Just Two Women Gabbing and Cooking in the Kitchen

And one of them share her stuffing recipe!

Simone Signoret and Marilyn Monroe ruling the kitchen. Photo credit: Bruce Davidson

It’s not popularly considered, let alone imagined, that accomplished, beautiful women would rather hang out at a kitchen sink and stove rather than dressed in uncomfortable clothes and being lavischiously ogled by people they don’t know.

Just look at these women—proof that two of the most coveted women of their times were quite happy to leave their husbands, Yves Montand and Arthur Miller, at the table while they stayed in the kitchen, always the best room in the house for a private, dishy, meaningful chat. It’s always a little intimating to come upon such a pair, feeling at once as intruding upon an intimacy that leaves no room for others, even famous husbands.

If you haven’t made the stuffing yet, follow Ms. Monroe’s recipe. It’s a good one and I’m about to make it now. I don’t own either an off-the-shoulder black dress or a tight plaid skirt—actually, I’m still in my bathrobe and fluffy slippers—but a friend is arriving soon and we’ll be happily in the kitchen while the men do whatever they do outside it.

We all have these little scraps, hastily scrawled with a recipe. The fact that Marylin Monroe didn’t note directions indicate she certainly knew her way around a mixing bowl.