I think I caught my friend Julia’s cold. At least, I sneezed about three hun­dred times while mak­ing Avery’s break­fast and, as well, drove to school in what seemed like a fog, although it’s a beau­ti­ful sunny day. Could our hug­ging and kiss­ing and shar­ing lunch have con­tributed to this sit­u­a­tion? Per­haps. I got to the car this morn­ing to find it nearly buried under a lorry full of scaf­fold­ing equip­ment and lots of cheer­ful Irish dudes unpack­ing their wares, swing­ing boards and rods and what­not with aban­don over our dear con­vert­ible. Then just as I pulled cau­tiously out of the park­ing spot, a vagabond taxi and a marathon run­ner came out of nowhere, but I did not hit them. Then there was another scaf­fold­ing lorry parked oppo­site our lit­tle road, which I neatly avoided, only to be nearly run down by an enor­mous vin­tage Bent­ley and a motor­cy­cle. Whew, I was glad to drop Avery off and get home safely and now I think I will drink an enor­mous glass of Lem­sip and do some laundry.

Avery had a mar­velous time at West­on­birt yes­ter­day, for what was touted as a “Sci­ence Chal­lenge” but actu­ally sounded much more like a cross between a mur­der mys­tery week­end and a pro­longed pic­nic. It’s a school to which I was all pre­pared to send her, aban­don Lon­don and move to the Cotswolds, she could ride every day, the house is gor­geous, and the food not to be despised… but it’s a board­ing school, it turns out. Shoot. Not even for a pony will she go to board­ing school and I don’t blame her. But it is a beau­ti­ful spot. The four of us par­ents stood around in Padding­ton Sta­tion last night, amid clouds of what we could only think was diesel fuel pol­lu­tion, watch­ing all the hap­less com­muters, wait­ing for our lit­tle dar­lings. What an inter­est­ing group of peo­ple: Ital­ian Vic­to­ria, wait­ing for her lit­tle Jamie, Ger­man Claus sternly inquir­ing why the train was four min­utes late, wait­ing for Sophia, and Eng­lish rose Ali­son, wear­ing sev­eral pieces of jew­elry of her own design and tap­ping her fin­gers impa­tiently for Coco. And there I was, a nice girl from Indi­ana… sneez­ing. Wish me luck.

Wouldn’t you hate to know that every sin­gle per­son who calls you, all day long (and so many peo­ple call you that your line is nearly always busy) hates you? And has never even met you?

This is what it must be like to answer phones at… The Royal Bor­ough of Kens­ing­ton and Chelsea Declamp­ing Unit. Yes, it finally hap­pened. I got clamped. That’s how it feels. I don’t even feel as if they clamped the wheel of the car. I feel as if the hor­rid yel­low tri­an­gle was attached to my very own foot and tight­ened until I bled pounds. As in 115 pounds.

Does any other city have such a nasty lit­tle park­ing scheme? Or as many rabid traf­fic war­dens who walk along in their ugly reflec­tive waist­coats (prob­a­bly because they know most motorists would dearly love to acci­den­tally run them down), wait­ing by park­ing meters until the last pence drops and then pounc­ing on the wind­screen with glee and the sat­is­fac­tion of hav­ing bled yet another dri­ver of yet another enor­mously inflated fine? We have, sev­eral times, come upon a traf­fic war­den writ­ing out a ticket for us, even though there were, say, five min­utes left on the meter. Just hop­ing we won’t come back in time. They must be on a com­mis­sion system.

The prob­lem is for the motorist that these war­dens are only occa­sion­ally caught in the act. Mostly you come back to your car to find the ticket flap­ping in the breeze. And there’s no one to scream at. But the poor man answer­ing the phones when you call in to get your car declamped, now he’s a sit­ting duck. A teth­ered tar­get for my wrath. The nasty park­ing reg­u­la­tors had played a cun­ning trick on me: they put a park­ing sign indi­cat­ing a “pay and dis­play” spot on a spot that was actu­ally, if one looked down at the road and noticed an extra lit­tle white painted line, a “resident’s only” spot. I fell for it, bought my ticket, dis­played it proudly in the win­dow and went off hap­pily to have lunch with friend Julia, vis­it­ing from New York. Only to come back two hours later to the ugly truth.

Well, enough about that. The rest of the day was lovely. Yes­ter­day, dur­ing Avery’s brief but unpleas­ant lit­tle ill­ness, I had got a text mes­sage from her sci­ence teacher indi­cat­ing that “we will all meet at Padding­ton at 8:15 a.m. next to the ticket counter.” Indeed? And why would that be? “Oh, Mummy, I for­got, Daddy signed the per­mis­sion slip. It’s the ‘Inter-Schools’ Sci­ence Chal­lenge’, in West­on­birt. We will spend all day there, and it was a real honor to be asked; just four girls in the class can go.” Well, it’s nice to be told. So I packed a lunch and hoped for the best, and sure enough, this morn­ing she was well enough to go. So we got our­selves to Padding­ton, met up with the other lit­tle girls and the teacher, and I had just said, “See you at pickup,” when the teacher smiled and said, “No, indeed, Mrs C, we’ll see you HERE at 6.” “P.M.?” I asked in amaze­ment. “Oh, yes, I asked Avery if you needed another per­mis­sion slip to know the details, but she said you knew all about it.” Sigh.

So my seven-hour free day became a 10-hour free day, and sud­denly my planned lunch with Julia, such a treat to see her, became a poten­tially even nicer whole after­noon with her. Suf­fer­ing from a dread­ful spring cold as she was, she bravely met me at home after I had done all my lit­tle house­hold chores of dish­washer, lit­ter­box, laun­dry, bed­mak­ing and the like, and then I con­fi­dently led us to the car, since I’m not afraid of dri­ving any­more and not (very) afraid of get­ting lost. Up to Not­ting Hill to a gor­geous place called E&O, one of the brain­chil­dren of the hot Aus­tralian chef and restau­ra­teur Will Ricker. He was not in evi­dence this after­noon, how­ever, which is too bad since by all accounts he’s an amaz­ing, ener­getic man. The name stands for “East­ern & Ori­en­tal,” and I’m not sure why we need both des­ig­na­tions, but the food was sim­ply sublime.

Julia and I kept inter­rupt­ing our by no means bor­ing con­ver­sa­tion to exclaim over another unex­pected tex­ture, or light­ness of touch, or unusual sauce. We started with two dishes to share: prawn and chive steamed dumplings, and a sauteed beef dish called “san choi bau” (the bits of beef a per­fect com­pro­mise between strips and mince) with red chilis and bean sprouts, to be wrapped in a let­tuce leaf with basil leaf and what I think were ground pinenuts sprin­kled on top. Spicy, light, salty and crunchy, it was sim­ply per­fect. And Julia declared that one bite blew her cold right out of the top of her head (although this prog­no­sis proved actu­ally a bit too opti­mistic on her part).

Then we went our sep­a­rate culi­nary ways and I had a tem­pura soft shell crab, nicely halved and there­fore man­age­able with chop­sticks. There was a sour green dip­ping sauce that could have been pars­ley and cit­rus? Don’t know for sure, and I should have asked. Julia went for a green curry with lichee and and aubergine and the pre­sen­ta­tion alone — topped with curls of sliv­ered red bell pep­per, daikon and a crispy fried aro­matic herb — was worth the money. And the heav­enly curry aroma, rich and coconut-milky, just per­fect. We ended up shar­ing every­thing, and talk­ing about her daugh­ter Nina, one of Avery’s rid­ing pals in New York, her work at the Guggen­heim on James Rosen­quist and other Pop artists (she’s knee-deep in her dis­ser­ta­tion on Pop and col­lage, poor girl), my cook­book project, our var­i­ous fam­ily entan­gle­ments, joys and sorrows.

Well, I’m flag­ging. Avery’s safely home from her Sci­ence Chal­lenge, which was per­haps both more, and less, than what one expected. More on that later. We are full of chicken in a cal­va­dos and mush­room cream sauce, and ready for slumber.

Well, as I write this I am jug­gling lots of feel­ings: total delight over the suc­cess of the salmon dish (for which I will give you some addi­tional bits of advice), lin­ger­ing mem­o­ries of an excel­lent day out with Vin­cent yes­ter­day in East Lon­don, and dis­may at the hud­dled, fever­ish lit­tle girl on my sofa, sur­rounded by con­cerned cats. She woke up this morn­ing seem­ing quite nor­mal, but then when I kissed her I realised she was quite hot, and then I noticed that her cheeks were too pink and her eyes too bright. So off with the uni­form and on with paja­mas, and I’ve been force-feeding her icy apple juice ever since, watch­ing her fall in and out of sleep. Poor dear. It means she misses the dreaded Dance Com­pe­ti­tion at school for which she had Coco and Anna had assid­u­ously pre­pared, as well as a rare Mon­day play­date after school with Anna while I had planned to go see the new Matthew Mac­fadyen film, screen­ing for just two days, in Leices­ter Square with another fan. I have to admit I was really look­ing for­ward to meet­ing this Eng­lish lady with whom I have been cor­re­spond­ing about our love for Matthew, yes, but mostly our love for London.

Ah, the best-laid plans. I have been read­ing a very dark but very reward­ing book called “Chas­ing Day­light,” and in it the author says some­thing quite pro­found. I can­not remem­ber the exact words, and just now I can’t find the pas­sage, but the gist is that a good day is a day that goes the way you plan. I think there’s some­thing to that. Because most of us plan a good day, one that includes at least a cou­ple of accom­plish­ments, how­ever minor, in which we man­age to appre­ci­ate our fam­i­lies and friends, notice the weather and enjoy it for what­ever it is, and have some­thing really good to eat, at least once before the day is out. I know a lot of peo­ple have much more elab­o­rate plans for their days, but that’s my typ­i­cal plan. And I think it is very use­ful to realise that it doesn’t take more than that to have a good day. But when things don’t go accord­ing to plan, whether in a big way or a small way, you do notice the felic­ity of the planned day, and watch it go by in favor of another day. And if you can man­age to be truly wise just for a minute, you get to enjoy being with your child when nor­mally she would be almost a whole post­code away at school. So there. (And even now my plan to blog is being replaced by a request for me to read aloud, so I’ll have to pause here…)

All right, now we can focus on salmon, and then on Hack­ney! Here is my bit of wis­dom as far as Vincent’s totally bril­liant recipe goes, and it applies to a lot of other sit­u­a­tions as well. Don’t do a job if you don’t have the right tools for the job. Or at least, you can do it, but you’ll find your­self alone in your kitchen, expect­ing guests, and irra­tionally curs­ing prac­ti­cally your best friend for telling you the recipe was easy when it wasn’t. Let me just tell you now, in case you don’t know: juli­en­ning veg­eta­bles with­out a juli­enne blade on your Mag­imix is like peel­ing a car­rot with a can­dle. It can be done, but you’ll be want­ing to crack your head against the win­dow after about an hour. Then after dis­cov­er­ing that I had no proper blade, I hauled my old man­do­line out to see how dull the blades had got (very), and then dis­cov­ered while fid­dling with it that I had bloody cuts and scrapes on all my fin­gers and I hadn’t even touched a VEG­ETABLE yet. A gad­get with blades too dull to work but too sharp to touch on BOTH sides of its evil self is just a recipe for dis­as­ter. I realised I had juli­enned myself.

In the end I got the man­do­line to work, sort of, but while it coop­er­ated with my car­rots, it turned its back on the more stub­born fen­nel bulbs and cel­ery stalks so I had to do them by hand. I’m sorry: life is too short. That being said, the rest of the recipe was… easy! It’s def­i­nitely a keeper.

Vincent’s Salmon with Cream & Vegetables

Prepa­ra­tion time: 10–15 min­utes (IF you have the right machine!)
Cook­ing Time: 25–30 min­utes
Level of Dif­fi­culty: Very Easy (it will be, for you)
Occa­sion: Din­ner Party or Sun­day Lunch

Approx 1 Kilo of Salmon Fil­let in one piece if pos­si­ble — (Enough to
feed 4 gen­er­ously or 6 if you’re hav­ing a starter)
3 Medium to large car­rots
1 Large fen­nel bulb
1 Medium Onion
1 Large Red Pep­per
2 Large Cel­ery Stalks
200g Green Veg­eta­bles (Green Beans, Aspara­gus etc.)
3 Tbsp Chopped Flat Leaf Pars­ley
1 1/2 Tbsp Chopped Dill
1 1/2 Tbsp Chopped Chervil (Not absolutely nec­es­sary)
Grated Rind of 1 Lemon
Juice of 1 Lemon
400 ml Creme Fraiche
150 ml White Wine (Chardon­nay, Viog­nier, Sauvi­gnion Blanc)

Pre­heat your oven to 200C (Medium hot oven). Put the veg­eta­bles through a food proces­sor with a shredding/julienne blade. Trans­fer the grated veg­eta­bles to a mix­ing bowl. Add the grated lemon rind. In a sep­a­rate mix­ing bowl, add the Creme Fraiche, lemon juice, white wine, chopped herbs and mix well. Sea­son this with gen­er­ous amounts of pep­per and some salt. Pour the liq­uid mix­ture over the veg­eta­bles and mix thor­oughly. When you’re done, you should have a very wet mix of veg­eta­bles sit­ting in but not cov­ered by liquid.

Par­tially strain and arrange 3/4 of the veg­etable mix­ture evenly on the bot­tom of a large and flat back­ing pan/tray. Place the salmon fil­let skin-side down on the veg­eta­bles. Sea­son the salmon. Strain and place the remain­der of the veg­eta­bles on the fish. You should have about 1 1/2 cups of liq­uid left in the bot­tom of your mix­ing bowl. Pour that over the salmon.

Bake the salmon for 25–30 min­utes, check­ing half-way and bast­ing the fish with some of the cook­ing liq­uid. When the time is up, check that the fish is cooked. It should be a bit “pink” in the middle.

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

I actu­ally sub­sti­tuted a leek for the advised onion, and didn’t have any chervil but did have lemon thyme. I have to con­fess, being not a very pre­cise cook, that I mixed all the veg­eta­bles, creme fraiche, wine and herbs all together before read­ing that I should have done them sep­a­rately, and it didn’t mat­ter. Also, I got involved in my din­ner guests’ con­ver­sa­tion and com­pletely for­got to baste the salmon as it baked. At all. It was fine! Every­one tucked in and was happy, and ate mam­moth por­tions along with the mashed pota­toes and sauteed aspara­gus. Just delight­ful. With a nice spicy water­cress and rocket salad, and a cheese­board, and finally brown­ies and rasp­ber­ries soaked in Amaretto, it was a deli­cious din­ner. And we had fun. Sophia’s fam­ily are always up for a nice gath­er­ing, plus they have a Euro­pean enjoy­ment of the table, and tons of glit­ter­ing and intel­li­gent con­ver­sa­tion. I am always slightly ashamed of my igno­rance, in a purely enjoy­able way, when I ask Claus a ques­tion. Some­thing very basic about an episode in Poland elicited a com­pre­hen­sive and totally fas­ci­nat­ing expla­na­tion of issues in Pol­ish his­tory over the past 500 years! And of course there was the req­ui­site rehash­ing of parent-teacher con­fer­ences, Susan diplo­mat­i­cally occu­py­ing the spot between hot-headed me and super-cool Claus. And even the girls liked the salmon. Alto­gether a super evening.

And here’s an idea, nicked from my friend Peter: treat the left­over salmon as if it were crab, and make cakes. I mixed up a hand­ful of the salmon with a hand­ful of the left­over mashed pota­toes, added some fresh bread­crumbs and a beaten egg and made them into nice hockey-puck-sized pat­ties, rolled them in more bread­crumbs and fried them in canola oil. Well-drained on paper towel and with a nice blob of may­on­naise mixed with chili sauce and lemon juice, they were per­fect for din­ner last night. Avery pre­ferred her left­overs straight from the bak­ing dish, however.

Yes­ter­day while Avery was at the barn (mostly lead­ing smaller chil­dren around by the lead­line, instead of rid­ing, to her cha­grin), I took a deep breath and drove myself all the way to Vincent’s house, in Lon­don Bridge. As I dropped Avery at the sta­ble, I realised with a shock that while I had explicit direc­tions from the Bridge to his house, I did not arm myself with any instruc­tions on how to get from the Bayswa­ter Road to the actual river. Oh dear! How­ever, I refused to be daunted, put the top down on Emmy, and res­olutely set forth. And I didn’t get lost! Not a sin­gle wrong turn. Now, most of you will ask your­selves why this is cause for cel­e­bra­tion: most peo­ple could not MISS the river. But I could. Thrilling to arrive safely!

I had decided it was time, at least for one day, to scotch my aca­d­e­mic look and go for con­tact lenses! And a lit­tle makeup. Vin­cent has very pre­cise stan­dards of how peo­ple should look (as he has high stan­dards about every­thing), not that they need be beau­ti­ful or fancy, but they should be true to them­selves. I didn’t want to dis­ap­point, and after all that scrutiny dur­ing the por­trait photo shoot, I knew that a lit­tle gussy­ing up would not go amiss. And you know what? It felt good, to make a lit­tle effort. I picked him up and we drove I can­not even begin to remem­ber where, but ulti­mately end­ing up Shored­itch, which I remem­ber from the Christ­mas children’s song that goes in part, “Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clements… when I grow rich, say the bells of Shored­itch…” A really charm­ing part of town, sort of Tribeca-feeling. Finally we were in Hack­ney, and des­per­ately search­ing among coun­cil hous­ing and ware­houses for the restau­rant, Bistrotheque. I think we saw every street in the postal code! But I didn’t mind, because it was a beau­ti­ful blue sky day, we had a con­vert­ible, and best of all, I wasn’t in charge! Finally we ran the place to earth, and hon­estly you would never even know it was there. Not marked on the out­side, a total flat-front ware­house, and the restau­rant itself was past an inner court­yard. But once there, as you see, it was gorgeous.

And every­one there (includ­ing the wait­ers) all seemed to have been cast in a play, or a gritty BBC drama, or were in the final throes of prepar­ing for their open­ing at what­ever gallery will become the next White Cube. Or else they looked famous or as if they were about to become famous. We dis­cussed what makes peo­ple attrac­tive. Not beau­ti­ful, but inter­est­ing. Vin­cent said in his typ­i­cal urbane sotto voce, “Now, there’s style. That girl is wear­ing a vin­tage Chanel suit with a ripped t-shirt. She isn’t pretty, but…” I agreed and said, “Don’t look now, but behind you is a man with yel­low hair stick­ing straight up, like Wood­stock, and the per­son in sequins oppo­site him is NOT a girl.” And before he could look, the girl in the Chanel suit went over and kissed them both. See? Intrigu­ing! What lux­ury to sit in the muted sun­shine of a Lon­don March day with a friend and people-talk.

And the food was fine. To be brave and do some­thing blog­wor­thy (it’s embar­rass­ing how many times I catch myself doing that), I eschewed the very yummy and rich-looking chorizo with scram­bled eggs that Vin­cent had, and ordered steak tartare and seared red mul­let. The steak tartare was excel­lent, as good as we had in Paris: icy cold, flecked with plenty of capers and chopped cor­ni­chons, topped with a per­fect, deep-gold egg yolk (and sur­rounded, unac­count­ably, by a ring of what turned out to be olive oil, don’t know why, but it was pretty). And I dis­cov­ered I don’t much like red mul­let. To my mind there are three kinds of fish: shell­fish, tall fish, and short fish. Tall fish include cod, and now I know red mul­let, and they always seem a bit tough to my taste. Avery and I both are devoted, on the other hand, to the queen of short fish, lemon sole. In any case, I’m glad I tried it, and it was beau­ti­fully cooked and lying demurely atop a gor­geous crunchy, gar­licky toasted slice of baguette and sur­rounded by sauteed heir­loom tomatoes.

Then Vin­cent ordered a very refresh­ing drink for us, which was one of those Eng­lish tra­di­tions that I’d always read about but never tried: elder­flower presse. And for once enough ice in an Eng­lish bev­er­age! I’d say the bar­tender was cater­ing to ice-happy Amer­i­cans but I think actu­ally we were the only ones in the room. The drink was long and tall and stuffed with mint and lime, so what­ever elder­flower itself tastes like, it didn’t mat­ter very much.

Through it all we chat­ted and exchanged recipe ideas. He’s try­ing to sell me on the notion of mashed pota­toes with THINGS in them, like Bram­ley apple, or leek and sun­dried tomato added while boil­ing, then mashed and driz­zled with lemon juice and olive oil. I myself pre­fer pota­toes unadul­ter­ated. And we people-watched. At one point a chap came in in very pointy shoes, dis­tressed jeans, a Fedora and super-dark sun­glasses, sur­veyed the room and seemed to choose the peo­ple he found most amus­ing, and sat down. Min­utes later he was strid­ing out of the room deep in con­ver­sa­tion on his mobile. One won­ders what script was accepted, or what part offered, or what gig dan­gled. I said in my usual state of self-absorption, “I won­der what any­one would say about me if any­one I know had a blog,” and he said, very sat­is­fac­to­rily, “That you go through life suck­ing all the mar­row out of it.” Ugly image, but I do like get­ting the most out of a situation.

After lunch we repaired to the car once more and intended to drive Vin­cent to a super­mar­ket, but ended up wind­ing our way through parts of Hack­ney that were rather less savory than the Bistrotheque street. “I’m chan­nel­ing… Flat­bush,” I decided. “Or Ben­son­hurst,” Vin­cent agreed, and strangely enough we found our­selves finally in Blooms­bury and I dropped him at a very dull Sains­burys and col­lected Avery from the stable.

Well, she has perked up, her fever has dropped (accord­ing to assid­u­ous appli­ca­tions by the patient her­self, of the intrigu­ing dig­i­tal ther­mome­ter), and she’s on the phone with my mother, talk­ing about their… new kitty! Wel­come to the fam­ily, Maisy, and how clever of Baby Jane to think of such a per­fect name. We can’t wait to meet her.

Well, first can I just say what a dif­fer­ence a decent night’s sleep makes! No bad dreams, two cosy lit­tle girls asleep down the hall, and sleep­ing in until 9. Now John will be cruel to me and tell you that I actu­ally pre­fer to sleep until 11, but truly, 9 is quite enough. But I did wake up in a panic at 7, think­ing I’d over­slept and Avery would be late to school. But this did not stop me from going right back to sleep.

Becky and I had a lux­u­ri­ously long lunch yes­ter­day at a place in Maryle­bone called Caffe Caldesi, a downscale-ish brother to the fancier restu­rant down the road (and with a cook­ing school that would be fun to try). I’m not sure it was ter­ri­bly note­wor­thy, but I did have a very fresh plate of bre­saola with excel­lently spicy rocket and good parme­san cheese, Becky reported her lin­guini al ragu was com­pe­tent, but the sauteed spinach was ined­i­ble. Parts burned black, all of it rather tepid, not enough but­ter or oil, and it needed salt badly. I guess I do won­der a bit when a restau­rant can­not pro­duce a dish that is vir­tu­ally fool­proof (throw spinach in a skil­let over low heat with some but­ter, gar­lic and a lit­tle water, cover it and come back in two min­utes. Hmmm). But mostly it was won­der­ful just to chat, to com­pare notes on parent-teacher con­fer­ences and to hear that, while she was at a bible study meet­ing that morn­ing, and had men­tioned to the other ladies that her chil­dren go to our school a mother swung around and said, “I know a lit­tle girl called Avery who goes there, with a mother called Kris­ten.” And of course it was Simone, my friend from Ross Nye Sta­ble, with whom I have had many a heart­warm­ing, socia­ble chat over the pad­dock fence. No sense even repeat­ing the “small world” bro­mide. It’s a good thing I don’t have any­thing to hide! Mostly, though, it was good to have Becky back with all her wry humor and appre­ci­a­tion for all our chil­dren, such a nice thing to share with her.

It was a busy sleep­over last night, what with prac­tic­ing the vio­lin, try­ing to record a CD for their beloved vio­lin teacher, mak­ing brown­ies, and going through the gor­geous stamp albums my dad gave Avery for Christ­mas. She has infected Anna with her fer­vor for all things phi­la­to­log­i­cal and gave her some dupli­cate stamps to start her own col­lec­tion, plus they invaded my com­plex din­ner prepa­ra­tions (the requested bolog­nese sauce) in order to soak stamps off sev­eral envelopes Avery had been sav­ing. Noth­ing like a hobby project involv­ing bowls of hot water to make chop­ping end­less gar­lic and car­rots that much sim­pler. They they had fun watch­ing “Bring­ing Up Baby” which Avery adores but is sec­ond only to hot nee­dles in my eye­balls as far as suf­fer­ing goes in my book. Finally, how­ever, it was bed­time, and I said, “Don’t for­get to brush your teeth, girls,” and they shrieked and said, “We’ve got to brush the teeth!” “THE teeth?” I queried, think­ing it was an odd turn of phrase. “Yes, the teeth we lost this week! We must put them under the pil­low for the Tooth Fairy!”

Now, it has been sev­eral years since Avery believed in the Tooth Fairy, but Anna’s enthu­si­asm was hard to resist. So they wrote long notes to the Tooth Fairy explain­ing that since they were an incisor and a molar respec­tively, they thought spe­cial atten­tion was mer­ited. Lord have mercy. I’m happy to report that the Fairy for­gave Avery for her skep­ti­cism and rewarded both girls suit­ably, with a cou­ple of pounds and a lit­tle tin horse for each of them, how clever of her.

Well, today I really must pat myself on the back for get­ting the girls filled with pan­cakes, bacon and pears and achiev­ing Coco’s house in Shepherd’s Bush with­out even a wrong turn! “Praise me, girls!” I begged, and Avery made a very impor­tant philo­soph­i­cal point in say­ing, “But Mummy, if you keep not get­ting lost, very soon we will stop prais­ing you for it. It will just be expected.” Now that’s food for thought. Why does the world do that to us? If we usu­ally screw up, we get praised when we don’t. But if we stop screw­ing up and peo­ple get com­pe­tence from us, very soon com­pe­tence is ignored and the bar is raised to excel­lence, which gets praised briefly until that too becomes com­mon­place. Then one is left like a ger­bil on a tread­mill, pro­vid­ing excel­lence and get­ting noth­ing but a bed of saw­dust and a water bot­tle with a ball bear­ing in it for one’s pains. I must think that through and find another way.

In any case, I did pat myself on the back, and pro­ceeded to get only slightly lost from Shepherd’s Bush to the Cromwell Road where I did a mam­moth Tesco shop (I know, I know, don’t scold me: I’m under pres­sure here). Now I’m spend­ing my favorite sort of day: cook­ing some­thing elab­o­rate for a din­ner party this evening. I’m going to repeat the recipe here so you don’t have to be click­ing on hot links if you just can’t wait another minute to make this salmon.

Vincent’s Salmon with Cream & Vegetables

Prepa­ra­tion time: 10–15 min­utes
Cook­ing Time: 25–30 min­utes
Level of Dif­fi­culty: Very Easy
Occa­sion: Din­ner Party or Sun­day Lunch

Approx 1 Kilo of Salmon Fil­let in one piece if pos­si­ble — (Enough to
feed 4 gen­er­ously or 6 if you’re hav­ing a starter)
3 Medium to large car­rots
1 Large fen­nel bulb
1 Medium Onion
1 Large Red Pep­per
2 Large Cel­ery Stalks
200g Green Veg­eta­bles (Green Beans, Aspara­gus etc.)
3 Tbsp Chopped Flat Leaf Pars­ley
1 1/2 Tbsp Chopped Dill
1 1/2 Tbsp Chopped Chervil (Not absolutely nec­es­sary)
Grated Rind of 1 Lemon
Juice of 1 Lemon
400 ml Creme Fraiche
150 ml White Wine (Chardon­nay, Viog­nier, Sauvi­gnion Blanc)

Pre­heat your oven to 200C (Medium hot oven). Put the veg­eta­bles through a food proces­sor with a shredding/julienne blade. Trans­fer the grated veg­eta­bles to a mix­ing bowl. Add the grated lemon rind. In a sep­a­rate mix­ing bowl, add the Creme Fraiche, lemon juice, white wine, chopped herbs and mix well. Sea­son this with gen­er­ous amounts of pep­per and some salt. Pour the liq­uid mix­ture over the veg­eta­bles and mix thor­oughly. When you’re done, you should have a very wet mix of veg­eta­bles sit­ting in but not cov­ered by liquid.

Par­tially strain and arrange 3/4 of the veg­etable mix­ture evenly on the bot­tom of a large and flat back­ing pan/tray. Place the salmon fil­let skin-side down on the veg­eta­bles. Sea­son the salmon. Strain and place the remain­der of the veg­eta­bles on the fish. You should have about 1 1/2 cups of liq­uid left in the bot­tom of your mix­ing bowl. Pour that over the salmon.

Bake the salmon for 25–30 min­utes, check­ing half-way and bast­ing the fish with some of the cook­ing liq­uid. When the time is up, check that the fish is cooked. It should be a bit “pink” in the middle.

Serve over white rice or boiled new pota­toes and with some steamed green vegetables.

Chef’s Tip: If the Salmon and veg­eta­bles ren­der too much liq­uid dur­ing cook­ing, and the sauce looks watery/runny, then when you are done cook­ing, remove the fish from the pan along with most of the veg­etable mix­ture. Take the remain­ing veg­eta­bles and all of the liq­uid and place in a pan. Add 2 Tbsp of creme fraiche, and reduce on a medium/high heat (stir reg­u­larly). When the sauce has achieve a pleas­ing con­sis­tency, add some of the fresh herbs if you have any left for color and pour over the fish and vegetables.

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

I must say I would rather have John’s mom here shar­ing the prep work and chat­ting, or my mother fill­ing me in on fam­ily news. But one can’t have every­thing, where would one put it? I will be attempt­ing Vincent’s fab­u­lous salmon, and I will report to you on its real level of “eas­i­ness,” as com­pared with Vincent’s claim of “eas­i­ness.” I wish he were com­ing too, but I don’t think I could take the pres­sure of repeat­ing his own dish for him to eat! Some evening soon I’ll run down to the cel­lar and bring up a fat­ted calf to roast. That should impress.

I’m cursed! All I wanted was an inno­cent lit­tle nap! And I didn’t even get under the cov­ers this time. I lay like a medieval saint on the liv­ing room sofa, broad day­light, hands folded on my chest. And then I had the scari­est dream, all the more scary because it was so life­like! This time I was tak­ing a nap, in my dream, on the liv­ing room sofa, when I began to feel a sen­sa­tion of heat on the side of my head. I reached up, and a whole sec­tion of my hair had burned off from hav­ing one of the ceil­ing light fix­tures descend on me. (Yet another rea­son to ban­ish over­head light­ing, as if the unflat­ter­ing light weren’t rea­son enough.)

So I lay there tak­ing the burned hair off my head, when I real­ized I was lying on wood, not the sofa. I sat up and I was on the teak din­ing room table. Then I got up fully and none of the fur­ni­ture was in the right place. I remem­bered I was hav­ing lunch with Becky and looked at my watch to make sure I wasn’t late, and my watch was upside down. I leaped up and looked fran­ti­cally around the room, think­ing as I did so, “I’m dream­ing, I’m dream­ing, so I’ll just walk into the kitchen and every­thing will be nor­mal.” I walked toward where the kitchen should be, pass­ing a bas­ket of laun­dry I hadn’t done (and I don’t have a bas­ket), and in the kitchen was all my liv­ing room furniture.

Then I told myself for REAL that I HAD to wake up! And I did. Any dream analy­sis I have ever done tells me noth­ing this time. I have had crazy dreams in the past, back when I owned the gallery, of hav­ing a mouth­ful of unend­ing oat­meal; no mat­ter how much I tried to get rid of it, more appeared. And even I (with a per­fectly good PhD but not in psy­chol­ogy) knew that that dream was about my then-life of always hav­ing to say the per­fect thing to every­one, never being able to say what I really thought. Artists to pla­cate, employ­ees to soothe, clients to suck up to, land­lords to pay. But fur­ni­ture in the wrong place? Hair burn­ing? I’m stumped. So any­body who knows any­thing about this is wel­come to come forth.

Mean­while, in my lit­tle anxiety-wracked house­hold, Keechie is show­ing signs of my attempts to wean her off her twice-daily doses of Val­ium. There is just no doubt that she is a hap­pier cat on the stuff. I skipped this morn­ing, really try­ing to get her down to the nightly dose the vet thinks is suf­fi­cient (of course the ram­i­fi­ca­tions are not on his duvet, they’re on mine). And just now my neigh­bors Janet and John stopped in to bor­row a few chairs for a meet­ing they’re hav­ing and… poor Keechie must have flashed back to mov­ing day, because she flat­tened her­self like a fer­ret and slith­ered as fast as she could to the safety of down­stairs. I myself flashed back to Avery’s birth­day and the extremely expen­sive dry clean­ing bill that ensued, and fol­lowed her down. But she had just hid­den under a chair, and now she’s back up here in my study at my feet, look­ing a bit nutty.

Ah well, the other three of my feline chil­dren and my actual human child seem stal­wart enough. So far.

First of all, it’s time for another Men­tal Note. Have you ever dropped your child off at school and then come home to do that wicked thing you often con­tem­plate but never do: Get Back In Bed And Pull the Cov­ers Over Your Head? Well, take it from me: don’t. I had the weird­est dreams ever. First, I dreamt that Avery was cov­ered entirely in tar­tan. Not as a gar­ment, but her actual self. I can’t remem­ber if it was the real tar­tan or not, but some­how that didn’t seem to mat­ter. So I woke up in a panic, turned over to go back to sleep and then I dreamt that I opened the refrig­er­a­tor and huge uncon­trol­lable heads of broc­coli came spilling out. Waah. Bad. Then there was some­thing involv­ing the cats and spaghetti, at which point I decided the bet­ter part of valor was just to be sleepy for the rest of the day.

Any­way, last things first. Avery lost her first molar! This seems an inop­por­tune rite of pas­sage: I remem­ber when she GOT the jolly thing. How can she be old enough to lose it? She explained it very poet­i­cally (after slink­ing into my bed­room at 10 p.m. last night hold­ing it in her hand). “You see, babies don’t really need the teeth they have, as they eat mostly mushy things. So the roots are rather frag­ile, and finally, when peo­ple get to be my age, the roots just… let go, and the tooth floats away.” It sounds, as every­thing does these days, like a metaphor.

Ah well, she doesn’t even believe in the tooth fairy any­more, so times are cer­tainly chang­ing. I remem­ber when my beloved friend Sarah Webb, a bril­liant artist, arranged the first visit of the Tooth Fairy to her daugh­ter Eve (they were our part­ners in crime for our trip to Paris last Octo­ber). Sarah scat­tered a trail of gold glit­ter from Eve’s bed­room door to the space under her pil­low where she left some tiny gift. In the morn­ing Eve said, “Mommy, are you the Tooth Fairy?” “Now why on earth would you ask that?” “Because lots of my friends have lost teeth, and glit­ter has never been part of their experience.”

Any­way, com­pared to the lost molar, my trip to the Royal Acad­emy to see the new show, “Cit­i­zens and Kings,” was pos­i­tively an under­state­ment. No, truly, my friend Susan who is a vol­un­teer there took me through the show and it is def­i­nitely worth a visit. The iconic por­traits of Napoleon, The Sun King, George Wash­ing­ton and so many oth­ers are really quite stun­ning and the rooms are arranged very clev­erly by var­i­ous themes, and not at all crowded, so that the viewer does not get bored. Susan was an excel­lent guide with lots of behind-the-scenes infor­ma­tion that made it espe­cially enter­tain­ing. Then we repaired to the court­yard with the statue of the first head of the Royal Acad­emy, Sir Joshua Reynolds (did you know that the foun­tains sur­round­ing him are in the arrange­ment of the con­stel­la­tion of stars on the day of his birth? nei­ther did I, but Susan did). The court­yard is cur­rently dom­i­nated by the two tow­ers of Jeri­cho by Anselm Kiefer, which have been the sub­ject of such con­tro­versy in the city. I myself can­not see what the fuss is about. Of course they are ref­er­ences to the many scenes of social destruc­tion about us these days, of course they bring up asso­ci­a­tions to Beirut, Afghanistan, New York, that’s obvi­ous. But the sheer scale of them, con­crete, rein­forc­ing steel, lead, com­bined with an eerie insub­stan­tial­ity, and the chang­ing impact they have depend­ing on the color of the sky, all com­bined for me to make a very suc­cess­ful instal­la­tion. We went on to Jay Jopling’s new Pic­cadilly White Cube gallery, with its con­cur­rent exhi­bi­tion of other apoc­a­lyp­tic Kiefer pieces. Much as I hes­i­tate to agree with Don­ald Kus­pit about any­thing, the gray­ness of Kiefer’s work and the enor­mity of the palm tree, lying supine in the huge gallery space, were very effec­tive and impres­sive. How did he get that tree out of the ground, much less installed with such incon­gruity in a gallery space just yards from Christie’s? Very odd, and beau­ti­ful. Susan and I puz­zled over the Latin labellings but were left in igno­rance, so we’ll have to look it up. Tomor­row, perhaps!

We ended up hav­ing a quick lunch in Pic­cadilly, dis­cussing our chil­dren, art, school, fam­i­lies. In the past two weeks, I think I have defined what a good friend­ship is, and I would like to learn some­thing from it from the giv­ing end, since I’ve received so much lately. I think a really good friend­ship is about hav­ing the per­son lis­ten to you when you need help, really lis­ten, and then not just nod sup­por­t­ively, but actu­ally react truth­fully. It has been so refresh­ing lately, ask­ing for advice, telling my friends how I’ve reacted to some­thing, han­dled some­thing, and I don’t get just a nice sup­port­ive nod. I get actual help. As in, every once in awhile, “oh, Kris­ten, that was really not the right way to go about that.” Or, “look at it from this angle instead,” or even more help­ful, “when I was in that sit­u­a­tion, I real­ized I was mak­ing the same mis­take.” I come out of these con­ver­sa­tions feel­ing strangely uplifted, because I real­ize I am actu­ally being lis­tened to. And the per­son oppo­site me cares more about mak­ing the sit­u­a­tion bet­ter than just nod­ding sup­por­t­ively and not risk­ing any­thing. So I myself am going to try to lis­ten bet­ter. And not just say what is expected, or the eas­i­est route at the moment. Really react and say what you think would be help­ful. I don’t know what I would have done lately with­out Becky, Olimpia, Simone, Susan, Vin­cent, and so many other excel­lent com­pan­ions. May I be able to do the same someday.

In the mean­time, I tread through the days mak­ing so many mis­takes! I went to the gro­cery and came home with­out a sin­gle thing that was on my list. Granted, they were unusual, and yet bor­ing things like dish­washer rinse aid, and matches. I’m sorry, those are things that occur to the human mind only at the pre­cise moment of load­ing the dish­washer or light­ing the din­ner can­dles. I can­not carry the need for them in my mind at any other time. Oh, and I was sit­ting vir­tu­ously read­ing with my lit­tle Form Two gulls, lit­tle Emi­lie to be pre­cise, when even lit­tler Ellie walked in with her coat and brief­case, looked me up and down and said, dead­pan, “You’re not sup­posed to be here until Thurs­day, Miss Kris­ten. You’re sup­posed to be with Form Three right now.” Holy *&%, she was right. Up I got and trudged across the pas­sage where the Form Three teacher just said patiently, “That’s all right, Mrs Cur­ran, it’s hard to keep the days straight.” Espe­cially the ones that require me to be sen­tient at 8:20 a.m.

And I have been a dead loss as far as cook­ing. It’s not that Avery isn’t reward­ing to cook for. Actu­ally, yes, that’s what it is. She would always pre­fer noo­dles and but­ter to any­thing else, although she hap­pily eats what­ever I put in front of her. But some­how din­ner con­ver­sa­tion palls for me, when it cen­ters almost exclu­sively on the atmos­phere left in one’s mouth once a molar has been lost, or the rel­a­tive mer­its of the songs that will be sung today by the var­i­ous school houses for the inter­school singing com­pe­ti­tion, or the incred­i­ble cute­ness of the 18-hand horse (yes, 18 hands, I reacted exactly the same way, what is my tiny child doing on the biggest horse in the sta­ble!?) she rode that after­noon. So I have been tremen­dously lazy and made dull but reli­able tomato sauce, eat­ing it with spaghetti, and fol­lowed by putting the left­overs in an oven-proof dish the next night topped with moz­zarella and baked in a slow oven for half an hour. Not Lucul­lan delights. That can wait till John gets home.

Easy Tomato Sauce
(serves four)

1/2 stick but­ter
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 soup-size cans whole peeled Ital­ian plum toma­toes
1/2 cup light cream
salt and pep­per to taste
lots of grated pecorino

Now what? Here’s what. Put it all in a saucepan, except the cheese, and mash the toma­toes a bit with a potato masher. Sim­mer for about half an hour. That’s it.

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

Last night I suc­cumbed to total slug­ness and we went out to a local Ital­ian place that I can’t name because the last time I did, the owner con­tacted me about my com­plaints (in this space!) and said he hoped we would come back. Well, we did and noth­ing has changed. A total lack of com­pre­hen­sion as to what we were order­ing, com­bined with a mind-numbing acoustic sit­u­a­tion which mean that I lost fully half of Avery’s mono­logue on the theme of the 18-hand horse (not that I minded). As Avery finally observed, when we had ordered our drinks YET another time, “some­times restau­rants being full of real Ital­ians is authen­tic and some­times it’s just… imprac­ti­cal.” Sigh. And she’s a quar­ter Ital­ian, what can I say.

At least there is my com­edy class. Yes­ter­day the teacher looked around the room at us and said, “James is going to be late. He says he has to meet up with some­body who owes him money.” Imme­di­ately every­one began spec­u­lat­ing about the bloody base­ball bat, the Irish thugs in Bermond­sey, etc. All the things that come up when you put sev­eral would-be writ­ers in a room together all try­ing to be funny. It was very refresh­ing. And sev­eral of my cohorts have been read­ing the blog and enjoy­ing it, which was extremely grat­i­fy­ing. Real writ­ers like it! That’s a good sign. We went on to ana­lyze part of another episode of “Extras,” which I find funny for about five min­utes and then I want to turn it off. I asked the tutor why Ricky Ger­vais would write a show with only two main char­ac­ters, and he said, “Well, he plays one of them and he gets a lot more air­time!” Exactly. I can’t take that much Ricky Ger­vais. Then we talked about the moti­va­tions of the char­ac­ters in the sit­com we’re try­ing to write (set in a health club owned by a petro­chem­i­cal com­pany, don’t ask: that’s what comes of writ­ing as a team). There is a vil­lain­ous female char­ac­ter that we have to decide if the audi­ence is meant to like, or not. We were debat­ing how ugly to make her, and how far to push her evil­ness, when the tutor objected, “Wait, we’re not mak­ing her into some­one who’s dis­mem­ber­ing other people’s chil­dren!” and I mur­mured, “Sea­son Two,” which got a laugh. But I don’t think I’m a sit­com writer at heart.

In any case, TGIF. Not so much as if John were here, but it does mean that if Avery and her beloved best friend Anna, who’s sleep­ing over, will per­mit, tomor­row I can spend a bit more time with my head under the cov­ers. Dream­less, one hopes.

All right, all right, he wasn’t bran­dish­ing a sword at the time. Boy are peo­ple picky. Just look at that face.

But yes, it truly hap­pened! And like most things in life, when I least expected it. OK, deep breath, I’ll tell you the whole story. I had decided to run into the Marco Polo Cafe in the Maryle­bone High Street for a spot of hum­mous for lunch, not hav­ing much in the way of an appetite lately, and had just fin­ished and was mean­der­ing toward school pickup when I passed the offices of BBC Lon­don. Lots of weedy look­ing chaps and chicks, smok­ing, clutch­ing their own ribcages in the wind, drink­ing cof­fee. Doubt­less our nation’s youth­ful cul­tural elite. I perused them to see if any­one looked like any­one. No one did. Just on the other side of the BBC is the lovely if hor­ren­dously over­priced kitchen sup­ply shop Diver­ti­menti, which I used to fre­quent in its old loca­tion in the Ful­ham Road, and I gazed into the shop win­dows, think­ing, “See, Matthew Mac­fadyen was pho­tographed in some undis­closed ‘Maryle­bone’ loca­tion just the other week, hav­ing lunch. Why doesn’t that ever hap­pen to me, see­ing him wan­der­ing about? What’s the point in hav­ing a crush if you never ever see him?” And there he was.

Truly! In the shop! It was but the work of a moment to realise, hey, I’m a cook, I might need some­thing in the way of car­rot peel­ers or Dutch ovens, so I darted in and… then what? I thought of Dorothy L. Say­ers’ refer­ring to tail­ing a sus­pect, and finally cor­ner­ing him. “The glass is firmly clapped over the moth. Now the only ques­tion that remains is how to extract the moth with­out injury.” Indeed. What to do? He was deep in perusal of some extrav­a­gant Mag­imix machines, so I perused them too. Then he moved on to cof­fee mak­ers, and that wasn’t too hard, there were so many. By the time he moved to the vin­tage cook­ery books behind glass, how­ever, I had to get out of the way. I found myself with a really top­notch grater in my hand and my wal­let in the other, so I queued up at the till, and he walked right behind me. Actu­ally brushed again the sleeve of my Bar­bour jacket (I’d say I’ll never wash it again, but then I never have washed it). He is, as I always sus­pected, just the build of John, big and tall and com­fort­ing. Rim­less glasses, messy hair, jeans and a sweat­shirt, with what could have been a script, rolled up in his hand. The hand bear­ing the wed­ding ring, mind you, so I sighed and bought my grater. Then he walked by and turned for just an instant, and looked right at me! Not with any great inter­est, you know. But still.

So I called John, so far away in Iowa, and he can be for­given for being less than entranced. But he tried, for my sake. I floated on up to school and got Fifi (and a beau­ti­ful bou­quet of flow­ers from my dear friend Becky who I really missed so much last week), and we made our way in a taxi back down the High Street toward the sta­ble. “Would you believe I saw him?” I raved, “And he could still be around here, any­where!” And there he was, on the cor­ner, car­ry­ing now a Daunt Book­shop bag in his hand, the kind you get if you spend more than 25 pounds. “It’s Matthew!” Avery shrieked. But taxis wait for no obsessed fans, so we were on our way. What fun.

How excit­ing. I can­not imag­ine that today will bring any such adven­tures, the sched­ule call­ing for noth­ing more than a visit to the Royal Acad­emy and the New White Cube Gallery with my friend Susan. But my eyes will be peeled, for sure.

Yes, it’s use­ful to have a ten-year-old who does excit­ing things dur­ing the day while her mother gro­cery shops and researches her cook­book. Avery spent the day with her class­mates yes­ter­day get­ting to, explor­ing, and get­ting back from Hamp­ton Court Palace. This is no easy feat as it turns out, involv­ing a coach jour­ney and a ferry jour­ney, with 23 lit­tle girls. I always think at these times that Miss Leslie needs to make a lot more money than she prob­a­bly does. How­ever, the sto­ries that came back made it sound like a def­i­nite des­ti­na­tion. The ghost of Cather­ine Howard, the unfaith­ful and ulti­mately head­less fifth wife of Henry VIII! “Really, Mummy, the ghost walks the Great Hall wail­ing and moan­ing!” And, unac­count­ably, a name­less puppy ghost who brushes against the legs of vis­i­tors. And a totally mys­te­ri­ous ghost caught on CCTV! I’m not mak­ing this up.

And on the way to the Palace, they stopped at the National Archives, the repos­i­tory of every­thing from the Domes­day Book to fam­ily his­to­ries of the British peo­ple. Most impor­tantly, for the gulls, was an actual auto­graph of Henry VIII him­self, brought out espe­cially by a docent and laid rev­er­en­tially before the chil­dren. “I could have touched it! But I didn’t,” Avery crowed, and then said, “You know, Henry VIII wasn’t really so much a bad per­son as he was… full of himself.”

I myself had a much less event­ful day, but inter­est­ing nonethe­less. I really am get­ting deep into my project to re-publish some of the recipes of the great Gladys Taber. Yes­ter­day I delved into a whole area of schol­ar­ship that I did not know existed: the his­tory of cook­books. Who knew there were culi­nary schol­ars? Well, I think I knew that there were peo­ple who stud­ied the his­tory of food, and eat­ing, but now there is what I can only think of as a meta-field, of peo­ple actu­ally study­ing the devel­op­ment of the cook­book indus­try. And as every devo­tee of a meta-field knows, there will be… con­fer­ences. I have attended so many meta-field con­fer­ences in my for­mer life as a fem­i­nist art his­to­rian that I feel, read­ing the list of con­fer­ence top­ics, as if I have heard the papers already. I myself used to give papers at the meet­ings of the devo­tees of Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Nineteenth-Century Stud­ies, with titles like “Uncov­er­ing the Gen­der Mes­sages in the Sculp­ture of Camille Claudel Between 1881–1886.” I’m actu­ally mak­ing that up, but I’m sure there was a paper close to it. So now I am mov­ing into the foodie realm of such arcane spe­cial­i­sa­tion, and I really look for­ward to it. There’s noth­ing like an expert, and it’s almost as much fun lis­ten­ing to one as being one oneself.

But I digress. My point is that there is a lot more to edit­ing a 60-year-old cook­book than just tak­ing out the MSG in the recipes and not­ing the decline of canned salmon as a major ingre­di­ent since 1947. I really want to give a fla­vor, so to speak, of who was writ­ing about food in the 1940s, what their atti­tudes toward cook­ing and hos­pi­tal­ity and fam­ily life were, how dif­fer­ently we in 2007 might (I’m not sure yet) feel about food and cook­ing. So I’m going to be read­ing all about it. Then there is a whole other tiny meta-meta-industry that I am fas­ci­nated by, and that is the children’s cook­book. I have no fewer than four, right here on my shelf, two old clas­sics of which there are prob­a­bly mod­ern edi­tions, and two entirely obscure vol­umes, The Gin­nie and Geneva Cook­book, and The Beany Mal­one Cook­book. These are com­pletely intrigu­ing books of recipes cooked by the entirely fic­ti­tious hero­ines of two series of girls’ books from the 1950s! Can you imag­ine? That being said, Avery did make an awfully good layer cake from one of the recipes, so it turns out even fic­tional peo­ple can cook.

Well, school pickup and rid­ing les­son beckon, and today I really am going to take my cam­era with me so I can get good pic­tures of the instruc­tors at the barn, for the even­tual iPhoto book I’m plan­ning as a present to the barn own­ers. Have you checked out iPhoto books? It’s so con­ve­nient to drag the pho­tos you’ve down­loaded right onto pro­grammed pages, click “buy now”, and a week or so later you have a gift that will get a big­ger roar of approval than just about any­thing else you could make or give. Give it a try.

Oh, and in the spirit of old-fashioned com­fort food, here’s a lovely warm­ing din­ner for you and your child on a damp March night.

Sauteed Chicken Breasts With Cal­va­dos and Cream
(serves two)

3 tbsps but­ter
2 bone­less skin­less chicken breast fil­lets
1/3 cup Cal­va­dos
1/3 cup chicken stock
2 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 shal­lot, minced
3 bay leaves
1 cup sour cream
salt and pep­per
8 lit­tle but­ton mush­rooms, coarsely chopped

Melt but­ter in a heavy-bottomed skil­let, then saute the chicken breasts on one side for 3 min­utes and turn, saute on the other side for 3 min­utes. Remove and place on a plat­ter and set aside. Deglaze the skil­let with the Cal­va­dos and sim­mer until the alco­hol burns off, just a cou­ple of min­utes. Throw in the gar­lic, shal­lot and bay leaves and sim­mer until gar­lic is soft, then add sour cream, whisk until blended, and sea­son to taste. Place the chicken breasts in the sauce (pour­ing in any juice that accu­mu­lated on the plat­ter) and scat­ter the mush­rooms around, stir­ring so they are coated with sauce. Sim­mer until chicken is done, about 8 min­utes. Serve on noo­dles, and nice lit­tle pile of steamed broc­coli for your con­science on the side.

Well, I have to be child­ish and admit to a cer­tain fris­son of panic today at being prop­erly the only adult in my house­hold. How have I, trained over the past ten years to rec­on­cile myself to John’s long work hours, many busi­ness trips, my being in charge of every lit­tle detail of our at-home lives, become this scaredy-cat? I’ll tell you how: the mind-bending com­fort, these last sev­eral months, of hav­ing him home all the time. Well, my wake-up call has buzzed.

John has gone off this morn­ing to spend the next cou­ple of weeks with his par­ents back in Iowa, so… good­bye early-morning cheer­ful per­son who makes tak­ing Avery to school such a daily treat (to be replaced with surly if reli­able me, not a morn­ing per­son). Good­bye per­son who always seems to know which park­ing bays are going to be sus­pended (to be replaced with me, who reg­u­larly for­gets where I have parked the car at all). Good­bye per­son who will hap­pily (well, at least will­ingly) run out to the cor­ner store for what­ever last-minute things I have for­got­ten for the prepa­ra­tion of din­ner. I have become so spoiled!

But he is needed back home, so off he went with a suit­case full of silly gifts, includ­ing any­thing we could find made of figs for his mother, who will eat any num­ber of them just plain, so who knows what she’ll think of the pre­pos­ter­ous comestibles we found at the gor­geous La Fro­magerie in Moxon Street, off the Maryle­bone High Street. What a beau­ti­ful shop, with its own Cheese Room attached to which is a very seri­ous sign inform­ing the vis­i­tor “Only a cer­tain num­ber of per­sons may be admit­ted to the Cheese Room at one time. Please await your turn.” Soci­ety has really accom­plished some­thing when peo­ple will queue up to enter a room filled with smelly cheeses. Then I vis­ited Sel­f­ridges candy sec­tion and acquired some­thing like Avery’s weight in vanilla jelly beans for John’s dad, who feels about vanilla as Rose­mary does about figs.

I also picked up a book for Rose­mary called “Roast Figs and Sugar Snow,” which looked com­pletely beau­ti­ful, although I didn’t peruse it long enough to get a sense of the recipes. All this while Avery hung out at her friend Jade’s birth­day party: the first bowl­ing expe­ri­ence for Avery, and as she tersely reported after­ward, the last. “I am really, really, really bad at bowl­ing,” was the exact descrip­tion. Whew, I am relieved not to add another activ­ity to her list of weekly require­ments, and equally relieved to know that a hideous pair of bowl­ing shoes will not be resid­ing in her closet. I spend enough time at the Queensway Bowl and Skate Rink as it is! But wait, drum roll please: Level 9 has been achieved! It’s been a long time, since there was a pesky back­ward figure-eight or some such skill that took for­ever to learn to get past Level 8. And to reward her for Level 9 she gets a badge for me to sew on her bag, in a stun­ning shade of… black. Seri­ously! Avery put it just right: “I think they should make the col­ors for Lev­els 1 and 2 really beau­ti­ful, to encour­age the small chil­dren, but then reserve some nice color for the high lev­els! Black??” I will be sure to sew it on her PE bag this after­noon while she’s at the barn.

Mostly I’m sit­ting here think­ing about how much I admire peo­ple who pos­sess what I would call “grace under pres­sure.” As opposed to I, who pos­sesses a qual­ity whose sci­en­tific term is “panic and neg­a­tiv­ity under almost noth­ing.” I have been so spoiled, not only in hav­ing John around so much since he hap­pily quit his job, but also in gen­eral in life just sort of hap­pen­ing, with its usual load of respon­si­bil­i­ties and tasks, but also punc­tu­ated by so much fun and good luck. So when the murkier, less sunny aspects of life rear their ugly heads, I find myself sorely in need of opti­mistic cop­ing skills. I know, intel­lec­tu­ally, that most of the world lives under dark clouds of one kind or another most of the time, and I am incred­i­bly appre­cia­tive of all the good things that come my way, but the unfor­tu­nate flip side to my bless­ings is what a Big Whingey Baby I become when cir­cum­stances are any­thing but ideal.

I think that liv­ing hap­pily in the real world is an actual skill. Like other skills (skat­ing and bowl­ing) you come into life with a cer­tain capac­ity to be good at it. But then you can either hone your nat­ural skills, or you can be lazy and just coast by. My father-in-law, for exam­ple, is just about the hap­pi­est per­son I know. He approaches each day (whether it’s lolling on the beach in St. Barts, or shop­ping in Lon­don, or slav­ing over some unbe­liev­ably com­plex and unsat­is­fy­ing work prob­lem) as a day in which to get the max­i­mum amount of hap­pi­ness out of it. Bad gram­mar, but you know what I mean. And partly how he approaches life this way is down to his ten­dency to think first about what the peo­ple around him would like, what they need, what would make them happy. And he is the orig­i­nal glass-half-full per­son. He vir­tu­ally invented opti­mism, and noth­ing can keep him down for long. Of course he is aided and abet­ted in this by his side­kick, my mother-in-law, whose gen­er­ous Ital­ian tem­pera­ment means that she runs on all avail­able cylin­ders all the time. What a mag­i­cal com­bi­na­tion, actu­ally, her Ital­ian fire and his Irish blar­ney. No won­der my own hus­band is such a delight. I would like to learn from all their resilience, their bounce-backedness. Maybe I can.

Last night at din­ner the three of us were dis­cussing the notion of love at first sight, and the related notion of soul-mates. John and I just seen the very enjoy­able and roman­tic film “The Illu­sion­ist,” in which the main premise is the ful­fill­ment of love at first sight. In my typ­i­cal non-Latin, non-Irish, instead Ger­manic and Scan­di­na­vian approach, I said, “I think a happy mar­riage is less about love at first sight and more about being will­ing to stick it out over the long haul.” John said, “Well, we’re lucky enough to have both.” Silence, while we all con­sid­ered this. Then Avery laughed and said, “Daddy, Daddy, always the diplomat.”

I’m going to try hard to be a grown-up in the next cou­ple of weeks, and try to learn the les­son that life is about all those cliches: “tak­ing the rough with the smooth,” “when life gives you lemons, make lemon­ade.” My goal is to be absolutely cloy­ingly pos­i­tive and chirpy, so that no one around me will rec­og­nize me and every­one will ask me to go back to my dis­mal, dark, spoiled per­sona. I won­der how long it will take?

In the mean­time, I want you all to go out and buy my newest musi­cal obses­sion CD: the new album by Corinne Bai­ley Rae. She is a British singer, annoy­ingly young to be so accom­plished (she writes, sings, plays gui­tar, I don’t know what all else). Her music was the sound­track to the com­pletely fab­u­lous film “Venus,” and it has a haunt­ing sort of beauty that makes me think of a mod­ern Rickie Lee Jones, she of the albums of our col­lege years (oh, the kiss­ing to the tunes of the Duchess of Coolsville!), a sort of mean­der­ing, poetic, style that would appeal to Ella Fitzger­ald, if she lived in 2007. Like a much bet­ter Edie Brick­ell, too.

just like a star across my sky
just like an angel on the page
you have appeared to my life
feel like I’ll never be the same
just like a song in my heart
just like oil on my hands
hon­our to love you

We were play­ing Corinne Bai­ley Rae, on the evening this week when we received sad news, and Avery said last night, “Oh, that song makes me sad now.” I thought how my own emo­tional devel­op­ment is at times right on a par with that of my 10-year-old child (and often revolt­ingly far behind hers), so I pulled myself together and said, “Well, that’s what mem­ory is all about, and it’s not always good, but it’s impor­tant to lis­ten to this song again, and realise…” “That you can hear it, and then some­day feel bet­ter,” Avery offered. Well done.

Of course two min­utes later she was ten again, insist­ing on eat­ing some nox­ious blue pow­dery candy prod­uct she had found lurk­ing in the bot­tom of her treat drawer. “That’s just com­pletely dis­gust­ing, Avery, look at your lips, your teeth and your tongue,” I objected. “Don’t look at me, Daddy, I’m all blue,” she gig­gled. So are we all a bit, today. But we’re going to rise above it.