Autumn with Matthew Mead

Can't wait to see the new issue...we created an autumn harvest dinner party and there are lots of great menu and entertaining ideas!

Booth House Benefit

Last night, we had the open house/reception of the Booth House our local historical society has been working on for 10 years! We had an amazing turnout, the sun came out, and the house looked beautiful. I hosted a light supper for friends at my house after and we had about 70 people come for a great evening. We set up tables all over the house, the studio, boathouse and patio, the fare was a buffet of great summer salads made fresh from our local farmstand and my herb garden...a great way to celebrate the end of summer!

Mary Louise Booth House

My house set up for party

Mary Louise Booth

She was born in Yaphank and grew up to know everyone who was anyone—
President Lincoln, Georges Sand, Winslow Homer, Oliver Wendell
Holmes. As the founding editor of Harper’s Bazar, she performed a
“great service” to suffrage, according to her friend Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, “by showing that a woman can hold for years a place at the
head of a profession so difficult and so arduous”. She had a passion for
flowers and perfumes, a weakness for lace and an eye for talent. She published Louisa May Alcott and Wilkie Collins and at her Manhattan home, she hosted legendary Saturday night salons. She wrote the first history of the city of New York in 1859, was fluent in seven languages, translated over 40 books and was first secretary to the Women’s Rights Congress at Seneca Falls in 1855.

The birthplace of Mary Louise Booth on Main Street in Yaphank is being restored by the Yaphank Historical Society and Suffolk County Dept of Parks Historic Services as a period house museum and will be open to the public. www.yaphankhistorical.org

still -lives

photographer Tara Sgroi visited last week and captured lots of beautiful images around my home...

blackberries and cream

this time of year, all I need is a cup of blackberries and a drizzle of cream for breakfast or dessert, to eat simply or mixed with peaches or ice cream...our farmstand is brimming with them this week...for dinner parties, I fill these little silver cups with berries on a tray and serve with a bowl of coffee ice cream and let guests help themselves...
photograph by matthew mead for"Summer"