
posted by Ideefixe at 10:19 AM on November 11, 2010


It seems more parsimonious to point out she was born in 1926 and therefore would have been taught to cook just like all the girls around her.

Can we go back to this please? (But not just for women. All kids should learn to cook! It's a hugely valuable life skill. I was crushed to learn that my middle school's Home Ec program got scrapped a few years ago... I probably use those skills more frequently than anything else I learned back then...)
posted by schmod at 11:05 AM on November 11, 2010 [2 favorites]


'It’s Joe Dimaggio’s shaving kit'
posted by clavdivs at 11:58 AM on November 11, 2010


The piece of Marilyn ephemera that most amazes me is her military ID from her time touring with the USO. What photograph could be less flattering than a military ID card? And yet she's still stunning. The camera could do her no wrong.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:26 PM on November 11, 2010


I enjoyed that article, and *know* it was a recipe from her mother-in-law. However, how many of us dutifully write down recipes from our mothers-in-law but NEVER make the recipe? I like the sound of this stuffing, but there's no way I'm making anything with that many ingredients. And I don't think Marilyn did, either.
posted by acrasis at 2:34 PM on November 11, 2010


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