Well, I hon­estly can’t think that much is going to hap­pen in the next few weeks of inter­est to any­one look­ing for “Kris­ten in Lon­don,” namely because I’m… not in Lon­don! We’ll be back there Sep­tem­ber 1, and if any­thing cool hap­pens here, or I cook some­thing of stu­pen­dous nov­elty, or Avery achieves any­thing note­wor­thy, or John gets a job, or I get a pub­lish­ing con­tract (I’m try­ing to think of really out­landish sce­nar­ios), I’ll be on the horn. Until then, I’m going to catch a few zzzzs…

Let me know if there’s any­thing I need to know!

xxxxxxx

No, not this lovely salad. That’s the flank steak dish I told you about yes­ter­day, with shred­ded car­rots added to the sec­ond try. Avery says this: “The bean sprouts are already kind of sweet, and the beef is so savory, that I worry it over­pow­ers the beef to add car­rots, but it’s good.” I like them for the color, but you try it both ways and see. We’ve finally come to the end of the left­over flank steak. I love what Gladys Taber says about left­overs, “it’s a ter­ri­ble word. ‘Remain­ders’ is even worse.” But if you can use things in a nice way, it’s so sat­is­fy­ing and budget-conscious.

No, what I’m talk­ing about as far as diet-busting, uber-rich, super special-treat, is… Home­made Fried Chicken! Have you ever fried chicken? Nei­ther had I, until last night. For some rea­son it sounded so good, and so ambi­tious to do, that I thought about it all after­noon and read Lau­rie Colwin’s recipe in Home Cook­ing (here adapted by Sara Moul­ton for the Food Net­work, and Bobby Flay’s online ver­sion, and then adapted both sets of instruc­tions to my own approach. Mostly I needed help in depth of oil, tim­ing and what to do with it when it’s cooked. Turns out, the short answers are: 2 inches, 12 min­utes, lay it on paper tow­els. But here’s the real deal. The secret to my fla­vor­ing is a table­spoon of a new spice blend I found in the fab­u­lous Pen­zeys Spice Shop in Min­neapo­lis, led there by my tal­ented and ener­getic niece Sarah.

Home­made Fried Chicken
(serves 6)

1 chicken cut up (breast halves cut in half again)
1 cup milk
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tbsp each: Fox Point sea­son­ing, paprika, gar­lic salt, lemon pep­per
Wes­son Oil to fill 2 inches deep in large, deep-sided skil­let (with a lid)

Mix the spices in the flour by means of a leak-proof plas­tic bag (pos­si­bly the one you car­ried the chicken home in?).

Have a bowl ready for your milk, a big bowl for your sea­soned flour, a plat­ter for the floured pieces, and the skil­let ready full of oil. Since I am noto­ri­ously bad at keep­ing track of heat­ing skil­lets, I waited until I had fin­ished dip­ping the chicken pieces to heat the oil. Prob­a­bly you can pay atten­tion to each, and if so, more power to you.

Dip each chicken piece in milk and wet every bit. Then place in sea­soned flour and pack as much flour as you can on each piece, lay­ing each one on the plat­ter when you’ve fin­ished. When you’re fin­ished, dust a lit­tle more sea­soned flour on the wait­ing layer of chicken pieces.

DON AN APRON. I’m not kid­ding. And place either a dish­towel or some paper towel on the floor under the front of the stove. But don’t slide on it!

Heat the oil until a piece of bread on the end of a fork fries imme­di­ately when placed in the oil. Then places as many pieces as you can of the chicken in the bub­bling oil. You can crowd a bit, because the chicken pieces shrink as they cook. Cover imme­di­ately and cook for about 5 min­utes, then turn each piece care­fully. Con­tinue to cover and cook, turn and cover and cook, sev­eral times, but let­ting at least 10 min­utes elapse for the breast quar­ters and wings, and at least 14 min­utes for the thighs and drum­sticks. When they look brown and appeal­ing, they are ready. Remove to a clean plat­ter lined with paper tow­els and let rest for about 5 min­utes before eating.

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

Ambrosia! But RICH. If you’re like our fam­ily, you don’t eat much fried food. You’ll be sur­prised at how lit­tle it takes to sat­isfy you. Then quickly wrap up any left­overs, drive to your neigh­bor Farmer Rol­lie and his wife Judy, and donate them. They will be thrilled, and it’s a good excuse to sit and gos­sip for a bit.

We’re off to the pool. More later…

Oh, yes! We went to “Wicked.” I must say, I have been almost dread­ing it, just going along to chap­er­one Avery and Cici as our birth­day gift to Cici. Why dread­ing it, you ask? Oh, only because for the past four or five months Avery has been insist­ing on play­ing it in the car on the way to school, on her iPod to which she sings along, mak­ing draw­ings and pup­pets and sto­ries, talk­ing about it inces­santly with her best friend Anna. Over­dose! I would chal­lenge you to enjoy any­thing to which you’ve been so com­pletely over­ex­posed as to need an antidote.

But… it was fab­u­lous! I have not been to a play or musi­cal on Broad­way, actual Broad­way, since some­thing archaic like “Miss Saigon” or “The Phan­tom of the Opera,” just because when you actu­ally live in New York, you (or at least I) are woe­fully inad­e­quate at doing any of the things that bring other peo­ple to New York. And when I say other peo­ple? Can I just say how many TOO MANY of them there were in Times Square! It was a mer­ci­fully cool and pleas­ant day, but even so, walk­ing, no wad­ing, through the masses of tourists was sim­ply over­whelm­ing. Have you been to Times Square recently? Don’t go! You will be trampled.

But I’m get­ting ahead of myself. We drove down from the barn on Sat­ur­day after Avery’s rid­ing les­son, and John dropped us off at the rather unre­mark­able but accept­able Cafe Un Deux Trois for lunch, while he headed down to Tribeca for lunch with a friend. Why Cafe Un Deux Trois, I won­der? I think we have an ancient mem­ory of a nice kid-friendly din­ner there with friends years and years ago, and remem­bered that it was a nice, calm place to take chil­dren. In the end, of course, I didn’t reckon on how extremely elderly the chil­dren were that I was tak­ing with me (isn’t it shock­ing how grownup they are! and how beau­ti­ful), and we could have gone some­where really ele­gant. But in the end they quite enjoyed draw­ing on the paper table­cloth just as much as their much-younger coun­ter­parts at other tables. And the soar­ing ceil­ings and lovely old tile floors made for a nice, clas­sic atmos­phere. So do go with your lit­tle ones, if you can stom­ach the prices for very aver­age food (a for­get­table salade nicoise for me, an unman­age­able and unwieldy chicken sand­wich for Cici, and very dull ravi­oli for Avery, but com­pletely edi­ble and priced out at about $70 for the three of us, ouch).

From there we emerged into the crowds and held onto each other’s hands like chil­dren lost in a for­est. And indeed, it was a for­est of peo­ple. Every nation­al­ity known to mankind, over­whelm­ing shiny bill­boards, scalpers sell­ing tick­ets, peo­ple sell­ing water, lit­tle tiny yel­low taxi­cab toys, sun­glasses, sun­screen, and every­one in an impos­si­bly jolly mood. Hon­estly, you wouldn’t think such a place could exist on the same planet as Red Gate Farm. I often com­pare Times Square to Oxford Street in Lon­don, when peo­ple ask what it’s like. Never again! Chalk and cheese, as they say. Noth­ing in Lon­don could pos­si­bly be as tacky (and yet pecu­liarly quite mar­velous) as Times Square. Every­thing seemed about one hour old, as if it would change again in the next hour to the REALLY mod­ern ver­sion. I am such a fuddy duddy.

To the the­ater where we ensconced our­selves and waited for the big event. I con­fess to nearly falling asleep before the show started, but then… it was just amaz­ing. I tend to for­get that famed things, and places, and events, are famed for a rea­son! Of course when you can gather the absolute best at every­thing in one place, it’s going to be amaz­ing. Win­nie Holz­man’s story was really enter­tain­ing, the chore­og­ra­phy per­fect and pre­cise, and the singers really enchant­ing. And per­versely all that over­ex­po­sure from Avery meant that I could really enjoy it, hav­ing mem­o­rized every song a hun­dred times over. There is noth­ing like the obses­sive atten­tion span of a ten-year-old to make every fam­ily mem­ber fully engaged with the cur­rent topic, I’ll tell you that.

We waited out­side after­ward for auto­graphs, and they got them! All three leads. Very gra­cious and sweet. I have to say: it was very expen­sive, but it was a plea­sure. Would you believe: evening per­for­mances are sold out until February?!

So home again, in the glow of other people’s achieve­ments. And to an unex­pect­edly deli­cious din­ner at our local eatery Julio’s, which we nor­mally treat as an emer­gency “don’t have time to cook” des­ti­na­tion, not as a source of gas­tro­nomic delight. But I had a salad of arugula (it’s con­sid­ered some­thing of a del­i­cacy still, in Amer­ica, rather than the ubiq­ui­tous green of all Lon­don plates) and sauteed scal­lops. Well done, Julio’s!

Sun­day saw us host­ing Jill, Joel and Jane, along with Anne and David, for flank steak on the grill. I have to con­fess I went to the gro­cery store to get a fil­let roast, no mat­ter the cost. I really was in the mood to roll it in some herbs and freshly ground pep­per, as we did in Iowa, and grill it to per­fec­tion. Hap­pily, I was saved from this ruinously expen­sive goal by the sheer fact that there wasn’t an unsliced roast at the store, just lit­tle steaks. So I picked up a num­ber of flank steaks and fig­ured I would mar­i­nate them and they’d be fine. Well, not only were they fine, they were glo­ri­ously deli­cious! And they pro­vided divine left­overs for an absolutely splen­did Asian dish the next day. Here you go:

Grilled Flank Steak with Gin­ger and Lime
(serves 8 with lots of leftovers)

3 flank steaks weigh­ing 1 1/2 lbs each
2-inch knob gin­ger, peeled and minced
5 cloves gar­lic, peeled and minced
juice and zest of 2 limes
2 tbsps sesame oil
3 tbsps soy sauce

Mix all mari­nade ingre­di­ents and slather over the flank steaks on both sides. Grill at a medium-high heat (375 degrees on a propane-fired grill) for 7 min­utes per side for medium rare. Let rest for at least 5 min­utes before slic­ing thin; lots of juices will accu­mu­late. And here’s a hint: after you slice it, serve with the accu­mu­lated juices poured over the top.

Baby Red and Yukon Gold Potato Salad
(serves 10)

4 pounds pota­toes total (if you can’t find the tiny ones, use new potatoes)

dress­ing:
2/3 cup may­on­naise
2/3 cup sour cream
juice of 1 lemon
large hand­ful dill, chopped
6 green onions, sliced (both white and green parts)
1 red onion, minced
sea salt and fresh pepper

Steam or boil pota­toes for 30 min­utes or until pier­ca­ble with a fork. Depend­ing on the size, halve or quar­ter them. You’re after bite-sized pieces. Toss with the dress­ing and serve at room temperature-ish.

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

These two dishes were per­fect together, if I do say so myself. And my dear brother in law brought his appe­tizer that I first had a week or so ago, and it deserves a sec­ond appear­ance here. We both think we’ll try adding crab­meat sometime.

Joel’s Arti­choke Dip
(serves eight)

1 cup arti­choke hearts (fresh or from a jar), chopped
1 cup may­on­naise
1 cup grated parme­san cheese

Mix well and place in a 9 x 9 bak­ing dish (non-stick sprayed to make life eas­ier), or sev­eral indi­vid­ual ramekins if you want to place them around an appe­tizer table at a party. Bake at 400 degrees for about 20–3– minute or until bub­bly and brown on top. Serve with toasted baguette rounds or crackers.

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

But the true glory, I must say, was the lit­tle lun­cheon dish Avery invented today. She’s got­ten to be such a use­ful per­son to have around the kitchen. She thinks spon­ta­neously about what might be good together, throws out ideas, and then I imple­ment them! Today I said, “How about some left­over flank steak for lunch?” And she said, “Didn’t you men­tion toss­ing it with some bean sprouts and soy sauce? Well, how about adding those Asian noo­dles I like so much?” So I did. We all sim­ply gob­bled it up; I wish I had made more. And you know what? I will tomor­row. What gets me excited about a dish like this is its sheer econ­omy and total ease. I will own up to some­thing that you all have prob­a­bly noticed: I do thrive some­times on expen­sive, clever, labor-intensive recipes, and then every once in awhile it’s glo­ri­ous to make some­thing effort­less and CHEAP. Give it a try! You’ll be very pop­u­lar in your kitchen, and you can hoard the secret knowl­edge that you didn’t put much effort into it at ALL.

Stir-Fried Flank Steak with Bean Sprouts and Noo­dles
(serves four if you serve your­self fast)

a good chunk of left­over grilled flank steak: per­haps 1 pound?
1/2 half Vidalia onion, sliced in large slices
1/2 pack­age Asian noo­dles (labelled “for stir-fry”), cooked and drained well
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
3 hand­fuls bean sprouts
2 tbsps peanut oil
2 tsps sesame oil
3 tbsps soy sauce

Slice your flank steak into bite-sized strips and set aside. Heat the two oils to nearly smok­ing, then throw in every­thing at once. Toss very well; the noo­dles will tend to stick together, but the oils and soy should sep­a­rate them. Stir-fry while toss­ing with tongs for about 3 min­utes over high heat. THAT’S IT.

I’m now think­ing the obvi­ous: you can dou­ble this recipe and use up all of every ingre­di­ent: the onion, bean sprouts and noo­dles. Try it: you’ll be a star.

What a fab­u­lous time we’ve had here with Cici to add to the vaca­tion cheer. The first day of her visit was a washout, which was actu­ally per­fect: cozy indoor times for Avery and Cici to catch up on all the year’s gos­sip and news, time for me to bleach out the nasty kitchen cup­boards that had gath­ered cob– and spi­der­webs all year, to empty out the pantry sta­ples that didn’t sur­vive the win­ter, assess what needed to be brought home from the super­mar­ket, watch a lit­tle “Days of Our Lives,” revel in the enor­mous wash­ing machine (but it doesn’t do half the job our much-maligned tiny Miele does in Eng­land: you can get either effi­ciency or capac­ity, it would seem but not both).

The lawn thrived over the win­ter, as you can see, with the intre­pid help of our grass-care team who refuses to bill us. Hon­estly, we live in fear of the day that who­ever in the office at that out­fit finds out they haven’t billed us in four years. How many times can we beg for an invoice? “Ayep, I’ll have to talk to Eric/Scott/David in the office and they’ll be in touch about that. See ya.” Oh my. We’ll owe the national debt. It’s just one of those Con­necti­cut things. They exist on a dif­fer­ent plane here.

Avery had a ten­nis les­son! A nice East­ern Euro­pean man called Val, in superb phys­i­cal con­di­tion, with a nice no-nonsense man­ner, taught her for an hour, very relaxed but exact­ing, and by the end of the les­son she was able to hold up her end of a very respectable rally, or vol­ley, or what­ever it’s called. Then, sadly, the next morn­ing dur­ing HIS les­son with Val, John tore up some essen­tial mus­cle in his back and spent the day full of Advil and feel­ing every one of his 43 years. It’s tough to get old! We girls on the other hand spent the day laz­ing around at the South­bury Munic­i­pal Pool, soak­ing up care­fully screened sun, pag­ing through books (Avery was amused to see that a lady across the grass was just about as far through the fifth Harry Pot­ter book as Avery was her­self!), watch­ing clouds cross the sun at infre­quent inter­vals. At one point I heard a voice say, “Hey there,” and then, “Hello!” and finally decided the per­son was talk­ing to me, and I gazed up with my hand block­ing the sun to see… my sis­ter Jill! Have you ever been taken com­pletely unaware by a per­son who most def­i­nitely didn’t belong where she was? I felt that an alter­nate uni­verse had opened up, or a hole in time. What fun to have an unex­pected chat! She had been on her way from check­ing on a race-support truck in New Jer­sey (the life of an ESPN exec­u­tive stops for no one) and decided to take a detour and see us, and was sent to the pool by the patient John, flat on his injured back. We made a plan to get together over the weekend.

Finally we had to go home, with a stop at the gro­cery store to get ingre­di­ents for a lip-smacking bar­be­cued rib din­ner com­plete with corn on the cob. I sent Avery and Cici over to invited Anne and David from across the road, and it was but the work of a moment to put together a vari­a­tion on the bar­be­cue sauce I gave you last week:

Bar­be­cue Sauce Part II

equal parts: ketchup, soy sauce, sesame oil, lime juice
1-inch knob of giner, peeled and minced
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
zest of 1 lemon

Mix all ingre­di­ents and slather over what­ever you plan to grill. Our baby back spare ribs took about an hour on medium heat, after mar­i­nat­ing for half an hour. Longer mar­i­na­tion would be bet­ter even than that, but they were really tasty.

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

What a delight to have Anne and David back in our lives. I try not to think, dur­ing the year in Lon­don, what it used to be like to have their friend­ship a road’s width away every week­end. As much as I adore my Lon­don friends, and our happy social cir­cle (happy for the most part, of course!), there’s noth­ing like old friends, who have known you under lots of dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances: being intro­duced on that first sunny house-hunting day so long ago, when we first encoun­tered Red Gate Farm. We were all stand­ing across the road, hav­ing just met, look­ing over at the house and feel­ing the first thrill of own­er­ship. Anne was most dif­fi­dent in explain­ing her con­nec­tion to the neigh­bor­hood: hav­ing been raised there week­ends with her famous grand­mother, Gladys Taber. David described a very small bit his upcom­ing book pub­li­ca­tion, which later of course was revealed as the extremely well-researched and unput­down­able Crash Out, about Sing Sing Prison. Both of them were com­pletely unnec­es­sar­ily nice to Avery, then just a small five-year-old with a pen­chant for behav­ing already as if she belonged in a covey of adults.

Since then of course there have been count­less vis­its over the fence, a heart­warm­ing bagel brunch on one anniver­sary of Sep­tem­ber 11, when it felt right to be with other New York­ers, can­delit pic­nic table din­ners by the dozens, a Christ­mas Eve cock­tail party here with all Gladys Taber hors d’oeuvres! And so many lively dis­cus­sions of books, films, the antics of Quincy and Emmy the cats. How many times have they enter­tained Avery just on her own? It takes unusual peo­ple to want to answer the screen-door knock of a six– or even ten-year old girl, to hear what she has to say.

So we sat on by the light of the can­dles on Fri­day evening, watch­ing moths do their kamikaze rou­tines, while the girls watched a movie, and just caught up. As we do every time we go back and forth between Amer­ica and Eng­land, we ended up sur­vey­ing the world scene as we see it and com­par­ing Amer­i­can views to what we’ve been exposed to as Eng­lish views, ana­lyz­ing pol­i­tics of the past and present, won­der­ing what is on the hori­zon for the com­ing year or so. I always come away from these talks wish­ing I were even half as well-informed and ana­lyt­i­cal as they are; I think of them as true New York­ers who would not let the week go by with­out thor­oughly perus­ing the Times (which I could never man­age even when I lived there) and giv­ing ample thought to the week’s events, crit­i­cal of what they see and read, ready to have a pas­sion­ate opin­ion on just about every­thing, but in the end, opti­mistic and full of energy. Such fun just to sit back and revel in the dis­cus­sion. Then, too, we heard sto­ries about the Land Trust activ­i­ties around here (always grate­ful for every piece of green earth that escapes the devel­op­ers!), the var­i­ous wildlife cruis­ing the neigh­bor­hood, they heard sto­ries about Avery’s manic Lon­don sched­ule, John’s real estate obses­sions, my cook­ing goals. It’s always hard to look at the clock and admit we should all go to sleep and be ready to face the next morning!

Which brought a trip into town, even­tu­ally to see “Wicked,” but first to stop off in Riverdale for a rid­ing les­son with Avery’s beloved and much-missed trainer Chris­tine. Oh, the con­trast between her Lon­don expe­ri­ences and these in New York! There is no way to pre­fer one over the other, but it’s night and day. In Lon­don Avery’s respon­si­ble for tack­ing up, clean­ing sad­dles, fork­ing hay, clean­ing up all the muck, sweep­ing up poo from the streets as they make their way home from Hyde Park. Then there’s a lit­tle bit of time rid­ing! The sta­ble is presided over by the regal Kirstie Nye (unless her 80-year-old father is around!) and the chil­dren are an inte­gral part of the work­ings of every day. And the horses! Big ones, small ones, mouths of steel, tem­pera­men­tal prima don­nas, enor­mous guys who are ter­ri­fied of a tis­sue float­ing by, and then lit­tle 37-year-old ponies who have seen it all. But at Riverdale: Avery shows up in her rid­ing togs, and a lovely young man who speaks no Eng­lish leads her to a per­fect, com­pletely pris­tine white pony who looks as if she just stepped off a carousel. Avery is given a “leg up” onto the pony and rides regally down from the sta­ble to the ring, where she is mer­ci­lessly screamed at (why she loves this I do not know) for an hour, going round and round, jump­ing ever higher and more per­fectly, on jumps set up by a groom before her arrival. At the end of the hour, she rides serenely back to the sta­ble where she’s relieved of the pony by another groom, and goodbye!

There’s room in the world, cer­tainly, for both approaches. I love see­ing her on a spec­i­men of pony­dom that sim­ply has no flaws, and with whom it’s pos­si­ble for Avery to achieve any skill with­out think­ing about what the pony wants or needs. On the other hand, see­ing her get to know many dif­fer­ent horses’ per­son­al­i­ties, lead­ing them to their stalls and tak­ing off all their lit­tle bits and pieces, under­stand­ing their weak­nesses and flaws: that’s lovely too. And I wouldn’t want to have to choose, full-stop, between the gor­geous red barns and white fences of Riverdale, and the urban glo­ries of Hyde Park. How nice we can have both.

It’s great to be back. I keep try­ing to ana­lyze what makes life in Con­necti­cut so dif­fer­ent from life in Lon­don. Some of it is noth­ing more than the dif­fer­ence between sub­ur­ban and big-city life: it’s so much eas­ier to live out in the boon­docks where the park­ing spaces are plen­ti­ful and all larger than you need, where the super­mar­ket aisles are ridicu­lously wide and there is always every­thing you need in the store! No traf­fic jams, no pol­lu­tion, no crowds, and GREEN every­where, plus the sound of a rolling brook when it rains, and the sight of a flock of wild turkeys in the meadow! And did Gary the ground­hog eat the melon rind you left for him? It’s such a wel­come change from remem­ber­ing com­pli­cated sched­ules, cir­cling the block to find a place to put your car (I know! we shouldn’t have one at all), drag­ging home too-heavy bags of stuff for din­ner, for lunch at the barn, all the bus­tle of city life, as much as I adore London.

But some of the con­trasts are in the dif­fer­ences between Amer­ica and Eng­land. Amer­ica feels so relent­lessly young! Ener­getic, spon­ta­neous, pos­i­tive, pow­er­ful, ambi­tious, friendly, opti­mistic, endear­ingly naive some­times, and undaunted by… any­thing. Eng­land in ret­ro­spect feels very his­tor­i­cally grounded, com­plex, slow to make judg­ments about peo­ple, reserved and ele­gant, reluc­tant to com­mit itself, a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed, I think, in the world around her, sophis­ti­cated and cos­mopoli­tan. Does that make sense? I love them both, and the flip side of lov­ing them both is that I always miss the energy of Amer­ica when I’m in Eng­land, and miss the thought­ful­ness of Eng­land when I’m in Amer­ica. What would we have if we could com­bine them? In either a per­son or a coun­try. Maybe if we play our cards right, we could have… Avery!

Well, knock me over with a feather. I owe all my recipe read­ers (and poten­tial users) an apol­ogy, although I didn’t actu­ally do the thing I should be apol­o­giz­ing for. Let me explain.

Last Sat­ur­day found us in Min­neapo­lis for the sim­ply stun­ning Bat Mitz­vah for our niece Sarah. Now, Sarah’s dad David would be the first to tell you that nor­mally (as in the din­ner the night before, and the din­ner the day after), food for the mul­ti­tudes which must, in the syn­a­gogue, be kosher, is not some­thing that will make you stand up and cheer. As we were work­ing our way through the Fri­day night shab­bat din­ner, hugely enjoy­ing catch­ing up with Sarah, her sis­ter Ellen, and lots of rel­a­tives we had not seen since John’s sis­ter Cathy’s wed­ding to David, David him­self came over to the table and said mourn­fully, “This din­ner will not make the blog.” And so it did not, in terms of describ­ing any­thing we ate. HOW­EVER. Sat­ur­day lunch was unbe­liev­ably deli­cious, and included a wild rice salad that I fully intended to give you a “recipe” for even though I had not tried to cook it myself. And in my defense, John’s mother (cook extra­or­di­naire) agreed with me: there was noth­ing to it! You cook the wild rice, saute some lovely bits of col­or­ful veg­eta­bles in a quan­tity of olive oil and gar­lic, and toss it alto­gether. Except…

I have never cooked wild rice.

Ever.

And it turns out that the pack­age direc­tions are, well, incon­clu­sive to say the least. Four cups of water to one puny pack­age of wild rice? How on earth would that work? So I boiled it and boiled it and took a freakin’ shower and boiled it some more… Finally I drained off the excess water and found a rather starchy, lumpy mass of what­ever. Edi­ble, yes, yummy, no. And it bore no resem­blance to what we had at the Bat Mitz­vah. But any­way, I had diced many adorable piles of yel­low and red pep­pers, yel­low and green zuc­chini (cour­gettes, to you across the Pond), red onion, gar­lic, and some cucum­bers to keep chilly to add at the end.

Kath­leen turned up with Avery’s beloved Cici in tow (what a joy­ous reunion! just like last sum­mer), and I fed it to her, and to John. Many sug­ges­tions: cook the rice less, add some vine­gar or cit­rus to the olive oil, lots more gar­lic. Since then I have been online and found that most recipes call for you to boil the rice for about 50 min­utes, then drain it and cook it dry and fluff it up. I shall try it again and let you know.

I’m so ashamed I almost posted a recipe with­out try­ing it! Rest assured, I have learned my les­son. Also that I’ll take any advice on wild rice.

Any­way. Obvi­ously of more impor­tance than the food (but the poached salmon was divine! sorry, back on topic) was the glo­ri­ously per­sonal, accom­plished job Sarah did at her Bat Mitz­vah. The rabbi was a per­fect com­bi­na­tion of infor­mal (she made a point of rec­om­mend­ing the chal­lah bread, “very fresh; other days, not so much,”), devoted to Sarah and her fam­ily and their place in the com­mu­nity, so grate­ful to see John’s dad there, and so prais­ing of their fam­ily in accept­ing the Judaism Cathy has so devoted her­self to. Sarah read and chanted and sang for nearly an hour in Hebrew, her sis­ter Ellen read beau­ti­fully, Avery did a lovely job with her prayer. The entire expe­ri­ence made me ter­ri­bly envi­ous of that wort of warm com­mu­nity. I would hap­pily make chicken and mat­zoh ball soup every Fri­day, if I could only ever do (ad believe) the other myr­iad things required to be Jew­ish. The sense of open­ness to ques­tion­ing, sym­pa­thy to other points of view, respect for a wider world, aware­ness of inter­na­tional issues: all these things com­bined to make a very intrigu­ing and wel­com­ing day. And how Cathy and David man­aged their speeches, how Sarah got through her speech, I can­not imag­ine, with­out sob­bing. For heaven’s sake, I sobbed myself and it wasn’t even my child! I could never.

It was a gor­geous, lovely day. John’s uncle and aunt (whom I last saw in Lon­don nearly 16 years ago, feed­ing them din­ner on the heels of my hor­ren­dous car crash into a Finnish tour bus!) were there, his aunt and her new hus­band (“I was alone for 45 years, and he is my reward!” she crowed, and he said, “Such as I am,” obvi­ously bliss­fully happy), all the Iowa friends of a life­time, all of Cathy and David’s eclec­tic and fas­ci­nat­ing group of friends. It’s always heart­warm­ing to see peo­ple you know and love as fam­ily, in their milieu as inde­pen­dent adults with their own sets of friends, clearly the cen­ter of their com­mu­nity, and much loved.

And the hotel! Can I say how gor­geous the Sof­i­tel is? We have gone online since and ordered the ridicu­lously lux­u­ri­ous feath­erbeds upon which we slept. Unheard-of comfort.

Back to Iowa for just a few days, spent mostly in the com­pany of Avery’s beloved friend Meta (with horses, dogs, two new kit­tens, and the same sense of humor that binds those two crazy chicks together every sum­mer). And Avery got her hair all cut off. Shoulder-length, so she could donate 10 inches to Locks of Love, a sweet orga­ni­za­tion that arranges replace­ment hair for child­hood vic­tims of hair-loss. I don’t envy John’s mother the creepy task of mail­ing that pony­tail off! She spent the whole car ride from the bar­ber­shop hold­ing the pony­tail up to the back of John’s and crack­ing her­self up. The secret truth: my mother in law has always longed for her hus­band to have a pony­tail. So I guess hold­ing up her granddaughter’s cut-off pony­tail to her own son’s head is a scary, scary substitute.

One of my favorite lines over­heard in Iowa: Avery’s hair­dresser is her beloved pal Meta’s hair­dresser, so as Avery was hav­ing her hair washed the girl asked, “So how do you know Meta?” and Avery said, oh-so-confidently, “Well, her par­ents are some of my par­ents’ best friends, from sort of child­hood, and it goes back even far­ther than that…” I should say it does: Meta’s grand­par­ents are Avery’s grand­par­ents’ best friends for the past 45 years. It does make for coziness.

Well, home from Iowa now. Avery and Cici are talk­ing hard and fast after nearly 12 hours together, and I’m ready for bed. Sum­mer is good.

Good­ness, I’m sorry I’ve been so silent! I had some crazy idea that by leav­ing Lon­don where we were pulled in thou­sands of dif­fer­ent direc­tions, and arriv­ing in Amer­ica where we would… relax… I’d have more time to tell you all about what’s hap­pen­ing. But in real­ity, life got even busier here in Iowa than it was at home. Truly!

We arrived on Wednes­day last week to bright blue skies, warm lus­cious sum­mer­time air and the longed-for embrace of John’s mother and father. I have to tell you: I have been arriv­ing at one Iowa air­port or another now for 24 years, to per­fect sum­mer weather and the expec­ta­tion of sun, swim­ming, great food and my irre­place­able in-laws, and this arrival was no dif­fer­ent. Just bet­ter, if that’s pos­si­ble. Because this sum­mer we’re not tak­ing any­thing for granted.

Imag­ine you were loaned some­thing many years ago, some­thing you knew you liked and would enjoy hav­ing. You heard the word “loan” but you didn’t really think much about it, because the term of the loan was so long. And any­way, you didn’t know back then how much you would come to trea­sure the thing. So the years went by as you got to appre­ci­ate your loan ever more, and enjoy its pres­ence in your life. It became a part of the beloved tapes­try of your days and years, always there to appre­ci­ate, always the same. You never took it for granted, but you didn’t always take the time to eval­u­ate its worth to you, either. It pro­vided one of the essen­tial spices of life.

Then the lender reap­peared, and said, “You remem­ber that was a loan, don’t you? And its term is due.” You are com­pletely unpre­pared. No, you didn’t prop­erly remem­ber that you were only loaned this pre­cious thing. It has become quite some­thing you can­not live with­out. At first you find your­self in absolute unwill­ing­ness to play by the rules. You will keep this thing, no mat­ter what an ear­lier agree­ment might have been. But in your heart you under­stand that these were the terms, and grad­u­ally you real­ize that giv­ing it back will become part of the fab­ric of your life as well. In this real­iza­tion, you exam­ine your heart, which has been quite lazy up until now, and you see very clearly the worth that this loan has had in your life, and you are thankful.

By some incred­i­ble reshuf­fling of the kalei­do­scope, then, the lender does not come back when you expect it. The loan is still with you, inex­plic­a­bly, the same as always, only larger than life now, all its qual­i­ties mag­ni­fied some­how, and set against a back­drop of a per­fect sum­mer evening, warm and wel­com­ing, safe and cozy. You don’t know how long it will last, but you find your­self word­lessly thank­ful for the extra time, for how­ever long it lasts.

That’s what our time in Iowa has been like.

And it all began with the Gilbertville “Cor­ner­stone Tap”! There is no other place like it, except all the pubs in Eng­land where have ven­tured in, know­ing we didn’t really belong, but want­ing to spend an evening with the locals, and hop­ing we didn’t stick out too much. I first went to Gilbertville with John’s dad many years ago, to the Locker where you can order any cut of meat, in any quan­tity, just for the ask­ing. I have a mys­te­ri­ous soft spot (con­sid­er­ing I’m rather squea­mish in many ways) for butch­ers. There’s some­thing about appre­ci­at­ing where your din­ner comes from, and appre­ci­at­ing the skill it takes to bring it to you, that warms my heart and makes me feel that it’s all right not to be veg­e­tar­ian. I loved my first visit there, com­ing away with a stack of lus­cious loin lamb chops that rival any­thing Scot­land can pro­duce in the month of May. Mar­i­nated with John’s mother’s gar­den rose­mary, lemon juice, olive oil and fresh black pep­per (never salt lamb raw! it leeches the juices), and then grilled to per­fec­tion. You can’t beat it.

But we were too hun­gry when we arrived to con­tem­plate cook­ing, so thank good­ness for the “Cor­ner­stone.” Grate­fully, we sidled into the Tap and sat down to order a ten­der­loin. Before we could, how­ever, in marched John’s par­ents’ adored friends, sev­eral sets of them and their kids, com­plete with “WEL­COME TO IOWA” signs! Totally heart­warm­ing! And could there be a more deli­cious pork ten­der­loin on the face of the earth? I don’t think so. Del­i­cately breaded, hugely over­flow­ing the bun, piled with red onions, let­tuce and toma­toes. And you want to hear some­thing funny? We drank the bar out of gin! And I think we ate every­thing they had. A glo­ri­ous per­fect evening that reflected one of my favorite wed­ding toasts: “To friends who are fam­ily, and fam­ily who are friends.”

More soon! About the Bat Mitz­vah for our niece in Min­neapo­lis, and Avery’s… rad­i­cal hair­cut. I told you, we’ve been busy.

No, we’re not serv­ing up ground­hog, at least not yet! But I couldn’t resist post­ing a pic­ture of dar­ling Gary, the ground­hog. Or it could be his off­spring, who Avery has chris­tened Can­teloupe (guess why). It’s hard not to just buy fruit and take it straight out to them. I hope they don’t give up on us while we’re away for a week in Iowa, and Minnesota.

Yep, we leave tomor­row morn­ing to visit John’s par­ents in Iowa, then drive up (over? I’m unclear) to Min­nesota for our niece Sarah’s excit­ing bat mitz­vah (my first!), then back to Iowa, then back here in a week. I’m try­ing not to remem­ber my last trip back from Iowa, in a snow­storm in a tiny four-seater plane. What a bad mem­ory! But tomor­row will be entirely large com­mer­cial planes flown by, pre­sum­ably, pro­fes­sion­als, and I’m tak­ing plenty of Bach’s Flower Reme­dies any­way, just in case I get ner­vous. I am really not much of a traveler.

I just have to tell you about my lat­est redis­cov­ery: Cor­nish game hens. In a child­hood sin­gu­larly untouched by events of a note­wor­thy gas­tro­nomic qual­ity, we did eat, for what­ever rea­son, Cor­nish game hens. Just Per­due, noth­ing exotic, but I think I dis­cov­ered them in high school and had some suc­cess. Well, yes­ter­day I was plan­ning bar­be­cued chicken, when I was vis­ited by an inspi­ra­tion. Why not buy some of the lit­tle guys and try my invented sauce on them? And it was sublime.

Bar­be­cued Cor­nish Game Hens
(serves four)

3 Cor­nish game hens

equal parts (about 3/4 cup each): ketchup, honey, maple syrup, Worces­ter­shire sauce
peel (but not bit­ter pith) of 1 lemon or lime
3 cloves gar­lic
half a red onion, cut in chunks

Place all the mari­nade ingre­di­ents in your Cuisi­nart and whizz till nicely mixed, but with chunks of onion left.

Now here’s the trick: split your hens down the back, choos­ing one side or the other of the spine and cut­ting the spine away when you’ve thor­oughly split the birds. Throw the spines, with the neck and kid­neys from the giblet bag, in a pot and cover with water, salt thor­oughly and sim­mer for a cou­ple of hours. There’s a nice pot of chicken stock for you.

Now line a big bak­ing dish or cookie sheet with foil and lay the hens out, then slather with the mari­nade. Leave as long as you can, but at least an hour.

Fire your grill (we have a propane Weber, thank you Jill and Joel) up to nearly its hottest, about 400 degrees inter­nal tem­per­a­ture. Grill the birds skin side up for 15 min­utes, then skin side down for another 15 min­utes. Perfection!

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

And, can I also report a very nice alter­na­tive to tra­di­tional vinaigrette?

White Bal­samic Dress­ing with Cel­ery
(make how­ever much you like)

3 parts olive oil
1 part white bal­samic vine­gar (in nice super­mar­kets, next to the dark sort)
juice of 1 lemon (if mak­ing at least a cup total)
1 tsp cel­ery salt
hand­ful cel­ery leaves, chopped coarsely
hand­ful flat pars­ley leaves, chopped coarsely
1 tsp pre­pared horse­rad­ish
pinch Mal­don salt

Place all these in jar with a tightly-sealing lid, or in a bowl to whisk, and mix thor­oughly. It looks very del­i­cate and pale, but has a nice kick.

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Lastly, I repli­cated with fair suc­cess one of Avery’s favorite dishes from our beloved Man­darin Kitchen, in Queensway, London.

Fried Noo­dles with Sprouts and Onions
(serves four)

1/2 pack­age dried Asian noo­dles (labelled “for stir-fry”)
2 tsps peanut oil
2 cloves gar­lic, minced
1/2 Vidalia onion, sliced thin
2 cups bean sprouts
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp soy sauce

Boil water for noo­dles while you mince the gar­lic, then cook the noo­dles as directed and drain thor­oughly. Toss in sev­eral paper tow­els. This step is very impor­tant as you do not want them to ren­der the dish soggy at all.

Saute the gar­lic and onion in the peanut oil until soft. Add the noo­dles and stir fry at as high a heat as you can with­out burn­ing the gar­lic. Add the bean sprouts and toss to mix, then pour over the sesame oil and soy sauce, toss to blend. So sim­ple and tasty.

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More from Iowa! Is it hot where you are?

It’s offi­cial: we’re back in Amer­ica! We made it through a last few days of insane activ­ity (the high­light being a real mile­stone at King’s Col­lege: a kiss from the head­mistress AND she called me by my first name!), last rid­ing les­son and din­ner play­date with Avery’s new friend Anasta­cia (a quite impos­si­bly sophis­ti­cated Swiss fam­ily in Not­ting Hill Gate), a last hur­ried din­ner of my favorite gar­lic and pars­ley scal­lops. Finally in Fri­day we headed off to the air­port where we sat through an unex­plained five-hour delay, and finally got off. The long car trip up to Con­necti­cut from JKF, Avery sleep­ing on my lap, whizzing past all the famil­iar high­way exits that we used to pass every Fri­day evening on our way up from town, to arrive in very foggy dark­ness at Red Gate Farm. Lights blaz­ing, thank you Farmer Rol­lie! Bread, eggs and milk in the fridge, thank you neigh­bors Anne and David… we tum­bled into bed. And awoke to a per­fect Con­necti­cut morn­ing: blue sky, green mead­ows, red barn (newly roofed over the win­ter), and a fam­ily of wild turkeys in the side lawn! They did not take kindly to being observed and scut­tled quickly back into the woods.

It’s a reg­u­lar wildlife pre­serve here, espe­cially once John refilled the bird feed­ers and corn hold­ers, and I had my first can­teloupe rind from Avery’s break­fast. “That’s not even half con­vinc­ing,” John objected. “You just cut that open to lure Gary the Ground­hog.” Which was true, and it worked! He came quite quickly, trained from last sum­mer to expect the best fruit castoffs. And this morn­ing he brought his lit­tle bride! Or per­haps a teenage off­spring? Any­way, we have two ground­hogs so far. And yes­ter­day when we went to the big barn to haul out the tram­po­line, there were, high in the rooftops, hun­dreds of baby bats. A few flew over our heads just to impress us. And chip­munks, dash­ing impor­tantly from ter­race to barn to wood­shed, tak­ing bird seed to their nests.

Here’s a weird break­fast: pesto on toast. Why eat such a thing? Because I got up super early with a bit of jet­lag, and knew we’d want pesto for lunch, and it smelled incred­i­bly good. John and I ended up cut­ting off end­less slices from the excel­lent Chabaso wheat sour­dough bread (voted Connecticut’s best bak­ery!) that Anne and David left for us, toast­ing it, and slather­ing it with fresh pesto.

Basil Pesto
(makes about 2 cups)

4 large hand­fuls fresh basil leaves, stems removed (they’re bit­ter)
1 cup pinenuts
3 cloves gar­lic
1/2 cup grated parme­san cheese
juice of 1 lemon
salt to taste (the cheese is salty already)
olive oil

Place all ingre­di­ents in a Cuisi­nart and add about 1 cup olive oil. Whizz till blended, and add more olive oil if needed to get a nice creamy consistency.

**********

Deli­cious! You can also make this with pars­ley, cilantro, any highly-flavored green leaves. And you can use hazel­nuts or almonds or any other nuts you like. In a pinch I’ve also used other hard cheeses, like a very highly aged gouda or ched­dar. It’s very versatile.

We were still ready for more at lunchtime.

Capellini with Fresh Pesto and Crab­meat
(serves four as a light lunch)

1/2 lb capellini, cooked in plenty of salted water
2 tbsps but­ter, room tem­per­a­ture
1 cup-ish fresh pesto (amount to taste)
1 cup fresh crabmeat

Toss cooked pasta with but­ter and pesto and mix thor­oughly. Once mixed well, toss quickly with crab­meat. So sim­ple and so good.

**********

Then we have been reunited with Sweet Baby Jane, quite sim­ply the sweet­est niece that ever lived, and sadly not a baby any­more. (And her par­ents are pretty nice too.) On Sat­ur­day after­noon we headed up north to see Jill and Joel in their per­fect house, smelling quite irre­sistibly of gar­lic and cheese (Joel is an amaz­ing cook), and the equally irre­sistible Jane, grown ter­ri­bly tall and with long real-girl hair. To think this time last sum­mer she was in dia­pers. She showed us her “real under­wear” with great pride, point­ing out the stripes as she held up her diminu­tive khaki skirt.

And there were stream­ers and a “Happy Birth­day” ban­ner for John, since we didn’t have a birth­day cel­e­bra­tion for him this year. Avery imme­di­ately set about find­ing any­thing longer than it was wide, to serve as a pony jump, and arranged quite a nice course for her new pony, Jane. It was very touch­ing, I must say, to see Jane con­fi­dently fol­low­ing Avery in any ploy she sug­gested. “Run as quickly as you can, and don’t stop before the jump, just keep going,” Avery instructed, and there was Jane, with her sweaty lit­tle brow and earnest expres­sion, “I’m com­ing, Avery!” It felt almost unbe­liev­able that my lit­tle sis­ter and I weren’t the chil­dren any­more, play­ing in the back­yard, one order­ing the other one around (guess which one I was), but it was our CHIL­DREN run­ning around in my sister’s own back­yard. How did that hap­pen! Then we heard from way across the lawn, “Cousin Avery, you’re my friend.” Well, you can live a whole life­time, as sis­ters, just to hear that.

But it’s hard to be too sen­ti­men­tal when there’s food to appre­ci­ate. Joel came out with a wickedly tempt­ing appe­tizer, and it cer­tainly sounds sim­ple. Be sure to use good, real may­on­naise. Joel and Jill report that Mir­a­cle Whip (the sta­ple condi­ment of our child­hood) does not work here.

Joel’s Arti­choke Dip
(serves eight)

1 cup arti­choke hearts (fresh or from a jar), chopped
1 cup may­on­naise
1 cup grated parme­san cheese

Mix well and place in a 9 x 9 bak­ing dish (non-stick sprayed to make life eas­ier), or sev­eral indi­vid­ual ramekins if you want to place them around an appe­tizer table at a party. Bake at 400 degrees for about 20–3– minute or until bub­bly and brown on top. Serve with toasted baguette rounds or crackers.

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

Jane makes us all laugh con­stantly. I had for­got­ten what a good age two and a half is. I must say here, how­ever, that while most tod­dlers are lus­cious, a lot of what makes Jane so won­der­ful is the way her par­ents treat her. They speak to her as a real per­son, remind­ing her of funny things she’s said in the past, tak­ing her opin­ions seri­ously, includ­ing her in all con­ver­sa­tion. Well, almost all. Once I leaned over to Jill to say some­thing I didn’t want Jane to hear, and she tapped me on the arm with a sticky lit­tle hand and chided, “Aunt Kris­ten, it’s very hard for me to hear what you are say­ing when you talk so qui­etly.” At one point she reached out toward the cracker dish, and Jill said, “Now, Jane, how would you ask nicely for a cracker?” Jane thought for a minute and then said seri­ously, “May I please have the whole plate?” She’s very vig­i­lant about man­ners, too. When Avery got up from the din­ner table to run her course of jumps again, and invited Jane to join her, Jane said with her brow fur­rowed, “Avery, I would love to run the jump course, but you should not leave the table while I am still drink­ing my water.”

Jill told the story of tak­ing Jane to the Indy 500 (which my bril­liant sis­ter was pro­duc­ing, if you can imag­ine), and putting the pass around her neck to get to all the behind-the-scenes events. Then later in an air­port, Jane saw some­one with a sim­i­lar thing around her neck and the lady said, “Yes, this is my ID.” Where upon Jane burst out laugh­ing and said, “No, it’s not, it’s your cre­den­tials!” She reminds us all of lit­tle Avery at that age, com­ing up with hilar­i­ous words all on her own, as in the time she approached me in the park, sit­ting with my other mother friends, and she took my hand, placed her candy wrap­per in it, and said, “Here, Mommy, you can have my detritus.”

Well, we’re off to the library, I think, then the pool. I can­not believe how pale and Eng­lish we all look, com­pared to the bronzed gods of New Eng­land. And all the other Amer­i­can things we had for­got­ten: the quite over­whelm­ing fast-paced tele­vi­sion ads, the ubiq­ui­tous cheer and will­ing­ness of sales­peo­ple, the enor­mous cars, and most hilar­i­ously, the new cam­paign on Sub­way sand­wich tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ments to make what are famously healthy sand­wiches HUGER and more fat­ten­ing than any­one could ever ingest: obvi­ously Amer­i­can appetites are not groov­ing to the slim­line image! There is a slick­ness and lux­ury to the most ordi­nary Amer­i­can expe­ri­ences that makes me feel pro­tec­tive toward the sim­ple and unas­sum­ing Eng­lish things we’ve left behind. I hope both ways stay the same and we can have the fun of each. But right now: it’s good to be back.

We’re off! The bags are packed, the kit­ties kissed, the last laun­dry load and dish­washer load done, sum­mer home­work in the suit­case, ready to go. To think: we’ll be at the lit­tle farm­house with the red gate, in just a few hours, wak­ing up to bird­song and friendly neigh­bors, horses up the road and goats and lambs to be pet­ted at the farmer’s around the cor­ner, chip­munks run­ning under the ter­race and Gary the ground­hog to eat scraps of melon left for him. Swim­ming at the munic­i­pal pool, din­ners from the grill around the pic­nic table, I can’t wait.

I’ll let you know how things go, plus I’ve got to tell you about our last fran­tic days here in Lon­don. A tan­ta­lis­ing tit­bit (as they say here): Avery won both the Latin Cup (shades of last year!) and the Eng­lish Prize at Prize Day. We couldn’t be more pleased. But more on that from the other side of the pond! See you there…