In Lon­don, that is, belat­edly!  We are all tak­ing total credit for bring­ing this lovely warm weather — and sun! — home from our Amer­i­can Easter holiday.

On our way to cross the pond, we stopped in New Jer­sey to visit our beloved friends Livia and Jan­ice, in their peace­ful, unchang­ing oasis of a house.

Old, old friends who know us back­wards and for­wards, end­lessly inter­ested in the rel­a­tive chaos and change of our lives.

We sit in their vast white kitchen, gos­sip­ing over single-malt Scotch, gin­ger ale for Avery, telling tales of our Easter fun, hear­ing about the insan­ity of Livia’s real estate busi­ness (“I have clients now who demand that vis­i­tors wear paper booties when they come in the house,” she chor­tles), the adven­tures of Livia’s niece in the cut­throat New York pub­lish­ing world, their thoughts on Avery’s and my cookbook-in-the-making.  Livia may have a con­tact for a pub­lisher!  Fin­gers crossed he will like our ideas.

Out for din­ner to our tra­di­tional old-fashioned Ital­ian restau­rant where we dither, pre­dictably, over the famil­iar choices.  Floun­der diavolo, or tortellini Michelan­gelo?  Arti­choke soup or a chopped salad?  Every­thing loaded with gar­lic and accom­pa­nied by soft, heavy Ital­ian bread.  Tra­di­tions.  Dear Livia, one of the most bril­liant minds I have ever known, and every year Avery becomes more like her.  What could be better?

At the first crack of dawn, off we went to Newark to go back to our real lives.

As always, after any sig­nif­i­cant time away from our Eng­lish lives, I find it quite intense to re-enter, to fit into this still-foreign cul­ture.  I always find it fas­ci­nat­ing to ana­lyze the approach that out­siders take to “fit­ting in” here.  I know some peo­ple who res­olutely remain them­selves in every way, either because they are supremely con­fi­dent in them­selves or because it’s just too dif­fi­cult or too much trou­ble to be a chameleon.  The sense of reserve that per­me­ates much of Eng­lish life can be a bit intim­i­dat­ing, and I cer­tainly under­stand those expats who just don’t try to over­come it; they make only Amer­i­can friends, they shop at the Gap and stream CNN.  If you look in their kitchen cup­boards, you will see Rice Krispie Treats, Ver­mont maple syrup and Dori­tos, care­fully col­lected from the var­i­ous British shops that cater to the Amer­i­cans here.  These peo­ple seem per­fectly con­tent to remain entirely Amer­i­can, sur­rounded by a for­eign culture.

But I do try to fit in.  I’m not sure why.  Take my beloved hobby: bell­ring­ing is just about as Eng­lish as you can get!  We rang last week in honor of St George — the patron saint of Eng­land — on a sunny, warm spring evening.

The flag, labo­ri­ously put in place on top of the tower by Howard, waved gen­tly in the breeze, high in an intensely blue sky.

And of course there is the won­der­ful Dorothy L Say­ers Soci­ety of which I am a fer­vently loyal mem­ber.  Although I can­not make it to many of their events as they take place dur­ing the sum­mer, I man­aged to join every­one over the week­end at a per­for­mance by one of my very favorite Eng­lish actors, Edward Pether­bridge, in one of the most unusual plays I have ever seen, “My Per­fect Mind” at the Young Vic.

Because dear Edward was sim­ply the defin­i­tive Lord Peter Wim­sey, that iconic Eng­lish detec­tive in Dorothy L Say­ers’ nov­els, we in the Soci­ety make an effort to turn up at any play he might appear in, and this lat­est was truly a tour de force.

The idea of the play came about when Edward was cast as King Lear in New Zealand, sev­eral years ago, and suf­fered a debil­i­tat­ing series of strokes on the sec­ond day of rehearsal.  While in recov­ery, although he had lost many phys­i­cal abil­i­ties, he found he had retained all of the con­tent of the play, and “My Per­fect Mind” is an explo­ration of his recov­ery, his child­hood, his entire act­ing career, punc­tu­ated by hyp­notic excerpts from “King Lear” itself, a play I’ve never seen per­formed.  All this was told in a kalei­do­scope of mem­ory, sad­ness, humor and ambi­tion, span­ning his entire life.  You sim­ply MUST go.  It’s been extended for a week, clos­ing May 4.  I think I’ll go again, per­haps drag­ging my fam­ily with me.

Believe it or not, after the mati­nee of this play, I saun­tered over to the National The­atre to meet John and Avery for Oth­ello!  Two plays in one day: a first for me.  I sat out­side at the won­der­fully scruffy famous skate­board­ing at South­bank, read­ing Edward’s mem­oirs, “Slim Chances” and wait­ing for Avery and John to arrive for early sushi, and the play.  And while it was a very good pro­duc­tion, lav­ish and dra­matic, expen­sive kit­ted out and full of stars, I much pre­ferred the far sim­pler stag­ing and sub­tle humor of Edward’s play.

What I will NOT do in my quest to fit in in my adopted land is suc­cumb to my bell­ring­ing teacher Howard’s pres­sure to pro­nounce cer­tain words in the Eng­lish fash­ion!  Ready to ring at Chiswick last Sun­day, gath­ered around the ancient bap­tismal font which was open ready for a cer­e­mony, he sprin­kled me with water.  “Howard!  That’s blas­phe­mous in the extreme,” I said.  “You’re going to find your­self in Pur­ga­tory before you know it.”

He hooted.  “‘Purga-tory’?  What’s that?  You do NOT pro­nounce it that way, surely.  Repeat after me.  ‘Purga-tree.’”

“Purga-tory,” I insisted.  “And while we’re at it, ‘ceme-tery,” ‘manda-tory’ and best of all, ‘LAB-ora-tory,’” I fin­ished triumphantly.

“‘Ceme-tree’, ‘manda-tree’ and ‘la-BOR-atree’!” he moaned in mock distress.

No, I will not give in on those.

We’ve been play­ing ten­nis madly (too madly in fact; I have a wretched back­ache right now from what I think is a pulled mus­cle) and eat­ing lovely sal­ads for lunch, in an attempt to throw off some our win­ter weight.  How about avo­cado, hal­loumi, baby leaves, toma­toes and hard-boiled eggs?

In order to eat more veg­eta­bles, I’ve had another deliv­ery from the divine Natoora, sup­plier of all things deli­ciously Ital­ian.  I went a bit mad, I think.  Got fennel?

To cope with the influx, I invented a fen­nel soup with Pernod, then reverted to one of John’s favorite slaws of fen­nel and car­rot, and best of all, exper­i­mented suc­cess­fully with a beau­ti­ful chicken and fen­nel dish.

Roast Chicken with Fen­nel and Lemon

(serves four with leftovers)

1 medium chicken

2 bulbs fen­nel, sliced thickly

2 lemons, sliced thickly

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

hand­ful capers

4 fresh bay leaves

dozen baby tomatoes

driz­zle olive oil

hand­ful grated Parmesan

fresh black pepper

Place the chicken in a large roast­ing dish and arrange the fen­nel and lemon slices around it.  Scat­ter over the gar­lic and capers and toma­toes and tuck the bay leaves in here and there.  Driz­zle olive oil over the fen­nel slices and top with a sprin­kle of Parme­san and black pep­per.  Roast at 325F/160C for two hours.

Of course the new school term brings a sim­ply hor­ren­dous but some­how fun-filled first day at Lost Prop­erty.  I sim­ply had to cap­ture it on my phone.  Twelve bags of STUFF.

Lacrosse boots cov­ered with caked dirt, piles of text­books, sin­gle drama shoes and sneak­ers, named and unnamed cloth­ing of every descrip­tion.  At one point I reached blindly into an enor­mous bag and felt some­thing WET.  I screamed!  “It could be any­thing, a sev­ered head!” I said des­per­ately.  But it was only left­over leaves from the work of the School Flower Team.  One of the Flower Team was just leav­ing, hav­ing sprin­kled her fra­grant magic around the school.  “This stuff stinks,” she said smil­ing, pick­ing her away across the LP room, strewn with dirty clothes.

And then there are the inex­plic­a­ble items that just make us shake our heads.  This time, I think the prize for “weird­est thing in Lost Prop­erty” had to be divided between a human-sized ply­wood cross and a six-foot woolly stuffed snake.  Really?  Really.  Even odder than the snake itself was the maths teacher who came trot­ting over.  “That snake is mine, actually.”

Go for it, mate.

Some­day I’m going to buy one of those wel­come mats that say “The Muck Stops Here” and put it out­side the Lost Prop­erty door.

This week will bring the beloved termly lun­cheon, for which I must decide what to make.  I’m think­ing of my brother in law Joel’s deli­cious arti­choke dip, since my Ital­ian veg­etable deliv­ery included two dozen baby pur­ple arti­chokes!  Or even the frit­tata I made this week.

Arti­choke and Iberico Ham Frittata

(serves two hun­gry people)

dozen baby pur­ple artichokes

1 lemon

1 tsp olive oil

1 tsp butter

six slices Iberico ham, torn into bite-size pieces

4 eggs

3 tbsps sin­gle (light) cream

1/4 cup grated Parmesan

fresh black pepper

First, pre­pare the arti­chokes.  Cut about 1/4 inch off the top of each arti­choke and cut off the stem.  Peel away the outer leaves until you judge that you have reached the soft­est leaves.  This will result in an arti­choke that’s about half the size it was orig­i­nally.  Have a bowl of water with the lemon juiced into it to one side as you do this, and cut each arti­choke into four slices, top to bot­tom, then drop them in the lemony water to pre­vent dis­col­oration.  When you are ready to cook them, drain them and pat with a paper towel.

Heat the oil and but­ter in a fry­ing pan and fry the arti­choke slices for about four min­utes.  Scat­ter the ham bits over them.  Whisk the eggs with the cream and pour the mix­ture over the arti­chokes and ham, tilt­ing the fry­ing pan so that the eggs cover all the sur­face.  Sprin­kle with the cheese and pep­per and cook gen­tly, not too hot, until the eggs are just nearly fully cooked.  A lit­tle squidgi­ness is fine.  Do not over­cook.  Remove from heat, place a plate over the frit­tata and turn the pan upside down. Done.

This is quite sim­ply one of the most deli­cious things you can eat.  It’s savoury, it’s creamy, and the arti­chokes impart an exotic bite and an inde­scrib­able fla­vor.  Home­made they are so far supe­rior to the ones you find in a jar that you may never go back.  I’m mar­i­nat­ing the remain­ing dozen arti­chokes in olive oil and gar­lic right now, but they will require three weeks to be ready.  You have to think ahead!

It’s that won­der­ful Sun­day after­noon feel­ing right now, a mix­ture of relief that ring­ing is over for the week until Fri­day prac­tice, lunch has been cleared away and it’s not quite time to start think­ing about din­ner.  Another busy week beck­ons.  And spring has sprung.

It’s the last day of our spring break here at Red Gate Farm, and you know what that means: pack­ing, doing end­less loads of laun­dry, eat­ing weird com­bi­na­tions of food to get it out of the fridge, madly buy­ing the odd Amer­i­can things we can’t seem to live with­out in Lon­don like gal­lon Ziplock bags, Fox Point sea­son­ing, those Penn­syl­va­nia Dutch egg noo­dles Avery loves so much, and plenty of “stress-relief” eucalpy­tus and spearmint hand soap that I’m con­vinced is even more effec­tive than Xanax on an anx­ious day.  It’s cer­tainly more expen­sive!  My long-suffering brother in law Joel, who patiently receives parcels for us dur­ing our Lon­don months and stores them in his base­ment, reports that said base­ment is dis­tinctly stressed-out now, since I’ve removed my stash to take it back with us.

We’ve had our last super brunch at the inim­itable Lau­rel Diner, home of the but­ter­i­est hash­browns, the rich­est corned-beef hash and the nicest staff in the world.  Look what I came away with this time, how per­fect to wear bell­ring­ing in Lon­don!  You can bet I’ll be the only girl on my block with one of these tees.

Avery has been dili­gently study­ing, or “revis­ing” as one says in Eng­lish Eng­lish, for the mas­sive exams loom­ing over her life next month, the dreaded GCSEs.  Eleven sub­jects, over the course of a month, to be suf­fered through in the school Sports Hall under the most rig­or­ous of con­di­tions (no sneez­ing has been bandied about by the exam rumor mill, for exam­ple).  The din­ner table this “hol­i­day” has been taken over by her papers, files, books, pens.  We cleared off a small por­tion for our din­ners, though.  Lob­sters for Nonna’s last night!

To be per­fectly hon­est, the lob­ster din­ner was pretty much a very expen­sive excuse to get Avery to pho­to­graph a lob­ster roll.  We are mak­ing mas­sive head­way on the list of pho­tos we need for our cookbook-in-the-making, and this one tops the list for cover image, don’t you think?

The book is to be called “Ladle to Lens: A Col­lab­o­ra­tion in the Kitchen,” and all we need now is… a pub­lisher.  That’s all.

We’ve sadly waved good­bye to Nonna, whose visit was as much fun as ever, punc­tu­ated with great cook­ing together, manic games of Aggravation…

She’s one of those peo­ple who makes you cooler just by watch­ing what­ever you do and mak­ing it seem inter­est­ing.  Chop­ping gar­lic!  Set­ting the table!  With my mother in law by my side, even the most bor­ing tasks take on color because she’s so intensely fas­ci­nated by every­thing going on around her.  And she gives won­der­ful gifts.  These lit­tle arti­choke can­dles are my new favorite possession.

But we couldn’t keep her for­ever.  Her real life beck­ons, so off she flew.  Until summer!

It was time for one last party, one last gath­er­ing around the table with peo­ple we never get to spend quite enough time with, for a bagel brunch loaded lux­u­ri­ously with smoked salmon.  The spring light made the table so lovely.

This time the cast of char­ac­ters included our dear­est neigh­bor and friend Anne, up here all by her­self to accom­plish some home repairs across the road, leav­ing dear David and Kate behind.  How hard it is to wait until sum­mer to see them!  The Elder Rol­lie, as he must be called now that there’s not only Young Rol­lie but Even Younger Rol­lie these days, came with Judy who brought fruit salad and daf­fodils, as well as her beau­ti­ful smile, one of the warmest in the world.  Such dear friends, all.

And dear Matt and Laura, who brought a cake and even more impor­tantly the most beau­ti­ful baby this side of the Atlantic.  Can you just believe lit­tle Annabella, nearly a year old now…

What fun it was to have a lit­tle one crawl­ing around here again, now that our nieces are so elderly, four and eight.  Annabella raced around on all fours, find­ing Avery’s old doll­house and all its accou­trements.  She is just charm itself, lis­ten­ing intently to every­thing being said and smil­ing now and then as if at some inter­nal happy thought.

How we feasted!  Real Amer­i­can bagels, plenty of cream cheese, toma­toes, cucum­bers, onions, avo­ca­dos, the smoked salmon with fresh dill, Rollie’s deli­cious home-smoked blue­fish.  We lin­gered in the kitchen where Annabella was play­ing, sit­ting on var­i­ous uncom­fort­able sur­faces like the hard bench before the wood­stove, the straight-backed kitchen chairs, or the floor, in my case.  The power went out, nat­u­rally, as it does all the time in this crazy house, but even so, we stayed where we were.

No one wanted to leave, and we all wanted to watch the lit­tle girl enjoy the doll­house peo­ple, so we made cof­fee and tea and just hung around, chat­ting about the state of the local gov­ern­ment, the Land Trust, the peep­ers in the swamp, our fam­i­lies.  “Well, my dad’s slow­ing down, nat­u­rally, as you do when you get older,” Matt said, then looked at The Elder Rol­lie.  “Well, not YOU, maybe, Rol­lie!”  “Yeah, that memo about slow­ing down, I didn’t get it!” Rol­lie crowed.

And when every­one else finally did depart, Rol­lie stayed behind to help John set up the gen­er­a­tor, since as city folk we could not pos­si­bly go more than two hours with­out the inter­net!  They entered the feared and cobweb-festooned crawl space to emerge with the magic source of energy.

Judy and I stood to one side as “the boys” got the gen­er­a­tor going, then shout­ing a bit over the din, went over to inspect the new wall.  How beau­ti­ful it looks!  The most costly expanse of stones I can imag­ine, but worth it to see it stand­ing firm now.

Should we be wor­ried about the expanse of moss accu­mu­lat­ing on our roof?  Rol­lie deems not.

The boys fill up the gen­er­a­tor with enough gas to get us through this energy emer­gency (the power came back on about an hour later!), happy to be play­ing with machinery.

The party was over, the early evening air chill.  The last guest gone, the hol­i­day over.  It’s back to Lon­don for us, to ring bells and mate socks at Lost Prop­erty for me, for John to con­tinue plan­ning his beloved river-edge prop­erty, for Avery to take the wretched exams.  And when we see Red Gate Farm next, there will be a chicken in the chicken house for the first time in half a cen­tury, I imag­ine.  That will be worth com­ing back for.  For now… hol­i­day over.

What a mad­cap ten days we’ve had here!

It’s what hap­pens when we’ve been absent for seven months from our beloved home here in the Con­necti­cut val­leys.  The birds have missed us, as have the chip­munks and the elu­sive wood­chuck Gary.  Agatha, our bril­liant clean­ing lady, had been and gone, leav­ing her mag­i­cal per­fec­tion and a pot of bloom­ing daf­fodils behind her.  Our neigh­bors had been involved in an intense rivalry as to who could leave the most wel­com­ing pot of jam, loaf of bread, sweet Easter note.

It’s been eight years since we were here for the Easter hol­i­day, and in those long years in Lon­don I had for­got­ten about the var­i­ous mir­a­cles that take place in the coun­try in April.  Snow­drops abound in Anne’s gar­dens across our quiet road.

In the shadow of our farm­house, over­look­ing the Big Meadow, the bed of ferns, dor­mant and brown through­out the win­ter months, begins to come alive again, with­out our hav­ing to do any­thing about it.  Perfect.

“Our generator’s been stolen!” John says sadly, walk­ing in from his inven­tory of the Big Red Barn.  “Oh, no, how dis­ap­point­ing to have some­thing bad hap­pen at Red Gate Farm,” I mourn, hat­ing to think our shangri-la had been invaded.  I mes­saged my dear farmer friend up the road to ask if there had been other such thefts and she replied imme­di­ately, “OMG, didn’t any­body tell you?  We came over and took it down to your base­ment for safe-keeping after the big snowstorm!”

So, far from a theft on our beloved farm, we have been vis­ited by yet more kindness.

How thrilling to see the new/old wall, repaired labo­ri­ously by our dear stone­ma­son Tony.  It will last forever.

We went to bed the first night puz­zled to hear a strange singsong, almost buzzing sound out­side the win­dows.  “Is it cicada sea­son?” John won­dered, and we fell asleep wondering.

In the morn­ing we fol­lowed the sound through the cold spring air across the road far into Anne’s prop­erty, into a stand of shiv­ery bare trees, to the swamp that the nearby main road is named after.  And there we found hun­dreds and hun­dreds of very vocal lit­tle new­born frogs, just below the sur­face, “peep­ers,” as it turned out, and liv­ing up to every inch of their names.  You can’t see them here, sadly, as they’re hid­ing, but trust me, they’re there and chirp­ing away.

We crossed the road and admired the tiny shoots com­ing up in the tiger lily bed in front of the house.  We’ll miss nearly all of them, but there is usu­ally one hold­out at the begin­ning of July to wel­come us.

How heav­enly to set­tle in, watch­ing “Days of Our Lives,” “Gen­eral Hos­pi­tal” and “Young and the Rest­less.”  What on earth is Jason doing on Y&R, and Ash­ley on Days?  I pre­pare lunches of red cab­bage slaw, left­over chicken burg­ers, soups from the din­ner before, hap­pily look­ing out my kitchen win­dow at the — admit­tedly brown — sweep of lawn down to the barns.

Then it’s time to make our sea­sonal pil­grim­age to the Gap for sale t-shirts and under­wear.  “Nice to see you!  But what are you doing here at Easter?” the saleslady asks.  Have I been spend­ing too much time at Gap?  We visit our beloved Amer­i­can gro­cery stores for the Amer­i­can foods we long for all year long: truly gar­licky dill pick­les from the deli counter, yel­low Amer­i­can cheese, Dori­tos and Chee­tos, bison for burgers.

It was absolutely freez­ing, lit­er­ally, the first days of our vaca­tion, but did that stop us from play­ing ten­nis?  Of course not!  Our hiber­nat­ing bod­ies were shocked to be asked to run, jump and hit balls.  We per­se­vered, secure in the knowl­edge that John’s mom’s approval would make it all worth­while.  And it did, when we retrieved her from the cozy nearby air­port and brought her home, stop­ping for the ulti­mate eggy brunch — a sand­wich with fried eggs, sausage, bacon AND cheese! — at the per­fect Lau­rel Diner, the best diner on the face of the earth.

Every­thing tastes bet­ter there, and it was such fun to greet our friends Peter and Stephanie who run that won­der­ful spot.

And from Nonna’s arrival, the pace of life ratched up.  We were off to my sister’s for a deli­cious pork rib din­ner, fresh from my brother in law’s grill.  “We had a lit­tle din­ner guest here awhile ago, and she said how great the ‘meat sticks’ were,” Joel laughed.  I have a feel­ing ribs will always be “meat sticks,” now.  How won­der­ful as always to be cooked for, in their beau­ti­ful, serene house, full of my nieces’ shout­ing laugh­ter.  I can’t believe we for­got a camera!

But Avery was there to pho­to­graph one of our favorite Red Gate Farm dishes: scal­lop and pars­ley pasta.

We’re hard at work on our cook­book and much of our diet lately has come under the head­ing of “Do we need a photo of that?”

One morn­ing, for some rea­son John was vis­ited by an intense desire to redo Avery’s child­hood room.  “Why should you be all crowded in there with two beds?  Let’s take one down and get you a chair and some book­shelves.”  So we took down one twin bed and poor Avery had to go through all her books, papers, girly stick­ers and toys.  It looks gor­geous and peace­ful in there now.

One more bit of child­hood gone, in a visit that began with the dis­cov­ery of No More Rope Swing.  How sad.

I sup­pose it shouldn’t have sur­prised us, as the swing’s been up since 2004 and the branch has drooped vis­i­bly in the last few years.  But I will miss it, scene of many lovely sum­mer after­noon swing­ing ses­sions with Avery, her vis­it­ing friends, the neigh­bor chil­dren, Jane and Molly.

And then my beau­ti­ful mother and brother arrived!  How won­der­ful to have every­one together, finally.  Here are all the ladies of my beloved fam­ily.  What fun to sit and gos­sip with and just plain enjoy my mom.

Just look at Miss Molly at school, rev­el­ling in her own spe­cial park­ing spot, thanks to the school auction!

We had a fab­u­lous time with the “dip me again, Aunt Kris­ten!” ploy.

Lots of time in the back­yard on the swingset.  Too bad Molly isn’t a ham, at all.

Jane got some valu­able lessons in pho­tog­ra­phy from the queen thereof, Rosemary.

I think she learned a lot.  What a com­pletely beau­ti­ful girl she is.

And Sat­ur­day brought us a belated Easter Egg Hunt!  No need to bother with expla­na­tions of the Bunny’s vis­it­ing twice in one year, this hunt was purely a gift to our nieces from us.

And they had fun in the cold, cold morn­ing air.

We had a deli­cious, if totally unex­pected Easter lunch.  I had decided that the best way to feed every­one would be a roasted ham, but I def­i­nitely did not want the already-cooked, and heaven for­bid already-sliced things that seemed to dom­i­nate the butcher sec­tion at the gro­cery.  “Do you have an uncooked, fresh ham?” I asked the “butcher” uncer­tainly, as most peo­ple stand­ing behind Amer­i­can meat coun­ters have no real rela­tion to the pro­fes­sion of butch­ery.  But this fel­low did, with the bloody apron to prove it.  And he sold us a fresh ham.

Which turns out to be… pork roast.  I should have real­ized that fresh ham here is a whole sep­a­rate cat­e­gory to what we’d think of as fresh ham in Eng­land, which is called a gam­mon joint and has been cured.  “Fresh ham” in the States is really not at all, except that it’s the cut that would even­tu­ally become a ham, if cured.  Ours was a sim­ple, giant pork roast on the bone.  Deli­cious, once we got used to it.  Here is our spring­time, Easter table.

Of course, I’ve been bell­ring­ing, amidst all this activ­ity!  I made the trip down to Brew­ster gladly, since the now-defunct Mel­rose School and its beau­ti­ful tower is one of my favorite places in the world.

How heart­warm­ing and never-changing, to be reunited with my Mel­rose band and take up the rope with them.  Easy cama­raderie, spe­cial bell in-jokes and spar­ring.  And then…

The num­ber five bell’s rope sim­ply sev­ered in Bill’s hands, thank good­ness not mine!  The prac­tice devolved into an impromptu rope replace­ment sem­i­nar, high up in the bell­tower, with the drama of which rope to choose tak­ing place in the ring­ing chamber.

We had a glo­ri­ous cou­ple of hours, ring­ing some­thing mad­den­ing called “Lit­tle Bob,” which involves ring­ing on six bells but pre­tend­ing there are only four, only you DO have to count the extra two, but not really?  You can imag­ine my level of skill at this endeavor!  “One, two, three, four, Lit­tle Bob is such a bore.  What did I choose the tre­ble for?”  Never mind, it was tremen­dous fun.  Good­bye to Mel­rose until July!  I got to greet the res­i­dent baby cow (don’t ask, no idea what he’s doing here) on my way to the car.

A won­der­ful visit with my dear chum Shel­ley on my way back upstate, and I was safely back at home, my ears lit­er­ally ring­ing with my afternoon’s adventure.

It’s so dif­fi­cult for me to believe, when I’m here, that our Lon­don life exists.  Life here is all about baby Rollie’s birth­day party, com­plete with a visit to his new chicks and ducks, and his love of the Wellies we brought him from London.

It’s about his mother Tri­cia bring­ing me a dozen of her hen’s eggs, and it’s about the school bus trundling by on its daily rounds, past the Big Red Barn.

It’s about the peace of this old, old house, and the most serene bed­room in the world.

It’s about Amer­i­can friends, and dear, dear fam­ily with whom we never get to spend enough time.  Two weeks of bliss, and then back to our other life, with its joys and sor­rows.  How lucky we are to have both lives, and every­one who peo­ples them.

Well, it’s back to the ten­nis courts for us.  The sun is shin­ing, the warm air wel­comes us, and it’s spring vaca­tion at Red Gate Farm.  Happy days.

It’s been an extremely busy, at times rather gru­elling autumn and win­ter, spent entirely within the world of Lon­don.  It’s been seven months of the weekly rounds of social work, bell­ring­ing lessons and ser­vices, the con­stant mess at Lost Prop­erty, wor­ry­ing with Avery over her exams, end­lessly cook­ing and writ­ing about cook­ing.  We can remem­ber the very days that weren’t cold, wet and grey pre­cisely because there were so few of them!  At least we had our vis­i­tor kitty Shas­tokovich to cheer us, seen here enjoy­ing a treat on the terrace.

So, it’s time for a break.  On Thurs­day, the school term finally ends and with it our self-imposed exile in Lon­don.  Sun­day will take us to Red Gate Farm!  Our moth­ers will appear for some much-needed fam­ily time, we’ll be reunited with Jill, Joel and the girls, and all our unique Con­necti­cut friends will appear with their par­tic­u­larly Amer­i­can per­son­al­i­ties and dearly-missed con­ver­sa­tion, adorable chil­dren and enthu­si­as­tic appetites.

I can’t really com­plain about our Lon­don life, since so much of it is quite won­der­ful.  Our lovely neigh­bors’ beau­ti­ful din­ner party with bacon-wrapped monk­fish and a light and deli­cious shrimp risotto (the chef says under his breath, “It’s made with that chicken stock you gave us.”)…  We’ve had a lovely sausage-roll party here with dear friends, and I can tell you that is one fab­u­lous dish.  Sim­ply take your own home­made sausages or the best you can find at the shop, wrap it in puff pas­try, brush with egg white and sprin­kle with Parme­san.  Bake at 350F/180C for 35 min­utes.  Heaven, a very pop­u­lar din­ner party idea.

There have been long cosy after­noons sit­ting on the wide sofa with friends and a cup of tea, lunches at the gar­den end of the din­ing table with another chum, a sushi adven­ture with a vis­i­tor from New York, and “Mac­beth” with the divine James McAvoy.  You must try to see that if you can.  His is a vio­lently phys­i­cal Mac­beth, vis­i­bly declin­ing from ambi­tion to mur­der­ous insan­ity, whilst spilling quite a lot of blood, jump­ing from table to chair, dis­patch­ing ene­mies right and left, once right onto the foot of an unsus­pect­ing audi­ence mem­ber in the onstage seats!  McAvoy is a brood­ing rev­e­la­tion, totally exhaust­ing to watch.

No, our lives are never boring.

But it can get repet­i­tive, a bit pre­dictable to watch the parade of days spent emp­ty­ing dish­wash­ers and doing laun­dry.  How much more fun to spend two weeks at Red Gate Farm doing those things in a dif­fer­ent place.

And we’ll be able to see in per­son, with our own eyes, the tree branch that’s fallen on Avery’s beloved child­hood tree swing, inves­ti­gate what­ever spring flow­ers are pop­ping up (it’s been eight years since we were “home” for Easter), and most excit­ing, we’ll be able to view the new meadow wall.  Or rather, the old, old meadow wall taken apart and put back together, with drainage pipes and invis­i­ble cement lay­ers to hold it all up for another 600 or so years.  This is what we last saw via email.  What — or who — IS under that tarp?!

Avery will be bring­ing along a heavy tote bag full of all the papers and books she needs to study, or “revise” as it’s called here, for her upcom­ing mas­sive exams in May and June.  How thrilled she will be when this is all over and she can set fire to all the notes related to the sci­ences, maths, Latin, French and Drama.  Then the autumn will bring a whole new and beloved slate of sub­jects: Russ­ian, Eco­nom­ics, His­tory and Pol­i­tics.  But “vaca­tion” will cer­tainly have to encom­pass some work.  How won­der­ful to do it in the atmos­phere of our peace­ful Con­necti­cut home.

In other news, before I fly away and get totally dis­tracted by life on the other side of the pond, I’d like to offer you a piece of deli­cious advice.

Eat More Plants!

Now, I’m not talk­ing about veg­e­tar­i­an­ism here.  Lord knows our fam­ily like their roasted chick­ens, lamb meat­balls and sir­loin burg­ers! What I’m inter­ested in is find­ing ways to fit more veg­eta­bles into our diet as well.  As the revered food and cul­ture writer Michael Pol­lan tells us, the best way to a healthy diet is three­fold.  “Eat real food, eat less of it, and eat more plants.”  Avery is prob­a­bly the most fer­vent meat-eater among us, and I pre­dict that when the sad/wonderful day comes that she goes off to uni­ver­sity, we will eat a larger pro­por­tion of veg­eta­bles than we do now.  John could prob­a­bly be veg­e­tar­ian, in fact, if I weren’t in charge of our diet.

Three sure­fire ways to intro­duce more veg­eta­bles into your diet are soup, dips, and slaws.  I am a soup junkie and will eat absolutely any­thing if it’s been cooked in chicken stock and pureed with a hand blender, period.  Dips are a decep­tively seduc­tive way to eat more veg­eta­bles on a sim­i­lar prin­ci­ple: any­thing scooped up with a pop­padum or tor­tilla chip or rice cracker or cel­ery stick is appeal­ing.  And slaws?  Most any firm veg­etable, low in mois­ture, is a delight to eat when cut into match­sticks and dressed in anchovy and lemon juice. Here are some of my favorite exam­ples of all these ideas.  Get inspired!

But­ter­nut squash soup is real com­fort food.  The squash can be cooked in stock after being roasted, as in this recipe, but if you’re really into sim­plic­ity, the squash can be sim­ply peeled and cut into cubes and then cooked in the stock.  Allow about 30 min­utes for this method.  There is some­thing very inspir­ing about the bright orange of this soup.

One of Avery’s absolute favorites is mush­room and thyme soup, fla­vored with Madeira or Marsala wine.  So smooth and heav­enly, and a per­fect way to use mush­rooms that are per­haps a bit elderly and not up to being eaten raw.  There is no herb more appeal­ing than thyme, espe­cially if you can get the ten­der young ver­sion like my brother in law Joel grows.  But it doesn’t really mat­ter, as you’re going to puree this soup and you can put it through a sieve to catch any woody bits at the last minute.

Per­haps the most inex­pen­sive soup in the world is this one, and you can have every­thing in your pantry and fridge, no shop­ping needed.

White Bean and Rose­mary Soup

(serves 4)

knob of butter

4 cloves gar­lic, roughly chopped

2 shal­lots, roughly chopped

2 cans white beans (small white, hari­cot, but­ter beans, all these work fine)

2 stems rose­mary, leaves only

veg­etable or chicken stock to cover beans

splash white wine

salt and pep­per to taste

dash of cream

Melt the but­ter in a heavy saucepan and saute the gar­lic and shal­lots until soft­ened.  Add rose­mary, beans, stock and wine and cook for about 10 min­utes at a high sim­mer.  Sea­son with salt and pep­per to taste and add the cream.

And it’s time to dip!  I chal­lenge you to find any­one who doesn’t love dip­ping things in things.  It’s casual and fun, and reminds us all of Super Bowls, foot­ball matches, Red Nose Day and the Oscars, every­one gath­ered around the telly with a plat­ter of veg­eta­bles cut into sticks, chips of every sort, and large bowls of DIP.  But for­get the fat-filled com­mer­cial dips of our child­hood, loaded with preser­v­a­tives and unwanted sugar.  Try my favorites.

Black Bean Dip

(hard to tell how many it serves: my hus­band can eat the lot at one go)

2 tbsps olive oil

4 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 small white onion, chopped

1 tsp each (or to taste): turmeric, ground cumin, paprika, chili powder

2 soup-size tins black beans, rinsed and drained

juice and zest of 1 lime or lemon or both

sea salt and fresh black pep­per to taste

Soften the gar­lic and onion in the hot olive oil and add the spices.  Fry for a bit, then add the beans and cit­rus juice.  Cook for five min­utes, then tip into a food proces­sor and process until as smooth as you like it.

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

And who can for­get gua­camole?  This rich avo­cadoy delight is a clas­sic and requires only that most elu­sive of veg­eta­bles: a per­fectly ripe avocado.

But if you can find enough ripe avo­ca­dos, sim­ply mash­ing them up with red onion and lime juice is the eas­i­est thing in the world.  Add a blob of sour cream and you’re all set.

When you’re ready for some­thing col­or­ful and crunchy, try red cab­bage slaw with anchovy dressing.

The dress­ing is sim­plic­ity itself.  And you must try it with any firm veg­etable that you can cut into match­sticks: car­rots, beets, red pep­per, or sliced fen­nel bulb.  And if you add a table­spoon of whole­grain mus­tard, you will have the per­fect dress­ing for a remoulade of the hum­ble and yet rather exotic cele­riac root.

There is just noth­ing like the mag­i­cal umami fla­vor of anchovies in salad dress­ing.  For fun, get them fresh and fil­let them your­self.  It’s like fish­mon­gery in a dollhouse.

In case you are crav­ing some­thing fatty and meaty to go with any of these treats, here is the ulti­mate such rich recipe, sim­pli­fied a bit from this orig­i­nal recipe, given to me by my friend Frances. This dish is the last word in indul­gence.  After all, the essence of life is in its variety!

Red-Cooked Pork Belly

(serves 6)

1 lb/1000 g pork belly

thumb-sized knob/150 g gin­ger, sliced

2 tbsps peanut oil

1 tbsp sugar

a large/90g scal­lion, white part cut into 3-inch pieces

3 dried red chili peppers

1 tsp red Sichuan peppercorns

2 tbsps Mirin (Chi­nese cook­ing wine)

3 tbsps dark soy sauce

1 star anise

1 1-inch piece cin­na­mon stick or a pinch of ground cinnamon

1 tsp salt

1 cup/250 ml water

“Red-cooked” sim­ply means that the main ingre­di­ent of the cook­ing liq­uid will be soy sauce.  So be ready with plenty, and extra to serve with the steamed rice you will want along­side. Bring a pot of water to boil. Immerse entire slab of pork belly with gin­ger. Remove any scum that sur­faces. After five min­utes, dis­card water and rinse meat and gin­ger with cold water. Slice pork belly into 1-inch cubes.

Heat cook­ing oil and sugar in a clay pot over low flame and let the sugar begin to melt. Toss in the pork pieces and gin­ger with scal­lion, chili pep­pers, Sichuan pep­per­corns and brown over high flame. Add Mirin and dark soy sauce while con­tin­u­ing to stir fry. Add salt, star anise, cin­na­mon and water. Bring to a gen­tle boil then sim­mer over low­est flame, cov­ered for at least 2 hours. Stir occasionally.

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Now I must go pack.  Easter treats for the egg hunt we will host next week­end, presents for a cer­tain birth­day boy, presents for moth­ers who will be trav­el­ling far to be with us, many copies of the school news­pa­per with Avery’s first byline in it.  Happy Easter to you all!

Who knew a sim­ple spring­time “walk” along the bike path by the Thames could result in such peril as we found today!  I’ll begin at the beginning.

The day was blowy, full of huge snowflakes that melted as they fell, but made a lovely pic­ture.  “Let’s go for a walk,” we decided.  These daily walks are the only thing stand­ing between us and end­lessly bal­loon­ing waist­lines, in this no-tennis weather.  So we set out.

Our house is just a road’s length away from the lovely river, one of the perks of our neigh­bor­hood.  The river is home to end­less row­ing races, sail­boat dis­plays, mal­lards, swans, pigeons and even seag­ulls, whirling dra­mat­i­cally over­head.  It’s just lovely.

“Whoa!  Look how high the river is,” John said, as we noted a pud­dle on the edge of the path.  “I’ve never seen it that high before.”

We turned to the right, ready for our mile-long trek.  And here is what we found.

“It’s actu­ally what I would call ‘flood­ing,’” I said in amaze­ment.  We have walked that path nearly every day for two years and this was a first.

As we rounded the first bend, slosh­ing through the pud­dles in our trusty Welling­ton boots, thread­ing our way through the occa­sional dry spot, we looked up to find THIS sight.

Good heav­ens, Gwen­dolyn!  (“Impor­tance of Being Earnest” quote there.)  “Should we turn back?” I asked, a bit alarmed since we were at the begin­ning of the walk, really.

“No, it’s fine!  As long as the water doesn’t go above our Wellies, it’ll be an adven­ture!” John said.  Famous last words.

Read­ers, there were TIDAL EDDIES as we walked along.  Not to men­tion the bit­ing wind and resid­ual snowflakes.  We passed a group of boys at the nearby school, watched over by a stern school­mas­ter.  He called to us over the cast-iron fence that ran around the school, “Don’t get swept away, seri­ously!  Stay close to the fence.”  I began to worry, and with good rea­son as the freez­ing water quickly closed, briefly, over the tops of my boots.  EEEK!

There were some scary moments, truth be told.  Well, John claims he wasn’t scared, but I was.  Feel­ing the tide pulling at my feet, occa­sion­ally stum­bling over a root in the path, far below the sur­face of the water, feel­ing the wind buf­fet my face, not know­ing how much deeper it could get before the mile was over…  “I can hear the head­lines now,” I moaned.  “Expa­tri­ate school­girl orphaned by idiot par­ents in local flash floods”…

“I can see the bridge!” John yelled.  “Not too far to go, now.”  We stopped for a breather on a handy bench, perched on a stone slab above the fray.

Finally, we came to the bridge, under which a patrol boat was JUST able to pass, hav­ing low­ered their antenna to do so.  I’ve never seen such a thing as that river, this afternoon.

Home, into dry clothes and thick socks, to con­coct the per­fect com­fort din­ner.  I’ve made this once before, so I can report that it is just about the most deli­cious, sim­ple, inex­pen­sive thing you might ever get out of a pack­age of chicken thighs.

Slow-braised Chicken Thighs in White Wine, Bay Leaf and Mushrooms

(serves 4)

8 chicken thighs, bone-in, skin on

4 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 medium white onion, sliced

1/4 cup each: white wine, olive oil, chicken stock

juice of 1/2 lemon

plenty of fresh black pepper

4 bay leaves

dozen chest­nut mush­rooms, sliced

1 tbsp cream

Place the chicken thighs skin up in a nice heavy bak­ing dish.  Scat­ter over the gar­lic and onion.  Mix the wine, oil, stock and lemon juice in a small bowl, then pour over the chicken.  Sprin­kle the black pep­per on top and tuck the bay leaves in with the onions and gar­lic.  Sprin­kle on the mush­rooms.  Cover the whole thing tightly with foil.

Braise in a medium oven, about 325F/160C, for two hours.  Remove the foil and up the heat to about 450F/225C.  Roast in this oven for 30 min­utes, or until the skin of the thighs is golden and crisp.  Pour the juices and veg­eta­bles from the dish into a fry­ing pan (dis­card the bay leaves) and add a table­spoon or so of cream, whisk­ing to  mix.  This will be the best gravy you have ever, ever tasted.

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

This din­ner, served with potato puree and cheesy spinach, was con­sumed for the first few moments in total silence.  Then we all started to talk at once.  “They’re so ten­der!  And this gravy!”  Even Avery who is no fan of meat con­tain­ing bones, was speech­less with delight.  When we had fin­ished eat­ing she picked up her plate and said spon­ta­neously, “Thank you for that.”  I always know she is appre­cia­tive of her din­ners, but this was very wel­come to my ears.  And it cost almost noth­ing, per­haps $6 in total.  My advice: make twice as much, because they would have been ter­rific, left­over, for lunch the next day.

This tri­umph capped a week that had been full of activ­ity.  I had invited the won­der­fully warm, cosy Rec­tor of my bell­ring­ing church to lunch, so I could ask him lots of ques­tions of a spir­i­tual nature.  He gra­ciously accepted, say­ing, “I only wish MORE of my work were dis­cus­sions of any­thing spir­i­tual, rather than admin, paper­work and deal­ing with peo­ple who are SURE they could think of a bet­ter to do absolutely every­thing!”  We sat down to chicken meat­balls in a sour cream sauce loaded with paprika and a touch of brandy.  There was a lovely fen­nel salad with an anchovy dress­ing (one of my lat­est obses­sions) to go along­side.  I wanted to feed him up so he could with­stand my queries.

We had a lovely after­noon.  For once, the sun shone brightly, warmly through our glass ceil­ing.  We talked about the way he came to be involved with reli­gion — although he isn’t too keen on the idea of “reli­gion,” shar­ing the atti­tude of so many of my spir­i­tual friends who pre­fer notions of “belief” and a “rela­tion­ship with God” to the notion of an organ­i­sa­tion.  But of course, he IS the organ­i­sa­tion, so he must fol­low the ter­mi­nol­ogy and struc­tures.  “It is a shame that our human minds can­not encom­pass a being that isn’t really a being, and cer­tainly isn’t a ‘he’ or ‘she,’” he mused.  “God is much more than that, but we can’t grasp the true nature of God so we call him Our Father, and refer to Jesus as his son.  But it’s much big­ger than that.”

We talked about what hap­pens after death.  I have been deeply involved lately with a friend who has suf­fered a ter­ri­ble bereave­ment, try­ing to find bet­ter ways of lis­ten­ing, learn­ing not to talk to her or at her, but just to lis­ten, and she has very strong beliefs about where her beloved is now.  She really feels her pres­ence in many com­fort­ing ways.  “What do YOU believe hap­pens after we die?” I asked.  He sighed and looked out at the gar­den, which is com­ing back to life after win­ter.  “My answer to your ques­tion is, I have no idea.  No idea what­so­ever.  But in the face of some­thing that can’t be proved or dis­proved, I choose belief.  I choose to believe that some­thing lingers, because it com­forts me.”

“What if that’s just wish­ful think­ing?” I asked.  “What’s the dif­fer­ence between wish­ful think­ing and belief?”

“Not much,” he answered.  “But in the face of never, ever being able to know for sure, to my mind there is noth­ing wrong at all with wish­ful thinking.”

How won­der­ful.  I was thrilled by his unabashed agnos­ti­cism.  The whole expe­ri­ence of talk­ing with him was like going back to the very best kind of school with a teacher you can ask absolutely any­thing.  AND he liked my chicken meatballs.

Partly my inter­est in speak­ing with him was prompted by the amaz­ing amount of time I have been spend­ing in churches recently, up and down the Home Coun­ties, ring­ing beloved bells.

I find it absolutely impos­si­ble to be sur­rounded by so much sheer age, longevity of insti­tu­tions, mau­solea con­tain­ing mor­tal remains going back hun­dreds of years, and be immune to the sug­ges­tion of belief.

After he had gone, with a hug and a kiss and a hand­shake for John (who came in on the tail end of our talk), we went for a long walk and talked about what I had learned.

“Agnos­tic” cov­ers my feel­ings pretty well, set along­side the life-affirming beliefs of many of my friends, and the absolute athe­ism of my hus­band and daugh­ter.  Talk­ing with the Rec­tor hadn’t so much changed those feel­ings I have, as given them a struc­ture.  I like very much the idea that we can choose what to believe.  It’s not as if we’re look­ing at a blue sky and “choos­ing to believe” it’s orange.  We’re star­ing into a total abyss and try­ing to find some sense in it.

The most I could say for myself, as I lay try­ing to get to sleep that night, was that at least I live a life — most of the time! — that a per­son of what­ever faith would try to.  I take care of my fam­ily and friends as best I can, and reach out to strangers when I get a chance.  That’s about the most I can say.  One of my favorite Scot­tish writ­ers said of a char­ac­ter in her novel, “She may not have believed in God, but I’m pretty sure God believed in her.”

As for bell­ring­ing, I’ve really turned a cor­ner, I say cau­tiously!  I’ve learned to do two things — to “tre­ble,” which means lead the band in their merry ways, and to “cover,” which means to fall in at the very end and bring the merry ways to a close.  This makes me much more use­ful than I was when all I could do was to mem­o­rize a pat­tern.  Every­one says that ring­ing involves three things: lis­ten­ing to the sound of your bell, look­ing around the cham­ber to see which rope you should fol­low, and count­ing the places you are meant to be in.  Sud­denly, all three of these things are hap­pen­ing at the same time and I’m get­ting bet­ter each week.  How I LOVE it.

And of course I can’t tell you any­thing about my social work, except that say that it is an absolute dream hav­ing very small chil­dren sit­ting heav­ily in my lap, singing “The Wheels On the Bus,” “Twin­kle, Twin­kle,” and  host of Eng­lish songs that I am hav­ing to learn very quickly!  The sound of many small chil­dren singing in Eng­lish accents is immensely enter­tain­ing.  What a respon­si­bil­ity it is, the care of other people’s chil­dren who are in need of a lit­tle com­fort and fun.  It makes me ter­ri­bly happy that they now auto­mat­i­cally laugh uproar­i­ously when I come into the house.  How I wish, wish my bril­liant child-psychologist dad were here to tell of my adven­tures.  Given his utter lack of sen­ti­men­tal­ity, he could eas­ily say, “Yeah, well, give it time and the thrill will be gone,” but in my heart of hearts I think he would be proud of me.

Feed­ing the fam­ily beck­ons, so I must love you and leave you.  My heav­enly chicken dish awaits.  Enjoy your own sup­per.  And mind the flooding!

It must be a con­se­quence of get­ting older (old?) that the end­less parade of grey, wet, blowy days in Feb­ru­ary have a depres­sive effect.  Our daily walks along the tow path by the river are treks along sticky vis­tas of mud, our faces slapped by cold driz­zle. There are signs of hope, however.

It’s no longer dark when Avery comes home from school, the funny lit­tle tree in our front dri­ve­way has begun, opti­misti­cally, to put out lit­tle pur­ple shoots that will even­tu­ally blos­som into beau­ti­ful flow­ers. And it’s my birth­day month!  I could feel, way back in Jan­u­ary, that a party would be a most wel­come diver­sion from the daili­ness of life.  And so it was.  My absolute favorite way to spend a day, gath­er­ing up our best nap­kins and nap­kin rings, clean­ing the old Russ­ian sil­ver, hunt­ing for ingre­di­ents for all my favorite foods.  The sun even came out to cel­e­brate! And how I cooked!  Creamy cele­riac soup, served in beau­ti­ful crys­tal shot glasses and topped with a crisp shard of bacon.  These were such fun to hold, warm and com­fort­ing, in one hand, with a glass of bub­bly in the other! Ten of my favorite ladies gath­ered on the cold night, bear­ing flow­ers, home­made elder­flower cor­dial, pussy wil­lows, cham­pagne and an enor­mous stack of books, and not a sin­gle dupli­cate!  So, so thought­ful.  It was heav­enly to intro­duce all my guests to each other — and I could have invited three times as many women, so lucky am I have such staunch and enter­tain­ing friends.  But I didn’t have 30 plates!  We tucked into a ter­rine of smoked salmon and poached salmon mousse, fra­grant with tar­ragon, dill, chives and cilantro. Then it was onto my hands-down favorite dish of all time, chicken meat­balls in a rich sour cream-brandy-paprika sauce.  Served with bas­mati rice tossed through with sauteed broc­col­ini and aspara­gus, though I say it myself, it was won­der­ful. The loveli­est thing was watch­ing the mix of ladies, right down the table, find­ing points of com­mon inter­est, whether Amer­i­can or British, whether the mother of a new­born or the proud grand­mother of twins, whether friends I have met online or friends with whom I have dec­o­rated for the school Christ­mas Fair, every­one chat­tered hap­pily.  And the nicest, most sat­is­fy­ing thing was that it wasn’t just chat.  We dis­cussed reli­gion, pol­i­tics, lit­er­a­ture, char­ity work, travel, books.  A heav­enly evening.

And what could pos­si­bly say Valentine’s Day like home­made sausages?  Yes, I con­tinue in my obses­sion with mincing/grinding my own meat, as the Great Horse­meat Scan­dal con­tin­ues here in Europe.  Horse in IKEA sausages!  I’m sure there’s a fab­u­lous Swedish word for that phe­nom­e­non.  So it was but the work of a moment to appear at the butcher’s to buy lovely pork steaks, veni­son and chicken breasts and haul out the min­cer.  Add some cheese, herbs and spices and bob’s your uncle. The first time around, we made lovely sausage pat­ties.  So fresh, so pure, so savoury!  But of course I had to go one step fur­ther and approach the butcher the next time for real sausage cas­ings.  Lamb’s intestines, if you please!  Slip­pery, latex-like tubes of unbe­liev­able strength.  “Brings back mem­o­ries, eh?” the butcher leered.  Our friend Sam turned up for the first batch, at an all-sausage din­ner.  We weren’t thrilled with the veni­son, rather dry.  But the chicken with feta and Fox Point and pork with caramelised fen­nel and red onion, plus my friend Kim’s fen­nel sea­son­ing, were divine. It was such a suc­cess that a few days later, we had a sausage-making party!

But some­times you have to go the extra mile and make some­thing com­pletely NEW.  Some­thing exotic, for­eign, thrilling.  I’ve had two of those exper­i­ments lately and they were both resound­ing successes.

Do you like Thai fla­vors?  I LOVE them, so refresh­ing, so dif­fer­ent from Amer­i­can or Eng­lish or Ital­ian fla­vors.  Just a few well-chosen ingre­di­ents and you have super aro­mas float­ing around the house.  I was so in the mood for Tom Yum Soup last week, and brought in shrimp and coconut milk, as well as hot chillis and corian­der.  It was only when the local food shop had closed and dark­ness had fallen that I began to cook and I real­ized to my cha­grin that in a kitchen clean-out, I had thrown away my jar of Tom Yum paste.  Oh no, it’s only the MAIN INGREDIENT.

Never mind, if some­one could make it and put it in a jar, surely I could make it!  And I could.  So much fresher, more intense and bet­ter than any­thing in a jar, I promise you.  And I had every­thing I needed in my pantry and fridge.

Home­made Tom Yum Paste

(makes enough for soup to serve 4)

1 stalk lemon­grass, lightly crushed, or zest of 1 lemon

1-inch knob of gin­ger, peeled

2 Kaf­fir lime leaves — 2/3 leaves sliced thinly, or zest of 1 lime

1 tbsp Thai roasted chilli paste or chilli gar­lic sauce

Thai bird’s eye chill­ies, to taste

2 tbsps Thai fish sauce — 2 tbsp

juice of 1 lime

1 banana shal­lot, peeled and cut into chunks

pinch sugar

hand­ful coriander/cilantro

Sim­ply place every­thing in your food proces­sor and process till as smooth as you can get it.  Dump it in a saucepan with a can of half-fat coconut milk and 2 cups/500 grams boil­ing water.

Now for the soup:

1 pound raw peeled shrimp

8 chest­nut mush­rooms, thinly sliced

1 bunch scallions/spring onions, thinly sliced both white and green part

chopped red hot chillis to taste

hand­ful coriander/cilantro leaves, no stems

Bring the paste and milk mix­ture to a sim­mer and put in the shrimp and mush­rooms.  Sim­mer for just a cou­ple of min­utes until the shrimp are JUST cooked. Add every­thing else and serve hot.  Divine!

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

So exotic!  And you made it all yourself.

Then, there is the new veg­etable in our lives.  We went out to the delec­table local Riva, the most per­fect Ital­ian restau­rant ever, for John’s birth­day the last week of the month.  And there we were given puntarelle, a chicory-like veg­etable that con­tains, hid­den in its core depths and cov­ered in many pointy leaves, lit­tle asparagus-like spears.  These were served in a sim­ply heav­enly anchovy-laced oily dress­ing.

I had to find puntarelle of my own.  They were slightly crisp, but slightly wilty, and so pretty.  Plus who can resist a veg­etable you’ve never even HEARD of before?  I cer­tainly couldn’t.  So I searched and searched and finally found this incred­i­ble food source, Natoora, who offered me many other deli­cious things like veal escalopes and bur­rata and salame, and turned up on my doorstep with puntarelle.  Here they are, whole.

Then, you strip away the EXTREMELY bit­ter outer leaves to reveal the lit­tle spears.

Then you cut off the spears one by one and slice them into strips.  This step allows more sur­faces to be revealed and exposed to the cold water bath to fol­low, which removes all bit­ter­ness.  Allow at least an hour.

Then you make a dress­ing of olive oil, lemon juice, gar­lic, black pep­per and as much or as lit­tle anchovy as you want.  For us, six anchovies were just right for one head of puntarelle.

How yummy, how for­eign, how fun!  I had ordered two heads and now I wish I had ordered loads more.  They would also be good with a blue cheese dress­ing, I think.  A Roman del­i­cacy!  I am shortly to be in pos­ses­sion of SEEDS, which I shall take home to my dear Con­necti­cut friend to plant in her gar­den.  Fin­gers crossed.  I can report in the mean­time that this anchovy dress­ing is addic­tive.  I driz­zled it over a fen­nel salad yes­ter­day and it was a delight.  Don’t for­get to rinse the anchovies if they’re pre­served in salt.

And there you have it, really.  These adven­tures plus a cou­ple of fab­u­lous polit­i­cal plays — “The Audi­ence,” all about the 60 years of the Queen’s weekly meet­ings with the cur­rent Prime  Min­is­ter — and “This House,” chron­i­cling the Par­lia­men­tary lead-up to the Thatcher years.  We have seen so much incred­i­ble the­atre this year that I feel quite sur­feited, quite spoiled.  But why not take advan­tage of liv­ing in the great­est the­atre cap­i­tal of the world, AND hav­ing a daugh­ter doing a drama GCSE exam?  We can write it all off to Avery’s education.

Well, the early March sun has set.  I for once am not cook­ing din­ner and await the deliv­ery of crispy, no-work-for-me wood oven pizza.  Enjoy these length­en­ing days…

It’s been a peace­ful few weeks here in post-holiday Lon­don. Lots and lots of muddy, squelchy walks along the nearby bike trail, caus­ing me to break out one of John’s birth­day presents early: a boot­jack!  Such fun to walk along the river, not­ing the tidal changes, enjoy­ing the peace.

Well, actu­ally it hasn’t been peace­ful here if you ask Avery, who braved her way through the many, many “mock” exams in prepa­ra­tion for the real thing in April and May.  It was a gru­elling 8 or 9 days with con­stant exams through­out every day.  A 15-minute break between French and Russ­ian, out­ra­geous!  She worked incred­i­bly hard, and to great results.

We par­ents agreed, when­ever two or more of us gath­ered, that we’d rather be tak­ing the exams our­selves than watch­ing help­lessly!  All I could do was feed her up, with all her favorite foods.  Among them was the always-delicious stuffed chicken breast…

Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Moz­zarella, Pesto and Spinach

(serves four)

four chicken breast fillets

four hand­fuls spinach

4 tbsps pesto

1 ball buf­falo mozzarella

16 strips streaky (Amer­i­can) bacon

16 tooth­picks

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp butter

This is merely an assem­bly job.  In order to main­tain per­fect kitchen hygiene, the most impor­tant thing to do is to make sure you have removed your por­tion of spinach from the bag before you begin, and that you’ve counted out your bacon strips.  The last thing you want to do is con­t­a­m­i­nate the rest of the spinach and bacon with raw chicken juice.  As well, you should have your 4 tbsps of pesto in a small dish of their own, rather than dip­ping a chick­eny spoon into the gen­eral pesto pot, and have counted out your tooth­picks and set them aside.  Make sense?

Now, gather your ingre­di­ents in easy reach and get a sharp knife.  Lay each chicken breast on a cut­ting board and care­fully cut a slice hor­i­zon­tally through the breast, not going all the way through to the back.  Essen­tially you are mak­ing a pocket, an enve­lope, in the chicken breast.

Now spread a spoon­ful of pesto in the pocket, and tuck the spinach leaves and a quar­ter of the moz­zarella ball into each pocket.  As best as pos­si­ble, close up the pocket and wrap each breast in four strips of bacon, secur­ing the bacon through the chicken with the toothpicks.

Heat the oil and but­ter in a large, heavy skil­let and place the chicken breasts in it.  Cook, turn­ing fre­quently, for about 20–25 min­utes, pok­ing at the breasts exper­i­men­tally to feel them stiffen and become thor­oughly cooked inside.  Finally you may feel you want to cut on breast in half to ascer­tain that they are fully cooked.

Serve hot.

These lit­tle guys are incred­i­bly savoury in so many ways: the gar­licky good­ness of the pesto, the salti­ness of the bacon, the iron rich­ness of the spinach, the creamy melted cheese, all sur­rounded by ten­der, juicy chicken.  They’re worth the effort!

I’ve had bell­ring­ing tri­umphs this dank and dreary month.  Once I was able to go back to the Tower after my month-long chesty cold, I was given the chance to “con­duct call changes” for the first time!  Let me explain.  When we ring for ser­vices, we begin by ring­ing what are called “rounds,” which means the per­son ring­ing the small­est bell, which makes the high­est sound, rings first.  She’s called the “tre­ble” bell.  Then in “rounds,” we sim­ply go “round” the cir­cle.  The next larger bell rings next, in sec­onds place, the next larger rings next, in thirds place, and so on until we get to the last bell, the 8, called the “tenor” and mak­ing the low­est sound.  The musi­cians among you will rec­og­nize this as an “octave.”  Eight bells, ring­ing high­est to low­est, over and over and over.

Well, this would be enough for me!  But some 500 years ago, clev­erer bell­ringers than I got bored.  Very quickly.  So they began an activ­ity called “call changes,” which means that a con­duc­tor calls out an instruc­tion like “six to seven,” in a very loud and author­i­ta­tive voice.  This is the sig­nal for the 7 bell in the cir­cle to ring after the 5, instead of after the 6.  The octave is changed by two bells.  Then the con­duc­tor con­tin­ues and changes other bells.  The rule is that bells can move only one place at a time.  But you can imag­ine that very quickly, bells are all over the place and able to change all sorts of ways, and the tune changes every time.

So two weeks ago I was mer­rily ring­ing rounds on a Sun­day morn­ing, when my teacher sud­denly shouted, “Kris­ten, call some changes.”  WHAT?  Me, who had never held a rope 18 months ago?  But I did!  I called three sets of changes, heart pound­ing, and then I called them “back,” putting them back into “rounds.”  Oh, the power!

Very excit­ing.  I went from that achieve­ment, as dotty as it sounds, to a full day’s out­ing last Sat­ur­day, ring­ing at 6 dif­fer­ent tow­ers in 9 hours!  Here is an account of our day, if you’re inter­ested, on the bell­ring­ing blog that I keep for our church.  A cold and sunny day in the Eng­lish coun­try­side.  So lovely.

Do you find your­self rather depressed in Jan­u­ary?  I do, and every Jan­u­ary I worry that I’m descend­ing into some Scan­di­na­vian per­ma­nent state of despair.  Then every Jan­u­ary, some­where around the 20th, John reminds me that this is an annual and short-lived feel­ing.  But in the mean­time, the cliche pre­vails that the best path to hap­pi­ness is by think­ing of some­one else rather than myself.  Here my vol­un­teer social-work gig comes in very handy.

Of course I can­not tell you any details about my new fam­ily, but I can tell you that I had com­pletely for­got­ten how sat­is­fy­ing it is to rock a sob­bing lit­tle tod­dler on your lap and com­fort her tears.  I’d for­got­ten how intensely repet­i­tive lit­tle chil­dren are, how pre­tend­ing to bite a hand emerg­ing from a coat gets a laugh every SIN­GLE time, how a pre­tend hic­cup whilst drink­ing imag­i­nary milk gets a laugh every SIN­GLE time.  This fam­ily speaks a for­eign lan­guage, luck­ily one I know a bit of, so we all speak in a com­bi­na­tion of our two tongues, to much mer­ri­ment.  A lovely two-hour inter­lude in every week.

And it SNOWED!  That cheered me up for at least two days, while it lasted.  The bike path!

And even our home gar­den was transformed!

All around us, the world was trans­formed by the white blan­ket, cov­er­ing rub­bish, flaws, incon­sis­ten­cies in the land­scape and mak­ing every­thing seem new and immemorial.

How happy it made every­one!  School closed two hours early on the last day of exams, hur­rah!  I cel­e­brated, nat­u­rally, by mak­ing one of my absolute favorite dishes, duck ril­lettes.  What?  You haven’t ever eaten ril­lettes?  They’re quite sim­ply a dish of shred­ded meat — duck, rab­bit, veni­son — after the meat has been cooked very slowly in oil and wine.  You need to do this.

Duck Ril­lettes

(serves as many as you like, as an appe­tizer, with what­ever duck you leave behind avail­able for another meal)

8 duck legs

sea salt

black pep­per

8 bay leaves

2 cups olive oil

2 cups white wine

You must start this dish a day before you want to eat it.  In a large oven­proof dish, place four of the duck legs skin side down, sprin­kle with salt and pep­per and lay a bay lef on top.  Now place the other four duck legs onto the ones already in the dish, this time skin side up.  Sprin­kle on more salt and pep­per and add a bay leaf to each leg.  Cover in plas­tic wrap and refrig­er­ate overnight.

In the early morn­ing, shake the salt and pep­per off the duck legs and replace them in the dish in one crowded layer.  Place the bay leaves back in top and pour on the oil and wine.  Place in a very low oven, 120C/200F and cook for 12 hours.

For the ril­lettes, sim­ply shred the meat of as many of the legs as you like, using it all if you like, or leav­ing some of the legs to be eaten as is.  The meat will fall off the bone.  Pour over a bit of the oil-wine mix­ture, salt to taste and add fresh black pep­per.  Serve with crusty French bread and a dol­lop of creme fraiche, if you like.

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

Very pop­u­lar!  John nor­mally turns up his nose at ril­lettes, even the gor­geous ver­sion I brought home from Paris last spring, but he LOVED my home­made ril­lettes.  Tri­umph!

Of course, Jan­u­ary brings the termly Lost Prop­erty lun­cheon and its atten­dant joys and anx­i­eties.  The joys involve see­ing all the won­der­ful vol­un­teers and chat­ting about lacrosse boots, exams, our won­der­ful and remark­able chil­dren, the snow.  The anx­i­eties involve num­bers of chairs and forks, whether or not the stuffed bone­less chicken I roasted will feed enough peo­ple (answer: no!  I had counted on left­overs for sup­per but there weren’t any!), whether the ladies meant to bring dessert and cheese will remem­ber.  High on our list of top­ics to dis­cuss was the recent Inau­gu­ra­tion, for which we’d been invited to a spec­tac­u­lar party.

I am always shamed by the depth of knowl­edge and analy­sis of our British friends, on the sub­ject of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics.  If I didn’t live here in Lon­don, could I name any of the British cab­i­net sec­re­taries?  No.  And yet the British are able to dis­cuss the Elec­toral Col­lege and the rel­a­tive mer­its of  pro­posed new Sec­re­taries of State.  It’s a real priv­i­lege to hear their views.  “What you have to remem­ber, Kris­ten,” one friend at the party said, “is that we HAVE to pay atten­tion to your coun­try because you get us in so many scrapes!”  Their admi­ra­tion for Amer­ica is always heartwarming.

My fun with Hand­Picked Nation con­tin­ues!  My lat­est obses­sion:  Grind­ing, or “minc­ing” my own meat.  Why, you ask?  Because the nation’s largest super­mar­ket chain was dis­cov­ered last week to have undis­closed HORSE meat included in its frozen “beef” burg­ers!  Now, I have no objec­tion in prin­ci­ple to eat­ing horse meat, if it’s humanely sup­plied and it’s what I thought I bought!  But hid­ing in my beef, no.  The only way to be sure is to grind your own.  So, so much better.

How nice to know exactly what you are feed­ing your fam­ily.  I admit it’s more expen­sive to grind your own, but it’s a tiny thing to eat less meat, and make sure all of it is perfect.

Well, the sky is blue right now.  A rare enough occur­rence to get us into our Wellies and off to the bike path.  And when I see you next, this grey, tir­ing, let­down­ish (but deli­cious) month of Jan­u­ary will be history.

We all woke up this morn­ing with the dis­tinct sen­sa­tion that real life had begun again, after the myr­iad joys of the hol­i­day.  Jan­u­ary 2.  It sounds dis­tress­ingly ordinary!

Actu­ally, that’s not true.  I for one am ready for a bit of ordi­nary.  We’ve been rushed off our feet with all the plans each of us made for our hol­i­day sea­son, some­times pil­ing on top of each other, mak­ing it feel as if the days were push­ing each other rudely off the cal­en­dar in a rush of activity.

Part of the fun of Christ­mas, for me, is being invited to see other people’s dec­o­ra­tions!  At least, the invi­ta­tion is osten­si­bly to din­ner, or for cof­fee or cham­pagne, but I waste no time in sidling up to people’s trees to inves­ti­gate their orna­ments, or to man­tels above flick­er­ing fires to see the ever-fascinating dis­plays of Christ­mas cards, their cousins’s cousins’ children’s pho­tos.  I love the vari­ety of everyone’s table set­tings, Christ­mas crack­ers, place settings!

The joys of being cooked for, sit­ting at a beau­ti­fully dec­o­rated table sur­rounded by laugh­ing friends.  Oh, the stand­ing ribs of beef, the creamy pota­toes Dauphi­noise with chives, the roasted cheesy cau­li­flower at my friend Elspeth’s fes­tive house, Christ­mas trees glit­ter­ing, hung with dozens of red ribbons.

I spent one quiet after­noon all alone when John took Avery off to see “Yes, Prime Min­is­ter,” a the­atre ver­sion of the clas­sic British telly series, updated to reflect cur­rent pol­i­tics (appar­ently to David Cameron’s open annoy­ance as Prime Min­is­ter!).  I sat qui­etly watch­ing an old movie, cov­ered with a fuzzy throw and a tor­toise­shell cat, with the tree flick­er­ing to the side.  How I will hate to dis­man­tle it!

We woke up on the morn­ing of the 30th, our 23rd wed­ding anniver­sary, full of antic­i­pa­tion of our annual cel­e­bra­tory lunch at Nobu, the sushi-fest of our entire year.  But as we asked Avery to take our pho­to­graph, I noticed she was dead-white.  Absolutely the color of paper.  “I don’t feel very good,” she whis­pered, and off she went, back to bed with an upset stom­ach and chills.  “Man pro­poses, and God dis­poses,” ran through my mind from the old Lord Peter Wim­sey story, and it some­times does feel that some­one up there wants to remind us that we’re not in charge.

Ah, well, it was but the work of a moment for John to ring up and change our reser­va­tion to the fol­low­ing day, as I was cer­tainly not going to enjoy an extrav­a­gant lunch out with the poor patient left at home to suf­fer.  And it was just as well, because later that day John announced he felt awful, too, and there ensued sev­eral hours of worry and deliv­er­ies of Sprite and crack­ers.  But in the way of these things, by evening every­one was ready for one more help­ing of med­i­c­i­nal chicken soup and all was nor­mal once again.

Nobu the next day!  A rain-spattered, chilly, unpleas­ant New Year’s Eve Day, but noth­ing could spoil our fun.

How we wished for the after­noon to last for­ever!  It is sim­ply the best restau­rant on earth, in our opin­ion.  There is noth­ing quite so lux­u­ri­ous, for me, as being fed dishes I could never, never make at home.  Yel­low­tail tuna with jalapenos and corian­der in a tart, cit­rusy dress­ing, toro with caviar swim­ming in a spicy sauce, sus­pended over crushed ice.  A won­der­ful con­coc­tion called “soft shell crab haru­maki,” which means spring roll, but WHAT a spring roll!  Deep-fried soft shell crab, tiny flecks of chive, tiny diced red pep­pers, all wrapped in the most del­i­cate of super-crunchy pas­try, on a pool of wasabi may­on­naise and thick sweet soy.  I could never dream of mak­ing such a thing!  Per­haps the best exam­ple of this phe­nom­e­non was the clas­sic rock shrimp tem­pura in creamy, spicy sauce.

Now you might remem­ber my for­ays recently into mak­ing this dish at home (scroll down through the post for the recipe!).  It was jolly suc­cess­ful, very tasty.  But honey, it was NOT NOBU.  There is an inef­fa­ble dif­fer­ence between my ama­teur­ish grasp of tem­pura, my blun­der­ings with the pro­por­tions of sauce to shrimp, just my inept­ness in gen­eral that I would never have noticed if I hadn’t eaten the real thing.  The key, I think, is in the razor-sharp line between the shrimp being under­cooked and being JUST cooked.  Heaven.

We indulged in our usual anniver­sary games of “what was the best play you saw this year?” and “what are you proud­est of this year?” and “what would you like to have accom­plished by the next time we sit down to this dish?”  Twenty-three years of those dis­cus­sions!  Amazing.

Home to hoover up yet another sev­eral thou­sand nee­dles from under the tree.  Hermione the tabby insists on play­ing under­neath the tree, bat­ting at the orna­ments, wav­ing her tail to and fro under the branches.  And at this advanced date, all you have to do is LOOK at the tree and it drops nee­dles.  We lit all the can­dles and brought out the cham­pagne glasses and the door­bell rang: John and Suzanne come bravely through the driz­zle, all the way from next door, to share our New Year’s Eve.  What friends they are.

It was a typ­i­cal me-party, I real­ized.  Lots of can­dles, pretty nap­kins, won­der­ful friends, and a cook­ing dis­as­ter.  Do NOT try to make parme­san short­bread with gluten-free flour!  John and Avery tasted them before the party began.  I offered a dis­claimer.  “First of all, I warn you, you can’t pick them up.  They dis­in­te­grate in a most unex­pected way.”  “Into pow­der!” John agreed.  “They stick to the roof of your mouth very oddly,” Avery said.  “Oh, for­get it,” I gave in, and rum­maged through the fridge for an alter­na­tive.  Luck­ily, also typical-me, there was plenty to choose from.  We sat down to creamy roasted salmon mousse, Boursin cheese with black pep­per, Moroc­can oil-cured olives, crisp crack­ers.  No problem.

John and Suzanne had cel­e­brated their anniver­sary the day before ours and had kindly brought over their wed­ding album, which I went through avidly.  So sweet to see their chil­dren, now par­ents them­selves, as chil­dren!  John recited awful jokes from the family’s Christ­mas crack­ers.  “What sort of pizza does King Wences­las like?  Deep and crisp and even.”  “What has a neck but can­not swal­low?  A bot­tle.”  There are end­less lists of these, just so you know!  Some of them require a degree of flu­ency in being Eng­lish, to be funny.  “What do you get when you cross a cat with a chemist?  Puss in Boots.”

Off they went to their din­ner party, off Avery went to her New Year’s sleep­over.  We set­tled down for an extremely glam­orous sup­per of left­over chilli, but so what?   Lunch had been Nobu!

New Year’s Day found us join­ing our friend Emily and a clutch of teenaged girls, in a crowded, chaotic pub in the vil­lage, sur­rounded by fam­i­lies with lots of adorable Eng­lish apple-cheeked chil­dren, har­ried staff and… Hay­ley Mills!  She hasn’t changed much since “The Par­ent Trap.”  Cool celebrity sight­ing, although arguably not quite as cool as Robert Pat­tin­son who had been in the night before.  Fair enough.  Burg­ers, fish and chips and a lot of incom­pre­hen­si­ble quotations-in-tandem by the girls of tele­vi­sion dia­logue, movie dia­logue, Shake­speare, and Carol Chan­ning movie quotes as inter­preted by stand-up comics.

Totally unlike Nobu, the food was only so-so and I in fact could pos­si­bly have done it bet­ter!  But John and I agreed later that as long as you know what you want from an expe­ri­ence, it doesn’t always have to be per­fect.  That day, in the thin mid­win­ter after­noon sun­light, we wanted to be out of the house, sur­rounded by our girls, watch­ing them laugh and be happy, on New Year’s Day.

And finally, it was our last adven­ture of the hol­i­days: “Cabaret”!  It was fun to come from hav­ing read “Good­bye to Berlin” (a truly dis­mal book with wildly unlik­able char­ac­ters, I thought, although Avery was more enthu­si­as­tic) and seen “I Am A Cam­era” (much more enjoy­able than the book largely due to amaz­ing per­for­mances and per­fect cast­ing) to this dizzy­ing delight!  First of all, the Savoy The­atre is a must for any­one who loves Lon­don because it’s adja­cent to the Savoy Hotel, one of the coolest, most iconic spots in this won­der­ful city.

Excit­ingly for the under­study, the actor nor­mally play­ing the cen­tral char­ac­ter, the nar­ra­tor, was ill.  One can only imag­ine the understudy’s sup­ply of air­borne flu germs!  Oh, the drama of a real West End musical.

And that was that.  One last cel­e­bra­tion.  Home to set­tle in for the com­ing week which will mean for me, tak­ing down the tree, for John, des­per­ately try­ing to save our invest­ments from the “fis­cal cliff” (how I can’t wait never to hear that phrase again!), and for poor Avery, the dreaded “revi­sion” for the upcom­ing GCSE mock exams.  Eigh­teen “mocks” now and 27 “real exams” in June!  So much work.  I plan to cook what­ever she wants for din­ner, for the dura­tion.  It’s about all I can do to help.

Per­haps we’ll find time for a quiet plea­sure along the lines of this Christ­mas present from me to her: a puz­zle of the tops of the cup­cakes she had for her birthday!

How many lay­ers of crazi­ness is this?  Book cov­ers in icing, turned into a photo, then turned into a puz­zle, then a photo of the puz­zle!  I think we have squeezed every ounce of enjoy­ment from that birth­day present that could ever be squeezed.

Per­haps I can find another silly, semi-athletic, mostly hilar­i­ous event for char­ity for us to do, like the pre-Christmas Santa Run for Home-Start!  We had so much fun on that crisp, sunny day, running/walking 5K through glo­ri­ous Green­wich Park.  How many San­tas does it take to pay a social-worker?

Through it all, mirac­u­lously we have all been spared the Win­ter Wom­it­ing Wirus, I mean Vom­it­ing Virus, that has felled over 1 mil­lion Brits.  Fin­gers crossed, hands washed.  Some­day this month-long cold I have been slog­ging through will be over.  In the mean­time, 2013 has begun, a year that promises to bring adven­tures with our plot of dirt in South­wark, with the cook­book Avery and I are work­ing on, with new recipes to exper­i­ment with and peo­ple to feed.

Avery, John and I wish you and yours the hap­pi­est and health­i­est of New Years!

What a whirl­wind it’s been this week of festivities!

Everyone’s assur­ances that we would love spend­ing Christ­mas en famille here in Lon­don cer­tainly have come true, and there’s more to come.  We’ve dec­o­rated our tra­di­tional mir­ror on the din­ing table with the lead sol­diers, Nut­crack­ers, skaters, sled­ders and the occa­sional stern bobby.  What has hap­pened here?  A Nancy Ker­ri­gan moment?

We have had great fun acquir­ing new orna­ments, although I cer­tainly do not need them, but what could be more fun than a cou­ple of new fairies?

There is noth­ing more fes­tive than trawl­ing the high street shops, peek­ing into this one and that, and com­ing away with a new bauble or two.

But of course the old friends are the best, really.  What would life be with­out a felt cat dressed to the nines for a hol­i­day shop­ping trip?

Home has been beau­ti­ful but we’ve also been out and about.  We headed to the West End on a rainy but excit­ing after­noon to see Simon Cal­low onstage, sim­ply incred­i­ble in a one-man pro­duc­tion of “A Christ­mas Carol.”  How on earth he could play Scrooge, Mar­ley, all three Spir­its, Fezzi­wig, Bob Cratch­ett all by him­self for 90 min­utes, with no props except a pile of chairs and a string of fairy lights, I can­not imag­ine, but he pulled it off.  Even the lad who brings his Christ­mas turkey was spot-on.  “You, lad!” “Whah?”

The dec­o­ra­tions on Leices­ter Square were just beau­ti­ful, even in the cold rain.

From there we were onto our first “panto,” a truly mad, out­landish British Christ­mas tra­di­tion.  My friend Lily, who included us in her family’s panto trip, explained, “British peo­ple nor­mally keep all their emo­tions in and behave them­selves, so panto is the one time we can let go and be com­pletely crazy!”  The idea is to take a typ­i­cal fairy tale, like Cin­derella in our case, and turn it into the ulti­mate audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion event.

The nar­ra­tor — a fallen fairy look­ing to get his wings back (played by Stephen Fry’s ex-love Steven Webb!) — enlisted our help.  “When I sing, ‘I believe I can fly,’ it’s your job to get me back on track, so you shout, “Get on with it!’”  And when­ever a char­ac­ter tried to steal Cinderella’s magic slip­pers, we had to scream, “That’s not your present, that’s not your present!”  The fairy pelted the audi­ence with sweets, tak­ing up a ten­nis racket to shoot them up into the upper cir­cle where we sat.  We had such fun.

And then, because it’s our fam­ily, we were onto the first food event of “Christ­mas in Lon­don,” with this fab­u­lous deliv­ery of hol­i­day treats from my dar­ling local shop, “Two Peas in a Pod.”

How clever was it of them to give all their cus­tomers a sheet offer­ing every sin­gle fruit and veg­etable you can pos­si­bly imag­ine and offer­ing to deliver it all for free right up to Christ­mas Eve.  I went a bit mad, admit­tedly, but the temp­ta­tion was too great to resist.  Toma­toes, mush­rooms, gar­lic and onions, spinach, romesco, lemons and limes, pota­toes, apples, cel­ery, shal­lots and Savoy cab­bage, and even organic eggs!  As I took a late-afternoon nap on the dark after­noon of the 23rd, up drove the van from Peas with two smil­ing deliv­ery guys.  “Happy Christ­mas, enjoy!”

On the morn­ing of Christ­mas Eve, John went into the vil­lage to pick up our order of shucked oys­ters for stew and I pre­pared the fra­grant brew of cel­ery, gar­lic, onions, but­ter, cream.  I don’t know why I don’t make it more often as it brings an enor­mous smile to John’s face and he is very, very happy for the sev­eral days that the enor­mous vat holds out.  So deli­cious and this year even Avery decided she likes it!  Go on, give it a try and your fam­ily may have a new tra­di­tion for Christ­mas Eve!

There was no rest for the wicked, how­ever, because as soon as the stew was ready to rest and gather its fla­vors together, we were off to a new Christ­mas activ­ity for us: a heav­enly evening of Car­ols at West­min­ster Abbey, tick­ets cour­tesy of my won­der­ful friend Suzanne.  Sim­ply unworldly.  There were strictly no pho­tos allowed inside, so all I can share is the beau­ti­ful view as we waited in the enor­mously long queue.

I have always been a mas­sive fan of choral music, but my expe­ri­ences until now have always been lim­ited to lovely record­ings.  Noth­ing could pos­si­bly have pre­pared me for the unearthly beauty, the more-than-human sound of dozens of lit­tle boys’ voices singing “Once in Royal David’s City,” waft­ing into the ceil­ing of the Abbey.  We were seated right by the nave where Kate and William were mar­ried!  We were given small can­dles as we entered the Abbey, and just before the final carol, “Hark, the Her­ald Angels Sing,” the verg­ers came around and lit the can­dles on the aisles and we lit from each other’s.  The lights all went out.  Pure heaven.

How lucky we are to live here!

We raced home to light every sin­gle can­dle, warm up the oys­ter stew, and wel­come our friends Elspeth and her fam­ily and friend Leo.  How beau­ti­ful every­thing looked.

Except per­haps for the soggy, wretched egg rolls which are meant to be my family’s Christ­mas Eve tra­di­tion.  “They’re stick­ing to the foil!  Isn’t that the whole point of the foil?  Some­body get a spat­ula.”  They lay, like beached dead things, on the plat­ter.  Oh well, there was lovely home­made veg­etable fried rice to accom­pany the stew, which was really the star of the show.  Oh, and Elspeth’s savoury olive and nuts, and Leo’s con­tri­bu­tion of strong blue cheese and gin­ger bis­cuits!  Elspeth pre­sented us with a framed photo of John and me at our new “plot of dirt,” taken on the day we wit­nessed the bungee jumpers in our front yard.  So, so thoughtful.

Finally it was Christ­mas Day, with all the beau­ti­ful presents we have spent all year choos­ing.  The nicest thing, for me, is a present only I would want, that it takes some­one who really knows and loves me to choose.  John gave me a jar of home­made “Fox Point” sea­son­ing which he had con­cocted from indi­vid­ual spices and herbs from the Por­to­bello Spice Shop.  He knew I was run­ning out and had relied on our Christ­mas trip home to replen­ish it.  What a per­fect gift.  And my friend Alyssa sent along the most per­fect dish, for some unknown rea­son bear­ing the words “Some­thing Else.”

This say­ing harkens back to the sum­mer day, long ago in Tribeca, when Alyssa’s hilar­i­ous son Elliot, about two years old and stark naked, stood bel­liger­ently in front of the open pantry door, try­ing to find a snack.

“How about an Oreo?” Alyssa offered.

“NO!  Some­thing else!”

“How about a pretzel?”

“NO!  Some­thing else!”

How mag­i­cal and pecu­liar for Alyssa to find this dish, just for me.  “I really wish I could have been there to see your face when you opened it.”

Avery was thrilled with the fake-fur throw we gave her to keep her warm in her frigid top-of-the-house bedroom.

Deli­cious.

After open­ing our presents, we headed next door to dar­ling Suzanne and John’s house to have a glass of bub­bly, a bite of smoked salmon, and a moment of fam­ily life.

Avery per­formed her usual magic pho­tograph­ing the world’s most beau­ti­ful two-year-old, their grand­daugh­ter Polly.

How lovely, and typ­i­cal of Suzanne, to know that spend­ing a bit of time with a child — and her tiny twin sib­lings! — would be just the ticket to make us feel our Christ­mas was com­plete.  Of course, it helped to have a dog in wings there, as well.  Dear Piggy.

It was com­pletely heart­warm­ing to be included in so many friends’ plans, every­one want­ing us to feel the com­fort of sur­ro­gate family.

And that was our hol­i­day.  We missed our fam­ily and friends at Red Gate Farm des­per­ately, and tied up quite a few hours of tele­phone time catch­ing up as the after­noon waned.  I got to hear from my uncle all about the suc­cess­ful oys­ter stew THEY made from my recipe and the oys­ters I had sent to them!  And I got to chat with my beau­ti­ful niece about the 620-piece Lego edi­fice she was work­ing on.  “My mommy is wear­ing the apron you gave her, from Avery’s school Christ­mas Fair.  How was that Fair?  Tell me about the atmos­phere.”  I love it!

We set­tled down with roasted ham wrapped in bacon.  Only in England.

We set­tled down with our sup­per — the ham sup­ple­mented with grated pota­toes and shal­lots baked in Boursin and cream, and Lau­rie Col­win stuff­ing, heaven — and the Christ­mas spe­cial of “Doc­tor Who.”  What could be better.

I must love you and leave you as we are expected at a fes­tive din­ner party in one of the most beau­ti­ful houses I have ever seen, hosted by our ele­gant friend Eleanor who also hap­pens to be a wiz­ard cook.  I expect noth­ing less than deli­cious, and what a treat, to be cooked for.  There will be another family’s Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions to admire, another family’s tra­di­tions to hear about, another family’s table to cel­e­brate.  John, Avery and I wish each and every one of you the warmest pos­si­ble hol­i­day, and a very Happy New Year!