Free Recipes for Life by Linda Evans

towel, if you do not have a splatterproof blender jar
    Place the egg yolks, lemon juice, and seasonings in the blender jar.
    Cut the butter into pieces and heat it to foaming hot in a small saucepan.
    Cover the jar and blend the egg yolk mixture at top speed for 2 seconds. Uncover, and still blending at top speed, immediately start pouring on the hot butter in a thin stream of droplets. (You may need to protect yourself with a towel during this operation.) By the time two-thirds of the butter has gone in, the sauce will be a thick cream. Omit the milky residue at the bottom of the butter pan. Taste the sauce, and blend in more seasonings if necessary.
    (*) If not used immediately, set the jar in tepid, but not warm, water.
    FOR MORE SAUCE
    The amount of butter you can use in a blender is only half the amount the egg yolks could absorb if you were making the sauce by hand, when 3 egg yolks can take 8 to 9 ounces of butter rather than the 4 ounces in the preceding recipe. However, if you added more butter to the blender than the 4 ounces specified, the sauce would become so thick that it would clog the machine. To double your amount of sauce, then, pour it out of the blender jar into a saucepan or bowl and beat into it an additional ½ cup of melted butter, added in a stream of droplets.

ASPARAGUS MY WAY
    I put Julia’s perfect hollandaise on asparagus that I peel before boiling.
    ¼ to ½ pound asparagus, per person
    Salt, to taste
    Julia Child’s “Perfect” Hollandaise, per person
    I think asparagus is better peeled before it is cooked. Using a vegetable peeler or a small, sharp knife, peel up to the green tip. Cut off the dry part of the bottom of each stalk (an inch or more). Then submerge in a large pan of cold water with a dozen or so ice cubes. This refreshes the asparagus and gets it crisp for better cooking.
    Fill a large pot with water and set on high heat. When boiling, add salt and asparagus. I differ in taste from most cookbooks in that I cook the asparagus only as follows (because they are peeled they take less time to cook):
    Small thin spears: 1 minute
    Medium spears: 1½ to 2 minutes
    Large spears: 3 minutes
    Drain. (As they sit in the colander, they continue to cook.)
    Serve with hollandaise sauce or, if you prefer, melted butter.

Take Two

    W HEN MY DREAM marriage ended, my life was turned upside down, not only emotionally, but financially. I had no choice but to go back to work. I certainly wasn’t ready to date. My friends were persistent, not wanting me to be alone. They kept suggesting men that they thought would be right for me. One bachelor on several of their lists was a playboy named Stan Herman. Playboy? I don’t think so.
    One evening at a very elegant dinner in Bel Air, one of my particularly persistent friends surreptitiously managed to seat Stan beside me. It was only after hours of delightful conversation that I found out who he was.
    Luckily, I was just preparing to leave for location to do a film, so there was no chance for us to date, even if I decided to ignore my warning voices. But then he became remarkably attentive and thoughtful, sending notes and flowers to me on location. He even proved what a great sense of humor he had, because one day in front of my house (where I’d lived with John) there was a
For Sale
sign from his company, Stan Herman and Associates Realty.

    Stan and me in Saint-Tropez.
    I never intended to let myself fall in love with him, but I did when he said he’d waited his whole life for someone like me. I believed him.

    Our wedding day with friends Dani and David Janssen and Polly Bergen.
    We were married on the beach at his home in Malibu on the Fourth of July as the sun was setting. It was so beautiful; I ignored the fact that my friend Christina Belford’s mood ring turned black.

Fugitive Found

    B Y THE TIME I met David Janssen, he was already a hero to me. My mother had watched every episode of
The Fugitive
. She was so taken by the show and David