I have no photo for today, because I don’t want to appear polit­i­cal and post either Tony or Gor­don! But it is quite a day here, we have a new Prime Min­is­ter, Gor­don Brown. A solemn accep­tance speech out­side Num­ber 10 Down­ing Street (did you know that even if the Prime Min­is­ter has been accepted by his party he still has to be invited by the Queen? Well, she did). And a very intel­li­gent, I thought, and enter­tain­ing, good­bye by Tony Blair. Say what any­one might about deci­sions taken: he is a well-spoken per­son and a lovely fam­ily man, and it seems a bit sad to have his depar­ture take this note. But it did, a bit under­stated, I thought. Ordi­nary removal men com­ing to pick up his bits and pieces, to take to the house in a nearby square that we drove past tonight on the way back from skat­ing: “oh, there’s his house.”

At the same time I was think­ing of the 1990-ish (we were head­strong new­ly­weds, not pay­ing enough atten­tion to pol­i­tics), was it, depar­ture of Mar­garet Thatcher that we wit­nessed our first time around in Lon­don: “It’s been a funny old life.”

And of course this week­end we’re hon­our­ing the tenth anniver­sary of the death of Princess Diana. I remem­ber so clearly wak­ing up that morn­ing in August 1997 with lit­tle Baby Avery, to the hor­ri­ble news of Diana’s death. All the cliches about a mother leav­ing her chil­dren, ter­ri­bly real, me clutch­ing a tiny baby in New York.

It’s odd, not being either British or Amer­i­can on a day like this. You know you’re watch­ing part of his­tory, and part of me feels that some­one is being unfairly judged today for hav­ing fol­lowed some­one else doing what he thought was right, and that an entire career and life is being put in only one prism. But of course we’ll see in future what it all means. Much richer, and more per­sonal, are things like watch­ing our daugh­ter at her rain-soaked horse show on Sun­day, with Becky and me sell­ing our hard-baked brown­ies and cook­ies and such for the ben­e­fit of the next farrier’s visit to the sta­ble, and a lunch with a friend Lebanese-born and British-raised, not sure where her alle­giances lie, and plan­ning a Sun­day din­ner with school friends who mean so much to us that we didn’t know existed a year and a half ago. It’s a sen­ti­men­tal evening.

I sim­ply have to kvell a lit­tle more about the Taste of Lon­don, which was such fun. Of course being crazy busy the last week or so, I did not do my blog­ger duty and post about it in time for you all to do it too, how­ever… There’s always next year, plus I came away with some incred­i­bly deli­cious things to eat that you can order online, and I think you should.

Far and away in first place was a chicken liver pate with chilli and lemon­grass, from The Patch­work Tra­di­tional Food Com­pany, although this flavour was highly un-traditional, I’d have to say. Quite spicy and with a beau­ti­fully dec­o­rated top of lit­tle pep­pers and what I sup­pose to be lemon grass leaves, finely chopped? I have never seen a stalk of lemon grass with leaves, only the long bamboo-like sticks, and I’m com­pletely flum­moxed as to how they got the flavour into the pate. It was dis­tinctly lemon­grass, not lemon, and very fresh, with a smooth tex­ture that made it per­fect to spread on a nice pic­nic sand­wich. But even nicer would be to unmould it onto a plat­ter with lit­tle bis­cuits. There were other flavours as well (a Stil­ton stood out), so sam­ple every­thing, I’d say. The pate comes frozen so it will stay good nearly as long as you want it to, and you can keep it for sev­eral days in your fridge after it thaws, as well. Sim­ply divine, and if you don’t do piquante, you could try one of the milder vari­eties, plus they’re devoted to a veg­e­tar­ian range as well.

Then I bought some rhubarb yogurt from Rachel’s Organic (they sup­ply all the milk for Pret a Manger, I know, and as much as I object to the whole big cor­po­ra­tion food thingy, Pret is always deli­cious when you’re in a hurry to get to writ­ing class and sim­ply have to have a cup of miso soup because it’s rain­ing and 60 degrees at the #@*&^ end of June). Tart, fresh, so tasty, plus I came away with creme fraiche, but­ter and a cherry yogurt that was com­pletely deli­cious and very highly flavoured. So much cherry-ish foods taste like candy, but this tasted like the real fruit. Then, because I looked at my watch and noted that it was happy hour in France, I sam­pled some lus­cious Pol­ish vodka with a really clean, flow­ery edge, called Ulu­vka. The bot­tles (I’m a sucker for pack­ag­ing as you know) has a lovely curvy neck that makes it very nice look­ing in your freezer when you’re search­ing for bread­crumbs. Do keep it frozen and serve it in a glass you’ve stored in your freezer. Plus you’ve got to love a vodka maker that invites you to sign its guest book on its web­site. Why on earth?

Then because my friend Jill is always going on about spelt (I always want to pro­nounce it “shpelt,” I won­der why? the word is remind­ing me of some­thing else), I mean­dered over to a table called “rude health organic foods,” feel­ing the name should be rewarded by a visit. Also, I like to sup­port a grain that has its own web­site. Can I just say that it was com­pletely, but com­pletely taste­less. I’m sorry, spelt! You do not rock. I can see that my prob­lem is, as the very earnest lady behind the table assured me, I am accus­tomed to food loaded with (even if the very best) salt. Or sugar, if it comes to peo­ple with a sweet tooth. But I have to jump in and say that there are many foods that taste good (heck, that taste like at least some­thing) with noth­ing added, like cucum­bers, toma­toes, milk, melon, lots of things. Maybe I just don’t eat a lot of grains with noth­ing added, so I should carry on about the poor spelt. And if I couldn’t tol­er­ate wheat, per­haps I would be very grate­ful for spelt. Right now I’m inclined to say that I can’t tol­er­ate food that has to have things added to it to taste good. But I can see that drenched in Rachel’s Organic rhubarb yogurt it would be all right. I did feel good meet­ing Ruth, my first agron­o­mist, and boy that’s a seri­ous pro­fes­sion. But then being put in a white apron and placed behind a table forced to extol the virtues of spelt could put a seri­ous cast on almost anyone.

Let’s see, I felt that I needed a lit­tle glut­tony and free liv­ing after that, so I headed over to the booth manned by the Scott’s restau­rant peo­ple to have some oys­ters on the half-shell. I have always longed to go to Scott’s, and it’s prac­ti­cally in my back­yard, but then when I see pic­tures in Hello! mag­a­zine of Jemma Gold­smith and Hugh Grant com­ing out, I real­ize I am bet­ter off sam­pling their wares stand­ing up at a plas­tic table in the rain. And Mark Hix was there, win­ner of this year’s “Great British Menu,” so I shook his hand and said how much fun we had watch­ing the pro­gramme, and he was very gra­cious. And the oys­ters were sub­lime, plus I had to applaud the atti­tude of the chap open­ing them and serv­ing them. “I have only 6 crowns left to spend, and your oys­ters cost 8. How many oys­ters could you give me for six?” And he said grandly, “Dar­ling, you help your­self!” So I got three dif­fer­ent types of oys­ters amply sprin­kled with Tabasco, lemon and shal­lots in vine­gar, yum yum. You know me and oys­ters, and it only made me want to spend my life’s sav­ings at the restau­rant even more.

In my yo-yo act between glut­tony and ascetism, I stopped and had a sam­ple of per­fectly good sweet potato and mush­room casse­role at a stand with the rather unfe­lic­i­tous moniker “The Intol­er­a­ble Food Com­pany,” where they make ready-to-eat foods for peo­ple who… can’t tol­er­ate food. Gluten-free, dairy-free, no addi­tives or preser­v­a­tives. Would you believe that Avery has a lit­tle friend who is severely aller­gic to sul­phur diox­ide? I can­not imag­ine the mater­nal devo­tion it would take for me to deter­mine that what was giv­ing my child a rash was… dried apri­cots. But there you have it. So if you, or some­one you know, is in this unfor­tu­nate posi­tion of hav­ing ingre­di­ents dis­agree with you, now you have a resource.

By this time I was ready to be rolled home (actu­ally it was a bless­ing I was so stuffed because we had the world’s worst din­ner out on the way to the the­atre). I stopped to reg­is­ter for a free din­ner at the new Galvin at Win­dows restau­rant in Park Lane, with reputed 180-degree views over Lon­don. The menu does look unbe­liev­ably tempt­ing, with bal­lo­tine of foie gras, chicken, cele­riac and truf­fle may­on­naise just for one starter. Maybe my ship will come in.

I trudge to Becky’s house a mere few blocks away, bur­dened with my pur­chases, and John picked me up to run out to the Old Vic to see “Gaslight,” which was lovely. We had bought a ticket for Avery but she, child that she is, opted for a sleep­over with a friend mov­ing back shortly to New York (the cal­lous crea­ture). Rosamund Pike was sim­ply gor­geous, and it’s a nice take on a clas­sic with the won­der­ful Ken­neth Cran­ham was was so evil in “Layer Cake.”

Then Sat­ur­day it was onto a com­pletely thrilling after­noon at the Royal Court The­atre Open House for a panel dis­cus­sion called “Do You Remem­ber Your First Time?”, bring­ing together actors, writ­ers and direc­tors to talk about their first expe­ri­ences at “The Court,” as they call it. I was spell­bound, com­pletely fas­ci­nated, at my first in-person glimpse of two actors I adore, Lennie James and Lind­say Dun­can, live, talk­ing about the job they love so much. And although they, and all peo­ple in the the­atre appar­ently, are a bit deri­sive about tele­vi­sion, I had to thank them for their fab­u­lous work in great British drama series that I have enjoyed so much. It’s a sort of six-degrees game I play with my drama friends: Lennie James was in “The State Within” with Eva Birthis­tle, who was in “Mid­dle­town” with Matthew Mac­fadyen, who was in “Per­fect Strangers” with Lind­say Dun­can. Oh, well, it amuses me, any­way. My friend 6point7 and I had a mar­velous time, and even more so that evening at the cur­rent play at “The Court,” “The Pain and the Itch” star­ring my dear crush Matthew. It’s a great social satire about an Amer­i­can fam­ily (although the word has to apply pretty loosely) at Thanks­giv­ing din­ner, faffing on about lib­eral val­ues and child-rearing, sib­ling hatred and phoney social val­ues. Def­i­nitely worth see­ing, and Matthew’s Amer­i­can accent, while verg­ing ever so slightly toward the mid­west rather than Brook­lyn Heights where the action is mean to be set, is still con­vinc­ing. Go see it, do.

And now I must be off to meet my gor­geous friend Dalia before tak­ing Avery skat­ing this after­noon. John and I have reck­oned that there is some­thing spe­cial going on every day between now and when we go back to the States for the sum­mer next week. Yikes. I know I will for­get… something.

Oh, I wish you’d been there with me! I don’t mind going places by myself (John is always mys­ti­fied that I will go to lunch by myself, his idea of sheer tor­ture, but the peo­ple watch­ing is good!). But some­times when you don’t just go some­where, but you’re filled with enthu­si­asm for the place you’re going to, it’s a shame not to have any­one along to gur­gle with. I had hoped to go with Vin­cent, but imag­ine this: he had to WORK. Hon­estly, I have got so spoiled with Vin­cent being between jobs, and my hus­band being between jobs, that I never imag­ine going any­where on my own. I felt ashamed that I had noth­ing bet­ter to do with myself than traipse around the Taste of Lon­don, but that’s what I did. I couldn’t think of any­one else obsessed enough with food to accom­pany me, so there you go.

I don’t know what I was think­ing, arriv­ing at 2 o’clock and know­ing I had to be at school pickup at 3:20! First of all, nat­u­rally, I got lost. Well, not lost as in didn’t know where I was (all right, a lit­tle that) but as in couldn’t find the fes­ti­val inside Regent’s Park. I wan­dered until finally I saw lots of posh-looking peo­ple com­ing toward me car­ry­ing plas­tic cham­pagne glasses and realised I had struck pay dirt. Once I was in, I don’t know how I could have missed it: it was enor­mous! The whole setup of posh peo­ple, taste­ful wealth and white tents reminded me of noth­ing so much as the Hamp­ton Clas­sic, last sum­mer. There were portable rub­ber paths set up in the expec­ta­tion that the occa­sion­ally black­ish pur­ple clouds over­head would see fit to empty their con­tents upon our hap­less foodie heads (it sprin­kled a bit but that was all, in fact).

I had no sooner arrived, bought my lit­tle “crowns” (the tick­ets that enable you to “taste” the chefs’ cre­ations) than I looked at my watch and thought, “Holy *&^%, it’s prac­ti­cally time to get Avery.” Where­upon my phone rang and it was my saintly, impos­si­bly per­fect friend Becky (except that she can be counted on for a nice gos­sip and a lit­tle friendly cat­ti­ness when you need it). “Lis­ten, why don’t I pick up Avery and take her to my house, the girls can do their home­work, and then you can come bring her sleep­over stuff and I’ll take them to Elizabeth’s?” Done! Sud­denly nearly two hours stretched out in front of me, and I could only wish I had not eaten lunch. What was I thinking?

Let’s see, where to start. I didn’t feel that my lack of appetite jus­ti­fied spend­ing tons of money on “crowns” for sam­pling the famous chefs’ wares, so I tasted just a few things. One, a glo­ri­ous thing called a “prawn pomelo with peanuts on a betel leaf,” from a Thai place called Bus­aba Eathai. Lovely and fresh and so exotic: noth­ing I could pro­duce at home.

All right, I must con­fess; if I don’t post this now, I don’t know when I will. More tomor­row, but I didn’t want you to think I fell off a cliff. Life is busier than I can keep up with, this week…

Be hon­est: how many times have you ordered a pizza and when it comes, and you’re eat­ing it, you think, “This tastes like noth­ing.” Then you start to think that you paid, what, 8 pounds for it, 15 or so pounds if you got two, and it tastes like… noth­ing. Plus you have to get rid of those boxes. The whole sce­nario is annoy­ing. And the only rea­son you did it was to save time because you got home late from the sta­ble or the skat­ing rink and it was all you could think of. Well, that can be his­tory. All you have to do is invest a lit­tle bit of time and a lit­tle bit of knead­ing, and a really fab­u­lous pizza is in your future. Trust me: if you hate to cook, have scram­bled eggs, but if you like to cook at ALL, don’t order another pizza, just do this:

Pizza at Home
(serves four today and four later in the week)

4 cups “strong flour”, like Hovis, plus more for dust­ing
2 cups-ish warm water
1 sachet pow­dered yeast (Hovis fast action is good)
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp dried thyme leaves
1 tbsp dried oregano
1 tsp sea salt
olive oil for brushing

Veg­gies: thin-sliced red pep­pers, red onions, toma­toes
Cheeses: shred­ded com­mer­cial moz­zarella, sliced fresh moz­zarella, goats cheese
Meats: pro­sciutto, parma ham, salami, sausage
Sauces: fresh pesto, tomato sauce, harissa

Don’t be shy. I was shy about get­ting my hands messy, but it was fine in the end. Of course, I was with my intre­pid cook­ing friend Vin­cent when I made my maiden dough voy­age, but you can do it too. Just pre­tend that some­one brave is stand­ing beside you to guide you through the uncharted waters. Take off all your rings, bracelets and watch, wash your hands thor­oughly, and go.

Pour the flour into a large bowl. With a whisk, mix the yeast and sugar into the warm water (the tem­per­a­ture should be like that of a baby’s bot­tle of milk). Let the water and yeast sit for a bit while you find your herbs and scat­ter them onto the flour. Now begin to mix the herbs into the flour, add the salt, and the water should be ready: a bit bub­bly on top. Pour your­self a lit­tle mound of extra flour on a VERY clean coun­ter­top (I don’t have a pas­try insert, but some lucky peo­ple do). Pour about half your water onto the flour and DIG IN. Mix it with your hands in a sort of scoop­ing, rolling motion. It will stick to your hands like crazy, but don’t fret. It will come off. Add more water and keep mix­ing until the dough is elastic-feeling and sticky, but not liq­uidy. If you add too much water, don’t worry: add more flour. As Vin­cent says, “It’s its own thing, you can’t hurt it.” Grad­u­ally the ball will pick up most of the bits inside the bowl and then you know you’re done mix­ing. Does that make sense? It’s eas­ier to do than to describe, I’m finding!

When the dough is a nice sticky ball in the bowl, cover it with a clean dish­towel and leave it for about an hour and a half. All you have to do to get your hands clean is to dust them with lots of flour and rub them together: the dough gets dry and falls off, very neatly.

The dough should just about dou­ble in bulk. Then give it a few nice whacks with your fist and turn it out onto your very clean, flour-covered coun­ter­top. You should have enough for two piz­zas, so cut the dough in half and wrap one of them in plas­tic wrap to save in the fridge for the next time (this dough will stay nice and fresh for at least three days). Knead the dough, dust­ing with flour all the time, turn­ing the edges under and turn­ing the ball around so you’re con­stantly turn­ing under a new edge. Knead for about 10 minutes.

With a flour-covered rolling pin, roll out the dough into the shape of your pizza pan (I used a nice perforated-bottomed round pizza pan, but you can use any­thing, even a cookie sheet). Remem­ber to keep flour­ing the coun­ter­top so the dough does not stick.
Spread the dough out onto the pan. With a pas­try brush, brush olive oil over the whole surface.

Now you can top your pizza. Start with the sauce, whichever you choose (or all!). Then layer the veg­eta­bles over the sauce. Avery intel­li­gently pointed out that the onions should be under every­thing else, so they don’t just friz­zle and get black, since they’re not very liq­uidy. Add what­ever meats you like (or all! or none), and fin­ish with cheese. Bake in a hot oven (400-ish) for about 25 min­utes, or until the cheeses are nice and bub­bly. Voila.

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I guar­an­tee you that this pizza will be more savory, more fresh, and more nutri­tious than any­thing you could bring in. Plus cheaper, and your kitchen will smell cozy and invit­ing. And if I can do it, any­one can. I never bake, and I can tell you that I had to buy a new pas­try brush, and a rolling pin, just for the pur­pose of mak­ing this pizza. And I’m glad I did. Thank you, dear Vin­cent, for mak­ing it so easy and tempt­ing to do on my own. I have to say, a sil­i­cone pas­try brush is a dandy lit­tle item to have in your kitchen: it comes per­fectly, ele­gantly clean every time. I’m sure in no time I’ll be glaz­ing every flat sur­face in my home with egg white, but for now, olive oil on pizza crust is quite enough.

If you don’t want to go to the admit­ted bit of effort that a pizza takes, how about a nice shoul­der of pork? So inex­pen­sive and so deli­cious. And effort-free, nearly. And the cook­ing aro­mas will bring every­one in your house into the kitchen, ask­ing, “When do we eat?” Last night Avery was curled up in the chair in the kitchen, book in hand, and said, “Gosh, it’s cozy in here.”

Roast Shoul­der of Pork with Rose­mary and Gar­lic
(serves eight)

1 shoul­der of pork, rolled and tied

four stems fresh rose­mary, leaves removed and chopped
4 cloves gar­lic, chopped
juice of 1 lemon
1 tsp sea salt
sev­eral grinds of fresh black pep­per
1 tbsp olive oil

Mix all the mari­nade ingre­di­ents and smear (awful word) over the shoul­der of pork. Place in a bak­ing dish sprayed with non­stick spray. Roast at 350 degrees for at least two hours (if you turn the oven down lower it can roast even longer). Couldn’t be eas­ier, and the meat is sim­ply divine: ten­der, juicy, salty.

If you can get pea sprouts where you live, DO. I’m not 100% sure why they are called pea sprouts, when they look like noth­ing so much as lit­tle spinach leaves. But Marks and Spencer say they’re pea sprouts, and ever since I had them at E&O in Not­ting Hill, I have been devoted to them. You need a LOT to feed even three peo­ple, because like all green leaves, they cook down instantly into almost noth­ing. So count on a pack­age per per­son, at least. They are so good for you, too.

Asian Wilted Pea Sprouts
(serves four)

4 pack­ages pea sprouts (about 8 cups, loosely packed), washed and spun dry
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp mirin (Japan­ese rice wine)
juice of 1 lime
2 cloves gar­lic, finely minced

In a large skil­let, place all the sauce ingre­di­ents and sim­mer until gar­lic is nicely soft­ened. Pile all the greens into the skil­let and hold over low heat, lift­ing the greens with tongs until all have been coated with the sauce. The leaves will grad­u­ally wilt down to a frac­tion of their vol­ume. So sim­ple, so deli­cious. The stems have a lit­tle crunch and the leaves are silky and refreshing.

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All right, we’re off to make a lit­tle tour of the neigh­bor­hood that encloses our lat­est house pos­si­bil­ity. It’s a for­mer vic­arage, so the estate agents say, just below Ham­mer­smith Road. Not a loca­tion to make you sit up and sing, per­haps, and the house is so ridicu­lously over-priced that it makes you won­der if any­thing the estate agents say can pos­si­bly true. Maybe it’s not a vic­arage at all; maybe it’s the for­mer head­quar­ters of MI6. We are get­ting seri­ously fatigued by the house hunt. Even John, who pre­vi­ous to this excur­sion could have, I would say, looked at houses infi­nitely, is tired of the search. We have just two weeks before we leave for the sum­mer in Con­necti­cut and some­thing deep within me would like to have a house before we go. Wish us luck…

I adore liv­ing in a coun­try that takes so seri­ously the gen­eral public’s treat­ment of its native tongue. Is there any­one in Amer­ica who cares how we speak? Any insti­tu­tion or author­ity, I mean? I don’t know, prob­a­bly there is, but in any case it wouldn’t be as touch­ing and intrigu­ing as the British mind­set about this issue. There are whole BBC pro­grammes about pro­nun­ci­a­tion! And the grow­ing scourge that has every­one so up in arms is, wait for it… “estu­ary Eng­lish”. I know, it sounds like a kind of bird, or fish, if you reverse it. “This autumn has seen a grad­ual return of the migrat­ing Eng­lish estu­ary.” But no, it’s a dialect.

I am con­tin­u­ally fas­ci­nated by the many dif­fer­ent accents we hear in Lon­don, and I have plenty of exam­ples and ques­tions stored up every time I get together with my friend Peter, or my friend 6point7 (they don’t seem to find my inter­est com­pletely barmy — a nice Eng­lish word there). Let me explain.

I first began think­ing about these things when Avery got the crazy “homo­phone” home­work early in her first term at King’s Col­lege. The notion that the words “raw” and “roar” might con­ceiv­ably RHYME was a com­plete mys­tery as she looked at them on the page, but of course upon trot­ting out her newly acquired Eng­lish accent, they quite did rhyme! And one of the nice mums at her school, when I told her of our strug­gles, said politely, “It’s really quite a shame that RP [Received Pro­nun­ci­a­tion, I later found out] so lim­its the num­ber of vowel sounds we pro­duce.” The more I thought about it, the more sense that made. It’s too bad, in a way, to have a lan­guage in which such diversely– pro­nounced words as “pour”, “poor” and “paw” in Amer­i­can Eng­lish all sound alike if spo­ken in cor­rect Queen’s Eng­lish here. In other words, how­ever, Eng­lish ways treat the let­ters with more respect than Amer­i­can ways do. For exam­ple, Proper Eng­lish speak­ing pro­nounces, even accen­tu­ates the “t” in for exam­ple “stut­ter.” Whereas the Amer­i­can treat­ment of the words quite swal­lows it. As do many utter­ances in… Estu­ary English.

Appar­ently the sounds of other towns along the River Thames are begin­ning to infect Proper Eng­lish with their idio­syn­cra­cies, like miss­ing or swal­lowed ‘t’ sounds in the mid­dle of a word. Of course take that too far, and you’ve gone all the way to Man­ches­ter. I often mar­vel, while watch­ing “Shame­less,” at the incred­i­ble facil­ity Anne-Marie Duff (a very proper Eng­lish speaker indeed) has with the very dif­fi­cult to under­stand speech pat­terns of that town, but to my untu­tored ear she’s spot on.

Also in the line of fire is the pro­nun­ci­a­tion of words like “duke” or “Tues­day.” Should the ‘u’ be pro­nounced like Amer­i­cans do, a rather dull ‘oo’ sound? No, it should, prop­erly, sound like ‘ew’, as in ‘Chews­day.” Then, too, there is the accent my screen­writ­ing tutor had, in which the word ‘assume’ was pro­nounced “ashew-m.” Where the heck do you sup­pose he was from? Any­way, I’m hav­ing fun with it. But Avery is res­olutely taught Received Pro­nun­ci­a­tion, and is tested on it, too, if you can imag­ine. I love it.

What else am I lov­ing about Eng­land right now? There is so much, but one is… hear­ing peo­ple talk­ing about the bis­cuits they love. It brings every Eng­lish per­son to his or her knees, remem­ber­ing child­hood teas. For exam­ple, as I learned from 6point7, “Pen­guin Bar” there are British peo­ple who take the Pen­guin Bar (and other teatime comestibles) very seri­ously indeed. Pull up a chair and take a look at this web­site, “A Nice Cup of Tea and Sit Down,” for example.

And I’m lov­ing my writ­ing class. As you may recall, it’s called “Cre­ative Non­fic­tion,” the idea being, to my mind, to find a way to use this blog to write some­thing pub­lish­able. I want you all to appear in real print! I know I use the blog as a diary, pri­mar­ily, but I also really trea­sure all my read­ers (whose pres­ence I can spot when I bother to go on Google Ana­lyt­ics and see where you all are), and I would like to have more. Plus I would really like to have some­thing to hold, and shelve, and keep. So I have been beaver­ing away at my class, and it is really a lot of fun. This week’s assign­ment for home­work had been to decide upon one “small thing,” as in a small object, that had emo­tional rever­ber­a­tions for us, and to write an essay about it. Or a “piece,” as the tutor always says. Imme­di­ately I knew I wanted to write about what I call Avery’s “hair thingys”, the lit­tle elas­tic bands she uses for her braids and pony­tails, and that in Amer­ica (before the days of the prohibition-obsessed school uni­form!) she wore all up her wrist, in col­or­ful pro­fu­sion. And I loved my essay! And my mother in law loved it. And I’m sure my mother will love it when I send it to her (right now), so hey: I’m sure it must be…awful, only my rel­a­tives don’t want to say so. But I am really think­ing hard about writ­ing some­thing good. I’d like to have some­thing to leave.

Well, speak­ing of leav­ing, I must. Go pick up Avery, that is. She’s play­ing with a friend and doing home­work after rid­ing together, so we could go to our parent-teacher con­fer­ence. Can I kvell for one minute? She is doing so well at school. Not one even hid­den ref­er­ence to Dumb Amer­i­cans came up. I think we can hope for great things, and I’m so proud of her.

Between Sports Day, sum­mer con­certs, sleep­over guests, din­ner guests, yikes there is a lot to remem­ber this month. I am begin­ning to have that slightly fran­tic feel­ing that is famil­iar from other end-of-schoolyear times, when I really don’t want to think any­more about what cloth­ing needs to go in Avery’s gym bag, what lunch she needs for the barn, what per­mis­sion slips to go see Damien Hirst’s diamond-covered skull next week, tick­ets for the school pro­duc­tion of “Peter Pan,” deposits for next year’s school trip (heav­ens, they just got home from this year’s!).

Plus I’ve got us tick­ets to see “Gaslight” with the delec­table Rosamund Pike. I remem­ber lov­ing the film, so I can only imag­ine we’ll all love the play. I have as well a ticket for me to go all by my lone­some to see my revered crush Matthew Mac­fadyen LIVE on stage in “The Pain and the Itch.” I’ve never seen him per­form live before, so I am plan­ning to be quite over­whelmed. John is very nicely putting up with my fevered enthu­si­asm, with­out pre­tend­ing in the least to share it. He and Avery will go and see her beloved form teacher Miss Leslie per­form a cello con­cert instead, which will be a per­fect evening for everyone.

Speak­ing of which, the school sum­mer con­cert was absolutely won­der­ful, at the lovely Hinde Methodist Church in Maryle­bone. Avery reported breath­lessly after the final rehearsal that lit­tle Molly in Form Three fainted from the heat and had to be taken home, but by the time the con­cert began, it was very pleas­ant and we sat upstairs to get the best view (John being unof­fi­cial pho­tog­ra­pher for King’s Col­lege!). The high­light, I think, was the whole choir singing “Green Eggs and Ham” with enor­mous gusto, to huge applause, so much so that Miss Potts the music mis­tress turned to the audi­ence and said, “That was so won­der­ful, and the gulls enjoyed per­form­ing it so much: would you like to hear it again?” That’s genius, work­ing with chil­dren, to be spon­ta­neous and cel­e­bra­tory. Dar­ling Miss Leslie, their form mis­tress, had also showed that sort of spirit ear­lier in the day dur­ing Latin lessons, Avery told us. “Sophia started off with her recita­tion using a funny accent, and after that Miss Leslie told us we all needed to have a funny voice for our read­ings, too.” I love that school.

Let’s see, what else is keep­ing us busy? Well, a film crew spent all of Thurs­day in our street film­ing a movie with a cast of… well, almost no one I’d ever heard of, except Vin­nie Jones whose name sounded vaguely famil­iar and then I was pretty sure I saw him. “Black leather jacket and slicked back hair, Mummy? Yep, that sounds like a ‘Vin­nie’ to me.” Given that the film turns out to be called “The Heavy,” it seems highly unlikely that any of us will see it, but still. Unknown actors or no, it was excit­ing to be trudg­ing home from the sta­ble with Avery, drag­ging all her clob­ber, and to come upon a real film set, and to be held back from walk­ing down our street. “If you could wait here, just for a moment, they’re film­ing right now, and then you’ll be on your way. Thank you SO much,” gushed the lit­tle go-fer with a clip­board and a walkie-talkie. A far cry from the film crews who used to clut­ter up our old street in Tribeca with alarm­ing fre­quency, drop­ping their craft ser­vices lit­ter on our stoop, crouch­ing out­side our door so that we could not get in, and gen­er­ally behav­ing as if it were their street, not ours.

Avery’s deep in the Form Five test prep for next year’s all-important exam­i­na­tions to get into senior school. I con­tinue to lag behind in the ambi­tion stakes, play­ing as ever the role of slacker mother who sim­ply can­not get into the com­pet­i­tive spirit on behalf of my child. Granted, I spend most early evenings cook­ing din­ner while Avery does her home­work at the kitchen table, and cer­tainly my ears prick up if I hear, “Mummy, can you help me with…” But in gen­eral my heart is not in hov­er­ing over her with her work. This atti­tude seems to have trick­led down to Avery her­self, who after report­ing how she and one of her lit­tle chums had done on a prac­tice exam said, “Her mummy assigned her essays to write on every day of the half-term hol­i­day, and then her mummy cor­rected them and they revised them together.” Yikes. “Do you think I should be doing that with you, dar­ling?” I asked. “No, not really. The way I see it, the other lit­tle girl is like… a hot­house orchid, a really well-tended flower. Whereas I am… a wild rose, just occur­ring nat­u­rally in the gar­den.” Hmmm. I went a lit­tle fur­ther and asked, “Do you think it would be bet­ter to be an orchid than a rose? I hap­pen to really like roses, but your Nonna loves orchids.” She thought a minute, and said, “No, roses aren’t bet­ter than orchids, and orchids aren’t bet­ter than roses. It’s more a mat­ter of the kind of flower you like and the kind of gar­dener you are. And I think your gar­den­ing suits me.”

I looked over at her, sit­ting beside me in the car, with her hair blow­ing all over since we had the top down on such a pretty day. It seemed there couldn’t be a nicer mater­nal moment. But of course John, upon hear­ing the story, is flex­ing his prun­ing shears and buy­ing com­post as we speak. Well, one of us should be pay­ing atten­tion, I guess.

All right, a cel­e­bra­tory evening beck­ons. Avery has achieved her Sil­ver in her skat­ing instruc­tion, and a scoop of Baskin Rob­bins “Grand Slam” is being con­sumed as we speak. She has been work­ing so hard on those spins and triple what­ev­ers that, as much as I dis­like the skat­ing rink, I have to be proud of her. I must go pre­pare my broiled salmon, cous­cous with pine nuts, orange pep­pers and red onion, and sauteed sugar snap peas. Both the salmon and the cous­cous are exper­i­ments, so if they’re good, I’ll pro­vide recipes. And… last night Vin­cent con­vinced me to take part in some home­made pizza dough-making (at Vincent’s house the phrase “we’ll have pizza” does not involve a card­board take­away box, need­less to say). So I am the proud pos­ses­sor, this evening, of a bag of “strong” flour, and a box of yeast. Tomor­row will see me play­ing around with herbs to add to the dough, and one hopes I will pro­duce a side dish wor­thy of the shoul­der of pork repos­ing in my fridge. Stay tuned.

Fire? In fact, no, despite hav­ing been awak­ened “rudely” not even begin­ning to describe our cha­grin, at 4:45 A.M. this morn­ing to the dul­cet tones of the build­ing fire alarm. I have been, all day, as a result, CRANKY. How did I ever get through the months, even years, of inter­rupted sleep with Baby Avery? I have no idea. At any rate, my atti­tude toward wakeup, always verg­ing on hos­tile, today reached epic pro­por­tions. All cats under Avery’s bed in ter­ror, so I spent the hours from 5 till 8 crouched down, lying down, turn­ing on my side so I could see them all, con­vinc­ing them it was safe to come out. Tacy was, not sur­pris­ingly, the bravest, but sur­pris­ingly Hermione was next out, then Keechie, the ulti­mate scaredy-cat, and com­ing in a dis­tant last, the giant Wim­sey. In fact, he stayed under­neath the entire time, his big white hands stretched out in front of him and every white whisker and eye­brow an excla­ma­tion point of dis­may. Poor boy.

Finally the porter (Gio­vanni, replac­ing the aris­to­cratic Lau­rie while he’s on a well-deserved hol­i­day) came and shut the *&^% thing off. By then it was school time, so bleary-eyed Avery made her way to the car. “Call me imme­di­ately if you need to come home,” I said, but she seemed intre­pid. School day fin­ished, she was up for a round of horse­back riding.

I can’t tell you how busy we’ve been. Of course, the ful­crum is Avery and her sched­ule, so John and I spend most of our time tak­ing her places, wait­ing and watch­ing while she does things, then tak­ing her some­place else. And look­ing at houses, and I tak­ing my writ­ing class, and look­ing at more houses, and then there was last week­end, which included Sun­day in the park with… Swans! Yes, you can rent a pad­dle­boat and pur­sue them, offer them dried apri­cots, and have friends for life.

Then my life being a day­time rather than night­time one, I have been hav­ing lunch with friends. My chum 6point7 and I met up for lunch at the Royal Court The­atre Cafe, which I would highly rec­om­mend for excel­lent soups (6 had “green” soup, which proved to be water­cress, spinach and broc­coli, while I went for the spicy tomato), and an unex­pected gluten-free foc­cac­cia that made 6 happy. We hap­pily dished about our shared favorite actors (Matthew Mac­fadyen and James McAvoy), and com­pared Eng­lish Eng­lish to Amer­i­can Eng­lish. There aren’t a lot of Eng­lish peo­ple who are flu­ent in both, but she is nearly there. A quar­ter to twelve, or a quar­ter of? Dif­fer­ent to, or dif­fer­ent from? Does “rub­bish” mean “not true,” or “worth­less?” In Amer­ica, of course, it means “garbage,” and a bin has become a can. Lots of fun.

Speak­ing of which, each Sat­ur­day from 12 to 1 has been an hour most mys­te­ri­ously spent for Avery, or at least for us hav­ing taken her to act­ing class and picked her up an hour later. “What did you do today?” elic­its noth­ing more forth­com­ing, nor­mally, than, “I don’t remem­ber,” which is odd con­sid­er­ing she’s usu­ally a very good sto­ry­teller. Maybe it was an activ­ity too amor­phous to describe? But last week we got this gem: “Today we did accents.” We jumped on this. “You mean, Ital­ian or French or some­thing?” “No, Amer­i­can. I had just made up my mind to con­fess that I’m Amer­i­can, since I’ve been Eng­lish in class so far. Then the teacher asked, ‘Who here thinks he or she can do a good Amer­i­can accent?’ so I raised my hand. And mine was really good!” “Well, yes, Avery, see­ing as how you’re Amer­i­can, “I objected. “But so then I con­fessed, and he said that my Eng­lish accent was just as good!” she chor­tled. That’s some sort of odd mile­stone. She can be either.

Well, I must leave you right now with a cou­ple of foodie bits. One is sim­ple: SPROUTS. Did you know that sprouts are a liv­ing food? That left to their own devices, they would con­tinue to grow? And boy are they alka­line, which I have now, lately, decided, is a bit of a key to good diges­tion. Since observ­ing some (I do every­thing halfway as far as diets go, can’t take too many restric­tions!) of the rules of more alka­line than acid, I have totally got rid of indi­ges­tion. I’d rec­om­mend a bit of atten­tion to the rules, totally. Any­way, no one can do any harm by eat­ing some radish sprouts, which are glo­ri­ously crunchy and spicy, and some bean sprouts which take me back to old Indi­anapo­lis Chi­nese food days of my child­hood. Chick pea sprouts I decided I don’t like, pre­fer­ring chick peas them­selves, which are elderly and dead and lack the emo­tional wrench of eat­ing a liv­ing food (or “embry­onic food,” as 6point7 pointed out, ICK). Make your­self a really packed-with-flavour dress­ing, and even add a can of fancy tuna, and it won’t mat­ter what’s underneath:

Crazy Flavour Dress­ing
(make as much as you want)

olive oil (I am favour­ing chili infused lately)
bal­samic vine­gar
lemon juice
soy sauce
Dijon mus­tard
chopped chillis
chopped rose­mary
dried oregano
tiny minced gar­lic
sea salt
freshly ground pepper

The key here is three parts olive oil to one part other liq­uids (so mix up your vine­gar, lemon juice and soy, and then use three times that much oil). Then sea­son it as you like with the rest.

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Then you can’t beat a nice fruit crum­ble in the sum­mer. I will go on record and say that, along with a nice hard-boiled or scram­bled egg and a glass of apple juice, it’s the per­fect break­fast for a lit­tle kid try­ing to get through a day with­out lunch. Now in Eng­land, rhubarb appears from late May until a sec­ond har­vest in late August, so we’re eat­ing it now.

Rhubarb and Straw­berry Crum­ble
(serves one lit­tle girl for four break­fasts, ish)

2 pints straw­ber­ries, hulled
2 stalks rhubarb, peeled lightly and chopped rather small
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 dark brown sugar
1 tsp each: cin­na­mon, ground cloves, nut­meg, all­spice
1/2 cup cold but­ter, cut in large cubes, plus a lit­tle extra for dot­ting
juice of 1 lemon

Nonstick-spray an oven proof con­tainer, and lay in the straw­ber­ries, left whole. Top with the rhubarb. Then in your Cuisi­nart or Mag­imix, whizz together the flour, sug­ars and spices with the but­ter, until it is com­pletely mixed and starts to lose its pow­dery tex­ture and begins to look like it might stick as a dough. Don’t let it become a dough, but stop it when it starts to stick. Sprin­kle the lemon juice over the fruit and scat­ter the flour mix­ture on top. Dot the top of the crum­ble with some bits of but­ter and bake at 350 degrees for 40 min­utes or until the fruit bub­bles and top browns a bit.

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Lastly, for now, I have two scal­lop recipes for you. I adore scal­lops and I don’t know why I stopped cook­ing with them. Yes, I do, because Avery said she didn’t like the tex­ture. Well, here’s the solu­tion. I got some beau­ti­ful scal­lops for a crazy-reasonable price (six pounds for a dozen!) at Marks and Spencer. Then, too, I had left­over bre­saola and moz­zarella from the school Sports Day pic­nic that after­noon. Who knew Avery would decide that dried cured aged beef was GOOD? Well, bre­saola it was, in my fridge. So I stopped for some flat-leaf pars­ley, ground up the left­over baguette from the night before in my Mag­imix and was in business.

Two Pasta Dishes in One Evening:
Scal­lops with Fresh Herbs and Olive Oil AND
Lin­guine with Bre­saola and Mozzarella

(serves two adults and one anti-scallop child)

3/4 pound linguine

DISH ONE:
1/2 cup olive oil
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
sprin­kle red chillis
12 scal­lops, mus­cle and roe removed (don’t like roe, sorry)
large hand­ful pars­ley, chopped
1/2 cup fresh bread­crumbs, toasted in the oven till crispy

DISH TWO:
4 slices bre­saola, sliced in sliv­ers
1 ball moz­zarella, cubed very small or shred­ded
parme­san cheese to grate over

So, boil your pasta water and put in the lin­guine. Now, you have 11 min­utes to work with. Warm the olive oil in a medium saucepan and add gar­lic and chillis and siz­zle until gar­lic cooks gen­tly. Turn up heat and add scal­lops turn­ing con­stantly and cov­er­ing with hot oil until cooked, about 3 min­utes. Take off the heat and stir your pasta. When the pasta is done, put the scal­lops back on the heat and add the pars­ley, drain the pasta, and have two hot bowls ready: put most of the lin­guine in a big one for the scal­lops, and the rest in a small one for the bre­saola. Imme­di­ately throw the scal­lops and oil on the big bowl, and add the bread­crumbs. Throw the bre­saola and moz­zarella on the smaller dish of pasta. Toss both thoroughly.

Voila. Everyone’s happy.

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Now, I must to bed. I still haven’t told you about my writ­ing class! Or Avery’s Sum­mer Con­cert (teary-making, I’m ashamed to say). And tomorrow’s a pic­nic in the park, so writ­ing may have to wait. Enjoy this beau­ti­ful Lon­don weather…

But before I get to that press­ing dilemma, I must tell you we had an incred­i­ble lunch at E & O yes­ter­day, which I had vis­ited ear­lier this year with my New York friend Julia, in Not­ting Hill. Because I like doing the same things over and over, I did order sev­eral of the same things I had had in the win­ter­time, so that John could taste what I had rav­ing and rem­i­nisc­ing about ever since. Divinely light soft-shell crab tem­pura (and this time I found out the dip­ping sauce was vinegar-based, with a pars­ley edge to it), beef san choi bau, with its mys­te­ri­ous spicy sauce, and tan­ta­liz­ing bits of mush­room and ten­der beef. In our new rel­a­tively carb-light diet (must I keep these ten pounds I don’t want?), we ordered fried-rice to share and in the end left most of it behind, but it was a nice lit­tle bed for what we both agreed was the best dish of the day: a lit­tle side order of some­thing called tau miu. I’ve done a bit of research, and it seems to be a snow-pea leaf. Tiny, ten­der, a lit­tle bit­ter. I must ask my Hong Kong friend Amy where I can get them here. Just a lit­tle wilted pile of leaves in soy and gar­lic. Sublime.

We walked off lunch by head­ing to what we thought was going to be our… new house. Alas, in less than the time it took me to come here to blog about it, it’s sold to some­one else. We are in a bit of a state. We had gone so far as to see an archi­tect, imag­ine where the fur­ni­ture would go, plan how to stop up the fence holes so the kit­ties couldn’t escape the gar­den, and… some­one else bought it. If you can believe this, the cur­rent owner is the for­mer Nanny to the Royal Fam­ily, and appar­ently the other buy­ers are Lord and Lady Some­thing Or Other, so you can imag­ine how pleased the seller was to sell to some of her own, as opposed to nasty Amer­i­cans like us. We are a bit heart­bro­ken, in the way you are about some­thing that really isn’t that impor­tant, and yet it is. Where are we going to live?

Then it was off, for me, to the Event of the Day (even more thrilling than pos­si­bly buy­ing a house). It was the Grand Open­ing of the Whole Foods in Kens­ing­ton High Street, in the for­mer Bark­ers build­ing (a mas­ter­piece of art deco design). Now, mind you, not every­one in Lon­don is thrilled by the event. I ran into seri­ous oppo­si­tion at school pickup from my friend Diana, who is pas­sion­ate about two things: organic food, and small busi­nesses. She was not at all keen on the idea of an enor­mous Amer­i­can super­mar­ket, how­ever organic it is, tak­ing over 80,000 square feet in South Kens­ing­ton. And it’s true, Whole Foods did buy out a UK-owned com­pany called Fresh & Wild in 2004 and just in the last two months closed down its enor­mously pop­u­lar branch in West­bourne Grove. My friend Sarah, later in the day, con­curred with Diana’s skep­ti­cism. “They can’t just put all the other organic food shops out of busi­ness,” she objected. “Well, they can if they buy them out,” I said rea­son­ably. “The key word being ‘buy.’ After all, they didn’t just close Fresh & Wild, they bought them out. Fresh & Wild didn’t have to let them.”

Now, is that true? Can a small out­fit really resist an acqui­si­tion? When does an acqui­si­tion become a takeover, surely two dif­fer­ent things? Yes, John explains, Fresh & Wild was a pri­vately held com­pany and the own­ers sold up. Voluntarily.

I have to think more about that. John likes to prick both Diana’s and Sarah’s right­eous bub­bles when he can, and also being the Com­pleat Cap­i­tal­ist, he feels that in the end, stores like Whole Foods are doing what Diana and Sarah would like: mak­ing buy­ing and eat­ing organic eas­ier and more afford­able for the masses. Well, ish. The prices while not exor­bi­tant were not on a par with Tesco, cer­tainly (and we all know I’ve racked my con­science about THAT store). It’s a dilemma, this food-buying situation.

Well, in the end I thumbed my nose at all nay-saying, wet-blanket killjoys, even if some of them are my clos­est friends, and off I went. Mind you, Sarah had a shop­ping request from the evil, wicked store: an obscure Roman­ian honey that I was kind enough to for­give her judg­ing me as super­fi­cial and buy for her. I am just that good a friend.

And dear read­ers, it was a glo­ri­ous expe­ri­ence. I didn’t get through even a third of the place and I spent over an hour there. Mas­sive! Words can­not con­vey. Three storeys of nearly 30,000 square feet EACH. I had to get Sarah’s honey, and toma­toes for Becky, so I headed down­stairs to the gro­ceries and pro­duce (and every­thing else under the sun, can’t imag­ine what occu­pies the two floors I didn’t get to! Now, all sorts of edi­to­ri­als in Lon­don are whinge­ing about the prob­a­ble waste involved in the per­ish­ables, since one can hardly imag­ine they can sell it all (although with 30 tills and every­one of them occu­pied at every moment per­haps they can). Whole Foods them­selves say they cook the things that don’t sell at the end of what­ever period, and that’s their pre­pared foods. Fair enough, I believe them. But in gen­eral I think the news­pa­pers and other objec­tors are object­ing to the undoubted Amer­i­can­ness of the entire project. It’s unabashedly enor­mous, filled to the brim with more choices than you can ever imag­ine, and every­one on the staff is smil­ing, opti­mistic, very can-do. Now, as anti-American as I can some­times be, I can’t fault those qual­i­ties. I guess it is silly to imag­ine that one needs 47 types of mus­tard to choose from. It is very self-indulgent. I can see that.

But here’s the flip side. Isn’t it nice to give 47 dif­fer­ent mustard-purveying con­cerns a chance to suc­ceed? And while all the edi­to­r­ial writ­ers are madly pok­ing fun at the notion that cheese can need a room of its own to age in, isn’t it nice that there are peo­ple in this world still car­ing enough to age their cheeses? I like the idea that lots of farm­ers are find­ing mar­kets for the heir­loom vari­eties of toma­toes that so many nay-sayers are mock­ing. Of course it’s elit­ist. Not every­one can afford to get to South Kens­ing­ton, pay for organic lamb and the organic rose­mary to put on it. But as long as there are peo­ple who can, I can’t com­plain about a com­pany decid­ing to sup­ply them with all these choices. Let me tell you some of the things I came away with.

Most mem­o­rable, I think, was the fil­let of beef. Not any spe­cial kind, spe­cially aged or com­ing from Japan or any­thing like that. Just nice Eng­lish fil­let, 27 pounds a kilo which I think is fair game, albeit a spe­cial pur­chase. I went all gourmet and rolled it in a mix­ture of Turk­ish Aleppo pep­per (which I already had from the box of Pen­zeys spices I told you about once before, from my dar­ling brother in law Joel), and some other yummy bits.

Roast Fil­let of Beef With Herbs and Spices
(serves 4 hun­gry peo­ple easily)

1 kilo beef fil­let, rolled and tied
1 tbsp each: Aleppo pep­per (it’s very mild but flavour­ful)
1 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp lemon pep­per
1 tbsp sea salt (Mal­don is and always will be the best)
lots of freshly ground black pep­per
2 tbsps veg­etable oil (not olive, it smokes too easily)

Rinse your fil­let to make sure it can pick up the herb mix­ture, which you’ve mixed together and placed on a cookie sheet. Roll the fil­let all over, help­ing the bits adhere if they don’t go on their own, mak­ing sure the coat­ing is even. Heat the oil in a large skil­let until nearly smok­ing and sear the fil­let all over, hold­ing it with tongs (don’t pierce it with a fork!) and turn­ing it over till the whole thing is nicely browned. Then place in a bak­ing dish and roast at around 350–375 degrees for about 35 min­utes for rare, 45 for medium. Don’t even think about cook­ing it any longer than that.

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Absolute per­fec­tion. So ten­der and tasty.

Then I’m look­ing here at a tin of “sustainably-fished tuna fil­lets in organic sun­flower oil,” from a lovely com­pany called Fish 4 Ever, and dis­trib­uted by another lovely com­pany called Organ­ico Real­foods, in Read­ing. Now don’t you think that tuna will just taste bet­ter, when you know that no sea mam­mals were caught in its eco-friendly “purse seiner net”? And it did taste better.

A lovely Eng­lish lady in the pre­pared foods aisle laughed with me over the jars of “authen­tic smooth French mus­tard” we were buy­ing, from a very Eng­lish com­pany called Stokes. Nor­mally I do buy real French mus­tard, but I fell for the very aus­tere and pretty label. Embar­rass­ing, I know. And it made mar­velous vinai­grette. Also quite remark­able for my vinai­grette was the not-expensive bot­tle of bal­samic vine­gar from Seg­giano that I couldn’t resist, hav­ing sam­pled it in the aisle with a bit of bread­stick. Rich, dark, sweet and puck­ery, perfect.

Well, I have to come down on the side of lik­ing Whole Foods. They con­sis­tently make For­tune Magazine’s list of best com­pa­nies to work for. I will go back and see the bits I didn’t see, like the cafe upstairs with deck chair designs by British artists, and what­ever else is up there. But chances are you’ll still find me at Bland­ford Fruit Stores on the way home from school, where there’s always a com­pletely bark­ing mad polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion going on among the staff. And I won’t neglect any of my farm­ers’ mar­kets on Sun­day, and the halal butcher in Por­to­bello Road, and if John lets me, the Fro­magerie in Moxon Street for some divine Dod­ding­ton cheese (pricey but lovely). And frankly, I’ll never get tired of Sel­f­ridges Food Hall. Vari­ety, it’s the spice of… well, you know!

Oh, I’m just pulling your leg. The duck I roasted wasn’t caught by Avery. Although she gave it the old col­lege try. This pho­to­graph is just coin­ci­den­tally about ducks. Isn’t Richmond-upon-Thames lovely? Whether you end up at the the­atre or not, you should go, just for the views.

Seri­ously, though, about duck­lings and roast­ing. Why have I never roasted one until last night? I think that, while I have pan-sauteed many a duck breast in my time, I have always been intim­i­dated by the thought of a whole bird. I think I’ve also been put off a bit by all the recipe warn­ings about extreme spit­ting. Of fat, I mean, not the duck itself (although one could hardly blame it for spit­ting, when one thinks of its future in my din­ner table). I know some peo­ple are intim­i­dated eas­ily by just the idea of roast­ing a chicken, whereas my house­hold would soon starve with­out that sta­ple. At any rate, Sun­day morn­ing found me haunt­ing the Maryle­bone Farm­ers’ Mar­ket, as is my wont, and while the game pur­veyor had par­tridges, quail, capons and such­like, there were no duck breasts, all sold out. There were whole ducks, how­ever, the cov­eted (I later found out) Ayles­bury vari­ety, appar­ently snowy white and much sought-after. So I bit the bul­let and snapped one up, thereby increas­ing the weight of my shoul­der bag by nearly 4 kilos, and stag­gered home. What to do with it?

I ended up prick­ing the copi­ous skin all over many times with a fork, and scor­ing sev­eral shal­low cuts across both breasts, and salt­ing and pep­per­ing him quite heav­ily. Then I put him in a deep roast­ing pan and, while I slaved away watch­ing Avery skate, and gos­sip­ing hap­pily with Becky as we shiv­ered together, John put him in the oven at roughly 2 1/2 hours before we wanted to eat. And let me tell you, that duck­ling was a rev­e­la­tion. The crunchi­est, crispi­est, melt­ingly fatty skin you have ever tasted, and rich, dark, juicy meat. Even Avery, who has been known to object to duck on cute­ness prin­ci­ples (as she used to lamb as well), suc­cumbed and had three help­ings. Mind, how­ever, the duck was not madly meaty, so you’ll need one for about every four people.

Roast Duck­ling
(serves four)

1 Ayles­bury duck­ling
salt and pepper

First treat your pan with non­stick spray. Take the giblets out of the duck and lay them along­side the duck. I was sur­prised to find offal that is not included in your aver­age chicken car­cass: namely, a rec­og­niz­able heart. Eeew. How­ever. Salt and pep­per all over, with the best qual­ity sea salt and freshly ground pep­per. Roast about 2 1/2 hours at a medium tem­per­a­ture, some­where between 350–375 degrees. I turned the broiler on for the last five min­utes or so, and the skin was really crispy. Let duck­ling sit for five min­utes before carv­ing, to let the last of the fat that will trickle out to trickle out. Lift the duck­ling out of the fat and onto a carv­ing plat­ter. The breast meat will vir­tu­ally fall off the bone, and if you have a great sug­ges­tion for get­ting much more than a sliver off the legs, please let me know. I found the thighs to be nearly meatless.

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Now, left with the lovely car­cass, what was a girl to do? “Make duck stock,” Avery advised. “What does one do with duck stock, pray tell?” I asked skep­ti­cally. “Look it up, I’m sure there’s some­thing,” was her blithe reply. Not to be intim­i­dated, I put the car­cass in a huge stock­pot, threw in a tired onion half, sev­eral even tireder cel­ery stalks, a half a red pep­per that had been neglected, and two cloves of gar­lic, a hand­ful of bay leaves, and cov­ered the lot with water. It sim­mered all the rest of the evening, fill­ing the house with the scent of duck, which was not to be despised. Full of duck, mashed pota­toes and aspara­gus as we were, we were all tor­mented nonethe­less by the aroma. By bed­time, it was ready to be poured through a nice sieve, the bones dis­carded, and the pot put into the fridge overnight, so I could skim off the fat in the morning.

Bet­ter than look­ing up a recipe, how­ever, I asked my mother in law, she who knows every­thing about food. “I would think it would make a lovely mush­room soup,” came the con­fi­dent advice, so that’s what I did. You know me and soup. If you can sim­mer it in broth and puree it, I’ll eat it. Almost any kind. Water­cress, or even cele­riac, you name it. Even sweet corn, if I have to.

Cream of Por­to­bello Soup With Duck Broth
(serves four)

3 tbsps but­ter
3 cloves gar­lic
6 cups fresh duck stock
dash of Madeira or sweet ver­mouth
6 large por­to­bello mush­rooms, roughly chopped
4 tbsps creme fraiche, or sour cream, or light cream

Melt your but­ter in a nice heavy stock­pot and saute the gar­lic gen­tly. Care­fully pour in the duck stock, add the liquor and the mush­rooms. Sim­mer for about 45 min­utes, remove from heat and puree with a hand blender. Whisk in the creme fraiche and voila.

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It was, John and I agreed, much richer than mush­room soup made with chicken stock. A very deep flavour. I think you couldn’t go wrong with a driz­zle of truf­fle oil, but for the first time round I wanted to taste it all on its own. Lovely. Maybe I can get Avery to catch me another duck…

To ease your con­science, should you have one (or cho­les­terol issues, heaven for­fend), here are two lovely sal­ads to have along­side, to cut the fat. What­ever that means, it just seems intu­itively true.

Cucum­ber Salad
(serves four)

1 large hydro­ponic cucum­ber
1/2 red onion
hand­ful fresh dill, chopped slightly
3 tbsps sour cream (or creme fraiche or yogurt if you’re diet­ing)
juice of 1 lemon
sea salt and pepper

Slice the cucum­ber length­wise and, using a small spoon, drag all the seeds out. Slice thin and place in a medium bowl. Slice the onion very thin indeed and add to cucum­bers. Place the dill, sour cream lemon juice and salt and pep­per in a small jar with a lid and shake until blended. Toss the cucum­bers and onions thor­oughly in the dress­ing and bring, ide­ally, to room temperature.

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Tomato and Avo­cado Salad
(serves four)

2 cups of the most vari­eties of small toma­toes you can find
1 large ripe avo­cado
1 medium-hot red chilli
1/3 cup chilli-infused olive oil
1 tbsp bal­samic vine­gar
1 tsp Dijon mus­tard
1/2 tsp oregano leaves
salt and pepper

Quar­ter the toma­toes and pre­pare the avo­cado (halved, pit removed, diced large). Place all the other ingre­di­ents in a jar with a lid, shake well until emul­si­fied, and pour over toma­toes and avocado.

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John and I often have one or both of these sal­ads for lunch. With a nice whole­meal pita bread, toasted, to soak up the dress­ings, they’re lovely.

Well, later on I’ll tell you about my “Cre­ative Non-Fiction” class yes­ter­day. I’m really inspired to write some­thing now, and John says, “Some­thing besides the blog!” I think he’s jeal­ous of you…