RIP Maxime de la Falaise

I'm not one to normally read the obituaries over breakfast (or the obituaries at all, for that matter), but a suggestion by one of my roommates brought me to the obituary for Maxime de la Falaise in the New York Times.

She seemed like a pretty fabulous woman with an impressive background and all-around culturally enriched life. She was considered "a trendsetter in London, Paris and New York society" and was married to a count. A count! She was mostly entrenched and celebrated in the fashion world, a close friend and "associate" of Yves Saint Laurent and Andy Warhold.

A few parts of this article particularly caught my eye. The first was a passage about de la Falaise's mother:

Her mother, Rhoda, an Irish beauty, was considered an eccentric even by the elastic standards of the British Isles. Lady Rhoda often made lobster thermidor, for instance, and then fed it to her roses.“She would make fish stew and sometimes would forget that she was making it for the garden,” Ms. de la Falaise told The Independent in 2004. “So she would add a bit of cognac, some garlic and spices. The roses would almost cry out with pleasure.”

Aside from spending time as a darling of the fashion industry, Ms. de la Falaise was also a food critic for Vogue. During this time she hung out with Andy Warhol

A friend of Mr. Warhol’s, she appeared in “Andy Warhol’s Dracula” (1974), an underground film he helped produce, and often cooked lavish meals for him and his retinue. (Ms. de la Falaise helped design the menu for the Andy-Mat, Mr. Warhol’s unrealized plan for an avant-garde automat.)

She published a book "Seven Centuries of English Cooking" (I probably won't be asking for this for my birthday) in 1973. The NYT article closes with a medieval recipe from this cookbook. “Take a crane, and unfolde his legges, and cut off his wynges and his legges, and sauce him with poudres of gynger, mustard, vynegre and salte.”

Not very vegan friendly, but come on, what a lady! I like to pronounce "legges" as "leggies", by the way.

love,
Lauren