Have we done noth­ing but eat for the past three days? No, we’ve also talked until you’d think we would run out of words. By a coin­ci­dence of social plan­ning, we have had lunch out, din­ner party, lunch out, din­ner party and if I don’t stir any­thing or chew any­thing for the fore­see­able future it will be too soon.

No, that’s not even slightly true! In between exten­sive real estate vis­its try­ing des­per­ately to find a house that doesn’t come com­plete with divorce papers (can you tell we don’t agree on what makes a per­fect house? I thought so), and fer­ry­ing Avery to rid­ing, and read­ing to my lit­tle school sprouts, we have been like peo­ple who are get­ting ready to move to another planet: we must see every­one we know before we go! Per­haps this week will be qui­eter, but then I’ll be bored. And all this fol­low­ing on the heels of our whirl­wind tour of New York and Con­necti­cut has me quite befuddled.

It all started with my long-awaited lunch with Susan on Fri­day, at Fish­works where I had such a nice lunch a year ago, all by myself. How times have changed! Since we had not seen each other in weeks and weeks, we had a lot of ground to cover in just a cou­ple of hours. Every time I see Susan I am reminded that she has a much more col­or­ful life than I have! Her fam­ily sim­ply bursts with drama, her past with famous col­lege room­mates and next-door neigh­bors who write tell-all thinly-disguised mem­oirs about their unfor­tu­nate fam­ily mem­bers, and now, it appears, a long-lost Pol­ish great-uncle who has a por­trait of Susan’s grand­mother, lan­guish­ing in his stu­dio. At least, it was lan­guish­ing. Now it has made its mys­te­ri­ous way to Man­ches­ter, in the hands of another Pol­ish rela­tion, who is meet­ing with Susan today to try to get her to take it off his hands. “But I don’t want it! My brother doesn’t want it! My mother doesn’t want it. Where will I put it?” Susan wails. She has prob­lems. I can’t wait to see it.

So I had an absolutely deli­ciously fresh whole sea bass, roasted with whole stems of rose­mary tucked into the flesh, and with lots of crunchy sea salt cling­ing to it. Plus sauteed spinach with gar­lic and but­ter. So lux­u­ri­ous. And we didn’t get through half what we needed to talk about, although Avery’s Eng­lish teacher got a thor­ough air­ing. When I called a meet­ing to dis­cuss Avery’s… treat­ment in Eng­lish class, I was all but called an aggres­sive, per­fec­tion­ist Amer­i­can mother who can’t bear to see her child crit­i­cised. Well. Fair enough. But I hate to see this teacher pull off the impos­si­ble: turn a child whose great­est love is read­ing and writ­ing into some­one afraid to turn in her home­work. It just is not help­ful. Susan and I agreed, how­ever, that actual draw­ing and quar­ter­ing was not an option. Yet.

From there, it was a dash to make school pickup, and hand her to Becky for the after­noon of bliss­ful play that was planned at Anna’s house. How pathetic am I to go to pickup even when I don’t need to? But I do like to see her lit­tle face. It warmed my heart so much to hear Becky refer to her as “Fifi,” since only peo­ple who really love her do that. Then I was on to Sel­f­ridges to try to track down some beef ribs. No joy. Upon hear­ing the word “rib” the butcher insisted that I wanted a joint. No, ribs in the plural, please? How about a veal joint? No, I really want beef ribs. Appar­ently they don’t do that here. I would say I was just using the wrong ter­mi­nol­ogy, all too easy to do in this land of the spu­ri­ous shared lan­guage. But I didn’t see any­thing in the case resem­bling ribs. So I caved and bought pork spareribs, always lovely, but not what I wanted to braise in tomato sauce in a vain attempt to match Olimpia’s per­fect dish. And I don’t think I can bring any back from Amer­ica. Hmmm, more research needed obviously.

In any case, home I went to slather the ribs with honey and sea salt and put them in a slow oven (350, I’d say, or 180 here) for three hours, turn­ing often and bast­ing. Doesn’t get any bet­ter than that. Just as they were get­ting ten­der, in trooped the McBs for our cel­e­bra­tory “Highly-Skilled Migrant Worker and His Depen­dents” din­ner. It’s not a hol­i­day every­one observes, but for our fam­ily it was quite sig­nif­i­cant, since the McBs hap­pily don’t show any signs of going “home” either. They came bear­ing gifts: Erin’s spe­cial two ver­sions of sticky tof­fee pud­ding, com­plete with tof­fee sauce to heat up and pour over. By the time we had got through the ribs, an enor­mous dish of mac­a­roni and cheese, a gigan­tic bowl of car­rots caramelised in but­ter and brown sugar, it was hard to look upon the pud­dings with the favor they deserved, but… we man­aged. And so began the process of far too much food that con­tin­ued into…

Lun­cheon with Vin­cent. Yes, as if he hasn’t been gen­er­ous enough with his menus, and then on Thurs­day his pho­to­graphic skills, he invited us once again, this time to give John a chance to see the con­tact sheets from the photo shoot. Was there ever a bet­ter lunch? I don’t hope ever to have one. And best of all, it put both Avery and John back on salmon, which I con­sider tan­ta­mount to an act of God. It will be won­der­ful to be able to bring that fish back into my kitchen, in an unsmoked form. Vincent’s ver­sion was softly poached in the oven, smoth­ered in a layer of finely juli­enned veg­eta­bles: red pep­pers, car­rots, fen­nel, and served with a creamy sauce con­tain­ing more of the veg­eta­bles. As soon as I get the actual recipe, I promise to share. With this was steamed broc­coli (or rather, it was braised, as I saw Pete stir­ring it in a skil­let) with lemon and olive oil, sliced boiled pota­toes, oh heaven. We sim­ply ate our­selves silly. Then of course there was salad! With a new thing I had never had before, beet­root sprouts. Spicy, crunchy, del­i­cate. Def­i­nitely some­thing to add. And THEN… the cheese­board. Fully seven, eight cheeses? I lost count. A barely-there goats cheese, ter­ri­bly young and del­i­cate, a per­fect Stil­ton, oh, I don’t know. So good, with a hearty brown bread and oat­cakes. And red and green grapes. And THEN… pud­ding. The sim­plest apri­cot tart you can imag­ine, just a per­fect short crust and halved apri­cots, with a sugar syrup poured over. I saw him do this, so I can attest that even those of us who think we can’t bake could do it.

Why isn’t Vin­cent writ­ing his own cook­book? Or start easy and do… a blog. Why not? Clearly any­one can. He is the real thing when it comes to cook­ing, where I am shown up as a bit of a fraud, but I don’t mind as long as he feeds me. He truly does put a load of flour and a load of sugar and some but­ter in a Mag­imix and whizz it and… there’s pas­try for a tart. Even his salad dress­ings are spec­tac­u­lar. And through it all he’s the most ener­getic father to his two beau­ti­ful lit­tle girls, who greatly enjoyed look­ing over the con­tact sheets with Avery (pos­si­bly her first ecounter with a loupe?). And Pete is the per­fect foil for Vin­cent: where Vin­cent is mer­cu­r­ial, unpre­dictable, Pete is all appre­ci­a­tion, con­san­guin­ity, firm dis­ci­pline of the girls while tick­ling them. And he is not with­out his own culi­nary mas­ter­pieces: upon hear­ing that John liked cheese­cake, out one came from the fridge, of Pete’s own design, and would you believe that John ate it? I con­fess I had two bites. Divinely cold and limey.

And I can say about the pho­tographs only this: if you ever have the chance for a pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher who loves you to take your pic­ture, DO IT. While I will never love look­ing at a pic­ture of myself, I came closer than I ever thought I would. Thank you, Vincent.

I must go have din­ner (! I know what I just said! but the stom­ach knows no rea­son), but I will tempt you with this pho­to­graph of Avery and one of her old school chums from New York, who came over last night… for din­ner. I know, I know…

Guess what I spent two hours doing yes­ter­day? Shh, don’t tell John; it’s his sur­prise birth­day present, and he’s not going to find out about it until tomor­row at lunchtime. But to you I will con­fess all.

Last thing at night before going to bed I always check my email. You never know. Well, on Wednes­day night I got a mes­sage from Vin­cent, sug­gest­ing spon­ta­neously (as is his wont, unlike plod­ding me) that I come by the next day and let him shoot some por­traits of me, for John. My first reac­tion was, “Why would I sub­ject myself, and ulti­mately poor John, to some­thing so awful?” But Vin­cent is sim­ply a bril­liant pho­tog­ra­pher, with all the proper equip­ment, the stu­dio, every­thing, so I paused. Then I fig­ured, how bad could it be? This restrained enthu­si­asm is, I think, a sad com­men­tary on how dif­fer­ent a 42-year-old is from a 20-year-old (among many such sad com­par­isons!), because I have very vivid mem­o­ries of mod­el­ling nude for a paint­ing class in Flo­rence, dur­ing one won­der­ful col­lege sum­mer spent there. Where has that per­son gone? Well, for one thing she’s twice as old and prob­a­bly a good twenty pounds heav­ier, but no mat­ter. I decided to throw cau­tion to the winds, and so yes­ter­day I packed up one of John’s white shirts, per Vincent’s instruc­tions, and told John I was leav­ing but couldn’t tell him where, and that I’d pick Avery up at school. I must say he is com­pletely mystified.

So I sped over to Lon­don Bridge and was a model! Vin­cent started out with a Polaroid shot of each pose, so I got to see them imme­di­ately and wasn’t too hor­ri­fied. He assures me that the real film shots will be much deeper and more vivid. I felt self-conscious, but his infec­tious good humor could not be resisted, plus his danc­ing to the salsa music ema­nat­ing from the stereo, as well as his run­ning com­men­tary on all the things hap­pen­ing in his life: his hap­pi­ness with his new loft, and with Pete, his fun pho­tograph­ing his two lit­tle girls, his plans for an enor­mous birth­day party in Mar­rakesh! And through it all he took pic­tures. “Did you go to school to learn to do this, Vin­cent?” “No, indeed I am self-taught as they say.” “But all this equip­ment! How did you know what to buy?” He roared at that. “Honey, I have never had any trou­ble know­ing what to BUY.”

Then I thought I had bet­ter get myself off to meet Avery, Anna and Ellie at school and take them rid­ing, but Vin­cent, as is usual, was hav­ing none of my self-imposed duty. “We are going out to lunch,” he announced, and with that phrase I saw col­lapsed all my Puri­tan­i­cal plans to be early, to bring a snack for the girls, all the other good-mother sce­nar­ios I tend to adhere to. Life with Vin­cent is an end­less round of fun. So the three of us repaired to a local Bermond­sey restau­rant called Del­fina, and had a fine time. I don’t know if I would go again, but my hes­i­ta­tion is partly because I’m sure I ordered the wrong things. I started with an interesting-sounding soup (“I hate all soups,” Vin­cent said cat­e­gor­i­cally), and I have to say he was prob­a­bly right in this case. Jerusalem arti­choke, pear and chest­nut puree, with lit­tle fried plan­tain curls on top. The prob­lem? All the ingre­di­ents are the same color (grey­ish) and the same con­sis­tency (mushy) and it was too thick and too salty, I imag­ine to give it more fla­vor than could be had from the too-dull ingre­di­ents. So aside from just being soup, which makes me tend to like some­thing, it didn’t have much to rec­om­mend it. Then I had chicken liver pate to fol­low, which was, unac­count­ably, smeared across a slab of toasted cia­batta. Now, the pate itself was fine, but I really didn’t want it slathered on the piece of toast which, left to its own devices, would have been a nice crunchy accom­pa­ni­ment but, as it was, filled the role of “mat­tress” in “The Princess and the Pea.”

Pete, on the other hand, had an absolutely gor­geous lit­tle fil­let of sea bass, on a bed of shred­ded cab­bage and tiny noo­dles, and it looked divine. I don’t know him quite well enough to ask to have a bite, so I can­not report on its good­ness except to say that he ate every bite. Vin­cent had a pretentious-sounding but very yummy-looking “sumac smoked weiner schnitzel,” and it was enor­mous. Fine for a big strap­ping fel­low, but I could never have worked my way through it. Plus, by the time the main courses came I was in a ker­fuf­fle over being pos­si­bly late to pickup (I have to remem­ber that there’s Green­wich Mean Time, and then there’s Vin­cent Time, in which the clock stops for him to have fun and wrap his expan­sive good humour around every­one in his orbit). So I called Becky, always a main­stay of help with­out mak­ing me feel guilty, and arranged that she’d pick the girls up and I would meet them at the sta­ble with Avery’s stuff. Which was at home. Slight panic! Pete laughed. “I was reg­u­larly left at school. I was the youngest of five, and my mother, after school, would just sort of cock her ear for the level of noise in the house, find it appro­pri­ate for the num­ber of chil­dren she thought were prob­a­bly there, and leave it at that. It was some­times 4:30 before any­one realised I was still at school.” There does seem to be a spe­cial rule that decrees if I get to school on time, she’s late, and if I’m late, she was early, and all the good things I do as her mother fly out of the win­dow as she expe­ri­ences that fate worse than death: Last Child Picked Up.

Mean­while, as only a true foodie can do, even full as a tick, Vin­cent was talk­ing recipes. He is absolutely 100% con­vinced that his ver­sion of any­thing he can cook is the ver­sion you should learn to, so I lis­tened avidly. A souf­fle? To most peo­ple the word strikes fear in their culi­nary hearts, but to Vin­cent it’s “what you cook on a Sun­day night when no one can be both­ered to cook.” And he makes it sound so easy, using up all the ends of the cheeses you’ve had on your cheese­board all week. (Do you have a cheese­board all week? Oh, good, nei­ther do I.) He is, quite sim­ply, the most effort­less cook, and host.

He was still in full cre­ative flow as I pon­dered these ques­tions. “Have I given you my scal­lops in scotch? All you do is throw a knob of but­ter in a skil­let and sear the scal­lops quickly to brown on each side, then add a tub of creme fraiche [“this is Vincent’s diet scal­lop recipe,” Pete teased] and a good dol­lop of single-malt scotch, some salt and pep­per, cook it down, pour it over the scal­lops. Divine.” It sounds it, and when I see him tomor­row I’ll get the real recipe and let you know how it turns out.

So yes, tomor­row will see us hav­ing lunch at Vincent’s house while John looks at the con­tact sheets he doesn’t know exist yet, and chooses which he’d like to have made into prints. I’m so excited. And I made it to the sta­ble on time, in case you wondered.

Well. I have to apol­o­gise, just couldn’t resist the cheesey post title. But last night I went to an amaz­ing discussion/performance of the poetry of John Donne, hosted by an intrigu­ing organ­i­sa­tion called “Eng­lish Pen.” They are a group of intel­lec­tu­als ded­i­cated to the free­dom of writ­ten expres­sion (some of the monies they gather by sell­ing pens marked “Might­ier Than the Sword” go to efforts to free writ­ers cur­rently in prison). I had heard about the Donne event through my devo­tion to Google Alerts. Have you heard of these things? You ask Google to tell you who’s talk­ing about the things you love, and then you get emails telling you what news source, or even blog, is talk­ing about, say, the divine actress Har­riet Wal­ter. You may have slogged through my paeans of praise to Har­riet and to Edward Pether­bridge who recently per­formed at the Park Lane Hotel’s 80th birth­day cel­e­bra­tion. Now, that event I heard about because I belong to the Dorothy L. Say­ers Soci­ety, she being the author of the Wim­sey mys­ter­ies so won­der­fully per­formed on film and audio­book by my dar­ling Edward. But I decided after that evening that Har­riet Wal­ter was nearly equally won­der­ful, and thus I was led to an excel­lent blog about books and writ­ing (and other things that inter­est Sarah, the blog­ger), who belongs to “Eng­lish PEN” and there­fore knew that Har­riet would be per­form­ing last night! Got that?

Long story short (have you noticed that, in con­ver­sa­tion, by the time some­one utters this phrase it’s already been a long story?), last evening found me, after a pro­tracted acci­den­tal tour of the area sur­round­ing the Far­ring­don tube sta­tion (yes, I admit it, I got lost — again), at 60 Far­ring­don Road in the pres­ence of many peo­ple much, much smarter than I am. And fun­nily enough, instead of being dis­con­cert­ing, nay even depress­ing, it was really very ener­gis­ing. I don’t know about you, but I tend to live on a very quo­ti­dien plane, address­ing pretty much what needs to be done that par­tic­u­lar day, and not really stretch­ing my mind any fur­ther than direc­tions to my des­ti­na­tion (which granted, being me, can be every bit as absorb­ing as repro­duc­ing the Mona Lisa in marzi­pan). I think I am moti­vated enough now to be a lit­tle more intel­lec­tu­ally adven­tur­ous, dust off my PhD and really think about some­thing. Not every day, mind you, but…

Hav­ing finally found the drat­ted place, I was just in time to find a seat in the packed audi­to­rium and be greeted by the young and gen­tly effer­ves­cent Direc­tor of PEN, Jonathan Hea­wood, as he intro­duced the speak­ers. The cen­ter of atten­tion was one John Stubbs, author of the newly-published biog­ra­phy of Dunne, “John Dunne: The Reformed Soul.” I had to restrain myself from bop­ping him on the top of his tou­sled head, because the lad is but 29 years old. Now, with very few excep­tions I have for­sworn to have any­thing to do with peo­ple under 30, espe­cially if they have accom­plished any­thing that makes me feel inad­e­quate (which is painfully easy to do). This man was just adorable, I have to say: a sort of com­bi­na­tion of Harry Pot­ter and Pete Doherty, if either of them had gone to Oxford. Actu­ally, this boy looked as if he had been born and raised at Oxford and had never left. The com­pleat aca­d­e­mic, disheveled in a lovely jumper and Viyella-ish shirt, con­stantly flop­ping his hair off and back onto his fore­head, with an endear­ing sort of brainy stam­mer. And the sort of com­men­tary that I thought resided only in my fever­ishly bril­liant PhD tutor, Steven Z. Levine, a man for whom semi-colons were usable parts of speech. His hes­i­tant man­ner of answer­ing ques­tions was a bit uncom­fort­able at first, to lis­ten to, until it became appar­ent that he was hes­i­tat­ing not for lack of cer­tainty as to what to say, but because it took that long for him to sift through the enor­mous num­ber of pos­si­ble words to find just the right one. And, dear read­ers, he spoke some words I didn’t even know. I was ashamed of myself, and nat­u­rally I could not write them down because I had never heard them before. Plus some words that I recog­nised as being nom­i­nally part of my own mother tongue, but had never found occa­sion to utter, like “ter­tiary verisimil­i­tude” and “amaneunses”:

amanu­en­sis \un-man-yoo-EN-sis\, noun; plural amanu­enses, \-seez\:
A per­son employed to take dic­ta­tion or to copy man­u­scripts.

and “internecine”. Might he have said “pro­lep­tic”? Is that a word? And what’s more, he was inter­est­ing. Much of the dis­cus­sion, which was led by poet Ruth Padel, cen­tered on Donne’s atti­tude toward his Catholi­cism, in a time when the faith was pun­ish­able by impris­on­ment, or even being drawn and quar­tered. But almost best of all dur­ing the evening was the part that led me there in the first place, Har­riet Walter’s read­ings of the var­i­ous poems that were rel­e­vant to the discussion.

The intel­lect and sense of humor of the Eng­lish aca­d­e­mic are such a joy to me, and I had for­got­ten what it was like to lis­ten to them. The Direc­tor had intro­duced all the speak­ers by say­ing, “Ruth Padel is of course the great grand­daugh­ter of Charles Dar­win, and Har­riet Wal­ter is the niece of Christo­pher Lee. John Stubbs is not the rel­a­tive of any­one famous, although he does say he dreams of horses.” Of course this got a laugh, but only if I had been really pay­ing atten­tion to liv­ing in Lon­don (which I must say I have been) would I know that he was refer­ring to the equine painter George Stubbs.

Har­riet Wal­ter her­self was just sub­lime, like a Kristin Scott Thomas who can laugh at her­self, and very beau­ti­ful, these 20 years after her turn as Lord Peter Wimsey’s amour Har­riet Vane. And after­ward I screwed up my courage and asked her for her auto­graph, in my old copy of my favorite of all the Wimsey-Vane nov­els, “Busman’s Hon­ey­moon,” since Say­ers her­self described it as “a love story with detec­tive inter­rup­tions.” She was gra­cious and said, about the novel, “Oh, it’s the one that got away,” since for some untold rea­son the Say­ers estate sold the film rights to some­one who won’t let any­one make a film of it.

Oh, and on the way to the event, would you believe: I was on one of the many streets I wasn’t meant to be on, get­ting loster and loster, when I looked up to see… Avery’s PS 234 friend Phoebe, and her fam­ily, wan­der­ing hand in hand along the pave­ment! Her mother Liz had emailed me to see if we were around this week and would we like to get together, and then smack! there they were right in front of me. Per­haps din­ner tomor­row night.

Well, Avery has just made her first cake, from her first real-live cook­book recipe, and is now repos­ing in her bath and I’ve promised to read aloud. I’ll let you know how the cake turns out, and it could be Avery’s first recipe on my blog, prop­erly cited in its orig­i­nal con­text, of course. I must say, I get very sen­ti­men­tal when she likes some­thing I like, or liked as a child, and to pass along all my Gin­nie and Geneva books and have her enjoy them is very sat­is­fy­ing indeed. And with the won­ders of inter­net searches, you can get copies for your daugh­ters, too.

I know, I know, I am really provin­cial and not very sophis­ti­cated, but it just bog­gles my mind that I can be say­ing good­bye to Anne and David in Con­necti­cut one minute, and seem­ingly lit­er­ally just min­utes later be descend­ing my Lon­don front steps on the way to Marks and Spencer for gro­ceries. Peo­ple do this all the time, I know! But it takes a long time for me to re-acclimate. I feel for sev­eral days as if all the beloved peo­ple on both sides of the pond are resid­ing in my pock­ets, or sit­ting on my shoul­ders, some want­ing to know why I’ve left and oth­ers not real­iz­ing I’ve ever been gone. “Why, you know on Tues­day…” No, I wasn’t here on Tues­day! “Over the week­end we…” Well, we were some­where else! And to think of our beloved Red Gate Farm fire­places dead and dark, our barns unlighted, the pond empty of our skat­ing attempts, Rol­lie roof­ing the barn with­out us there to gloat, the snow melt­ing over our foot­prints. I hate that! And yet, to come home to Lon­don and see that our cats are thriv­ing, the oven still work­ing for a roast chicken, “Top Gear” ready to be watched: that’s all to the good as well. It does make me laugh to hear Jeremy Clark­son say that the “right turn on a red light” is the only sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion of Amer­i­can cul­ture to the world. Thanks, Jeremy. I’ll be sure and log the inven­tion of pot­ted chicken under YOUR nation’s cul­tural achieve­ments. Harumph.

I am totally inspired now, after our after­noon with Anne across the road, to begin work in earnest on my edi­tion of her grandmother’s recipes. Over a lovely lunch of oys­ter stew, we dis­cussed strate­gies for choos­ing, pre­sent­ing and updat­ing Gladys’s recipes. There are some lovely bits, like “scal­loped oys­ters,” or “sweet potato souf­fle,” absolute mar­vels of sim­plic­ity and thrift. Then there are clas­sic budget-conscious post­war gems like “Sour Cream Loaf” which fea­tures ground veal and chopped green pep­pers (an ingre­di­ent for which I feel a totally irra­tional hos­til­ity), as well as the epony­mous dairy prod­uct. That’s got to be a really weird dish. Then there’s the recipe for lob­ster bisque, which involves mix­ing a can of mush­room soup and a can of tomato soup, and a “No.1 can of lob­ster”. Now, I don’t know what a No.1 can is, but I feel cer­tain that no can should con­tain lobster.

Here’s one fas­ci­nat­ing thing about recipes from the past, I find: there is a curi­ous con­tra­dic­tion about sea­son­al­ity, and also afford­abil­ity, that per­vades many of the instruc­tions. On the one hand, old-fashioned cook­ery writ­ers are much more tol­er­ant of sim­ply not being able to get things at cer­tain times of the year (like fruit in snowy Con­necti­cut), or not being able to afford things (like a lob­ster fresh from the ocean). How­ever, they are per­fectly happy to use frozen straw­ber­ries, some­thing I have never pur­chased, or canned cher­ries, or canned lob­ster. If I can’t have it fresh (whether from avail­abil­ity or from cost), I just skip it. What does that mean about me as a cook, and about Gladys? I have a lot to think about, before I can put together a decent analy­sis of the cook­ery mood of one New Eng­lan­der writer in the 1940s, and my own 21st cen­tury urban atti­tude, in this era when one can get (if one can afford) almost any­thing, almost any­time of the year. I am incred­i­bly flat­tered that Anne thinks I am the right per­son to take on her beloved famous relative’s work, and turn it into some­thing that new read­ers can approach with enthu­si­asm. Most impor­tant, I think, is to point out that Martha Stew­art did not invent domes­tic­ity, nor did Nigella Law­son, as won­der­ful as these peo­ple are. And there is a great deal to be said for a writer, and a per­son, who wanted her writ­ing and her recipes to be acces­si­ble, not to scare peo­ple to death.

Anne feels that the best thing to do is to select a small num­ber of good recipes, and test them all, pos­si­bly bring them up to date with mod­ern ingre­di­ents, and sur­round them with some sort of text that will get across the enor­mous and last­ing appeal of Gladys’s writ­ing. That is a tall order, on all sides. Because the recipes are really only the tip of her appeal. Of course that is in part because the col­lec­tions are pep­pered with items like this gem: “Boiled Tongue: raisin sauce makes a nice change.” I bet it does. No, the recipes are lovely, some deli­cious, and all of them evoca­tive of a cer­tain era in home­mak­ing, but her real genius is in her gen­uine love for her farm, her friends, fam­ily, hos­pi­tal­ity and enjoy­ment of her rural life. And I must say her con­cern for the overde­vel­op­ment of the sur­round­ing coun­try­side res­onates awfully loudly today. So I must put on my think­ing cap and do her jus­tice. In the mean­time, you should give her writ­ing a whirl. I can only hope to pro­duce any­thing half so valu­able, but I’ll try.

All we can say is OOF. What a meal!

It was a crys­tal clear day, as you can see, as we set off for Olimpia’s house in Catskill, New York, which is actu­ally a pseu­do­nym for “Very Far From Any­where.” As in, their dri­ve­way alone is like the dis­tance from Avery’s school to Buck­ing­ham Palace. You have to cross the Rip Van Win­kle Bridge to get there, and thence resist the temp­ta­tion to stop at the Rip Van Win­kle Diner, but file under your hat the vacan­cies at the Rip Van Win­kle Motel. You will have gath­ered that this lit­er­ary phe­nom­e­non is the focal point of the cul­tural life of Catskill, New York. Except that we turned a blind eye on all these attrac­tions, know­ing that if our old VW sta­tion wagon could make it up the drive, ambrosia lay at the end of our jour­ney. We were not disappointed.

I will never for­get the day that Olimpia and I cooked all day long (or rather she cooked and I salaamed “I’m not wor­thy” at her feet, for John’s work Christ­mas party just before we moved last year. Meat­balls to serve 60! Ribs that spent the entire day in her home­made tomato basil sauce. All the other “food” that I sub­mit­ted for con­sid­er­a­tion was entirely eclipsed, and peo­ple stood around the empty plat­ter where the meat­balls had been, say­ing, “But I didn’t get any!” So when we knew we were going to have a chance to see Olimpia and her hus­band Tony dur­ing our visit home, we jumped on it. And I had no hes­i­ta­tion in ask­ing her to make my favorites.

Tony built this log cabin with his own hands! It reminds me of the incred­i­ble accom­plish­ment of my dad (well, we helped a lit­tle) when he built the bed­room exten­sion on their house: the sheer capa­bil­ity bog­gles the mind. And now Tony’s build­ing a kitchen exten­sion for Olimpia and we were able to see the plans, plus the work in progress, plus exam­ine tile sam­ples, peek at light­ing fix­tures, cab­i­nets in progress. Very excit­ing, and you can imag­ine the views. The Catskill moun­tains loomed in the dis­tance and there were fully two feet of snow. Avery was in heaven sled­ding, with all of us in atten­dance to try to pack down the trail.

We sat down to lunch, and it exceeded all our expec­ta­tions. It was like eat­ing through the entire menu of a small Ital­ian restau­rant. We began with lasagne, in which there were tiny, tiny meat­balls instead of the mince I use to make mine. Avery was in heaven. From there we pro­gressed to large meat­balls and the suc­cu­lent ribs, which had sim­mered all day in sauce. Then, if you can imag­ine it, a dish of flank steak wrapped around pars­ley, pine nuts and raisins, PLUS an egg­plant dish with olive oil, capers and black olives. Oh MY. Sim­ply sub­lime. And through it all we gos­siped about John’s aban­doned office, Tony’s col­or­ful his­tory as Deputy Fire Mar­shal of the FDNY (excit­ingly on the arson squad). Did you know that every FDNY fire hel­met (and every one in the world, for all I know) is made from a cast of the indi­vid­ual fireman’s head? Unique, every one. And Avery did her posh accent, and her David Beck­ham accent, which I must say is spot on.

I will pass on any recipes I can man­age to cajole from Olimpia, espe­cially the egg­plant dish which revived my inter­est in that deadly night­shade (well, not deadly, but you know what I mean). Thank you, Olimpia and Tony, for everything.

Yes, we’re offi­cially visa-ed for life in Eng­land now. John is, ahem, drum roll: a “Highly Skilled Migrant Worker.” Avery and I are his depen­dents. As if we didn’t already know that.

We got up early Tues­day morn­ing and rode down in the hotel ele­va­tor with lots of hilar­i­ous dogs in town for the West­min­ster Dog Show at Madi­son Square Gar­den, just down the street from the New Yorker. Oh, yes, we had to switch hotels after Alyssa vis­ited the one I had cho­sen, and said that while she was not actu­ally attacked by giant rodents and cock­roaches, it was a near miss. And she thought maybe there was a dead per­son on the front steps. So I put my tail between my legs and let Olimpia book us into the bor­ing but clean hotel John always stays at in town. Sigh, so much for exper­i­men­ta­tion and adventure.

But yes, after we dropped Avery off at school with Cici to spend the day being a non-uniformed co-ed girl, I had tea with Kath­leen and then trekked up to the British Con­sulate to sub­mit all the labo­ri­ous paper­work John had gath­ered up: tax records, salary records, mar­riage and birth cer­tifi­cates, every­thing but my last gro­cery list and mam­mo­gram results.

But on the way in the taxi, I was again vis­ited by the feel­ing that New York is sim­ply lit­tered with mem­o­ries. Bal­let on 6th Avenue, and the dar­ling Jef­fer­son Mar­ket library across the street, where lit­tle tutu-ed Avery spent so many happy hours. Our crazy mis­er­able den­tist who wanted to be an Olympic skier, on 10th Street just around the cor­ner from the Hal­loween store, open every day of the year sell­ing makeup, wigs, scary teeth, dead rub­ber rats, plas­tic swords and cos­tumes. And then Friends Sem­i­nary where Annabelle goes to school and Avery spent so many hot sum­mer days at camp with her, and Beth Israel Hos­pi­tal, vis­i­ble from the school, where Avery was born. Sigh. But Lon­don is begin­ning to feel like home, as well.

The visas were no prob­lem at all, and then we found out our lunch with Alyssa had to be can­celed because Elliot was busy film­ing a com­mer­cial for PBS! His red hair and gen­eral atti­tude of friendly, goofy aban­don makes him a total obses­sion with the New York com­mer­cial set. So we aban­doned our plan and instead spon­ta­neously hopped on the V train and had pas­trami sand­wiches, mat­zoh ball soup and latkes at Katz Deli! There is just noth­ing like it, although I did recoil a bit at $13.45 for a sand­wich. But since no sane per­son can eat a whole one, it’s actu­ally not that bad. In fact, per­fect. Then a long walk to SoHo to find a down coat for me since the bit­ter wind was des­tined to make stand­ing out at a pony les­son quite mis­er­able. Boy are things on sale! EMS was good to me and I came away look­ing like a marsh­mal­low, but cosy and warm. And I found, on the other end of the style spec­trum, a beau­ti­ful halter-neck black dress to wear to the British Show Jump­ing Cham­pi­onships in April, for which John and Avery gave me fancy VIP tick­ets, for my birth­day. Black tie, the Puis­sance Wall, it will be great, and now for a bud­get price at JCrew, I have a dress.

Just in time to pull out­side school to get Avery, and I looked up to see my old friend Mya, one of the gallery’s best clients, com­ing toward me! “What on EARTH?” she asked in aston­ish­ment. It was but the work of a moment to explain our mis­sion, and she explained too that her eldest son Miles (who was just two when his par­ents bought their first paint­ing) goes to school at VCS. Then there is the mid­dle son who was born when the gallery was about a year old, and now there is a third son, with whom Mya was preg­nant when I told her we were mov­ing. We chat­ting ener­get­i­cally until it was time for Miles to be col­lected. How nice it would be if they came to Lon­don, but with three boys under seven, it might be tough.

Up the old famil­iar West Side High­way, past the newly-rebuilt crum­ble of the wall that so famously fell onto the road just feet from our car sev­eral years ago. What an adven­ture that was. Poor John’s mom not being able to reach me with my dead cell phone, cer­tain that we were buried under tons of rub­ble. We reached the barn to find all our friends milling about in the cold, some unrec­og­niz­able under woolly hats! Ali with her new, dear horse, Gabby and Nina jump­ing in the ring with dear Chris­tine shout­ing at every­one to keep heels down, hands calm, shoul­ders straight. Arrange­ments were being made for the din­ner that evening to reunite us all, and John was pass­ing out cof­fee to every­one. Avery was on Lady­bug, and as you can see, the meet­ing was a joy for all. What a dear pony, but I must say the les­son lasted just long enough in the freez­ing cold. And, dear read­ers, I man­aged to work in a trip to my beloved Fair­way, quite pos­si­bly the best, and most afford­able, food mar­ket I have ever been to. Huge piles of pro­duce of every descrip­tion as you enter, then onto the pantry goods with deals on olive oil and anchovies and pasta, plus a huge deli sec­tion where I snagged gravad­lax, smoked rain­bow trout, fresh cream cheese (bears no resem­blance to the gelati­nous cousin of the Philadel­phia vari­ety), and then into the famous Cold Room, where the entire space is a refrig­er­a­tor. There I picked up an embar­rass­ing quan­tity of fresh shucked oys­ters for stew for Fri­day night’s sup­per, and regret­fully passed up the whole beef fil­lets and giant pork roasts on the bone, not hav­ing enough peo­ple to feed to make it worth­while. Up we went then to Avery’s barn friend Nina’s gor­geous town house, to snug­gle before the fire and try to help Nina’s mother Julia with her lat­est pro­fes­sional conun­drum, a museum oppor­tu­nity that sounds both com­pelling and confusing.

Din­ner was a total delight. I can­not say that my appetite was at its most oppor­tune, with a giant Katz Deli lunch in its recent past. So I con­tented myself with an enor­mous Cae­sar salad and had lit­tle bites of every­one else’s pasta, John’s gnoc­chi with wild mush­rooms def­i­nitely win­ning out. It was a lovely restau­rant, Cen­tolire on Madi­son Avenue, and appar­ently when Julia told some­one of our plans, the lis­tener was incred­u­lous. “You’re tak­ing CHIL­DREN there?” It’s one of Pino Luongo’s brain­chil­dren, and had I known ahead of time where we were going, I would have saved my pas­trami for another day. I remem­ber the days years ago when we lived in SoHo (more wax­ing nos­tal­gic), going to Il Can­ti­nori in Lit­tle Italy for a spe­cial treat.

Cer­tainly it was lux­u­ri­ous, and with a table for eight moth­ers (and John) and eight lit­tle girls, we were per­fectly set for a relax­ing evening. I just looked and looked at my friends and was so happy to be included: beau­ti­ful, earnest Flo­ren­cia lis­ten­ing gravely to what­ever story ele­gant, ath­letic Camille hap­pened to be telling, and author­i­ta­tive, opin­ion­ated Venezue­lan Ana, daugh­ter of Car­olina Her­rera, and then feisty, foxy Francesca who hosted us so mem­o­rably this sum­mer, and fresh-faced Sandy, wife of a very pop­u­lar CNN host and with an edge of South­ern steely wit to her charm. And of course Julia to my right, still mus­ing over her job offer, join­ing me in look­ing over at our daugh­ters, order­ing their din­ners with grace and aplomb. How did they get old enough to deal with wait­ers, and receive such glow­ing smiles for their man­ners? All of them so sweet in their jodh­purs and long glossy pony­tails. As always the dis­cus­sion ranged from the most recent pony-human intrigues at the barn, who is win­ning ver­sus who should be win­ning, what insane things Joey the trainer has been say­ing lately, wor­ries over our daugh­ters’ grow­ing up too quickly, and a lot of inter­est in our lives in Lon­don, espe­cially Avery’s rid­ing. It seems mag­i­cal, and almost impos­si­ble to me, that we can come back, and our friends are still here. As we fin­ished din­ner we looked out the win­dow to see thick snow falling. “Bet­ter get going,” John said, and we parted with many kisses, and headed back up to Connecticut.

We spent yes­ter­day recov­er­ing from our mad sched­ule, doing noth­ing but cook­ing crab­cakes and watch­ing “The Manor House,” a won­der­ful series of pro­grammes detail­ing the Gos­ford Park–like lives of an invented, recre­ated aris­to­cratic fam­ily life in Edwar­dian Eng­land. So far three of the vol­un­teer scullery maids have quit, the French chef hates every­one, lit­tle Mas­ter Guy has received a pony for his birth­day, and some of the shim­mer is wear­ing off the gen­er­ous atti­tudes of the peo­ple play­ing the landed gen­try. What will this evening’s episode be? Per­haps Rob the Foot­man will fall for Jen­nifer the Sec­ond House­maid? We’ll find out.

Kristen’s Crab­cakes (inspired by Joel’s Crab­cakes, thank you)
(makes approx­i­mately 8)

1 lb fresh claw crab­meat, cooked and picked over
1/2 cup thinly sliced green onions, white and green parts
1 red bell pep­per, minced
1/2 cup may­on­naise
3 egg yolks, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups fresh bread­crumbs
1/2 tsp chili pow­der
salt and pep­per to taste
3 tbsps veg­etable oil

(1 more cup bread­crumbs for rolling)

Mix all ingre­di­ents but oil, thor­oughly. Form into 3-inch diam­e­ter cakes, about 3/4 inch thick. Roll in bread­crumbs and place in a sin­gle layer on a plat­ter. Refrig­er­ate as long as pos­si­ble, at least 2 hours (this will keep them from falling apart while cook­ing). Before fry­ing, firmly squeeze them into shape once again. Heat oil in a wide, deep skil­let and place crab­cakes in a sin­gle layer. Fry on one side 4 min­utes, then turn and fry for another 4 min­utes. Drain thor­oughly on thick paper tow­els and serve with:

Spicy Chili Mayonnaise

3/4 cup may­on­naise
juice of one lemon
2 tbsps gar­lic chili sauce
1 tbsp Dijon mus­tard
2 cloves gar­lic, finely minced
salt and pep­per to taste

Mix all ingre­di­ents and adjust sea­son­ings to your taste. Serve in dol­lops on each din­ner plate, along­side crabcakes.

Mon­day morn­ing found us at brunch in West Hart­ford with the fam­ily, being enter­tained by Jane who is clearly a favorite with the staff at the cute diner AC Petersen Farms, which they fre­quent. “When are you headed off to the sun­shine, lit­tle one?” our wait­ress wanted to know. Joel and Jane are des­tined for the Florida sun to join my sis­ter who is slav­ing away for ESPN on NASCAR busi­ness. My mom told hilar­i­ous sto­ries about many of Jane’s tricks that we have not yet seen, like her “blap gui­tar,” made by strum­ming on her favorite bird­s­eye dia­per secu­rity item (don’t ask, it’s a fam­ily tra­di­tion), and the related “blap accor­dion.” Sud­denly then there was a beep­ing sound and Jane announced, “Coffee’s done.” Joel looked sheep­ish. “Well, our cof­fee maker beeps when the coffee’s done, so…” Sev­eral hun­dred omelettes and pan­cakes later, we played in the snow at Joel’s house for a bit, John using Jane as a shield against Avery’s snow­ball fights. “You wouldn’t hit an inno­cent baby, would you?” Then good­byes all round, and we were off to the city.

The apogee, of course, of the day, was Avery’s long-anticipated reunion with Cici. They hadn’t seen each other since August, and the excite­ment was at fever pitch. We pulled up out­side the Vil­lage Com­mu­nity School in the West Vil­lage and there it was: a com­pletely typ­i­cal urban New York school, red brick, high fence sur­round­ing the play yard with its bas­ket­ball hoops, the children’s voices at wineglass-shattering octaves. And the uni­ver­sal sen­sa­tion that is school pickup. It doesn’t really mat­ter what the accents are (Wash­ing­ton Square or Sloane Square), or whether the cars wait­ing out­side the yard are mother-driven SUVs or chauffeur-driven Bent­leys, or whether the kids are boys and girls in every out­landish out­fit you can imag­ine, or lit­tle girls in pris­tine uni­forms. The feel­ing is the same: how was Eng­lish? Did you eat your lunch? Hurry and jump in the car because your sis­ter is hav­ing a meltdown.

And there was Cici’s mother wait­ing out­side the yard, ready for our hugs and a bot­tle of cham­pagne. “Cici’s right there, Avery!” and there she was. Much scream­ing and jump­ing up and down, and Avery’s lit­tle glow­ing face, being intro­duced to Cici’s cir­cle of friends, all of whom looked bemused, fas­ci­nated and a lit­tle skep­ti­cal, but friendly. Clearly there had been some advance press for the visit. We walked in the bit­ter, bit­ing cold to their new apart­ment not far away, and had tea and caught up on fam­ily life. “I remem­ber these plates!” Avery said in delight, and “Here’s that pic­ture of you and me eat­ing a strand of spaghetti together, one on each end, until we kissed!” and show­ing off pic­tures of Cici rid­ing at their sta­ble in Con­necti­cut, and sto­ries of the embalming-chicken project that Cici is involved with at school. “We’re study­ing King Tut!” Finally Kath­leen and I left them draw­ing together while we nipped down to the gor­geous bou­tique on the ground level of their build­ing, Zero by Maria Cornejo. She’s a fas­ci­nat­ing Chilean designer, and thank good­ness there was an enor­mous sale, because Kath­leen found a pair of really chic and use­ful black culottes that I put on imme­di­ately while the lan­guid and bored shop assis­tant strug­gled might­ily with the com­puter sys­tem. Gorgeous.

Then I was off to meet John in SoHo for a trip down mem­ory lane, in our old stomp­ing grounds of Spring and Broad­way, look­ing up fondly at the second-story bal­cony (OK, OK, it was a fire escape) on which we had so many, many after-party hang­outs, good­ness, nearly 15 years ago. Look­ing down­town to the Wool­worth Build­ing and uptown to the Chrysler Build­ing, there was never a cooler loft. Many cats, fur­ni­ture styles, din­ner par­ties and one child’s entire life later, we looked up there and felt very… old. But happy. Off for my long-awaited shop­ping trip to Varda, quite sim­ply the best shoe bou­tique in the world in my opin­ion. In our most recent closet purges, I finally said good­bye to two pairs of boots that had lasted (so to speak) me nearly 15 years, and I was ready for a bit of a blowout. Oh my, though, painful as it is to say, prices have increased in that period of time! Nev­er­the­less, I came away with some gor­geous choco­late brown boots, flat-heeled, sadly, as John objects to any heel, and I am fool enough to want him to be happy. And a pair of pil­grim shoes, with a glossy lit­tle folded flap. The shop­keeper actu­ally remem­bered me! Then it was off to Old Navy for t-shirts for Avery.

It’s strange: nor­mally I am not a shop­per, at all. I have black turtle­necks and other black turtle­necks. Huge dis­plays of cloth­ing make me ner­vous, and shop assis­tants, too. In Lon­don of course I get sticker shock and never buy any­thing. But there was some­thing sort of youth­ful and fun-loving about a lit­tle shop­ping spree! I think it’s a SoHo thing, a mix­ture of old happy mem­o­ries of what John used to call the “oppor­tu­nity cost” of liv­ing at the cor­ner of Spring and Broad­way: there was always an oppor­tu­nity for some­thing to cost money! And I was a care­free young art his­tory pro­fes­sor who felt it was part of my job to look chic. A bit of myself that has def­i­nitely got­ten if not lost, then firmly pushed aside under lay­ers of moth­er­hood, mov­ing into my scary 40s, many moves, job changes and other stresses. It was fun to out shop­ping with my hus­band, in a spend­ing mood. All we were miss­ing were John’s par­ents, whose shop­ping trips used to cut a swathe through SoHo, John’s mother’s credit card in her hand as she said, “Charge!” Self-indulgent and fun.

Then we raced back up to the Vil­lage and col­lected Avery, arranged to meet every­body back at Cici’s school in the morn­ing, and raced back down to Tribeca for drinks with Alyssa, Annabelle and Elliot. As the girls imme­di­ately turned on their “Bop to the Top” sound­track and began danc­ing, Alyssa said iron­i­cally, “Can it really have been TWO WHOLE MONTHS since we saw this dance?” She turned to Amy, the girls’ babysit­ter from years gone by and explained, “It turns out that ‘Bop to the Top’ is appro­pri­ate for any occa­sion. Chang­ing of the Guard? Bop. Wait­ing in line at the British Museum? Bop.” Elliot skated around them, try­ing for a moment in the sun. All too soon, how­ever, we were off in the cold to walk to the nice quiet Indian restau­rant we had cho­sen for our evening with Jeanne and Cyn­thia. Alyssa went with us and we decided to pass by our old loft on Jay Street. So sad to look up into the win­dows and see that my miles and miles of zinc book­shelves, so lov­ingly designed and always chock-a-block full, were nearly empty. “And the place is lit up like a pho­tog­ra­phy stu­dio!” John wailed, think­ing of his sub­tle and beau­ti­ful light­ing schemes. We all sighed, think­ing of the home that had been.

Just as we approached Salaam Bom­bay for din­ner, John said, “I won­der how long it will be before you see some­body you know?” and there in our path was… Augus­tus, the painter from my gallery who had so famously (not that he knows that I told every­one the story) announced to me that we were meant to be together. Des­tined for a great pas­sion­ate love. Intended by fate to join our cre­ative instincts together in a great part­ner­ship of love and the arts. “But Augus­tus,” I objected, “what about my hus­band and child, and your wife?” I don’t even remem­ber his response, but good­ness he was appeal­ing. So we stood there in the windy bit­ter­ness, my fam­ily and I, lis­ten­ing to him extol his own virtues, a past­time at which he is amaz­ingly tal­ented. Give him credit, I thought to myself, he is a great painter. But it was a funny encounter, and lit­tle did he know he had pro­vided excel­lent copy for my fic­tion class, in which he appeared as a mur­der sus­pect. Too funny.

Into the cosy restau­rant, and a glo­ri­ous evening of gos­sip and catch­ing up with our dear friends. Avery, how­ever, stayed awake only long enough to unwrap a present from Jeanne, a book on horse mythol­ogy, and to say thank you nicely, and then was down for the count under a drift of everyone’s coats. Cyn­thia brought us up to date on the awful and costly ren­o­va­tion of her realty office (she is quite the most clever real­tor that ever lived, hav­ing once described a house in an ad as “entirely uphol­stered”), and the pres­sures of hav­ing young job-hunting rel­a­tives liv­ing with them, and the health of var­i­ous friends in com­mon. And pos­si­ble plans for them visit in May! They are try­ing to con­vince us to join them on their upcom­ing cruise on the Queen Mary II, but as far as vaca­tions go, that one doesn’t grab me. How won­der­ful, though, to be warm and well-fed, chat­ting with old friends, and mak­ing plans. The food was not quite as remark­able as I had remem­bered, the many times we ate there and more often ordered out, all the dishes except for the vin­daloo tast­ing a bit as if they had all been cooked in the same sauce, albeit tasty. But a lovely evening. Back to the hotel with a bone­less Avery, and to sleep. Because the next day was slated to be… busy, to say the least.

I hope this finds you all as cosy as we are here in Con­necti­cut: snow with­out, a flick­er­ing fire within. Of course all is not joy: my poor par­ents and brother are stuck at lit­tle Janie’s house, their plans all awry with this win­ter storm that began last night and is still con­tin­u­ing. All the weather peo­ple are so happy! They have chris­tened it “The Valentine’s Day Storm,” which to me sounds like a ser­ial killer who hits only on Hall­mark hol­i­days, but I guess it had to have a moniker. Any­way, but for the extreme annoy­ance being caused to many trav­ellers, it’s sim­ply beau­ti­ful here at Red Gate Farm. This pic­ture makes me laugh: it’s one of the Vic­to­rian can­dle hold­ers attached to the branches of our hydrangea tree, so as to be lit up for Christ­mas Eve lo those many months ago as we pre­pared our big move to Lon­don. I guess the lit­tle things were lost in the lush branches and leaves this sum­mer, when we arrived for our holidays.

Our trip here was a bit mud­dly as well: we arrived at the air­port on Fri­day evening to find that although the flight had been delayed, board­ing had been closed three hours early, and we were not allowed on. Grrr. There was noth­ing to do but go back home and return on Sat­ur­day, which we did with­out mishap, and hours later found our­selves wait­ing out­side the ter­mi­nal at JFK for a “car” to pick us up and drive us to Con­necti­cut. “Oh my lord,” John said, “that’s not a car.” “It’s a stretch limo!” Avery shrieked in some com­bi­na­tion of glee and total embar­rass­ment. “I just hope nobody is look­ing out the win­dow as we arrive,” I groaned, since the aus­ter­ity of our farm­ing com­mu­nity does not really run to enor­mous long gas-guzzling vehi­cles too atten­u­ated to fit in our dri­ve­way. We sim­ply scut­tled out of the car and raced inside, to per­fect warmth from Rollie’s com­ing in and get­ting the house ready for us. Plus food in the fridge from Anne and David! So per­fect. We fell into bed, happy.

The next morn­ing we were each up just two hours ear­lier than nor­mal, so I was, unusu­ally, happy at 7 a.m., in the gro­cery store. It was my favorite way to spend the day: sur­rounded by fam­ily, cook­ing and eat­ing. My par­ents, brother, and Joel and Jane arrived and there were birth­day present exchanges, no-reason present exchanges, catch­ing up of news, and mostly appre­ci­at­ing all the hilar­i­ous things Jane says. She seems very low to the ground for some­one who can say so much! She emerged from explor­ing the guest bath­room, hold­ing a sham­poo bot­tle and say­ing earnestly, “Ooh, I love bar­codes.” And she has sev­eral jokes in her two-year-old reper­toire that require many, many rep­e­ti­tions. “Why chicken cross road?” “I don’t know, Janie, why did the chicken cross the road?” “OTHER SIDE!” and shrieks of uncon­trol­lable laugh­ter. This she tells to UPS guys, vis­it­ing farm­ers, wait­ers and wait­resses. Every­one seems to find it pretty enter­tain­ing. And she is so cute, just to look at. “Aunt Kris­ten, my shoes make funny sound.” “Do they? You mean if you stamp up and down?” “No, just if I wig­gle them, they squeak.” Sure enough, as she twirled her lit­tle ankles around they squeaked in all their pink leather glory.

It seemed a good day for some hot soup, so I remem­bered that my beloved vichys­soise of sum­mer prob­a­bly started out its life as creamy leek and potato soup. Give it a try; it couldn’t be any eas­ier, or cheaper.

Creamy Leek and Potato Soup
(serves 8)

3 tbsps but­ter
6 leeks, just white part and a bit of the green, washed and sliced thin
3 medium onions
3 cloves gar­lic, coarsely chopped
6 medium pota­toes
6 cups chicken stock
1 cup half and half
chopped chives to garnish

Melt but­ter in a heavy stock­pot and sweat the leeks and gar­lic gen­tly until soft. Add onions and pota­toes and coat with the but­ter, then cover with chicken stock and sim­mer high for 45 min­utes. Blend with a hand blender and add half and half, then return to the stove and heat gen­tly. Serve in warmed bowls and scat­ter chives on top.

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

With this we had sim­ply obscene sand­wiches of roast beef, turkey, red onion, avo­cado, tomato and fresh pesto, on sour­dough toast. Oh, and some odd cheese that was com­pletely deli­cious, in a very American-deli kind of way: it was called “buf­falo wing ched­dar” and was a creamy yel­low cheese stud­ded with jalapenos and laced with chili sauce. Delicious.

Then we just hung around. My mother is the best hanger-arounder I know. She gets com­fort­able in the old southern-Indiana rocker we bought 20 years ago for $15, and keeps me com­pany, telling me what’s up with my 94-year-old grand­mother, all my cousins’ babies I’ve never met and know only through birth announce­ments and send­ing pic­ture books to them. We gos­sip about my sister’s job, Jane’s remark­able accom­plish­ments, Eng­lish mys­ter­ies we both love (includ­ing the new police pro­ce­dural from our favorite Deb­o­rah Crom­bie, “Water Like a Stone” which we have both ordered and can’t wait to read). She looks over my shoul­der as I cook, mar­veling at my abil­ity to do the sim­plest tasks, which makes her a very reward­ing com­pan­ion. I should make a men­tal note: when Avery is grown and I come to visit her, I need to find her as admirable and praise­wor­thy as my mother always claims to find me, even when I haven’t done any­thing to deserve it. It’s a nice feel­ing. My dad had tales of the enor­mous cel­e­bra­tions for the Colts’ big Super Bowl win, and my brother reported on the lat­est Bea­t­les reis­sue I gave him for my birth­day. And through it all, Jane talked. And threw a tiny rub­ber ball from one of us to the other. And I stirred my brisket, and whipped up cole slaw for din­ner. Rol­lie came bar­rel­ing in to say hello and that yes, he and Judy could come to din­ner after all, had Judy told me so? No. Small panic! Really? OK, Plan B: why not make a meat­loaf? To go with the brisket? That way, as far as the menu went, you could choose beef… or beef! Which led to Joel’s telling me that in some Indi­ana towns he’s trav­eled to for busi­ness, chicken is offered as the veg­e­tar­ian alter­na­tive. Oh, my home state.

I have to con­fess: the crazy social life of the past four days has caught up with all of us: two of us are asleep and I am nod­ding. More tomor­row. On tap: New York City adven­tures, horsey adven­tures, retail ther­apy, and…gnocchi. I know, you can hardly wait.

It’s that hol­i­day feel­ing again (didn’t we just do this?). Half-term pickup with the air full of roman­tic whis­pers of hol­i­day des­ti­na­tions: Cali’s off to Nor­folk, Ava to York­shire, Anna to Leeds and points beyond, and then there are the Con­ti­nen­tal types. Gigi to Val d’Isere, Lind­say to Zer­matt, Sophia to the south of France. And we, well, we’re nei­ther Eng­lish nor Con­ti­nen­tal, so… it’s off to New York we go! The hor­rid school uni­form has been flung into the suit­case to be worn at Cici’s school, and Avery is chic and casual in her hol­i­day clothes. You got your flared jeans, your dis­tressed t-shirt, your lit­tle knit­ted shrug. She’s ready for Virgin.

And many, many books have been crammed in amongst the presents we’re tak­ing back for every­one (would you believe 10 rolls of Polo mints for the ponies on Tues­day? plus British Skit­tles for Avery’s dear for­mer babysit­ter Amy, because did you know they don’t con­tain ani­mal gela­tine and are there­fore vegetarian-friendly? nei­ther did I). And bis­cuits and lemon curd and every­thing British for our friends across the pond.

So next report: the snowy wilds of Red Gate Farm. And the excit­ing thing? Between now and next week­end, we’ll get to see so many of you!