The 5 Ingredient College Cookbook by Pamela Ellgen

Recommended to me by a friend, this is not a only cookbook that offers recipes with a limited number of ingredients, but  offers recipes suitable for both weekday dinners and informal entertaining. I think it would be useful for a new cook.

There are recipes for some of my favorites: Pasta Puttanesca, Shrimp Scampi, and Gazpacho. I'm delighted to see that there are recipes for the superfoods avocado and sweet patato; Sweet Potato Fries with Chipotle Mayo and Creamy Avocado Toast. And there's lots of recipes I think I'd like to try: Southwestern Skillet, Watermelon, Feta and Tomato Salad, Ramen Noodle Soup (with chicken or vegetable stock, soy sauce and green onions), Tortilla Soup, Pizza Margherita, Lemon Chicken, Shredded Chicken Street Tacos, Italian Sausage and Pepper Skillet, Steak Fajitas and Creamy Cheese Casserole, lots of vegetable recipes, recipes for black and red chili, and a recipe for ratatouille with chicken.

There are dessert recipes too, including a recipe for chocolate cake and another for blueberry crumble.

What's helpful and interesting is that this shortish book (221 pages) offers advice throughout: information on the tools and pans you ought to have, staples you ought to have in your cabinet, how to make eggs (as well as wonderfully simple directions for making an omelette), recipes for salsa, hummus, trail mix, caesar salad dressing and other popular dressings made frequently.

There's a helpful glossary that defines braise, blanch, poach, saute and sear. , 

The small dimensions of the book, and the brief and breezy nature of the information it provides, suggests to me that this will be welcoming and accessible book for someone just starting to cook.

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Christmas in Connecticut, directed by Peter Godfrey (starring Barbara Stanwyck)

In Christmas in Connecticut, Stanwyck isn't a show girl on the run or a con artist, she's a writer. She's the Martha Stewart of the newspaper for which she works, headed by Sydney Greenstreet. Only .. it's all a fantasy: she can't cook, she doesn't have a farm in Connecticut, and for sure she doesn't have a baby - she's not even married!

This is a well-made film: entertaining, polished, and well-paced. Interestingly to me, the movie opens with the bombing of a Navy ship and two sailors attempting to survive in a life raft. There are two narrative threads that don't unite until the middle of the film: Stanwyck's scrappy reporter and the sailor who survived the torpedoing of his ship and spent his time in a lifeboat dreaming of good food. Dennis Morgan is the sailor.

I truly enjoyed this film but it's not a patch on Lady Eve or Great Ball of Fire.

Twentieth Century, directed by Howard Hawks

There's a lot to say about this film: Carole Lombard is wonderful, and in more muted performance than in My Man Godfrey or Mr. and Mrs. Smith. 

The plot is a cliche: the troubled Broadway play in rehearsal is hampered by an inexperienced actress. The eccentric director/producer manipulates her in a number of ways (ahem!) to coax a fine performance from her and they become an item. It's a classic Svengali story: a star is born!

He controls her, she resents his control and egotism, and they split up.

Three years later, the director is on the skids and finds himself on the very same train as his former protegee. She's become a big star in Hollywood and has a new romantic interest. He is determined to sign her to a new contract, and his efforts create a great deal of slapstick on the lurching train.

Here, in essence, Barrymore has the Lombard part: emotional, even hysterical, loud and frantic.

In a way, it's so timely. Both Barrymore and Lombard are brilliant; the end of the film seems to drag but when the director is down and out and decides to hitch his falling wagon to the fortunes of two Jewish Oberammergau actors I suffered whiplash. 

 An essay I found described this as the first screwball comedy (https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/20th_century.pdf).

Mr. and Mrs. Smith, directed by Alfred Hitchcock

I was so surprised to discover that this screwball comedy starring Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery, with a script by Norman Krasna (he wrote The Devil and Miss Jones), had been directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery are a bickering couple - in the extreme. When they argue, they have a rule that neither one of them can leave the bedroom until they've made up. As the film opens, they are resolving their latest blow-up: this one lasted three days. (The gossip about this in the kitchen is priceless.)

An official from a faraway town arrives at Montgomery's office to inform him that due to a boundary dispute, his marriage to Lombard three years earlier is not legal or binding. Of course, it seems like a minor matter: easy enough to just get married again.

The official then drops by the couple's apartment, where Lombard is being visited by her mother, just to visit. It comes out that the reason that he's in town is to inform the couple that their marriage was not legal and is not binding.

Lombard's mother is upset and tells Lombard that this is going to be a big problem. Lombard's unconcerned and tells her mother that her husband will tell her what happened and propose to her before the evening's out. In fact, when Montgomery invites her to go for dinner that evening, Lombard is convinced that he's arranged for them to get married that very evening.

When that doesn't happen, there are some very hurt feelings -- Lombard throws Montgomery out -- and hijinks ensue. Lombard is wonderful here, but the pace of film drags after a little while. To me, the back and forth between the battling spouses goes on just a little too long, and after its escalating intensity, the resolution seems abrupt and insufficiently motivated. It suprised me a little bit, because this screenplay is by Norman Krasna, who also wrote the screenplay for the Devil and Miss Jones, a screenplay that seemed perfectly paced.

The Devil and Miss Jones, directed by Sam Wood

I really enjoyed this film; having watched a handful of classic films it seems to me one of the best. It stars Jean Arthur, who is new to me but was obviously a wonderful actress. She's so charming in this film.

It's not quite a "Depression Era" film, having been made in 1941, but its concerns seem to be those of the Depression.

Charles Coburn plays a domineering businessman who is determined to foil an attempt by retail clerks at one of his stores to unionize. Dissatisfied with the private detectives who have been tasked with infiltrating and destroying the nascent union, he declares he'll do this job himself.

Hired as a shoe department salesman, he's quite lousy at it and he's quite uncomfortable. Edmund Gwenn, utterly unrecognizable as Santa from Miracle on 34th Street, plays his supercilious and unforgiving boss, Mr. Hooper. This is part of what's so wonderful about this film: great acting and lots of charm. 

Coburn's stony path is eased by the compassion of two female clerks in his department, Jean Arthur and Spring Byington. Unfortunately, Jean Arthur is also in love with the union's organizer.

Jean Arthur and Spring Byington soften the hard-heartedness of Coburn, and by the time he gets his hands on the list of employees willing to join the union, he's ready to negotiate to improve conditions at the store. The movie ends with Coburn's marriage and Byington and a celebratory cruise to Hawaii for the staff of the entire store. Just thinking about it makes me laugh.