Ooof, the old tree has been soundly kissed good­night and dis­posed of, with the help of our saint Porter, Lau­rie, and his saw. John has an awful cold, but rose to the occa­sion to ren­der the old tree ready to take out­side, and the con­struc­tion work­ers across the way kindly agreed to take the detri­tus. Thence I sent John to rest, while Avery and I hoovered up and swept up the gatril­lions of nee­dles from the floor in the recep­tion room, and, painfully, the car­peted foyer. Ouch. Thou­sands of them! Pricks to all exposed skin, nee­dles buried in the car­pet, kit­ties scared to death. Finally done.

Off we were to Tesco to get chicken soup ingre­di­ents (since the ambrosia vir­tu­ally cured Grandpa Jack of the cold he had while he was here), then to get Tree The Sec­ond. He’s lovely as you can see, much smaller than his ear­lier brother, but smelling divine. As much as the kit­ties jumped about the sofa chas­ing the orna­ments as I removed them from Tree the First, noth­ing was bro­ken. So we got home with the tree, I put a chicken in to roast (a bed of slightly wilt­ing fresh thyme from the weekend’s soup did not go astray) with wine and stock poured on, and onions all round, and set to work. Sev­eral hours later all was in readi­ness: tree dec­o­rated, more nee­dles hoovered up, chicken roasted nicely and here’s a thought: sep­a­rate the whole breast for sand­wiches, and put the legs and rib bones straight into a pot for soup. I added sev­eral car­rots and a cou­ple of stalks of cel­ery, and John had a very nice bowl of restora­tive soup to help him mend. Mean­while, the tree looks and smells lovely. I am BEAT! But here’s a great and festive-looking side dish that cooks itself, along with your chicken:

Oven-roasted toma­toes with a kick

1 dozen small toma­toes on the vine
olive oil to driz­zle
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 red chili pep­per, minced
1 tbsp rose­mary, minced
sea salt to sprinkle

Sim­ply halve the toma­toes and lay in a glass dish, nonstick-sprayed of course. Then driz­zle on olive oil, sprin­kle on the glo­ri­ous Christmas-colored gar­lic, pep­per and rose­mary, sprin­kle on salt, and roast with chicken, for at least an hour and a half. The toma­toes will be wrinkly and soft, per­fect to pile on a sand­wich of sliced chicken breast, ched­dar cheese, red onion and mayo. Now we’re col­laps­ing and let­ting Avery read to us. What a dear girl.

But first, did you ever see such a Christ­mas present? John’s mom, over the fall months, asked me for one of Avery’s school uni­forms, and cre­ated this: the first known Amer­i­can Girl doll to attend our school! I am absolutely con­vinced that she could take all of Lon­don by storm if she made dresses for all the lit­tle girls’ schools in town. Except that, from her descrip­tion, these are not items to churn out. I think she slaved for weeks! What a touch­ing and per­fect gift. Two of them, so Avery and a friend can each dress up a doll and play. Thank you, Nonna.

As for my post title, well, per­haps not in that order, but that’s what’s been hap­pen­ing around here in these last fran­tic days before The Big Day. Yes­ter­day, on her way to Angelica’s car­ol­ing party, Avery became the proud… renter? yes, of a vio­lin! From the gor­geous old shop, really like a stage set for some bygone era, JP Guiv­ier, in Mor­timer Street. The instru­ment is for school use, but we hear it came in handy when they began to sing “Ding Dong, Mer­rily on High,” which had been prac­ticed in advance of the school con­cert last week. She is so proud! We dropped her off at her party and I ended up in Wig­more Street at Boosey and Hawkes, a com­pre­hen­sive music store staffed with delight­ful Eng­lish roses, lit­tle sheet music elves, who helped me find the music required by QCPS, and some other cute sur­prises besides. What a glo­ri­ous win­ter evening, pink and laven­der sky in the west over Port­man Square, every­one out shop­ping and being fes­tive. I stopped in Mar­garet How­ell and while I was sorely tempted by sev­eral sweaters and skirts, I ended up with a Christ­mas present for John! For obvi­ous rea­sons, I can­not divulge its nature in these pages, but suf­fice to say that the design sec­tion of that shop is just won­der­ful. All mod­ern, sleek and ele­gant, just what he likes.

Home to con­coct my mus­sels, but since I don’t like mus­sels, I had left­over oys­ter stew from our Christ­mas evening with his par­ents, before they, sadly, left for Iowa. That is, I don’t know if they’re sad to have gone, but we’re bereft now that we’re on our own. We had such fun. Any­way, we had our tra­di­tional oys­ter stew for Christ­mas Eve, and I greed­ily bought far too many oys­ters so that we would have extra. It’s sin­fully easy, and this year, because of my var­i­ous food shop­ping obses­sions, we had the Rolls Royce of oys­ters, as well as the sub­lime raw, unpas­teurised milk from the farmer’s mar­ket, as well as the French organic pink onions and gar­lic, and cel­ery salt from the Spice Shop in Not­ting Hill. Don’t miss a visit to this shop, if you’re ever in the neigh­bor­hood. The Ger­man pro­pri­etress is lovely. Any­way, the stew was quite with­out peer. You should make it your tra­di­tion, too.

Christ­mas Eve Oys­ter Stew
(serves per­haps 10 if you’re not greedy)

6 tbsps but­ter
4 tbsps flour
2 medium onions, minced
6 cloves gar­lic, minced
4–6 stalks cel­ery depend­ing on size, plus leaves, minced
4 dozen freshly shucked oys­ters with their liquor
1 gal­lon whole milk
3 shakes Tabasco
1 tbsp cel­ery salt
salt to taste

In a very large pot, make a roux with your but­ter and flour, and cook until it bub­bles. Add the onion, gar­lic and cel­ery and saute until slightly soft­ened. Then add the oys­ters and their liquor and stir until the oys­ters’ edges have curled up in that pretty ruffly way they do. Now add the milk and bring to a high sim­mer. Add the Tabasco, cel­ery salt and sea salt, and taste. Just a lit­tle! Actu­ally I find it requires an unusual num­ber of spoon-dippings to get the sea­son­ings just right, but then that’s the sort of sac­ri­fice I’m will­ing to make for my guests. Once you’ve got the sea­son­ings prop­erly adjusted, let the stew cool out on your back porch or wher­ever, if you’re not eat­ing it right away, and believe you me, it’s bet­ter reheated. Serve with oys­ter crackers.

Per­fect!

But it was not to be ours to eat right away, on Sun­day morn­ing when I made it, because Twiggy and Eddie were com­ing to Sun­day lunch and they are strict veg­e­tar­i­ans. At least, as strict about any­thing as two such fun-loving, charm­ing peo­ple can be. So I buck­led down and pro­duced a suit­able feast. It required all my con­cen­tra­tion to make sure I didn’t put the wrong ingre­di­ents on the var­i­ous pots on my cook­top, because at one point, they all con­tained olive oil, minced gar­lic and onion! Then I had to remem­ber which pot was which. Once I fin­ished the oys­ter stew and it was cool­ing, I moved on to:

Red Pep­per Soup with Cal­va­dos and Fresh Thyme
(serves six with sec­ond helpings)

3 tbsps olive oil
6 large red bell pep­pers, very roughly chopped
1 large onion, roughly chopped
4 cloves gar­lic, roughly chopped
veg­etable stock to cover (per­haps 5 cups), or chicken if not veg­e­tar­ian
1/2 cup Cal­va­dos
1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
1 cup sin­gle cream
1/2 cup creme fraiche for gar­nish, if desired

Because you are going to puree this soup, noth­ing has to be chopped nicely. Sim­ply saute the veg­eta­bles in the oil until the gar­lic is cooked, then throw in the stock and Cal­va­dos and thyme, and set it boil­ing. After 45 min­utes, the pep­pers should be quite soft and ready for the hand blender. What a mar­velous tool. It can turn any­thing into soup. Blend thor­oughly, and taste to see if any pep­per skin bits annoy the tongue: if they do, strain through a colan­der into another pot. NOT, mind you, for­get­ting that other pot! Believe it or not, I have been known to pour soup, and stock, right the way through the colan­der, into… noth­ing. Just down the drain. Do not suc­cumb to any such idiocy. Then add the cream and the soup can sim­mer gen­tly until you’re ready for it. Ladle into warm bowls and drop a spoon of creme fraiche on top, if you like.

So sim­ple! But tasty.

While the soup was sim­mer­ing, then, I was onto the main course. I think these two dishes were fine together, but there was a lot of red, and if you don’t need to adhere to a veg­e­tar­ian menu, I’d serve them sep­a­rately. I should think of a really good green main dish to have with the pep­per soup. But no one com­plained at what we did have:

Egg­plant Stew
(serves six)

6 tbsps olive oil
6 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 large onion, minced
2 large egg­plants, or four small, peeled and cut into cubes
2 large cans or four small cans peeled plum toma­toes
1 large bunch flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped
hot chilli flakes to taste
salt to taste
fresh ground pep­per to taste
1 cup freshly grated parmesan

Saute the gar­lic, onion and egg­plant in the olive oil until soft­ened. Some peo­ple nat­ter on about soak­ing egg­plant in salted water to take away the bit­ter­ness, and then strain­ing it, and dry­ing it on kitchen tow­els. Bother! I wouldn’t make the stew if I had to go through all that. And I never find egg­plant bit­ter. So there. Add the toma­toes and sim­mer a long while, prob­a­bly an hour, stir­ring occa­sional to break up the toma­toes. Don’t start out with chopped toma­toes, though, or you will end with mush. Toward the end of cook­ing, add the pars­ley and sea­son­ings, and taste. The green of the pars­ley is very fes­tive, and whole dish is won­der­ful topped with lots of parme­san cheese. I served the stew on steamed rice, but you don’t have to.

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

Twiggy and Ed turned up with a fab­u­lous bot­tle of old Talisker sin­gle malt scotch, lovely! And a whole bevy of tiny mince pies from Kon­di­tor and Cook at Bor­ough Mar­ket. We had lovely cham­pagne, and sat around the Christ­mas tree lis­ten­ing to its nee­dles drop­ping, and talked… real estate. They have just set­tled into their new house, and we are increas­ingly pan­ick­ing over our sit­u­a­tion. At least, I am. John is in heaven. I don’t think he actu­ally cares where we live! It’s shop­ping to him. Makes me insane. We have seen a lot of houses to buy, and flats to rent should we not find a house to buy in time. So nice and relax­ing, that sce­nario. Every­thing is unbe­liev­ably, unfath­omably expen­sive. At least John didn’t quit his job. Oh wait, he DID! I find it all quite wor­ry­ing, but he seems relaxed so I am try­ing to stay out of it. Except that I keep hav­ing to visit real estate.

We saw a lovely, lovely house in Not­ting Hill yes­ter­day, both the home and the surgery (I love the Eng­lish use of that term, noth­ing to do with scalpels! just the doctor’s office) of a very posh and suc­cess­ful GP. In a three-piece tweed suit! Doc­tor to the stars, in Not­ting Hill. The house is on five storeys, pris­tine in con­di­tion, all the orig­i­nal charm­ing details like plas­ter­work kept in. I just wanted to lie down on one of the exam­i­na­tion tables and stay. Just let John move us out of here and into there, maybe leav­ing Avery at the sta­ble for the dura­tion. He likes it too, but we must keep look­ing. Aargh. Out again today, in West Kens­ing­ton. I don’t think he real­izes how much I worry! He just hap­pily sees houses, whereas I men­tally move us in, have our favorite peo­ple to din­ner, play­dates, Christ­mas par­ties, find a place for the lit­ter­box, alpha­bet­ize my books, and oops! It’s onto the next can­di­date. I find it all very tir­ing and wor­ri­some, frankly. But we have to move.

But I am get­ting out of order. Last night was the final evening of the Olympia Horse show, and it was impres­sive. The finals of every­thing! Show jump­ing, and dog agility, just won­der­ful. The announc­ers are so… Eng­lish! “Come on, folks, is that the best you can do? This evening, well, it’s going to be a right cracker!” And when one of the dogs misses a jump, “We know how you feel, Thomas, there now. It’s not your fault!” And guess who was there to present prizes? The Duchess of Corn­wall! I know, I know, it’s That Woman, but I have to con­fess that all judg­ments about Diana, Princess of Wales, and that nasty lady who broke them up, go out the win­dow when there she is, right in front of you, in all her green vel­vet “you’ll never be Queen” glory. Pretty impres­sive. She sat up in her Royal Box, receiv­ing the Hanove­ri­ans’ salutes, and was served cham­pagne and prob­a­bly lovely things to eat, all clink­ing china and whisk­ing white nap­kins across her lap. Avery stroked my hand sym­pa­thet­i­cally. “I know, Mommy, it’s prob­a­bly foie gras. Maybe next year.”

We came home close to mid­night and all of us knack­ered, as they say. Imag­ine if we’d actu­ally rid­den! Or done any­thing at all! I’m get­ting too old to stay out late.

Nearly time to get Avery at the sta­ble. Tomor­row, I’m bit­ing the bul­let and get­ting… a new Christ­mas tree. I just don’t think I can enjoy the hol­i­day lis­ten­ing to nee­dles tin­kling to the floor. Espe­cially with Annabelle and her fam­ily com­ing on Sun­day, yippee! Alyssa emailed today to say that they were up for a full Christ­mas do, although her Jew­ish side will still be marched into the kitchen to make mat­zoh ball soup for me. Cel­e­brate every­thing, is our motto! So in the mean­time I must remove every orna­ment from the tree, give it a decent bur­ial in the gar­den, get a new one, put it up, and then have the fun of dec­o­rat­ing it again. Wish me luck.

Okay, obvi­ously the first prob­lem is that the only cool thing about me in this pho­to­graph is my gor­geous new dress from Vince, which you can’t even see prop­erly, but it was my major Christ­mas present from my mother in law (don’t even get me started on how lucky I am to have a mother in law who gives me Vince). My point is that Nigella has me com­pletely flum­moxed. Has any­one seen her Christ­mas series? Where she effort­lessly pro­duces six whole roasted poussins with chili oil and a fes­tive rub, while hav­ing cock­tails OUT with friends, and then there’s also two side dishes and a pud­ding? Here’s my objec­tion: unlike Martha Stew­art, Nigella makes a fetish of being sim­ple, easily-imitated, “you can do this.” Only it’s all a hor­ri­ble, hor­ri­ble fake. First of all, she’s effort­lessly Eng­lish, so I can­not do HER. And it’s worse to be told emphat­i­cally how easy it is, than to be told, as Martha does, “you should only hope you could be me.” With Martha I don’t even try.

But wait: my prob­lem is in pre­sen­ta­tion. Not of the dish per se, although that’s lack­ing at times. No, my prob­lem is in the pre­sen­ta­tion of ME. I do not exude glam­our. I do not exude a sort of sexy apolo­getic “these three courses are all I could man­age, sorry,” while being impos­si­bly gor­geous and sophis­ti­cated, nor do I even have an adorable incom­pe­tent glow about me. No, I’m that awful thing in between: I can do things, fine, no prob­lem, but they don’t look COOL.

I need all your help on this! How am I ever going to turn my blog into a cook­book, much less a tele­vi­sion pro­gramme that makes peo­ple like me feel bad, if I just sit here and live, occa­sion­ally feed­ing peo­ple and then telling you about it? Obvi­ously some­thing is needed in the way of presentation.

Take this evening, for exam­ple. Truly, in all hon­esty, I did walk in the house from drop­ping Avery off at her friend’s house to play, and within ten min­utes produce:

Mus­sels with White Wine and Fresh Thyme
(serves one hun­gry hus­band with a wife who doesn’t like mussels)

3 tbsps olive oil
1 lb mus­sels, cleaned
4 cloves gar­lic, chopped fine
3 shal­lots, chopped fine
1 tbsp fresh thyme (chopped with­out stems)
6 Thai fresh green pep­per­corns, chopped (from Spice Shop in Not­ting Hill)
2 cups white wine
½ cup chicken stock
2 tbsps butter

Saute gar­lic, shal­lots, thyme and pep­per­corns in olive oil, then add white wine and stock. Bring to a boil, add mus­sels, cover and steam for 8 min­utes. Dis­card any that did not open, and lift good mus­sels into a large bowl with slot­ted spoon, bring wine sauce to a boil again and whisk in but­ter. Pour over mus­sels and serve with warm baguette and goats cheese.

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

Now, don’t mis­un­der­stand me. I think this dish was all to the good, and it fol­lows our long tra­di­tion of either cook­ing mus­sels or get­ting them in Belgo, where he eats all the mus­sels and I soak up all the sauce with French bread, or just drink it straight, as I’m sorry to say we have pho­to­graphic evi­dence of my doing, per­haps 15 years ago in this very city.

No, my objec­tion is that I have no… PR. That’s right, no one is watch­ing me, styling me, doing my hair, mak­ing sure the right num­ber of friends laugh on cue in the back­ground or that my child and her friends unac­count­ably begin to enjoy crab cakes, or spicy baby­back ribs, at my Christ­mas party, some­thing that would never hap­pen. No, my par­ties and even just acci­den­tal din­ners occur with­out fan­fare. Which is why I find Nigella so depressing!

And why, you might ask, am I awake at 1 a.m. being depressed my B-list food celebri­ties when I should be get­ting my beauty sleep so as to deserve B-list celebrity sta­tus? Because we got in from the final night of the horse show at 11, and it takes me a min­i­mum of two hours to decom­press from any event involv­ing hay. And bad sausages. Yawn. Tired. And sad to have said good­bye last night (okay, they left this morn­ing but I was asleep) to John’s mom and dad. What an empty spot their guest room is today.

I have lots more to tell you about my busy, if un-glamorous life, but right now I shall sip a Cal­va­dos and con­tem­plate sleep. If you have any sug­ges­tions on how I can get more glam­orous in (ide­ally two, or three) a cou­ple of steps, let me know. In the mean­time, what I am grate­ful for tonight are a few things: fam­ily who let me cook for them, and say they enjoy it, and friends who come by, like dar­ling Twiggy and Eddie for Sun­day lunch (veg­e­tar­ian! I’ll tell you all about it), and hap­pily enjoy what­ever I cook for them. Sur­rounded by them, and antic­i­pat­ing more to come, I’m quite sat­is­fied. But a lit­tle glam­our wouldn’t hurt!

Drat these time dif­fer­ences! It’s been so hard to find the proper time to call Avery’s Cousin Ellen for her birth­day. By the time she gets home from school her grand­par­ents are asleep, here in Lon­don. Today we can call, though, because it’s Sat­ur­day. Happy birth­day, dear. We hope that before you’re a year older, you’ll have made it to London.

We spent the entire sunny, crispy day today at our beloved Por­to­bello Mar­ket. This is a clas­sic thing to do with John’s par­ents, because as I have hinted before, they can SHOP. We all for­got, how­ever, to bring very much cash, so our spend­ing was cur­tailed, but I can still safely say that we brought home some trea­sures, some secret things, to make Christ­mas a lit­tle more fun. I think we’ll exchange gifts tomor­row evening. The Mar­ket is the only place I can think of where crowds are more fun than not. There’s some­thing cel­e­bra­tory, albeit it crazy, about strug­gling down the pave­ment with half the world’s pop­u­la­tion, peek­ing in past the out­door bits on sale to see if it’s worth duck­ing inside. And it usu­ally is. After our last din­ner party here, I decided that my carbon-steel cut­lery, though sharp and also lovely (19th cen­tury Russ­ian), it is not prac­ti­cal. The blades just darken and get nasty to eas­ily. So at the mar­ket today I found some really nice stainless-steel blades with ivory-colored Bakelite-ish han­dles. Six for five pounds! Not bad. So I got a dozen, and now I can have ten friends all come to din­ner and I won’t have to lie awake the night before plan­ning on food that we don’t all have to cut at the same time, a rather ridicu­lous sit­u­a­tion before a party. If I only had cheese knives, I’d be all set. Someday.

I spent some con­sid­er­able time in a but­ton shop (nearly as won­der­ful as The But­ton Queen in Maryle­bone), look­ing in vain for but­tons with lambs on them for our farmer friends in Con­necti­cut. Two years ago, Avery fed the baby lambs with milk from Corona beer bot­tles, and then the next Christ­mas Rollie’s wife Judy knit­ted a hat for Avery from wool from the babies she’d fed. Alas, no but­tons to be found. Although the sight-challenged pro­pri­etor offered up some that he was pos­i­tive had great impres­sive bucks on them. Now, I did not tell him that firstly, I didn’t want bucks, I wanted sheep, and sec­ondly, the ani­mal on his but­tons was… a bunny.

Avery madly bar­gained for what she wanted, and came away with a fab­u­lous stamp album. She spent all of lunch perus­ing it and now wants to go through the album her Grandpa Paul gave her for her birth­day, and see if she has any coun­tries he did not have. She has grand plans to alpha­bet­ize them all, as well. That’s the sort of thing to do on Christ­mas vaca­tion, espe­cially when your best friend has jet­ted off to Africa for the dura­tion. I hope Anna and her fam­ily are hav­ing an incred­i­ble time. We col­lapsed for a late lunch at Eclipse, which although it is a chain through­out Lon­don, is remark­able for American-style burg­ers and Bloody Marys, should you be in the mood. Although the tra­di­tional french fries are replaced by fried wedges of pota­toes, do not despair: they are crispy, incred­i­bly hot, and dusted with nice flakes of sea salt. Yummy.

Avery and her Nonna are watch­ing “High School Musi­cal,” for about the hun­dredth time for Avery, and the first for Nonna, who feels it is de rigeur for being a granny to three small girls. I felt that watch­ing it once was quite enough, so I’m up here mon­i­tor­ing my chicken soup. Last night, how­ever, we all gath­ered around the tele­vi­sion set to watch the Puis­sance event at the Olympia Horse Show. Oh, my, that wall was high. The con­cept is that a wall is built out of light col­lapsi­ble bricks, begin­ning at 5 feet 9 inches, I think. Then the rid­ers and horses who can accom­plish that go on to attempt an even higher wall, and so on until the wall reaches over seven feet, if any­one gets that far. In the case of last evening, it was a tri­umvi­rate of Whitak­ers includ­ing Avery’s beloved Ellen (she stalked her on Thurs­day and got her auto­graph again!), and one lone Swiss fel­low. Won­der­ful sport! Just as long as Avery has no inten­tion of ever doing any such thing…

We saw Zara Phillips! Yes, indeed, the star of Hello! mag­a­zine, the BBC’s newly-crowned “Sports Per­son­al­ity of the Year,” and last but not least, a real-live Princess (although some­thing tells me her mother, Princess Anne, declined to give her chil­dren titles? must look that up), was at the Horse Show at Olympia yes­ter­day. I must say I have always a bit dis­counted her, think­ing she prob­a­bly coasted to the top. But now that I know bet­ter, from Avery’s expe­ri­ences strug­gling to learn to trot, then to can­ter, finally to jump, and to jump ever higher, I can say with cer­tainty that one coasts nowhere in the horse world. Being a Princess does not keep your horse from knock­ing down a fence, nor does it help you to be the fastest rider against the clock. So I was pretty thrilled to see her. Avery nearly jumped out of her skin. And she’s beau­ti­ful in per­son, with a real glow. She and her horse Toy­town were really a joy to see.

We picked Avery up at school yes­ter­day to hear all sorts of excit­ing news. The four houses at school (Pot­ter, Nightin­gale, Franklin and Avery’s own Curie) were com­pet­ing at assem­bly in a Quizmaster-ish pro­gramme. Avery had spent all the din­ner hour the night before ask­ing to be quizzed, and I’m here to tell you the child knows a lot of weird stuff. Strange sci­en­tific knowl­edge, like that, in fact, the egg came first, because it was hatched by a dinosaur, but turned out to be a chicken. I have to feel sorry for that dinosaur. Can you imag­ine, going to Dinosaurs R Us, shop­ping for clothes, buy­ing a crib, get­ting all excited for your baby dinosaur, and the egg hatches to reveal… a chicken? Bum­mer. Much worse, even, than buy­ing for a girl and get­ting a boy. Chicken.

But I digress. My point is, at pickup she reported hav­ing won the match for Curie! Cool. Plus a really stel­lar report card for end-of-term. What a trooper. This being the child who was prac­ti­cally writ­ten off in math­e­mat­ics by her New York school. I can’t tell you how proud we are. The frus­trat­ing thing with Avery is that we don’t get much time to be proud of a thing, or excited, because right around the cor­ner is another thing to get proud and excited for. I shouldn’t let that hap­pen, because she really deserves to be thrilled at each new achievement.

So she shed her hor­rid uni­form, shouted, “I’m free!” and hopped into a taxi with us to be taken to the Horse Show. And what fun it was. There were the usual stun­ningly high and scary jumps, and the usual dres­sage per­for­mances, but then there were two events that really made the whole show, for me. One was called the “Pony Club Mini-Major Relay,” fea­tur­ing one pro­fes­sional grownup rider, like Ellen Whitaker, and paired with a lit­tle tiny Pony Club child, in this case a lit­tle girl called Rosie, I think. The con­cept is that the course is filled with two sets of jumps, one big and one small. The pro­fes­sional rider starts out, against the clock, deter­mined not to knock over any jumps. Just as she approaches her last jump, a ref­eree sig­nals to the lit­tle rider to begin HER round. Fas­ci­nat­ing to see the lit­tle ones impres­sively accom­plished, even in the com­pany of some really famous rid­ers. Hap­pily for the fem­i­nists among us, Ellen and her lit­tle friend came top, over pairs of man and boy, and man and girl, and woman and boy! It must have been the crown­ing glory of that lit­tle girl’s life so far. She then got to ride in the Santa sleigh with Ellen in the Christ­mas pageant at the end of the afternoon.

The sec­ond most adorable event was the dog jump­ing! They call it “dog agility,” but that’s just the Eng­lish try­ing to lend grav­i­tas and dig­nity to what is actu­ally a laugh-out-loud enter­tain­ment. You would not believe the hilar­ity of this. The dogs are com­pletely over-the-top fran­tic with excite­ment, try­ing to evade their train­ers, escape from their leads, but then when it’s time to jump the course (and go through fab­ric tun­nels! and run a course of lit­tle wick­ets!) they mean busi­ness. And all sorts of dogs! “Here comes that peren­nial favorite, the Jack Rus­sell!” the announcer boomed. “And don’t dis­count the toy col­lie! She’s a beau­ti­ful jumper.” I can’t describe how funny. The dogs absolutely run like the wind, flat­ten­ing them­selves like otters to become more aero­dy­namic. And the train­ers! They have to run along to encour­age them and keep them from clock­ing them­selves on the poles. You must go sometime.

Then we shopped. Which got old very quickly. One can with­stand only so many tents full of bri­dles, bits, my favorite, the “ship­ping fuzzy,” and so on. Well, one can with­stand only so many, if one is not Avery. She was in heaven. And the poor child doesn’t even have a pony to hang the things on. Then after a period of intense nego­ti­a­tions (con­sist­ing of Avery’s say­ing, “I want Nonna and Grandpa Jack to stay, and you guys can go home”), John and I left and had our lovely din­ner out.

Well, they got home at nearly mid­night and Avery sim­ply fell into bed, to be dragged out this morn­ing for the Gill Roberts Cook­ery Morn­ing. I got all my family’s pack­ages wrapped and packed up and the enor­mous box from Fort­num and Mason is on its way to Indi­anapo­lis. Sadly for them, the box was emp­tied of its gor­geous Christ­mas ham­per, a present from dar­ling Becky’s fam­ily. Oh, the teas and cof­fees, bis­cuits and choco­late. What a treat.

Now Avery’s been col­lected early from cook­ing, dri­ven to the sta­ble and swept up by Alexa and the other lit­tle gulls for a rare glimpse of the behind-the-scenes action at the Horse Show. Life at ten is a never-ending round of fun. But frankly this evening I think she, and all of us, will be ready for a cosy com­fort din­ner and a Christ­mas movie. Oh, speak­ing of din­ner, I invented, may I say, the best soup I have ever tasted, much less actu­ally made myself? It won approval all round the din­ner table, so I can say with rel­a­tive impunity that it’s excel­lent. And a com­plete fluke. My mother in law hap­pened to point out an extremely ugly veg­etable at Sunday’s farmer’s mar­ket and said, “I’ve always wanted to make cele­riac soup.” I had to admit that this life ambi­tion had rather passed me by, until that moment. How­ever, I rose to the chal­lenge, and tucked a cou­ple of the nasty-looking tuber­ous roots in my bag and brought them home. Where­upon they reposed in splen­dor on my coun­ter­top while I ignored them and cooked other, more famil­iar things. Finally, though, their obsti­nate pres­ence made me feel guilty, so before I could lose courage, I pro­duced this, and so can you:

Cream of Cele­riac Soup with Cham­pagne
(serves four, unless you have a straw and don’t tell any­one you’ve made it, then it serves one)

2 tbsps but­ter
2 bulbs cele­riac, peeled and cut into small­ish chunks
3 cloves gar­lic, chopped coarsely
1 medium onion, chopped coarsely
3 cups chicken stock
1 good splash cham­pagne (mine was rather old and flat, left­over)
1 tsp cel­ery salt
1/2 cup sin­gle cream

I am not kid­ding here: sim­ply throw all this, except for the cream, in a stock­pot and boil gen­tly for an hour. Then pul­ver­ize with a hand blender and add the cream.

DIVINE! Where I thought it might be stringy, like cel­ery soup which has to be strained, it was vel­vety. Where I thought it might taste as bor­ing as it looked (white), it was com­plex and inter­est­ing. And where I thought it might be sim­ply weird, it was per­fect. Com­fort­ing, creamy, per­fectly smooth. I can’t say enough about it. Nutri­tion? I have no idea. No, now I’ll look it up and we’ll all be the wiser.

Tonight, how­ever, will be roast chicken, jacket pota­toes with soured cream and chives, and spicy spinach casse­role with ched­dar cheese. What the hell, I’ll give you that recipe too. It comes from Lau­rie Colwin’s inim­itable and irre­place­able cook­book, Home Cook­ing. There will never be a bet­ter recipe. As Lau­rie her­self says, “It made me sit up and beg like a dog.” Even chil­dren like it. You will too.

Lau­rie Colwin’s Spinach Casse­role
(serves 8)

First of all, a word about the spinach itself. Do not use fresh. In my opin­ion, there is only one pur­pose in life for frozen spinach and this is it. Now, in Amer­ica, frozen spinach comes in lit­tle square-ish flat boxes. You need two of these. In Eng­land, how­ever, frozen spinach comes in bags, in which you will find intrigu­ing sort of hockey-puck shapes. For this, you need about 1 pound.

1 lb frozen spinach
6 tbsps but­ter
4 tbsps flour
1 medium onion, minced
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
6 ounces evap­o­rated milk
8 ounces any sharp cheese, like ched­dar
sprin­kling of chili flakes (or in Amer­ica you can use jalapeno Mon­terey Jack cheese)
1 tbsp cel­ery salt (essen­tial!)
3/4 cup fresh bread­crumbs
3/4 cup grated parmesan

Spray a 9x9 glass dish with non­stick spray. Believe me, you don’t want to skip this step. Then put the spinach in a saucepan, cover with water, and boil till cooked, but don’t over­cook. In the mean­time, melt the but­ter in a heavy saucepan and then add the flour, and let bub­ble for about two min­utes to cook the floury taste away. Add the minced onion and gar­lic and saute till soft, but do not burn the floury but­ter. When your spinach is cooked, drain off the water, but into a mea­sur­ing cup, till you have 1 cup liq­uid. Dis­card the remain­der. Slowly add the liq­uid to the onion and gar­lic, and stir till thick. Add the evap­o­rated milk, the cheese, the chili flakes, the cel­ery salt, and stir until cheese is melted. Pour the mix­ture into the glass dish and top first with bread­crumbs and then with cheese. Bake at 400 degrees for half an hour, or until bub­bly and browned on top. Heaven.

***********

I have two more days until our next enter­tain­ing event, which will be my friend Twiggy and her hus­band Eddie com­ing to Sun­day lunch. I’ve recov­ered from the mam­moth din­ner with Vin­cent and Peter here last week­end: roast stuffed pork, my Thanks­giv­ing dress­ing and brus­sels sprouts, roast beet­root with bal­samic vine­gar, a salad, cheese­board and trea­cle cin­na­mon cook­ies! I think I used every saucepan, skil­let, bak­ing dish, plate, uten­sil and glass in my pos­ses­sion. Not to men­tion every ounce of energy! I con­fessed to Vin­cent, who is the com­pleat cook, that I had Wait­rose stuff and tie up my roast for me. “I don’t know how to tie up meat!” I wailed! His reply? “If you can wrap a Christ­mas present, you can tie a roast.” I’m not so sure, espe­cially after my lame attempts to clean a fish. But we had a com­pletely lovely time.

Totally unex­pect­edly, we ended up on the floor sur­rounded by my huge col­lec­tion of photo albums, look­ing for the New Year’s party we had at our loft on Broad­way, just before I got preg­nant (and stopped hav­ing 60 peo­ple to my house, black tie). Vin­cent had been there along with the McBs, some slightly famous guy from MTV, lots of fash­ion design­ers, jew­el­ers, actors, agents! Boy that was fun. I remem­ber John say­ing plain­tively at one point, “Nobody’s hav­ing fun, they’re all leav­ing,” and we looked at our watches to see that it was four o’clock in the morn­ing. A jacuzzi bath­tub filled with ice, flash­lights, and bot­tles of cham­pagne! That was the year it was cool for women to smoke cig­ars (if it lasted a year, that trend, prob­a­bly not), so the pic­tures of us with Vin­cent are all in a haze of smoke. My black silk Kenzo tuxedo! John’s goa­tee! What care­free bliss. Such fun to look at all the pic­tures, rem­i­nisce about old times now nearly 10 years ago, to find the pho­to­graph of Vin­cent hold­ing new­born Baby Avery, real­iz­ing how impor­tant it is to keep old friends.

Not to men­tion that he taught me, at din­ner, the proper way to cut dif­fer­ent sorts of cheeses! Igno­rant Amer­i­cans (if there are any besides me) do not know these things. He prac­ti­cally ripped the cheese knife out of my hand, say­ing, “I can­not bear to see you butcher that inno­cent food­stuff for another moment. Watch and learn.” So it turns out you need one knife for cheddary, hard cheeses, one knife for any­thing blue, and one knife for goat’s cheese. And one for triple cremes, but I didn’t have any that night. Then, you cut a round cheese in lit­tle pie-shaped wedges, and a wedge of cheese along the tri­an­gu­lar side, evenly, and a hard cheese on just one end, to pre­serve the seal on the other sides. Who knew? With them we taste-tested oat­cakes, decid­ing that the Prince of Wales’s Duchy label wins out. This is the sort of thing you do when you have really taken food pre­ten­sions to the outer limit.

Well, I’m all alone in my house, so to stave off lone­li­ness I shall go read and look at the Christ­mas tree. If I’m real quiet, per­haps I can hear the Sal­va­tion Army band at the Marks and Spencers in Oxford Street. “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”…

The Christ­mas fes­tiv­i­ties at school were sim­ply lovely. The majesty! The accom­plish­ment. The sound of many, many lit­tle girls cough­ing simul­ta­ne­ously! And the dump truck and street cleaner busily at work out­side the stained-glass win­dows. Such are the accou­trements of an urban hol­i­day celebration.

Miss Leslie clev­erly sug­gested that we sit up high, in the gal­leries above the pews, and it was a rev­e­la­tion. Not for us the cran­ing of necks, to catch the occa­sional glimpse of our child. We got to see her the whole time! She played her vio­lin, she sang in Eng­lish, in Latin, in French! All the songs that had been get­ting a lit­tle tire­some, a lit­tle repet­i­tive heard over the whir of the food proces­sor or the run­ning of bath water, took on a whole new dimen­sion in the grav­ity the church, and com­ing from 130 throats. They were all so well-behaved, even the minute lit­tle Lower Kinder­garten gulls whose only trans­gres­sions were the occa­sional swing­ing foot or wav­ing hand, to an older sis­ter. They sang “It’s a Baby!” with great enthu­si­asm, but per­haps not the grav­i­tas of the upper grades and their gui­tar, recorder, flute and vio­lin per­for­mances. I passed out kleenexes to my mother in law and to Susan, who sat next to me, but no one blubs quite as much as I do. I tried my best to be dig­ni­fied, and spent some qual­ity time star­ing at Sam’s new baby cra­dled on her chest. What a nice time of year to have a small baby.

Mrs D read a les­son, and you could hear a pin drop. Those gulls are ter­ri­fied of her! And Isabelle’s mother read, as Chair of the Par­ents’ Cir­cle, and the head gull and deputy head gull read, very impres­sively. The Rev­erend Who­ever (I sim­ply can never remem­ber his name) gave a very nice prayer, to the accom­pa­ni­ment of the con­struc­tion site out­side, and then we all crushed out the door, los­ing Sophia and her par­ents in the mean­time and caus­ing some minor panic as to whether or not her par­ents had gone ahead to our house, and Sophia had been left at the church. But as we walked back to the school with Mrs D, it was hard not to feel that all was right with the world. She put her arm around Avery’s shoul­der and praised her vio­lin play­ing, and we praised the incred­i­ble organ­i­sa­tion that went into the whole hour and a half long event. And who knew Miss Leslie played the bass? She was dressed in her usual whim­si­cal, indi­vid­ual fash­ion, with a gauzy flow­ered skirt peep­ing beneath her pink tweed coat with a leop­ard col­lar! And knee-length boots.

We came home with Sophia’s fam­ily and tucked into cham­pagne and tea sand­wiches: duck pate, roast pork and dress­ing, egg may­on­naise, smoked salmon and cream cheese, and a sand­wich of my own design: sliced plum toma­toes with but­ter and cilantro pesto! Pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Right now, I’m just back from The Lon­don Inter­na­tional Horse Show at Olympia, which I’ll tell you more about later (plus an incred­i­ble soup recipe of my own design), but John’s par­ents kept Avery at the show and John and I can have… a date! What shall we do? I know, a spicy din­ner out. Maybe Deya? We’ve always had so much fun there.

Sir Edward Elgar, if you please

So we’re inno­cently view­ing flats on Fri­day, in the rain that the BBC weather peo­ple var­i­ously describe as a down­pour, a del­uge, or merely a soak­ing. I love it when the weather guy says earnestly, “The rain should stop around lunchtime, leav­ing us with a gen­tle driz­zle.” I don’t think Amer­i­cans, as a gen­eral rule, con­sider that it has stopped rain­ing if it is still driz­zling. How­ever. My point is, our real estate search was sort of ham­pered by driz­zle, or what­ever you call it, because it was less appeal­ing just to wan­der through the neigh­bor­hood. We looked in Not­ting Hill, and what might be more prop­erly called Hol­land Park, and saw one pos­si­ble flat, except that there was a nasty leak, drip­ping from the ceil­ing into a saucepan. And guess what the estate agent (“real­tor” to us Yanks) said? “Oh, after this bit of rain today it will stop. And it won’t rain any­more.” Well, that engen­ders con­fi­dence in her hon­esty! It’s only Eng­land: of course it won’t rain anymore.

Then another much nicer flat, whose owner opened the door with the encour­ag­ing words, “Wel­come to the House of Lurgy.” True to her word, the flat was inhab­ited by two dar­ling lit­tle girls cough­ing and sneez­ing and gen­er­ally being ill. We vowed not to touch any­thing and to wash our hands imme­di­ately upon leav­ing. A very nice mod­ern do-up of essen­tially two floors of a Vic­to­rian house. Per­fectly nice, with a gar­den, and Avery could have more room in her room. This is begin­ning to be essen­tial as she, her hun­dreds of books, her pony gear, are threat­en­ing to burst the seams of her cur­rent space. This flat was a real possibility.

From there, we went to Hyde Park Vil­lage, a hop and skip from the sta­ble, which is a bonus. There we saw an extremely nice, if bor­ing, small house. It had been done up to appeal to expats, and so was neu­tral through­out, which is dull but would be livened up by our things, so it appealed to me. And, dear read­ers: a sep­a­rate DRYER! This means that I could actu­ally dry more then one bed­sheet at a time, a true lux­ury. And a real-sized freezer. I have found that even from my days of liv­ing in France in 1982, the Euro­pean dis­dain for ice has increased. There­fore, one can­not find ice trays in stores, and ice­mak­ers in freez­ers do not exist, plus the freez­ers are too small to acco­mo­date a bag of ice, which in any case is extremely hard to find. What is it about Amer­i­cans and ice! But I love ice, and this freezer had room to store it. A strange thing to love about a house, but there you go.

Home to lunch and a head spin­ning with real estate. John’s mom had gamely gone along to all the flats, squeez­ing in and out of Emmy with aplomb. She hap­pily entered into all John’s obses­sive dis­cus­sions on the topic of where to live, while I served my fancy tuna salad. Because John and his mom liked it so much, I shall share (the recipe, not the salad, because Blog­ger does not run to food across the wires):

Fancy Tuna Salad
(serves 4)

First of all, keep this impor­tant cul­tural rule in mind: if you order “tuna salad” in Eng­land, that’s what you’ll get. Tuna. With salad. If you want what Amer­i­cans think of as tuna salad, you must order “tuna may­on­naise.” That being said…

1 jar or 2 cans, yel­low­tail tuna steaks in olive oil (you can use the ordi­nary flake tuna, and I often have, but if you can find really fancy tuna, it’s just a cou­ple of pounds more and will really improve the result)
1/2 can (200 grams) chick peas
zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 small red onion, minced
2 stalks cel­ery, coarsely chopped
1/3 cup may­on­naise
4 leaves but­ter let­tuce (also called Boston, or here, “round lettuce”)

Sep­a­rate the tuna steaks into nice bite-size chunks, and add all other ingre­di­ent, mix with­out com­pletely shred­ding the tuna. Eat piled onto let­tuce leaves.

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

So that was Fri­day. On Sat­ur­day we dropped Avery off at Sophia’s house for an after­noon of the­atre! Oh, I almost for­got to tell you about an amaz­ing musi­cal evening John’s mom and I went to, at the Grosvenor Chapel in South Aud­ley Street. Actu­ally it was our nasty, greedy land­lords’ one gen­er­ous ges­ture, invit­ing us to this con­cert, where­upon they raised the rent 18%. Oh well, carp­ing does no one any favors. The point is, if you ever get a chance to hear Eng­lish Sin­fo­nia, you must go! They are a group of per­haps 8 women (and one chap, play­ing the bass!) on vio­lin and viola, and they pro­duced, in that gor­geous can­dlelit church, the most mag­i­cal sounds you can imag­ine. I don’t hear very much live music, and it seemed com­pletely impos­si­ble that human bod­ies in front of me could sim­ply lift up their instru­ments and become… a con­cert! Just gor­geous. Mostly Han­del, and some Vivaldi, but then a fel­low called Edward Elgar, whose music reminded me of my child­hood exper­i­ments with Debussy under the watch­ful ear (can an ear watch? what­ever) of my piano-talented mother. His piece was called “Ser­e­nade for Strings,” and the instruc­tions were “alle­gro piacev­ole,” which to my non-fluent Ital­ian vocab­u­lary sounds like… “fast enough to please a vole”? Surely not. Any­way, it was just gor­geous. I wish Avery had gone, because she has just begun vio­lin lessons (what a ter­ri­ble thing to learn just at the very begin­ning!) and would have been inspired.

We picked Avery up at Sophia’s house, with her father Claus open­ing the door to us in the driz­zly dark, warm cosy Eng­lish light (and Diva the black lab!) spilling out the door onto the check­ered tiles. How beau­ti­ful. He wel­come us in for a warm­ing glass of cham­pagne, and then the girls and Susan came bar­rel­ing back in from their the­atre adven­ture, full of inco­her­ent (well, Susan wasn’t) sto­ries about the opera they had seen, “Chincha-Chancha Cooroo, or the Weaver’s Wed­ding.” Adriana’s par­ents came to col­lect her as well, and we all sat around gos­sip­ing about the hol­i­days, the iniq­ui­ties of the French teacher, recipes for trea­cle cookies!

And now I must run get sand­wich ingre­di­ents for the tea party we’re hav­ing this after­noon. Sophia’s fam­ily will come over after the school Christ­mas con­cert, which promises to be one of those thousand-tissue events. I’ll let you know how it goes. Suf­fice right now to say: Avery will be play­ing the violin…

One thing about my mother in law: she can SHOP. Food, clothes, books, Christ­mas orna­ments, even apart­ments and houses! She loves to shop. Now, nor­mally I do not. As you know, food is the excep­tion: I’ll go in any place that pur­ports to act as a food pur­veyor and be quite happy. But clothes, well, I wear the same things over and over, and if they aren’t black they’re grey. Books, I tend to read the same things over and over! Or really branch out and read the new thing just out, by some­one I already love. And I have so many Christ­mas orna­ments from these many years of mar­ried bliss that I really should never buy another. Don’t even get me started on the real estate hell that is rapidly tak­ing over our lives.

So I have to admit that Rosemary’s arrival has been a real shot in my acquis­i­tive, com­mer­cial and hol­i­day spirit arm! Boy have we shopped. Not even so much buy­ing things, although Marks and Spencer ben­e­fited a lot from a sort of ran­dom “hey, this would do for Sarah!” moment last night. But we have been in and out of Sel­f­ridges hun­dreds of times, and lit­tle shops in St. Christopher’s Place, and every­where around school. She is such a tire­less walker, too, that we’ve been get­ting plenty of exer­cise. Then, too, my father in law Jack arrived on Sun­day and he just eggs us on. It’s good for peo­ple like me who tend to run a track in sort of a tri­an­gle: home, sta­ble and school, and I just wear that out, but never do any­thing new. We’ve had fun. And of course we’ve spent plenty of time the three of us, and four of us includ­ing John (when he’s not run­ning apart­ments and houses to earth in his tire­less search for our next home) doing the home, sta­ble and school circuit.

I’m def­i­nitely get­ting in the mood for Christ­mas. What are your ear­li­est child­hood Christ­mas mem­o­ries? Mine are funny, not really about Christ­mas per se, but fam­ily things with a hol­i­day tint. One of my most cher­ished is of my new baby sis­ter dressed in a minute Santa suit given her by two maiden aunts who were our rare babysit­ters (my par­ents’ bud­get not really run­ning to a night life), in her antique cra­dle, beside the fire­place my dad built. And speak­ing of my dad, he claims to be the Com­pleat Cur­mud­geon the rest of the year, but Christ­mas turns him to com­plete mush. He often says he wishes he could keep my mother’s beau­ti­ful dec­o­ra­tions up all year round. And my brother and me wait­ing at the top of the steps out­side our bed­rooms, wait­ing for my father to bring us a glass of orange juice before we descended into Christ­mas land, because allegedly my mother once fell down­stairs from being light­headed and spent Christ­mas con­cussed. This being my fam­ily and given its pen­chant for Writer’s Embell­ish­ment, one never knows, but the tra­di­tion holds. And being given the mam­moth task of vac­u­um­ing the fam­ily room before my grand­par­ents’ visit, and my grandfather’s boom­ing laugh and pipe smoke, his face obscured by arm­loads of tow­er­ing presents, my grand­mother laugh­ing gen­tly, nicely girdled.

And com­ing home from col­lege, com­pletely worn out by the round of exams and par­ty­ing, to my mother’s per­fectly dec­o­rated house, sev­eral Christ­mas trees all round the place, mulling spices sim­mer­ing on the stove, and not hav­ing to DO any­thing to get it that way! Adult Christ­mas, espe­cially with a small child, is another mat­ter. Every­thing that needs to be done has to be done by… me! And my hus­band, who would also like to “smallen down” as Avery says, and have Christ­mas done for us, at times! Youth is wasted on the young, as they say.

All right, it’s time to pro­duce spaghetti and meat­balls, amidst the piles of wrap­ping paper, end­less bot­tles of sin­gle malt scotch that accom­pany any gath­er­ing of John and his dad, and figs in every form to please my mother in law. Avery has just burst in from rid­ing, so between those sto­ries and home­work, I had bet­ter scoot.

I’ve always read about trea­cle! Just the word sounds so dis­taste­ful, doesn’t it? And then there’s the dire-sounding “trea­cle tart,” and even peo­ple in Eng­lish nov­els are described as “trea­cly,” which I always took to mean some­thing like nasty and tru­cu­lent. That’s why, the word sound like “tru­cu­lent.” Or lit­tle chil­dren wak­ing up from “trea­cly” night­mares, which I imag­ine is when your feet are stuck in trea­cle and you can­not escape The Bad Guy. How unfair on trea­cle, in any case, as it turns out. Because it’s molasses. And boy does it make a good cookie.

In the course of mak­ing these cook­ies, I learned sev­eral things the hard way, about bak­ing in Eng­land. One, you can­not use “plain” sugar. It is too coarse and doesn’t meld with the but­ter prop­erly, so the cook­ies were not flat and shiny, they were plump and matte. Also, bak­ing soda, or “bicar­bon­ate of soda” as it is rather baldly named here (always sounds like a mur­der mys­tery where some­thing is sup­posed to be arsenic and isn’t) is only “sin­gle” ris­ing, not dou­ble as it appar­ently is in Amer­ica. What­ever. They were deli­cious at our house too.

Trea­cle and Cin­na­mon cookies

4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsps each ground cloves, cin­na­mon and gin­ger
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsps bak­ing soda

1 cup but­ter, soft­ened
3 1/2 cups caster sugar
1 cup black trea­cle
2 large eggs

In a medium bowl, mix together dry ingre­di­ents. Did you know you have to run a fork all through a new bag of flour, to rus­tle up the air pock­ets so you don’t get too heavy a quan­tity? I didn’t either, but my mother in law put me right. The things she knows. Any­way, then with a mixer (since the move we can find only one of the beat­ers and we don’t rec­om­mend mix­ing with one beater!) cream together the but­ter and sugar, then add the trea­cle and the eggs. Now grad­u­ally mix in the flour. It will seem like too much dry ingre­di­ents, but it isn’t. I looked over my mother in law’s shoul­der, being involved with cook­ing the other parts of the meal myself, and she per­se­vered to good effect.

Bake for 10–12 min­utes at about 180 in Eng­land, 350 in Amer­ica. Yum yum. And in fact, if you want to spend/waste a lot of time look­ing at the ways we do things dif­fer­ently in the kitchen in the UK and in Amer­ica, go to this fas­ci­nat­ing site. You can get lost in all the dif­fer­ent vocab­u­lary in this osten­si­bly “same lan­guage” situation!

I must fin­ish email­ing all the var­i­ous peo­ple to whom I have double-booked, over­com­mit­ted and oth­er­wise screwed up in my vain attempt to organ­ise our hol­i­day sea­son. For exam­ple, doubt­less my child, although clearly remark­able in every way, can­not be at both Grace’s cook­ery party and Julia’s ice skat­ing date, which hap­pen at pre­cisely the same times on Fri­day. Like­wise not arrange for Anna to come play while Avery in fact is at the Olympia Horse Show. I must also make a Men­tal Note to in fact be here when I host Sophia’s fam­ily for a tea party tomor­row. Oh well, they’ll remind me when I see them at the school Christ­mas con­cert tomor­row at All Souls’ Church. Unless I for­get to go…