I couldn’t resist basi­cally a pic­ture post. How can we ever for­get the twin foals born at Red Horse Sta­bles? Nor how we found out: Avery and I are such well-known pool rats that when Anne and David had some­thing to tell us, they knew exactly where to go. It was so funny to look up in the sun­shine at the side of the South­bury Munic­i­pal Pool and see fully-dressed Anne com­ing toward us, arms prac­ti­cally wav­ing with excite­ment. “There are twin baby horses in the pad­dock at Red Horse!” So we dried off and drove away, and sure enough: two lit­tle foals. Appar­ently while it’s not that unusual for a mare to be preg­nant with twins, it’s very unlikely that both will be born safely. So these two are real mir­a­cles. We have vis­ited them with loyal fre­quency ever since.

Then I had to show you the street sign from Mys­tic, Con­necti­cut, where I took Avery to visit twice, to see Cici. Can you believe it? There’s also Avery Cor­ner. Who was this Avery?

But noth­ing can top the pres­ence of Jane in our sum­mer. Have you ever seen such a crea­ture? We will miss her ter­ri­bly. Jill and Joel sim­ply have to sched­ule a visit to Lon­don, that’s all there is to it. There must be some impor­tant sport­ing event Jill can pro­duce, right? I’ll keep my eyes out. How can we pos­si­bly spend the next ten months just HEAR­ING what Jane is doing? Will she keep on sit­ting in her Think­ing Chair and Think­ing? Will she con­tinue to do touch­downs and find the book of funny faces, and do “happy feet”? No, she’ll learn a whole bunch of new party tricks and we won’t know. Thank good­ness for dig­i­tal cam­eras, and pretty soon she can talk well enough to spend lots of her par­ents’ money on exten­sive transat­lantic phone calls. Sob. Jane has greatly added to our lit­er­ary knowl­edge this sum­mer, our money being on the hereto­fore unknown to us Mo Willems, author of such gems as “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus,” fol­lowed by the even more stim­u­lat­ing, “Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late”. Per­haps the best, though, is “Knuf­fle Bunny.” If you need baby presents, go for the whole pile.

Well, we’re off right now to din­ner at the Olive Tree, one of per­haps two din­ners out we have had here in Con­necti­cut. It’s too much fun to cook, to jus­tify going out. But this restau­rant was rec­om­mended by Rol­lie and Judy, and bor­ders two golf courses, so it should be pretty. We had such a nice din­ner at Rol­lie and Judy’s house, a real farm­house meal. Chicken in a mush­room sauce, and then the veg­eta­bles! Steamed fresh beans and zuc­chini, car­rots and tiny new pota­toes. And I brought pesto, so the boys (Rol­lie Junior, Chris and Todd) spread it on their bread. Then fresh peach and blue­berry pie with a real lat­ticed crust. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a real pie like that served by the real per­son who made it! We’ll let you know how the Olive Tree is.

Have I given you my corn chow­der recipe? I think I did, but I’ll go back and check. One thing I’m going to try to learn this upcom­ing year, well two things, one is to write bet­ter, more pre­cise recipes. The other is to find a way to present them on the blog that is eas­ier to get and more appeal­ing, like maybe a hot link to a sep­a­rate page that will include a photo of the com­pleted dish. We’ll see.

In any case, this sum­mer has been about corn. I just love sweet corn, and not the scary kind that finds itself mixed in baked pota­toes in Eng­land. I’m sorry, that is just WRONG. No, the kind I mean is picked up from the Star­chaks’ farm stand on Main Street in South­bury, Con­necti­cut, dri­ven directly home to be shucked on the back step (always throw the husks over the back fence; I love to have a fence to throw things over), then boiled for pre­cisely three min­utes, and raced to the table and salted, and eaten with­out hold­ers. I can eas­ily eat four ears, no prob­lem. How­ever, after an entire sum­mer of corn on the cob, my fam­ily was object­ing to the monot­ony. So in addi­tion to the corn chow­der, I came up with a recipe that takes into account the awful pos­si­bil­ity that some ears of corn will not live up to the billing I have just given them. They will be, inex­plic­a­bly, tough. Or not juicy. Or starchy. The kind of corn that, were you to encounter it on the side of a lame plate of surf and turf at Red Lob­ster, you would sim­ply treat as the kind of aber­ra­tion it is: clearly there to pro­vide the illu­sion of a veg­etable but not in any way expect­ing to be actu­ally ingested.

So if this hap­pens, what is an unhappy cook to do? Well, rather than slog through and eat it any­way because it’s there, and you bought it and cooked it, sim­ply say good­bye to the sorry ears and put them aside. Fin­ish the rest of your lovely meal and do not dwell on the dis­ap­point­ment. There’s always another trip to Star­chaks’ tomor­row. Mean­while, save it for the next meal you pre­pare, espe­cially if it’s a nice meaty one like steak, pork chops, or as last night, a roasted leg of lamb rubbed with a mix­ture of chopped rose­mary, gar­lic, lime juice and olive oil. While the lamb is roast­ing, here is what you do:

Scal­loped Corn, or How to Turn a Fail­ure Into a Suc­cess
(serves four easily)

6 ears cooked corn
four cloves gar­lic, chopped fine
half pint light cream
1 cup fresh bread­crumbs
3 tbsps melted but­ter
1/2 cup grated pecorino or parme­san cheese

Spray a nice casse­role dish (I used a pretty oval Pyrex one) with non­stick cook­ing spray. Sprin­kle the gar­lic over the bot­tom of the dish. Cut the ker­nels off the ears of corn (be sure to gather up the few racy ker­nels who will fly off onto the counter top) and sprin­kle them onto the gar­lic, tak­ing care to sep­a­rate the long rows should they stick together. Pour the cream over all the ker­nels evenly, then toss the bread crumbs in the melted but­ter and fluff them up. Spread evenly over the corn and then sprin­kle the cheese over all. The casse­role can bake for the final half hour of the roast lamb, and will be ready to make the per­fect accom­pa­ni­ment for a juice, gar­licky bite.

Then there’s the peren­nial ques­tion, what to do with a really high-quality 1-pound can of crab­meat, the kind that comes in the refrig­er­a­tor sec­tion of the fish depart­ment? Or alter­na­tively you could order it along with your lob­sters from Dave Thomas in Isles­ford, don’t think it isn’t pos­si­ble. Any­way, say you bought it intend­ing to make crab­cakes and then you got back from the Hamp­tons where you had just had crab­cakes. Well, here’s what you can make, in two seconds:

Sim­ple Crab Salad
(serves four)

1-pound can crab­meat, refrig­er­ated
1/4 cup red onion, chopped fine
3/4 cup may­on­naise
juice of half a lemon or lime
salt and pep­per
half an avo­cado, sliced length­wise
1 really good heir­loom tomato, cut in bite-sized pieces, or a hand­ful of grape toma­toes, cut in half length­wise
pinch paprika
four slices but­tered toast

Mix the crab­meat, onion, mayo, and juide together, fold­ing gin­gerly so as not to break up the yummy long pieces of crab claw. Then salt and pep­per to taste. DO NOT eat it all at this stage. Taste just a LIT­TLE. Then put on a large plate, mounded in the cen­ter. Sur­round with tomato bites, and fan the avo­cado slices on top of the crab. Sprin­kle with paprika. Serve with but­tered toast.

I’m think­ing about all this sum­mer food, and all our fun this sum­mer in gen­eral, to take my mind off Leav­ing Anx­i­ety. Yes, I who can find some­thing to be anx­ious about under all cir­cum­stances, am wor­ry­ing about leav­ing. It’s a bit stress­ful get­ting the house in order should some­one want to rent it this fall and win­ter. So we’re pack­ing away clothes, linens, etc., so as to make it count as fur­nished, but not per­sonal. Then of course there’s the ever-present unwill­ing­ness to leave the three Js behind. I can­not imag­ine how much Jane will change over the year until we get back in July. Already she can say “up above” when she couldn’t six weeks ago, and it will prob­a­bly be a mat­ter of only days before “the world so high” follows.

Also I must admit to a cer­tain don’t-wanna-fly creep­ing back into my recon­structed heart, which was doing so well about fly­ing on our way here. But even some­one not as self-centered as I might be for­given for a bit of anx­i­ety when my life entails mov­ing from Tar­get Num­ber One to Tar­get Num­ber Two or the reverse, depend­ing on your point of view and air­port of depar­ture. One of the fun­ni­est moments of the sum­mer, in a com­pletely sick way, was when Rol­lie stopped to chat after scyth­ing the meadow to the side of the house. It was the day when all the non­sense broke about what liq­uids you could and couldn’t take on board and how we had all just nar­rowly avoided what­ever dread­ful thing hap­pen­ing on the way from Lon­don to here, and gen­er­ally announc­ing the incip­i­ent Armaged­don. Rol­lie put some grass between his teeth and whis­tled. “When’s John expected?” I sighed and said, “He’s fly­ing back from Lon­don tomor­row morn­ing.” Short silence. Then Rol­lie grunted. “You HOPE.”

Well that’s just icky! I can join the thou­sands of gen­er­a­tions of par­ents before me and moan that I really don’t like the world we’re bring­ing our child into. Europe has such a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on the world than Amer­ica has, and such a sadly neg­a­tive view of much that is Amer­i­can. It’s so hard to know what to think, but one exam­ple of the huge iso­la­tion of the United States these days came up when I was talk­ing to a friend at the pool about the air­port sit­u­a­tion. “It’s just going to lead to worse pro­fil­ing than we had in the past,” she wor­ried. And I men­tioned the awful case of a fam­ily in Lon­don whose home was bro­ken into by dozens of armed spe­cial force police offi­cers, shout­ing and order­ing peo­ple to the ground, all based on what turned out to be com­pletely base­less threat infor­ma­tion. The story was top news in Europe for days, as the mis­take was dis­cov­ered, the family’s ruined lives paraded in front of the news media, the police and gov­ern­ment forced to apol­o­gize. And you know what? The story never broke here at all. I guess that’s a com­bi­na­tion of our lack of inter­est in sto­ries not directly related to Amer­ica, and a reluc­tance to dwell on mis­takes. Watch­ing tele­vi­sion here is inter­est­ing: the media seem to want us all really scared, but not very specif­i­cally! A strange mix­ture of how right we must be because we’re Amer­i­cans, but how target-number-one we are because every­one else in the world thinks we’re wrong. Such an unhappy sit­u­a­tion. It will be help­ful to get back to Lon­don and real­ize that of course we can go back and forth and the world doesn’t end.

In the mean­time, though, I’ll con­cen­trate on Avery’s lit­tle face, pressed up against her dad’s. Because you see, he DID come home.

I have had these pho­tos sit­ting in my draft post box for ages! Ever since Annabelle’s sleep­over. Avery is obsessed now with the water park where we had our adven­tures. And so I don’t for­get, and so you know where to go should you come to Mid­dle­bury, Con­necti­cut, it’s Quassy Amuse­ment Park, a hundred-year-old park full of dry and wet rides, and pro­vided us with one of the most excit­ing days of the whole summer.

Until this sum­mer, I had seen bill­boards for Quassy on the way to Jill and Joel’s house, but it never occurred to me to go. Then Avery and I decided that a day of get­ting really soak­ing wet, and pos­si­bly hav­ing a hot dog to go with it, was just the ticket, and that Annabelle should come along. So we packed up our bag of tow­els and sun­block and bev­er­ages, and headed off, singing at the top of our lungs to the Bea­t­les. I must add: musi­cally speak­ing the sum­mer has been defined by Songs in the Car. If you haven’t heard Sheryl Crow’s duet with Sting, “I’m Always on Your Side,” you must. Avery and I, one day, lis­tened to it pos­si­bly 60 times in a row to get two phrases JUST RIGHT. Also, John has exposed Avery to Queen, so she spends a lot of time shout­ing, “We will we will ROCK YOU,” which brings back hor­ri­ble mem­o­ries of var­i­ous after-game high school dances where I never had a date. But the music’s good.

Any­way, we sang along and arrived at the park, and spent the next few hours get­ting sweaty on the dry rides (I skipped the Heli­copter, and the MusicFest, but the girls loved them), hav­ing that hot dog, and slushies for the girls, get­ting soaked in the water park (“Over 30 ways to get wet!” the web­site trum­pets). Best of all was, how­ever, the Sat­u­ra­tion Sta­tion. As you can see, it’s an enor­mous bucket sus­pended high about the water park, grad­u­ally fill­ing with water. 400 gal­lons! When it reaches a crit­i­cal mass, it tips over, bury­ing the peo­ple under­neath in water so freez­ing you sim­ply have to scream! We all clung together under where the water would fall, wait­ing in ridicu­lous fear, then sim­ply shouted our heads off and inhaled a great deal of water, plus step­ping all over each other’s feet. But it was GLORIOUS.

And it gave the girls strength to go the bumper car route, as well as the famous Quassy Super Slide on a nasty burlap rug that brought back mem­o­ries of some sim­i­lar slide in my child­hood. And just like then, you get to scrape your arm against some rough bit of the slide as you pelt down­ward, and have a nice scrape to prove you were brave.

What a day.

Let’s see, aside from fish­ing for min­nows with the new min­now trap seen here (I actu­ally got us to the tackle shop in New­town, and back, with­out get­ting sig­nif­i­cantly lost… well, I did, but I got us found again), going to the Hick­ory Stick Book­store in Wash­ing­ton Depot (quite sim­ply the best book­shop west of the Atlantic Ocean (I’m loyal to Daunt in Lon­don, sorry!) and spend­ing all our dis­pos­able income, vis­it­ing Rollie’s wife Judy’s farm stand at Painter’s Ridge Farm and sam­pling the water­melon (also com­ing away with the best peaches ever, and did you know that if you didn’t bar light from reach­ing grow­ing cel­ery it would be dark green? nei­ther did I), noth­ing much is hap­pen­ing. Oh there was the night of a rain­storm so heavy that I turned off the fan I always sleep to, and lis­tened to the pat­ter on, var­i­ously, the roofline out­side the bath­room win­dow, and bird feeder out­side Avery’s win­dow, and the slop­ing, densely-surrounded meadow out­side my bed­room win­dow. Blissful.

Wait, there’s also the wood­chuck who eats dur­ing the after­noon, and the skunk who eats at night, and the deer cross­ing the road today in front of Quincy, our 1967 Land Rover, and the hum­ming­bird who almost drank from John’s dad’s cock­tail over the week­end, and the frog that Baby Jane did NOT like hop­ping about on a rock in a bowl full of water! “Uh oh! Uh oh!” she said. All was NOT right with that picture.

And our after-dinner trips to Denmo’s for the best ice cream in the world (accord­ing to peo­ple who eat ice cream, accom­pa­nied by peo­ple like me who watch peo­ple eat ice cream).

We stopped off yes­ter­day to see Jane and Joel on our way home from drop­ping off Rose­mary at the Hart­ford air­port. Sorry, Bradley Inter­na­tional Air­port. I saw a sign for Mid­west Air­lines and for a moment mis­read “Mideast Air­lines.” That’s right, non­stop from Hart­ford, CT, to… Dubai? Jane was most sur­prised to see us after her nap, and led us from one pos­ses­sion to another, show­ing us her lit­tle world, with a sweaty brow and hair in her eyes. Sweet Joel who had his gin­ger and gar­lic chopped for their gourmet stir-fried beef din­ner that evening. Well I remem­ber those later-afternoon “she’s about to wake up, bet­ter under­chef din­ner” moments! Sadly we missed Jill who was slav­ing away at ESPN, but we shall see them for din­ner at their place on Fri­day. I won­der what has hap­pened to the lit­tle baby pigeon that fell from its nest dur­ing our visit. I wish you could see the lit­tle cutout in their fence, shared with their little-boy neigh­bors, labeled from Jane’s side with the leg­end “To Milo and Kai” and from their side, “To Jane.” Joel is a per­fect dad. These are the excit­ing events that make up sum­mer­time in our neck of the woods. Tomor­row I promise to blog about our babysit­ting with Jane. Suf­fice to say, this evening: Joel and Jill have their hands full! She’s a car­bon copy of her mother when a baby, and it took two par­ents and two sib­lings to help her sur­vive child­hood intact. She’s cook­ing with gas, that girl.

Have you ever received a big box from Fedex and opened it up to dis­cover a dozen toma­toes from your very own father’s gar­den, wrapped up like Christ­mas orna­ments? That’s actu­ally a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion because I’m vir­tu­ally cer­tain that no one else I know has a father so obsessed with tomato-growing, a fam­ily so devoted to Fred­er­ick­son Tomato Eat­ing, or indeed a fam­ily crazy enough about the whole thing to think that send­ing them across coun­try is a rea­son­able thing to do! How­ever, we do, and it is. The love waft­ing up from the box, once opened, was almost vis­i­ble! Or maybe it’s the whiff of insan­ity. In any case, for the unini­ti­ated, Paul Fred­er­ick­son toma­toes have a patent pend­ing. They have fan clubs (with wait­ing lists). They are, quite sim­ply, Manna From Indi­anapo­lis. So in honor of my in-laws’ visit from Iowa, my father packed up twelve of his babies and sent them here to Red Gate Farm. There they were joined in holy mat­ri­mony with four pound-and-a-half lob­sters from David Thomas Lob­ster in Isles­ford, Maine, and a dozen ears of corn from Star­chak Pro­duce in South­bury, Con­necti­cut, and there has never been a bet­ter din­ner. EVER. As soon as I get a jpeg from my mother-in-law, I’ll post a pic­ture of the whole din­ner. Unbe­liev­able. Added to it was a gen­er­ous help­ing of may­on­naise infused with gar­lic and lemon juice, and lit­tle baguette rounds brushed with olive oil and lightly toasted. Were we lightly toasted? The single-malt Glenk­inchie Scotch was flow­ing nicely! I don’t think any of us has ever had a bet­ter culi­nary expe­ri­ence. Even Avery, who doesn’t eat lob­ster, was happy, because her besot­ted mother pan-sauteed a lit­tle filet mignon, just for her. Actu­ally her father got the best end of the deal: she couldn’t eat it all, so he ended up with the ulti­mate Surf and Turf!

Basi­cally all we did dur­ing John’s par­ents’ visit was eat. Actu­ally, shop, cook, eat, clean up, and then talk about what we just ate. Sick! I’ll give you the high­lights. And it’s been sug­gested to me by read­ers of this blog that I turn my inco­her­ent rav­ings about food into more actual recipes, to con­vince you all to try things. So here goes.

First of all, if you love lob­ster, scal­lops, or crab (or all three), may I sug­gest you go online to David’s lob­ster site and order you up some. They will arrive alive, overnight, sur­rounded by ice and wet news­pa­per, and what you should do is open up the box to make sure they’re still alive, then close it again and leave it till din­ner time (the box doesn’t have to be refrig­er­ated). When you’re ready to eat, boil about three inches of water (sea­wa­ter if you live by the sea!) in a very large stock­pot (you can buy the cheap­est enam­eled thing on earth, some­times from a hard­ware store) with a lid. Then one by one, quickly drop the lob­sters in head­first and put the lid on with some­thing to weight it down (don’t think about why). After 13 min­utes, take them out and put them on a large plat­ter and let cool for five min­utes or so. Then with your nap­kin tucked into your shirt col­lar and very clean hands, the fun can begin. Some peo­ple don’t bother with the legs, but they have yummy meat inside that can only be sucked out. Oh, don’t for­get to have a set of crack­ers for each per­son: some peo­ple buy fancy task-specific lob­ster crack­ers, in the shape of lob­sters and bright red, but save your money and buy nut­crack­ers. Just as good, IMHO. I start with the claws because I like them best and I rarely can get through a whole lob­ster, so start with the best is my phi­los­o­phy. Then move onto the tail, then the legs. If you’re still hun­gry you can scoop out the toma­l­ley from the body of the lob­ster and it it on a saltine. Truth to tell, the toma­l­ley grosses me out so I pre­tend it isn’t there. If you have the tail left­over (both Rose­mary and I did, defeated by all the other food), put it to one side and after din­ner you can rinse it and put it in the refrig­er­a­tor, and then the next day you cut it up and either dress it with a table­spoon of mayo mixed with lemon juice and put it in a toasted hot dog bun (this is called a “lob­ster roll”), or eat it with an avo­cado dip of my own invention:

Avo­cado Dip a la Lit­tle Cran­berry Island

1 avo­cado, nice and ripe (so you can make an inden­ta­tion in the flesh, but don’t go crazy doing this), peeled and the seed taken out)

Wait.

Let me inter­rupt myself and teach you how to pre­pare an avo­cado. I had to learn the hard way, where you man­gle many, many avo­ca­dos and are finally taken to task by some more knowl­edge­able din­ner guest watch­ing you be your idiot self. You hold it in one hand and using a nice par­ing knife, pierce the avo­cado with the tip till you feel the seed inside, then run your knife all the way around the avo­cado, mak­ing con­tact with the seed at all times. Then hold each half of the avo­cado in a hand and twist till it comes apart. Then VERY CARE­FULLY ease your knife tip into the seed (I once com­pletely stabbed myself in the palm doing this, so deeply that it didn’t even bleed, and it had to be patched up by my din­ner guest who hap­pened to be a doc­tor — a der­ma­tol­o­gist, but I couldn’t be choosy). Wig­gle the knife in the seed VERY CARE­FULLY till you dis­lodge the seed and then dis­card it. Now pull the skin off the whole avo­cado and either slice nicely for a salad or in this case…

Place avo­cado in food proces­sor or blender. Add:

three table­spoons sour cream
three table­spoons goat cheese
sev­eral shakes Tabasco
juice of a lime, juice of a lemon
salt to taste

Whizz till com­pletely smooth. This with lob­ster or crab is DIVINE. Unless, like my mother who is oth­er­wise per­fect, you feel that avo­cado is infe­rior to mod­el­ling clay as a food.

The evening of the Cur­rans’ arrival we had a gor­geous din­ner as well, if I do say so myself, and really a diet chicken salad din­ner. For when you’re in a no-carb mood. The chicken salad idea is mod­i­fied from a lovely lunch my friend Kath­leen served to me at her house in Mys­tic, Con­necti­cut. With it I served my pink gaz­pa­cho (recipe in an ear­lier post from May).

Guilt-free Chicken Salad
(serves four)

three whole bone-in chicken breasts
salt and pep­per
half stick of butter

1 large bag or bunch of baby spinach, or mixed leaf salad
8 very small toma­toes (prefer­ably on the vine)
1 avo­cado, sliced pret­tily
dress­ing of your choice

Place 1/4 stick but­ter on each chicken breast and salt and pep­per it. Roast at 425 degrees for an hour, then five min­utes under the broiler or until nice and crispy (if you really want it a diet salad, remove the skin after roast­ing; remov­ing it before roast­ing will make it dry out). While the chicken cools, arrange the greens on a large plat­ter, pre­pare your avo­cado, quar­ter the toma­toes and mix your dress­ing. Remem­ber this basic rule, taught to me by the mother of the French fam­ily I lived with when I was six­teen, never for­got­ten. Three parts oil to one part vine­gar (or other acidic liq­uid like fruit juice. Then you can add what­ever other things occur to you with aban­don (mus­tard, Tabasco, mayo, pesto, you name it). Slice the chicken breasts and arrange them on the greens, then scat­ter the toma­toes and avo­cado all over and around. Driz­zle a min­i­mum of dress­ing on just before serving.

After din­ner, if you’re feel­ing at all ener­getic, put the breast bones in a stock­pot and cover with water, and quite a bit of salt. If any salad is left, you can throw that in too. Boil pretty high for at least an hour, strain through a colan­der (throw the bits away tak­ing care not to attract skunks!) and refrig­er­ate. In the morn­ing you can take the fat off the top of the pot and you’ve got chicken broth, good on its own or per­fect as the basis of any good chilled sum­mer soup!

Mmm. We’re going out for din­ner tonight, but right now I’m pretty sure it won’t get bet­ter than that! Enjoy what­ever is on your plate tonight…

At least you’re see­ing this skunk in day­light hours! But I’m get­ting ahead of myself. Let me describe to you my day. Oy veh.

Actu­ally it started last night, when Avery dis­cov­ered (nearly spit­ting it across the table) that her glass of milk was ROT­TEN. This, of course, was the same half gal­lon that I had used to make my afternoon-project batch of vichys­soise. How dare they! Fizzy, awful.

Then this morn­ing. I’m sorry, some­one tell me I didn’t get up at the crack of dawn (well, it was in a pour­ing rain­storm to drive an hour and half for a horse­back rid­ing les­son that had been CAN­CELLED. Truly. The only thing that saved me from an absolute tem­per fit was actu­ally two things: one, the trainer had an out of date phone num­ber for me, and two, we were, in any case, rendez-vousing with Annabelle to bring her to the long-awaited sleep­over. So. I kissed Alyssa, watched Elliot slog through pud­dles at the barn, and hus­tled the girls straight BACK into the car for another hour and a half drive back home. It was enlivened by expos­ing the girls to “Straw­berry Fields For­ever” on the CD player, which made me feel very old, half the Bea­t­les being dead and another sim­ply embar­rass­ing. How­ever. Dur­ing the drive Avery found out from her Iowa Nonna on the cell­phone that a pack­age awaited her at Red Gate Farm, from the sin­gu­larly excit­ing return address of “Amer­i­can Girl,” which made arrival very excit­ing: a new doll! Holly, to replace the Holly stolen cal­lously from our park­ing lot in Tribeca. There you go: a unique “New York isn’t per­fect” memory.

To lunch at the diner, then a marathon ses­sion at the pool! Much div­ing, lap swim­ming, while the skies grad­u­ally cleared to the MOST beau­ti­ful early evening swim ever. Sim­ply divine, com­ing up from a dive to see blue, blue sky and green, green trees. Avery’s valiantly attempt­ing diving.

Home for me to fran­ti­cally clear up all the mess from an early morn­ing depar­ture and pre­pare spaghetti all car­bonara, tons of gar­lic. Annabelle is my best din­ner­time cus­tomer. Here’s the recipe:

Kristen’s Car­bonara
(serves four)

1 pound bacon, throughly chilled and sliced into 1-inch pieces (easy to do: just keep the pound together as it’s pack­aged and slice down the strips length­wise as a bulk, does that make sense?)
4 cloves gar­lic, finely minced
1/2 small white onion, finely minced
1/2 pint light cream
1 egg yolk
3/4 pound cap­pellini
2 tsps fresh thyme, leaves only
1/2 grated pecorino romano or parmesan

Boil water for pasta. Then in a large skil­let, saute bacon bits over low to medium heat, stir­ring nearly con­stantly and tak­ing care that the bacon does not scorch. Drain fre­quently (not down the drain! try a mea­sur­ing cup, then you can keep it to saute hash browns in if you’re feel­ing ambitious).

When bacon is com­pletely crispy but not burned, drain one last time and return skil­let to heat. Add gar­lic and onion to the sauteed bacon and saute lightly, again tak­ing care not to scorch. When gar­lic and onion are soft­ened, add cream and bring to a low sim­mer. Add egg yolk and stir thor­oughly. The sauce can sit and sim­mer while you cook and drain the pasta.

Cook pasta and drain. Throw the pasta into the sauce skil­let and toss well with the sauce. Serve with thyme and cheese sprin­kled on top.

The girls made home­made “cookie dough ice cream” with real cookie dough! Then the real heart-clencher of the day: I went to (nice Indiana-ism there) take the garbage (only we’d say “trash” back home) to the can in the barn, when out of the bag I’d stashed on the ter­race bounced… a SKUNK! EEEWWW!! Cute, all right, but alive! In my garbage bag! It lurked with­out undue alarm on the ter­race as I stared, and screamed, and the girls came run­ning down from Avery’s bed­room, con­vinced I was nearly dead from… some­thing. Finally it ambled off. Terror!

Much sweeter is the melon-obsessed wood­chuck, Gary II, so named after Jill and Joel’s orig­i­nal Gary. That boy loves melon! Car­ried away a whole half, if that makes sense.

OK, I’m fad­ing. Sleep­over finally liv­ing up to its name as both girls slum­ber away. Sleep well!

Now that the tem­per­a­ture has returned to nice nor­mal Con­necti­cut num­bers not in the triple dig­its, I can look at this photo and rec­og­nize that Avery is actu­ally MELT­ING! And my poor friend Sarah Webb! Of course, it was her idea to meet up in the city, but when we sched­uled the visit back in, gee, May, who knew it would be 105 degrees in New York that day! Just awful. But the rea­son for our visit was worth the hell­ish tem­per­a­tures. The Eva Hesse show at the Jew­ish Museum was, Sarah and I agreed, the sin­gle best and most sig­nif­i­cant exhi­bi­tion we have ever been to. She is, of course, the co-author of our book, “Sin­gu­lar Women,” which we wrote together over seven years, the most reward­ing project of our careers. Undoubt­edly our feel­ings on this mat­ter are col­ored by the fact that our work, and our emails about the project, were shared in equal mea­sure by dis­cus­sions of the com­pletely remark­able things our baby daugh­ters, then tod­dler daugh­ters, then school-age daugh­ters and Sarah’s baby son, were doing, plus in those days we knew what each other was cook­ing for din­ner every sin­gle night and exchanged many, many recipes and din­ner party sto­ries. But still, Eva Hesse is huge for both of us. Much of Sarah’s own art­mak­ing is inspired by Hesse, and I myself have taught Hesse’s work in count­less sem­i­nars, one at Christie’s devoted to her. And so many of the artists whose work appeared at my gallery, and grace the walls of our homes, shows the lin­eage of her influence.

So there we were, in the swel­ter­ing, beyond tor­rid heat, con­trasted by the near-arctic tem­per­a­tures of the museum itself and the cafe where we had lunch. It was won­der­ful and touch­ing to catch up with Sarah, to hear about her daughter’s exploits. We rem­i­nisced about the ded­i­ca­tion of our book: some­thing like this. “To our daugh­ters, who with their inno­cent ques­tion, ‘Can men be artists too?’ showed that fem­i­nism has indeed achieved its goals.”

From there we headed to Tribeca, frankly dri­ving slowly to take advan­tage of the air con­di­tioned car! But even the heat could not spoil din­ner with my friend Alyssa and her kids Annabelle and Elliot, at our old neigh­bor­hood haunt, “Roc.” Rocco him­self was there in all his Ital­ian charm, and it was sim­ply won­der­ful, and so heart­warm­ing, to be back. Avery spent the night with Annabelle and I repaired to John’s mid­town hotel for a nice ren­dezvous! Being back has taught me this much: you in fact CAN go home again!

Three cheers for Eva Hesse, and all the artists who make life a bit more than just liv­ing. And sweat­ing, for that matter!

Well, wouldn’t you know that my friend Alyssa Sad­off would not let our arrival in Amer­ica go unher­alded. We had all arranged our pic­nic lunch at Red Gate Farm for the first Sat­ur­day after our arrival, and I was more than pre­pared to bar­be­cue, what­ever was needed. No! Alyssa imme­di­ately announced that the lunch would be com­ing from none other, none less than… KATZ Deli, the be all and end all of Jew­ish proper food from New York! So she arrived our first week­end with scads of pas­trami and corned beef sand­wiches, cole slaw, potato latkes, apple­sauce, the whole nine yards. Thrilling! Jill, Jane and Joel came, as well as Anne and David from across the road. A beau­ti­ful after­noon, kids on the tram­po­line, pop­si­cles, Baby Jane in her wad­ing pool.

Pos­si­bly noth­ing sur­passed the hap­pi­ness, though, of our arrival that first evening in Con­necti­cut. Thanks to the gen­eros­ity of Reuters for our “home visit”, we were picked up at JFK by a lovely car and dri­ver, and spent the ride to Red Gate Farm on the phone with our fam­i­lies, let­ting them know we’d arrived safely. As we approached the farm, our hearts quick­ened, and we rounded the lit­tle hill toward the house: lights blazed every­where from our neigh­bors’ deter­mi­na­tion to wel­come us home! Farmer Rol­lie and his wife Judy had left home­made scones, peach and blue­berry jam, and Anne and David had stocked the fridge with eggs, juice, bread, hum­mous, every­thing we needed to set­tle in. And there were Rol­lie and Judy gifts of flow­er­ing gera­ni­ums all over the ter­race and front porch. We were offi­cially HOME.

I will never for­get the feel­ing of utter calm, flop­ping onto my old quilt upstairs in our bed­room, look­ing up at the dormered ceil­ings, can­dles burn­ing in the win­dows, real­iz­ing in some dim way that one CAN go home again. LOVELY.

The reunion was every­thing they dreamed it would be, I think, or at least from what I can gather judg­ing from extreme screams, much jump­ing up and down (even with­out the aid of the tram­po­line) and mostly, obses­sive hair-doing. I did not real­ize the extent to which life as a (nearly) ten-year-old involves hair-doing. Per­haps my friends and I were not so assid­u­ous in our groom­ing. But any­way, Cici came imme­di­ately to us on our arrival, thanks to her gen­er­ous mom Kath­leen who bravely drove all the way from Mys­tic, Con­necti­cut, and thence back to the city to work on her upcom­ing Chelsea paint­ing show in the fall at Brenda Taylor’s. Poor girl: she got caught in the now leg­endary “Tar­ry­town Tor­nado,” on the Saw Mill River park­way on the way back into Man­hat­tan. Lit­er­ally a rare event: I think there has not been a tor­nado in New York State for 50 years. Thank­fully she was not injured.

Cici and Avery spent their visit shop­ping at the Gap, where fright­en­ingly it turns out they can wear extra-small women’s sizes. Of course since cur­rent trends (I hes­i­tate to call such hideous­ness “fash­ion”) pre­cludes cov­er­ing most of the torso, it’s eas­ier for women’s sizes to fit small girls. They looked, as you can see, adorable. Then there was catch­ing up on their phan­tom rid­ing tech­niques. It turns out it’s pos­si­ble to have a phan­tom horse show ON a tram­po­line. We ended up for din­ner at Mag­gie McFly’s, the “Unique Eatery” (this moniker always trou­bles me, listed as it is on their busi­ness card show­ing TWO loca­tions). The chief attrac­tion of Mag­gie McFly’s is the light-up ice cube, included in some of the more nox­ious cock­tails on offer. Since I was taught from a tiny girl­friend by John that a true cock­tail includes only two ingre­di­ents, and one of them is ice, the thought of drink­ing some­thing with sev­eral dif­fer­ent kinds of alco­hol PLUS fruit was pretty nau­se­at­ing, so I opted to buy the ice cubes out­right, in glasses of Sprite. Much eas­ier on the drive home, not to get arrested.

Oh, and the POOL. It’s only a lit­tle bitty munic­i­pal pool; I don’t know why I love it so much! It must remind me of some­thing in a for­mer East­ern life. We’ve spent many happy hours there, doing laps, watch­ing Mr Ado­nis the local heart­throb work on his tan and his pecs, hear­ing the inevitable Amer­i­can screams of “Marco… Polo,” lis­ten­ing to chil­dren whine at their moth­ers (mine at me), “You should come in! It’s so warm! Come on in, please?!” to moth­ers who are hap­pily stretched out on tow­els read­ing Peo­ple, or in my case catch­ing up on Soap Opera Digest. Did Dinah cause the fire that almost killed Cassie, and will Sami admit she switched Lexi’s test results before the Gloved Hand switches Belle’s in vitro embryo? I’m so glad to be in a posi­tion to find out, with­out transat­lantic postal charges.

We’ve been hang­ing out at the library, too, but more on that in my post to cover Tak­ing Care of Jane. That could be a blog all its own!