Before I tell you all the excit­ing activ­i­ties that have been going on here, let me make a pub­lic Third Men­tal Note. Remem­ber the first one, when I washed all John’s busi­ness shirts with a red pash­mina? And the sec­ond one, the Case of the Explod­ing Pyrex? This one was not a dis­as­ter on the scale of those, but some­thing to remem­ber, nonetheless.

Our din­ner on Fri­day night at the Man­darin Kitchen was so good that I haven’t stopped think­ing about it, each time it’s time to cook my own din­ner at home. So on Sun­day night I bought chicken breasts, and hot chili pep­pers, and chopped up tons of fresh gar­lic and gin­ger, and made a nice mari­nade of mirin (Japan­ese rice wine), soy sauce, honey and sesame oil. Sounds good, right? Well, then I tried to find a recipe for “Dry Fried Chicken,” which was how the sub­lime dish was described on the menu at the restau­rant. A lot of things came up about how to fry chicken with­out it turn­ing dry, and Ken­tucky Fried Chicken, etc. Noth­ing very help­ful. One vaguely advised a quan­tity of hot peanut oil and dredg­ing the chicken in flour. Well, it was awful. I think my stu­pid stove doesn’t get hot enough, or con­cen­trated heat enough, so the oil never got prop­erly hot. Then the flour sep­a­rated from the chicken, fell to the bot­tom of the pot and formed a deep and last­ing rela­tion­ship with the metal. Then in a vain attempt to get the oil really hot, I left the chicken in it far too long and it was every­thing you don’t want in a bite of food: dry, and yet at the same time greasy, tough, taste­less. OK, the pep­pers were good and the mari­nade was at least some­thing to make the bas­mati rice edi­ble. Do I hear any sug­ges­tions? My friend Amy who loves the Man­darin Kitchen informed me at school pickup yes­ter­day that the secret was in mar­i­nat­ing the chicken in chili-infused oil (she has a secret mole at the restau­rant), and also in a super, SUPER hot burner so the chicken cooks almost instantly. Well, the for­mer I can prob­a­bly achieve. The lat­ter, not in my kitchen.

Boo hoo. Then last night I did a fairly good but bor­ing slivered-beef Asian dish. Avery and John scarfed it down, but I was left with the sen­sa­tion that there are some things bet­ter left to the pro­fes­sion­als: cut­ting hair, diag­nos­ing gall blad­der trou­ble, and stir-frying. Sigh. Well, we’re invited to our friend Vincent’s tonight where I am quite sure we will be given some­thing per­fect, which will make me simul­ta­ne­ously happy and envious.

This morn­ing John woke me up (never an easy thing to do) with the sim­ple ques­tion, “Guess what I just saw out­side?” I yawned, stretched and said, “A fox.” Silence. “OK, how did you know that?” he demanded. “Well, what else would you just have seen out­side that would make you inter­ested enough to tell me about it?” “Lots of things!” There have been so many reported sight­ings lately!

Can I just whinge for a moment about the only imper­fect thing about our school? Aside from the “food,” that is. Avery came home with her French home­work last night and was, as is her wont lately, doing it in the kitchen while I cooked my unspec­tac­u­lar din­ner. “Lis­ten, Mommy, it’s a verse of ‘Jin­gle Bells’ in French!” What fol­lowed was the most absurd lin­guis­tic recital ever to have been set to music, resem­bling not at all any of the words I could see writ­ten on the page. My com­plaint begins with the fact that the chil­dren were learn­ing the song by rote, had no idea what any of the words actu­ally meant, but grows with the real­iza­tion that nearly all the words were being pro­nounced wrong. All I can say in Made­moi­selle Stanway’s defense is that while they were all wrong, they were wrong in a way that actu­ally rhymed, surely not an easy feat to accom­plish. “Avery, the word for ‘path’ is not pro­nounced ‘che-mon,’ it’s ‘che-man.’ That way, it rhymes with the word for hand, ‘main,’ in the next line.” “Oh, no, Mummy, ‘main’ is pro­nounced ‘mon’ as well. See, it still rhymes!” Aaargh! Just appalling. It reminded me of the lunch party last win­ter where some­one was com­plain­ing that you can’t expect much of an accent from some­one called Made­moi­selle… STAN­WAY, and another par­ent said, “Well, it beats the Span­ish teacher, Sig­norita… O’MALLEY.” For heaven’s sake. Avery brought up the legit­i­mate point that she would have to choose between sound­ing cor­rect, and sound­ing like the other chil­dren. We decided that just this once, fit­ting in was the bet­ter part of valor.

I had rather a dis­tin­guished day yes­ter­day! My friend Susan had intro­duced me last year to a painter called Melanie Essex, American-born but liv­ing here for 10 years, mar­ried to a really won­der­ful guy called Richard and with two lit­tle girls about Avery’s age, at the fan­tas­tic Bute House school. So yes­ter­day I got dressed in my posh black “I used to own an art gallery” clothes and tod­dled off to 27 Cork Street, where Melanie was hav­ing a new show, and was giv­ing a talk about her work as well. Her own gallery, The New Grafton Gallery in Barnes, had bor­rowed the May­fair space for just a week, to give Cen­tral Lon­don­ers a chance to see these gor­geous new paint­ings. Now, nor­mally I do not grav­i­tate to paint­ing per se, pre­fer­ring work on paper. And nor­mally I don’t go for rep­re­sen­ta­tional work, either. But these paint­ings are very, very lovely, extremely accom­plished, and Melanie spoke very well about her process. Thor­oughly enjoy­able, so stop by in the next week to see them, and then have a nice jaunt to Barnes to see what else the gallery does. It’s inter­est­ing that a prime May­fair gallery space would rent itself out. Maybe some­day I should inves­ti­gate that. My anti-art atti­tude is grad­u­ally wear­ing off, you’ll notice.

After the talk, we headed off to Melanie’s favorite stomp­ing ground, The Grou­cho Club in Soho. In her foot­loose and fancy-free days before chil­dren, Melanie hung out there all the time, even stay­ing in one of their almost-secret inn rooms when between flats. There were just six of us “ladies who lunch,” and the food was lovely. I had foie gras with per­sim­min, apple and sul­tana chut­ney and brioche to start, and then roasted scal­lops with clemen­tine and a tiny bed of chived mashed pota­toes under each scal­lop. It was such fun to sit and chat about art, Lon­don, hus­bands, chil­dren, food, and just relax. It’s always amus­ing to be reminded that how­ever unique and won­der­ful one’s hus­band is, give enough women enough time to talk freely about their hus­bands and it will turn out we’re all mar­ried to the same per­son. Quirky fel­lows, men, aren’t they? Yesterday’s topic was how our hus­bands feel about money. I said that John nearly filed for divorce when he caught me using an ATM that charged a fee, and my friend Sarah said, “When my hus­band retired, I had to put my foot down and ask him to kiss me hello in the morn­ing before he ran to turn down the ther­mo­stat.” We all laughed and Melanie said, “Yes, well, when the Iraq war started, Richard wouldn’t let me buy gas at Elf or Total. They’re French-owned, you know.” “Total inter­dit,” Susan said, with that wicked, clever expres­sion she gets. We had fun.

But 3:20 found me back in mother mode at pickup, and Avery was very pleased with her test results (96 in math and 92 in Eng­lish, I believe!), so it was decided that a reward was appro­pri­ate. She is now the proud pos­ses­sor of both a gold and a sil­ver metal­lic marker. Two for one, can’t beat that. What would we do with­out Ryman, sta­tioner to the stars?

Oh, and speak­ing of stars, we saw Hermione Nor­ris hav­ing a cof­fee in the High Street com­ing home from school today! She is even bonier and scarier in real life than she is on “Spooks”! But I do love a celebrity glimpse.

But the real news was Avery’s field trip today, if you can call such an exalted place a “field.” Form V was invited, along with some 600 other lit­tle school chil­dren, to sing at the Christ­in­gle Ser­vice at West­min­ster Abbey this morn­ing! What a thrill. Becky and I hung around school for our usual read-aloud with the lit­tle gulls, and then met up for cof­fee to kill time before the coach left, with our friends Angela and Amy, whose Form II gulls were also hav­ing a field trip. “Oh, where are you all going?” I asked. Silence. Finally Angela said, “Wait­rose.” “You mean the GRO­CERY STORE? We’re going to West­min­ster Abbey and you’re going to WAIT­ROSE?” “Don’t rub it in.” The coach came and all the gulls got on, look­ing very spruced-up. I just love that an above-ground trip from school to the Abbey is like a free tour bus ride! With the added attrac­tion of over-excited scream­ing children’s voices, that is. Every once in awhile the shrill­ness led even patient Miss Leslie or Miss Clarke to shush them, as we passed Buck­ing­ham Palace, Trafal­gar Square, Big Ben, the Houses of Par­lia­ment. Gor­geous. They were hushed upon enter­ing the church, how­ever, and through­out all the hymns, read­ings, and finally the cer­e­mony of being each given an orange, sym­bol­iz­ing the world, tied with a red rib­bon sym­bol­iz­ing Christ’s blood, and tooth­picks strung with candy, sym­bol­iz­ing children’s love for… candy! Then too there was a can­dle, rep­re­sent­ing the light of the world, each of which were lit, and the chil­dren all stood in a cir­cle around the nave of the Abbey, and sang. It was just lovely. Will Avery remem­ber things like this? More likely her mem­o­ries will be of ponies. Which reminds me, it’s time for riding…

I hope my dad can feel all the birth­day wishes from across the Pond! And do you know the only other per­son whose birth­day has been used as a post title? The Queen. So there you go.

This is, of course, Indiana’s own Sen­a­tor Lugar, and he’s patron of my father’s favorite, I think it’s safe to say, char­ity, Glean­ers Food Bank. There are sev­eral loca­tions, but we just donated to the Indi­anapo­lis branch, in honor of my dad for his birth­day. Isn’t it impos­si­ble to think of some­thing to give a father, espe­cially a non-materialistic one like my dad? He doesn’t care what he wears (unless it’s a red sweat­shirt with a v-neck from one of his children’s col­leges, or home­towns), and he’d just as soon go to the library as get a book as a gift. He’s got every tool in the world already, and about three thou­sand framed pho­tographs of both his grand­daugh­ters (not that that stops Jill or me giv­ing him more). No, what my dad likes best is to have given to some­body else, so we did. You might think of a sim­i­lar thing for your dad, this Christ­mas. Unless he really and truly likes get­ting neckties.

Let’s see, what else is going on, other than recov­er­ing from Thanks­giv­ing? Well, I had a truly crummy fic­tion class yes­ter­day, I have to say! I just don’t think my writ­ing is going well. There weren’t many com­ments, and I must say I am not think­ing that writ­ing a novel is going to hap­pen for me. John warns me that my class­mates might not fit the pro­file of the read­ers my style would appeal to (more seri­ous than I am, for sure, and grit­tier), so per­haps that is true. I was forced to call my mommy and daddy on my way home from class, for some parental sup­port (this takes the form of unqual­i­fied praise and approval, just in case your kid calls you for “parental sup­port”). I might email my mother my first chap­ter and see what she thinks, because it’s really the sort of book that she and I would read: light fic­tion, with a mys­tery thrown in. But I didn’t enjoy my class, and I really won­der some­times, why do I put myself through these things? Pay good money to be under pres­sure to pro­duce some­thing that doesn’t feel very suc­cess­ful, and have to read it out loud in front of how­ever many semi-professionals. It cer­tainly isn’t the professor’s fault; he’s as help­ful as he can be. Well, only two more weeks to go.

In the mean­time, Christ­mas is begin­ning to rear its excit­ing head. My friend Susan says we can get a tree at “Home­base,” a sort of Home Depot from what I can glean. And then I must bring all the boxes up from the lit­tle stor­age room down­stairs, all the boxes labeled “Christ­mas orna­ments,” with stick­ers from the movers say­ing “FRAG­ILE,” and “BY SEA.” What rel­a­tively awful mem­o­ries, from a year ago! Pre­tend­ing to have Christ­mas in Con­necti­cut while in real­ity get­ting ready to move, move, move. This year we can relax.

Well, I am off to try to repli­cate the fan­tas­tic “dry-fried” Man­darin chicken we had out on Fri­day night. Any­thing that doesn’t con­tain tra­di­tional North Amer­i­can fla­vors! Those can wait till Christ­mas din­ner. I’ll put my George Win­ston sea­sonal piano music on in the back­ground, while John obsesses over a house (yep, it’s the one in the pic­ture) in Fitzroy Square that he is des­per­ate to buy, and Avery mem­o­rizes “Jin­gle Bells” in French. A peace­ful evening ahead, all in all.

Well, our first Thanks­giv­ing in Lon­don, as par­ents, has come and gone. I really did want the lit­tle scrap to have as much fun as pos­si­ble, given her feel­ings about being away for Christ­mas and how hol­i­days are meant to be spent at “home.” So the most home­like thing seemed to be to have peo­ple over! It was per­fect, I must say, except that I think we all ate much more than we have ever eaten before. Ooof. Nobody even made a stab at dessert! Except for the chil­dren, who have the good sense to stop eat­ing when they’re not hun­gry any­more, unlike we adults who just kept on fill­ing our plates.

I raced home from my screen­writ­ing class to find Mr Turkey much closer to being done than I had expected, look­ing golden and lus­cious on his bed of fresh sage and rose­mary. So I did a sort of novel thing, with the twofold pur­pose of free­ing up the oven and keep­ing him warm: I put the whole roast­ing tray on the burn­ers of the hob and turned all four of them on really low. The liq­uid that was even­tu­ally to pro­duce the most deli­cious gravy I have ever had (sorry, can’t sum­mon up any false mod­esty) bub­bled sweetly away while I peeled mas­sive amounts of pota­toes. I used up all three vari­eties I’ve been exper­i­ment­ing with: King Edward (rather a for­get­table, white potato, suit­able, as they say, for mash­ing), Lady Bal­four, and Nicola, which are both sweet and yel­low, and waxy. As they boiled, I lis­tened to a voice mail from Becky say­ing she wasn’t sure if I had wanted her to bring her green bean dish, and if not, what green veg­etable would we have? I pan­icked for a moment, real­iz­ing I prob­a­bly wouldn’t reach her in time, and then remem­bered John had bought a bag of brus­sels sprouts. Not, as my favorite culi­nary mys­tery author Kather­ine Hall Page would say, nor­mally a veg­etable to make peo­ple stand up and cheer, but I felt sure I could rem­edy that. (And use them before John could make me drink them for lunch, I have to admit.) So here’s what you do (peo­ple did stand up and cheer, pretty much):

Brus­sels sprouts with Pinenuts (aka “Good Brus­sels sprouts”)
(serves 12 if you have seven other side dishes!)

2 tbsps wal­nut oil
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 pound Brus­sels sprouts (in Eng­land you can get them on the stalk, lovely)
3 cloves gar­lic, finely minced
1 tsp soy sauce
juice of 1 lime
1/2 cup toasted pinenuts
salt to taste

Pre­pare your sprouts by cut­ting off the bot­tom of each, and pulling off any leaves that look dam­aged. Then shred them by cut­ting each into four length­wise slices. Throw them in the skil­let with every­thing else, and saute over super-low heat until they get a bit caramel-y. Of course you can turn them off and tend to other things, like mash­ing your pota­toes with copi­ous amounts of cream and but­ter, and then turn them back on to heat up at the last minute.

Lovely.

Peo­ple began arriv­ing as John lit the can­dles and Avery changed out of her rid­ing gear (although you can see the gor­geous birth­day gift from our Con­necti­cut friends Anne and David, on her dress: tiny pewter rid­ing boots!). Becky and I looked at the kitchen table where I’d thought we could fill our plates, buf­fet style. “Where on earth are we going to put every­thing?” she asked in alarm. She had brought two kinds of sweet pota­toes, one topped with brown sugar and wal­nuts, and the other with… marsh­mal­lows! To feel truly Amer­i­can. Claus and Susan arrived with Sophia, and imme­di­ately the girls clos­eted them­selves to prac­tice their bless­ing song. So hard to believe that these girls could ever be any­thing but angelic, but chil­dren are noth­ing if not inher­ently unpre­dictable, I reflected, as mem­o­ries of last spring floated through my mind. Got to stay on our toes. But Thanks­giv­ing brought out the best in them, and aren’t they moments to dwell on? Dar­ling, gen­tle, dreamy Anna, dra­matic and beau­ti­ful Sophia, and Avery, how did she ever get included in such august com­pany? I felt incred­i­bly lucky to have, not even a year after mov­ing, such heart­warm­ing friends and their chil­dren. They sang “We Gather Together,” in their lit­tle Eng­lish girls’ school accents, and I think even super-sophisticated Ash­ley and lit­tle Eleanor were impressed.

We raised our glasses of cham­pagne, gin­ger ale, Pimms # 3, Win­ter, and toasted the girls on their beau­ti­ful song, and tucked into food!

I’m headed out to din­ner with John at the Man­darin Kitchen, so must tell you more about the din­ner later, includ­ing a cou­ple more recipes. I can’t believe I’m hun­gry. Avery’s spend­ing the night with Anna, and I think Becky is in for an early night for those two: between Thanks­giv­ing (Mrs D reported today that all the Amer­i­can chil­dren were trashed!) and run­ning in Regent’s Park at gym (“Mummy, it’s child abuse! It really is,” was Avery’s com­ment), they will be down for the count pretty soon.

Finally! The real thing is here, not a crazy Eng­lish use of the word that flum­moxes all expat Amer­i­cans. It’s time for fig­ur­ing out how to make the body of the paper turkey for the cen­ter­piece (although I’m groov­ing to my fruit and veg bits here), it’s time to gather leaves from the gar­den and let them dry so they can be scat­tered here and there to please the kit­ties, it’s time to pro­duce mam­moth amounts of food for Anna’s fam­ily, plus Sophia’s fam­ily, who will be com­ing tomor­row. So I slept in this morn­ing while John took Avery to school (gee, it’s pleas­ant hav­ing two adults in the fam­ily, at home!), to gather strength for cook­ing all day today. That’s just about my favorite way to spend the day, in advance of a party: in the kitchen, singing away to the new “West­life” album, I’m ashamed to say. Their cover of Bette Midler’s “The Rose” is to die for!

What a dif­fer­ence a year makes. Last Thanks­giv­ing we were hap­pily hun­ker­ing down at our farm­house in Con­necti­cut, with the Sad­offs and the three Js, all of us mak­ing over Baby Jane, not the least David from across the road, since Anne had gone off to spend the hol­i­day with her mother Con­stance, daugh­ter of Gladys Taber, the great Martha Stew­art of the 1940s. Con­stance is also the author of two of our family’s absolute top 10 books: “A Skunk in the House,” and “The View from Morn­ing­side.” They each give the nicest pos­si­ble vision of a New York City child­hood in the 1970s. Any­way, with no sig­nif­i­cant other, David came over to us for Thanks­giv­ing. I am always flat­tered when he comes over, espe­cially on his own, because I sus­pect him of choos­ing his friends very care­fully and pre­fer­ring often to be on his own. And prob­a­bly he should have been work­ing on his new book, given the enor­mous suc­cess of his first book, “Crashout,” about a break­out at Sing-Sing prison where his fam­ily has a tra­di­tion of being guards! Fas­ci­nat­ing, believe me. But he came, and had my exper­i­men­tal brined turkey, which was such a hit that we’re repeat­ing it this year. I remem­ber our first Thanks­giv­ing in Lon­don the last time around, gosh it must have been 1990, and I paid some astro­nom­i­cal sum for an organic turkey from the butcher in Ful­ham Road, only to find that it was… rather pur­ple, had almost no breast, and in gen­eral bore no resem­blance to the top-heavy Amer­i­can mon­ster that we had all come to know and love. Some things don’t need improv­ing on, in my crass opin­ion. So this year Becky and I con­ferred and found that we heartily agreed with one another on this point, and a nice overfed unnat­u­rally busty Mr Turkey is resid­ing in his salty, herby bath, out­side my bed­room door. The school librar­ian yes­ter­day alerted me to the very real pos­si­bil­ity of a fox in our gar­den, so the lid is, when our bird is not sub­mit­ting to a photo shoot, firmly anchored with a flower pot.

It was a morn­ing of good smells. Why does cel­ery always make me think of my Aunt Mary Wayne? I think it must be because we always spent Thanks­giv­ing with them when I was a lit­tle girl, in their per­fect home in Louisville, Ken­tucky, sur­rounded by my Uncle Kenny’s Civil War mem­o­ra­bilia (and the very real pos­si­bil­ity that he was on The Other Side than we Yan­kees from up North). When else do you really have cel­ery sticks on the table? I never do. But at Thanks­giv­ing, yes, my Aunt Mary Wayne would have a dish of them, and car­rots and pos­si­bly radishes, to sprin­kle with salt and munch on when you were about to eat your sister’s arm off, the turkey smelled so good. This was at the point of the hol­i­day when we were glad to be out of the car, our par­ents say­ing to one another in annoy­ance, “That was the exit! Or is it the next one? We do this every year…” So this morn­ing my cel­ery made me home­sick. Then I brushed away my onion-and-sentiment tears and started chop­ping briskly for a Thanks­giv­ing dress­ing of my own design, loosely inspired by Lau­rie Col­win:

Sage and Sausage Dress­ing
(serves the masses, or maybe 10)

2 loaves of sim­ple white (unsliced) bread, Ital­ian maybe?
1/2 stick but­ter
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 white onion, minced
4 stalks cel­ery, chopped
8 medium mush­rooms, chopped
12 leaves fresh sage, chopped
1 pound sausage (I used pork and leek), out of cas­ings
1 cup cream
chicken stock (at least 2 cups, but depends on bread amounts)
2 eggs, whisked

If you pos­si­bly can, TWO nights before you want to eat it, tear the insides of the bread into lit­tle bite-size pieces. Feed the ducks with the crusts. Leave to get stale, toss­ing now and then. It is absolutely essen­tial to do this at least the day before. I tried once the day of, and the bread was too moist (hate that word) to absorb fla­vors prop­erly and it was a bust. So two days at best, one at least.

The day BEFORE, if you can (the fla­vors are so much bet­ter if they can rest together overnight), make the dress­ing. Saute the gar­lic, onion, cel­ery, mush­rooms and sage in the but­ter. Mean­while, saute the sausage, tak­ing care to break it up as much as pos­si­ble so it’s in small bites. Now, pour the veg­etable mix­ture and the sausage onto the bread, add the cream and at least two cups of stock plus the eggs, and begin mix­ing. Add more stock as you need it. The mix­ture should be wet, but not seep­ing liquid.

Pat into a nonstick-sprayed 9 x 13 pan, and leave overnight in the fridge. Pat on some but­ter bits over the sur­face and bake just before serv­ing, 45 min­utes at 375 degrees.

OK, I cooked too much today! The dress­ing, for which I had to make fresh chicken stock from a nice pot of bones I had, plus the jalapeno-cheese spinach casse­role I shall tell you about tomor­row, and crazy juices for lunch, and then fresh tomato sauce with ricotta and sausage for din­ner (on far­falle), plus a beet and avo­cado salad! Of course, I think I worked it all off (lots of tast­ing, of course) ice-skating out­side the Nat­ural His­tory Museum with Avery and John, plus Sophia and Susan! It was pour­ing down rain, so some­what a non-ideal cir­cum­stance, but still great fun, even more so than it was when Avery and I first arrived, last win­ter. Plus at the Christ­mas Fair there I acquired a cou­ple of wreaths, in lotus root and a small white blos­somy berry, from Jacky Weaver-Pronk, in Stansted, Mount­fitchet, Essex (one of those addresses I adore), and a Christ­mas present that shall go unde­scribed because some­one who reads this is the recip­i­ent, but here’s the creator’s web­site. We zoomed Susan and Sophia home, crammed into Emmy, and then came home across the Park, golden leaves blow­ing every which way in the dark, across the wind­screen and into the car, with her top down. Glorious.

I shall go col­lapse with a lovely Cal­va­dos and a book. Avery is deep into a story about a stal­lion for a book­store com­pe­ti­tion, so per­haps a bit of a read of that would do. Happy Thanks­giv­ing! I wouldn’t trade being an Eng­lish per­son, much as I am an anglophile, and for all that some of them have pretty cool lives. Maybe on Fri­day. But not on Thanksgiving.

Despite the glory of our autumn gar­den, where bright yel­low leaves float past our win­dow and drive the cats crazy (“I can get through this glass, I know I can!”), I am a bit gloomy. Not to say down­cast. And it really isn’t fair to John.

You see, he kindly took me all the way to Not­ting Hill today to see a show at a gallery that our friend Vin­cent had taken him to, when they had lunch at the trendy Ottolenghi last week. John came burst­ing into my study when he got back from show, say­ing, “It’s all stuff you would have shown at your gallery. Text, parts of books, obses­sive and repet­i­tive. You would love it.” So this after­noon, to avoid the clean­ing lady and stave off the sleepi­ness that accom­pa­nies Mon­days, we jumped in Emmy and headed up north, to Eng­land & Co., a sim­ple, white cube (sorry, Jay Jopling) of a gallery in West­bourne Grove, sort of the high street of Not­ting Hill. Of course, ever since the film, the neigh­bor­hood has been over­run with an equal num­ber of a) cool peo­ple, and b) peo­ple look­ing for cool peo­ple. OK, OK, I saw Jodie Kidd in Fresh and Wild. But I wasn’t look­ing for her. Any­way, we opened the enor­mous glass door of the gallery and went in, and I was taken over by a grad­ual, invid­i­ous sort of ache in the pit of my stom­ach that, ana­lyzed, turned out to be one part nos­tal­gia, one part envy, and one part shame. How could I not have made my gallery work? I had, if I do say so myself, a great eye, a ready pen, a gre­gar­i­ous sort of will­ing­ness to talk to any­body who came in, and a sur­pris­ingly good sales pat­ter. What hap­pened? How did my lit­tle tod­dler gallery not make it to its third birth­day intact? I’ll tell you how. Eight thou­sand dol­lars a month in rent.

Still, it didn’t seem right. I have been so intent on not think­ing about it, plus frankly pretty freakin’ busy, that I have not prop­erly put the mat­ter to rest. I loved it. When it was good, it was so good. Like when I sold the Miriam Schapiro paint­ing to Steve Wynn, or the Sarah Webb sculp­ture to Edward Albee, or the David Hen­der­son and the Scott Reeds, and the Fran Siegel, all in one day to Howard Lut­nick. But prob­a­bly even more emblem­atic of the gallery and the fun we had were all the sales of Makoto Fujimura paint­ings to my dear upstairs neigh­bor Mered­ith. Every time she had some­thing to cel­e­brate, she bought a paint­ing, but even more impor­tant, she told me that the paint­ings were there to com­fort her when her hus­band died.

There was the fun of get­ting reviews, and the theft of the Lisa Capone sculp­ture that Avery and I tracked down and sent the police to get back for us! And all the open­ings. Michael Myers man­aged to bring the entire cast of “The Sopra­nos” to his! And it was always such fun to open the door in the morn­ings and walk in and feel that it was all MINE. My project, my busi­ness, the place in the neigh­bor­hood where every­body came to exchange gos­sip, worry that the war in Iraq would start, com­mis­er­ate on play­dates gone wrong, walk around the show and say what was the favorite piece, look up and won­der if the per­son who just walked in was the reviewer for the Times, or Art in Amer­ica. And all the lunches out with Milt Esterow, the head of Art in Amer­ica, where he vir­tu­ally pat­ted me on the head and said, “Don’t let the bul­lies get you down.” And the fun of hav­ing my assis­tant phys­i­cally sit me down, answer the phone and deal with all the vis­i­tors, for that one hour a month when I sim­ply had to pro­duce 500 words of wis­dom to describe the upcom­ing show. And Erin, my part­ner in crime, rub­bing her hands together when a par­tic­u­larly hot sale went through, say­ing, “We’re cook­ing with gas!” And Avery and her lit­tle friends climb­ing the lad­der to sit in the lit­tle car­peted attic on top of the bath­room. “Is that a proper ceil­ing, or could they come tum­bling down into the sink?” some­one asked once, and we never really knew the answer.

And the dis­as­ters! The $125,000 paint­ing that arrived from the artist’s stu­dio cov­ered in toxic black mold: with the poten­tial buyer arriv­ing in three days to see it. Best of all was the peo­ple: all the bril­liant artists, the happy buy­ers, the acer­bic review­ers, the wanna-be artists (one of whom, never to be for­got­ten, who painted with a mix­ture of her own breast milk and human ashes), and the art-school elec­tri­cians, installers, painters, car­pen­ters and assis­tants who came and went, telling their sto­ries, doing their jobs, and drift­ing out again, to turn up at an open­ing, or on a Sat­ur­day after­noon with their babies and dogs, to chat and show off where they had worked.

Ah, well, the fact remains that I was a truly chal­lenged busi­ness owner. I hated deal­ing with the insur­ance, the phone, the land­lord, the util­i­ties, the leak, the mold, the bro­ken front-door key. And one can­not run a suc­cess­ful busi­ness in New York City with one’s head stuck in one’s PhD. John and I often think that if he had quit his job then, like he has done now, we could have run the busi­ness together.

What? Didn’t I tell you? Yes, John has quit his job. I know, I know, that’s why we moved, for The Job. Except that what was dan­gled out in front of him, a really won­der­ful pro­mo­tion, was given to The Other Guy. So while all the powers-that-be at Reuters scram­bled to offer John this other job, or that other job, at the end of the day he felt it was the right time to quit. Every­one at school pickup keeps ask­ing with either anx­i­ety, dis­be­lief, or patent envy, “Are you slav­ing away to find some­thing else? Some­thing else will present itself…” and the answer is always, “No, not really.” He is what he terms a Ser­ial Quit­ter, since he left Mer­rill Lynch and stayed home for a long time when Avery was two, and then again before he went to Reuters he stayed home for nine months. He likes it! And thank­fully he can do it. So I sud­denly have not only com­pany at home, but some­one who actu­ally LIKES get­ting up at 7 in the morn­ing (or has already been up for an hour and a half), some­one who emp­ties the dish­washer, makes beds, rewires lamps and car­ries heavy gro­ceries. Of course the flip­side of all this glory, bless his heart, is that I also have some­one who lis­tens in on my phone con­ver­sa­tions and reminds me when the milk is going to go off. Well, every sil­ver lining.

Seri­ously, though, we’re hav­ing a great time. I have been instructed not to worry about any­thing, and just to enjoy hav­ing him around since it won’t last for­ever. Already head­hunters are call­ing. One day, just to rat­tle my cage, he said, “How do you feel about Day­ton?” I retorted that unless it was a little-known but very con­ve­nient sub­urb of Lon­don, I wasn’t buying.

Any­way, Not­ting Hill is adorable. I can see why movies are set there and all the A-list celebri­ties live there. Of course I can also see why prop­erty val­ues are so astro­nom­i­cal. I wouldn’t be able to shop at Fresh and Wild for very long. And the show at Eng­land & Co. really was exactly my cup of tea. It’s called “Lit­er­ary Con­structs” and fea­tures a num­ber of Eng­lish artists, promi­nent among them Chris Kenny, who takes snip­pets of “found” text and recon­structs sto­ries out of them, pin­ning them to a piece of paper so the shad­ows form as much of the piece as the text itself. Sim­ply gor­geous. One of the best pieces was all phrases to do with food, and I would have bought it instantly, but it was sold already, darn. Phrases like “an insuf­fi­cient quan­tity of cod” and “choco­lately essence of child­hood,” or some­thing like that, stood out. Witty and clever, but also visu­ally very spare and aus­tere. Loved it. I had a nice talk with the owner, Jane Eng­land, about my expe­ri­ences, the cut­throat New York art world, the pres­sures of run­ning a gallery. She summed up her job in one phrase: “It’s relent­less.” How well I remem­ber it.

Fresh and Wild was offer­ing sam­ples of fresh gua­camole, which inspired me to come home and try to make it myself. You know me: if it’s edi­ble and con­tains an avo­cado, I will eat it. It turned out really well.

Gua­camole

1 large, per­fectly ripe Hass avo­cado
3 tbsps sour cream
juice of 1 lime
pinch of cayenne pep­per
1 tbsp chopped cilantro
3 tbsps finely chopped red onion
salt and pep­per to taste

Mix all the ingre­di­ents in a bowl and either eat it right away, or cover it with cling­film that touches the sur­face, so it does not brown. With this I had some slightly stale cia­batta from yes­ter­day, a lit­tle pile of red pep­per bites, and another lit­tle pile of halved baby toma­toes. A bite of each, all at the same time, was heaven. I think next time I would mix the pep­pers in, but keep the toma­toes sep­a­rate since I didn’t want tomato juice in the gua­camole. I won­der how it would be with chick­peas added? Per­haps it’s best not to cross the great guacamole-hummous divide. Let them stand on their indi­vid­ual merits.

Avery’s come home with a cer­tifi­cate pro­claim­ing that she had won the Gold Level of the Pri­mary Math­e­mat­ics Chal­lenge. Now, you’d think she’d be excited, even proud. But no. Sat­ur­day morn­ing my phone rings and it’s Grace’s mother Janine. “Con­grat­u­la­tions to your lit­tle girl, Kris­ten. Well done on the maths chal­lenge, Gold Level indeed!” “Uh, what do you mean?” “Well, it’s in the Fri­day newslet­ter!” Which Avery did not even show me. Queried on this point, she heaved a sort of pre-adolescent sigh and said, “It’s not real gold. It’s just card­board.” Oh dear, the need for bling starts young.

I know, there’s noth­ing worse than a new con­vert to ANY­THING. I don’t care if it’s reli­gion, or Pilates, or the World Cup, or in our case, The World of Juic­ing. Con­verts are annoy­ing. So I promise to write only one post about our new addic­tion, and you can just pic­ture us the rest of the time, I’m not say­ing a word about it tomor­row, but you’ll know we’re… juicing.

First of all, no one can just con­vert. One must be con­verted. In my case it was my tea at the Wolse­ley with my friend Twiggy, who is so charm­ing and appeal­ing that any­thing she’s addicted to becomes, very shortly, extremely attrac­tive to other peo­ple. This includes her hus­band Ed, who I met once in New York as a coworker of John’s at Reuters. He was lovely, friendly, intel­li­gent. But it took meet­ing him again in Twiggy’s pres­ence to see him as the absolutely full-stop Eng­lish charmer that he is. Why? Because Twiggy was there to pro­vide the light in which he could prop­erly shine. Now, odd as it may seem, she had the same effect on the notion of juic­ing. I’m not a juic­ing vir­gin by any means. Many after­noons find me at the organic shop in Moxon Street on the way to school pickup, car­ry­ing away a nice pear-apple-ginger-beetroot juice. But I was always happy to leave the actual process to oth­ers. In fact, I con­fess to going to that shop partly just to make con­tact with the Juice Boy, strung about in macrame bracelets and neck­laces, wear­ing a t-shirt that said “Acai rocks,”, arm mus­cles rip­pling as he han­dled his cel­ery and pur­ple kale. I’ll have to find some­thing else like organic quinoa that I can’t live with­out, so I can hear how it’s going with his attempts to dye his own fab­rics with the pulp he takes home. I’m not mak­ing that up.

But I am dis­tract­ing myself from the point. Which is, we are the proud own­ers of a Cham­pion 2000+ Juicer, and it turns out there’s just about noth­ing that doesn’t give enough juice for us to try it. Hav­ing never tried to get blood from a turnip, I’m not going to put a stone from the gar­den through my Cham­pion just to see if it’s got what it takes, but we’re close. We came home from the farmer’s mar­ket (odd blogger’s note: be patient with this par­tic­u­lar link: you have to read through some really quite good sto­ries to get to the farmer’s mar­ket, but I hope it’s worth the trou­ble, or you can just cru­elly scroll down) laden with things that we reck­oned had accept­able liq­uid con­tent, and John is sit­ting with a beetroot-carrot-ginger-kale drink, while I opted for the sweeter choice and had beetroot-orange-pear-strawberry. I know we’ll get tired of it, but so far it is really strangely enter­tain­ing. We made some Bram­ley apple juice for Avery, but last week she objected to the bub­bles on top. Hmm, qual­ity con­trol to the res­cue. I’m sure my 129-page “Instruc­tion and Recipe Book­let” will help.

Con­tin­u­ing with the “foods you can get through a straw” theme, I also came away from the mar­ket with some raw milk from the Guernsey cows at Hur­dle­brook Farm. Once you’ve had it, you wish you never had to go back to the nasty homogenised, pas­teurised stuff you live on day in and day out. The cream actu­ally rises to the top like cows used to make it. And the fla­vor? It has actual taste, not just like white water. I remem­ber we got some at the Food Fes­ti­val of the Royal Wind­sor Horse Show last year, yum yum.

Before you get scared, though, that din­ner here next time you come will be in a glass and not on a plate, I also bought some organic mince beef from Perry Court Farm in Can­ter­bury, which along with some onions, cel­ery, car­rots, white wine and toma­toes will become Bolog­nese sauce tonight. So all is not lost. You can still count on chew­ing when you’re at my house. But guard that bou­quet of roses and lilies you brought: I’ve heard they’re really… juicy.

Bolog­nese (won­der how it would taste put through the juicer?)
(serves 4 easily)

2 tbsps but­ter
1 tbsp olive oil
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 medium onion, minced
3 stalks cel­ery, diced
2 medium car­rots, diced
2/3 cup white wine
2/3 cup whole milk
2 soup-size cans (400 grams) whole toma­toes
1/2 tbsp ground nut­meg
1/4 cup grated parme­san cheese

So, melt your but­ter and olive oil together in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add gar­lic, onion, cel­ery and car­rots and sweat till onions are translu­cent. Here’s a trick for OCD peo­ple dic­ing car­rots: you slice the car­rot in half length­wise, then lay it on its flat sides and slice each of the halves length­wise three times, then line those babies up and just slide your knife right down those lit­tle sticks. It’s so sat­is­fy­ing: the bits are almost exactly the same size, and by lay­ing the car­rot halves flat they don’t roll around.

When the veg­eta­bles are soft, add the beef and stir con­stantly until it is bro­ken up into a nice mince. Don’t over­cook, though. Add white wine and sim­mer until most of the liq­uid is absorbed, then add milk and let it absorb as well, stir­ring occa­sion­ally. Add toma­toes and break them up with your spoon, then add nut­meg and parme­san and turn the heat down. This can con­tinue to cook for as long or as short as you like, but no less than half an hour. The longer the bet­ter, and it will be bet­ter the next day if you have any left. And if you have a lot left, or you made a dou­ble batch, you can have:

Cot­tage Pie (or Shepherd’s Pie if you used lamb)
(serves six at least if you use a whole batch of Bolognese)

left­over Bolog­nese
4 medium pota­toes (my favorite this week is the Nicola), peeled and quar­tered
1 tsp salt
1 cup light cream
1/2 stick but­ter
1/2 cup grated parme­san cheese

Cover your pota­toes with water and add the salt, then bring to the boil and let cook for half an hour. Mash well with cream and but­ter. Set aside.

Spray a 9 x 13 glass dish with non­stick cook­ing spray. Then spread the Bolog­nese out evenly, and cover with mashed pota­toes. Sprin­kle with cheese and bake at 400 degrees for about a half an hour, or until bub­bly and slightly browned on top. Serve with a good baguette for mop­ping up juices, plus a really good salad to salve your conscience:

Really Good Salad

1 large bunch water­cress, washed thor­oughly and spun
1 large bunch baby rocket (also called arugula)
1 large bunch spinach
1 large bunch lamb’s let­tuce (also called mache)
a dozen tiny heir­loom toma­toes, halved

dress­ing:

1 cup olive oil
1/3 cup bal­samic vine­gar
1 tbsp dijon mus­tard
1 clove gar­lic, minced extremely fine
hand­ful curly pars­ley, finely chopped
juice of half lemon
1 lit­tle hot red pep­per, finely minced
1/2 tsp dried oregano, thyme or mar­jo­ram (or a bit less if fresh)
pinch salt

Mix all these ingre­di­ents together and set aside. Toss let­tuce leaves together and throw toma­toes on top. Just before serv­ing, pour as much dress­ing as you would like, but not to soak­ing point. Save the rest for tomor­row night.

Good­ness, it smells good in this house.

Today I breached a hunor­mous bar­rier: I con­fessed to my fel­low stu­dents at Citylit that I have been writ­ing a blog. Here’s my logic: they are all really impres­sive writ­ers, sym­pa­thetic but crit­i­cal lis­ten­ers and vora­cious read­ers. What bet­ter peo­ple to have read­ing my fledg­ling efforts? Nev­er­the­less I am a bit ner­vous. I have had such a reward­ing expe­ri­ence with all three classes I’ve taken there: my act­ing class, how­ever nutty they could be at times, and the won­der­ful Pip Mayo who taught it, and my screen­writ­ing class, whose teacher I have to con­fess is less forth­com­ing than the other stu­dents, and now my fic­tion class, the best of all so far. I plan to spend the rest of my days in Lon­don tak­ing one course after another, get­ting bet­ter, one hopes, at what­ever it is I am meant to be doing here. I have to say that so far, chron­i­cling what’s been hap­pen­ing has been almost as much fun as doing it.

By the way, this image is of a work of art by Mal­i­heh Afnan, a Palestinian-born artist, whose work, to me, invokes text, and the his­tory of set­ting down words. Pow­er­ful, no? How we strug­gle with words.

How long has it been, really? Since we had din­ner out, the two of us? That’s a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion to which the unnec­es­sary answer is, “too long.” Almost as long as it’s been since I had a non-foody post. And so unex­pected, which is almost the beauty of it. I feel as if all I’ve been doing lately is cook­ing, and writ­ing about cook­ing, so when Avery had an impromptu invi­ta­tion to play after skat­ing yes­ter­day, it was but the work of a moment to say yes, fling her into Becky’s arms and make plans for din­ner OUT.

But first, I must tell you about the may­hem at the skat­ing rink. There we were, two inno­cent mums with Becky’s three girls and my one, and sud­denly there’s a film crew on the ice. Avery was trans­fixed, cer­tain that this was her moment to shine and start the ball rolling on her film career. But it turns out they were film­ing a very lame cou­ple for a tele­vi­sion show called “Date My Mom,” a cul­tural (and I use the term loosely) phe­nom­e­non of which I had been hereto­fore unaware. The con­cept is that a series of young men date the mother of an eli­gi­ble girl, and then the mother chooses the man she should end up with. I tried and failed to pic­ture my own mother tak­ing part in this merriment.

Around and around skated this ordinary-looking woman of moth­erly pro­por­tions and a dif­fi­dent demeanor, with her escort whose teeth could light up a tube sta­tion, and some unsightly bling around his neck. Avery skated strateget­i­cally close to them, hop­ing to be included in some shot. Before long, how­ever, the woman had fallen down, and in the time it took for us to pay atten­tion, it was clear that she was truly injured. Ankle, some­thing down low. Becky said, “Is it just me, or would the first thing you’d do be to get her to stop sit­ting down on the ice, where her bum will shortly lose all feel­ing?” Fully eight or ten strap­ping young men came and went, hov­er­ing over her, offer­ing this sweater, that blan­ket, but no one offered to get her off the ice. At one point an offi­cial from Queensway Skat­ing Rink loomed over her, hold­ing a clip­board, onto which sur­face he took some notes. Prob­a­bly along the lines of, “Noth­ing that hap­pened here was anyone’s fault who can be named.” Young Lochin­var who was, pre­sum­ably, the “date,” spent a lot of time on his mobile phone, then bend­ing down to speak to the “mom”, and reveal­ing parts of his anatomy that no one wanted to see. Won­der­ing if he’d still be able to shag the girl if her mother died on the ice, one presumes.

Finally the vic­tim was taken away on a stretcher, but the pas­sage of time led both Becky and me to pon­der our girls’ chances should some­thing of a more, say, bloody nature hap­pen to one of them. They could eas­ily bleed to death while the rink offi­cials shut off the pizza machine and found the clip­board. Ah, well, all ended hap­pily. Or at least we left, which was happy for me.

Avery went off with Becky and her girls, and I walked in to find John who hap­pily said, “The pork chops look great, so I thought we could cook together, and be really cozy!” Pause. “Or not.” “Not,” I said, and we decided instantly to go to Deya, the nearby and com­pletely deli­cious sort of fusion Indian. Except that all it’s fus­ing with is light­ness and good taste, so I guess it’s nou­velle Indian. An amuse-guele of coconut cream of mush­room soup, in a tiny espresso cup, with a tempura-ish morsel of cau­li­flower sus­pended from a tooth­pick atop it. Com­pletely per­fect. Lis­ten, I must run watch the last bits of “Tom’s Mid­night Gar­den” with Avery before she curls up with her hot water bot­tle and a book, so more on the menu later…

Well, I signed up for “Blog­ger Beta,” and we shall see if every­one thinks it’s a huge improve­ment, or an unno­tice­able yawn. I’ll have to pub­lish this first before I can tell.

What do you do for din­ner when you have spent all day hard at work at your screen­writ­ing class, and then all the early evening shiv­er­ing at the Christ­mas lights cer­e­mony in the high street (and see­ing your child’s prize-winning draw­ing dis­played at Thomp­sons Gallery!), and your entire fam­ily is com­pletely starv­ing? You go to Marks & Spencer, look furtively around to see if any­one who knows you is stand­ing nearby, and you pick up a pack­age of Crispy Aro­matic Duck. It is one of my absolute favorite meals in Chi­nese restau­rants and while I have been known to saute a duck breast, I have not in many, many years been brave enough to deal with an entire duck. They pro­duce so much fat that they have to be drained, and then drained and drained again, and I live in fear that in tak­ing the roast­ing pan out of the oven I will tip all the remain­ing fat onto the door and it will go up in flames. Doubt­less this is an over­re­ac­tion, and I always feel such a pang at the guilty plea­sure of pre­pared food that quite soon I will feel com­pelled to make Crispy Duck at home. This has hap­pened with such basic items as but­ter, may­on­naise and salad dress­ing. Once I make them for myself, it’s a great guilt-producer when I buy them ready-made. How­ever, last night was just not going to be a cook­ing night, so the din­ner hour found us hun­grily crouch­ing over a plate of the shred­ded, spice-laden duck, pil­ing it into the pan­cakes and top­ping it with sliv­ered green onions, sliced cucum­ber and a good dol­lop of hoisin sauce, and tuck­ing in. It all comes in the box! Com­pletely fresh and per­fect. Try it, do. You can salve your con­science by mak­ing some­thing really time-consuming like home­made fried rice, tomor­row night.

Enough about that. I have been really good this week about not only cook­ing din­ner, but using the left­overs. Tonight will be sauteed pork chops with rose­mary and lemon juice, broc­col­ini stems with olive oil, and left­over mashed pota­toes. With the gravy from my roast chicken ear­lier in the week. With Thanks­giv­ing com­ing up, I feel it is my sworn duty to remove the mys­tique, not to say the aura of mys­tery, that sur­rounds this homely condi­ment. Even my own sis­ter, no mean cook, was scared enough of mak­ing her own gravy next week to ask me for my “recipe.” I think because I learned to make it lit­er­ally stand­ing at my grandmother’s knee. I can say this about pre­cious few things because she, along with my mother, found cook­ing a heartily bor­ing chore and cer­tainly didn’t pass along recipes. But Mamoo (yep, that’s what we call her back in Indi­ana) made spec­tac­u­lar gravy, prob­a­bly because it was a Depres­sion era spe­cial­ity, a way to use up what oth­er­wise would just go down the drain. And the per­fect thing is, you have to roast a fowl to get it, so there’s your main course auto­mat­i­cally done. What makes it so won­der­ful is the blend of herbs and spices that you sprin­kle on your chicken before roast­ing. My dar­ling brother in law Joel gave me for Christ­mas the most won­der­ful gift: a col­lec­tion of spices from Pen­zeys, the peer­less spice com­pany. I have fallen in love with two blends: one called “Sand­wich Sprin­kle” and another called “French Vinai­grette Base.” And they’re announc­ing a new one called “Mural of Fla­vor,” which is salt-free (I would then be com­pelled to add a ton of salt, as I’m addicted). Any­way, for your gravy here’s what you do:

Every­day Gravy (it’s not just for Thanks­giv­ing any­more)
serves six (ish)

1 large roast­ing chicken

2 slices bacon (in Eng­land you must buy “smoked streaky rash­ers”)
1/2 tea­spoon each of: dried basil, oregano, thyme, gar­lic salt, paprika (or any sea­soned salt you like)
2 table­spoons but­ter
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup white wine
1 large onion, quar­tered
6 cloves gar­lic, whole
2 tbsps flour
good dol­lop of cream (if you insist)

Spray a large roast­ing pan with non­stick spray and place chicken breast-side up. Pour chicken stock and wine over the chicken, then sprin­kle on herbs and put the but­ter in two pats at the top of the breast. Throw the onion chunks and gar­lic cloves in around the chicken, then drape the bacon slices over the legs. Roast at 400 degrees for a min­i­mum of two hours, turn­ing the heat down toward the end if the chicken gets too brown.

About forty min­utes before you want to eat, put peeled and quar­tered pota­toes (my alle­giance is with Lady Bal­four pota­toes these days) in a pan and cover with water, then bring to the boil. Then, ten min­utes before you want to eat, take the roast­ing pan out and place a gravy sep­a­ra­tor in the sink. This is one of the very few spe­cial­ist kitchen items I believe in, nor­mally adher­ing to Lau­rie Colwin’s dis­dain for kitchen objects that serve only one pur­pose. Lift the chicken out onto a large plate, and then very care­fully pour the liq­uid into the gravy sep­a­ra­tor, leav­ing the onions and gar­lic in the pan if pos­si­ble. Put the chicken back in the pan and return to the over, tak­ing care to wipe any liq­uid from the bot­tom of the pan first. Now, you will notice that the gravy has sep­a­rated into a good stock base, and a layer of fat on the top. Very slowly, pour the gravy out the spout into a skil­let. Amaz­ingly, I have no idea how this works, the stuff at the top comes out last! How do they do that? I really should have taken high-school physics as my father often laments. Any­way, watch and stop pour­ing when you run out of good stock and the fat begins to drain out. Throw away the fat.

Now put the skil­let over medium heat and whisk in the flour. Bring to a low boil and whisk until the flour is com­pletely absorbed. Let it cook a bit, and if you find you want your gravy thicker, sim­ply add more flour. Add the cream if desired (of course in my house it is always desired).

Now you can let it sim­mer, and turn your atten­tion to the rest of the meal. Drain and mash your pota­toes with a nice hot mix­ture of but­ter and milk. Take the chicken out of the oven and let it sit a bit, while you saute your broc­coli or pep­pers, or peel your beet­root, or make your salad.

A gravy boat is a nice thing to have, as it has a lit­tle spout. But you can use a cof­fee cup with a big soup spoon, as well. I will never for­get that as a young engaged per­son, I reg­is­tered for some really expen­sive china. I don’t even remem­ber the pat­tern. Any­way, the ONLY piece I got was the gravy boat! I think it cost $450! Need­less to say I exchanged it for, basi­cally, every­thing else I needed to start a home, and got a cheap sweet lit­tle white gravy boat that I still use, now 16 years later.

Now carve the chicken, which unless you are an expert, sim­ply involves cut­ting the breasts off and slic­ing them, and remov­ing the legs if any­one likes dark meat. As for me, I eat what I call the “swings,” because when I lived in Moscow and was invited to the home of a Russ­ian diplo­mat for din­ner (this was in 1992 when no nice peo­ple in Moscow had any money, and con­se­quently very lit­tle food), the host’s wife said to me very ele­gantly, “We are hav­ing chicken tonight. I hope you can eat the swings.” I always intended to write a mem­oir of our time in Moscow and call it “Golden Domes and Chicken Swings.”

But I digress. Now you have pro­duced the per­fect com­fort meal, all the food groups accounted for, and… you can throw the chicken car­cass in a stock­pot and make soup. Mmmm.

Oh, another food blog you might like: Smit­ten Kitchen. Right now the author has a bro­ken wrist and so is focus­ing on food she can pro­duce with only one hand. Some­thing for every­one! Her style is very humor­ous and the food sounds won­der­ful, like a sausage risotto. Thanks to my mother in law for steer­ing me to these won­der­ful blogs, which unfor­tu­nately make me feel I should lay down my vir­tual pen, I get so intim­i­dated by their wit.

So what else has been going on? Becky and I went to a jew­ellery show with work by our friend Ali­son Bradley. Oh my. I wanted one of every­thing. She is bril­liant, and made us feel ter­ri­bly wel­come. At one point in our brows­ing she came over with a large plat­ter of… stuff. “Eat some! It’s dried fruit, but every­one thinks it’s pot­pourri.” Not exactly a stuffy per­son! She is Avery’s school chum Coco’s mother, Coco of the first day of school fame. Becky and I were sorely tempted, but may I say that I came away with only a gift. For some­one. Some­one who reads this blog, so I can­not say more. Then this morn­ing was the Form Five Mono­logue Pre­sen­ta­tion, with each girl recit­ing a bit of drama for us. Need­less to say, Avery could teach the drama course, so her pre­sen­ta­tion was very full of vigor and enthu­si­asm. And, hey! On the way to school John and I saw Lady Sarah Chatto, which was cool. Or rather I saw her and had to explain to John who she is. I say, what’s the point of liv­ing in Lon­don if you’re not going to get excited when you see minor mem­bers of the British royal fam­ily?

Off now to take Avery ice skat­ing. She’s up to Level Seven on her badges, now, I mean on her skills. It’s not all about the badges, of course. But they do liven up her gym kit. Have a great week­end, every­body.