Kristen in London

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Proposal for your site

2011-06-15T20:46:00.001+01:00

Hello,

I work in the SEO field and I ran into kristeninlondon.blogspot.com during my search for great quality websites. I am looking for link exchange partners as I'm working on promoting my site.
In exchange I can offer you great quality websites with good PR and backlinks in a 3-way link exchange set up.

If you are interested or have further questions I'd gladly hear from you.

Best regards,
Barry
SEO
email: barry@ez-mortgagecalculator.com

Link Exchange Opportunity

2011-03-27T11:08:00.001+01:00

Dear Webmaster,

I have recently visited your site on the web, and found it not only useful but also informative. As well, I am wondering if we could exchange links with each other? A Link exchange with similar websites like ours would not only promote both websites but also help both of us in providing relevant informational services for users. I certainly would very much like this opportunity to exchange links with you.

Just reply to me if you are interested and I will get back to you with the right proposal.

Regards,
Rina

Link exchange request with http://kristeninlondon.blogspot.com

2011-03-18T12:22:00.000Z

Hello

We own and operate http://www.babyaccessorize.com web site and would like to exchange links with other good quality web sites such as yours at http://kristeninlondon.blogspot.com

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If you wish to exchange 3 waylinks, or exchange links manually by email. Just reply to this email with your web site details; title, description, url
We can exchange reciprocal links, 3way links and deep links

Our site details:
Url: http://www.babyaccessorize.com/pushchairs/
Title: pushchairs
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2010-12-12T03:10:00.001Z

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2010-12-12T01:33:00.001Z

Hi,

I set up a profile where I can post photos, connect and share.

Do me a favor and confirm our relationship here.

Thanks,
Kristen Frederickson

This message was intended for kristenfrederickson.2330278@blogger.com and was sent as a notification, invitation or reminder (digital goods subject to change in reminders) of an event initiated by Kristen Frederickson using a third-party or platform application and may contain promotional materials and/or services for sale including digital goods received.

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goodbye!

2010-06-30T22:14:00.003+01:00

It's with mixed feelings that I say goodbye to the old "Kristen in London" and prepare to say hello to the new...

So many wonderful memories of beginning my efforts nearly five years ago, of "meeting" you all, learning to express myself, cook better meals and take better photos of them! Avery growing up before our eyes... our lives in London taking shape with ever happier detail. And "Kristen in London" recorded them all, with such pleasure.

But all good things must change, and so "Kristen in London" will appear in the next few days as a completely different-looking world, but peopled by the same characters, places and memories that we have all come to love. And...

A RECIPE INDEX! It is simply a beautiful thing to behold. There are some things that need tweaking, like moving "Crabcakes" out of "Desserts", but that sort of detail will keep me busy in the longer summer weeks ahead. You'll be able to look up the recipe for the very dessert Avery is holding here, her adored Eton Mess. And then you can make it at home. Someday, of course, I hope you'll find all the recipes between the covers of my very own cookbook, but until then, they're free for all.

So be looking for the new and improved us, and let me know what you think! I'll meet you there.

eight things I love about London

2010-06-25T14:57:00.014+01:00

Actually, one of the things I like best about London is that as I was compiling this list, the number of "things I love about London" kept growing! I thought I'd better stop before I got to double digits. That's for another time.

But we are thinking a lot about how much we love it here, as we start thinking about leaving. Connecticut beckons: the green of the grass (cue Avery moaning here, about how predictable I am), the red of the barn, the blue of the sky, the white of the fence... our beloved family and friends. And we want to go, of course. But there is so much to love about our adopted city, such an idiosyncratic little list this evening, that I thought I'd let you in on some of the best. I'll warn you: it's no tourist list. It's the kind of list you make when you're fully entrenched somewhere, where the tiny bits that make your home loveable are weird, quirky, and all your own.

First, may I say how much I adore the fishmonger who has moved into my neighborhood? He is Tony of The Fishmonger's Kitchen in Shepherds Bush Road, and he's Australian, gorgeous, generous and funny. For months we and our neighbors looked in chagrin as the fishmonger before him jumped ship (so to speak), and the shop moldered (and molded, probably), and the hairdresser next door reported smells of grim death floating under the walls.

And then suddenly: there was Tony! With his lovely blue-painted chalk sandwich board out in front, trumpeting "Cooked Lobsters to Order" and "Why not throw some fish on the BBQ this weekend?" and "We now have fresh sushi!" From Tony I bought the many crabs necessary for my recent television sojourn, and the huge slabs of salmon for many dinners, as well as juicy pieces of yellowtail tuna to sear for a weekday lunch with my beloved, and gorgeously fresh king prawns (as you see!) to marinate in olive oil, smoked paprika and sea salt, to saute for two minutes and then pull their little heads off and lick your fingers.

Sauteed King Prawns with Paprika
(serves 4)

2 dozen king prawns, raw with heads and shells on
1 tbsp smoked paprika
6 tbsps olive oil
1 tsp sea salt (or to taste)
fresh-ground black pepper
a little more olive oil for the pan
chives to garnish

dipping sauce:
1/2 cup mayonnaise
juice of 1/2 lemon
squirt of prepared wasabi (as hot as you like it!)
fresh-ground black pepper

Cut each prawn up the back with scissors, ending before the tail. Place the prawns in as single layer as you can fit, on a large cookie sheet. Sprinkle with all marinade ingredients and smoosh them around, mixing the paprika with the oil. This releases a magnificently earthy, sensual aroma that will get your taste buds kicking in.

Sprinkle a little more olive oil in a very large skillet and heat till really hot. Place the prawns in immediately, all at the same time, and begin turning them as they turn pink. Continue to cook over high heat, turning all the time, until they turn stiff and are completely cooked (2-3 minutes total time, depending on size of prawns). Do NOT overcook beyond being JUST done.

Sprinkle with chives and serve over rice or spaghetti, spooning out all the oil and cooking debris from the skillet and sprinkling it over. Serve with the dipping sauce and provide a large body plate for the shells!

*********************

Thank you, Tony. Having you there in the road, to chat with on a hot summer's day, to report on the recipe of the night before, to stop in for some wickedly fresh Cornish haddock for tomorrow night's fish fry, makes every day just a little cozier, a little warmer, and our corner of London a little more like a village.

And then there's Sundrica, our gorgeous little Italian deli, for parmesan cheese to make my puttanesca even saltier than it already was! Never mind, skip salt tomorrow to make up for it. Sundrica is a tiny little space next to a flower shop by the Hammersmith tube stations, and is packed to the gills with delicacies that you won't know you needed until you walk through its magical doors. Italian tuna in olive oil, duck fat in plump glass jars, giant bowls of cured black olives, long rows of many whole salami, pepperoni, chorizo, pates of every description, sandwiches of mozzarella and basil on artisan bread, homemade gnocchi and ravioli... go, do. Pick up a tin of lovely Italian plum tomatoes, a chunk of parmesan, a handful or two of black olives, a packet of spaghetti and a tiny of anchovies and a jar of capers, and you're good for:

Spaghetti Puttanesca
(serves 4)

1/2 lb spaghetti
3 tbsps olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 handful (200 grams-ish) oil-cured black olives, pitted
1 soup-size can peeled tomatoes, cut in sixths
3 tbsps capers, rinsed if held in salt
6 anchovies, rinsed
1 cup grated parmesan cheese

Boil spaghetti. In the meantime, mince the garlic and onion. Saute in olive oil in a saucepan, then when soft, add the olives, tomatoes, capers and anchovies. Saute till mixed. Throw in the drained spaghetti and serve with cheese.

*****************

This is wickedly, evilly good: strong-flavored, robust, not for the faint of heart. If you can find a tin of tiny whole cherry tomatoes, get those. They're whimsical, like slightly collapsed red balloons. Makes the whole dish even nicer.

Once you've brushed your teeth from all that garlic and anchovy, go to the Victoria and Albert and book tickets for "Grace Kelly: Style Icon" (you have to book them! there's no showing up on the day, it's far too popular). Take a teenage girl or two: it's the perfect event for them to see what glamor was really like. There are her REAL dresses from "High Society" and "Rear Window"! Avery's jaw simply dropped at the sight of these iconic garments, with their impossibly tiny waistlines... and there are lovely videos of her engagement announcement, her wedding, her honeymoon... and enough jewelled handbags, sunglasses and shoes to make any 13-year-old girl swoon. And the shop! There is nothing like the V&A shop. Avery always touches everything, and if her Iowa grandmother is with her, it takes twice as long because they EACH touch everything, with each other. Perfect for birthday party gifts.

And then, it's late June in London, so it's... Wimbledon. Can there be anything more satisfying than playing a magnificently sweaty game of tennis on our grotty local courts, coming home to shower and change, and flopping down on the sofa to watch a lovely American called John Isner duke it out for over 11 hours with a Frenchman? Over eight of those hours were SEQUENTIAL! The match played out, as you all know by now, over three days, and they are both my new heroes. Now, whenever John and I are exhausted after our hour, I say, "So let's do that for seven more HOURS." It was simply awe-inspiring. The only comparison I can possibly even suggest to myself is childbirth: at some point, or many points, one says to oneself, "I don't think I can see this process through. I think I'm done." And then one's husband says, "No one can have this baby but you. You'll have to stick it out." (I'm sure he said it more poetically and supportively than that, but you get the idea.)

It must have been like that for these two lads: with every impossible serve, they must have thought on some level, "I really can't be doing with this anymore," but what choice did they have? No one but they could finish the match. Truly inspiring!

And then, in my never-ending quest for new things to do that not everyone gets to do: go visit the Law Courts at and around Lincoln's Inn Fields and... hush hush... get to have lunch in the Members Common Room! It pays to have illustrious friends, I do have one, a very cool solicitor friend who is a loyal blog reader and therefore an unquestionably good person, and she kindly invited me along to lunch in the exalted space. It is the original wine cellars of the larger dining hall upstairs (in order to get into which one must be a barrister, which is the English type of lawyer who appears in court, not the type who works with the general public and is called a solicitor. But she walked upstairs with me after we had our lovely gossipy lunch, and we gazed upon the glorious vaulted ceiling, painted chandeliers, long refectory-style tables. "It's like Harry Potter!" she murmured, and exactly so! She described to me the old-fashioned barristers working in their Georgian offices and then repairing at the end of the day to their flats above, with menservants, just like Oxford dons...

It was such fun to see something private and impressive and rather secret-feeling, the buildings soaring around the Old Square and New Square, leafy and green, and encapsulated by wrought-iron fences to keep out people like me. I am happy to report that my friend is just as impressed with her surroundings as I was, so we were able to be gleeful for her together.

And then, of course, there is Avery's beloved school. I fully realize that the clock is ticking on my being welcome there, in fact on her being there at all. Of course come to that, the clock is ticking on everything, so I don't know why I should suffer particularly over the school, but it is quite the most magical place we could ever have envisioned sending her. This week was the Celebration for her year moving up into the Middle School from the Lower School, and frankly, the sight of all 100 of them in their teen glory, perfect bodies and hair and gorgeous smiles and all of them just starting out, so earnest and yet cool and sophisticated, was enough to make me want to cry, as usual. I do try so hard not to! Luckily I was brought from bathos by the sheer intelligence and charm of their presentations: "A Very Civil War: or, The Entire Recounting how Charles Stuart did come to lose possession of both head & crown in a single stroke with this sorry tale reduced to five minutes." If I told you that the girls' analysis of the salient battles was told in football-analysis language, would you find that as amusing as I did?

Sitting in the great hall, panelled up to the gallery from which girls hang, arms folded, clinging to their friends, listening to an excerpt from "The Crucible" in which most excitement was obtained from a concerted scream (the acoustics are impressive, I found!)... I felt completely happy, in spite of the heat!

(I interrupt this paean of love to London with a brief screech: enough with the heat already! We go to Connecticut for this! Let's have some nice drizzly grey for just a day or so, so I can stop being all pink in the face and sweaty, even before I start a game of tennis.)

Finally, tonight we picked Avery up from a cupcake-making birthday party (she decorated hers with Doctor Who references, per her current obsession.

She said, "It's really hard to make a Dalek's arm out of frosting."

We smiled at each other. "That's a good one for the game," I said, referring to our ongoing love affair with sentences that we reckon have never been uttered before.

"I know," she said, as we trooped to the car, she in her beautiful grey Bonpoint dress (dotted with chocolate from the cupcakes and gone suddenly too short with her shooting up), and a pair of tottery vintage charity-shop heels. Only Avery could get away with it.

We raced away from the party to my last thing-I-love, and that's the Old Vic. How many dozens of times we have driven there through town across the Westminster Bridge, looking up at Big Ben (which Avery always reminds me is not what you can see, not the tower at all, but the bell inside: the tower is St Stephen's Tower), Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye. It's the tourists' tour, only it's on the way to the theatre!

Tonight it was "The Tempest", and while it is not my favorite of dear Will's efforts (I simply cannot keep the plot straight, and Avery and I agree that the Ceres-Juno scene is not just incomprehensible, but downright annoying), but it was great fun to see the glorious staging, hear the idiosyncratic live music coming from both sides of the stage, and to revel in knowing that in this town, Shakespeare is a local playwright done good. It's funny how present he is, when you live here. He's alive and well, and we all feel that he must be reading the reviews, shaking his head over pedantic modern stagings, wishing he could throw an Elizabethan ruff over some character dressed as a bicycle messenger (I'm not making that up). The Old Vic is simply a cozy, elegant, friendly theatre that simply churns out beautiful productions: "Gaslight" last year, the never-to-be-forgotten "Six Degrees of Separation" this spring, and tonight... I, well, I LOVE it.

And... did you know that when you book tickets for a play in London, the choices of "title" (instead of just Mr, Mrs, Miss, Ms and Dr), include "Lady", "Lord" and "Sir"! I love that too.

And there you have them: eight things I love about living here. I wish you could do them all with me, but then if you lived here, you'd have your own eight things. That's what makes this city great. If you ever think you're a tiny bit bored, all you have to do is look up and there is something to cherish, to invite a friend to do, to chortle about afterward, to hold to your heart and enjoy. Now... it can cool off.

the blueberry or the muffin? you decide

2010-06-19T17:09:00.005+01:00

Might I interrupt whatever exciting activities are occupying you, dear readers, at this moment, and ask your opinion?

I am about to meet with a simply SUBLIME food photographer here in London, about possibly (so exciting!) taking photographs for my eventual "book." Now here are some things I am wondering. And the reason I am asking you? Because she said, "You must ask yourself who your audience is to be."

I am hoping it will be YOU.

So. Do you like to look at/read/use foodie books that include photographs of ingredients, or of dishes in progress, or of finished dishes? I suppose the ingredient-based illustrations are more artsy, more for the joy of looking, where the dish-in-progress or finished dish might be more instructional. Does that make sense?

For example, the photographs above give you an idea of the sort of choice I am imagining. What do you like? One or the other, or both, or something else entirely?

If you have an opinion on this subject, do take a moment to let me know. It's all getting stupendously thrilling. And thank you!

The Crucible (of June)

2010-06-17T01:57:00.004+01:00

Stop the presses: SUNBURN! Not a lot, I rush in to say, but today we got... sunburned. I'm old-fashioned enough to say I put on "suntan lotion," when my PC side knows I really mean "sunblock" or "sunscreen." But hey, 30 years ago I was slathering myself with baby oil and lying on a bed of aluminum foil, so I think I'm due a little leeway.

It's that time of year again, when I look at the calendar and think, "Really?" Did I really book tickets for three more plays, RSVP for Avery for three more parties, encourage her to throw one of her own, and schedule two more sales for Lost Property, not to mention out of town guests, doctor and dentist appointments and the vet, all in the three weeks left before we go to the States?

Drinks parties, dinner parties, really?

The girls deserve it after the hellish week they put in last week, 12 exams in five days! I'm relieved to have it over, and I never even cracked a book! The whole ordeal was brought home to me most visually when Avery held out a pen. "Do you see how there is no ink in this pen?" she asked rhetorically. "This pen was NEW at the beginning of last week!"

This week, we've been out and about playing tennis (I will not succumb to tennis elbow, will NOT, I'm sure it feels better if I play than if I don't), and seeing a new bit of the Victoria and Albert installation, of architects using the museum itself to explore architecture's experiments and limitations. "The Ark," by Norwegian architect Rintala Eggertsson (would you have guessed that was a man? I wouldn't) completely charmed us: a two-story two-by-gour construction, tethered to the staircase by thin metal cables, and sheathed entirely in... paperback books! A giant bookshelf, going round and round, admitting only four people at a time because it... moves. From side to side, just slightly, but enough to remind you of your own mortality. In between contemplations of that, you can sit on the sheepskin covered seat on floor two, and browse. Really, they invite you to browse! Go, do.

And then onto "The Crucible." At Regent's Park Open-Air Theatre, one of my most favorite places in the world, where we have seen "The Importance of Being Earnest," "Much Ado About Nothing," always in these waning days of the school year before we decamp for our American summer. This year it was "The Crucible." McCarthyism! Shades of today's hysterical shoutings about Obama, healthcare and Communism! Everything that changes, simply stays the same. The sun beat down, Avery's class occupied the upper regions of the theatre as we cooked in the "better seats", and we reveled in the American play playing itself out in the English atmosphere. I wondered how the religious fervor would play out in America... there was some nervous tittering as the predominantly-schoolkids audience came to terms with Miller's deadly earnest treatment. "No religion that demands your blood deserves your faith..."

And how difficult it is for me to withhold the secrets of my culinary excitement of last weekend! Filming! Studios! Cars and drivers! But my lips are sealed. Until mid-August, when I can reveal all... Stay tuned.

In the meantime, I await the big reveal of my new blog design. There have been delays, as there always are with big projects, but I am hopeful of massive excitement in a week or so. To deal with this, I had better offer:

Cucumber and Yogurt Salad with Chillis and Lemongrass
(serves 4)

1 large cucumber, outer sides sliced off and seeds left behind, cut into slender sticks
1 red onion, diced
1 medium-hot red chilli pepper, minced
1 stalk lemongrass, peeled of outer layer, minced
zest of 1 lemon
lots of fresh-ground pepper
1/3 cup fat-free yogurt, mixed with juice of 1 lemon
Maldon salt to taste

Mix everything but yogurt and lemon juice, then toss with those. Salt to taste.

*************

This salad is beautiful and fresh on its own, but also surprisingly lovely with a rather heavy main course, as we had this week: beef ribs in a tomato sauce. The two bounce off each other: rich and light, dark and springlike.

I wish you luck in achieving all that June has left for you, as we dance through the excitement left for us... then HOME!

the hidden beauty of exams

2010-06-06T22:55:00.007+01:00

It's a good news/bad news scenario, and since I'm Scandinavian I always want the bad news first: Avery's long-dreaded end-of-year school exams begin tomorrow morning. Five days, 11 exams, nothing else. Just exams.

The good news? She was home all day, every day last week and I simply LOVED it. I try not to think, most of the time, about how much time she spends away from me these days, because I know it's the wave of the future, it's healthy, and in the hideous modern expression, "it's all good." I hate that phrase because it's NOT all good. I miss her, and I find myself longing stupidly for the days when she was far more dependent on me, and therefore within my sight much more than she is now. I realize that to have a young lady on the doorstep of being adult, so capable and elegant and knowledgeable, is "all good." It's wonderful to drop her off at her acting class and see that she no longer has any need of anyone accompanying her, and her teachers have inside jokes with her, and she can be counted on to be a funny, hardworking member of the group.

And even her riding lessons, where I used to take her, settle myself down with a magazine and sort of sigh at having to watch her go round and round, being led by one of the big girls... these days SHE'S the big girl at the stables at the weekends, the one the adults rely on to help the little ones. There's no more watching: she's off in Hyde Park leading the little ones. I love it that people have grown to depend on my child, that she's responsible and resourceful. It's all you wish for, really, as a parent.

Except for more time with her! I wish for that.

So this week, as onerous as it was for her, was a delight for me. I provided her with "frequent little meals," as my friend Shelley so lovingly once said about feeding a kitten! Bowls of juicy, blood-red American cherries to be gnawed around the pits, bits of toasted baguette spread with salty Normandy butter, Danish salami of such a pinkish hue that we find ourselves wondering if Denmark feeds its pigs food coloring! And fresh fried haddock, battered in homemade breadcrumbs, four-cheese lasagne with a sneaky layer of spinach, chicken in sour cream sauce with brandy and a special paprika provided by my chum Rosie... not to mention countless asparagus spears, broccoli florets, sugar snap peas, and, best of all...

Avery's Exam-Week Blueberry Muffins
(makes six medium-sized muffins)

5 oz/150g plain flour
pinch salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 large egg
1 1/2 oz/40g white sugar
1/2 vanilla pod, scraped
zest of 1/2 lemon
2 oz/50g butter, melted
1 cup blueberries

Heat oven to 350F/180C. Line the muffin tin with paper liners, or butter and flour each muffin space.

Sift (or simply shake through a sieve, as I do since I don't own a sifter) the flour, salt and baking powder into a bowl just large enough to hold them. In a larger bowl, stir together the egg, sugar, vanilla pod scrapings, lemon zest and butter.

Fold the flour mixture into the egg mixture just gently, mixing until all is JUST wet but leaving behind plenty of lumps. Carefully stir in blueberries and divide among muffin cups.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until just browned and firm. The blueberry juice will have bubbled up and may look a bit messy around the edges, but that's what keeps them juicy and lovely. If you used paper cups, remove the muffins (in their paper cups) from the muffin tin right away.

*****************

Can you believe how little sugar is in this recipe? I was absolutely shocked, but I shouldn't be surprised, because the basic measurements of flour and baking powder and sugar were taken from Delia Smith, and she is so very sensible.

If you have a hungry child around the house, split one of these open while still warm, tuck a nice piece of butter inside, put it back together and deliver it, with a good napkin to wipe those buttery fingers, and watch the appreciation steal over the little face. Or not so little, in Avery's case.

I hate to think that I equate love COMPLETELY with food, but I know I come close. Tonight I offered Avery a sort of junk-food chocolate pudding with a hot sauce, one of her favorites, and she accepted, saying, "First, can I have a huge hug?" Once hugged, she smiled and said, "That's better than chocolate. I can save the pudding for tomorrow."

Other than exam hell, we've been fairly dull and quiet, accomplishing things like weeding the oxygen-rich planted roof of our guest room (I hated to tell John after, but it didn't look much different... he did discover some wild strawberries out there, however, a total mystery). And I ruthlessly cleared out all my kitchen cupboards, discovering uncharming things like six different opened packets of couscous (guess what we had for dinner tonight), at least five opened packets of pinenuts, countless partly-used packets of mismatching pasta and no fewer than seven different types of miso soup paste! What on earth? So everything has been wiped down, thrown away when absolutely necessary, consolidated and counted up. Remind me not to buy any dried chicken soup for about another century. The same goes for tinned tuna! I foresee some odd meals coming up. Just wait till I hit the freezer. Fancy some thawed smoked salmon with homemade breadcrumbs and limoncello?

And we've been entertained by our neighbors, both literally (a lovely drinks party last night in the garden with the first Pimms of the year!) and more accidentally, when Selva appeared outside in front with a giant electrical saw and enough energy to cut our side of the hedge while he cut theirs. Other neighbors walked by, weighted down festively with boxes of wine bottles, and we all ribbed Selva about his hedge-cutting skills. "I want a topiary chicken, sitting on an egg, like that one a couple of streets over," John said, and I chimed in, "Or a pony, or a kitten, please." Selva didn't skip a beat. "Actually, it was already in the shape of a chicken, so I have refashioned it into a topiary hedge-shaped hedge."

Lots of parties being bandied about: Annie and Keith's always splendid drinks with the most tempting and gorgeous small eats you can imagine, including my favorite of smoked salmon mixed with creme fraiche on little blinis... can't wait for that. And Avery's giving a party! "Mocktails" and vintage prom dresses, which should be a hoot. I brought home from Indianapolis a peerless pink dress made for my MOTHER by my GRANDMOTHER, a satin top, with layers of tulle skirt and a hugely long sash, and it fits Avery like the proverbial glove, so that inspired her to ask her friends to look round the charity shops and flea markets. They will all simply pile into the sitting room with sleeping bags afterward, to watch something involving Grace Kelly, and fall into chocolate sundaes. I timidly mentioned the notion of "real food" and pizza was mentioned, so that should take care of all the basic food groups.

Well, tomorrow Lost Property beckons, which always requires the utmost in my energy. And sometimes a face mask, if the lacrosse boots are particularly pungent. But you know the best bit? Avery will come to visit while I'm there, I will be able to hear how the morning's exams went and offer comfort for the afternoon's efforts, and for sure, there will be a hug available.

a star is boiled

2010-05-28T09:00:00.006+01:00

Guess what? It's the 600th post for "Kristen in London," and very possibly the last before my new look is unveiled, so Happy Birthday to us!

My house right now is filled top to bottom with a band of men installing my new security system. Because we have been burgled twice in less than a year, our insurance company is understandably a bit peeved with us. How did such undemanding customers of 25 years, dwellers in countless apartments in New York and London suddenly become so very... expensive? So they are insisting on an alarm system, before they agree to cover any more of our home invasions.

An atavistic instinct in me is enormously satisfied by the notion that some evil neighbor, having preyed on us twice before, is now looking with consternation from across the street, watching us become alarmed.

And it IS alarming.

Because these fellows are full of grisly tales from their native land, one from South Africa and the other the East End of London, where one apparently does not leave expanses of glass uncovered by metal bars, or doors with fewer than two solid locks at all times.

"This, madam, is your Panic Button. Simply press this red button if you hear broken glass or other signs of an intruder, and a loud screaming, piercing sound will..."

"OK, OK, I get it!" I say.

Actually I think having an alarm set while I'm in the house would make me even more jumpy than just THINKING I hear somebody. We've all done that: lain awake absolutely sure we've heard somebody coming in, but knowing it's not true. The idea of having scientific, Panic-Button-deserving proof of it is rather too close to the food chain for me.

So, the best thing for me to do in the face of such drama was to cook a live crab, and learn to take him apart.

This is because, dear readers, my aspirations for breaking into the British food world are coming true! I have won a place on a TELLY contest which shall remain nameless until it airs... The dish I'm putting forward? "Creamy Sweetcorn and Rocket Soup with Fresh White Crabmeat," so naturally I had to learn to cook and prepare a real, live crab. As I'll do on television, for real, on June 11.

Here's what happened. My dear friend Susan received an email invitation to join the contest, and while she had no interest in doing so, she forwarded the invitation to me, and on a sort of whim, I entered my darling soup recipe. Because, I'm loath to boast, but I will, I think it's a superb soup AND I invented it. As far as I can see, from assiduous googling and cookbook trawling, no one else has thought to cook sweetcorn and rocket in chicken broth and add cream and crab.

So the first thing that happened was someone emailed me back and asked that I submit the whole recipe with complete instructions, amounts, procedure, etc., along with some biographical information about me. The next thing I knew, my phone rang. Now, I am well-known to my nearest and dearest for hating speaking on a mobile phone. I don't like the feel of it, the tinny sound, or the tendency it has to ring when I've just sat down in a dentist's chair or ordered my main course. But I answered.

"This is so-and-so, is that Kristen?"

Gulp. "Yes."

"We here at the studio are holding our London and Southeast Regional Auditions next Saturday and wonder if you could bring in a bit of your lovely-sounding sweetcorn soup for our producers?"

Gulp. "Yes."

And from this scintillating exchange, my career in television was born. That grey and cold, spitty Saturday, John and Avery drove me to the Studios, whereupon Avery checked my makeup, applied a little extra of her favorite Benefit "Get Even" for my complexion, and a touch of lip gloss. "There, now you're ready." I marched into the building, got my name tag (complete with hideous photo in which I look like a disembodied head) and waited. And waited. Then the little group of us waiting there, eyeing each other and our carrying bags curiously, were escorted up to another waiting room filled with food smells!

A very large man was unpacking a complex-looking terrine with a layer of quail's eggs inside it and a lattice pastry top, a nervous-looking lady with red cheeks was ladling out a soup studded with what looked like sliced hot dogs, and a very skinny young man tending two little children sliced up a chocolate dessert of some kind, with glace cherries on top. Other hapless people who must already have submitted their dishes leafed in a desultory way through tabloid newspapers all screaming about the election.

When my turn came, I ladled my beautiful bright-green soup into a white bowl provided by the studio, and went to face my producers. And they were adorable! Lovely young men in their 30s, very competently asking me about my chicken stock, my opinion of British produce (better than American, I had to say, especially chickens, and rocket), what I was doing living here, how often I cook... it was great fun! I had expected to feel nervous, but honestly, when I'm talking about something completely natural and dear to my heart, what was there to be nervous about?

And they liked the soup!

"Now, your recipe suggests scallops or crab as an optional addition," one man said, licking his spoon. "Tell me about that."

"Well, for a party I have served it with sauteed scallops, but I didn't think they'd travel well, so I didn't bring them today," I said, "and crab meat always sounded like a natural, with sweetcorn, sort of a chowdery touch."

"Exactly," said the second young man, "I wonder if you'd be willing to consider that, should you get to the next round?"

"Sure!" I chirped, and they had another sip, shook my hand and said they'd be in touch.

Well, that little encounter completely disappeared from my life in the face of my trip to Indianapolis down memory lane, and other than mentioning it to my mother on the way in from the airport when I arrived, I never gave it another thought.

Until I got home, to a message on my mobile phone, left behind in favor of an American one. "Kristen, this is so-and-so again, and I wonder if you'd call me so we could speak about your recipe." That seemed like good news! It seemed hard to believe he'd want me to call him so he could tell me my stock was too salty. It had to be good news.

And it was! I'm part of the London/Southeast Regional heats. I'll compete against another person cooking a starter, and the judges will decide between us. Then after all the regional contestants have cooked and their shows have aired, the judges will choose a number of us for the next round. So it could be awhile, after filming on June 11, before I know any more, but watch this space! I'll tell you when to flick on your telly to watch me prepare:

Fresh-Cooked Devon Brown Crab
(serves 1 as a starter salad, or 2 garnishes for soup)

1 large LIVE Devon brown crab
1 carrot
2 stalks celery
large handful flat-leaf parsley
2 tbsps sea salt
cold water to cover
dash white wine

Leaving Mr Crab to the side for a moment, thrashing about on your countertop, place all the other ingredients for his cooking water in a large stockpot and bring to the boil. When the water is vigorously boiling, lower the crab in carefully and place a lid on the stockpot. This lid may need to be moved a bit to one side if the water begins to boil over. Watch the pot carefully to make sure Mr Crab does not flick the lid off. Boil for 15 minutes, then remove the crab to a plate to cool.

When the crab is cooled so that you can handle it, pull off the tail flap at the back, then remove all the legs and claws by twisting away from the body. Place the claws under a clean towel and tap with a hammer until the claws are broken enough to remove the large chunk of meat inside each.

Each large chunk of claw meat will have a central piece of cartilage running through, so feeling carefully along this cartilage, remove the crabmeat in as large pieces as possible and set aside. Check carefully for bits of shell and discard.

The chunks of white meat should be placed in the center of your bowl of soup in as pretty a pile as possible. Or you can mix a bit of mayonnaise with them and sprinkle with chives for a perfect crab salad.

**********************

For the purposes of this recipe, and because I do not like brown crabmeat, discard the rest of the crab or find a lovely friend who does like brown meat and give it to her. Or, my fishmonger says the brown crabmeat makes a lovely stock if you boil it and the crab shells in a little water. I tried boiling just the shells and the resulting liquid was awful: watery, dull, unpalatable.

So there you go, completely fresh crab. It is head and shoulders above anything you'll buy already prepared.

I must learn to do this perfectly, at least two more times, before the television day. When I did it the first time, I did not cover the crab before I hit it with the hammer, and the shells disintegrated like porcelain, shooting all over the kitchen. This to the truncated delight of my tabby, who thought each shard might contain food for her. Just shell. I'd rather not have shell shooting all over the studio, however!

Well, other than my burgeoning TV stardom, life has been fairly quiet. Avery is gearing up for a week of unmitigated study revision (well, probably not unmitigated) beginning tomorrow. They all have the week off to look over their work from the year, and the week after is nothing but exams. I remember this from last June: every day they are tuckered out, and irritable, and they just get more so as the week goes on. Many yummy little snacks are required to bring them from their gloom. It IS hard, six or so hours of exams all day long, for five days in a row. I actually think next week will be delightful, just having her at home sitting quietly with all her books and papers. I'm sure we'll find something adventurous to do to break up the monotony.

Last night was swimming pool duty, which I always enjoy. Our school owns a share in a gorgeous, old-fashioned, glass-ceilinged swimming pool just adjacent to the school grounds, and it's a beautifully evocative place to spend a couple of hours. I arrive with Avery and all her swimming gear, punch in the security code, pull back the gates, run with my set of jingling keys to find the box containing the sign-in book, the money to pay the pretty young lifeguards (school seniors), and a bunch of purchasable swim caps for those hapless souls who have forgotten theirs. Then I sit in the slightly humid air with my mystery and a bottle of water, perusing the membership cards as people come in to swim, petting somebody's little fuzzy terrier left behind in the lobby while her owner swims, chatting with the girls as they come out wringing their wet hair and comparing homework assignments. Cozy.

And home for one of my favorite dinners, in fact one we all love because it's messy and silly, and I'm happy because it uses all sorts of bits and pieces from the fridge! Keep all your parts of peppers, mushrooms, onion, and such through the week, roast a duck or a pork tenderloin, or a chicken, ANYTHING really! And roll them up.

Everything on a Pancake
(serves 4)

enough roast meat (chicken, pork, duck, lamb) for 4: leftovers are good too!
4-6 Chinese pancakes per person
vegetables sliced long and thin: peppers, cucumbers, spring onions, mushrooms, carrots, etc.
green leaves to tuck in: spinach, cilantro, parsley
chopped nuts: pinenuts, cashews, peanuts, macadamia, hazelnuts, etc.
sauces: plum sauce, mustard, chilli sauce, satay, etc.

Now just start rolling up, with whatever you like inside, and make sure you have plenty of napkins!

*********************

Well, it's Friday, so it must be ice skating tonight, and then we have to whisk her away to see "The Fantasticks," that gloriously romantic musical that ran forever and a day in Greenwich Village (we saw it as newlyweds!), and is now in revival here with my super-crush Edward Petherbridge... I'll let you know.

want to offer your opinion?

2010-05-19T22:46:00.004+01:00

So...

Drumroll please...

Here is a link to the new and improved "Kristen in London," still in the planning stages and we're still building that recipe index!

But I'd like to ask your opinion on how it looks, what you see on the first page, how the hot links work. In short...

Do you like it?

I'm open to all ideas, so let's get the ball rolling!

you CAN go home again

2010-05-17T04:00:00.016+01:00

There is no substitute for going "home." No matter how strongly I feel about my own home in London, or how much I loved our various apartments in New York, when I walk into my mother and father's home in Indianapolis, I know I am "home."

I feel so tall there now! The kitchen where I spent so many happy childhood hours seems smaller than I remember, the ceilings lower, the counters lower, the lights dimmer. All the cupboards (or "cabinets" as they were called in my childhood) are within my reach, but my strongest memories of them are from the vantage point of being 10, crouching on my knees on the counter, to get down a can of corn or the blender, which lived far in the back, on a dark shelf.

Every room in the house is testimony to my mother's intensely personal decorating skills, and every object has been chosen with deliberate care to reflect her taste in any given year. When I was little, everything was yellow: checked sofa, chairs and curtains, the whole living room a sunny haven, flanked by the fireplace on one end and her conservatory/plant room on the other. Very 1970s! Now, yellow has been replaced by deep browns and clear whites, in the tuille of the chairs she inherited from her mother's house, in the southern-style shutters at the windows, the masses of brown and white transferware china she has collected all her life. The walls are covered with samplers she stitched herself in the long days she spent looking after the three of us children, and there are displays of antique eyeglasses, symbolizing my grandfather's career as a prominent optometrist in southern Indiana.

The plants are still there in the plant room: luscious ferns, tiny baby primroses in hanging baskets, the terrarium we children planted, with even the stepping stools stencilled beautifully by mother, reflecting her belief that everything one uses or looks at should be decorative, should add to the visual landscape.

She has a squirrel collection! No, not taxidermy (she is far too fond of living furry things to do that), but every other conceivable material: fuzzy Steiffs, cast-iron doorstops, paperweights, carved wood, all sitting demurely on a painted tray, tails tightly curled.

And everywhere are photographs. My mother has a positive genius for making arrangements of touching, significant, historical (she likes to call them "hysterical") objects, combining them with photographs, placing them all in deep boxes behind glass: all our family history hung on the walls. My great-grandmother's passport, wedding certificate, teaching degree, christening dress, string of pearls, photograph of her holding my grandmother, smiling at her baby from under a cloche hat. My mother collects printer's type, and makes boxes for baby gifts, for my daughter a box filled with types of cats, symbols of New York City where she was born, my and my husband's initials, her birth announcement, a photo of her as a newborn baby.

The many, many photographs of our family reunions, grandchildren arranged stairstep-fashion, the tiniest child changing as more babies appeared! My beloved grandfather, dead so prematurely at 64, in the happiest family days you can imagine, all of us grandchildren being pulled in a cart behind his lawnmower on the acres of lawn in front of their big, rambling stone house, on the street named for him... he with pipe in mouth, billed cap on head, broad smile as he spent his days the happiest way he knew, surrounded by his grandchildren. How he would have adored Avery. This is something my mother and say to each other at least four times, every time we get together. "Wouldn't he have thought her the little princess," for that's what he called all of us granddaughters. We were each a princess, when he was with us.

So I went home, last week. My father valiantly dragged in my impossibly heavy suitcase, and I brought out presents for everyone, talking and listening, catching up on family and neighborhood gossip. Who had sold a house, whose children had got divorced, how many cars were in the next-door garage in various states of disrepair, who had turned gay or got arrested (it's an interesting neighborhood)...

And in the morning there was time to sit out on my mother's screened-in porch, surrounded by hanging plants, with a giant box of memorabilia from my 98-year-old grandmother's house. My mother was glad to have me go through it, making a pile of things I wanted to bring home with me, including a photograph of some random great-aunts, old ladies in their flowery print dresses, eyeglasses with rhinestones at the corners, gnarled hands folded in their laps. And guess what? They were 45 years old when the photo was taken! Times have certainly changed... somehow I don't think there was a "cougar" among them.

There is a dusty film in some unfamiliar format, of my baby mother held in her father's arms, and an old photo album belonging to my grandmother with pictures of long-ago Easters spent looking for eggs under their giant spruce tree, and Christmases in polyester pajamas with tousled hair, all of us grandchildren gradually getting older until I suppose she stopped putting photos away, and just let them pile up on her bedside table.

That was the one quiet day at home! From then, time speeded up in a blur of visitors. My mother's best friend Janet, gorgeous as ever, hostess of many, many sleepovers with her daughter who grew up with me, always the more glamorous, popular and beautiful! Just looking at her familiar face made me feel as if the intervening 30 years had never happened, and we were once again jumping off the dock at their lake house, or our lake house, or speeding on water skis behind one of our boats, all of us with perfect athletic figures and perfect tans, eating hot dogs and steaks and getting up at the crack of dawn in 1981 to watch Princess Diana's wedding, on our dodgy aerial television.

And along with her came her great friend Dallene, famous in my life for teaching me to play piano, a joy that has stayed with me all these years; if I'm not as good as I was at age 12, it's not Dallene's fault! How many hundreds of hours I spent at the piano in her elegant Victorian house, with her son under my feet, trying to keep me from reaching the pedals! And her husband our high school football coach, the two of them bursting with energy to teach all of us everything they knew... Many years later, they turned up in London on a school trip, and I cooked something for them, a pork roast, Dallene thinks, and of course she says, "That was the best pork roast I ever ate!"

It was simply lovely to sit with them and my mother, feeling petted and loved, remembered as a skinny little kid tagging after the cooler kids, practicing my piano and making chocolate chip cookies, seeing them always in the bleachers at my diving and gymnastic meets, a set of ladies ready to take care of me and all our friends, stalwart mothers. I love to think that there are girls in Avery's little social circle who see me as just such a mother, there to pick them up at the train station after school trips, to provide popcorn while they watch a movie. Every time Avery asks for help with her piano music, I think of Dallene and what she added to my life, once a week, for years and years, and I told her so! Which made us both happy.

Then it was onto producing lunch for my dear friends Bob and Ann, Bob who married us in his infinite philosophical wisdom, 20 years ago. Ann was and is a total feminist and iconoclast, and she was more than happy to turn the traditional marriage service into something that reflected who we were. To get ready, my mother polished the brown and white china, spreading a matching tablecloth on the dining table where we NEVER eat unless company comes! More china shone down from the cherry sideboard that my dad made with his very own hands.

It was tricky for me, queen of butter, cream and other fattening things, to make something that would please Bob and Ann who are 80+ for a good reason. They really take care of themselves, biking through Holland last year, playing tennis twice a week. So I really felt I didn't want to poison them at lunch, and I spent a lot of time thinking of just the right dish: savoury and festive, yet not heavy and guilt-inducing. I think I invented just the ticket, and I have to tell you that I served the chicken salad in... a chamber pot. I really did, as you see.

Chicken Salad with Basmati Rice, Artichokes, Pinenuts and Courgettes
(serves 8)

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 tbsps olive oil
1 tsp Fox Point seasoning
2 cups basmati rice, steamed in 1 1/2 cups water
2 heads Boston lettuce, well trimmed and leaves separated
1 large globe artichoke
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 cup pinenuts, lightly toasted
2 medium courgettes (zucchini), cut into bite-size batons
1 red onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced with salt and lemon juice
juice and zest of 1 lemon
handful chives, chopped
handful fresh dill, chopped

dressing (optional):
2 tbsps mayonnaise
1 tbsp olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Saute the chicken breasts in a large frying pan with the oil and Fox Point, till just cooked. Don't overcook. Slice thin and set aside to cool, reserving the seasoned oil in the frying pan.

Steam rice and set aside to cool.

Line a large bowl (or chamber pot) with leaves of Boston lettuce, just the sweet inner leaves. In a separate large bowl, mix all the ingredients (including chicken and rice) for the salad and toss well. Add the seasoned juicy oil from the chicken pan and as much of the dressing (or none) as you like and mix well.

Arrange the salad in the bowl lined with lettuce leaves and serve with baguette slices, rolls, or as my mother did, buttered biscuits.

*******************

This was so delicious! So many different textures, colors and flavors that each bite was interesting. Be sure to serve a couple of lettuce leaves on every plate. If you're the type of person who likes things wrapped in lettuce, eat the salad that way, wrapped in a leaf.

For dessert we had blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and strawberries tossed in a little lemony sugar water, and my mother's all-time, old-fashioned favorite sweet:

Lemon Bars
(serves 12)

1 box lemon cake mix
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 package lemon frosting mix or 1 cup lemon frosting
1 8-ounce package cream cheese
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup lemon frosting for top

Butter a 9x9 cake pan and heat oven to 350F/180C.

Mix the cake mix, 2 eggs and melted butter and press into the cake pan evenly. Mix frosting mix or frosting, cream cheese and 1 egg and spread on top. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until set and golden brown. Cool and spread remaining frosting on top. Cut into 12 squares.

**************

Now I know you will sit up at this and say to yourself, "Self, what is Kristen doing with processed foods full of high-fructose corn syrup and artificial flavorings?" And to this I can only say, this was the first dish I ever cooked in my entire life, age perhaps 10, and that's what we did in those days. I'm sure if I put my mind to it, I could come up with a pretentious recipe using all organic pure ingredients, and it would be a page long and cost about $20. But why? How often are you going to eat Lemon Bars, anyway? Once a year? Go for it.

Bob and Ann and we sat around the table for hours, reminiscing about my college days (where he was my professor, to be sure, but he started when my parents were there!), our lives in London, discussing the recent election, my sister's career, and theories of children in foster homes, all subjects dear to our hearts. Best of all were the stories about old professors my parents and I had had in school.

"Remember old E., how blind he got in his old age?" Bob asked.

"Sure," my mother said promptly. "Once there was a kid in my class who had a bet that he could crawl out down the central aisle, and E. thought he was a dog. 'Who let that mutt in my classroom?'"

"Versions of that story are legendary," Bob laughed, "but the best is that one kid bet another a quarter that he could crawl out. When E. saw him, he walked back where the kid was on his hands and knees and said, 'Young man, what are you doing?' And the kid said, 'I just lost a quarter,' so E. got down on HIS hands and knees to look for it!"

Finally they had to go, having driven an hour from my college town to see me.

Thursday saw me having coffee (I really needed it at that point, jetlag threatening to catch up with me!) with my old high school friend Brent, now the director of the Indiana University jazz radio station. We talked over and over each other, trying to fill in the gaps between 1983 and now. Indiana politics, the history of our little neighborhood where we grew up, adventures in college, and of course the joys of Facebook, where we found each other after all these years!

He raced me home where we jumped in the car and drove two hours to the little town in Southern Indiana where my mother grew up, and where her mother now lives in a gorgeous little retirement home, where she is the undisputed Queen. And the oldest lady at 98! "Well, hey there, Bettye," person after person called to her, while we were there. And she remembered me perfectly, although it's been several years since I saw her, isolated as she is in that town, so far from London. "I'd like to go back there," she said reminiscently, "and spend more than two weeks. I was there for two weeks with your grandfather, and it surely was not enough to see all there was to see..." her voice trailing off as she looked into the past, two dead husbands ago, another lifetime it must seem.

I confess to a little heart-thumping fear when I first saw her. So much older than I remembered, living not in the houses where I visited her as a child, but as a patient, really, in a nursing home. I know that my life is impoverished by not spending enough time with her, and with the other old, old people who exist in my life. Oldness can start to seem scary, so far away, as if they aren't really people anymore. But the longer I sat with her, the more we exchanged stories, and she looked through the photographs of Avery and John that I had brought, the more I recognized the silly, chatty, resolute matriarch of our family who held us all together for so many years. When we got up from the table where we'd been sitting as she had a cup of ice cream, she started to stand up and abruptly sat back down in her wheelchair, laughing. "I almost forgot I was living in this contraption, honey! Almost stood up on my own two feet. Got to remember I scoot, now, not walk. It's hell to get old!"

We left after an hour or so, and I kissed her soft cheek and she clung to my arm for an instant, saying, "It's good of you to come see an old lady, honey," and I could only hug her back and see her old, old eyes overlaid with the snappy brown ones in the photos on my mother's porch. How odd it is to try to see the continuity between that buxom, beautifully dressed young lady holding my baby mother, and this lady so diminished and tiny. But when I said, "Now you behave yourself, young lady, till I see you again," she squeezed my hand and said, "What would be the fun in that?" She's still in there, after all.

As if this wasn't overwhelming enough, I was then taken out for a super-fancy dinner with eight of my best friends from high school! Simply unbelievable, that I have been friends with Amy, in particular, since I was five (and she is still exactly the same, with an enormous booming laugh and sparkling black eyes, always looking for trouble), and most of the others since our high school days. What struck me was the continuity of their personalities! Jami, still a vegetarian as she has been since one thunderstruck day at age 14! Tawn, her sister, eccentric, brilliant and white-haired, as beautiful as ever. Lynette, ever the Francophile among us, who managed to marry a Frenchman! The "other Amy," older than we, sophisticated and lawyerly but with the same wicked gleam in her eye. And the little sisters of the group: gregarious Jill, serene and gentle Jennifer, and Shelley, full of zest for life and well she might have, with a boyfriend who is, shall we say, considerably more YOUTHFUL than the rest of us! She too, is a discovery of Facebook, and say what you will about social networking, if it brings together friends from 25 years ago, I say, bring it on.

It was a good thing we started out at an outdoor table, because we simply shouted with laughter! Catching up with stories of our adolescent children ("is it OK if she has a total attitude, or should I nip it in the bud?" was a common topic!), our husbands (some of them high school sweethearts!), our parents, old teachers we remembered. "Remember how that health teacher told us that if you have a tapeworm, all you have to do to get rid of it is to hold a bowl of macaroni and cheese under your chin, breath in through your mouth, and then when the tapeworm appears, grab it and pull it out?" EEEW! A strong pedagogical memory for us all!

Home very late, as I really felt I had to talk at some length with everyone! We parted, vowing not to leave it another long space of years before we see each other again. How lucky I felt, to have had such good judgment in choosing friends, so long ago.

And that was that. Hugs and kisses all round with my mother, father and brother the next morning (and of course Maisie the cat!), and off to the airport. There I sat, not reading, not people-watching as I usually do, but lost in the space of years that comes to you when you step back in time. Four days of memories... and a lot of love and fun remembered.

continued adventures in the shires...

2010-05-05T15:51:00.009+01:00

Before I devote myself to the continuation of our Wiltshire story (ponies!), I must tell you that not only is today the UK General Election, in which we'll get a new Prime Minister, but also tomorrow is the 65th anniversary of VE Day, Victory in Europe Day, and as such, I've been reading several books that I would recommend to anyone even remotely interested in the Second World War. I confess it's the period in history that interests me more than any other, partly because it still feels present here in London (in America we're not accustomed, for example, to walking past buildings with pockmarks labelled as war damage). But also we've been watching "The Pacific", the nominal sequel to "Band of Brothers," not so much as entertainment, I must say (hideously violent and depressing), but as a tribute of appreciation to the soldiers who lived through such horrors.

I offer you Citizens of London, a fascinating account of several famous Americans who chose to stay in London during the Blitz... and Americans in Paris, the same story in that beleaguered, occupied city. But perhaps even more overwhelming have been In Memory's Kitchen, a cookbook (imagine) written by Czech ladies in a concentration camp outside Prague. A COOKBOOK written by starving ladies. And In My Hands, the story of a Polish teenager who became a Holocaust rescuer. You will cry with horrified sympathy, you will wish you could meet these people, express your gratitude, you will look around you at the riches and freedom we have and see the tiny, thin, wavery line that separates normal life from unbelievable suffering. All worth the read. And thank you to my friends Anne, Bina, and Alyssa, who made these heartbreaking, enriching books known to me.

Happy VE Day.

Well, I felt I couldn't leave you all with the last post, the story of our adventures at Salisbury Cathedral, without some marvellous photos of those times, those views, those places. We were up SO HIGH! I can't explain exactly what happened to me in Salisbury - was it lack of oxygen? - but it contained for me a sort of magic, a cocoon of safety, kindness, historical fascination and peace that will stay with me always. I can't sing enough the praises of the Landmark Trust, and I hope you will spend your next holiday in one: to be enveloped in a property who exists for us only because some very far-seeing brilliant archaeologists and architects decided to save it, to be surrounded by its history, to find in each and every house the most minimal but perfect furnishings, always quite the same in each one, to read and write in the extensive Log Books... to follow in some places 30 years of visitors and their stories! Go, do, and write your story. I have passed the reins of this job to Avery.

And now for something completely different: my current obsession with... teriyaki sauce. Now, before you jump down my throat, I am fully aware the "terikyaki" is a method of grilling meats, and does not refer to any specific sauce. In this, I think it shares space with the Western concept of "satay sauce," because "satay" really refers to the skewer method of cooking, but we all think it means a peanut sauce.

My point is, drop your skepticism for a bit and imagine what you think of as "teriyaki sauce." You know what I mean: dark, salty, spicy, sticky. I know. That's what I mean, too. And here it is.

Teriyaki Sauce
(you arrange the amounts, I'm giving the proportions)

2 parts dark soy sauce
1 part Japanese mirin
1 part honey
1/2 part sesame oil
zest and juice of limes
fresh grated ginger (to taste)
fresh minced garlic (to taste)

So imagine you want to make enough of this sauce to coat fillets of salmon for four. That's what I typically make.

You will want 1/2 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup mirin, 1/4 cup honey, 1/8 cup (just a drizzle, in short) sesame oil, the zest and juice of 1 lime, and a 2-inch knob of ginger, peeled and grated, and 2 cloves garlic, minced.

Mix all in a saucepan and simmer till the sauce bubbles like a toffee, perhaps 3 minutes.

Cool and pour over the salmon fillet, then bake at 425F, 210 C for 20 minutes.

*******************

Believe me when I tell you that this sauce is DIVINE. Simple, wholesome, spicy, sticky. Try it on chicken thighs and breast fillets, which you can then saute in a frying pan. For a vegetarian meal, you can easily toss steamed broccoli, peppers, cauliflower, baked squash, in the sauce and serve with rice. Sublime. Make it.

But back to Wiltshire. At least, it's strictly speaking Hampshire.

The New Forest! It's a protected area much like Exmoor or Dartmoor, with ponies standing by the side of the road, and in the hillocky areas in parkland. Big ponies and small, brown, black and white, as you see: simply there for the petting! Well, actually we were told off by a park worker who at first claimed we might be bitten, then once Avery's extreme equestrian experience was made known, said that petting them encouraged them to demand petting! And what's wrong with that! John's mom was the perfect paparrazza, following Avery everywhere to get the best possible shot. We repaired then to nearby Lyndhurst for a pizza lunch at Prezzo, lovely and relaxing in the garden.

Oh, the adventures we had. Back to town finally where the volcano hit and forced us into tourist destinations FAR off the beaten path (plus Avery blissfully shopping in Regent Street! did you ever see such a happy shopping face!), and my own personal ambition to cook something different for EVERY night of John's mother's stay, which by the end was approaching the four-week mark! But I did it. And now I just notice how often I repeat things, our favorites like... teriyaki salmon.

Quiet reigns here tonight, then, and election coverage is beginning NOW. So I shall love you and leave you, and tomorrow, we have a new Prime Minister.

catching up with Wiltshire (with a little Rye along the way)

2010-05-05T04:10:00.004+01:00

Life: speeded up. I cannot believe it's been a month since our unforgettable trip to Wiltshire, most especially the magical town of Salisbury, and that I am just now sitting down to look at these evocative photographs, and to describe a bit of our fun.

Just before we left, of course, was the horrid burglary and the loss of my laptop and my camera. Brilliant John was able to retrieve our photos from some Big Brother umbrella online, so everything is safe. But I have been astonished at how naked I feel without a camera! I have gotten so used to simply whipping it out to record a dish, or something Avery's doing, or a beautiful sight in the countryside, that to have an empty hand and just eyes to remember has been an unpleasant surprise.

Thank goodness John's mother had a camera in her possession when we were out of the house being burgled, and she is the Compleat Recorder of Everything That Happens, so we have marvellous photos of Wiltshire.

Since then, of course, we've had The Adventure of the Volcanic Ash, and all the mess that went with it. Finally, though, everyone is back in place at home, at school, and I've been on an adventure: to Rye, in East Sussex, on a reunion with my foodie and food-writing friends from the Arvon Foundation. Three solid days of FOOD. I dragged with me all the ingredients for my grilled teriyaki salmon, three-cabbage slaw with fennel, celery and carrots, pesto, many, many packets of sausages and bacon from my beloved Giggly Pig in the Hammersmith farmer's market... you can imagine the weight of my suitcases!

All weekend we did nothing but shop for food, cook, talk about methods, ingredients and memorable dishes, then EAT. And sit around talking about cooking and eating! Pure heaven. Everyone contributed, with very little discussion or arrangement, special dishes, and the table groaned night after night. Rosie's slow-roasted pork belly with rosemary, lemon and superb crackling, Pauline's cauliflower roasted with chilli olive oil, a sauce of pork juices, Calvados, red wine and butter... Beets roasted and tossed with chopped parsley and lime juice, and finally Sunday lunch of two gorgeous legs of lamb, slow-roasted with Adam's ambrosial marinade of every savoury ingredient imaginable: harissa, anchovy fillets, lime juice, garlic, rosemary, olive oil...

And the desserts! I started out as I usually do, saying warningly, "Don't have your feelings hurt. I don't really like sweet things." But maybe it's just that I don't like rubbish sweet things! Because I liked everything: Sam's Victoria sponge with raspberry jam filling, Rosie's chocolate and Amaretto slice, and her incomparable Bramley apple crumble with homemade toffee sauce and custard! The chocolate slice, ah... quite wonderful: a kick of alcohol, a crunch of crushed biscuits, fluffy perfect creamy chocolate.

Through it all, we discussed food. What would be our Desert Island Ingredient (butter, for me). Does bread count? Last dish on earth? Foie gras creme brulee for me, smoked salmon for someone else, a perfectly cooked steak...

Conviviality, humor, generosity beyond belief. That is my group of friends, the Gathering of Nuts in May. Susan's humor, Caro's sparkling wit, Louise's booming laugh, Katie's smiling appreciation of us all... everyone so talented, warm and supportive. One of my favorite lines? I was complaining that too many English puddings contained gelatine, and said pompously, "Americans don't like anything wobbly!" And nearly everyone chorused, "Except themselves!"

Rosie's Celestial Chocolate and Amaretto Slice
(serves about 8)

10 crushed Amaretti biscuits
125 grams high-cocoa-content chocolate (Valhrona is excellent)
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tbsp strong espresso coffee
1 tbsp Amaretto liqueuer
4 eggs, separated
1 tbsp caster sugar
300 ml double cream

Line a loaf tin with greaseproof paper, then place half the crushed biscuits on the bottom.

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler, then stir in the butter, coffee and Amaretto. Set aside.

Whisk the egg yolks with the caster sugar until fluffy, and set aside. Whip cream, then mix it with chocolate mixture.

Beat egg whites till stiff and gently fold into chocolate mixture. Pour into loaf pan and refrigerate overnight, very important. When ready to serve, unmold from pan and scatter remaining crushed biscuits on top. If you want to be posh, Rosie suggests a shot glass of Amaretto on the side. HEAVENLY.

*********************

One lunch out: should you find yourself in Camber Sands, a stretch of sandy beach a few miles outside Rye, slip into "The Place at the Beach" and prepare for a treat. A simply gorgeous starter of creamy smoked haddock gratin with spinach, then massive fish and chips with a truly memorable tartare sauce. Don't get Caro started on the risotto, however: uncooked, tasteless and quite inedible. Back to our little rented house on a sheep-filled hillside to cook another perfect meal for ourselves...

Now I am home. For a brief moment, it seems. My head is spinning a bit from what's on my desk and mind right now: just home from Rye, I'm now heading off to Indianapolis on Monday to visit my dear mother, father and brother for five days. Before that, I'm signing the permission slip for Avery's trip to Bath on the 15th, listening to John talking about going to Dublin the next weekend to look at his beloved Georgian architecture, looking into tickets for our return home in July, signing permission slips for Avery's trip to St Petersburg before Christmas!

Yesterday afternoon, I just wanted to sit down and breathe for a moment. So I did.

I took a nap! Just collapsed on the sofa in peace, listening to Avery practice her singing lesson downstairs in the kitchen, and Tacy lay across my legs while I watched the trees along the road wave their springy yellowy-green leaves, where bare branches had accompanied my late-afternoon naps in the approaching dark of late winter. Peace.

Peace was what characterized Salisbury, no doubt! We arrived at the Wardrobe, a Landmark Trust building in the heart of the Cathedral Close, and practically in the shadow of the spire. As with all Landmark Trust houses, total simplicity and perfection. "Old Chelsea" china, perfect cleanliness, a little bar of soap with LANDMARK carved into it, harsh white sheets and piles of woollen blankets on all the beds, and VIEWS. Of the red roofs of Salisbury, the Avon river stretching out under the window, the manicured gardens of Ted Heath's house next door!

Oh, the gorgeous cobblestoned courtyard of our ancient little house (a military museum sits underneath, part of the agreement with the Landmark Trust to have the little apartment for holiday lets)... and then the Green, stretching in a serene square bounded on three sides by Georgian houses and exquisite gardens, and then the Cathedral itself sits in medieval splendor, its spire reaching far into the sky. How far? I'll tell you... it's a long, long walk.

But we did it! We booked a tour of the Tower with one of the Cathedral guides, and I may tell you that as soon as our eyes met, I felt a deep and appreciative kinship. His name was Alastair, and he took to our little American party straightaway. Americans, I can tell you from long experience of both being one and observing them in and out of captivity, put to shame any other nationality when it comes to getting the most out of a tour guide. We ask questions! And right away it was clear that this was no ordinary guide, armed with a few facts and Health and Safety warnings about pregnant women not being allowed to climb the Tower.

"Why did the workers bother putting so much of themselves into this Church?" I asked, trying to imagine them working endless hours with no electricity or proper equipment, sanding marble pillars, carving limestone, killing themselves. "Ah, yes, that is a crucial question," Alastair jumped in at once, his eyes sparkling as he warmed to his theme. "Their lives were nasty, brutish and short, spent in darkness and filth in lonely little cabins. Their children died, they themselves had a life expectancy of between 25 and 35 years... how important it must have been to think that there was another life to come, a much better one, and this place was the stepping stone to that better life..."

We climbed the hundreds of steps up a winding stair barely wide enough to accommodate us one at a time, the worn stone steps barely deep enough for our feet, Avery and me with our combination of agoraphobia and claustrophobia. I swear I could feel the tower swaying in the breeze! We stopped for breath in the clock chamber, and in the bell chamber, while Alastair pointed out medieval ironwork, ancient rooflines, and the water pipes climbing all the way from the ground. So many towers simply burned down.

DING DONG, DING DONG!

Avery and I had heart attacks. We had not been expecting the chime! Alastair smiled indulgently at us and led the way, at the top of the inner tower, to the standing area outside, looking FAR below us to the green below, and we could see our Wardrobe! Simply stunning, and stunningly frightening. But we did it. "I am standing here imagining the tower just toppling over," Avery moaned, and I completely agreed. It felt very insubstantial, and VERY high up.

Back down, so much less frightening than going up. And worth the trip! We chatted more with Alastair, asking question after question, and he knew far more than we could even think to ask. Finally at the bottom, he asked if we had seen the Magna Carta yet, and upon hearing no, strolled over to the desk to ask if he could lead us through the exhibition. How intriguing to think that the Charter that the Pilgrim fathers were so keen to protect was their own copy of the great Magna Carta, ensuring a swift and speedy trial to all free men.

The document itself was strangely diminished: tiny and impossible to read, even if one read Latin. So small, to have accomplished so much.

The feeling of religion, of the place of the church in life, both medieval and present, was all around us. A ghostly organist practiced in the moonlit evenings, alone in the giant Cathedral. "Wouldn't it be funny," Avery chuckled, "if he broke into the theme from 'The Phantom of the Opera'?" Late at night, after a roast chicken and couscous, I said, "Listen! Bells..." and sure enough we could hear ringing. We wandered into the sleeping village and followed the sound, and there, magically, was a church, on bell-ringing practice night. Avery cowered in the graveyard, sure she saw an open grave just waiting to welcome her, and bats flew overhead as I stood in bliss, listening to the chimes, imagining Lord Peter Wimsey in that greatest of all crime novels, "The Nine Tailors," ringing away on a snowy Christmas Eve... heaven!

"Go in and ask to meet them!" John and his mother urged. "Just introduce yourself and see if they will show you around," but I was too shy.

Our days were so splendidly quiet and peaceful: we devoted ourselves to one of the many puzzles we accomplished over the week: you simply MUST order a puzzle from the Wentworth Company: all wooden pieces, and a few whimsical among them shaped like the subject of the puzzle! So a puzzle about a garden included pieces shaped like tiny spades, flower blossoms, garden hoses. How peaceful the afternoons were, John's mom hovering with one of her inevitable cups of coffee, Avery with a slice of apple cake, me with a glass of sparkling water, fighting over "that's my piece!" John napped or worked on the computer, John's mom tried to get through "Wolf Hall" by Hilary Mantel, Avery curled up with Sherlock Holmes, I puttered in the kitchen. Simple peace.

The night of the tower tour, we decided to spring for dinner out, and ended up, after mature consultations with the house Logbook and previous visitors' reports, at Anokaa, a fusion Indian restaurant right in the heart of Salisbury (which is a completely charming town in an of itself, although our loyalty was to the Cathedral Close). Starve yourself for the day and be prepared to be overwhelmed by Anokaa, its inventive menu, the charming and generous waiters... crispy lamb's liver with a chickpea pancake! Lentils smothered in garlic, spinach and okra, chicken in unusual sauces, the crunchiest papadum, the softest naan. Avery went traditional and ordered a creamy chicken korma, and the scent of delicate coconut milk wafted over us all.

And guess who was there as well? Alastair! With his family. I quickly succumbed to one of my usual impulses, and invited him to dinner the next night, and to my joy he accepted, just on his own because his wife would be away that evening. Glorious! More time to ask him questions.

He turned up precisely on time, with a gift for us: a glorious picture book of the Cathedral, its history, its floods and famines, great tombstones and inscriptions. How lovely. We sat down to dinner, talking nineteen to the dozen, and John's mother said gently, "Why not ask Alastair if he knows anyone at that church in town, someone you could ask questions about the bells?"

A moment's silence. Then he said, "Stay right here," and went to fetch his phone. He demonstrated its ringtone: handbells! "I am a ringer at that church," he said, "and let me make one phone call..." And then he was on the phone to the head of the ringers, explaining that he had a friend he'd like to bring by in the morning. To hear their ringing before services!

And guess what his favorite book in the world is? "The Nine Tailors." "It was read aloud to us as schoolboys," he reminisced, "and those were wonderful evenings, working out the change-ringing in the plot, imagining ourselves as Lord Peter..." He spent the rest of the dinner working out changes for me on a scrap of paper, explaining everything so that I understood, finally, after years of reading that novel in puzzlement.

Unbelievable.

So the next morning found me in the bell chamber, sitting quiet as a mouse on a bench along the wall, listening to the ancient calls I've read about so often... "Treble's going, treble's gone..." and reading tablets on the walls about great peals they've rung, and the instructions for the changes in Kent Treble Bob. Just like in the book, I kept thinking, and their pulls down, the rhythmical flight of the ropes, the men's (and one woman's!) faces as they looked to each other to know when to pull their ropes. The half hour flew by as I watched and listened. Then they all smiled indulgently at me, tied up their ropes and went on their ways, joking about how he who rings the treble bell does so only because it's all the poor man's capable of, bringing up the rear, making fun of each other's accents, lots of inside English jokes that I would have to live there a hundred years to understand. But, oh, I was in heaven trying!

Alastair unlocked the door to the belfry, and one of the men rang the treble bell alone, so I could hear it, and feel the swaying of the wooden structure holding it up, and that's just with ONE BELL ringing! Imagine during an entire peal, how powerful the sound is.

Well, that was the magic of Alastair Lack, whose guidance through the Cathedral you must ask for should you get there. Thank you, Alastair, for making one of my dreams come true.

And Stourhead House! This bridge forms part of its gorgeous landscape, used in the 2005 "Pride and Prejudice," so we made our pilgrimage to it, having a lovely picnic in the grounds, and then making our way along what we came to think of as the Stourhead Death March, an unbelievably LONG walk round hill and dale till we finally came to the house, panting and puffing. And it was a yawn, except for the Music Room, where as you see, "Pianists are welcome to play." It was a moment of a child's lifetime, at least for the adoring adults surrounding her. She sat right up at the Steinway (our piano will never sound the same, now) and played one of the themes from the score of "Pride and Prejudice," the elegant, simple sounds ringing against the carved ceilings and ancient paintings. When she finished, the notes drifted away and all the tourists and tour guides in the room applauded. How I missed John's dad at that moment. He would have beamed with pride at his granddaughter, in a moment of supreme dignity and elegance.

More on Wiltshire next... think New Forest. Think... PONIES.

freaking out

2010-04-28T23:17:00.005+01:00

New blog is coming.

New version of OLD blog is coming.

Improved blog of (sob) beloved blog is coming.

I'm SCARED.

I love my blog. I love how it looks, how pointlessly old-fashioned it is, how only-texty, how it doesn't scream at you, only gently says, "Hello, here's what has been happening, isn't it lovely/funny/touching," and "By the way, here's something you could whip up for supper."

I don't want to lose any of that, so I'm panicking a bit. A bit as I felt when I stood by and watched Avery have her first major haircut, from little-girl to "hairdo." Of course she was even more beautiful when she emerged, and still recognizable, but something of the Original, the Baby, was gone.

I just previewed two versions of The New And Improved Kristen in London. Made some suggestions (gently, this fellow owns my life right now!), tried to decide if I was being too picky... sighed over the completely new look...

I shall survive. It's only a matter of days before you, Dear Readers, are presented with the new choice. Then you can weigh in, and how I hope you WILL! We will tweak her (sorry, it) together. (Clearly, I have some issues going on here with adolescence in general, whether it's my daughter's or my blog's! All mothers want babies to stay small, even if they have better conversations with them when they're 13. For SURE).

Bear with me. Change is coming. And they say, change is... good. Don't they?

of eruptions and interruptions

2010-04-18T16:55:00.003+01:00

Two words: volcanic ash.

Who knew that two words could have such a devastating, discombobulating, disorienting effect on much of the world.

No flights.

In or out of the UK, as you all know by now, and this since Wednesday night. So my poor mother in law, who wanted nothing more than to be in Iowa on Thursday evening, is bravely sticking it out with us here this weekend, hoping to get out on Tuesday if the reports are safe and healthy.

I keep thinking how much I would like to get to Indiana on Wednesday. I do NOT want, however, to be part of the sort of seismological experiment entitled "How Much Volcanic Ash Does It Take To Shut Off Transatlantic Airplane Engines Headed for Detroit?"

In short, we're stuck. Can you believe it?

We've done:

Piccacilly: Hatchards (my favorite bookshop ever), plus lunch at the Wolesley with my friend JoAnn (duck livers in Madeira, halibut steaks and endless laughter) and the Van Gogh show (total yawn from Avery's and my perspective: we spent the entire time making up irreverent replacement titles for the very repetitive paintings ("Peasant With Bottom in Air Taking Care of Chickens and Possibly Dead Dog")

Highgate Cemetery (fascinating, ask for Josephine the Guide who is knowledgeable, funny and loyal to the cemetery)

Covent Garden (lovely spices from the Arabica company, including something called "Dukka" which was lovely on duck)

Avery's audition for a very silly-sounding sitcom like "Hannah Montana"

Portobello Market where we bought loads of presents I cannot describe here because their recipients will read about them! and lunch at E&O, possibly the best Asian fusion food in the city: seared tuna with miso aiol, crispy chilli squid, a beef dish with chopped peanuts in lettuce... words fail me. Perfection on a plate.

The Criminal Courts in the City (a murder case involving a young Kurd in a chicken shop who killed a man with a mop to get his cell phone)

The Lock and Canal Walk from Paddington Basin (a good five or six miles, be prepared, but in good weather it's delightful)

Camden Market (hideously crowded but found the BEST presents for everyone in Indianapolis, should I ever get there, and excellent donuts)

...........

We're in a tailspin.

All I can do is cook. Can I interest you in:

Salmon in Teriyaki Sauce
(serves 4)

4 fillets of salmon
2 cloves garlic, minced
1-inch knob ginger, grated
1/2 cup dark soy sauce
1/4 cup Japanese mirin (or sake)
1/4 cup honey
1 tbsp sesame oil
zest and juice of 1 lime
handful chives, chopped long

Line a baking dish with foil (very important as the sauce is very difficult to clean from baking dish!). Place salmon fillets in it.

In a small saucepan, place all marinade ingredients except chives and simmer until reduced just a bit, perhaps 5 minutes. Cool slightly, then pour over salmon fillets.

Cook either in a very hot oven (425F, 210C) for 20 minutes (or until opaque in center) or grill on one side for about 6 minutes, then turn and grill for another 4-5 minutes, JUST until cooked through.

Scatter with chives.

**************

Haddock with Tartar Sauce and Savoy Cabbage and Curly Kale Saute
(serves 4)

2 inches high (in a wide, shallow pan) tasteless oil like rapeseed or sunflower oil

4 pieces haddock loin fillets
2 eggs, beaten
2 tbsps cream

1 1/2 cups fresh breadcrumbs
3/4 cup cornstarch (cornflour)
salt and pepper

3/4 cup mayonnaise
tbsp capers, chopped
6 cornichons, chopped
juice of 1 lime
pinch dried dill
pinch dried tarragon
black pepper and salt to taste

CABBAGE:
3 tbsps butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 head Savoy cabbage, chopped
2 handfuls curly green kale, chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Mix eggs with cream in a wide bowl. Mix breadcrumbs with cornflour and salt and pepper in a flat plate.

Mix following ingredients for the tartar sauce and set aside.

In a medium saucepan, over low heat, toss butter, oil, cabbage and kale until JUST slightly limp, then season and turn off heat.

To prepare fish, heat oil to nearly smoking. Meanwhile, coat each fillet of haddock in egg mixture, then in breadcrumb/cornflour/seasonings mixture. One at a time, lower into hot oil carefully. Cook on each side about 2-3 minutes, until firm. Drain on paper towel.

Serve with sauce and cabbage. Perfectly crunchy, light and you'll never go for fish and chips again. At least, until I learn to make chips and teach YOU.

*****************

So until the air clears, I'm stuck cooking for my growing household. Tonight, close to midnight, Avery and I walked to school to pick up a friend back from a school trip in Italy, to stay with us until her parents, stranded in America, can get back.

"Can I just tell you," chortled Avery as we trundled along with Lille's suitcases through the dark neighborhood toward home, "How extremely funny it is that your trip back from POMPEII was delayed by... a volcano."

Trust a teenager to make it funny.

one more apologetic, photoless update

2010-04-14T23:12:00.003+01:00

My goodness.

Life has been simply crazy of late. The last two weeks have simply SPED by in the company of my beloved mother-in-law who always makes every event three times as much fun, just by being there. And there have been SO MANY events.

The burglary has also set me back as I just cannot retrieve photographs from our old iPhoto sources with any ease. I depend on poor John to teach me to do everything, since my old system was stolen out from under me.

For my own sanity, may I list: "Six Degrees of Separation" was a mixed bag, theatre-wise. Strong performances, the most thought-provoking notion just in and of itself: how many degrees separate you from anyone you can imagine? Us from the Queen? Not so many as you'd think. John worked once at Goldman with someone who is now a Gordon Brown staffer. There you go: three degrees. Angelina Jolie? Avery had a school chum whose mother was best buddies with Elton John. At most, three degrees? Mother Teresa? Just add one from the Queen to Princess Diana, and there you go. We couldn't come up with ANYONE for whom we needed six actual degrees. And neither do you, if you know me. That's just one extra degree.

The play itself? Memorable mostly for the two naked male bodies fresh from a gay encounter, leaping about the stage. "Concealing a gun? Look at me! I don't think so!" Poor Avery didn't know where to look. Today, as I was recounting the story, she said, "I was FINE about it, it was just sitting next to YOU when it happened that was embarrassing!"

Ditto "The Last Station", a film about Tolstoy, with my adored crush James McAvoy in the supporting actor role. Well... one of the major plot lines was his deflowerment, by a young Tolstoyian maiden. Again, averted eyes, and "if you hadn't been next to me...!" A bit too much education, all of a sudden. But as my dear friend Jo said today, none of it is the first, nor will it be the last, so get used to it all!

There have been countless fabulous shopping trips (Benefit for Avery, food for me in many different places, the Apple store for John to replace our stolen computers)... and meals, my goodness! Last night's fried haddock with fresh olive oil-rosemary breadcrumbs from Gail's in Hampstead, homemade tartare sauce on the side! The Easter ham and its accompanying dauphinoise... fillet of beef with mushroom duxelles... pork medallions with sage, cream and brandy sauce...

Most of all, it's been the company of one of my favorite people on earth, plus two other of my favorite people on earth. Together, the four of us huddle down wherever we are, enjoying each other, raising a glass as many times as we can to John's beloved, much-revered, completely-missed father, feeling that as long as we can remember him to each other, laugh over our memories, he is still here.

Right. Tomorrow I shall consolidate photographs and tell you about Wiltshire. Specifically, Salisbury. Its Cathedral Close formed our home for six days, and its people were a complete delight. One in particular... but that's another story.

I promise I'm getting back on track and tomorrow? A recipe.

lolling in Salisbury

2010-04-09T23:29:00.003+01:00

Just the tiniest of updates to let you know all is well...

We are photographless for two reasons: one, we were unceremoniously burgled last week, AGAIN, and all photos are gone. Except for the ones we have taken since, and we have come away to Wiltshire (MUCH more on this soon!) without that essential piece of equipment that allows us to connect computer to camera, and to exchange all the blessings thereof.

So all I can say, briefly is this: 380 Cathedral steps up to the spire (whew), 5+ miles walk today to see the settings of several pivotal scenes of "Pride and Prejudice" (proposal in rain: swoon on cue).

And tonight: the best Indian meal EVER in the history of mankind: black lentils in honey and yogurt? Twice-roasted pork in vindaloo? Spinach with garlic and fenugreek leaves?

But wait: tomorrow will bring... dinner here with an exalted guest: our guide of the Salisbury Tower Tour. He is quite simply the most charming gentleman any of us has met in about a thousand years, so it was but the work of a moment to invite him to mozzarella-stuffed meatballs in the Wardrobe, our abode high above the Cathedral Close, tomorrow evening. Watch this space.

salads, salads, everywhere

2010-04-01T03:37:00.002+01:00

Don't you find you get on food kicks? I do. I get an urge to cook scallops and then I have them one night with loads of olive oil, parsley, breadcrumbs and garlic. The next night I want them with beets, potatoes and bacon.

Or pasta, when I cook rigatoni alla vodka sauce one night and then the night after that feel I can't live without carbonara.

Won't it be wonderful SOON when you can look up all these recipes on the magnificent INDEX that's coming? Just yesterday I sent my spreadsheet of categories to my Blog Angel Julian, the dear young man who is going to drag me into the land of the Search Optimized and Google Popularized. It will be simply brilliant for you, and for me, to be able to simply click on "Main Courses" and find "Shellfish" and there will be scallop recipe after scallop recipe.

But I digress. My point is, I've been on a "how to make more interesting salads" kick this week. I started with your basic "how many beans can you fit into a bowl" recipe, but then my passion was whetted and, as well, John's photographic ambitions. And thus were born these two completely luscious, versatile, and yet completely different salads.

I have had readers suggest that I add grilled chicken to them, that I add crispy tortilla strips to them, that I add a piece of lightly toasted baguette with olive oil to them. To all these suggestions I shout HURRAY and also throw in: how about some seared fillet steak? Some, dare I say it, sauteed scallops? Even some shaved Parmesan, to either one. These salads are marvellous, and JUST the beginning. Just you use your imagination, and I don't mean just your tastebuds. Imagine how they will LOOK, too, because I'm convinced, with salads at least, that contrasting color will automatically equal good flavors. I really think so. Can you imagine adding together any two red and green things and having it not be delicious? Plus, what ingredients cannot be married with chilli oil and lemon juice? I challenge you.

Red Pepper, Courgette and Black Bean Salad
(serves 4 as a side dish, or 2 as a main course)

1 red bell pepper
1 large courgette (zucchini)
1 soup-size tin black beans, well rinsed and drained
1 large clove garlic
juice of 1 lemon
pulp of as much of a lemon as you can gather
1/2 tsp sea salt
lots of fresh-ground black pepper
1 tbsp chilli oil
1 large handful flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Dice the red pepper and the courgette in same-size bites, then mix in a large bowl with the black beans. Mince the garlic WITH the lemon juice and pulp and salt (this combination will break down the garlic into a mush, perfect for eating raw). Toss with the red pepper and courgette and beans and chilli oil, and sprinkle with black pepper.

Mound as high vertically on a plate as you can, and scatter the chopped parsley on top.

*********************

Beetroot, Goats Cheese and Wild Rocket and Sorrel Salad
(serves 4 as a side dish, or 2 as a main course)

3 medium beets
2 tsps balsamic vinegar
handful wild rocket
handful wild sorrel leaves
handful goats cheese in dice
1/4 red onion, diced
handful chives, chopped long
1 tbsp chilli oil
juice of 1/2 lemon
fresh black pepper and sea salt to taste

Roast the beets by wrapping them, in a group, in foil and cooking in a very hot oven (425F) for an hour and a half. Leave them in the foil on the counter for 10 minutes or so before unwrapping and slipping the skins off (this time lapse allows the beets both to cool and to let go their skins by steaming).

Dice the beets and sprinkle with the vinegar.

Arrange the rocket and sorrel on a pretty place and pile the beets on them. Scatter with goats cheese, onion, and chives, and sprinkle the chilli oil and lemon juice on top. Season as you like.

*****************

Try these when you feel you've had just too much red meat, or fried food, or have been away from home and feel disconnected from the finer, most basic things in life. And if your children don't love salads (Avery won't eat anything with lettuce included), just deconstruct it. Beets and goats cheese are two of her favorite foods. But not together.

Let's see, part of what's put a sparkle in my step tonight is the arrival today of John's mom, a person we all hold so dear that all we can do most of the year is to avert our thoughts. We are separated for so much time that we can only enjoy the moments we are together, not dwell on the months spent apart.

She arrived this afternoon to a flurry of welcomes, kisses and hugs and "Oh, I love these photographs!" in the entry hall, and exclamations over the delightful cats, her cozy white bedroom overlooking the gardens of Hammersmith, the small gifts we had left on her bed with its fluffy white duvet. As always, presents emerged from her suitcase: a tea towel for me saying, "After a good dinner one can forgive almost all, even one's relatives." (Dear Oscar Wilde, such a clever boy.) And a gorgeous black shirt, and lots of clothes and precious makeup for Avery... just like Christmas!

We settled down to the business of appreciating her, her special way of making everything we say seem interesting, our lives interesting, Avery's accomplishments remarkable (well, her school report WAS pretty spectacular). And to think we have two weeks of her company to enjoy. Maybe if we eat enough vegetables, we'll live forever and have all the time in the world. Bring on the beets.

everything soft (especially me)

2010-03-28T05:29:00.004+01:00

Well, it's Sunday evening, there's a chill rain falling on the midnight streets of London, and I feel I've dodged a bullet.

Thursday found us driving a desperately anxious Avery to have her dental surgery. Somehow I imagined this happening in a dentist's office (silly me, that's what happens in America, I think, never having been through any such thing), and since the dental surgeon had told us to expect the procedure to last a half hour, I had us home about an hour and a half later, relieved at its being over.

I had it all wrong.

We pulled up to the stated address to find ourselves at a hospital. A real, proper hospital. Avery's despair deepened. Up to a hospital ROOM, complete with bed with head and foot that moved according to a little remote control, an entirely unbelievable menu of food items like "Vegetable Pakora with Raita" and "Seared Cod with Miso Sauce" (in a HOSPITAL??), and perhaps most incredible, a complete list of wines and spirits. At this point, while the porter (like at a doorman building in New York) was pointing out how to work the space-age bed, I was about ready to order the entire bottle of Smirnoff vodka and call it a day.

Hospital gown ("The ties open at the back, dear"), dressing gown (only in England) and disposable slippers. Did they think she was staying the night? I felt completely shocked out of my skin. Somehow, I knew we wouldn't be home in an hour and a half.

Three hours of waiting later, things went from shocking to completely unbelievable, for me, as the surgeon and anaesthetist (I longed for America where it's spelled anesthesiologist and somehow sounds less scary without the dipthong) arrived. Dressed in clothes that looked appropriate for a round of golf (surgeon) and an accountants' office (anaesthetist), they announced that plans had changed and Avery would be put under a general anaesthetic.

Before I could properly take this in, Avery and John were nodding rather calmly, both of them having been intelligent enough to do research on all possible pain relief options, long before the day. I felt completely ignorant and rug-pulled-out-from-under, but what could I say? It all seemed a fait accompli. Seemingly instantly, she was taken away, John having been voted the parent to accompany her to the "operating theatre" (I was designated as "recovery parent").

"Say goodbye to Mum," the nurse intoned kindly enough, which felt like doom to me.

"Bye, Mummy," Avery said, and with her usual demeanor of charm and impeccable manners to strangers, simply walked away into the theatre, John following her.

AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY.

I was struck by what seemed to have happened: my only child simply taken from me, thank God with her father with her, to undergo something that's never happened to me, a journey down a perilous and unknown path, at the mercy of people I had scarcely met, let alone quizzed about their steadiness of hand, their mood, their levels of concentration. What if they'd had too much coffee, or not enough, or fought with their girlfriends and weren't paying attention?

"Are you all right?" asked a lovely passing nurse. This is English for any number of questions. It rarely means what Americans think of asking "Are you all right?" which would indicate a pretty serious concern for someone's well-being. To the English, it can mean, "Is your coffee milky enough?" or "Do you need help with your baby's buggy?" in the Tube.

This English lady, however, could see that I took her question literally.

"My daughter's in there, without me. Her father's there, though..."

"Ah, here he comes. It will all come out all right," she said, and smiled with the unconcern of the professional in an arena that seems to the outside visitor totally overwhelming and frightening.

There followed the longest 40 minutes of my life. Worse than waiting for a plane to take off in my worst moments of fear of flying, but similar. How could I have put the most precious thing in the world in the hands of complete strangers who knew how to handle machinery I couldn't even identify? We tried to watch telly, we tried to chat, but even John was a bit off and conversation flagged.

Finally the lovely nurse was back, smiling, "Would you like to come to her now?"

"You mean she's all right?"

"But of course, a bit wobbly perhaps, but you mustn't worry," this all said in a placid French accent, her whites impeccable, she separated from me by a gulf of non-motherhood. (Of course she may be a mother, but not the one of my child who might be a bit "wobbly.")

And I found Avery, all tubed up and certainly wobbly, although motionless, her eyelashes fluttering, things attached to her hands, but unmistakably still Avery behind her eyelids, when they fluttered open.

"I was dizzy but I couldn't make the words work..." she said. I found her hand under the blankets, pristine and soft, and held it, feeling my life had been saved.

The surgeon and anaesthetist appeared, in scrubs now and nonchalant, "It's been a pleasure," they said meaninglessly, not seeming to realize that they had brought me to the brink of total disaster, and then decided to let me live. How on earth do they DO that every day, many times a day? Take a 13-year-old's consciousness, body and life in their hands, fix something, bring her back, and simply move onto the next one? As foreign an existence as I can imagine. All this for two tiny gold chains attached to her buried incisors, to be attached to her braces next week. As if her teeth matter.

But of course they do. Real life continues.

Some two hours, a glass of water and a straw later, plus endless measurings of her heart rate and blood pressure, she was allowed to dress in her civvies, discard the dreaded hospital gown ("I'm for SURE entering that contest to redesign hospital gowns!" she said emphatically), and shake the nurse's hand graciously. "It's been a pleasure to look after you today," the nurse said.

We put Avery carefully into the car, I feeling as if I was handling an angel that I'd almost not gotten back. She was her normal self, detailing everything she remembered. "How weird to think I've been in a room I don't even remember, and something's happened to me that I just MISSED," she marvelled.

We arrived at home, settled her with the new Daisy Dalrymple mystery books that had miraculously arrived in the post while she was away, a cashmere throw, a warm cat. The nurse having insisted that she eat something to soak up the IV medications, I made some creamy red pepper soup. It can be done in the blink of an eye, while the cook downs a lovely cocktail and begins to rejoin the land of the living, the thoughtless, the careless and normal.

Creamy Red Pepper Soup
(serves 3)

2 tbsps butter
3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 shallot, roughly chopped
4 red bell peppers, roughly chopped
2 sprigs thyme, roughly chopped
long splash Marsala wine
3 cups GOOD chicken stock
1/2 -3/4 cups double cream, depending on how creamy you like it
sea salt and black pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan and throw in garlic, shallots, peppers and thyme. Saute till just not raw. Add Marsala and turn up heat to burn off alcohol for 30 seconds or so. Add chicken stock and simmer until peppers are cooked, about 25 minutes. Whizz with a hand blender and put through a sieve to catch pepper skins and thyme stems. Add cream to soup and season.

****************

This soup is love incarnate. It's like chicken soup but without the "sick person" connotations of chicken soup. It's velvety and bright red and celebratory, and it makes Avery happy every time. This soup depends entirely on the quality of its few ingredients: especially really good stock (not from cubes) and really good cream.

This she sipped, and drank a glass of pink lemonade through a straw her clever father unearthed in the pantry.

And we put her to bed with hot water bottles, and a tissue paper package to open, filled with little fake-pearl bracelets in funny, cheerful colors. Something to open. And she was asleep, safe.

I asked her the next day how she managed to comport herself without panicking. She had an explanation that stopped me in my tracks, with its simplicity and dignity.

"If you can control your exterior closely enough, and make it positive, then gradually it begins to affect your interior, and you really begin to feel the way you're acting."

The next day she was COMPLETELY FINE. No swelling, no pain. The annoying anaesthetic wore off and she was totally normal. "Let's walk to school at noon and I can say goodbye for the holiday, to my friends." Off we went, I leaving her to finish the walk by herself while I picked up an enormous quantity of Scottish salmon at our local fishmongers, to be baked in a method so simple it can hardly be called a recipe. But with salmon that fresh and divine, it hardly requires chewing either, so it's perfect for a semi-invalid.

Fox Point Salmon
(serves 3)

1 length of salmon serving three portions: perhaps 1 lb in all?
olive oil to drizzle
Fox Point Seasoning to sprinkle lavishly

Simply drizzle the oil, sprinkle the Fox Point and bake this salmon in a very hot oven (425F, 210C) for about 20-25 minutes, till JUST cooked through but NEVER dry. That's IT.

*****************

With this, it's imperative to have:

Cheesy Spinach
(serves 3)

1 large bag washed baby spinach (1 lb)
2 tbsps butter
1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp celery seeds
1/2 tbsp celery salt (to taste, really, but mind the saltiness)
3 cloves garlic
2 tbsps cream
1/4 lb sharp cheese: Cheddar, Edam, Gruyere, Monterey Jack, grated

Whizz up the spinach in batches in the food processor till in small pieces, but not mushy.

Melt butter in a large skillet, add flour and sizzle a bit, then add celery seeds and salt and sizzle more. Add cream and stir up into a stodgy, thick paste-like almost-sauce.

Now turn off heat, and throw in spinach and cheese. Just before you're ready to seat, turn heat on low and stir constantly and watch it all magically amalgamate into a bright-green, creamy, cheesy DELIGHT.

*******************

Avery met up with me at the fishmonger's carrying a giant chocolate Easter egg, an offering from one of her friends. "She missed me yesterday," she said with pleasure, and we headed home, for a peaceful afternoon, and a dinner of everything SOFT.

Over it all, my heart was soft, and grateful. I thought of the parents who were at the hospital still, overnight, over many nights, hearing bad news, surviving any sort of unimaginable anxiety, not having to invent it as I did, because it was there in a diagnosis or an operation, not something simple and predictable and everyday as Avery had been through. And I was thankful.

It would be good to remember to feel that way every day. I know very soon we'll be back to chewing, and quibbling, and being annoyed that she leaves her wet bath towel on her bedroom floor. But not today. Today everything is soft.

of matzoh balls, liver, and dentistry

2010-03-24T05:01:00.006Z

Let's see, this evening we're in a moment of calm between an adventure in Golders Green, a magnificent weekend in the country, and Avery's dental surgery tomorrow. We'll start with the matzoh balls.

Because that is why I went to Golders Green, deep in North London. Having spent a fair amount of my adult life in New York City, I feel a deep and abiding love for most things Jewish, and all things Jewish food. Chicken soup with matzoh balls. Potato Latkes, pastrami, bagels. I miss it all. And so when my foodie friend Janet arrived for one of her all-too-infreqent trips to London from LA, off we went to Golders Green, on a pilgrimage to find the perfect spot for lunch. And we did, in Blooms.

"What are kneidlach?" I asked my adorable young waitress.

"Those are the, how do you say, the... noodles. Homemade."

"Thank you. What are kreplach?"

"Those are the dumplings, they are filled with minced meat."

"Excellent. What are lokschen?"

"Those are the matzoh balls."

"Fine, I'll have chicken soup with ALL of them."

This was lovely. Golden, rich, simple, with that flavor that can be imparted, I truly believe, only by a Jewish hand, and with love of the dish. I have made it myself, to no real success (and I'm a mean soup-maker, I'd say). But get my friend Alyssa in front of a stove, in my very own kitchen, and her chicken soup with matzoh balls is a revelation in health-giving, life-giving elixir. It's about the love.

There is no one like my friend Janet to have a food adventure with. We wandered into a Polish delicatessen where she encouraged me to buy kielbasa, sauerkraut from an old wooden barrel, little chocolate cookies and little sugar cookies in the shape of leaves ("leaf novelties" as I later translated the label).

And then the next day, our little Cinquecento stuffed like a tick with our overnight gear AND one of the children of our hosts, we were off to the country.

One gorgeous house, five wonderful children, a tennis court, an all-singing, all-dancing kitchen with an Aga, AND the family was happy for me to cook dinner! Meatballs stuffed with mozzarella, with one of the middle daughters as my helper, garlic bread and sauteed sugar snap peas. The dad made bread in a machine, overnight! I am researching buying just such a machine... the aroma was irresistible. During the weekend I was taken to Beechcroft Farm where I hugged no fewer than two baby lambs, one born the day before, and met several newborn calves and pigs, and bought pork sausages, bacon, sirloin steaks and lambs' liver. Let me elaborate.

Lambs' Liver with Marsala Wine, Bacon and Onions
(serves 4)

4 slices bacon, cut in small pieces
3 tbsps butter
2 white onions, sliced thick
3 tbsps Marsala wine
squeeze lemon juice
sea salt and pepper to taste
8 slices lambs' liver
scattering of fresh chives

Fry the bacon in a medium skillet and push to the edges of it, then add butter and fry onions until soft. Pour in the Marsala and scrape up all the little bits from the bottom, then add lemon juice and salt and pepper. Push everything to the sides and place the slices of liver in the center. Fry gently perhaps 3 minutes on the first side and 2 on the other. This timing will depend on several things: how thick the slices are, how high your heat, and how rare you like your liver. I mean, THE liver.

Pile everything on a nice platter and scatter chives over. Serve with some sharp salad, like lentils with a chilli dressing, beetroot with balsamic vinegar, tomatoes with lemon juice. Also toasted baguette if you like. Rich with iron, only a small serving needed: elemental.

********************

Long walks in the countryside as you see, with girls all around to make us laugh.

Tonight was the first night for pierrade! Huge platters of thinly-sliced duck and the sirloin from Beechcroft: peerless and delicious. Served with Sate sauce, Hoisin sauce, Dijon mustard. Plus dauphinoise potatoes (not beautiful, as you see, but gorgeously rich and creamy) and roasted carrots and parsnips. Spring HEAVEN, although it sounds wintry. But to eat outside, to saute each bite for oneself in the spring evening, EVEN though we were being rained on ever so slightly... heaven.

Roasted Carrots and Parsnips
(serves 4)

8 carrots
3 parsnips
drizzle chilli oil
scattering brown sugar
pinch sea salt
8 sage leaves
1 tbsp butter

Halve the carrots lengthwise (unpeeled, but washed), and quarter the parsnips lengthwise (peeled). Lay in a baking dish and drizzle with chilli oil, then scatter brown sugar over, and salt, then scatter sage over all. Roast in a hot oven (200C, 400F) for 30 minutes, then take dish out and add butter and toss the vegetables in the accumulated oil and butter. Place in oven for another 10 minutes. Perfect.

********************

All this has been lovely. Tennis, even though I keep straining some muscle/joint in my elbow. Lost Property: the Sale of goods made a record amount of money yesterday! Twelve mothers, 6 hours, and we raised... £400. Well, it's something, and most important, it's tradition and we were there, and the ways of Avery's school go on.

Today saw me writing up the Sales Proceeds, making up the rota for next term, a schedule of requests for next term's fabulous Luncheon, generally accomplishing things. And worrying. About Avery and tomorrow.

One wouldn't think that a child's perfectly routine surgery could throw a family into a tailspin, but we are, a bit, simply because of our lack of experience with... Avery being in pain.

I just don't like it. I know without a doubt that she will be absolutely fine, by tomorrow evening she will be safely ensconced back in the circle of my arm (with a secret present in her hands), and a Chilly Billy to suck on, if she wants to.

But it seems to me, as I sweat and fret and worry, that there is something elemental in a parent's makeup that says, "No pain, please, for my child." We would always rather go through it ourselves, whatever it is, even though we know that the experience of pain is normal, part of life, and something that everyone learns to submit to, to overcome. In fact, I suppose, the job of a parent is not to smooth the path for the child, to take away all potential sources of pain, but to teach her to shoulder up to pain, to make friends with it, to set it on the side of the road and move on.

But I don't like it.

Onward and upward to tomorrow afternoon, Avery and her bravery and whatever chew-less foods I can invent, as long as she needs them.

the magic of music (not to mention squash)

2010-03-17T02:29:00.003Z

The past week or so has been an exercise in taking my own advice: simply putting aside the imaginings of what I ought to be accomplishing, in favor of the here and now of my rather needy family of late.

Avery's day off school descended into that most dismal of all ailments, the common cold. Not enough of an illness to justify staying home (although if John weren't breathing down my neck, I'd always rather she stayed home when the slightest runny nose strikes), but enough to make life miserable for the duration. Achy, no appetite to speak of (which strikes terror in my feeding-people heart), cranky and apathetic. One of Avery's favorite jokes? "Are you ignorant, or just apathetic? I don't know and I don't care."

Then John's tooth flared up again and he spent a miserable weekend anticipating a root canal, which took place yesterday. Then last evening, while I volunteered at a school drinks party, John took Avery to the maxillo-facial surgeon (can that be right?) for a consultation on her upcoming surgery to bring down her incisors, to be met with her braces and pulled into place.

Ouch.

The poor guys. All I can do is make chicken soup and other soft, warm foods, and feel sorry for them both.

In the meantime, I managed to meet up with my new blog designer here, over an enormous dish of macaroni and cheese and a mammoth salad of beet leaves, rocket, olives, tomatoes, artichoke hearts. The plans that young man has for my efforts! Have you ever heard of SEO? Neither had I, but it stands for "Search Engine Optimization," or how to get Google to pay more attention to me. For instance, if I write about our trip to Venice, he has strategies for getting my blog to come up early in people's Google searches for "Venice," and the same for creamy sweetcorn and rocket soup. And he has wonderful ideas for randomly-appearing recipe hot links to pop up every time you log on, and a different banner photo for every post. And a logo! There will be a whole series of deadlines, test drives, opinion polls (you can weigh in if you like!), before finally going live with the New And Improved Kristen in London on... May 20.

That's all very well for me, in the dull month of March, to keep me occupied. And John's had more than enough to contend with visiting dentists. Our entire household has been livened up in a very minor way by our acquisition of a "toastie machine," which makes anything between two slices of bread a hot, chewy, glorious meal: buffalo mozzarella, bresaola, rocket and homemade pesto, as you see. Something to keep us entertained.

But dear Avery? Readers, I can hardly convey to you her frustration with the piano. She hates the songs she's been given to learn at school, her lessons occur during other lessons at school, so she must leave, miss the homework assignment and rush to meet up with her teacher for a scant 20 minutes or so of instruction. Then she forgets a lesson, then her teacher is called away and cancels. You can imagine.

So the poor dear sits on the velvet bench, music propped disconsolately in front of her, banging away as I cook dinner. "But Avery, that's meant to be an F sharp, I'm sure." "I like it this way." Dear me. Moments of silence fall between songs as she gathers her mental strength to continue. The whole instrument seems to encapsulate everything frustrating about education: being at other people's mercy, having to do what THEY say, having to follow all the stupid rules when YOUR way sounds just as nice. My sister and I have agreed that to play the piano at least on a basic level, or at least to read music competently, seems to us a skill akin to reading or subtracting. So I insist that Avery continue, just for a bit.

So, the antidote for all this musical misery? Not, as I would have thought, immersion in Facebook or video games or television. No, in a display of the sort of wisdom that makes me look at her in awe, she picked up, as you see, an old guitar, loaned to her by one of my friends, and began to improvise. Strumming away in the dimly lighted study, by herself, she looked for all the world like the next Joan Baez. Even what she was wearing, and fall of her hair, seemed an image of serenity from bygone days. How beautiful the sound was, how it took me back to my childhood with my brother's incredible talent playing itself out every day from his guitars...

How peaceful the house suddenly was, one sort of music acting as a cure for another. She played from "High School Musical," unrecognizable from its awful pop incarnation, just softly thrumming chords. The cats settled down near her, candles flickered on the table, and my dinner vegetable bubbled away in the oven. Quite perfect, and so unexpected! A cure for anxiety: guitar and butternut squash.

Baked Butternut Squash with Sage
(serves 4)

2 smallish butternut squashes
4 tbsps butter
4 tbsps brown sugar
drizzle olive oil
16 sage leaves
sprinkle sea salt

Heat oven to 400F, 200C. Line a cookie sheet or baking sheet with foil. Cut each butternut squash in half lengthways and scoop out the seeds. In the cavity left behind the seeds, place 1 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp brown sugar. Drizzle with olive oil, place 4 sage leaves on each squash half and sprinkle with salt. Bake for at least 40 minutes or until very soft. Lift out carefully because the squash may collapse, and mind the very hot butter-sugar mixture. Spoon the melted sugar butter over the whole half squash and serve hot or warm.

*************************

Speaking of music, we are on our way to a charming English school institution known as "The Singing Tea." Just what it says on the tin (also one of my favorite English expressions), it's a teatime concert of performances by girls who are taking singing lessons at school. You turn up in time for a cup of tea, or a glass of elderflower, you take a little piece of date and walnut cake, and chat for a bit with other parents. Then the girls are called onto the stage in the Singing Hall, one by one, to perform the pieces they are practicing for the upcoming National Exams this weekend. Avery is singing one piece in French (very depressing words, but they sound lovely) and one piece in German (she assures me it's a bucolic tale of frolic and mayhem, but it sounds like a funeral dirge).

I'll take plenty of tissues.

being needed

2010-03-08T23:05:00.008Z

I sometimes go through phases when I wonder, "What purpose am I serving, anyway?" Days pass when I don't seem to accomplish anything more significant than emptying the laundry basket, grocery shopping, putting a few things in envelopes and mailing them. Tasks anybody could do, I'm nothing special for it. These are days I will wish I had back when my days are more obviously numbered than I already know them to be.

At such times, I imagine myself with a proper job. Showing up at my local cafe every morning to make lattes and serve unappreciative customers with shouting children. Showing up every day at my local fishmonger to sweep the floor and tidy up after the people working there who actually know how to fillet a hake (and how to tell a hake from a cod).

Or I could go back to school to get a degree in child psychology, and start a practice helping teenage girls get along with their parents. Or open that mythical art gallery/bookshop and get used all over again to worrying about how to pay the rent.

I know this is all an unbelievable luxury. Most people don't have the option to sit around having existential anxiety; they are too busy surviving. But I do have the luxury, and I do worry. What is it all about? My friend Bee has suggested that "middle age" isn't so much about having lived half your life, but rather being in the middle: between your mother and your child, wondering sometimes what it is all about, and who we are meant to be for the time we have left.

Then, like clockwork, before I can indulge myself too much in my quest for self-expression, my phone rings.

"Hi, cutie, what's up?"

"My throat is really sore. I maybe don't think I can stay at school."

"Well, I'm in a car with your father just passing the school, so you have to decide RIGHT NOW."

"But I don't know what the teachers would say, or where to go, and I'm losing my voice."

"Then do you want me to come get you? Quick!"

A trailing wail... "I don't KNOW..."

I jump out of the car, saying, "I'll get to school in five minutes and then you can decide."

The phone rings again. It's that old classic: the grumpy school nurse.

"Your daughter is here saying she feels unwell." (Avery told me later that when she turned up at the infirmary, the dear lady harrumphed and said, "I was just about to take a tea break." A born nurturer, clearly: Nurse Ratchet's English sister.)

"Yes, I know, I'm on my way and I'll be there in five minutes."

"Well, we don't want our girls standing about outside the school in the cold, so you can telephone when you arrive, and I'll send her up."

So warm and fuzzy. I arrive, I ring up, a couple of windy, unpleasant minutes pass and Avery appears, gray-faced with her eyes looking, as my mother would say, "like burned holes in a blanket." I take her schoolbag, she buttons her coat, she puts her arm around my waist and we head home.

"Did you at least have lunch?"

"Well, sort of. It was meant to be a chicken stir fry, but I put in my fork and up came a PRAWN."

"Perhaps a bowl of chicken soup when we get home... I made some for Daddy's toothache and there's a little left."

So we arrive at home, she has a bowl of soup and some buttered crackers, I give her a cough drop, a warm throw around her knees, a new mystery propped up beside her. I share the throw and we lie at opposite ends of the sofa, legs stretched out, she takes her temperature, no fever. Relief.

And there we stay, all the rest of the afternoon, each with our book, dozing slightly and watching the bare branches outside waving back and forth against the steely March sky, feeling lucky. And today, a gorgeous dish of apple crumble to reward her for going to school when I would much rather have kept her home.

I know there aren't many years left when the voice on the other end of the phone could be my daughter, needing to be picked up at school, given a little TLC, a child who wants to spend the afternoon curled up with me and a cat, recovering.

My plan for self-actualization can definitely wait awhile.

Apple Crumble
(enough for one child for at least six breakfasts)

150 grams/2/3 cup plain flour
60 grams/1/4 cup granulated white sugar
80 grams/1/3 cup cold butter
4 Granny Smith apples, peeled and cut in bite-size pieces
sprinkle fresh-ground nutmeg
sprinkle fresh-ground cinnamon (or powdered)

This is a lovely, light crumble, by Simon Hopkinson, one of my favorite English cookery writers. My crumbles used to have too much butter, which resulted in a heavy topping. And my friend Livia gave me, for Christmas, a cinnamon grinder. I'm devoted to it now. The scent is so much fresher than ready-ground, and it's fun to do. I've also turned my back on ready-ground nutmeg. The aroma of fresh-ground just runs circles around the powdered stuff.

Place the flour and sugar in your food processor and turn it on. Then, a little chunk at a time, drop the butter into the little hole at the top and clamp your hand over the hole: flour will tend to shower out the top when the butter disturbs it, the first couple of chunks. Use up all the butter and whizz until the mixture is nice and sandy.

Scatter the apples in a nice ovenproof dish, sort of 8x6, or even a pie plate would do, I suppose. Scatter the crumble topping over all and grate a sprinkle of nutmeg, and of cinnamon, over the whole thing. Just a dusting.

Bake at 180C/350F for about 25 minutes, till the top is golden. Don't let it burn. Serve warm with ice cream for that sore throat.

last day in Venice

2010-03-03T01:46:00.003Z

But first.

The reason I will never have a Kindle. (There are many reasons, but here is just one GOOD one).

I picked up a book to read tonight, and on the flyleaf, completely ruining any resale value, I know, is a notation, dated October 25, 1999. Avery was just shy of three years old. It runs like this.

*******
I close her bedroom door.

"Wait, wait, "Avery says, "don't close it yet. I have to say 'sleep well' to you."

I open her door again.

"Sleep well, darling," Avery says. "Good night, darling."

****************

Tell me what Kindle will ever have THAT written on its flyleaf, for me to find on a chilly London night, and you're sold. Until then, I'll stick with my bookshelves full of treasures, unsaleable to be sure, heavy to lug around yes, and all the more LOVED for that. Grocery lists for birthday parties, ideas for exhibits at my old gallery, notations of nightmares (involving raw chicken and futons?? don't ask), memos to thank someone for a dinner party. I could not live happily without this flotsam and jetsam of my past, thank you, not even for a slim, convenient plastic thing full of words.

Speaking of jottings, I've simply got to jot down the adventures of our last day in Venice before they are all permanently replaced in my brain by by the flurry of activity here: a very late-night, luxurious dinner out with a girlfriend visiting from the States, "Cinderella on Ice" at the Royal Albert Hall (production closed now, but look out for it next year: magnificent!), John's birthday, and my obsession with homemade pizza! Isn't this the most gorgeous pizza you've ever seen?

It's kind of a garbage, clean-out-the-fridge dinner, with homemade crust (the easiest thing in the world to make) tomato sauce from a jar (my only requirement: no sugar!), pesto, leftover artichokes, half a leftover red pepper, sliced really thin, leftover Giggly Pig sausages, some slightly shrivelly baby tomatoes, red onions, mozzarella, a handful of olives stolen from John's martini stash, and after it's all cooked, a handful of rocket scattered on top...

Heaven. The dough recipe makes more than twice what you need for two pizzas, but trust me, you want that leftover dough. Nothing makes Avery and John as happy as that dough, rolled out super-thin, baked on a red-hot pizza stone for 10 minutes with some slices of buffalo mozzarella and a sprinkle of parsley and garlic salt. The most wonderful, cheapest, easiest little slice of paradise, perfect little side dish for pasta.

So Venice, Day Three. We started out at simply the most beautiful market I have ever seen: the famed Rialto Market of all the guidebooks and novels. I thought all the descriptions were completely over the top: how wonderful could it be? Well, as you see. And dear readers, the tragedy was that I could not buy anything! Never again will I stay in a hotel in Venice; we need a flat with a kitchen. The crispest looking fennel, the firmest onions, beautiful baby artichokes (I adore them now, want to put them on everything but ice cream), and the fish? Don't even get me started! I don't particularly love squid, but it was magical-looking. And cuttlefish and live prawns (these creeped Avery out, "Somebody get a bowl of water for these poor gasping fish!") and scallops in the shell... I did buy two heart-shaped salamis from a gorgeous charcuterie (or whatever the word is in Italian), reluctantly leaving behind the salame in the shape of a dinosaur, seriously.

And there was a horse butcher. I mean, horse meat, not a butcher who was a horse. Don't ask Avery about that, either. The Rialto Market is not for the faint of heart.

From there, we hopped on the vaporetto and headed for the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, and there, I saw my entire career as an art historian flash before my eyes. My field was international art from 1900-1940, and that... is the Guggenheim Collection. Boccioni, Brancusi, Kandinsky, Duchamp, Mondrian... I found myself smiling like a silly ass as the memories of my teaching days came back: my lectures linking the earliest Mondrian paintings of light dancing on water, through the classic red, blue, black and yellow geometric works, to the ultimate, Broadway Boogie-Woogie, that paean to New York city culture...

We played our usual "what would you buy" game, and I came down unable to decide between Brancusi's Bird in Space and Boccioni's Development of a Bottle in Space. John fell in love with a Giacometti group of walking men, or maybe a Joseph Cornell box, and Avery went back over and over to a drawing by an artist I'd never heard of, a British documentary filmmaker named Humphrey Jennings. A lovely little Surrealist piece.

An unforgettable place.

From there we wandered to lunch at the nearby Al Vechio Forner, a tiny osteria devoted to... lasagne! Of every description. It wasn't the most brilliant lasagne I've ever had, but it was homey, warm and tasty, and the staff were lovely to us, letting me speak my slow, basic Italian. I had scallop and artichoke lasagne (I know, artichokes again), John had raddichio and Fontina, and Avery had what we decided was the best, a simple bolognese.

We stumbled upon the world's best marbled paper shop! Alberto Valese Ebru, tucked away, just waiting for Avery to relinquish her gelato to John and slip in with me to find presents for Anna whose birthday is coming, I get a photo album for the hundreds of photos I've managed to get printed but not put in albums... I also manage to say "Thank you so much, no, we don't need a bag, we can put everything in this one I have HERE!" Totally thrilling.

As we stood on the Accademia Bridge, admiring the view, suddenly there was a flurry of boats below, all containing people in black brandishing enormous cameras with telephoto lenses. "It's the paparazzi," John said wisely, "Let's wait to see who it is." And it was the ultimate, if you like that sort of thing: Brangelina! Stopping at a gorgeous palazzo, Brad emerging first, then reaching down into the boat to hand out child after child after child! Finally, Angelina stepped up to the dock and they rushed inside, not even stopping to give their adoring fans, who had gathered in the dozens on the bridge, a smile. Ah well, our brush with fame was sort of fun, in a shame-faced way.

We crossed the bridge finally and went into the Istituto Veneto where there was an exhibition of the paintings of Venetian artist Zoran Music. I am not even normally very enthusiastic about figurative art, but this man's work was overwhelming. A survivor of the Holocaust, he painted landscapes, self-portraits and Venetian cityscapes for 25 years before his experiences resurfaced and demanded to be expressed... and the resulting series of paintings was very, very difficult to look at. I can only imagine if one had actually experienced the Holocaust oneself, what it would be like to look at those paintings.

Strangely, John had decided earlier in the day that he wanted to visit the Jewish ghetto and museum, so, our minds still filled with Zoran's work, we went off to drop our parcels at the hotel and head off on foot. Such an innocent-looking little square, housing the synagogue (which was closed) and the museum, under renovation. So hard to believe there was ever a mass exodus, a rounding up of all the Jews in the quarter, only 8 of whom ever returned. Children were racing around the square in a burst of energy after school, I suppose, and a tiny wet dog raced with them, chasing a tennis ball. How bizarre to think what the place had been like 70 years before.

The most lasting result of our visit to the ghetto was our discovery of the restaurant where we had the best meal of our stay in Venice! And it was kosher. Gam-Gam, down a tiny, dark street off the ghetto square, where we passed the only man I saw in Venice wearing a yarmulke. Oh, the food! An Israeli tapas (weird fusion name, that) platter of housemade pita bread with at least 8 salad-y bits: hummous, cucumbers in oil, beetroot roasted and cubed with parsley, a sort of egg salad with paprika, roasted red peppers, a mixed bean dish. Avery had matzo-ball soup and it was the absolute best we've had since we left New York. I had moussaka, lovely with velvety aubergines and a creamy bechamel sauce. John had wiener schnitzel which was sort of average, but then we all shared a lovely platter of latkes. Just gorgeous. And the staff were beyond friendly and helpful, speaking to each other in Hewbrew and to us in Italian and English.

And that was Venice. Well, except for our horrid departure. We got up early to take the water bus to the bus station, and stood at the stop, chattering about our adventure and watching the rain begin to fall. And we waited, and waited and waited. Finally a woman standing nearby answered her phone and said, "Sciopera!" Oh no! A bus strike! Just going in the direction we wanted to go, just announced that moment. What to do! We walked.

And walked, and walked, in the pouring rain, pouring so hard that when we got home, five hours later, the clothes and books INSIDE the suitcases were wet! Just awful. We attached our duffel to Avery's wheeled luggage (we may never again be able to make fun of her for succumbing to function over form: John usually hates wheeled luggage! but it saved our life), and simply ran and walked the 40 minutes or so to the bus station. Jumped on for the wildest ride of our lives, at excessive speed through massive throwings-up of pooled rain water at the side of the road. Avery simply closed her eyes. A freezing cold airplane ride in our soaking wet clothes, and home.

Well, my friends, I must close because we have a concert at Avery's school to go to, and then guests for dinner, and I've committed that sin that people always warn me never to commit: I've cooked something I've never cooked before, to offer to guests, and it's really scary-looking. I'll tell all when the worst is known.

Enron and Artichokes

2010-02-26T10:10:00.011Z

I have, unsurprisingly, not much of a head for business. When John talks about subprime mortgages, TALF, TARPS and what not, I try hard to pay attention, not to retreat into making silent grocery lists or wondering how to fillet a sea bream.

So when my good friend Darina rang us up to see if we would like to join them at "Enron," I quailed a bit. I know that it's the hottest ticket in town. I even tried, with the best of intentions, to get tickets last autumn when the play was at the Royal Court. Wasn't too devastated when it was sold-out. A theatrical rendition of the collapse of an oil and gas company in Texas?

But I couldn't in good conscience not go, when tickets were being waved in my face. So we said yes, to go last night.

"It's a musical, isn't it?" John asked yesterday afternoon as yet another grey rainstorm swept by the study window. (At least the heat is back on.)

"It most certainly is NOT a musical," I scoffed. "Just because it turned out that the life of Sir Francis Drake could be set to music and dance for 13-year-olds, does not mean that the tale of the downfall of a double-A American corporation is a musical. Certainly not."

It's a musical.

Well, it was intended as such by Lucy Prebbles, its 24-year-old female playwright, but apparently the powers-that-be who funded her unlikely project scaled down the singing bits somewhat. But it's true that at times the office workers break into song and dance, brandishing light sticks, spinning around on their ergonomic office chairs, you name it.

And somehow, it's magnificent.

It helped that John and my friend's husband are longtime inhabitants of the corporate-banking world. It was amusing and sweet to listen to them at the interval, debating the veracity of the stock prices on the theatrical ticker tape. "Intel was DEFINITELY higher in 2000, that's totally wrong..." The things these boys take seriously.

How many things about this production were wonderful. First, the greedy CEO Jeffrey Skilling, with a fatherly heart of gold, who teaches his little girl how long it would take to count to a billion (32 years) by counting out dollar bills, played by the delicious Sam West. West plays him sexy in a ruthless, creepy way, seductively megalomaniac, revelling in the smoke-and-mirrors' machinations of Andrew Fastow, his CFO, played with almost drunken delight by Tom Goodman-Hill. Then there's the Chairman Ken Lay himself, played by a sort of cartoonishly Texany Tim Pigott-Smith. I do think it's a little lazy of British actors to lay on a Southern accent so thickly, because it means that the pressure of a real, believable American accent is off, in favor of cliche. We adored him in 'My Fair Lady,' so I was thrilled to see him again live.

How a 24-year-old British woman became interested enough in Enron to write a play about its downfall eludes me. Further, it's a massive feat to make it a musical comedy! I cannot imagine how Prebbles was able to turn a very basic story of corporate greed and excess into a story of three very intriguing definite personalities (the female executive, Claudia Roe, played by Amanda Drew) who rounds out the four main players was not so interesting to me, being played I thought too broadly as a bitchy, aggressive sexpot).

There are so many delights! The Lehman Brothers, played as suit and tie-sharing Siamese twins! The dinosaur-headed "Raptors" who gobble dollar bills, the little daughter who sits in a pile of regurgitated, shredded corporate paper and asks her daddy how the world works. But best of all to me, with my well-known fear of flying, was Skilling's explanation of how debt-laden corporate structures fall apart. I paraphrase:

"It's not like flying in an airplane. It doesn't matter if you know how the airplane works, and it doesn't matter if you believe it will work. Even if all the passengers in the airplane decided it wasn't going to stay in the air, the airplane stays in the sky. But... if the corporate world decides it doesn't believe in debt structure..."

And a tremendous sound of airplane engines overwhelms the theatre, and a brilliant, abstracted vision of the ruined World Trade Center appears.

I won't spoil the drama for you, but the ties Prebble draws between September 11, 2001, the unbelievable magic of flying, and the unbelievable profitability of a Ponzi scheme, as long as everyone believes in it... well, it's the stuff that makes the Wizard of Oz, Harold Hill, Bernie Madoff, and the UK MP expenses scandal all WORK. Until someone decides to look behind the curtain.

Amazing! And I learned a great deal. I described the experience to Avery as a combination of "The Way We Live Now" and "Legally Blonde: the Musical." If that's not an inducement to queue for a ticket, I don't know what is. She asked if the failed corporate raiders walked around saying, "Oh my God, oh my God, you guys."

Now then, as night follows the day, onto artichokes. I have been haunted by the beauty of the salad I had in Venice, and I have successfully recreated it here! And so can you. Preparing artichokes always makes me wonder how desperate must have been the first person to want to eat them. They're intuitively very off-putting: prickly and difficult. But so satisfying.

Carciofi Crudi con Scampi
(serves 4 as a starter, or 2 as a light lunch)

2 globe artichokes
juice of 1 lemon
1 cup crayfish tails
2 tsps garlic-infused olive oil (or plain oil and a minced clove of garlic)
juice of 1 further lemon, maybe more
sea salt and fresh black pepper to taste

Cut off the stem of the artichoke where it's woody, and peel the outer layer from the rest of the stem with a potato peeler, then cut off the top sort of third of the artichoke. This is because the top and outer leaves are tough and inedible.

Peel away nearly all the outer leaves, until very pale and tender ones are left. Then with a sharp teaspoon, dig in the center of the artichoke and carefully scoop out all the inner leaves and the furry, hairy bits of choke inside them. Err on the side of removing too many inner leaves, rather than leaving behind any choke, which is inedible.

Immediately plunge the artichokes in lemon water, to prevent them turning brown.

When you are ready to serve your salad, remove the artichokes one at a time, shake off the water, and slice PAPER thin, as thin as you can manage. As soon as you finish slicing an artichoke, place in a medium-sized bowl and sprinkle with lemon juice, toss to mix. Move onto the next artichoke and repeat, adding more lemon juice and tossing again.

Mix the crayfish tails with the artichokes and sprinkle over the olive oil, lemon juice to taste, and season well. Mix well and to serve, pile in the center of the plate as high as you can. Perfect.

******************

The buttery, briny richness of the crayfish and their softness go perfectly with the gentle bite of the artichoke. I decided to go with the garlic-infused oil rather than simple oil and minced garlic, just because I wanted to be able to taste fully the delicate artichokes. Next time, I might use chilli oil, or even sprinkle a few chilli flakes over the top of the salad. With a grilled chop or fillet of fish, sprinkled liberally with flat-leaf parsley, you'll have the perfect dinner.

Well, believe it or not, I'm off to deliver a lovely warm banana and apple spice cake to my erstwhile tennis instructor, the cologne-emitting but very talented Rocco. In return for this, he has offered a free lesson, and I'm beginning to think I'm ready to learn to serve properly. I have end-of-winter body and since I don't plan to eat less, I'd better exercise more. And how many calories can there be in an artichoke?

carciofini and cani

2010-02-22T11:40:00.009Z

I have to tell you how silly we are, what silly things we buy when in a foreign land, to haul home in overstuffed suitcases: not Italian clothes, or Murano glass, oh no. We bring chocolates, biscotti, dried mushrooms, little red peppers stuffed with tuna, tiny crackers embedded with rosemary, and... heart-shaped salamis. And as for the last, I do not mean some lame effort like a long salami shaped into a heart. No, I mean that an actual Italian salami-maker has formed the salami mixture into the full-fledged shape of a heart: three-dimensional! I will take a photo when we eat it, but believe me, it's an oddity. I imagine it will be a delicious one.

Today I am wishing we were back in Venice for many reasons, but first among them is that our home away from home in Venice had heat and hot water. Yesterday we were sitting around shivering, watching the Olympics and figuring it was the appearance of all that snow that was making us cold. No. The boiler has shot itself. Since yesterday, not one drop of hot water or breath of heat. And it's COLD here. We put Avery to bed with five hot water bottles (each one requiring an entire kettle of nearly-boiling water, took forever) and two feather duvets, but she was still freezing in the middle of the night. British Gas sent a lovely man who spent all afternoon here only to tell us that there isn't an available "team" for two weeks. We're gutted. Something has to give.

So let's go back to Venice, where nothing bad ever happens. Wednesday saw us in a little square, the Campo Erberia (Square of Herbs, which is delightful to imagine!) outside the Rialto market where it was too late to see the market stalls (that had to wait till Thursday), but there was an incredible shop called Casa del Parmigiano, which as the name implies is a House of Cheese. Every Italian cheese you can imagine, but also cured meats, fresh pasta, and in a little shop adjacent, all sorts of deli items that made me positively green with envy! This is where I acquired my porcini secchi and peperoncino alla tonno, and directly outside was the most beautiful dog Avery had ever seen, so each of us was happy. We looked up "caress" in my dictionary and asked permission of the owner to stroke him, as you see.

"I love this dog, I want this dog," Avery murumured urgently. "How do you say 'dog'?"

"Cane," I said, "this is a cane tipicamente Veneziano. A typical Venetian dog."

Avery repeated it spot-on perfectly, and thereafter, in the way that children (or teenagers) do, every dog we saw was a "cane tipicamente Veneziano," and then there were other things "tipicamente Veneziani," like cheeses, or bridges, or squares.

Dog caressed, snacks bought, we hopped on the vaporetto and headed to the cemetery island of San Michele. Yes, there really is an island that is nothing but the final resting place of many, many Venetians. Simply miles, as far as the eye can see, of marble walls, not deep enough to contain a coffin or even, in some cases, an urn of ashes, but all covered with carved epitaphs, the names and dates of the deceased, and messages from loved ones, along the lines of "as much as we loved you on earth, the angels will love you now." There was an entire Recinto dei Bambini, an area reserved for dead babies and children, which we had to turn away from, presently, because the Italian tradition is to place a permanent photograph on the gravestone, somehow fused with the marble. The images of tiny faces in christening gowns, or even sadder somehow, playing in a garden or sitting on a parent's lap, were too much.

As light comic relief from these sad memorials was one particular photograph, of a husband who died in the 1960s and his widow, buried with him in 2008. Clearly the photograph was fused, combining the 1960s image of the man, with the 2008 image of his wife. We stared for a moment. Then Avery intoned, "Together in life, Photoshopped in death."

There were Italian contessas who clearly, from their first names, were English! We imagined them arriving in Venice for a summer abroad, as students, falling in love with a dissipated but charming nobleman, tipicamente Veneziano, and ending up living out their days here, eating Parmigiano and being interred on San Michele. Not a bad way to go.

At one point, another tourist approached us and asked in German,

"Have you seen the lady I was with?"

"No," I answered, "and I don't really speak much German."

"Oh, I thought you were a German family, I'm sorry. Would you rather speak French or are you Italian? I just do not want to leave her here, without me."

I would think NOT! Of all the places to choose! And in fact later in the day, we saw her get off the vaporetto without him, so perhaps the cemetery was a bad place for that first date.

From the cemetery island we journeyed over to Murano to see the glass factories, so famous, so storied. Avery chose a pendant (and this was NOT the place for her to perform her usual shopper's technique of touching everything!), but we left empty-handed.

After a forgettable but energy-restoring pizza back in Venice proper, we headed to the Piazza San Marco to see the Basilica in the right manner, not just as the background to the masks of Carnevale. Oh, the Loggia dei Cavalli, those incredible copper horses, overlooking the Square. Much of the Square itself was scaffolded for repairs, which made us feel as if we were back in London (my father used to say he was going to buy stock in a London scaffolding concern). The views were impeccable, but we had to descend because Avery is sadly quite afraid of heights!

From there to the Campo Santa Stefano to see the Opera House, La Fenice, which figures so prominently in the first of the marvellous Donna Leon mysteries set in Venice, "Death At La Fenice." I listened to the book on tape before we left, and it was great fun to see the lovely white marble facade in person, restored after a devastating fire. We searched in vain for shoes for Avery, who as she gets on in years is showing a fearful propensity for... high heels. Do you know the word for "kitten heels" in Italian? It's kittenheels, just as the French word for "weekend" is weekend. Seriously. But no one had any shoes of any type in a size small enough for her, so we're spared for the time being.

For dinner that night we fared better than adequate, though still not stellar. I was happier with my choices than I had been the night before, partly because I was completely charmed by the lovely, energetic, dramatic maestro of Osteria da Bepi. On our cold, rainy evening, it was hard to imagine people eating outside on a sunny day, enjoying the fresh air. Instead, we were trundled inside to an atmosphere of chaotic control, with the man in charge (I wish I knew his name, he was so patient with my Italian and so lovely and happy) rushing to and fro doing all the jobs: taking orders, cleaning tables, boning fish, serving tiramisu.

I had a wonderful starter that I would like very much to make at home: tiny sliced carciofini (baby artichokes) with scampi (crayfish tails) in a garlicky olive oil dressing, simply delicious and so unusual. Then fegato (tipicamente Veneziano, the menu said, which made Avery laugh), liver sauteed with onions. John had capa longa (razor clams) sauteed in garlic, and then seppie (cuttlefish), which I found... disgusting, sorry. Everything with polenta! Not my favorite side dish, it was appropriate to be served, so I could not complain. But when I make liver and onions at home, it will be with mashed potatoes! Avery was happy with an ENTIRE plate of prosciutto and tortelli a patate. We were full, which was enough.

We went home to open the balcony shutters and look out at the foggy streets across the darling little bridge, at one lone person (on what errand, so late at night?) passing by, at the green water and floating boats. Quite, quite perfect.

Carnevale

2010-02-22T10:39:00.005Z

Languages, languages. Is there anything more satisfying than arriving in a foreign land, hearing familiar but strange words flowing all around, and reaching into your brain, back to the past when you could speak those words yourself, and finding a way to express yourself? I simply love it.

When I was 21 or so, I spent a summer in Florence trying to become an artist, learning to appreciate real food for the first time in my life, and beginning a lifelong love affair with the Italian language. Sadly, I was told in no uncertain terms by my various art teachers that I had absolutely no talent whatsoever at making anything. I tried sculpture, I tried printmaking, I tried drawing. My printing teacher was no less a luminary than Leonard Baskin, amazingly, and while he was very, very nice to me, I will never forget his disbelief at my lack of ability. "Until I met you, Kristen, I would have said that I could teach anyone to make a decent print." Just awful. But I did turn out to have a talent for appreciating what other people made, and explaining it. My ambition to teach art history raised its tiny head, and many happy years were spent doing just that.

Even more lasting, though, were my new love of food - tortellini alla panna, millefoglie con cioccolato, you name it, I ate it - and my absorption of the Italian language. To be able to fit in, to produce whole sentences in a proper accent, to slide under the surface of a foreign culture, to bridge the gap between the local and the visitor... it's addictive for me. If I weren't so inherently lazy, I'd be a serious linguist and actually accomplish something with my tiny talent at picking up languages. As it is, I just get a kick out of arriving in Venice, reaching into the shadowy corners of my brain where all those words are sleeping, and waking them up, for three days.

We arrived on Tuesday afternoon at lunchtime, and jumped onto a vaporetto, a waterway bus, along with all the other visitors for the last day of Carnevale. We'd packed very lightly, so the short walk from the Ca' d'Oro "bus stop" to our hotel was a total pleasure, and we were the Compleat Tourists, our heads cocked at that unmistakable tourist angle, looking up, up, and around. And the hotel! The Ca' Vendramin, former palazzo home of a 16th century art collector, Gabriele Vendramin, whose artworks are now in the Accademia, the British Museum, all over the world.

We were completely silenced by our arrival at the hotel, across a tiny stone bridge from the main street of the neighborhood, the Strada Nuove. The magnificence of the ornate doorway, the vast stone winding staircase to the first floor, the marble terrazzo floors! Our room had a soaring trompe l'oeil ceiling, enormous windows opening out onto small balconies overlooking the tiny canal "street" below, gorgeous tapestry bed hangings. And not outrageously expensive! In fact, the price dropped on the second and third nights because Carnevale had ended. A lovely, lovely place. Avery and I fell in love particularly withe the green glass doorknobs, and the tiny but beautiful bathroom, forever toasty with its heated towel rack.

We unceremoniously dumped our bags, grabbed my Italian dictionary and the guidebook, and headed out. "Let's buy some meat and cheese and bread and have a picnic lunch," John suggested, which seemed brilliant. Why wander around looking for a restaurant when we could plop down by the Grand Canal with an assortment of mouthwatering Italian delicacies?

We dropped into the local, totally ordinary and therefore fascinating supermarket, and picked up salami alla erbe (salami with herbs), an amazing cheese, Camoscio d'oro, and a packet of all the components for a perfect carpaccio salad: slices of tender raw beef fillet, shavings of Parmigiano Reggiano, and a scattering of incomparable Italian rucola: you know me and my obsession with rocket! And the Italian version, bought and eaten in Italy, puts to shame the imported bags we get in London.

With a little focaccia, some senape classico (just plain mustard, but it tasted better in Italian) and a bottle of olives, we were in business. "Posso accettare una forchetta?" I somehow managed to ask, thrilled at producing a whole sentence! But no, I could not buy a fork, they had sold all their forks. We crouched down on a pier by the Grand Canal, surrounded by other perfectly happy tourists (lots of teenagers in love), and had our picnic.

From there were wandered over to Piazza San Marco, to see all the Carnevale-goers, so many of them dressed up extravagantly! Full 18th century costumes, one group of four ladies not only dressed, but with their faces AND hair painted gold, sitting at a cafe table, inclining their gilded heads to all the gaping onlookers. "Complimenti, complimenti," the Italians would say to them, and the ladies would say, "Grazie, grazie," complacently.

We were virtually the only Americans in Venice, it seemed: almost everyone was Italian, although there was one Russian man shouting into his mobile phone in a particularly serene campo. Where were all our fellow countrymen? And very few English people. Which made for a very foreign atmosphere, and motivated me to produce my Italian for Avery and John, who were gratifyingly impressed. But as always happens to me, I'm much better at speaking than at hearing, so I found myself asking complex questions very adequately, and then standing there open-mouthed as a completely incomprehensible answer flowed toward me!

We wandered around San Marco, admiring the masks and finally buying one for Avery, covered with musical notes. How pretty she looked! We bought a bag of confetti and pelted her with it, as the sun set.

Back to the hotel for a cocktail and to put our feet up. The sound of boats, of waves splashing against the hotel, the shouts of Carnevale revellers - "va bene, ciao, ciao," and terrible 1980s music from a nearby disco, "Y-M-C-A..." Lovely Federica behind the welcome desk had made a reservation for us at a local and perfectly forgettable restaurant, Hosteria Al Vecio Bragosso, where Avery had spaghetti carbonara and French fries! I had a carpaccio of tuna and rucola, John had a nice veal chop. It was our first experience with what seems to be a universal phenomenon in Venice: adequate, but not memorable restaurant food. I hated to admit it: adequate. Now we've come home, everyone we know who's been to Venice raves about all the things we loved too, and then we say, "The food? Not so much." Catering to tourists means just that, I suppose. Next time perhaps we could find the hidden, local treasures.

A quite perfect first day in what's now become one of our favorite cities in the world. Day Two? Even better. Watch this space.

Venice, City of Magic

2010-02-19T22:36:00.004Z

I'll have LOADS to tell you about Venice tomorrow (Carnevale, our amazing Palazzo of a hotel, the MARKETS, my new love affair with artichokes in every form, our nostalgic trip to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (guess who used to be an art historian?).

Right now I'm dropping. We got up early, went out in the rain, arrived at the vaporetto (water bus) stop in time to hit a STRIKE, walked half an hour in an evil downpour UP and DOWN the steps of bridges, John lugging all the baggage...

Home to mountains of laundry as everything got soaked through the luggage, believe it or not! Four loads so far and I've been home only five hours. A gorgeous supper of grilled beef fillets, red pepper soup with creme fraiche and a warm salad of cannellini beans with Parmesan (brought back in the soaked suitcases!) chilli oil, fresh breadcrumbs and rocket.

Tomorrow we drive Avery to the train station for her first journey alone (one stop and change of platform!) to visit a friend in the country. I'm getting perilously relaxed about this sort of thing. But I'll have time to blog. And I'll leave you with this image: Brangelina, handing their kids one by one out of a water taxi, right before our very eyes. I hate to say it: I was a bit starstruck.

But even more impressive... those ARTICHOKES...

changes are coming

2010-02-15T00:01:00.008Z

How do you like a completely new vegetable? Seriously. As the Daily Mail puts it, the newly-minted "flowering sprouts" give children all over the UK another vegetable to hate. They're a genetic mix of Brussels sprouts and kale. Well, I like sprouts, and I like kale. But when you mix the two together, give them to Marks and Spencer to sell exclusively, they take on a new cachet. The grower in Chipping Camden crowed, "Our other sprouts are green with envy."

Here's my best advice: Snip off their little bottom stems for freshness, then let the loose leaves detach themselves and cook them right along with the sprouts. Pour a little olive oil in a heavy skillet, then sprinkle with minced garlic and a bit of balsamic vinegar. Saute for a moment, turn over and saute again. Then add a bit of water, put a lid on the skillet and turn off the heat. There you go.

They're intensely flavored, with a chewy, lovely bite, and of course anything mixed with olive oil and garlic has its charms. We ate them for lunch whilst our own little sprout was in school, because Avery, sadly, will not go near a sprout. Don't even mention kale. I'm lucky that she regularly begs for broccoli, asparagus, and peppers. But sprouts? Not so much.

Second to this excitement is our departure tomorrow for VENICE! John and I went once, in 1986, and we were so completely besotted with each other that we had very litle time for oh, say, the sights of Venice. We could have been anywhere. So this time, with Avery in tow, many restaurant recommendations and a firm plan to visit a cemetery island and glass-bowing factory, not to mention a stay in a real palazzo, should be a slightly more appreciative experience. I have a pocket mini dictionary (for menus! I figure the rest will figure itself out, but I don't want inadvertently to order calf's nostrils), two novels by Donna Leon, set in the water paradise, and a page of notes with all my friends' exhortations not to miss this, that, the other. Very exciting! We'll be back Friday afternoon, full of stories, no doubt.

Can the food be any better than our lunch last week at Bibendum? Such a gorgeous spot, in the Fulham Road, above the famed Oyster Bar where, in our first turn in London twenty years ago, we bought a lobster every Saturday evening, to accompany our bottle of champagne. Young love! This time around, we went to the big kids' restaurant, and sat contentedly in the warm sunshine, traveling through the stained-glass windows depicting the Michelin Man, casting colored shards of light on all the diners.

I started with rabbit rillettes, confit and rich with a marmalade quenelle and a salad of flat-leaf parsley, chopped hazelnuts and le Puy lentils, lightly dressed in olive oil and lemon zest. John revelled in chicken livers with sauteed spinach in puff pastry with a tomato marjoram sauce. Then we chatted, waiting for our main course, looking longingly at our neighbors' fish and chips, the most gourmet imaginable! Then there was a loud crash far over John's shoulder and I said with absolute certainty, "That was our main course."

Sure enough, minutes later the maitre d' came by, smiling wryly, carrying two plates. "That brouhaha, you may have guessed, was your meal. So here is a little gift from us, as we prepare fresh plates for you." And there was the starter I reluctantly passed up in favor of the rabbit: escabeche of red mullet with an AMAZING and so simple accompaniment of steamed carrots, caramelized golden onions, blood orange segments, basil and creme fraiche. Simply delightful, so surprising and fresh, and we normally do not like "fruit and meat." But the oranges with the fish were lovely. Intensely aromatic, bitingly tart, oily and LOVELY.

I could scarcely, after all that, eat my main course which was guinea hen, roasted with a basil pesto under the skin, swimming on a light broth with fennel, parsley, carrots and celery. John had kidneys with a panko-breadcrumb fried potato dauphinoise: total decadence!

So that was the end of our FT special lunch outings: full price for one, the second person for a fiver! If you can stop yourself ordering champagne, it's an amazing deal. Lunch for two at a Michelin-starred restaurant for under 40 quid.

As if all this weren't enough... drumroll please... I have made a big decision about my darling blog. I have come to terms with my admitted total intimidation and trial by admiration of a certain other blogger running a ranch with horses and cattle and four home-schooled children while cooking gourmet meals and photographing them all with a state of the art camera. John actually suggested that she's the blogger version of "Christmas in Connecticut" and actually writes from a fourth-floor studio walkup in Harlem with a parsley plant dying on her windowsill: this made me howl with laughter during our very posh lunch.

As a result, however, I have made the acquaintance of a lovely, soft-spoken Austrian website designer, and over a pot of peppermint tea (and my gazing upon his 20-something youthful, self-deprecating charm) came to a number of conclusions about Kristen in London. Someday soon I will migrate to something called WordPress, and with a whole new look. Have no fear, however, of my turning the blog into an all-singing, all-dancing, advert-obsessed, slideshow-filled, dizzying show of splendor. No, my new friend likes Kristen in London just as it is, but thinks it could be improved in terms of what the reader (you!) sees on the screen at the very beginning, and could have more depth in terms of choices of things to look at. Most excitingly, there will be a RECIPE INDEX! I am cautiously thrilled. Watch this space!

Right, off we go. But not before I tell you about why it will be a long time before I go out again for fish and chips. It's because - aside from the chips - I can make it myself now! Better fish than I've ever had out. The chips are next. And don't forget the tartare sauce, adapted from a recipe in my new cookbook, given me by a friend at my birthday! Need a present for a newlywed? This cookbook is it. In the meantime, fry up some haddock and watch out for the new Kristen in London. You deserve them both.

Fried Haddock with Tartare Sauce
(serves 4)

4 good fat fillets of skinless haddock

1/2 cup flavorless oil, like sunflower, safflower, soybean

1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup cornflour (cornstarch)
1/2 cup fresh homemade coarse breadcrumbs
2 tbsps Fox Point Seasoning or other dried shallot-garlic seasoning

2 eggs
1 cup milk

Make sure the fish fillets are completely dried. Heat the oil in a wide, shallow saucepan till nearly smoking (I know that sounds silly, but you will be able to tell).

Mix dry ingredients in a wide, shallow bowl. Mix eggs and milk in a bowl. Place all fish fillets in the egg mixture. Have a large plate nearby, ready to receive the fillets once battered.

When ready to fry, dip the fish fillets, one by one, into the flour-breadcrumb mixture, then dip quickly again into egg mixture and again into flour-breadcrumb. Place gently into hot oil in ONE layer. Have a large plate nearby again, topped with several layers of paper towel.

Fry the fish on one side for about 2 minutes, then turn carefully and fry on second side for about 2 minutes or until fillets are stiff. Lift carefully onto the paper towel.

Serve hot with:

Tartare Sauce
(serves 4)

4 tbsps mayonnaise
4 cornichons, drained and minced
1 tbsp capers, drained and minced
pinch chopped fresh tarragon
juice of 1/4 lemon or lime
fresh-ground black pepper
salt to taste

***************

Be sure to plump for the highest-quality haddock for these. They should be bright white, firm, thick and odorless. The resulting fried fish is crisp, light, not oily in the slightest, and perfect with the tart (!) tartare sauce.

Now for the chips... next time.

Birthday Week

2010-02-10T00:18:00.004Z

I'll admit it.

I was going to lie and say it had been a whole week since I blogged because I Had Been So Busy.

And while it's true, I have been running to and fro, watching Avery create ever-cooler new outfits as above, seeing plays, cooking, turning 45 (no need to expand on the number of years, that's for sure), the reason I have not been blogging is...

SHEER INTIMIDATION.

Out of the goodness of her sharing heart, a dear friend of mine pointed me to a blog she enjoyed, saying, "Her tone is very different from yours, but I think you might find her inspiring." I'm almost afraid to point YOU to this blog, because it is my sincere fear that anyone who sees this superior blog will have no time for me anymore.

Sob.

She's Pioneer Woman, and she is perfect in every way. She lives on a ranch with four unbelievably photogenic children, hordes of horses, acres of cows, and masses of sexy cowboys as far as the eye can see, including her husband. She gardens, she cooks splendidly (her COOKBOOK has just been published, which put me over the edge), she even home-schools. And she's gorgeous. And nice.

I could spit.

Well, as you can see, the most that this state of severe negative self esteem has produced is a photo behind the banner of my blog, and a new description, and a new "About Me." What has not transpired is a recipe index. Or the uber-expensive Nikon camera with which she takes her glorious photos, or the Photoshop software to alter them all to perfection.

Just a photo behind my banner, that's all. But it's a start. And since it was my birthday table after my sublime party, I'm posting it separately on this post. In reality: it's the typical image of my life, my mother-in-law says, which makes me very happy.

Mostly I spent the seven days of my silence turning 45. Planning to turn 45, cooking for the lovely ladies who came to help me turn 45, cleaning up after us all, and generally dozing around analyzing whether or not I felt any older. It was a glorious birthday.

The first delightful thing that happened in my obsessive planning leading up to the party was a discovery in my basement (which could yield almost any surprise, it has to be said). This particular surprise was a Ziplock bag full of tarnished silver napkin rings. Back in the days when John and I spent a lot of time thinking up presents to give each other, one of our fallbacks was a napkin ring, to be brought out at the endless dinner parties we gave, pre-Avery. We bought them at antique shops and flea markets, people gave them to us for birthdays and anniversaries, and most celebratory of all, we commissioned them from our friend the jeweler, Linda Lee Johnson, our neighbor in our SoHo loft building and the maker of all the beautiful things we have ever owned.

And somehow, in the confusion of all our many movings of house, those gorgeous things were stuffed into a plastic bag and forgotten on a cellar shelf. Awful.

It was but the work of a moment to bring them up, cover them in silver polish and shine them up. Two are engraved with the date, month and year of our first date! And one says "John + Kristen," and another is a giant silver flower shape, and one, a Victorian beauty, says "Ellen Bennett," who one of my birthday guests joked was actually John's first wife.

What a find.

I spent all of Saturday polishing champagne glasses, polishing forks and knives and spoons, and soaking beans for the cassoulet that would be my birthday supper, Sunday night. Because why buy an ordinary tin of haricot beans and pour off the water in about 26 seconds, when you can, instead, soak dry organic beans for 22 hours, changing the water three times? Always go the extra mile.

Saturday night found us on our way (and on, and ON) to a little-known Oscar Wilde play, "Lord Savile's Crime," in Bromley, of all places. Fifty-two minutes to drive there didn't sound so unreasonable, on google maps. How they lied. It was at least an hour and a half, with impossible directions and terrible traffic. I could feel John fuming next to me, watching the minutes tick by, finally saying, "Of all the neighborhoods we've been through on the way to this b**dy play, there isn't a single one I'm planning to visit again." Ouch. Rain, finally, to cap it all off.

But the play was lovely! A crazy Victorian farce, with Lee Mead of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" fame, in the lead. He's been told by a psychic that he's going to commit a murder, and in order that he not murder his beloved fiance, he finds other relations and friends he thinks he can bump off instead. Great costumes, and a stage design and direction that was almost like another character, it was so clever.

And somehow finding our way home was even more Draconian than getting there. But we made it.

Sunday I... cooked. And cooked, and cooked some more. I shelled sweetcorn, chopped garlic, simmered duck, spun lettuce, sauteed lamb, baked sausages, sliced carrots and celery, wept over onions.

I filled candle holders with candles, folded old white vintage napkins into my polished napkin rings, chose soup bowls and wine glasses, and John hoovered the house to be ready, and lit the fire in the living room upstairs.

And they came. My friend JoAnn all the way from Oxford! My neighbors and friends from school, ready for fun, gossip, and the exchange of wisdom and emotion and silly anecdotes that makes up the great good fortune of having girlfriends. Heaven. Avery and John came in late from their own dinner party (cooked by the husband of one of my guests!), had a piece of lovely chocolate cake made by my friend Annie and decorated with a "K" in raspberries by her daughter. Finally everyone departed into the rainy night and JoAnn and I made a desultory attempt to handle the mess in the kitchen, getting only about halfway through before we simply had to stop, sit and chat a bit, and then fall into bed. A gorgeous, lovely night.

Many would find it silly, even incomprehensible, that my idea of a birthday party was to cook everything myself and then have to clean up. But it was heavenly. Eight girlfriends, some of whom knew each other but some did not, dressed up, bearing champagne and presents, with candlelight and the aroma of sweetcorn and rocket soup, cassoulet, the gorgeous purple hyacinths on the table and many different subtle perfumes.

And on Monday morning, perhaps the best gift of all: the window cleaner came! I'm ashamed to say we've lived here for nearly two years and not... had the windows cleaned. Kenny came, hung his frame outside and inside the windows, and after just a few hours our windows gleamed in unaccustomed sparkle! I almost felt we'd fall out of them if we got too close. Perfect birthday present for me. Then to lunch at La Trompette in Chiswick: foie gras and chicken liver parfait with fresh brioche, then I had cod with little gnocchi in a puree of cepes (how hard can THAT be to produce, and be so magical? just mushrooms, after all), and John had sea bass fillet with chick peas, aubergine and squid stuffed with diced red pepper... a cheese board and granite of grapefruit, and out into the slushy, slow-falling snow, staggering home in delight.

Home to be given my birthday presents, which SO represent who I am: a tiny spice grinder, a tart slicer, an olive oil decanter, and a gorgeous white shirt and black skirt from Theory. Plus a pair of "duvets for the feet": feathery slippers, perfect for this cold, cold house.

And all over for another year. My feeling is this: if you have to get older, and come up against a milestone like 45 years, why not celebrate it with those you love, get out of your comfort zone a bit by inviting people who don't know each other, cook something you haven't cooked before, light the candles, pour the champagne, watch the snowflakes outside the windows (clean!), and...enjoy with a crisp, salty bite.

Spicy Parmesan crisps
(serves 8)

1 cup grated Parmesan
1/4 cup flour
2 tsps black onion seeds
1 tsp cayenne

Mix everything thoroughly. On a greaseproof paper or a nonstick-sprayed surface, place a tablespoon of the mixture spaced 1/2 inch apart and bake at 425F/220C for about 2 minutes, watching carefully so they don't burn. Transfer to a plate to cool, and the crisps can be stored in a closed tin for up to 3 days. Perfect with champagne.

the ultimate French food

2010-02-02T09:00:00.011Z

When I was 16, I spent a summer in France. I know, it sounds like the beginning words to a very cheesy, or tragic, novel. No, it was simply the beginning of the rest of my life. I discovered perfume, pain au chocolat, advanced French grammar, the joys of a Deux Chevaux, and love. What more could anyone want from life?

And strangely, all these things have figured strongly in my adult life, albeit in different forms and at different times. The perfume I loved went defunct, but I found a new one (still French). Pain au chocolat is still my daughter's favorite breakfast treat. Lovely friends in London years ago drove a Citroen, and love? I will never forget that particular Frenchman, but my lovely husband now listens to tales of him and my adventures with a raised eyebrow and total acceptance.

What France did not bring to me, until many years later, was a love of French food. Besides, that is, pain au chocolat, which I consider not so much a food as sanctioned candy, masquerading as breakfast.

No, French food escaped me for years, understandably since I lived in Indiana, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, until I got married and moved to London, now 20 years ago. Then, because I was writing a dissertation on French art, I had to (had to!) spend time in Paris. And there... I found... cassoulet.

Now, make no mistake, I was no foodie. There weren't foodies, as far as I know, besides Julia and James and Craig. There was just the world, who far from living to eat, ate to live (if they were lucky). But there were also French people, and French people have always understood the overriding importance of food in life, which I now believe in implicitly and explicitly and every other way. Food is life.

I remember very little of my months in Paris, mostly a fog of this or that bibliotheque, an indigestible mass of information about late 19th century French sculpture, and coming home to yet another rent-by-the-week apartment to eat a tin of tunafish, which in France comes flavored with things like tomato sauce, capers and olive oil. I might have had a cracker with this concoction, then fallen straight to sleep.

But when John came to visit me, we ate. Because he was a man, and therefore hungry. I stayed in many skeevy flats, in many horrid neighborhoods, but once I stayed in the guest room of a friend who lived opulently in the Seventh Arrondisement, and there we found Cafe Max. It was always only a simple out of the way French bistro, like hundreds of others in Paris, and even now it has almost no internet presence, no reputation, no visibility. I was treated kindly at Cafe Max because I spoke fluent French, one of my few skills in life. We sat down, out of the rain, I ate my first confit de canard, my first pate, my first EVERYTHING. And John ate his first cassoulet. And we never forgot a single mouthful.

Candles sputtering, everything brought to the table family-style, you simply helped yourself to whatever amount you wanted, and I don't remember how it was billed. Red wine in non-labelled bottles, tap water in lovely blue-bottomed bottles, rain, always Parisian rain, spattering outside, the foreign French sirens blaring in and out. Mustardy salad, sometimes with soft-boiled egg on top, hard country breads, unsalted and tough outside, but fluffy and soft within, the room got darker and the smoke from everyone's cigarettes got thicker. I'm no smoker, but I can't imagine Cafe Max is the same, if the ban has reached that far.

Memories from another life, when I was young enough to find Paris frightening, yet determined to knock on every door to do my research, to meet all the people I needed to meet. And at night, I was alone, alone, alone. In whatever rented apartment I had managed to find for that three-week period of time, longing all the while for John, far away in London. Youthful adventures are wasted on the young! Silly me, not just to dive in and enjoy everything, even the scary solitude.

And yet I did dive in, as best I could. At least I went, and I was there, however frightened on the inside. And while in those days I was an anti-bean lady, I could see and smell the point of John's cassoulet: predominantly GARLIC, and FAT, and breadcrumbs, crunchy on top.

I have given almost no thought in the intervening years to Paris (except when I went back) or to cassoulet, until John said last week:

"I've been wishing for... a casserole, only what on earth do I mean by that?"

"Campbell's Cream of Mushroom?" I ask, referring to our ENTIRE childhood, which actually can be encapsulated in a can of soup.

'No, something GOOD... I don't know what I mean."

But I did. Something in me returned to France, to my 20-something self, to goose fat and sausage and duck and baguettes and rainy nights. I went off to the grocery store, bought roughly everything in it, rolled up my sleeves, cancelled everything else I had to do for the day, and produced:

Classic Cassoulet
(serves 8)

for the confit:
4 duck legs
coarse sea salt
4 fat garlic cloves, finely chopped
4 bay leaves, broken in half
1 cup white wine

for the cassoulet:
4 Toulouse sausages
350g/12oz belly pork, skinned and diced
350g/12oz lamb neck fillet or rolled breast, diced
1 large onion, chopped roughly
2 large carrots, chopped roughly
2 celery sticks, chopped roughly
400g/14oz can chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato purée
2 heaped tbsp fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped
1 heaped tbsp fresh thyme, chopped
sea salt and pepper
290ml/½ pint dry white wine
2 cans haricot or cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
850ml/1½pt chicken stock

for the topping:
1 large day-old baguette (or 1 cup fresh homemade breadcrumbs)
2 fat garlic cloves, halved
4 tbsp butter
2 heaped tbsp fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped
1 heaped tbsp fresh thyme, chopped

Place the duck legs skin side down in a skillet with a lid, sprinkle with the salt, garlic and bay leaves and pour the white wine around. Place the lid on top and cook at the tiniest simmer possible, for two hours. Of course, for real confit you'd pour the winey fat over the duck and preserve it, but no need for that step here, as you'll be using the duck straightaway.

Meanwhile, place the sausages in a 220C/425F oven and bake for 20 minutes. Set aside to cool.

In a large stovetop- and ovenproof dish that will hold all the ingredients, place the belly pork and heat gently until fat begins to be released, then raise heat and cook, stirring occasionally, until all the fat has been released and the pork is crisp, but not dry. Lift the pork onto a plate with a slotted spoon, leaving all the fat behind.

Add the lamb to the pork fat and cook until colored on all sides, then lift out with slotted spoon and set aside with the pork.

Add the diced vegetables to the pork fat and cook till soft. Tip the ingredients from the plate back into the dish. Add the tomatoes, tomato purée and herbs, then season with sea salt and pepper to taste.

Add the wine, haricot beans and chicken stock to the dish and bring to the boil. Stir, then lower the heat so the liquid is just simmering. Keep the mixture in the same dish to cook or transfer it to an earthenware dish.

When the duck has cooked for two hours, remove it from the wine and fat and cool to handle. Remove the skin from the duck, then tuck the duck legs into the cassoulet.

Peel off the sausage skins, slice the sausagemeat thickly on the diagonal and add to the dish.

Cover the dish and bake for 1 hour, stirring once. Stir, then cook uncovered for a further 1-1½ hours, stirring halfway, until the meat is really tender and the sauce is thickened. Take the dish out of the oven and remove the duck legs. Strip the meat from the bones (it will fall off easily) and return the meat to the dish. Stir and add a little water, if necessary. Season if necessary, then return to the oven and bake for another 15 minutes until all the meat and beans are very tender.

For the topping, cut the crusts off the baguette, tear the bread into pieces and put in a food processor. Add the garlic and chop into coarse crumbs (you should have about a cup of garlicky bread crumbs).

Heat the butter in a large frying pan until sizzling, then stir fry the breadcrumbs and garlic over a moderate to high heat for 7-8 minutes until crisp and golden. Remove from the heat, toss in the herbs and stir to mix, then season well with salt and pepper.

Ladle the cassoulet in generous servings into warm bowls, sprinkle on a bit of topping, and serve.

******************

Be warned: this is a labor-intensive recipe, with many steps, lots of cooking time and attention. It's not difficult, because each task is simple in itself. But you must be in the mood to potter about the kitchen for the better part of the day.

Here's a tip that worked for my family: Avery does not like beans, and so I knew that the entire cassoulet would not be to her liking. So I simply made an extra duck leg confit, and when the others went into the cassoulet, hers waited until just 20 minutes before dinner and then roasted in a hot oven, skin side up. Perfect.

Once the cassoulet is thoroughly cooked, it can sit in the refrigerator for up to a day, wanting only to be reheated at a low temperature before serving, so it's perfect for those days when you're out until an hour or so before you want to eat.

Your reward for all that dicing and stirring and simmering will be the richest aroma stealing through your house, your family asking if we can eat early, and all you need besides the cassoulet is a traditional green salad with a very mustardy dressing, and a warm baguette, torn into pieces that fit in the hand.

Pure France, in a soup bowl, topped with buttery, garlicky breadcrumbs. You really can't ask for more than that on a shivery February evening.

Salinger and spinach

2010-01-28T01:43:00.003Z

Oh, it's hard to get old! My daughter has reached an age I can remember BEING. I watch her struggling with homework, getting excited about drama auditions, running home with a friend to decide what to wear to a party, getting her first hairdryer and curling iron! And I remember. I don't think I was anywhere near as accomplished, self-confident or worldly as she is. But I was there. It's not that I miss it, but I am a bit envious of all that she has before her. As much as I'd like to relive her baby- and childhood, I'd like to relive my own life, only do it MUCH smarter. And maybe that's what I dream of, for her.

But we all have to be teenagers, with all the glory and pain that that entails. And to underscore my minor melancholy, today the world lost J.D. Salinger. I'll admit it: I thought he had been dead already. But even so, it is sad to think of a world deprived of his genius. It's been years since I even thought of him, but my teenage years, the years Avery has just on the horizon, were enormously brightened by his words. Not "The Catcher in the Rye," that classic that we were all meant to read,
but "Franny and Zooey," and "For Esme, With Love and Squalor." These rich, upper-crusty, introspective, dysfunctional, wonderful Glasses, these New Yorkers with their smart, snappy dialogue and a sort of American Nancy Mitford family life...

Esme. I can't find my copy tonight, which saddens me. When I was in high school, not an era of magical success for me, I nevertheless had one particularly intelligent friend who handed me a copy of "Esme," in "The Nine Stories," and he said, "This girl is you." How flattering and wonderful was that, to be compared to a fictional heroine of epic inspirational proportions. This friend and I have corresponded tonight, reminiscing about those young, sweet selves we were. How completely odd to think we're older than our parents were, then, when we were teenagers.

And Avery told me tonight that one of her favorite series of books, "A Series of Unfortunate Events" by Lemony Snicket, contains many hidden references to J.D. Salinger! The orphans are adopted by Jerome (the "J" in JD is for "Jerome"!) Squalor and his wife Esme! The magic continues.

I was, of course, painfully influenced in my adolescent writing by Salinger's innovative way of italicizing only part of a word, according to how important that part was! My stories became ever more infused with tiresome Salinger-esque characters, smoking cigarettes down to where they burned the smoker's fingers, whining about alienation! But even to this day I remember being compared to Esme, and my teenage self wakes up for a moment.

I love watching Avery feverishly writing her stories, and objecting to bedtime because "I get my best ideas for writing when it's nighttime, and then I have to go to sleep!" It's as if I'm looking in a fuzzy mirror, seeing my childhood self in my green-flowered bedroom, upstairs in the house where my parents still live, hearing the television with "The Six-Million-Dollar Man" in the living room below, as I tirelessly wrote at my desk. Those stories are still somewhere in my childhood closet, I'm sure. My mother never throws away anything that anyone might ever want, bless her heart.

Well, I grew up. But I still love my words, so I suppose my youthful, heart-pounding inspiration by the reclusive Salinger still holds sway.

Grown up. Yes. And as such, these days, most of my creativity goes into what we eat! Today John and I hopped the Tube to take a trip to Piccadilly to run some errands, and while there popped in to Kulu-kulu for a sushi lunch. Fish, yes, plenty of omega-3, but almost my favorite dish is the chilled steamed spinach with a sesame dressing. And you know what? You can make it at home.

Chilled Steamed Spinach with Sesame
(serves 2)

1/2 lb baby spinach, washed

dressing:
3 tbsps soy sauce
1 1/2 tbsps sesame oil
2 tbsps peanut oil
6 tbsps tahini
3/4 tsp sugar
1 tsp honey
1 clove finely minced garlic

sesame seeds to sprinkle (1/2 tsp?)

Boil water in a large saucepan and plunge spinach in it. Boil, stirring, for 1 minute, then pour into a colander and rinse with COLD water. Now, squeeze the spinach for an impossible-seeming time, as more and more water is released from it. Expect just one handful of spinach left after squeezing. Seriously.

Chill spinach for at least an hour. Meanwhile, mix all dressing ingredients together very thoroughly.

When ready to serve, bring spinach out of the fridge and form into a log, then cut in half to form two servings, and drizzle with dressing (just a little, save the rest). Sprinkle with sesame seeds.

*******************

There will be lots of extra dressing. You can use it for two dishes I can think of right off the top of my head, either of which would be lovely right alongside the spinach, if you don't mind similar flavors in two dishes. With some steamed rice, you're good to go for dinner.

Sesame Salmon
(serves 2)

2 salmon fillets
dressing as above

Place the salmon fillets in an ovenproof dish and pour dressing over. Flip the fillets so both sides are coated. Bake at 200C, 425F for 25 minutes. Done.

Sesame Aubergine (Eggplant)
(serves 2)

1 medium eggplant
dressing as above

Dice the aubergine in 1-inch pieces (skin on). Scatter in an oven-proof dish, then pour dressing over and toss. Bake at 200C, 425F for 15 minutes, then turn oven down to 120C, 240F for a further 20 minutes. Toss again and serve.

***************

These are contradictory dishes: vegetable and yet rich, spare and yet complex, cheap and yet luxurious.

It's that sort of yes/no, joyous/suffering, full/empty sort of contradiction that makes the best dish, whether it's on a plate, served up at dinner, or between the covers of a novel on a shelf, or in the life of an almost-grownup, teetering between goofy and elegant. I'm celebrating them all tonight.

Lovely Ladies Who Lunch and other adventures

2010-01-24T04:20:00.008Z

A thought occurred to me in the middle of the night: sometimes I feel snowballed, as in, running in the trail of downhill snowball, by events that come around only every few weeks or months, and then suddenly, whoosh, they're all there at once.

These things all happened last week. Writing class, with excellent advice given to me on piece now submitted to the next issue of Vintage magazine. Bless the editor's heart, to be interested in, of all things, a piece that was Campanology born on my blog a year or so ago, on the art of bell-ringing. Some goddess of editorial match-making must have been looking out for me, as this same lovely editor wanted my "Recipe File" for the magazine last year. I know that there are writers who complain about deadlines, but so far, not me: a deadline means someone wants my work!

Coming home from writing class I sat across from two men on the Tube: overcoats and shaking out newspapers, decrying the state of modern culture and the failure of "civil servants."

"I say, old thing, most of them not the LEAST bit civil and most certainly with no idea of how to be a servant!"

"Well, old boy, Churchill said something very witty you know, about two peoples being separated by a common language, he had an American mother, you know, a Vanderbilt or some such."

"What we need, what this country needs, is fewer small men making small mistakes, and more GREAT men making GREAT mistakes."

Coming from writing class, all about characterization, I felt I had been thrown into a Tube car thirty years ago without warning, with men who might have served in the War, came home to rationing and too few servants to look after one...

Then, you know, if it's January, it's time for Avery's sort of quarterly haircut, only this time it seems to sit atop a person who is changing right before our eyes: vintage Ferregamo pumps from an antique shop in Connecticut, silver Gap tutu, blue-spotted tights, pink mohair sweater, Hermes scarf purloined from me on her head, a general look of eccentric selfhood coming over her features. She's always had an eye for fashion, even as a toddler crawling around in a combination of corduroy, silk and denim, pulling open the door to the dishwasher so she could sit on it, surveying her world with skepticism and interest from that slight height. Then she would toddle over to the full-length mirror and look herself up and down, maybe to return to her room and change her socks.

We got a very funny email from one of Avery's teachers who happened to come upon her singing Tom Lehrer's "Chemical Elements" for her chemistry teacher... that combined with a very unusual fashion sense means we're NEVER BORED.

Of course, every few months along comes the Lost Property luncheon, which means that I, plus 30 of the best volunteers that Avery's school has to offer, dust off our hands, fold up the moldy swim towels, dirty lacrosse sticks, smelly tennis trainers, and gather together, in a pouring rainstorm, in my kitchen, to share gorgeous dishes of food. Ladies brought vegetable lasagna (chock-ful of butternut squash, carrots, eggplant and mushrooms), a salad of roast chicken, orzo, pine nuts, romaine lettuce and parmesan shavings. My dearest friend Annie brought her tiny meatballs stuffed with mozzarella, swimming in a sea of tomato sauce under a blanket of homemade breadcrumbs and cheese.

"Do you mind just getting this warmed up and gratineed, Kristen?" Annie mentions, so I push the casserole gently into the oven and move onto various other tasks, like gossiping. Finally I peek into the oven and it seems so SLOW, and nothing really bubbling. Why not put it under the grill for a moment?

Suddenly everyone seems to be coughing. "Open the garden door!" I shout, as my heart sinks and I open the oven door. Breadcrumbs blackened. The smoke alarm goes off.

"Is this just browned and tasty, or... carcinogenic?" Annie asks, scraping it off, the best of all possible sports.

Ah well, the afternoon was lovely anyway. Someone brought quite simply the best cheese EVER, something called Wigmore from Jeroboam's in Holland Park Avenue. Slightly smelly, creamy, meltingly rich. And a rhubarb tart, and a treacle tart with fresh whipped cream, a plate of Lebanese treats of honey and pistachios and pastry.

We all pitch in to tidy up a bit so Annie can give me a lift to school - I'm carrying a plate of leftover tart for Jamie and Avery to snack on! - , and then I pick them up at the gate, carry their clobber over to Jamie's mother's car where we pile in to head to the skating rink, everyone sharing the tart.

"I'll carry it in to the skating rink," Avery offers, "hidden like this beneath my sweater."

"Stick it in my skate bag!" Jamie shrieks, but Avery insists.

"No, between my two files it will be fine," and we sneak in, with our forbidden outside snack included.

Saturday we succumb to that other sort of quarterly impulse: Camden Market. Normally, of course, nothing could drag John to a place that manages to be both cold and stuffy, windy and full of cigarette smoke, and containing nearly all the people in London between the ages of 17-28. All in search of a dress from the 1960s and a pair of go-go boots, for an upcoming party given by one of Avery's friends. I say "normally," because in fact John will do a lot of things he won't normally do, in order to help Avery out.

Polyester dresses by the YARD, stinking of the ages, all the shops playing the Bee-Gees but not quite synched up, so you end up hearing bits of "Stayin' Alive" sixteen shops in a row. All the shop girls convincing Avery that each dress is the one she needs, and also that she really CAN walk in knee-high (someone's knee, someone John's height) boots with platform, or stiletto heels. Finally we ran a dress to earth: purple, green, orange and blue rayon, with white collar, tie and cuffs, knee-high, and plastic jewelry to match. But no go-go boots. Not yet.

From the Market in a rush across town and across Piccadilly to the theatre district where we were to see a play and have sushi before, but it became clear with traffic that we wouldn't make it to sushi. That sort of semi-silent treatment between married people ensued. No one wanted either to blame the other or completely support the other, so we simply fumed slightly and then arrived at the theatre, picked up the tickets and realized we had an hour. Not quite sushi time, but time for something.

"What are you in the mood for, Avery?" Predictably, Italian. But huge queues.

"Would you rather run for sushi, or try this Korean place?"

"You guys aren't liking each other too much right now, so I'm not getting involved!" she wisely decides, so Jindalle Korean Grill it was, and actually, very good it was, although we were rushed. The place was virtually next-door to the theatre, so we could relax and enjoy grilled beef, duck, pork and chicken, while I wished for some sort of carb and we looked at our watches.

Finally, one of those classic things I seem to schedule for us to do once every few weeks and then suffer agonies of pressure as to whether or not everyone will enjoy it: theatre tickets. Last night it was "The Misanthrope" with Damian Lewis and Keira Knightley, and it was a total joy. Amazing rhyming schemes, energetic performances, very pointed social commentary set in contemporary life, but with recurring hilarious references to 17th century France. And some very funny lines... one from a celebrity playwright to a failed writer... "What do you mean, you're going to MAKE a scene? You can't even WRITE one!"

Home chattering about the dialogue (how much did Avery mind a lot of cursing? not much: "I hear a lot worse at school, from TEACHERS!"), the costumes at the party in the last scene of the play, how well Keira pulled off an American accent (pretty well). Tired on a Saturday night, from the bits of adventure that seems to keep us busy.

As for cooking, I can tell you that one of the favorite dishes at the Lost Property luncheon was my own:

Crunchy Colorful Slaw
(serves at last 8 as a side dish)

1/2 head each shredded: red cabbage, white cabbage, Savoy cabbage
3 large carrots, julienned

dressing: equal parts lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, fromage frais or yogurt
1 tbsp mayonnaise
1/2 tsp dried oregano
sea salt to taste

Simply shake up the dressing in a jar, then toss everything together.

***************

This slaw went beautifully with all the lasagne and meatballs, and my roasted salmon.

But probably the most popular side dish was this invented by my friend Elizabeth:

Orzo Chicken Salad
(serves at least 8 as a side dish)

4 chicken breasts with skin on
Orzo – half a pack
Cos (butter or Boston, in America) lettuce – chopped into small pieces
Other mixed leaves including rocket
Asparagus tips
Pack of pine nuts (about 1 cup)
Block of parmesan
Flat leaf parsley - bunch

Vinaigrette
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 teaspoons dry mustard
Maldon salt to taste

Roast the chicken breasts, cool, remove skin, and slice thinly. Set aside.
Meanwhile, boil water for the orzo and cook for 15 minutes and drain. Cool but make sure that you add olive oil so that the pasta does not stick.

Roast the pine nuts briefly – make sure they do not burn. Set aside.

Boil salted water for asparagus and cook for 5 minutes. Drain and cool.

Put the orzo in a large salad bowl and stir in the lettuce and rocket. Add the chicken and mix in. Mix in the vinaigrette and add the asparagus and pine nuts, covering all the ingredients with vinaigrette.

Sprinkle shavings of parmesan and chopped parsley on top, add Maldon salt to taste, stir again, and serve.

****************

This week? Quiet. Peaceful. Uneventful. At least that's the plan, but then... it's only Sunday night. Watch this space.

how long is a week?

2010-01-17T04:34:00.004Z

Here's where I'm just not a very modern person, at heart. Because it doesn't make the slightest sense in the world to me that a week ago tonight I was in Orange, New Jersey with my most extravagant hostessly friends, drinking Scotch and watching them prepare pot roast, noodles and summer-grown lima beans in butter sauce.

But I was.

I was fed magnificently, tucked into a bed of white flannel sheets, kissed goodnight, and then minutes later the alarm went off at 5 a.m. for us to get to Newark. Nightmare.

Twelve hours later, we arrived to four cats simply starved for affection, mountains of mail including beloved Christmas cards from farflung friends, a COMPLETELY empty refrigerator. I mean, two onions and some condiments. That was ALL. And a host of emails reminding me that I was in charge of Avery's class ice skating trip to Somerset House the NEXT DAY. And two mothers begging, "Can you take Little So-and-So because it turns out I can't make it?" And of course I could. Maybe responsibility for three teenagers with skate blades in the Tube would keep me awake.

And so the week went. I skated, I chaperoned the children in the chill, gray City world. Feeling we might be nearly lost on the way, the children and I stopped a likely-looking City Chap and asked, "Where is Somerset House?" To our total delight, he pointed us in the right direction and then said, and I am not making this up, "Toodle-loo!" The girls all collapsed in laughter. Several of them came home with us for movies on the sofa, popcorn, trying on makeup, and finally baked chicken and paprika potatoes. We were officially HOME.

Wednesday I took charge of a friend's daughter while my friend was, sadly, consoling her sister on the death of her child. THAT situation puts life right in perspective. "Could you have my daughter for the day?" Could I? I'd keep her for life if I could have stopped that situation from happening. There can be no whinging of jet lag in a world where children simply cease to exist from one moment to the next. I was THRILLED to have a household full of girls, dropping in to say hello, bringing "We missed you" brownies, mothers stopping for a cup of tea and to catch up.

And Thursday Avery went back to school, and I went for a sushi lunch with my friend from California, Janet, who had the temerity to live next door to me for two years and we were nothing but "hi, how are you" friends, but up she moves to Los Angeles, and now we can't get enough of each other! So whenever she comes to town, we're off on a foodie adventure and to chat, chat, chat.

Here's an intriguing question. Janet's been spending some time in a nursing home with an aging relative, asking that elderly lady and all her friends, who are also 90-year-old ladies, what age they would go back to if they could. And do you know what these ladies answer? Their mid-80s. Why do I find that so surprising? Perhaps because I waste a fair amount of time wishing I had my 30-year-old figure back, or my 2-year-old child back, or I'm nostalgic for my gallery six years ago. So I suppose I imagine I would return to my 30s.

But apparently my friend Janet's anecdotal evidence isn't an anomaly. Apparently, some scientific studies of "happiness" have been done (this is what comes from having a friend visit from California, you know) and some surprising things have been discovered. One is that while people with children stay married more often than people without, people without children report themselves as being "happier." And, sure enough, if you live past 80, to your 90s, you remember your 80s as the best age. Why?

Because those perennial questions that dog us in our 30s and 40s (and beyond, I guess) like, "Am I doing what I should be doing? Am I living a worthwhile life? Am I performing well at the things I see as my job? Is my child developing well? Do we have enough money?" have all been resolved and set aside. Can that be true? That by age 80 we get wise enough to stop fretting? These ladies reported to Janet that they truly succeeded, in their 80s, in living in the moment. Enjoying what was there to be enjoyed, without looking ahead and fretting. Or maybe... ladies with that attitude were the only ones to live past 80.

I don't know. But it made for very good lunch conversation over teriyaki salmon, tuna sashimi, chilled steamed spinach with sesame sauce, and a softshell crabs in a fresh-made roll just for us. I'll tell you one of the many things that make me happy, that have lasted from childhood till now: the fun and joy of girlfriends. A lunch like that, swooning equally over bigeye tuna and John Malkovich, makes life worth living and suddenly sunnier than it was an hour or so before. Girlfriends are wonderful.

Here's another thing that makes one day in the life of being almost 45 in London a great thing. I still am allowed to leave the house at 3:50 every weekday, walk about 8 minutes to Avery's school, wait a moment with a paperback to amuse me, and out comes my delicious daughter, in some outlandish outfit (white shorts with grey tights and a grey cashmere sweater, belted and the whole thing finished with hot pink Converse high tops). She's still happy for me to appear at school and walk her home, carrying half her load of books, stopping for a snack, listening to the day's accumulation of hilarious stories, gossip, complaints about lunch ("I had one bite of sausage and that was ALL, and WHAT is suet pudding?"), descriptions of people's outfits.

The main topic walking home with Avery and Emily on Thursday was, can Avery reasonably be expected to answer the door while John and I are at the Parents' meeting, receive the pizza and tip the pizza guy?

"How," Avery wails, "will I know that the guy at the door isn't some homicidal maniac?"

"Well," I say with laborious reasonableness, "He'll be standing beside a motorbike, wearing a helmet and carrying a giant insulated bag that will contain our pizzas."

"But there could be anything in that insulated bag!" Avery shrieks.

"It could even be a severed head," I say hopefully.

"My mother wants everything to be a severed head," Avery says indulgently.

"And it never is."

Off to the Parents' meeting, gazing at the head (not severed) of the school wearing a gorgeous woollen suit with a long, flowing skirt and perfectly, softly matching silk scarf, totally in control of every moment of her life, seemingly. How is that possible? I'd love to see the cracks, the real life somewhere. But it never happens. A gloriously controlled, kind, appreciative, elegant lady who never puts a foot or a word wrong. How, how.

Ah well, life cannot possibly be that perfect. But I offer you two vegetable side dishes that will make you think it can be, for just one dinner. With a roast chicken, or even just a bowl of steamed rice, these two dishes will enhance your week, dare I say it, your life. Your husband and child will thank you. And one more week will have gone by, however impossibly filled with changes and events and loved ones and craziness, and you'll be comforted by each bite.

Roasted Beets with Balsamic
(serves four enthusiastic eaters)

6 medium-sized beets, leaves and stems removed
generous splash balsamic vinegar
tiny splash chilli olive oil
handful chopped flat-leaf parsley

Lay out a sheet of heavy-duty aluminum foil (there is really no reason in life to buy any other kind, trust me) and pile the beets on it. Wrap completely in foil, and set in an oven heated to 450F, 220C. Roast for at least 1 1/2 hours and test by inserting a sharp knife into a beet from the outside. If it penetrated very easily, the beets are done. If not, err on the side of cooking longer.

Now, crucially, do NOT unwrap for at least 10 minutes. The steam generated by leaving the beets wrapped tightly will aid enormously in peeling the beets.

After at least 10 minutes, open the packet and grab each beet in turn, under flowing cold water, and simply slip the skins off. Trim the ends and cut each beet into bite-sized pieces, placing them in a medium bowl. Sprinkle with vinegar and oil and parsley and serve either hot, room temp, or cold. Lovely.

********************

Button Mushrooms with Marsala, Thyme and Creme Fraiche
(serves four)

6 tbsps butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
1 lb (1/2 kilo) button mushrooms
handful fresh thyme leaves
good splash Marsala
1 cup half-fat creme fraiche, 2 tbsps reserved
handful chopped flat-leaf parsley
sea salt and fresh-ground black pepper

Melt butter in a heavy skillet and add the garlic, shallot and mushrooms on medium heat. Toss and turn until mushrooms are slightly browned and the whole mixture sizzles nicely. Add thyme leaves and Marsala and cook until a thick, but meagre sauce develops. Add all but 2 tbsps of creme fraiche and stir well until mixed and saucy.

Just before serving, stir in the final 2 tbsps of creme fraiche, turning heat up, and then toss with parsley and season. Perfect.

you say bison, I say buffalo

2010-01-10T02:10:00.005Z

It's not Saturday night unless you set fire to something, that's my motto. Can I just tell you how close to the house this bonfire was last night? Normally both John and I are extremely, uh, responsible, but for some reason, we both thought it would be a fine idea to stack up all the tinder-dry Christmas wreaths in our ancient copper fire pit, and set fire to them.

The smoke! Simply plumes of it a mile high. I can't believe none of our neighbors called the fire department. Finally I made John shovel snow onto it and THEN the smoke was truly something to behold. We smelled like the Grim Reaper.

End of story: it's out. Of course the snow melted in the pit and then froze to the burned-out carcasses of the wreaths so that all John could do this morning was lug it behind the fence and pitch it into the snow. Now we can look forward to hauling it out in July.

It's always so hard to believe that six months will pass between now and our next vision of Red Gate Farm. It's odd to be here only in the most intense months of the year: we arrive in deep snow, and in the greenest days of summer, skipping the interim weeks of growth and decline. Before we see our beloved house again, there will have been plays and dinner parties in London, homework traumas, tune-ups at the orthodontist, Lost Property sales, job interviews, skating competitions, another issue of "Vintage" magazine will appear, containing another article from me. And then it will be July, and we'll be back.

The fridge is empty, the beds stripped, the candles removed from the hydrangea tree, mail stopped, the last laundry load done. In a few hours we'll be picking Avery up from the airport after her Fabulous Adventure (I survived!) and off we'll go to New Jersey to spend the night with our lovely friends, before heading to London in the morning.

I'll leave you with our last meal, a very American supper, and perfect for the sort of weather we're all having, on both sides of the Atlantic. Serve it with a crunchy slaw of red and Savoy cabbages, carrots and fennel. And I'll see you from London.

Bison Chilli
(serves 6)

2 lbs ground bison (buffalo)
1 white onion, minced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 soup-size can black beans
1 soup-size can red kidney beans
1 soup-size can Northern beans
2 large cans diced tomatoes
1 packet McCormick chilli seasoning
extra: chilli powder, ground cumin, turmeric to taste
sea salt and fresh black pepper
condiments: cilantro leaves, sour cream, shredded Cheddar cheese

Brown the bison thoroughly in a heavy, large saucepan. Add onion and garlic and cook for several minutes, then add all the other ingredients and stir well. Cook at a simmer for at least an hour. Better even on the next day. Serve with condiments and everyone can choose for herself.

********************

Warm, hearty, stick-to-your ribs, snowy day perfection. Bliss!

definitely not panicking

2010-01-07T03:16:00.004Z

I'm trying desperately not to feel like this little fellow, here at Red Gate Farm tonight.

How I would love to keep Avery tied to my apron strings, or stuffed in my jeans pocket, or even stored in a nice roomy glass Ball jar. Alas, tomorrow...

She gets on an airplane by herself.

BY HERSELF.

Now, as you well know, I have airplane issues. I try to acknowledge them so they don't people my nighttime dreams, but I think it's only reasonable that if you combine my big irrational fear of flying with my big irrational love affair with my daughter, there will be problems. Like those wonderful pairs of coffee mugs in London: "Keep Calm and Carry On" and "Now Panic and Freak Out."

But the important point is, I'm letting her go. Tomorrow she flies off to Charlotte, her big Christmas present, to spend two days with her beloved friend Anna who moved away from London a year and a half ago. How bereft they have been ever since. And isn't that the point of being mature? We overcome things we fear in order to make good things come true for the people we love.

Or something like that.

Sigh.

And in the service of living daily life and not freaking out, I must report that last night the kitchen drainboard and counters were full of the washed but un-dried dishes of yet another dinner party, which must mean one thing: Rosemary's gone. She's the kitchen elf of my blessed acquaintance, the magic helper who restores my house to perfection behind my back, folding laundry, shining silver, setting the table, lighting candles. And drying pots and pans. So along with the general loneliness of her empty bedroom, not helping her look for her coffee cup during the day ("I really thought I left it just HERE"), not having her bright and interested listening ear to all the details of daily life, we also having a drainboard full of dispiriting dishes to remind us of her absence.

And the dishes themselves? The detritus of, seriously, the LAST party of our Christmas holiday at Red Gate Farm. Last night it was my sister and her family, and Rollie and Judy, bringing with them several culinary gifts that reflect both who they are and who I am: a giant snowman-shaped Rice Krispie treat, a peppermint ice cream log, a chocolate ice cream log. These were from Judy, for the children. And from Rollie, for me? Two slabs of homemade smoked bluefish. He winks roguishly at me. "Judy yelled at me for putting them on top of the ice cream. They do smell, fishy, but I know you and you'll want them." Lord, how I do! "I even brought the crackers to go with," Rollie nudged my arm. I could easily have cancelled all of dinner and sat down happily to a plate of smoked bluefish and creme fraiche.

And because I was selfish and didn't feed everyone my smokey treasure, we helped ourselves instead to:

Rigatoni alla Vodka
(serves 8)

3 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 white onion, finely minced
5 cloves garlic, finely minced
2/3 cup vodka
2 large cans peeled plum tomatoes
1/2 cup grated Pecorino or Parmesan cheese
1 cup light cream
sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

1 1/2 lb rigatoni

Simply saute the onion and garlic in the oil and butter in a large skillet or saucepan, then add the vodka and cook high for 1 minute. Put the tomatoes through a food processor and add to the skillet. Stir together and add cheese and cream and season with salt and pepper, and simmer for at least 1 hour.

Cook the pasta and when it is drained, turn the heat up under the sauce and tip the pasta into it. Toss well and serve with LOTS more Parmesan.

***************

Rollie and Judy. They never seem to tire of our questions about the past life of Red Gate Farm. "Where was the second fireplace? Did Tessie's heirs REALLY throw away all her china and rag rugs when they inherited the house? Was she a good cook?" Tessie, Tessie, the last loving inhabitant of this house, famously the first lady of her family to get a Christmas tree into the place. "Her father didn't believe in such things," someone told me when we bought the house. "So when her young man, John, brought on in the front door, we knew it was over, he'd won the day, and they got married."

Tessie's spirit lives on in the "borning room" at the back of the house, now the kitchen, double-heighted since the renovation opened it up to the old attic. And whenever Rollie and Judy come, they give us another tidbit or two about the past of this beloved place, ending always with, "How Tessie would smile, to see you here now, cooking and all." I think of her so often, more than I think about anyone else I never knew.

Today I drove to Greenwich to meet up with my girlie friend Alyssa from New York days, to shop and have lunch at Morello Bistro, to gossip and catch up in that elliptical style we have. "Are you wearing LIPSTICK, Kristen? Do I see lipstick on you?" "What's up with Elliot's tooth? Somebody HAS to take that scary thing out of his mouth..." Discussions that cannot be carried out on the phone about children's schoolbus schedules, Annabelle's bat mitzah plans and presents (ha, Annabelle, I gave your present to your mom and it's STILL a secret!), Avery's fashion sense described but still not to the extent that we felt comfortable choosing a dress for her at Rugby. I had no problem choosing a tiny little plaid woolly skirt with fringe, and a pair of houndstooth trousers, for myself.

And my lunch salad? Divine.

Morello Bistro's Beet Salad with Hazelnuts, Ricotta and Scallops
(serves 1, GENEROUSLY!)

1 tbsp butter
2 large sea scallops
3 tbsps ricotta
2 handfuls arugula
2 medium beets, roasted, peeled and diced large
1/4 cup chopped toasted hazelnuts

dressing:

3 parts olive oil to 1 part balsamic vinegar
chopped chives
sea salt and fresh pepper

In a heavy skillet, melt butter till it "stops speaking to you," as Julia Child would say, then lay scallops in the butter and cook on one side, high heat, for 2 minutes. Turn and cook for another 1-2 minutes depending on how you like your scallops cooked. Set aside.

On a large plate, arrange dollops of ricotta in three spots. Place handfuls of ricotta in the center. Scatter beets and hazelnuts across the greens and drizzle with dressing. Place scallops between the ricotta dollops. Serve with toasted bread.

***************

Simply divine.

Home safe and sound with nary a wrong turn (stop the presses) to an evening of mixed feelings for me: happy to sit on Avery's bed and help her pack, but Panicking and Freaking Out about WHY.

"So do you want this tiny t-shirt anymore, or can it go to the charity shop?"

"Oh, I wore that nightgown for YEARS. Save it for Jane, unless she thinks it's a dress."

"Do you really want to take the whole calendar of cute animal pictures with you to Charlotte?"

"Yes, I have to show them to Anna, plus here's the envelope of pictures from days that have already gone by."

"Is this sweatshirt REALLY dirty, or just sort of permanent lipsticky dirty? And what's that you're kicking under your bed?"

"Do we have time for a library run tomorrow before I go?"

So hard to believe that the next time Avery's installed in her tiniest-of-all living bedrooms, it will be July. Jane and Molly will be completely different and little Kate across the road might well have traded in her shoe obsession (they refer to her as "Little Imelda") for something more sinister, like cutlery. The house will be stuffy and airless when we come in, far from the chilly regions of tonight. Avery will probably be 1n inch or more taller. My bluefish will be in the freezer.

In the meantime, we have tomorrow to get through, I mean enjoy. And John and I will spend the next two days packing up the house for the long winter ahead. Then we'll collect Avery at the airport and I can breathe again.

Wake me up when she's back.

last holiday revels

2010-01-02T05:36:00.003Z

Well, it's been a flickering and lovely end to the Christmas holidays... our anniversary lunch at Nobu on Wednesday was, quite simply, the best meal ever eaten by either one of us, anywhere. It's going to be painful to get used again to ordinary wonderful London sushi, because Nobu exceeded any of our golden memories, from Tribeca days gone past, when it was, unbelievably, our neighborhood hangout. The times, the times the maitre d' looked over the heads of hopeful would-be diners, telling them, "I'm so sorry, we're COMPLETELY booked," to beckon to us, with little Avery, and say, "Come right in, how's the family?"

All the old remembered favorites: the yellowtail tartare with caviar and wasabi-ponzu dressing, suspended on a bowl of ice. The tuna with jalapeno and cilantro, the tuna tataki with ponzu sauce, the bigeye tuna sashimi that a baby could gum, it was so impossibly tender! Soft-shell crab rolls, spicy tuna, giant clam sashimi. Finally rock shrimp tempura with creamy sauce, shiitake mushrooms and minced chives... all washed down carefully with a precious Matsuhisu martini complete with floating cucumber and sake...

And our conversation wandered everywhere: best play seen in 20 years of marriage? Ralph Fiennes in Hamlet in 1994, or David Suchet in Timon of Athens in 2000? Or "War Horse" last year? Best vacation? Seychelles, or Rome with Avery, or one of the endless English Landmark Trusts? Best Avery memory? Her school notification day last year. Favorite apartment in 20 years? Probably where we are right now.

While we were indulging in this unbelievable fishfest, Avery and her Nonna were uptown, revelling in shopping galore! Takashimaya, Bendel (where Avery acquired a peerless green flowery headband), Saks to see the windows and try on EVERY pair of shoes, and ending at Dylan's Candy Bar on 60th Street, where we picked them up in the late, bloomy afternoon. Happiness all around.

Awake the next morning to find SNOW! Snow falling with a vengeance, for New Year's Eve. Blowy bursts of flakes rushing past the windows, highlighted against the red barns and black tree branches, impossible to photograph and simply gorgeous. Festive and beautiful! How we worried that the weather would prevent our guests from making it from New York City, and in the midst of all of it, up pulled a car containing Avery's first best friend ever, Cici, and her lovely family, on their way from NYC to their house on the coast! Coffee all round, the kids out to give the pugs a walk in the fresh snow, all of us reminiscing as you do, with old, old friends (Avery met Cici when she was 3 days old!) with whom you've shared school days, September 11, gallery ups and downs, being separated by 3000 miles. And yet friendship endures. A shared history warms the heart, and seeing two girls (and brother Noah!) stretched up tall, with memories of their baby selves hovering in the background, brings tears to the eyes.

At sunset, they drove away, and Rosemary and I resumed our work of all day to prepare the New Year's Feast to come. Salmon to roast with olive oil and my beloved Fox Point seasoning, a side dish of cannellini beans with rosemary, breadcrumbs and parmesan, asparagus with hollandaise. Possibly Avery's favorite of the evening:

Prosciutto-Stuffed Mushrooms
(serves 6)

6 large flat mushrooms, stems removed, set aside and chopped
olive oil to drizzle
12 slices prosciutto, chopped
2 tbsps butter
1 small white onion, finely minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs, toasted
sprinkle fresh thyme leaves
handful grated Parmesan or Pecorino
3 slices deli Provolone, torn in half

Simply set the mushrooms on a cookie sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Then in a heavy skillet, saute the prosciutto till cooked and set aside, then add butter to the skillet and cook the onion and garlic till soft. Add breadcrumbs, thyme and cheese, toss the prosciutto in and mix well. Spoon the mixture into the mushrooms, top each mushroom with a folded half of Provolone, and bake at 350F for 20 minutes. Perfect.

**************

So candles lit, the Christmas trees looking lovely for one last evening, Anne, David and Kate trooped across the road for one more holiday party, and we had a stupendous time. There is nothing nicer than a whole SIDE of salmon, oven-roasted for 25 minutes, moist (though I hate the word) and festive and celebratory! Glasses of bubbly all around, Kate asking for Avery to sit next to her! I even forgot to toss the Parmesan in with the cannellini beans and no one seemed to mind, we ate like people possessed. Happy New Year's to everyone!

New Year's Day found us sledding in the back meadow with an enthusiastic Avery and a terrified Kate: not terrified for herself, but for the loved ones she saw putting themselves in mortal danger as they hurtled down the bumpy hill. "Done! Mommy done, Dada done, Avery done!" The sun slanted on the shimmering, crisp snow and we all remarked on the landscape. "I love this view of your compound," David said wryly, as we all surveyed the outbuildings. "Everything is falling down," we agreed with no great degree of dismay. Somehow that seems all right, dark, weathered boards creaking under the weight of cracking glass and heavy snow. Weathered is the word for our whole property, here at Red Gate Farm.

Finally, the last celebration of the holiday season: prime rib at my sister's house! My brother in law is supplied with every possible gadget and receptacle to make cooking such a scary piece of meat fear-free, and John helped by supplying advice from the sidelines about thermometers, bone contact, the usual backseat driver nonsense. I escaped all the decision-making by creating place cards with dear Jane ("I love these markers, they're so... chemically!") and Avery, while Molly slithered around underfoot. My sister was as usual the most patient of all people, being everything to everything, while Joel supplied his gorgeous hot artichoke-cheese appetizer. There is nothing better.

Joel's Hot Artichoke Dip
(serves 6-ish)

1 cup artichoke hearts, drained of oil and chopped
1 cup mayonnaise
1 cup grated Pecorino or Parmesan cheese

Simply nonstick-spray a large ramekin or several small, then mix all and decant mixture among the ramekins. Bake at 350F for 30 minutes. Serve with crackers.

*************

A perfect celebratory end to the festive season: my sister's house glowing with the craziness of Jane and her "Cerebral Hullabaloo" Twister-like game, Molly's furrowed brow and determined "transferring" of her hand from one walking-helper to another. Warm, family, red meat. Nothing could be better.

Home to electric blankets to protect against the cold, snowy wind, and a midnight snack of a lime cookie from Rosemary's stash, packed in her carry-on. Who else has a mother in law who arrives with gingerbread men, cappuccino cookies, lime cookies, Chex Mix, brownies and homemade caramels? They all bring out the hidden sweet tooth in me... but I think it's more the secret ingredient: love.

It's over, isn't it? The packing of holiday fun into suitcases, travel, the frantic wrapping and decorating to the background of "Charlie Brown Christmas," the oyster stew and turkeys and stuffing and Christmas cookies, the champagne and parties and celebrations. Some 300-something days from now it will all begin again, but for the moment, a sigh of happiness at family nearby, food treasured, presents opened and loved. Well done, everyone. Surfeit.

a flood of memories

2009-12-29T14:27:00.007Z

Twenty years.

As of tomorrow, that is how long my beloved and I have been married.

I keep trying to picture myself 20 years ago, with no house (much less two, on two different continents), no PhD (however redundant these days), no child - how is that possible?

As if to punctuate this great milestone, yesterday found us all in SoHo to go shopping. SoHo, the place of our first New York home in 1993, where we could stand on our "balcony" (this is what we called our fire escape) and look to the north at the Chrysler Building and to the south at the Woolworth Building. Here we planted our adult lives, made our first New York friends, bought our first important art. And by important I mean...

I had art students. I was the youngest professor at Hunter College and my God, how I LOVED my job. Art students! Those who made art with their hot little hands and those who were training to study it all, and what fun we had. At the end of every semester, I invited my students home to my loft on Broadway to drink wine, eat shrimp butter and show slides of their work. And one of those early semesters, I was lucky enough to find Brenna Beirne, who showed a slide of an installation of sculptures I can only now describe to you, stored as they are in a massive warehouse somewhere in New Jersey until we someday have walls tall and wide enough to hold them.

They are "The Ladies." Five full-scale sculptural casts of Brenna's own form, from the neck down, in five different poses, cast in plaster, brushed with wax and graphite. When I saw the slide of these pieces, I simply could not believe their beauty. "Where are they now?" I asked in wonder, and Brenna answered with youthful carelessness, "Oh, they were stolen from my senior show." "STOLEN?" "Yep."

"Weren't you devastated?" I asked. "Why? I still have my body, I can always make them again." Just then, John walked into the apartment to see the slide on the wall. "WHAT are THOSE?" he demanded, in thrall as I had been.

It was but the work of a moment to commission Brenna to cast her body, one more time.

So she arrived on John's birthday, our friend Christine in tow to steady the ladder, and while John was at work, she installed "The Ladies." Five Ladies all in a row, from full profile to the left, part profile, straight ahead, part profile to the right, full profile to the right. HOW I wish I had a photograph to show you.

And John came home, dropped his briefcase, and was stunned.

These sculptures followed us to yet another loft in Tribeca, and then had a wall designed just for them in our final loft before our move to London. Whereupon, they were wrapped carefully, said a prayer over, and waved goodbye to their storage place far, far away. When will we ever see them again?

Yesterday we stood outside that old loft on Broadway, remembering the deli across the street where I bought our orange juice and "two eggs on a roll," the block-long walk to Dean and Deluca where I bought croissants, and John's mom once snapped a photo of me coming home, buttery paper bag in hand, in a long form-fitting black dress, ready to teach my class... young and hopeful and THIN and full of energy!

From there to one of our favorite shops on West Broadway, where we helped Avery shop tirelessly for clothes (she and her grandmother have an inexhaustible supply of energy for this activity, long after John and I have stopped looking at our watches!). Suddenly John emerged from the back of the shop, saying, "You will NEVER believe who I have run into back here!" And it was... Brenna. My dear girl, who had just peopled our memories ten minutes before!

A long, hugging reunion, exchange of how to get in touch with one another, a bit tearful at her encountering Avery at age 13, my asking after her twins of 9 and a half years... life, in short, surprising us once more.

A big gulp of life.

Off we went to the shop where we, 20 years ago, bought my gorgeous gold wedding ring, now too small (Avery's arrival for some reason made my hands and feet grow!). We dropped it off to see if they could stretch it somehow, as my latest arrangement of it as a pendant on a leather thong is just not quite enough. More memories, of us in the very same place, planning our wedding, deciding we didn't want a diamond, would just move straight to the wedding band, John choosing his own (years later lost in the wild snows of Canada on a skiing trip when he removed his glove with a flourish and...).

John's mom and Avery went off on their Christmas errand of finding Avery's signature fragrance, a perfume she felt really identified her. And after trying on all she wanted to, guess what she chose? Chloe, my own high school fragrance! How the past seemed determined to haunt me yesterday.

In a cab uptown via 6th Avenue, haunting me further with memories of Avery's ballet classes at Joffrey, with the hated "Miss Liz," one of Avery's long string of early-childhood hated female authority figures! No wonder ballet lasted only about a year. But I loved those days, when I'd run her up the three floors of skeevy stairs, drop her off in her pink tutu, then race back downstairs and up the block to Jefferson Market, one of my favorite foodie destinations: the perfect mozzarella, the plumpest pork roasts, a fruit stand to die for. Then back up those three flights of stinky stairs to hear what I came to think of as Avery's "Moan of the Week." How she HATED ballet!

From there past 11th Street, a brief look at the yellow facade of the school where Avery was evacuated after September 11, 2001... terrible memories of September 19, dropping her off into what felt to me the most dangerous of all possible traps... terrible hollow, black memories of dread.

Uptown further to Shun Lee restaurant to meet up with my darling Alyssa and Annabelle! Alyssa and I agreed later that we can survive being 3000 miles apart when we ARE apart, but when we're sitting together at a dinner table, the number of dinners we're missing together suddenly seem overwhelming and we feel quite ferklempt. The girls have become so elegant, so sleek and grownup, that the shimmery vision of their 2-year-old selves together just breaks our hearts. How have the years so dissolved since then?

From dinner, clutching each other in goodbyes, we headed in a tremendous wind across Columbus Avenue to Lincoln Center, and... the Nutcracker!

When Avery was tiny, maybe just past her third birthday, John's mom and dad decided she needed to go to the "Nutcracker." Friends and relatives alike shrank from our plans to spend untold dollars on a late evening of ballet for a tiny child who would probably melt down. I brought along a little plastic bag full of jelly beans, prepared to bribe her with them should her patience flag. My psychologist father objected strongly, saying, "You should not give her a treat to convince her to behave, but rather give her one after she HAS behaved!" This subtlety was entirely lost on me, intent only on three hours of good behavior, no matter what theories I ruined in the doing.

As it was, she was an angel, completely riveted. And John's parents took us to the Nutcracker for all the years to come, until we moved to London. As if we needed one more reason to be sorry to move away.

And even then, when we returned for the holidays to Connecticut, John's dad was too ill for the "Nutcracker" to be part of our plans. And then he was gone. Unbelievably. A stunning gulf of loss where our Christmases, our endless games of the Fabulous Foursome who were John's parents and we, and then the Fivesome when Avery arrived, had played such an enormous and joyous part of our lives.

Here's something strange, something I've learned. When you know you're going to lose something unutterably dear to you, you try to believe that the love you've felt, the appreciation you've always hugged close, will count for something, will give comfort. "At least we never took anything for granted," you say to yourself, trying to believe it. You hold your memories close, you treasure the person.

Then when the loss comes, you feel that all that assurance, all the past appreciation, doesn't count any more. What about now? What about wanting to tell him something now, right now? About Avery's school acceptance, a new dish I know he'd love to share with us, a first look at our new house. There is only sadness at the void.

But what I've found this Christmas is that the memories DO help. The streets of SoHo were filled, yesterday, with images of John's dad, his love of shopping, his careless disregard for how much a dress might cost at Morgane le Faye, if it looked beautiful on Avery. His joy in finding just the right extravagant bottle of Scotch for John (and a secret black sweater for me, most years). His shy pride at meeting our friends, seeing the cool new sculptures hanging on our wall, hearing me tell about teaching, John's reports of exotic business trips, my trying out a new recipe that he'd later report was "a meal to kill for." He was there, with us, all day yesterday, and never more so than at the "Nutcracker," looking back over all the years of tiny Avery, right through the elegant teenager she was last night.

The memories really do help. They do.

Home we came, visions of snowy Sugarplum Fairies dancing in our heads. Christmas trees alight, our cozy house here to welcome us, a day of beloved friendships to pore over.

Twenty years. They couldn't have been more full, which means great joys and great sorrows, putting down roots here, pulling them up and starting again, holding people close and saying goodbye, saying hello again, holding onto images from the past and knowing that yesterday will provide many more for the future.

A huge sigh of thanks for everyone we hold dear.

Most of all, thank you to my husband. Twenty years. Here's to twenty more, at least.

in the wake of Christmas

2009-12-28T01:49:00.001Z

Oh, a quiet day today, making turkey soup, taking a walk with Anne and little Kate across the road, watching Kate choose every dirty snowy puddle she could find. "I can't believe it was snowy here yesterday, and today, green everywhere," Anne marvelled. We could hear the rain thundering down all night.

The stormy night suited my mood of reluctant goodbyes to my family: my mother, father and brother: after two days of reminiscing, giggling over silly shared jokes, family-familiar quotations from movies, "But, Harlot, Scunny!" "I saw it in the window and couldn't resist it," discussions of old high school friends ("I swear he had a crush on you but your nose was always in a book!"), analysis of the plots (truly) of "Days of Our Lives," watching the little girls and Avery share jokes with my mother, my brother playing a toy guitar for them all, my dad watching over all. He was a tremendous help in the kitchen on Christmas Day, quietly washing dishes, supervising Jane's help with my cheesy spinach, listening to all the gossip.

I find if very sad that family, and family time in our lives, is such a rarity. I spent the first 18 years of my life simply cocooned with my family, close and extended, and that life provided a sense of warmth and acceptance that I feel again whenever I am with my mother and father. Why must it be for two days at a time twice a year? It is not enough time, ridiculously not enough, to make them realize what they mean to me. But it's what we have. Perhaps this year they can make it to London, and we can have the fun of showing them our house, Avery's school, our little world. Until then, we've had our Christmas.

And it was controlled INSANITY! Simply loads of packages for everyone to open, especially as I feel compelled to wrap books separately, to be appreciated on their own, each one, and of course I give mostly books! A pull-tab "Miffy" for baby Molly, which was grabbed by five-year-old Jane immediately. My sister broke in.

"No, no, Jane, don't break that. Let Molly break it for herself."

There were the remote-controlled helicopter races between John and Joel - John's gift of the year to everyone he loves, and no matter my skepticism, everyone in fact loved it! Hovering near our heads, threatening to go into the dishwasher, to cut off my knees, to ascend into the double-height kitchen ceiling where no one could reach it! Engine-obsessed Jane was in heaven.

Avery retreated now and then with a favorite Sherlock Holmes book and a throw, to a remote corner, but was soon followed by Jane, and then by everyone else who wanted to be with Avery and Jane! Perhaps the most peaceful moment of the entire day: with Joel in the barn, looking up at the repair braces we've been paying for and receiving email photographs of all autumn. The whole project looks massively official and supportive and quite as if the Big Red Barn might well stand up for another 200 years. Joel and I took several deep breaths in the darkness of the barn and then plunged again into Kitchen Christmas Central, to manage the chaos.

Chief among whose elements was... the Raw Turkey! Slow-cooked was the goal. How long it would have had to cook, at 250 degrees F, I do not know, in order to be ready for dinner, but considerably, painfully longer than the 5 hours allotted to it. Joel, who is my ace carver, approached with carving knife. "Kristen, look at these juices..." Running red and pink. Awful. Panic. "Can we all, including the mashed potatoes and spinach, wait for another hour?" "We'll have to!" So Joel dismembered Mr. Turkey and separated the breasts from the sternum and I turned up the heat (all I was capable of) and we simply waited.

Finally the turkey was deemed edible, the mashed potatoes had survived, the very rosemary-y gravy whisked up with cream, the stuffing out of the oven and the apple gone in. We gathered around the table. Feasting ensued, and by the time we got to the pies with whipped cream, everyone was feeling slightly mad with overeating and festivity. "Don't lick the reindeer!" I had to warn dear Jane, who saw the ceramic centerpiece covered with stray whipped cream. At this, my mother choked into her pecan pie, she who taught us all to love phrases that we feel certain have never been uttered before. "Don't lick the reindeer!" Classic.

So the holiday has come and gone again. Today we were tired. We took a walk up the meadow to John's Dad's Bench, sat to recover our breath, to remember our time with him two years ago, to be grateful, regretful, all at the same time.

And tomorrow: into New York for shopping and the Nutcracker! That's life for you, isn't it? Just when I think I will take a moment to wallow in nostalgia for my childhood, in my love for my too-far-away family, tomorrow appears with its own delights. A lesson, I'm sure, to be learned in the New Year...