Tasha Tudor
(Page 4 of 6)
December/January 1994
By KATHLEEN HALLORAN
RELATED CONTENT
Create a sturdy gingerbread house with this gingerbread recipe....
Medieval history comes alive through seeds and spices....
Use this thick icing recipe to construct a gingerbread house....
Sugar and spice and everything nice...
At our party, these cookies made a dramatic appearance as angels descending from on high — above ou...
The art of living
Tasha views her artwork with this same brand of horse sense. “My
drawing is only a means to an end. When people talk about my
creativity, that’s nonsense. It’s a case of the wolf at the door. I
do it to support my corgis and my four children.” Her remarkable
publishing record, the number of magazine stories that have been
written about her over the years, and her legion of admirers
haven’t swayed her from a hard-headed practicality about the need
to earn a living. Her elaborate, delicate artwork, often framed by
borders filled with vignettes from her life, supports her garden,
her menagerie, and her implacable mind-set.
Much of Tasha’s artwork and her reading are done in the
wintertime. “I love the winter. It’s delightful,” she says. “I
don’t have to go anywhere because I work at home. If I’m snowed in,
I can stay this way for months.” She hopes for early, deep snow to
protect her garden from the harshness of the New England winter,
and when it comes she puts on snowshoes when she needs to get down
the mile-long dirt path that leads to the road.
Given her enjoyment of winter and her fantasy way of life, it’s
not surprising that Tasha’s Christmas is a storybook holiday. She
hangs garlands of laurel over the front door and swags of hemlock
in the barn. Her tree comes from the woods, and it goes up on
Christmas Eve, lit by homemade candles of carnauba wax and beeswax
and decorated with her great-grandmother’s collection of delicate
ornaments that date from 1850, as well as cornucopias filled with
homemade pralines, butter toffees, vanilla cream caramels, taffy,
and fudge. In a place of honor on the tree are large gingerbread
cookies cut into the shapes of her animals. (The recipe for these
cookies, which also adorned the White House Christmas tree during
the Johnson administration, is given below, along with her
good-eating gingerbread recipe. Both are from The Tasha Tudor
Cookbook by Tasha Tudor, ©1993 by Tasha Tudor, reprinted by
permission of Little, Brown and Company.)
Page:
<< Previous 1 |
2 |
3 | 4 |
5 |
6 |
Next >>