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Tinky Weisblat and Alice Parker get together for
a night of smooth celebration of “Old Blue Eyes”
Our great friend Tinky sees no reason not to tip her hat to Frank Sinatra in a big way. Besides creating a magical evening of memory through song with “To Be Perfectly Frank: A Sinatra Centennial Concert,” our favorite crooning foodie dishes out some recipes of Italian standards for us to cook while listening to our favorite Sinatra albums.
The show takes place:
SATURDAY, August 8, 7:30 p.m.
Charlemont Federated Church
175 Main St, Charlemont, MA 01339
(413) 339-4294
Consider following her sausage and peppers recipe that she shared with massappeal viewers (WWLP 22) to get you in the mood for the show!
Tinky chronicles her thoughts on food in a number of places. Be sure to check out her website as well as her blog, In Our Grandmothers’ Kitchens. Right now, a recipe for Italian Fruit Tarts is at the top of the blog, and it looks yummy!
Then, pick a copy of the Pudding Hollow Cookbook or her memoir, Pulling Taffy.
Pudding Hollow is a real place, a dip between hills in the hamlet of Hawley, Massachusetts. It looks much as it does on the cover of The Pudding Hollow Cookbook, much as it has for more than two centuries. A few homes, the Hawley town office (a former one-room schoolhouse), and a cemetery mark its landscape.
Pudding Hollow is also a place of the imagination and of the heart. To author Tinky Weisblat and to her late friend and collaborator, folk artist Judith Russell, the area has long represented home in a sense that goes beyond the literal. The ties hilltown
dwellers feel there, both to the land and to each other, constantly renew valued American rural traditions. Pudding Hollow thus serves as a metaphor for the best in New England life and country life.
Writer and singer Tinky Weisblat kept a journal during the final year of her mother’s life. Jan Weisblat was 93 and suffered from dementia. “Pulling Taffy” shares journal entries, history, family photographs, and recipes that document their time together. It pays tribute to the vibrant spirit of Jan, whom her daughter called Taffy.
This informal, candid memoir explores the ways in which Taffy’s view of the world changes as her Alzheimer’s disease develops … and the ways in which it remains the same. Tinky and Taffy move through frustration to joy as they learn to embrace life despite the dementia. They survive their ups and downs with the help of community, music, nature, pets, and laughter.
While we couldn’t play any Frank Sinatra, we are just as excited to introduce you to a young singer very much of the old school, Canadian crooner, Matt Dusk. Enjoy his rendition of “My Funny Valentine” in the show, but also check out the video, below, which is trés smooth. This track is off “My Funny Valentine—The Chet Baker Songbook.”
