I am glad to say that after my brief absence from the world of blog­ging, my read­er­ship is back. I was afraid you would all for­get about me while I removed any poten­tial bomb­shells from my innocu­ous lit­tle blog (sadly, I couldn’t find any, but I removed lots of other bor­ing stuff for you).

But about my hair­cut. I have to admit to always skimp­ing on get­ting my hair cut. I’ll go any­where that might save money, because frankly I don’t have very inter­est­ing hair and it’s not really worth get­ting fancy over it. But a week or so ago, I had to admire my friend Becky’s gor­geous locks, beau­ti­fully cut and styled, so I caved and asked her where she had it done. “Kris­ten, for once you need to go to an expert and get a really good cut, so promise me you’ll call them,” she said earnestly, so I did. I had no idea.

At the front desk I realised at once I was in another world from the usual places I turn up when I’m des­per­ate to get my fringe out of my eyes. At those places, the phones are usu­ally answered rather spo­rad­i­cally by a young per­son who clearly takes the notion of self-expression by hair quite seri­ously: the color is nearly always what you’d be hard pressed to call any­thing kinder than “exper­i­men­tal,” and the cut is gen­er­ally a work in progress. And there’s always a sen­sa­tion of peo­ple liv­ing on the mar­gins, eking out a liv­ing, and recov­er­ing from some other expe­ri­ence in their lives. Not at the place Becky sent me to. This salon, Daniel Galvin in George Street, cer­tainly has a client list to admire. Every­one under the sun seems to get her or his hair cut there! The staff, my good­ness, every­one looks like a bud­ding super­model, all dressed uni­formly in chic black some­thing or oth­ers, and a vast array of com­put­ers behind the recep­tion desk to man­age the place like a well-oiled machine.

And Daniel Galvin him­self was there, very flam­boy­ant and doing the hair of some­one I didn’t rec­og­nize but who, for some rea­son, attracted no fewer than five styl­ists around her at all times. Then, just as I sat down with my wet, unat­trac­tive head in my stylist’s chair, on the lower ground floor of the saloon, I could see a black town car pull up just above my head, and a man who looked as though he might be covertly armed stepped out. He looked up and down the pave­ment as if he were sweep­ing the street for ene­mies, and then opened the car door. Out stepped… Naomi Camp­bell. She walked quickly down the back steps to the pri­vate door just to my right, and swept past me with quite the the­atri­cal air of escap­ing from immi­nent danger.

“Gee, was that Naomi Camp­bell?” I asked, and Dean the styl­ist shrugged with world-weary fatigue. “That’s really not so excit­ing. More inter­est­ing peo­ple, peo­ple who’ve actu­ally achieved some­thing, have come in here. And you know what? She’d attract a lot less atten­tion if she just walked in the front door like every­one else.” Fair enough. But I was intrigued. Unfor­tu­nately how­ever, my hair­cut required that I take my glasses off, and I wouldn’t rec­og­nize my own child with­out my specs. So who knows who else came in and out. In the end, I got a great hair­cut, and my styl­ist turned out to be a foodie, so we exchanged recipes, dish ideas, impres­sions of Bor­ough Mar­ket and restau­rant reviews with aban­don. What fun. And while it broke the bank some­what, the cut is so expert that I don’t need colour, so I saved money in the end. Ish.

I spent sim­ply for­ever yes­ter­day at the skat­ing rink with my friend Vic­to­ria, while our chil­dren went around and around in glee. She is a com­plex, delight­ful per­son to be around: Ital­ian born, Swiss-educated, with an air of quiet self-confidence that I can only admire. And yet she isn’t one bit full of her­self. It’s more a com­plete sense of ease with her­self, and with her approach to the world, that makes her stand out. She speaks Eng­lish with the care­ful per­fec­tion of one to whom lan­guages are not a chal­lenge, but a set of ingre­di­ents among which she can choose, to get just the right dish. Every once in awhile she hes­i­tates, with a gen­tle lit­tle smile of ques­tion­ing on her lips, and says, “Well, as we would say in Italy…” and uses a beau­ti­ful expres­sion that I can just grasp, but it’s a choice she makes, not a fall­back onto a more famil­iar lan­guage. She just knows that some ideas are expressed bet­ter in one lan­guage than in another. I am fas­ci­nated by peo­ple who have hid­den depths, or if not hid­den, then lay­ers, that take time to uncover. I know I myself reveal absolutely every­thing about myself, whether my com­pan­ion wants me to or not, within about ten min­utes. But Vic­to­ria has a mys­te­ri­ous oth­er­wordly qual­ity about her that means I get to know her slowly, but it’s worth it. And a truly empa­thetic spirit. And a great mother. So all in all, it made the three hours we spent shiv­er­ing and watch­ing our girls make goo­gly eyes at us to get us to watch, quite a lovely interlude.

Oh, and we’ve found another two houses that are pos­si­bil­i­ties, but as in every real estate sit­u­a­tion, there’s some­thing deal-breakingly wrong with each one. One is just the right size, on a nice road, con­ve­nient to the schools we’re look­ing at for year after next, but a truly wretched kitchen. And it’s too expen­sive. The other one is tremen­dously afford­able, but in a dicier neigh­bor­hood, needs exten­sive updat­ing, and has not so much a wretched kitchen as a room crammed with junk that serves as the kitchen, but only because no other room would do it bet­ter. A sim­ply ancient Aga stove, cold as a herring’s elbow (as one of my screen­writ­ing class mem­bers penned) and sur­rounded by other lesser fry as far as appli­ances go. Just awful. But a gor­geous over­grown gar­den. But it feels cot­tagey, and as always hap­pens in these sit­u­a­tions, John seems to get big­ger as the min­utes tick by. By the time we left, he was hunch­ing over as if he’d been tour­ing a Wendy house. What to do? Spend much less money and always feel that he needs to be six inches shorter, or spend more money and be poor for the fore­see­able future? Nei­ther, prob­a­bly, we’ll just keep looking.

At this stage, though, one of the few really nasty per­son­al­ity clashes we suf­fer as a cou­ple begins to emerge: John could hap­pily look at houses in per­pe­tu­ity, stor­ing each detail away in his mem­ory for­ever, liv­ing with the cer­tainty that if we ever do buy a house, the one he REALLY wanted will come on the mar­ket the next day. Whereas I could make do with almost any­thing; I just want to set­tle down. So we exchanged some mildly acri­mo­nious remarks and then repaired to the quite splen­did butcher that popped up out of nowhere just around the cor­ner from house #2. Now, see, that could decide me right there. Butcher around the cor­ner? I’ll take the house. It’s J. Hunt at 173 Uxbridge Road, staffed by the loveli­est central-casting British chaps you could ever wish for. “Now what sort of work do you do, my boy?” the chief guy asked John, as we gos­siped about the neigh­bor­hood and our love for Lon­don. “Actu­ally, I don’t work right now,” John said sheep­ishly. “But he will do, some­day! We can’t afford for him not to,” I said, and the butcher laughed said, “Oh, you made a mis­take there, my lad, not mar­ry­ing a woman with enough money to keep you!” I came away with a sim­ply to-die-for rack of pork spareribs, yum yum. But rather than doing the com­pli­cated mari­nade I did last year, I sim­ply roasted them with salt and pep­per. So good.

But the week’s best din­ner was prob­a­bly my favorite chicken dish, the recipe for which I’ve given you before, but ages ago and it’s worth repeat­ing. I swear, some­day I will have lit­tle clever links to the side of my posts with all the recipes lined up and you can just click on them. But until then:

Lil­lian Hellman’s Chicken (to be served with Dashiell Ham­mett Spinach, but that’s another story) Serves four

2 whole bone­less chicken breasts, split and finely trimmed
1/2 cup Hellman’s may­on­naise (get it?)
1/2 cup grated parme­san or pecorino cheese
juice of 1 lemon
freshly ground black pep­per to taste
1 1/2 cups home­made bread crumbs

Now before you object, there is sim­ply no need for canned bread crumbs to exist. Have you ever won­dered what sort of bread the Pro­gresso com­pany deems bad or old enough to be pul­ver­ized and put in a can? So march your­self over to your pantry, take out that blue can, and pitch it. Go on, you know I’m right. Then start sav­ing your left­over hot dog buns, that third of a baguette you right­eously didn’t eat last night, the crusts of the bread you used in your pic­nic lunch. If you just have a bowl on your counter where you can throw these lit­tle left­overs as they appear (don’t cover the bowl or the bread will get moldy), then when you are in the mood you can grind them up. Just throw them in your Cuisi­nart and whizz away. The sound of stale bread in a Cuisi­nart, for the first few sec­onds, is a very sat­is­fy­ing, vio­lent rat­tling noise like a car crash where nobody gets hurt.

Mix together the mayo, cheese, lemon juice and pep­per in a bowl big enough to acco­mo­date a sin­gle chicken breast. Pour your bread crumbs on a wide plate. Line a cookie sheet with alu­minum foil for easy cleanup. Pre­heat your oven to a nice high tem­per­a­ture. My New York oven used to oper­ate at only one tem­per­a­ture, no mat­ter where I set the dial, so all my recipes can sur­vive at 425 degrees.

Smear each chicken breast gen­er­ously with the gooey mix­ture and then roll equally gen­er­ously in bread crumbs. Lay each on the foil with some space between them. Bake for 30 min­utes, and voila.

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With it you have no choice but to serve the afore-mentioned Dashiell Ham­mett spinach, so here’s that as well. Of course it’s really by the incom­pa­ra­ble Lau­rie Col­win, but lit­er­ary needs must.

Lau­rie Colwin’s Spinach Casse­role
(serves 8)

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

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

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

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Here’s a bit of wis­dom (gleaned from my clever hair­styl­ist, of all peo­ple). Since you can­not find the cheese you really want for this dish, Mon­terey Jack cheese with jalapeno pep­pers in Lon­don (at least I can’t), the clos­est thing turns out to be… Edam. Sur­pris­ingly. Just peel off the red cas­ing and you’re in busi­ness. It’s slightly sharper, more aged-tasting than the Jack, but it’s lovely.

Avery’s had her first foray into the land of act­ing! She had her first class at the Sylvia Young The­atre School this after­noon, and loved every minute of it. She reported, some­what dis­joint­edly, on an exer­cise involv­ing a mys­te­ri­ous let­ter, and impro­vi­sa­tions thereto, and of her all-English class­mates, which I love. I hate turn­ing up for some­thing truly British and then find­ing that it’s full of other Amer­i­cans. Why live in for­eign places if you can’t watch the locals at their own game? So I think act­ing class is a win­ner. Pretty soon she can sup­port us, and then the butcher will be happy.

Then I had a fan­tas­tic long cof­fee break with my friend 6point7, fel­low Matthew Mac­fadyen enthu­si­ast of course. We dished a bit about his lat­est onscreen ven­ture, a ter­ri­bly upset­ting but fan­tas­ti­cally acted telly pro­gramme called “Secret Life.” All of us whom adore him, includ­ing the lovely ladies at dar­cy­li­cious, were wor­ried that it was a rough career move, but the reviews have been uni­ver­sally won­der­ful. Now we can all sit back and wait for his next project, a play called “The Pain and the Itch” that’s come from Step­pen­wolf. It’s in June and I sim­ply can’t wait. 6point7 is a pos­i­tive over­flow­ing font of infor­ma­tion on all things filmic and stage­like, and we talked non­stop for hours, trad­ing opin­ions on var­i­ous British actors, gos­sip­ing about who directs whom, who writes what. I myself would dearly love to turn a beloved novel into a screen­play and see if I could sell it. It’s “Shine on, Bright and Dan­ger­ous Object,” by the same Lau­rie Col­win who cre­ated my spinach recipe. Oh to be that multi-talented! A lovely story about grief and loss and reju­ve­na­tion, set in New York. Oh, I know, Matthew could play the lead! Not that I haven’t thought about that before. We’ll see.

Then, in my quest for felt so that Avery can com­plete a gift project for her Grandpa Jack, I came upon what I can describe only as a knit­ting shop for true believ­ers. The peo­ple at I Knit Lon­don, while not able to sup­ply me with felt, were so kind in their replies to me that I feel duty-bound to pass along the high­est praise. Surely some­one read­ing this blog has been des­per­ate to know where to find yarn, nee­dles and fel­low devo­tees of purl­ing, in Lon­don? Well, now you know. Still have to find felt, though. A trip to John Lewis may be in order.

Well, it’s off to the gro­cery store for me. I’m think­ing red-cooked shrimp…

Szech­wan Red-Cooked Shrimp
(serves four)

3 tbsps peanut oil
1 lb uncooked large shrimp, shells on, heads off (call them prawns in Eng­land)
3 bunches green onions, sliced thin (white part only)
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
1-inch knob fresh gin­ger, minced
1/2 tbsp coarse sea salt

4 tbsps soy sauce
2 tbsps Japan­ese mirin (rice wine)
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp chili paste or sauce

1 cup bas­mati rice

Arrange your shrimp in a sin­gle layer on a plat­ter and scat­ter the gar­lic, gin­ger, green onions and sea salt over them. They can sit there, thaw­ing as mine will have to from the freezer, while you do every­thing else.

Mix all the rest of the ingre­di­ents except the rice in a bowl and set aside. Put your rice on to sim­mer with a lit­tle under 1 1/2 cups water. Now, in a wok over high heat, heat your peanut oil. It has a very high smok­ing point, so you can get it good and hot. I find the shrimp are more ten­der if they’re cooked hot and short. Throw in the shrimps with their gar­nish, and toss very quickly until the shrimp turn pink. Take them out with a slot­ted spoon and place them in the bowl you intend to serve in (no sense mess­ing about with extra bowls!). Pour the liq­uid mix­ture into the wok and bring to a boil, mix­ing in the gar­lic and gin­ger left behind in the wok. Boil high for two min­utes, then throw the shrimp back in and toss for 30 sec­onds. Serve with rice.

Now gather up a bunch of paper nap­kins and start pulling their lit­tle legs and shells off. This din­ner is messy, spicy, and glorious.

I’m just happy to have the blog back. Some of you (the hun­dreds who emailed me, per­haps, among them?) may have noticed my hia­tus these last few days. Let me explain.

A new reader to the blog, who hap­pened upon it through an entirely acci­den­tal group of key­words in a search engine, expressed in no uncer­tain terms that there was FAR too much trans­parency, I think they call it, in my use of, say, real peo­ple. Real places, real what­ever. So I have spent a labo­ri­ous sev­eral days excis­ing REAL­NESS from many sto­ries and sit­u­a­tions that, frankly, most of you never paid any atten­tion to any­way. The sce­nar­ios in ques­tion were the least inter­est­ing of any I sub­mit for your perusal on this blog, and so while it was very bor­ing to do all the stuff I had to do to Change The Names To Pro­tect The Inno­cent, it also makes almost no dif­fer­ence to the fas­ci­na­tion quo­tient of the blog itself. I actu­ally had some fun mak­ing up names, so there you go, lemons into lemon­ade. WHEW.

So I’m back! All search engines are GO. We’re in business.

Most impor­tantly, I must address the long-delayed (OK, three days) pub­li­ca­tion of my recipe for a new and extremely green soup. The beauty of this soup is that you can clear your con­science of that full, unopened bag of spinach you bought a week ago and still… haven’t used. It’s not fresh enough for salad, or even for pasta, but soup? Heck yes.

Spinach and Leek Soup
(serves six-ish for a starter)

4 tbsps but­ter
5 leeks, white parts only, sliced, washed and drained
1/2 white onion, chopped roughly
4 cloves gar­lic
at least 5 cups chicken stock
1 large bag or large bunch spinach leaves, care­fully washed
1 cup light cream
salt and pep­per to taste

Melt but­ter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and sweat leeks, onion and gar­lic till soft. Pour over chicken stock to cover, gen­er­ously, and sim­mer for 45 min­utes. Add spinach and stir care­fully till soft­ened, then whizz with a hand blender till com­pletely pureed. Add cream and sea­son to taste.

John sug­gests per­haps a driz­zle of cream at the end to gar­nish. You could serve with crispy toast and goats cheese, but we were pretty happy stand­ing up around the stove drink­ing it out of a ladle.

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More later, but right now I must con­tinue watch­ing cov­er­age of Boris Yeltsin’s funeral. It is bring­ing back such strong mem­o­ries of our time liv­ing in Rus­sia in the early 90s when Yeltsin was the sweet­est thing you could imag­ine, or at least so we thought, and we were all run­ning around with breath­less inter­preters, dis­cov­er­ing Russ­ian artists and pri­vatis­ing the gov­ern­ment willy-nilly. Much has been revealed to be fool­ish or at least quixotic about our actions, but we were young and it all sounded like a good idea back then. What riches, in memory.

No, one of those things isn’t shoot­ing off can­nons in Hyde Park. But some­body was, this after­noon. There I was, sit­ting inno­cently at my desk blog­ging or some such thing, when my mobile rang: John. “It’s me. Somebody’s shoot­ing off big loud guns and there are lots of horses gal­lop­ing around. Come out.” So we met up on the cor­ner, and crossed Park Lane, and sure enough, far off in the dis­tance there was a huge cloud of smoke ris­ing into the air, and the sound of can­nons going off at reg­u­lar inter­vals. And in the very near dis­tance there were many, many glo­ri­ous horses in full regalia of some kind, stand­ing about look­ing skit­tish. Then all at once they went tear­ing off toward the can­nons, so we did too, walk­ing as fast as we could and try­ing not to look igno­rant. There were a lot of other dumb-looking peo­ple stand­ing behind a rope bar­rier, though, so we were in good com­pany. “Now watch them come back this way, when we’ve nearly caught up,” John joked, and sure enough, they turned around and went gal­lop­ing back from whence they came. Just as sud­denly, the can­nons stopped and some gan­gly look­ing sol­diers came and took them away, and the horses retreated off toward the Bayswa­ter Road with­out a word of expla­na­tion. What gives?

Assid­u­ous googling revealed that it was the 21-gun Salute for the Queen’s birth­day! Well, bless her heart. Happy Birth­day. Appar­ently after the dis­play in Hyde Park they were off to the Tower of Lon­don to repeat it there, and thence to Wind­sor Cas­tle. Let the bells chime. Just another after­noon obse­quy for the monarch. But in search­ing for the answer, I found an excel­lent web­site about things to do in Lon­don, so check it out. Who knows what else I’m missing.

We’ve been run­ning around like the prover­bial head­less poul­try these days, vis­it­ing houses that seem like pos­si­bil­i­ties on paper, and then find­ing out they’re not, or are, as the case may be (a real pos­si­bil­ity appeared yes­ter­day, in Not­ting Hill, so fin­gers crossed). At least the loca­tion gave us the oppor­tu­nity to pop into the charm­ing Mr Christian’s del­i­catessen in Elgin Cres­cent, for excel­lent sand­wiches of pas­trami and mus­tard mayo on cia­batta for me, and salami and Emmen­thaler for John. If we did move to that neigh­bor­hood, I would be in food heaven with that place and the won­der­ful Gro­cer on Elgin just down the street.

And Bor­ough Mar­ket was excel­lent. So quiet on a beau­ti­ful sunny Fri­day (well, not quiet per­haps, but bet­ter than Sat­ur­days). At the peer­less Sill­field Farms I picked up some lovely ham for Avery’s pic­nic today on the way to her teacher’s wed­ding (more on that when we col­lect her this evening), as well as a num­ber of slices of some­thing called “haslet,” a sort of meat­loaf of a recipe dat­ing back to Henry VIII’s time, appar­ently, full of sage and onion. Sounds like the per­fect mid­night snack to me, when I should be reach­ing for a car­rot stick. Then some gran­u­lated gar­lic from “Spices From Hell,” a lovely lit­tle stall that I wish I could have spent more money at, but there was noth­ing I really needed. Oh, I also tucked in a nice-looking jar of tahini for hum­mous, John’s absolute favorite lunch.

Hum­mous
(serves four as an appe­tizer with toasted bread and cru­dites)

1 410-gram [soup size] can chick peas (also known as gar­banzo beans)
1/2 cup tahini (sesame paste, in for­eign or Mid­dle East­ern sec­tion of shops)
3 whole cloves gar­lic
juice of 1 lemon
salt to taste
1 cup olive oil, maybe more

Sim­ply put all this in the Cuisi­nart and turn it on, puls­ing occa­sion­ally and scrap­ing the chick peas away from the sides. Then, if you want to, pour some more olive oil on the top and leave it. The fla­vors will improve. To this you can add any num­ber of improve­ments like red bell pep­pers, lit­tle chunks of avo­cado, spinach, cilantro, you name it. And it’s good for you.

***********

From the fish­mon­ger at the mar­ket (does it have a name? don’t know it if so, but Nigella Law­son shops there, enough said) I picked up about a kilo of superb-looking mus­sels to steam for din­ner. They turned out to be incred­i­bly tiny, and suc­cu­lent, but almost too much trou­ble to eat, to jus­tify the bit of labor involved in debeard­ing, scrub­bing and check­ing for cracks and dead spec­i­mens. It was almost like eat­ing peri­win­kles. I’ve done a bit of research but can’t find the rea­son for the small size. In any case, the white wine sauce I invented was divine for dip­ping olive cia­batta in. To my usual recipe I added creme fraiche from a fab­u­lous French dairy pur­veyor at the mar­ket, as well as a hand­ful of san­tini toma­toes I had sit­ting on the counter which looked about to get shriv­elly, which cut in half were quite lovely. At the last minute I just fished through the broth with my whisk and out came the toma­toes skins. Per­fect. So here’s my revised recipe. I also added more chicken stock. Keep in mind I make a lot of broth, for drink­ing like soup after you fin­ish your mus­sels. You can cut down on the wine and stock if you don’t want a lot of broth.

Mus­sels with White Wine and Fresh Thyme
(serves four)

3 tbsps olive oil
1 kilo mus­sels, cleaned
4 cloves gar­lic, chopped fine
3 shal­lots, chopped fine
1 tbsp fresh thyme (chopped with­out stems)
6 Thai fresh green pep­per­corns, chopped (from Spice Shop in Not­ting Hill)
2 cups white wine
2 cups chicken stock
hand­ful cherry or other small toma­toes, cut in half
2 tbsps butter

Saute gar­lic, shal­lots, thyme and pep­per­corns in olive oil, then add white wine and stock. Bring to a boil, add mus­sels, cover and steam for 8 min­utes. Dis­card any that did not open, and lift good mus­sels into a large bowl with slot­ted spoon, bring wine sauce to a boil again and sim­mer a bit to reduce. Add toma­toes and whisk in but­ter. At the last minute, run your whisk through sauce and pick up tomato skins and dis­card. Pour over mus­sels and serve with warm bread and goats cheese.

Speak­ing of matu­rity, after long months of nearly for­get­ting I had called, I got a mes­sage from the Sylvia Young The­atre School that Avery’s name had come to the top of the wait­ing list and she can start a week from today, in drama lessons! She was so inspired by the lit­tle girl in “Miss Pot­ter” that we rang up, and now it’s come. She is very, very excited. And I can enjoy the prospect of liv­ing vic­ar­i­ously through her, cer­tainly a healthy atti­tude toward mater­nity. What fun it will be to pick her up and hear how it’s going.

I have been in a tizzy of order­ing tick­ets for things to do, in the com­ing months. It’s that time of year when all the things we enjoyed so much last spring are com­ing around again. So, try­ing not to think about how much it all costs (and jus­ti­fy­ing it as part of the point of liv­ing in Lon­don) I have booked us for a play in Rich­mond star­ring my dear crush actor Edward Pether­bridge, can’t wait for that, and seats at the Royal Wind­sor Horse Show. And most exot­i­cally, John has booked us to fly to Morocco for our friend Vincent’s 40th birth­day party. Won’t that be a hoot! After that we may be approach­ing cool enough to… have a din­ner party of our own. I’ll pop an invi­ta­tion in the post for you, how’s that?

We just came in from a lovely lunch at a cute lit­tle place lit­er­ally around the cor­ner, but to which until now we’ve never been. Fino’s in the sun­shine is a lovely spot, and the pizza was amaz­ingly fresh, crunchy and sim­ply slathered with fresh ricotta and red onions. I had a very nice crab may­on­naise, but my only com­plaint was the way the chef had pre­sented it piled on what started life as a crunchy slice of Ital­ian bread, but by the time I got to the last bite was quite annoy­ingly soggy. Served along­side would have been nicer. It’s def­i­nitely worth a visit and we will eschew the ubiq­ui­tous Ask and Pizza Express in the future.

Well, we’re off to take Anna and Ellie off their par­ents’ hands for the evening, and then swing by to col­lect Avery at school and hear how singing for the wed­ding went. As long as the cer­e­mony didn’t put any ideas in her head…

First off, I must tell you that this beau­ti­ful pho­to­graph comes from a very cool foodie blog you might enjoy, “What We’re Eat­ing. Check it out. It’s writ­ten by an extremely cute cou­ple (?) of peo­ple one of whom cooks, and the other eats, then they talk about it. And they take great photos.

But I digress. My point is, you think hav­ing a per­fect day is an accom­plish­ment, a sort of unusual thing that comes about when you’ve set your­self a task and it all works out the way you plan, don’t you? So did I. But I’m think­ing it’s sim­pler than that. Mostly the per­fec­tion comes in the notic­ing how many pleas­ant things come my way on my aver­age Tues­day, and tak­ing the time to appre­ci­ate them. First of all, the way to start your per­fect day is with fresh-squeezed juice. What­ever comes to mind when you’re at the gro­cery: my glass today con­tained blood oranges, ruby red grape­fruit, and clemen­tines. It just makes all other juice, includ­ing “fresh-squeezed” that you buy in the refrig­er­a­tor sec­tion of the gro­cery, taste like noth­ing. Or worse, that sulfur-y taste of pas­teuri­sa­tion. Go on, squeeze some for your­self tomorrow.

Then some more per­fectly ordi­nary things begin to hap­pen. I drop my child off at school, and there’s the miss­ing vio­lin, behind the coat rack, whose absence at home was so dis­turb­ing on the night before the first day back from hol­i­day. And two new gulls have appeared in the school! Tatiana and Isabella, already firmly called “Bella,” found their way into Form Five after the break. The class is get­ting pos­si­bly too big, and we found out that they’re being split up into two groups, alpha­bet­i­cally deter­mined, which has every­one in a tizzy. And who will get the final speak­ing role in “Peter Pan” this sum­mer term, the cov­eted Talk­ing Pirate? Only Mrs Bick­ley the Drama Teacher knows for sure, and so far she’s not telling.

Then I climbed the stairs to the very top floor to be read to by what­ever four or five lit­tle seven-year-olds have been sent my way by Miss Arm­strong, and are they sweet. Scrubbed and fresh from their hol­i­days, the vari­ety and posh­ness of which seem quite stag­ger­ing to me, but then I’m a nice girl from Indi­ana. Athens? Why not. Val d’Isere, New York, the south of France, Dublin, Switzer­land for that last-gasp ski trip. So I went to Iowa, is there a prob­lem with that? Their lit­tle pip­ing voices are so sweet.

Then a long-overdue tea break with Becky, to catch up on the crazi­ness of our var­i­ous fam­ily lives. Is a move immi­nent in their expa­tri­ate lives, and if so, where to? Not a relax­ing thing to think about, but with typ­i­cal grace, Becky rises to the occa­sion with­out deliv­er­ing any blows in her domes­tic sphere. Hav­ing been through that myself more than once, I do not envy her. Not to men­tion that hav­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of no Becky is NOT accept­able. I’ll have to have a word with her husband’s boss.

And who but me could count among her Per­fect Day activ­i­ties a mam­moth Tesco shop? I do adore to gro­cery shop, espe­cially when I’m all by myself with no wet-blanket hus­band to cau­tion me about ingre­di­ents, quan­ti­ties or price. Ha! Even the car got washed as I shopped, not that it mat­ters with all the dis­gust­ing pollen falling all over this town. The flip­side of the gor­geous spring week: the air is sim­ply full of sneeze-making non­sense. But for about an hour, Emmy looked great.

And seem­ingly overnight, flow­ers have appeared in our com­mu­nal gar­den, and all the trees are in bloom. Lovely (also con­tribut­ing, no doubt, to the sneezing).

Home with Avery and Anna who promised faith­fully to do their home­work. Is there any­thing cosier than tying on an apron to pre­pare din­ner, sur­rounded by chil­dren dis­cussing their maths prob­lems? I don’t think so. It was an all-five-senses after­noon: the smell of but­tered pop­corn, the sound of their lit­tle voices and the scrapes of their pens, the sight of all my bowls of cit­rus fruits wait­ing to be juiced, the feel of a nice husband’s no-occasion kiss on the cheek, and tast­ing my salmon sauce for sea­son­ing… it doesn’t take much to make me happy. Actu­ally, that’s quite a lot, come to think of it.

Becky popped in to pick up Anna, and we stood around in the kitchen admir­ing the salmon dish and the casse­role of cheesy pota­toes, which recipe I must tweak before I give it to you because I didn’t realise how fine my grater grates (yes, the Matthew Mac­fadyen Memo­r­ial Grater! it’s excel­lent), and there was not enough cheese and too much milk. A work in progress, clearly. I either need lots more cheese, or a much less fine grater. I’ll let you know.

My per­fect day ended with Avery secure in her bath­tub talk­ing about her book of the moment, “A Year Down Yon­der,” which I can­not rec­om­mend highly enough, either in book form or the book on tape we have loved. It’s even bet­ter, I think, than the orig­i­nal book in the series of two, “A Long Way From Chicago.” Richard Peck is a genius at por­tray­ing the life of wartime Indi­ana with a gun-toting, embar­rass­ing but life-changing grand­mother for a young girl trans­planted from Chicago. Your kids will love it. Then it was onto our excel­lent din­ner, although Avery did have some very use­ful sug­ges­tions about the potato dish which I am tak­ing under advise­ment. She is becom­ing a very dis­cern­ing eater, pro­vid­ing me with the sug­ges­tions that improved my mush­room soup immensely. Thanks, Aves.

Well, our house­hold is busy lis­ten­ing to Avery prac­tice the songs she and her choir­mates will sing at tomorrow’s coun­try wed­ding of the school music teacher! “My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose.” It’s actu­ally incred­i­bly touch­ing; the teacher invited them to come sing “All Things Bright and Beau­ti­ful,” and they will, but secretly the singing teacher taught them this extra song to sur­prise her. I wish we were invited, but alas we are not included. We’ll have to find some way to keep out of trou­ble. Bor­ough Mar­ket is out, since on a Sat­ur­day it will be a mad­house and in any case I just came from there, hang­ing out with Twiggy and sip­ping cof­fee from the Mon­mouth Cof­fee Com­pany. I don’t even drink cof­fee nor­mally, and nei­ther does Twiggy, but it came so highly rec­om­mended and the smell was superb. Each cup is indi­vid­u­ally fil­tered, and there’s help-yourself bread and jam on the tables. We had a fine gos­sip. Now I’m home to make my steamed mus­sels, once John and Avery return from the skat­ing rink.

You all put your feet up and think of ways to enjoy a per­fect day. Think SMALL.

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

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

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

Well, no one can accuse me of being a prima donna about my appear­ance, that’s for sure. First of all, I man­aged to get a dress for about $80 in New York for the big VIP event at the British Show Jump­ing Cham­pi­onships. $80! For a for­mal event, not bad, I thought. Gosh, it’s hard to believe it’s been a year since we went to the Cham­pi­onships last spring, just Avery and me, while John was in a long trip to Asia. So much has changed! We feel pretty firmly Eng­lish these days; Avery and I are inun­dated with friends, John’s quit his job. But a lot remains the same: same flat (to our dis­may, with no news on the real estate front, although we’ve put in an offer on a house in Ham­mer­smith Grove, near to both of the schools we’re look­ing at for Avery), same crazy cats, same beloved school.

But I digress. I started out with my bargain-basement dress, and we packed up all our duds to head to Birm­ing­ham. John found out last minute, call­ing to con­firm our tick­ets, that it was not black tie, but merely “lounge suit.” This phrase con­jures up unfor­tu­nate images from my child­hood of my father in a Nehru jacket (can that be true, or was it some­one else’s dad?), but in any case John hap­pily donned his favorite dress trousers, dumped all our belong­ings from the hang­ing bag into a duf­fel, flung his jacket on the back­seat of the car and we were off. Two hours later we arrived at the hotel to find that one cru­cial (or not) item had not made it in the trans­fer of bags: my toi­letries. That’s right, no con­tact lenses, no hair­brush, no makeup, and most omi­nously, no anti­his­t­a­mines. I took a deep breath, fielded Avery’s anx­ious inquiries about “what about the lip­stick you were going to let me wear?” and headed down to the hotel shop. This estab­lish­ment had its pri­or­i­ties firmly in hand. Hair­brush, check. Anti­his­t­a­mines, check. Tooth­brush and tooth­paste, check. But makeup? For­get it. So there I was, all decked out with not a speck of eye­liner, con­cealer, noth­ing. Of course, I didn’t need blush, since I pro­duce that all on my own, every day. And I found a sorry lit­tle lip­stick at the bot­tom of my hand­bag, which addi­tion was all Avery required to be per­fectly, incan­des­cently beau­ti­ful. It didn’t pro­duce the same mir­a­cle for me, sorry to say. But we looked nice.

Over to the arena feel­ing like Cin­derella, pass­ing all the peo­ple in ordi­nary clothes, as we would be in the morn­ing, but for the moment feel­ing as if we were going to the prom. It was a beau­ti­ful, gor­geous spring evening, every­thing under the sun blos­som­ing and a lovely sun­set on the man­made lake.

And onward to the Hos­pi­tal­ity Suite, right at the busi­ness end of the arena, where all the horses come out, and up to our ele­gant row of tables, and bow­ing wait­ers, and a lit­tle sign with the show logo, say­ing our last name. Very cool! Avery had her first taste of cham­pagne, and I’m pretty sure she prefers gin­ger ale. Then it was onto some pretty aver­age mush­room soup with crou­tons and creme fraiche (I will not aban­don this post with­out giv­ing you my own recipe for mush­room soup and you will not be dis­ap­pointed), fol­lowed by some really sub-par roast lamb and veg­eta­bles, then a creme brulee of a really most strange bub­bly con­sis­tency. I diag­nosed gelatin of some kind, which should never breathe the same air as creme brulee. But it didn’t mat­ter, the food wasn’t the point (well, it could have been, but it wasn’t). The point was, we saw every rider close up, every horse entered the arena right under our chairs, and… we were invited to “walk the course.” This is what the rid­ers all do after the jumps have been set up. They appear on the course in either their full regalia of whites, jack­ets, hel­mets and boots, or just jod­phurs and shirts, and they… walk the course. Find out, by their strides, how to cal­cu­late the num­ber of strides their horses will need between the jumps. So we were taken out by one of the arena stew­ards and walked the course that the rid­ers would do for the famous “Puis­sance” jump at the end of the evening.

The Puis­sance wall got up to nearly 7 feet 3 inches before finally the adorable young Ben Maher and Robert Maguire were crowned co-winners. Amaz­ingly, none of the splen­did Whitaker Dynasty made it to the finals. We are finally sort­ing it out. John Whitaker is Robert’s father, Steven is Ellen Whitaker’s father, and now there’s young William who is someone’s cousin but we aren’t sure yet whose. I’ll sort it out. Ellen did not dis­grace her­self, but nor did she live up to the impos­si­ble billing the announc­ers always give the entire fam­ily. The pres­sure! But what fun to be those kinds of peo­ple, solidly at the top of their game, and it’s the only game in town.

Prac­ti­cally my favorite thing to watch is “arena polo,” whose stew­ard and cham­pion is the saucy Jack Kidd. Actu­ally I love all polo, indoors or out. We must remem­ber to get back to the Wind­sor Polo Club soon.

Finally, sadly, the evening came to an end near mid­night, and we trooped back to the hotel, and up to our pas­sage to our room. Just as we came to the door, the door oppo­site ours opened and out popped… Jack Kidd him­self! A quick look into the room he was occu­py­ing revealed more than a cou­ple of young Eng­lish roses, so I’m think­ing we got a glimpse of what has marred his pri­vate life. But the boy can cer­tainly play polo!

After our very late night, we had to be dragged out of bed, but it was for a wor­thy Eng­lish break­fast of every­thing you can imag­ine: freshly poached eggs all lined up on a steam­ing plat­ter, omelets to order, bacon and sausage, juice and cereal, pas­tries and bagels. Three cheers for the Hilton Birm­ing­ham Metro­pole Hotel! And onwards to the show.

Never hav­ing had front-row seats before (although no Hos­pi­tal­ity Suite for us on day two, sadly), I didn’t real­ize that there was a tra­di­tion of the showjumpers throw­ing their win­ning rosettes to the chil­dren in the crowd. But before she knew it almost, Avery was the proud owner of Mark Armstrong’s rosette; we can’t remem­ber which place he got in the speed stakes, but it was excit­ing and fun to watch. Then there was the tri­umphant Tim Stock­dale, for whom we felt all sorts of sup­port and sym­pa­thy, think­ing him to be sort of the elder states­man of the com­pe­ti­tion: then John said, “Wait a minute, he’s 42!” Alle­giances threat­ened to shift, but his per­for­mance was incred­i­ble. Not an old man, though, John, not at all. The biggest excite­ment of the day hap­pened at the very end, in the showjump­ing finals, when just as favorite Markus Fuchs was approach­ing the last jump, two unwary jump stew­ards realised they were about to be run over and leaped to the side, fright­en­ing the horse and caus­ing him to bring down the jump. The crowd went crazy: every­one was abuzz with the unfair­ness, the need for Fuchs to have a “do-over,” and even he approached the jury table and protested. But to no avail. The jumps were brought down, and the tro­phy plate pre­sented to the lovely (but we’re not so sure deserv­ing) Jes­sica Kurten of Ire­land. Plenty of fod­der for a fam­ily dis­cus­sion on the way home. “I think she should have protested that she didn’t really win, and offered to share the prize money,” Avery felt. I thought there should have been a do-over. But John, typ­i­cally, said, “He was a good sport, and that’s what counts. But good on you, Avery, for not think­ing you’d take the money and run.” And what a shame for poor Jes­sica to go home not nec­es­sar­ily think­ing she really won.

Well, we made our way home lis­ten­ing to “Unnat­ural Death” by Dorothy L. Say­ers, a new favorite by an old mas­ter. How I have missed it all these years I do not know. Another far-too-late night for all of us, and so it was a chal­lenge to get to the skat­ing rink this morn­ing. But go we did, and thank good­ness, because the cov­eted Bronze Badge was Avery’s by the end of the les­son. Another sewing job for me. That PE bag is absolutely cov­ered by now.

We recov­ered some­what from our trav­els with a nice com­fort­ing bowl of Cream of Mush­room Soup. Home­made, that is. And school starts tomor­row. Whether that’s good news or bad, remains to be seen. Sum­mer Term, here we come.

Cream of Mush­room Soup
(serves four as a starter)

4 tbsps but­ter
2 cloves gar­lic, sliced
4 cups chicken stock
1 pound baby porta­bella mush­rooms, roughly chopped, with 4 reserved and sliced
3 tbsps Marsala wine
1 cup light cream
truf­fle oil to gar­nish
chopped pars­ley to garnish

(baguette slices on the side)

Melt 3 tbsps but­ter in a heavy stock­pot and saute the gar­lic briefly. Cover with chicken stock and add chopped mush­rooms, keep­ing 4 sliced mush­rooms aside. Add Marsala wine and sim­mer for 45 minutes.

Mean­while, melt last tbsp but­ter in a small skil­let and slowly saute mush­room slices. Puree soup with a hand blender and add cream. Keep warm, then put in warmed bowls. Pile sliced sauteed mush­rooms in cen­ter of each bowl, driz­zle with truf­fle oil, sprin­kle with pars­ley and serve with baguette. Sim­ple and heavenly.

Can I just say? Seri­ously. Some­one HIGH UP in charge of the bet­ter­ment of my soul via fear-conquering was hav­ing a seri­ous laugh yes­ter­day. It’s not enough I con­quer big planes, nice weather. Then you got your big planes, bad weather. Ratchet up to tiny plane, nice weather. Yes­ter­day we had the whole nine yards. Well, actu­ally I take that back, the pilot did not have an actual heart attack neces­si­tat­ing my acti­va­tion of the para­chute mech­a­nism. But we were nearly grounded by a freak snow­storm. Please! Don’t wanna do that. But I did, kick­ing and scream­ing, get on the plane. And we were fine. But note to self: arrange NOT in the future to be the only peo­ple dumb enough to get up to 11,000 feet in a snow­storm so that we were the only peo­ple in the sky report­ing on the weather con­di­tions. Either that or arrange not to be lis­ten­ing to all of it on the radar headphones.

Ah, well, this too shall pass, and it did. We got our­selves hap­pily on the Great Big Plane to come from Chicago to Lon­don, unevent­fully. But seri­ously. Crazy scary.

We’re back from our week in Iowa, where John’s dad’s not well and so we were all hands on deck, or what­ever the expres­sion is, when we all step up and play the parts allot­ted to us in fam­ily sit­u­a­tions. Let’s see, in our fam­ily that meant that John’s mom com­pletely threw her­self into enjoy­ing what the kids were doing: Avery, John’s sister’s girls, the grand­kids of John’s par­ents’ best friends. Did they want to go swim­ming at the hotel? Fine, she was there with her cam­era, and will­ing to sham­poo any num­ber of girls’ hair after­ward. Did they want to dye eggs for Easter? Sure, how many dozen? End­less per­mu­ta­tions of mark­ers came forth from her craft boxes, trips to the Hobby Lobby for yet more note­books, rib­bons, stick­ers for projects. And John? He wrote let­ters, fixed com­put­ers, filled the cars up with gas, orga­nized paper­work. John’s sis­ter devoted her­self to end­less research projects and of course on top of every­thing else she had on her plate, gen­er­ously decided she wanted Avery to spend the night at the hotel with them, com­plete with a break­fast swim. Her hus­band, eas­ily the most orga­nized per­son I have ever met, com­pleted a spread­sheet of more phone num­bers and email addresses than I have ever seen. If the num­ber isn’t there, we don’t need it.

And me? I cooked. Not that appetite is always first and fore­most on everyone’s list of con­cerns, but it gen­er­ally heads up my list, and so I cooked. A roast chicken so we could have sand­wiches and soup. And three vari­a­tions on my cele­riac soup: garlic-less for a more del­i­cate con­sti­tu­tion, veg­e­tar­ian for John’s sis­ter, and one using very fla­vor­ful home­made chicken stock for… me, who hap­pened to have some on hand. I would say that all these ver­sions are worth­while, but keep in mind that no gar­lic means very sim­ple, veg­etable stock can mean very car­roty (still good, but not as del­i­cate and very orange), and home­made stock means the cele­riac gets lost. Not a bad soup, but not what I would say high­lights the cele­riac fla­vor. All these per­mu­ta­tions are use­ful to know about, I think. But the best ver­sion is with plain old, watery, rather taste­less canned chicken broth, so use it and be glad there’s a pur­pose in life for a thing in a can.

Oh, and quite a spec­tac­u­lar cook­ing fail­ure. Word to the wise: if you burn the cheese sauce for mac­a­roni and cheese, the fin­ished dish will taste as if you are enjoy­ing it through a Marl­boro fil­ter. Just pitch it and start over. Do not believe the var­i­ous well-meaning rel­a­tives who pass through the kitchen, take a bite, and say, “It just tastes like you used smoked ched­dar.” It doesn’t. It’s awful and belongs in the garbage. I hate to screw up! But I took it as a learn­ing point. You have to learn other people’s stoves, and since John’s mom’s stove never turns on her, and has never before turned on me, I must assume I was really not pay­ing attention.

And while I was not ruin­ing the evening’s meal, I was busy crash­ing John’s mother’s car into the post that sep­a­rates the two park­ing spots in their garage. Well, “crash­ing” is exag­ger­at­ing. More like rub­bing up against and then just con­tin­u­ing to do so until all the paint on the post was trans­ferred to the side of the car. As I did this, John’s sister’s fam­ily pulled up in their car and every­one just stood, open-mouthed. Now I know where the expres­sion, “It was like watch­ing a train wreck” comes from. No one could look away. Finally my brother-in-law said, “I don’t think we’re help­ing by just stand­ing here,” and thank­fully hus­tled every­one away. John said, “That’s just what we needed, one more thing,” but then he took pity on me and said some­thing like, “It’s just a garage.” The things we have to rise above, when I am around.

But in the end, we also spent a lot of time chat­ting, me get­ting to know my nieces who are dear, intel­li­gent girls (I think Sarah is a great chef in the mak­ing, so I hope I didn’t inter­rupt her progress with my mis­takes, and Ellen is a ter­rific ath­lete and a real ball of energy), hang­ing out at our friend Stephanie’s barn and watch­ing the kids groom the horses, going to the book­store with Stephanie’s won­der­ful mom’s gift cer­tifi­cates for the chil­dren, all of us drink­ing Bloody Marys and “help­ing” John and his mother scram­ble three dozen eggs for Easter brunch, hid­ing plas­tic eggs full of all the candy Tar­get could offer, on Stephanie and David’s enor­mous tree-filled lot. But it was freez­ing! Lit­er­ally, below freez­ing. What was Iowa think­ing? But it meant we had lovely evenings by the gas fire (the fire­place of which John and I, famously, checked as LUG­GAGE lo these 15 years ago, when we moved back from Lon­don the first time), sip­ping sin­gle malt scotch, rem­i­nisc­ing about our many, many vaca­tions together, the hun­dreds of times John and his dad have stolen the check from each other at din­ner (“Hey, Dad, there’s a rea­son I have the same name as you: you never know which credit card slip you’re sign­ing”), the hun­dreds of books John’s mom and I have rec­om­mended to each other, the hun­dreds of treats they have both arranged for Avery, for all their grandchildren.

One evening I was up after every­one else went to bed (OK, that hap­pens every evening I spend in Iowa), and I wan­dered around through the house, see­ing the Bat­tersea box with caviar on the top that I gave them when we were liv­ing in Moscow, the Russ­ian icon I smug­gled in through Moscow cus­toms, the mer­cury glass flower vases John found in Por­to­bello Mar­ket, the bronze archi­tec­tural repli­cas John’s mom col­lects and to which we’ve con­tributed the New York land­marks we could see from our first SoHo apart­ment, the enlarged photo of lit­tle John as Eey­ore that I gave John’s mom when I unearthed it years ago in her lim­it­less photo col­lec­tion. And the lith­o­graph by Mauri­cio Lasan­sky, hang­ing by their front door, the only object that would com­fort month-old Baby Avery when she came to visit for her first Christ­mas. “Look,” John’s dad would say, dan­gling her from his out­stretched arm, “She loves this thing. Who says babies don’t under­stand art?” It wasn’t a week later that we found our­selves in the store­room at the Uni­ver­sity of Iowa, let­ting the tiny baby choose a lith­o­graph for her­self, which has hung over her bed all her life.

Fam­ily is excel­lent. It’s funny to me to see us all take our places, the same places we always take, in good times and bad. It gives me a nice sense of con­ti­nu­ity. And now that we’re back home in Lon­don, I know the old places are still there like squares on a chess­board, and every­one knows the rules of where to go. We just have to get all the pieces on the same board at the same time. What a rare treat it was.

But truth be told: Iowa also con­tains some very odd things. I will never for­get being a new girl­friend and turn­ing up in Water­loo to find, of all things, a “Grout Museum.” I said in won­der, “Are there enough kinds of grout to jus­tify a museum? Or was grout invented here, or some­thing?” Silence pre­vailed. Finally some­one said, “Kris­ten, the Grout fam­ily endowed the money for the museum. It’s filled with price­less his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments about sci­ence.” Oh.

And get this: hot LEGS. No, not hot wings, which we’ve all had and enjoyed (or not) in our times in places like TGI Fri­days, or Den­nys, or what­ever hor­ror the town you’re vis­it­ing con­tains. I myself adore hot wings, any­where, of any descrip­tion. But hot LEGS? This is what dieti­cians worry about when they ana­lyze the diet of the Mid­west of my home­land. If you can get it big­ger, you’ll get it big­ger. So hey: it turns out the lit­tle roundy bit on a chicken wing? You can super­size that and you get a drum­stick! I hate to say it made me laugh. Prob­a­bly the next time I’m there I’ll have some.

Well, in any case, the hol­i­day is over and real life beck­ons. As in the much-vaunted, looked-forward-to, nay hyped open­ing of the new Pri­mark depart­ment store at the cor­ner of Park Street and Oxford Street. Open your mouth wide. Take a deep breath. Now… YAWN. Yep, a big yawn. Hordes of peo­ple, every­one fight­ing over the next sequined or ruched thing made of some not-cotton fab­ric. But Avery and I were the only peo­ple who did not exit with a bag filled with mer­chan­dise. We escaped in mor­tal fear.

Tomor­row John comes back from Iowa, and we head imme­di­ately to Birm­ing­ham for the British Show Jump­ing Cham­pi­onships! VIP tick­ets, for my birth­day present, so we must pack tuxedo, for­mal black dress for me (darn, no one reminded me to diet this month), Avery will be a vision in Mor­gane Le Fay.

And before I go, I have to tell you the most suc­cess­ful menu of my week. It involves, strangely, one dish being depen­dent on another. At first I thought this was cheat­ing, that my risotto would never taste the same for you as it did for me, because you wouldn’t have the fresh roast turkey drip­pings I had. But then John’s mom and I real­ized, they can if I tell them to! So here is the per­fect com­fort menu for peo­ple who don’t want any­thing chal­leng­ing, or expen­sive, or with hard to find ingre­di­ents. And it’s DELI­CIOUS. Keep in mind the ingre­di­ent list is for the whole DIN­NER. Take it with you to the supermarket.

Roast Turkey with Mush­room Risotto and Broc­col­ini
(serves five peo­ple awfully happy to eat din­ner together in Iowa)

1 large turkey breast, on the bone (not split, cru­cially)
6 tbsps but­ter
4 tbsps olive oil
1/2 tsp each: dried basil, oregano, paprika, gar­lic salt
2 cloves gar­lic, minced
4 tbsps minced onion
1 1/2 cup arbo­rio, or risotto rice
two hand­fuls baby porta­bella or but­ton mush­rooms, chopped roughly
1/2 cup white wine
at least 4 cups chicken broth (canned!)
1 cup fresh grated pecorino or parme­san cheese
1/2 tbsps fresh thyme leaves (not the stems)
3 bunches broc­col­ini, trimmed and rinsed
fresh ground pep­per, and salt to taste

So here’s what you do. Two and a half hours before you want to eat, pre­heat your oven to 325 degrees. Spray an oven-safe dish large enough for the turkey breast with non­stick spray. Lay the turkey breast in the dish, sprin­kle with herbs and place 3 tbsps of the but­ter, in pats, along the top of the breast. Roast for two hours.

Mean­while, mince your gar­lic and onion and tear off your thyme leaves. Grate your cheese. Trim your broc­col­ini and lay it in a skil­let cov­ered with 2 tbsps of the olive oil, and some salt.

Half an hour before you want to eat, place the remain­ing but­ter and olive oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Melt and saute the onion and gar­lic, then toss in the rice and stir till com­pletely coated. Add the mush­rooms. Add the white wine and stir over low-medium heat till absorbed. Now, add the chicken stock a bit at a time, maybe half a cup at a time, and stir con­tin­u­ously as you do so, adjust­ing the heat so the liq­uid is absorb­ing steadily but the mix­ture never spits at you. If you have a will­ing and gra­cious mother-in-law, she could do this while you do the other bits and pieces.

Ten min­utes before you want to eat, put the heat on under the broc­col­ini and stir with tongs, lift­ing up the stalks so they get sauted gen­tly on both sides. Mean­while, get the risotto to the con­sis­tency you want (I like wet but not runny), and remove from heat.

HERE’S THE MAG­I­CAL PART. Take the turkey breast out of the oven and drain all the cook­ing liq­uids from the dish into the risotto. It will be a mix­ture of turkey juices, but­ter and herbs. Sim­ply per­fect, and you can’t get that depth of fla­vor any other way. Stir gen­tly, add the cheese and the thyme leaves and taste for salt and pepper.

Carve your turkey breast and you’re in busi­ness. Enjoy.

Well, I sur­vived. As many of you know, my atti­tude toward fly­ing runs on a spec­trum from mild alarm to intense dread. But I was so good about tak­ing my fear of fly­ing course of Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioral Ther­apy, lis­ten­ing to end­less tapes, par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Wednes­day Night Chat, tak­ing advan­tage of the two-hour phone con­ver­sa­tion with Cap­tain Tom, the ex-commercial pilot turned ther­a­pist, who explains all about how air­planes work, how pilots of com­mer­cial jets are so safe at work that their life insur­ance pre­mi­ums are the low­est of any pro­fes­sion (although my life insur­ance agent father-in-law regret­fully informed me that that’s not quite true). I went the whole nine yards and did the whole course, and I must say, it worked pretty darn well. I still don’t love fly­ing, but I don’t panic at every unex­plained sound, I don’t think the plane’s going to flip over like a bee­tle on its back, and I don’t let myself think that all the sta­tis­tics work only for the planes I’m not on. I got much better.

But as we approached this lit­tle plane to fly from Chicago to Water­loo, Iowa to visit my in-laws last week, one of the salient details of the course stood out in broad relief in my mind. None of the facts or fig­ures applied to teeny-weeny pri­vate planes! In fact, the whole course kept empha­siz­ing that it’s only pri­vate planes that are dan­ger­ous. Harumph! This plane was unbe­liev­ably tiny. Like our Mini Cooper, only with wings. Seriously.

But I was brave. Mostly because I had no choice, since it was that or walk to Water­loo. Of course as luck would have it, it was incred­i­bly windy that after­noon, so the nice calm pilot warned us there would be some “bumps,” which I came to real­ize is like a doc­tor warn­ing you that there might be some “dis­com­fort,” and then you’re in mor­tal pain. Most alarm­ingly, as we sat lis­ten­ing to the engines rev, the pilot said as in an after­thought, “And if I were to become inca­pac­i­tated for any rea­son, say a heart attack, you reach up here, to this lever, and just like you were chin­ning your­self, pull it down, and a para­chute will exit the back of the plane and carry you down.” Excuse me? I thought he was jok­ing, but no, there was the omi­nous lit­tle lever, hov­er­ing above our heads like a bad dream.

It was like being in a lit­tle toy, bounc­ing around in a bath­tub. But finally we climbed up through the invis­i­ble bumps, Avery clutch­ing my hand in a death grip, while we lis­tened on our head­phones to John’s excited ques­tion­ing of the pilot, who at first was rather laconic and dis­mis­sive, but soon real­ized he had a very, very inter­ested audi­ence, and so we spent the whole jour­ney lis­ten­ing to tales of how much ice is too much ice, how to com­pen­sate for strong head­winds, and how to divert to Rock­ford because there was radar dif­fi­culty in Dubuque. Then came the inevitable John ques­tion, when con­fronted with some­thing he’s never done before but decides he really likes. “How much would one of these babies set you back?” Too much, as it turns out. Thank you, God.

So here we are in Iowa, where the land is flat, the Wal­marts plen­ti­ful, Amer­i­can flags adorn every sur­face you can imag­ine, the super­mar­kets are the size of air­plane hangars and the weather is incred­i­bly cold. But on the plus side, we’ve been see­ing all our old friends and fam­ily, repeat­ing the same old jokes we’ve been telling for the past 20 years, indulging in the kind of food we eat only when we visit the Mid­west, like breaded pork ten­der­loins the size of fris­bees, fried shrimp, ice­berg let­tuce, Lucky Charms for Avery, and unlim­ited ice. The first night we were here, after every­one had fallen asleep but me, I looked up from my book which I was read­ing propped up in John’s child­hood bed, and across the room on the desk was an enlarged pho­to­graph of Avery and her sta­ble friends, seen from the back, all on their ponies, in Hyde Park Mews. I was vis­ited by a very strange sense of unre­al­ity: that here in Iowa, in the mid­dle of the dark night, Lon­don still exists, com­plete with the Bayswa­ter Road for Avery to cross with her pony, and the Mar­ble Arch round­about with its zoom­ing black cabs, and our placid lit­tle maisonette inhab­ited by the cats in our absence. How can both places be real? And yet in two days we’ll be back there, doing our food shop­ping in the crowded, for­eign aisles of Marks & Spencer, filled with spot­ted dick and mushy mar­row­fat peas instead of Pop-Tarts and fruit cock­tail. I’ve got lots more to tell you about Iowa, but right now we’re headed out to find some Amer­i­can lunch and drop Avery and her Nonna off at the dreaded craft store for yet another project involv­ing yarn, glit­ter, goo­gly eyes or metal­lic mark­ers. Then to the gro­cery store for ingre­di­ents for the mush­room and parme­san risotto I’m plan­ning for tonight. Every once in awhile we eat some­thing that isn’t deep fried, but not too often. More soon…