Blossom at 171 E. Bay St., downtown

Happy Mother's Day to me!!  My family and I had a lovely meal  at Blossom Restaurant this weekend.
Blossom has an understated frontage on E. Bay St., and you may walk right by without realizing that there is  a fairly large restaurant there, with a cathedral, beamed ceiling and outdoor dining.
In past year's, we have watched The Kentucky Derby at their small but friendly bar and celebrated New Year's Eve in their balloon bedecked dining room.  This year, Mothers Day was well-spent at Blossom, dining on Lowcountry favorites and traditional fare.
Our starters were Buttermilk Fried Calamari, She Crab Soup and Baby Spinach Salad.  The calamari was some of the best our group has eaten in a long time, lightly breaded, tender and served with a creamy red pepper remoulade.
I am very fussy about she crab soup, and Blossom's definitely met my expectations.  It had a zing of paprika and a wonderful flavor of sherry throughout.  The baby spinach salad had a twist that I loved...candied bacon.  Delicious.
We ordered the Maple Leaf Farms Duck, Pecan Crusted Flounder and Grilled NY Strip Steak and were pleased with all three.  The duck was crispy on the outside, tender inside and served with a flavorful port cherry sauce.  I loved the flounder, which was one of the better pecan crusted presentations of fish that I have had in the area.  It was served over a bed of sweet potato hash and a puree of fig and honey.  Each bite was swirled in the puree before eaten, giving it a slightly sweet finish.  The NY strip was perfectly cooked and quite tender.  Our entrees were accompanied by a basket of bread, baked with a pretzel-like, soft crust, topped with crunchy sea salt.
The restaurant was very flexible when asked for substitutions on veggie sides and the service was friendly and efficient.
For delicious entrees and a cheerful atmosphere, I recommend Blossom on E. Bay.

I am joining a book club in June and my first assignment was to read the book, The Madonnas of Leningrad.  I uploaded it to my Kindle and read it in 4 days.  The author, Debra Dean, skillfully tells the tale of Marina, who, as a docent at Russia's premier art museum, Leningrad's The Hermitage, packed, shipped and emotionally catalogued the art work which was at risk during the Siege of Leningrad.
In June of 1941, with the Germans closing in on Leningrad, intent on destroying the city in its entirety, those who worked at The Hermitage, and those citizens who loved it, worked tirelessly to pack over a million art treasures.  They were loaded onto two trains which safely evacuated the art they contained to the Urals, until the war and siege ended in 1945.  Spending days packing, sometimes for 23 hours at a time without a rest, and nights on fire watch on The Hermitage building complex's roof, Marina and the other volunteers lived with little sleep and less food, as they preserved the collected art history of Europe and Asia.
Told from Marina's perspective, as both an elderly, Alzheimer-threatened woman who emigrated to the United States after the war, and as a young worker at the Hermitage, the story weaves tales of war, suffering, hunger and love for art into a compelling narrative.  The Madonnas of Leningrad is also told from the perspective of her daughter, who gives us a side to war survivors that many of us have seen, that of people who have seen such horrors, that they choose not to speak of it.  Marina and her husband, Dmitri, have lived a long, full life after the war, and only reflect on their past experiences when age and dementia shuffle their memories.
I highly recommend both reading this book and looking at the website for The Hermitage, www.hermitagemuseum.org.  The facts of the story and the human side represented in this novel bring a clarity to a part of WWII that many of us rarely hear about, The Siege of Leningrad.

I am a great fan of Julia Child, her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and food, in general.  I love to look at food, think about ingredients and their combinations, experiment with food and, above all, eat food. As I thoroughly enjoy cooking my way through her book of French cooking, I thought it would be fun to look inside the life of Julia Child, to see what made her tick.
The biography, Dearie, by Bob Spitz, enlightens readers about Julia's youth, her west coast upbringing, her service during the war and, ultimately, her love affair with her husband, Paul Child.  It opens the door to Julia, the person, as well as Julia the chef.
I loved learning that Julia was highly driven, competitive and absolutely adored men, especially those she called "real He-men"!  She always appeared to be so "off the cuff" in her life and work, an impression that she cultivated but one that was absolutely untrue.  She was obsessed with the details- all would be planned, researched and rehearsed, step by step, before a recipe or tv show was ready to be used or viewed.  She was also a natural performer.  She could roll with any gaffe and had a wicked sense of humor.  All in all, Dearie was a delight and I recommend reading Dearie for anyone who is just as curious about Julia the person as Julia the chef.

A dark tale of unrelenting winter, obsession and disappointment in New England,
the story of Starkfield, Massachusetts resident Ethan Frome will chill you to the bone.  Author Edith Wharton draws you into the small world of subsisting farmers, desperate love and unrealized dreams by the use of a dispassionate narrator.  Told in flashback style, you are lead reluctantly by the hand down a path of emotional and physical destruction.
You will feel a creeping horror for main character, Ethan, as his choices lead him to the inevitable end of all has hoped for.  The suffering of all is exacerbated by the coldness of Ethan's wife, Zeena and the warmth of their live-in help, Mattie.
Still fresh and just as stunning, even on this, my third read, the tragedy and suffering of Ethan Frome is definitely worth adding to your library.

The Glass Onion, 1219 Savannah Hwy in
Beautiful West Ashley

How lucky are we in West Ashley to have an amazing restaurant such as The Glass Onion?   The food is fresh, local and incredibly creative.  They are successful due to  great culinary ideas such as crispy french fries served with bearnaise sauce.  Delicious!
Orders are taken at a central counter, from menu items updated daily, written on a large chalk board.  The friendly staff then escorts you to a table, where a picture on a clip is set on the table to help bring the food to the correct table.  My table picture was of Julia Child, who is coincidentally my culinary hero!  My friends and I chose Po Boys, served on soft french-style bread, with lettuce, mayo and tomato.  Mine was loaded with fried shrimp, lightly breaded and so tasty.  The plate was garnished with pickled cucumber chunks.  The portions were generous, we were pretty full, but dessert beckoned.  Knowing how good the meal was, we just had to see if the dessert would be the same....and it was!
We tried Johnny's Favorite Orange Cream Pie and the Blueberry Almond Pound Cake with Buttercream icing.
The orange pie was a creamy, rich version of chess pie, with just the right amount of orange flavor, not too sweet and topped with fresh, whipped cream.  The pound cake was dense, flavorful and moist with a very thick layer of absolutely perfect buttercream icing.  As the menu changes daily, it is well worth visiting The Glass Onion again and again, to discover new taste combinations and to enjoy the company of the genial staff.
As Julia Child would have said, Bon Appetit!  

Glazed Doughnuts, on upper King, is my favorite place for an after-church treat.  This morning's taste revelation was an orange-pistachio glazed doughnut.  The glaze had just the right amount of citrus punch, and was topped with crunchy pistachios.  The doughnut itself was airy with just a bit of sweetness.  Perfect!
I also tried the raisin buns, which were topped with a light sour cream glaze.  The dough was soft in the center, crispy of the edges and loaded with plump raisins.  I'm not sure which one was my favorite, but I will be returning soon to try more of their wonderfully creative confections.
Charleston's best doughnuts, by far are at Glazed.

Okay, I just finished reading The Shack, the very popular Christian novel, written by William Paul Young and published in 2007.
Hmmmm....I just don't know what I think about this book.  What topics were meant to be stressed by this narrative?  I almost think that there were too many of them, all swirled around in a colorful but puzzling serving of religious soup.  Some of the ingredients were loss, responsibility, guilt, grief, recovery, faith, anger, revenge, judgement, and love.  Is this beginning to sound like the Old Testament to you?  The only thing missing were the plagues of locust.  Well, maybe they were there somewhere and I just missed them.
The book dwells in a good place, on the great I AM, the holy Trinity.  If you have ever had a difficult time explaining the trinity to new or non-Christian believers, The Shack may be a help to you.  However, there were  aspects of the story that made a few things less clear for Christians.  I struggled a bit with The Shack's suggestion that expectations are sinful.  That seemed rather broad and was somewhat perplexing to me.  But, the book does affirm what should be obvious to all of us who love Jesus Christ dearly, that being with God, being one with Him, brings perfect joy and peace, complete openness and happiness beyond measure.  If that is the message you come away with, then the book is a worthy read.  Am I recommending The Shack?  At the risk of sounding as nebulous as the book,  my answer is...Maybe.