Oh my. I just went down­stairs to revel in the quiet peace of the house tonight, the rest of my fam­ily asleep, think­ing hap­pily about our din­ner party here this evening with our farmer friends up the road (more on that tomor­row), won­der­ing if I could ever make a blue­berry pie like Judy’s, and check­ing on the can­dles I moved from the pic­nic table to the front win­dows to keep David across the road happy in the late evening. But guess what I saw? The whole front of Stillmeadow, the ancient white salt­box house across the road, was com­pletely lit up. Glow­ing from top to bot­tom. For a moment I was afraid! What on earth?

Then I real­ized it was the light of the full moon high above our back meadow, light­ing up the house as if by a street­light, only an eerie, glow­ing feel­ing. I wanted to go out to explore, but my city-girl nature (what hap­pened to those for­ma­tive years in Indi­ana? sorry, Mother and Dad!) almost kept me from it. But to see the full moon! I had to try.

I crept out onto the stone path I so labo­ri­ously weeded this sum­mer (must find an eco-friendly way to pre­vent encoun­ter­ing those same weeds next July). What if there were toads on them like the ones we had on our ter­race dur­ing din­ner? I didn’t want to squash one under my bare feet! Or a snake, as vis­ited Avery’s birth­day party long ago, in the leaves beside the stone wall? Any­way, I got my courage together and ven­tured out. The trees here are so mas­sive and so old that you are alter­nately grate­ful for their elderly and gen­tle shade, and def­i­nitely afraid lest their branches land on your house in a storm.

Tonight they were black before the glow of the moon. No far­away, roman­tic light this: no, this was an assertive, glit­ter­ing, in-your-face shim­mer, seem­ingly right THERE. I looked over again at the house across the road, illu­mi­nated quite sharply but with a funny, selec­tive light that didn’t seem to touch the shrubs and trees nearby. Just the white clap­boards. And since I’ve been spend­ing all my sum­mer read­ing time lately with the mem­oirs and cook­books of Gladys Taber, the most beloved of all the house’s inhab­i­tants, I felt in an odd way that she was here. Was she happy I was thumb­ing tonight through her My Own Cook­book (the crazy large-print edi­tion that Anne, her grand­daugh­ter and my dear friend, had to loan me!)? Was she glad to see farm­ers and their chil­dren sit­ting at the table of the house across the road tonight, being fed as she fed count­less farmer friends, exchang­ing recipes and gos­sip, laugh­ing at each other’s sto­ries as we do? Will she be pleased with the recipes I choose to repro­duce when I edit her cook­book, and will she give me a help­ing hand when I try to describe her and her life and ways, and our place here in her world? I hope so.

Today was so peace­ful. Well, first it was hot and sweaty while we played ten­nis. I love it! I think I’ve turned a cor­ner. I can actu­ally hit a seri­ous fore­hand with­out fear­ing I’ll miss it alto­gether. OK, some­times I miss it. But there are more and more times that the ball seems to just get hit! Which is a lot of fun. But from there we had a won­der­fully relaxed after­noon, start­ing with the per­fect lunch for left­over roast pork:

Cuban Sand­wiches

My friend Alyssa will laugh: this sand­wich was inspired by one you can get at the I.P.N Deli on Green­wich Street in my old ‘hood of Tribeca in my now-long ago and mis­spent early mid­dle age. It was and is the last hold­out of non-chicdom in that fabled area of Lower Man­hat­tan. It is peo­pled exclu­sively by res­i­dents of the rent-controlled coun­cil hous­ing of Inde­pen­dence Plaza and the nearby con­struc­tion work­ers whose num­bers are over­whelm­ing these days. And nan­nies. But for me, it was the place for a deca­dent, wicked sand­wich on a day when I was headed for a non-remunerative and prob­a­bly dull after­noon in our sweet lit­tle neigh­bor­hood park, Wash­ing­ton Mar­ket, play­ing with my child. Now, lit­tle did I know the days of play­ing in the park would be so FLEET­ING. I am ashamed now of how I let myself feel bored, now that I have a world-weary almost 11-year-old who needs me for so lit­tle! And we’re never bored. Moth­ers of small chil­dren take heart: the bore­dom is such a short-lived, sweet lit­tle gift. Not that it seems like it when you’re stuck in the park.

But my Cuban Sand­wich would have been a nice improve­ment on the deli’s ver­sion. For one thing, Tony’s roast pork is a rev­e­la­tion, and who knows what they were grilling the deli ver­sion on or in.

After lunch I indulged myself with “Gen­eral Hos­pi­tal” while under­ch­eff­ing din­ner. How I will miss my Amer­i­can soaps when we return to Lon­don on Sat­ur­day! Avery took a long cozy bath in the guest bath­room adja­cent to the ter­race and every so often one of us called to her through the screen in the win­dow: “you still in there?” John tried (one knows not yet how suc­cess­fully) to stem the pop­u­la­tion of yel­low jack­ets in our vicin­ity, with a set of traps and some spray. All I can say is, nobody with wings vis­ited our din­ner party tonight.

Well, more on that tomor­row. Drum­roll, though, please: this is POST NUM­BER 300 of my blog! Happy birth­day, or what­ever… it’s been a lot of fun.

It’s a gor­geous blue-sky day in Con­necti­cut, we’ve just come from a round of sweaty ten­nis and a swim. I’m thrilled: John said today, “You’re good enough now that it’s fun for me to play with you.” As opposed to the mind-bendingly dull job he had at first of sim­ply… serv­ing! End­lessly, since I couldn’t really hit it back. I love ten­nis, and I hope I can find a place to play in Lon­don. The pool was freez­ing again, how­ever, so we chick­ened out and came home for lunch.

Which brings me to: recipes.

Now, I must say that I quake even to claim to repro­duce a recipe by our friend Olimpia. I say this not because I don’t think I can cook, but because of an intrigu­ing notion sug­gested to me by our neigh­bor friend Alice over the week­end. As I was describ­ing what Olimpia had cooked for us, Alice mused, “It sounds almost like a kind of mys­ti­cal thing you are sug­gest­ing, a sort of alchemy.” And that is exactly right. The other per­son in my life whose cook­ing strikes me this way is my friend Alyssa, whose mat­zoh ball soup is leg­endary, and with whom I have, as I have with Olimpia, stood at the kitchen counter, watched, taken part, writ­ten down, lis­tened. And yet… when I try their recipes myself, while they’re all right, even quite good, they’re lack­ing some­thing. And Alice may be right: it’s not an ingre­di­ent or a method, it’s the magic of the cook her­self. And as John always believes (I don’t nec­es­sar­ily agree with him!) that if I love some­one I think she’s beau­ti­ful to look at, it’s pos­si­ble too that some­thing of the love and admi­ra­tion I feel for the cook per­me­ates my taste buds right along with the gar­lic or chicken. Possible!

But I will do my best to tell you how to make what we ate so hap­pily this week­end in the Catskills with our friends, Olimpia and Tony. And she let me cook with her.

Zuc­chini all’Olimpia
(serves 4 as an antipasto)

2 medium zuc­chini, sliced round
olive oil to reach an inch up the side of your skil­let
1 tbsp fresh olive oil for sautee­ing
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
driz­zle more olive oil
4 leaves basil or mint (we had mint, I’d like to try basil too)
1/4 red wine vine­gar
salt and fresh pepper

Heat oil in skil­let until a small piece of bread on the end of a fork siz­zles imme­di­ately when dipped in. Fry the zuc­chini slices until soft, then drain on kitchen paper.

Dis­card the olive oil and wipe out skil­let. Cook down a bit and add 1 tbsp olive oil, then saute gar­lic gen­tly (do not brown).

In a pretty serv­ing dish, layer the zuc­chini slices, sprin­kle gar­lic and mint or basil, driz­zle oil and a bit of the vine­gar. Repeat this till all zuc­chini slices are lay­ered. Salt and pep­per to taste. Mar­i­nate for at least an hour before serving.

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

Moz­zarella in Car­rozza

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

Roast Shoul­der of Pork with Garlic

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

As you can imag­ine, it was just unbe­liev­able. We rem­i­nisced about friends in com­mon, old days in New York, our visit in Feb­ru­ary, our wishes that they come to us in Lon­don. Then too we exchanged lots of views on child-rearing (they are proud grand­par­ents and great-aunt and uncle to Tony’s fam­ily), and it was nice to agree on every­thing! “Keep com­mu­ni­cat­ing, keep talk­ing. You have to know where they are and who they’re with, and what they’re think­ing,” Tony said wisely. A for­mer New York City fire inves­ti­gat­ing offi­cer, he has a most com­fort­ing demeanor of innate wis­dom and sagac­ity that I just love. Not to men­tion: he built the kitchen him­self! I adored the Wolf stove, and all the intri­cate and savvy lit­tle spice shelves, slid­ing draw­ers, sev­eral sinks and other lux­u­ries that John and I filed away in our imag­i­na­tions for the remote day that we might design our own kitchen.

Thank you, guys, for a great after­noon. I like to think of your dishes being made now all over the world! But miss­ing, I fear, that spark of… Olimpia.

Sum­mer is back! I can’t believe that two nights ago it was so chilly and damp that I was cooking:

Kristen’s Pre­ten­tious Meatloaf

***********

Since then the sun has come back out, and today the humid­ity is RAM­PANT. We spent a sweaty hour on the ten­nis courts this morn­ing, and a sav­agely cold dip in the com­mu­nity pool, and came home starv­ing and hot. So today’s lunch was the ulti­mate sum­mer cooldown feast. I call it “pink gaz­pa­cho”, for which I must give you the recipe because it’s sin­fully sim­ple and inex­pen­sive, and aside from a cucum­ber and an avo­cado you can eas­ily have every­thing on hand in your pantry. It was first made for me by my beloved friend Jeanne, and served in green porce­lain bowls in the shape of let­tuce heads:

Jeanne Grieger’s Pink Sum­mer Gazpacho

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

In any case, we took Avery to Mys­tic, to reunite with her beloved friend Cici, made plans to come get her on Sun­day (which turned out to be today, the days FLEW by!). On the way home from drop­ping her off, we turned off the road to pop into a local insti­tu­tion (no, not the one you’re think­ing of, prob­a­bly, with restraints and bars on the win­dows), but Abbott’s Lob­ster in the Rough”, a really, well, ROUGH place to have seafood. Cici’s mother had warned us against it, say­ing it could be hor­ri­bly crowded, and I can see that if we’d gone at a more nor­mal time to eat it might have been, but we ended up there around 4, and it was nearly deserted. You place your order and then go stake out a pic­nic table right on the water, look­ing out over what might be some­thing like Mys­tic Sound? Lovely, sail­boats every­where. Then your num­ber is hollered over a loud­speaker and you go pick up your food. Here’s my advice: look at the menu, for fun if you like. But skip every­thing else and go straight to the LOB­STER. We felt adven­tur­ous and ordered an enor­mous lob­ster feast, to share, so we could try some of every­thing. And try we did. But, I know this will sound harsh: every­thing but the lob­ster was com­pletely for­get­table. The clam chow­der we used to get in Isles­ford, Maine, unfairly blows away any other, but even with­out that for com­par­i­son, Abbott’s was watery and dull, dis­tin­guished only by its tem­per­a­ture which burned the roof of my mouth.

Then the shrimp was fine, but ordi­nary, a tad over­cooked as the insti­tu­tional nature of the process might pro­duce. The clams and mus­sels were fresh, but unre­mark­able, steamed as they were in the aus­tere New Eng­land recipe of… water. I like my mus­sels in a nice gar­licky wine-laden broth, call me decadent.

But the LOB­STER! The fresh­est we’ve ever had out­side Maine, and cooked to per­fec­tion, so it didn’t take long for us to wash our hands with the insuf­fi­cient lit­tle wet wipe and cozy up to the “Retail Deck,” manned charm­ingly by a nice young man who thrust his arm in a tank and brought up two madly wav­ing spec­i­mens which we hap­pily brought home and steamed. DIVINE. Run, don’t walk, to Abbott’s.

Let’s see, we spent the time Avery was away play­ing ten­nis (my new obses­sion, must find a place to play in Lon­don), and vis­it­ing… Olimpia. I will tell all tomor­row, but for now, can I just say that she sent us home with the most delec­table meat­balls and beef ribs swim­ming in tomato sauce, and guess what? She had already fed us lunch, a com­pletely dif­fer­ent menu. I will divulge as much of the magic as can be felt and expe­ri­enced with­out Olimpia being here, which sad to say she is not. But I got to stand in her kitchen, and learn at the knee of the mas­ter, and I came away with… recipes. And left­overs! Quite the best host­ess in the world, Olimpia is, with her loyal side­kick hus­band Tony there to roast the shoul­der of pork and pro­vide per­fect con­ver­sa­tion. But more on that later.

Suf­fice to say this evening, we’re happy to have our lit­tle chick home again, grate­ful to Kath­leen and John for host­ing her and feed­ing us such a deli­cious din­ner tonight, and we’re miss­ing our lit­tle niece Jane. Aren’t the two girls adorable together? A week from now will find us tucked up in our flat in Lon­don, so this week must cram in as much Amer­i­cana as pos­si­ble. And lunch with Olimpia, a bagel brunch with Anne and her bril­liant vio­lin­ist sis­ter Alice, and a visit to the impos­si­bly charm­ing South­bury His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety all fill the bill. I have a lot to tell you.

Well, John’s par­ents have flown away, sadly. We’re hud­dling around a roar­ing fire, believe it or not, in August! Avery’s tack­ling the home­work her teach­ers sent home with her for the sum­mer, John’s at the den­tist (ick) and I’m keep­ing a box of Kleenex close by as I seem to have caught the cold lit­tle Jane brought for her sleep­over this week­end. But what a good time we had with her while she was here: jump­ing on the tram­po­line, play­ing on the teeter-totter, catch­ing min­nows from the pond, eat­ing her favorite ham sand­wiches, head­ing off to the library to trade in Avery’s huge stack of books for another huge stack of books. And the Elephant’s Trunk flea mar­ket in New Mil­ford! If you can get there early there are real trea­sures (our teeter-totter, years ago, and a beau­ti­ful old mir­ror, I remem­ber.) But this time we came away with a soc­cer ball on a tether for guess who, and she ate two bananas as she walked along! We had a ball. But all good things must come to an end, and before we knew it, it was late after­noon on Day Two under a gray sky and Jill and Joel were pulling up in the dri­ve­way to take her home. Anne stopped by for a minute to say hi to John’s par­ents and left with a cou­ple of pieces of cake for David’s birth­day. Happy Birthday!

Can you believe we had an owl visit! To add to our live­stock col­lec­tion here at Red Gate Farm. I was not awake early enough to see him, but John’s mom was. I just hope he doesn’t swoop down to get any of our chipmunks…

And Avery had her best rid­ing les­son ever, I hear! Was I there? Of course not. That’s being a mother for you: sit­ting through count­less for­get­table lessons on both sides of the pond, traips­ing through Hyde Park and the Bronx and South­bury in the dusty wake of this or that pony, but when it comes to the per­fect pony, the high­est jumps, I’m sit­ting at a pic­nic table at home eat­ing a lob­ster roll, miss­ing it all. Never mind: Nonna and John were there, and as you see, the pony, Belle­hop, is a sweet­heart. I did get to go the next day, and she was lovely to watch, a real carousel pony. What a beau­ti­ful place: the red barns, blue sky, green pines, white fences, so many mem­o­ries of the hun­dreds of after­noons and evenings I spent up there either sweat­ing in the sun or hud­dling around the wood fire, watch­ing Avery and her friends ride, gos­sip­ing with the other moth­ers. Such a cozy place to be.

But you know what: I missed the les­son last week because I was hang­ing around at home hav­ing a meaning-of-life chat with my father in law, and that doesn’t hap­pen very often. He is like an old-fashioned sage: his blue eyes look out on the world with enor­mous per­spec­tive and wis­dom, kind­ness and judg­ment, accep­tance and opti­mism. He doesn’t offer his opin­ions unless you really ask, and even then he mea­sures his words to make his com­ments as gen­tle as pos­si­ble. We sat and ate lob­ster and crab rolls (just about the most mag­i­cal left­overs in the world, in my opin­ion), and tomato and avo­cado salad, and chat­ted. I can’t say I would have wanted to be any­where else.

Then the weather changed com­pletely! The tem­per­a­ture dropped some twenty degrees, the wind turned and you could smell autumn com­ing. I’d really like to think we have another week or so of sum­mer com­ing, but for now we’re bun­dled in sweaters. A cou­ple of nights ago I found myself the only one awake, walk­ing around the house watch­ing the flames flicker in the liv­ing room, can­dles in the front win­dows, and I opened the tiny square win­dow in the kitchen and stuck my head out to lis­ten to the rain. This is the most pleas­ant place in the world, I think: peace­ful and calm. I have to think of how to trans­fer some of this peace to our lives in Lon­don: it’s got to be possible.

Then we ful­filled one of John’s mom’s life­time ambi­tions (she’s very easy to please!): a visit to Litch­field, Con­necti­cut. It is sim­ply the most beau­ti­ful town: all white houses with black shut­ters, wide green lawns, Amer­i­can flags every­where. And my most favorite store for cash­mere sweaters, R. Der­win on the Green. Just about four times in the past 20 years I have found myself in that store, and each time I find the per­fect sweater, and have a nice talk with the two gen­er­a­tions of Der­wins who linger behind the counter. Quin­tes­sen­tial New Eng­lan­ders: bright eyes, cor­duroys and poplin, a happy incli­na­tion to gos­sip about Litch­fiel­d­ans we have known.

Then it was onto a per­fect old-fashioned candy store, for Avery. The Litch­field Candy Com­pany at 245 West Street, crowded with all the old sweets I remem­ber from child­hood: Pixy Stix, Necco wafers, Lemon­heads! And a soda that we couldn’t resist for obvi­ous rea­sons: Always Ask for Avery’s! Can you imag­ine. I’m not one for old-fashioned sickly sweet sodas, but I can see that it’s the kind of thing you’d like if you like that kind of thing. John at least was pretty keen on the Birch Beer. We’re plan­ning to pour most of it down the drain and use the bot­tles for flower vases. If I get a good pic­ture I’ll post it.

But I think the best thing about Litch­field was our din­ner at the Litch­field Salt­wa­ter Grille. Run, don’t walk, get a table out back under the nice white duck awnings (even in a dri­ving rain­storm this spot was delight­ful!), and ask for Tracy, a bub­bly and effi­cient wait­ress who brought us any num­ber of fab­u­lous dishes. The chef, one Albert Clugston III, has come up with some real win­ners. And our expe­ri­ence put to rest one of those old food rules: “Never order oys­ters in a month with­out an R.” Well, August at the Salt­wa­ter Grille is def­i­nitely an oys­ter month any­way, as they must all be. The Blue Points were per­fect: freez­ing cold on a bed of ice, per­fectly fresh, served with the req­ui­site lemon wedges, horse­rad­ish and chili sauce. Yum yum. Then Avery had a chicken breast wrapped in bacon and topped with mys­te­ri­ously deli­cious red pep­per strips and crispy “match­stick” potatoes.

The seafood ruled, though: my mother in law and I both had enor­mous slabs of seared tuna with a pep­per­corn crust and some truly tasty mush­rooms hid­ing under­neath. We could eas­ily have shared, so that’s some­thing to think about for those with less than gar­gan­tuan appetites. John had a bouil­l­abaisse that he decided later was the weak­est of all we ordered, although good. The true star of the evening was John’s dad’s giant bowl of “Shrimp and Clams New­port,” swim­ming in quite the most divine sauce we had ever tasted (we unashamedly begged Tracy for more bread and all of us sopped it up). I think I’ll try to repro­duce it later this week when Avery’s off vis­it­ing Cici in Mys­tic: we all diag­nosed but­ter, Pinot Gris, pars­ley, gar­lic, crushed red pep­per flakes and… clam broth? Maybe mixed with a bit of chicken broth? Lovely.

Such won­der­ful mem­o­ries of John’s par­ents’ visit. Long after­noons sit­ting in our ratty old fold­ing deck chairs, pre­tend­ing to read but really watch­ing Avery’s end­lessly inven­tive tram­po­line rou­tines, named inex­plic­a­bly after her favorite Archie char­ac­ters. She nar­rates as she jumps, so the lawn rang with “Veron­ica, Veron­ica, Jug­head, Betty, Veron­ica, Veron­ica…” and end­less games of Aggra­va­tion! John’s father, nor­mally quite mild-mannered, turns into an absolute ogre when faced with the lit­tle blue mar­bles. And John has been known actu­ally to make a move that is dis­ad­van­ta­geous to him­self if it can send some­one else home! “Wait­ing for a one… You can­not tell me ones come up with any­thing LIKE the sta­tis­ti­cal fre­quency they should! You did NOT have to send me home!!” John’s mom hap­pily accom­pa­ny­ing me on num­ber­less trips to the gro­cery store (why are we always fas­ci­nated by even the most bor­ing lists?), chop­ping gar­lic for me. “Remem­ber that first time we cooked together in Lon­don, Kris­ten, and you told me in no uncer­tain terms how fine the gar­lic had to be minced?” I must have been one obnox­ious new daugh­ter in law, that’s all I have to say.

Need some­thing to give a ten-year-old girl? Pos­si­bly the most suc­cess­ful gifts of the sum­mer: the fab­ric mark­ers and sten­cils for dec­o­rat­ing t-shirts that John’s mom brought, and The Enchanted Dolls’ House Wed­ding Book from my mother. Per­fect sum­mer activ­i­ties, thanks to the Non­nas. Thank you!

Well, I must close this mam­moth post and make some lunch. I’m think­ing dev­illed eggs. One thing I learned this sum­mer, although I hes­i­tate to dis­agree with the great Julia Child and her strin­gent instruc­tions on boil­ing eggs (some­thing about 17 min­utes and a tight-fitting lid), my method worked sur­pris­ingly well: bring­ing the eggs to a boil in cold water and then for­get­ting they’re on the stove, hav­ing your hus­band turn off the heat and let­ting them sit there for an untold period of time until some­one said, “Weren’t you going to make dev­illed eggs?”, shriek­ing and run­ning them under cold water. Perfect.

Devilled-Eggs

Oh, and I suc­cumbed to yet another exam­ple of home­made being bet­ter than boughten: I ran out of Hellman’s, needed mayo. I’m sorry to say: home­made is much, much nicer. Lim­ber up your whisk­ing arm and make some:

Home­made Mayonnaise

Avery’s grand­fa­ther is nap­ping, Avery and her grand­mother are lying on the tram­po­line far down the lawn between the pond and the stream, John’s deep in Exile, by Richard North Pat­ter­son, a good polit­i­cal thriller, he reports. We’re all slightly comatose from a mam­moth lunch that hit all the right but­tons for me: it used up left­overs so my con­science is clear, it cost almost noth­ing, and… every­thing looked and tasted delicious.

Club Sand­whiches

I have to tell you: my dear mother in law offered to get the meat off the hens for me, and while it was a sticky, messy job, there is a lot to get, so do go for it. And I don’t know if you can get the super-spicy Ched­dar where you are, but it’s deli­cious in a slightly processed, bor­der­line junk food way. Here’s a source for super-hot, and here’s a source for a milder ver­sion. I love it that there is a blog devoted entirely to hot things to eat.

Then too we had:

Instant Game Hen Salad

Let’s see, we’ve been find­ing that our vocab­u­lary these days is greatly enhanced by… lit­tle Jane. She has a way of hold­ing out her hand, palm up, when she talks, which lends an old-fashioned, earnest air to every­thing she says. “Aunt Kris­ten, I can’t stand on one foot in my Crocs. I’m not big enough, and it makes me very wob­bly.” This she demon­strates by hop­ping wildly from one foot to the other, “Whoa!” Then a cou­ple of days before her birth­day party here, she saw a pile of present all wrapped up, on a bench. “Uncle John, are those pack­ages for me?” “Of course, Jane, for your party on Mon­day, when your mommy gets back from her busi­ness trip.” “Oh.” Pause, then, “Uncle John, I’m think­ing about open­ing those pack­ages and do you know what? I can’t wait.” Hand out­stretched in appeal. “Oh, we can’t wait either, Jane!” Another pause. “No, I CAN’T WAIT.” Avery observed sotto voce, “She’s not say­ing that idiomat­i­cally. She means she lit­er­ally CAN’T WAIT.” And she was right. Every after­noon finds some­one say­ing, “I can’t wait,” about something.

And she’s obsessed with things being “auto­matic.” Joel explained that this all began when she was exposed (quite lit­er­ally, which was the scary part) to an auto­matic toi­let at a shop­ping mall. Scared her to death, nat­u­rally! So now she is under­stand­ably a lit­tle skep­ti­cal of unfa­mil­iar toi­lets, which do unex­pected things that she hasn’t asked them to do. Things she’s not in con­trol of. So over the week­end as she was seesaw-ing with Avery, the end she was on went too high, and she said sud­denly, “Aunt Kris­ten, is this see­saw auto­matic?” We had to reas­sure her that no, Uncle John was in com­plete con­trol (ish) of every move­ment it made. The dear girl.

And she pro­nounces “banana” “bah­nah­nah” after her favorite Kip­per video! And accord­ing to her (and Kip­per, appar­ently), peo­ple mow the “grahss.” And eat “tom­ah­toes.” Too funny to hear Avery switch to her full-on Queen’s Eng­lish at that point!

Then we’re all find­ing ways to deal with the inex­plic­a­ble influx of fly­ing insects on our ter­race. Whether it’s the water­melon rind we’re leav­ing for Gary the Ground­hog, or the out-of-date pick­les we threw behind the fence for the skunk, I don’t know. Oh, side story: I came home from the gro­cery with, among other things, a jar of pick­les. “But Kris­ten,” my long-suffering hus­band objected, “we already have SO MANY pick­les.” “No,” I said, “Avery says we’re out.” Silently he went into the kitchen and brought out… THIS MANY jars of pick­les. How did that hap­pen? I guess every time I shop I think we’re out. Eeek! But I digress. My point was, there are a lot of per­haps bees, in par­tic­u­lar, fly­ing around and nei­ther Jane nor Avery likes them one bit. Why did it so crack Jill and me up to hear Jane say, “It’s too buggy; it’s not a good idea to eat out­side.” She sounded so adult! I tried, “Don’t worry, Jane, the bugs say. We won’t hurt you.” But she wasn’t buy­ing. “Bugs do not talk, Aunt Kris­ten.” “But if they did, they might say that, Jane.” “But they don’t.”

Now I see Avery and her Nonna have moved on to catch­ing min­nows in the pond, so I shall go join them before ten­nis lessons. Is there any­thing sweeter than a child and her grand­mother play­ing together? It warmed my heart so to see Avery with my mom, dis­cussing the infin­i­tes­i­mally tiny paper doll clothes Avery was design­ing and cut­ting out at the birth­day party on Sun­day. There seems to be a spe­cial brand of patience that comes with the gen­er­a­tion gap. Or more likely, Avery’s two grand­moth­ers are unusu­ally nice peo­ple. Or maybe it’s grand­par­ents in gen­eral: my sweet dad think­ing of teach­ing her to play crib­bage so he can send her a set for her birth­day, John’s dad spe­cially pack­ing a bag of But­terfin­gers to give her for her treat drawer. I feel incred­i­bly lucky to have had all four of them with us this summer.

Enough sap­pi­ness: min­nows beckon. Really, Jane, they DO.

Well, even after as sen­ti­men­tal, won­der­ful and emo­tional day as I’ve had today, I do think I can tell peo­ple from salad. But telling peo­ple you’re blood-related to from peo­ple you just WISH you were related to… that’s another story.

It started this morn­ing with the arrival of Alyssa and Annabelle and Elliot. I know I have to stop whing­ing about how much I miss Alyssa when I’m in Lon­don, because I am very lucky to have such staunch friends as I have there. Lord knows, in the early days I didn’t know if I ever would have friends. But even so, noth­ing stops me from miss­ing the sort of sis­terly (only we never bicker, as my sis­ter and I used to when I was a nasty pre-teen) fun of a day with my old friend. And I am the great­est pos­si­ble fan of her chil­dren, the ginger-sprouted Elliot, and Annabelle, the raven-haired show tunes maven. They are much more like cousins to Avery than mere friends, bat­tling over how to include Elliot in games that, on the sur­face, are more suited to two girls than to two girls plus their mascot.

We had Katz Deli sand­wiches! This has become a tra­di­tion for our sum­mer reunions at Red Gate Farm (in my book, a good thing has to hap­pen only once in order to become a cher­ished tra­di­tion: life’s too short to make things like that fer­ment, or mature or what­ever. Go for it.). Then it was a long gos­sip ses­sion in the sun until John tore him­self reluc­tantly away to pick up his folks at the air­port. I have to share Alyssa with my hus­band, which can be tedious except that it’s so nice. Then we girls and Elliot were off to the pool in the bril­liant, per­fect after­noon sun­shine, sim­ply a glo­ri­ous day more like June than August.

By the time we returned, it was time for them to go back to Man­hat­tan. Hugs all around, with plans to see each other at Christ­mas­time up here, although noth­ing will EVER top last year’s Christ­mas in Lon­don together. Is that what being middle-aged means, hav­ing so much of your hap­pi­ness bound up in remem­ber­ing things? Not a bad bar­gain, if so. As always, a ter­rific wrench to feel the last hug. If only I could take her back in my pocket.

But I had lit­tle time to feel sorry for myself, because the phone rang and it was John say­ing he and his par­ents were half an hour away! Oh my. A rush to create:

The Per­fect Salad

This with bar­be­cued Cor­nish game hens, and some heav­enly scal­loped corn, was quite a nice sum­mer meal.

It’s almost a sur­feit of delights to have so much fam­ily around so close together. I just barely got used to hav­ing had my beloved par­ents and brother here over the week­end, and whoops: here’s my husband’s fam­ily too. How I wish we could see them all, all year round. But the time-honored cus­tom of see­ing a car pull up con­tain­ing John’s par­ents, and hol­ler­ing like crazy, was hon­ored tonight, in the approach­ing twi­light, and then John and his dad walked the prop­erty, mak­ing sure it was all still there, and Avery and her grand­mother trailed around mak­ing per­fume and vis­it­ing the fairies, and I played around in the kitchen mak­ing sure we’d have some­thing to eat, watch­ing them all through the tiny-paned win­dows of our old farm­house, think­ing how unbe­liev­ably won­der­ful it was. To have fam­ily around. Another August at Red Gate Farm, another visit. Top THAT.

But John’s dad STILL beat us at Aggra­va­tion, no mat­ter how fond we were feel­ing of him! Ah well, the visit is young…

Things are hot­ting up here with fam­ily, let me tell you. John’s par­ents arrive tomor­row evening, after Alyssa’s fam­ily is here for the day, and a day after my whole fam­ily was here for my mummy’s birth­day. Got that? Just take a look at these grand­daugh­ter faces. What could be a bet­ter present (com­plete with yel­low rib­bon from the bal­loons dec­o­rat­ing the seesaw)?

It was one of the best days EVER here at Red Gate Farm, long sunny hours spent chat­ting, some of us in the kitchen cre­at­ing meat­balls, some of us on the ter­race cre­at­ing paper dolls, some on the see­saw shout­ing, “not so high, Uncle John!”, and some using the tram­po­line as a most unex­pected lounge lizard venue… yel­low bal­loons every­where (my mother’s favorite color), blue, BLUE skies, green lawns, red barns, glasses of ice-filled pink lemon­ade, gos­sip and four-parted con­ver­sa­tions about all the same top­ics, and games of high-stakes Aggra­va­tion (New York rules!). The per­fect day. More on that later, but suf­fice it to say: “Happy Birth­day, Mona.” We love you.

Let’s see. Both Avery and I have book sug­ges­tions for you. And I must say that these par­tic­u­lar choices quite beau­ti­fully under­line the com­plex, dare I say fas­ci­nat­ing breadth of our per­son­al­i­ties. Let me explain.

I was shop­ping at KMart for, I think, dishes to put left­overs in, or maybe a sprin­kler. Or wasp and hor­net hex juice. In any case, I saun­tered past the book sec­tion (who knew KMart had a book sec­tion? maybe Sears insisted), and this book cover popped out at me. I do in fact judge a book by, well you know. As does Avery, and nei­ther of us apol­o­gizes for it. Life is too short either to read a book whose cover does not appeal to you, or to take your­self to task for these lit­tle foibles. In any case, “Whistling in the Dark” is a won­der­ful novel. It reads like a mem­oir, in a major way, as did one of my all-time favorites, A Girl Named Zippy. Inter­est­ingly, both are accounts of grow­ing up in the Mid­west, and I feel seri­ously deprived that my child­hood spent in much the same local­ity was not, appar­ently, suf­fi­ciently messed up to pro­vide me fod­der for a read­able mem­oir, just enough to send me to the odd (believe me, very much so) ther­a­pist in this or that decade of my life.

No, these ladies, Les­ley Kagan and Haven Kim­mel, par­lay their bizarre and some­times heart­break­ing child­hood expe­ri­ences into beau­ti­fully detailed anec­dotes about sib­ling rela­tion­ships, acutely observed parental dis­tress and may­hem, and hilar­i­ously real dia­logue. Kagan’s account (billed as a novel, and fair enough, maybe she changed all the names, but it still sounds very real) is at times quite dark and sin­is­ter (for this rea­son I wouldn’t rec­om­mend it for even pre­co­cious chil­dren inter­ested in their par­ents’ upbring­ings), but lump-in-the-throat touch­ing, as well, and very, very funny. You will enjoy it, espe­cially if you have chil­dren or ever were a child your­self. These are, I feel, the book’s nat­ural audi­ences. Buy two copies and give one to your sis­ter. Except, oops, I didn’t buy an extra to give to my per­fectly deserv­ing sis­ter. I still can.

Then, yes­ter­day found me unex­pect­edly at the most charm­ing book­store I think I’ve ever encoun­tered. We were dri­ving through dis­mal, cold and raw rain toward my sister’s house in West Hart­ford, Con­necti­cut, to see my par­ents and brother who have flown in for my mummy’s birth­day tomor­row, when the lighted win­dows of a book­store beck­oned out of the gray­ness. Brick Walk Books and Fine Art (be patient with this link, as it seems to be only to the inte­gral art gallery, but it pro­vides all the right con­tact info), a lit­tle slip of a shop in a row of undis­tin­guished other shops, with lovely small paint­ings in the win­dow. Avery and I crept in while John tried to find a place to buy a throw­away watch, his real watch hav­ing died in the night. And there we found, well, count­less things we wanted. Cru­elly, the shop leads with its children’s sec­tion, so I’m afraid we were suck­ers from the very start. Many first edi­tions, and lots of other old but pris­tine edi­tions, finely illus­trated, and most right around $25, which is a lot of money until you con­sider that a per­fectly for­get­table hard­cover book from KMart will run you nearly $28 and for what? Some­thing you’ll read once and then never think of again. But a fine copy of “Bed­Knob and Broom­stick”? That is worth tak­ing home.

I myself fell vic­tim to a first-edition of my new absolute favorite book: Eat­ing Together: Rec­ol­lec­tions and Recipes, by Lil­lian Hell­man and Peter Feible­man. Oh, my, it is end­lessly won­der­ful. All my favorite things in a book: there’s mem­ory and anec­dote from what was undoubt­edly a fas­ci­nat­ing life (liv­ing with Dashiell Ham­mett can­not have been pleas­ant, but it was cer­tainly not bor­ing), food descrip­tions and recipes, and a lit­tle heart-tugging friend­ship along the way. The book clev­erly chron­i­cles Hellman’s friend­ship with this much-younger man, through accounts of their bick­er­ing over food, recipes, din­ner par­ties and poten­tial guests (like Mike Nichols, Dorothy Parker or Leonard Bern­stein, to name a few). And won­der­ful recipes. You’ll love it. It reminds me of all my favorite food writ­ers: Lau­rie Col­win, Vir­ginia Rich, Ruth Reichl, Nigel Slater, and the incom­pa­ra­ble Eliz­a­beth Ryan and her Lord Peter Wim­sey Cook­book. It doesn’t get ANY bet­ter than that.

The book­store itself is just a joy, and I wish there were more peo­ple in the world like its pro­pri­etor, Kevin G. Rita. Doing what he loves best in the world, I’d bet, sequestered but by no means lim­ited by his desk over­flow­ing with the tools of his trade, eager to get to know his cus­tomers, full of enthu­si­asm for his wares. He even took down a French edi­tion of “Rebecca”, opened its pre­sen­ta­tion box, showed me all its delights, and… had no idea how much it might cost! Just wanted to share the joy. What a lovely man, and a gor­geous shop. He does a mean inter­net busi­ness, too, so get in touch with all your wishes.

Avery’s also hugely enjoy­ing Oscar Wilde’s Epi­grams, addicted as she is to “The Impor­tance of Being Earnest.” Kevin was so enchanted by this choice that he gave it to her! “My daugh­ter, Phoebe, who’s about your age, finds books to be… let’s see, what was her exact descrip­tion, LAME. It breaks my heart.” Phoebe has, how­ever, her own sec­tion of the book­store, all her own choices, for which she gets the pro­ceeds. “Oh,” I said, “then she does care, a lit­tle,” and he said, “Oh, no, it’s purely the cap­i­tal­ist in her.”

Then, when I went back to the Brick Walk Book­store this morn­ing to tell Kevin how happy we were with our acqui­si­tions, he was so happy that he said, “Wasn’t there some­thing else your daugh­ter was look­ing at? Such a self-possessed young lady… Yes, here it is! I have to love a girl who reads both Wilde and Trol­lope.” And out came an ele­gant leather-bound copy of “The Way We Live Now,” which Avery got hooked on after watch­ing the fab­u­lous minis­eries on the BBC star­ring, of course, my crush Matthew Mac­fadyen.

Then Avery would tell you that every­one needs to read Cor­nelia and the Auda­cious Escapades of the Som­er­set Sis­ters, by Les­ley M.M. Blume, a very touch­ing account of a girl about Avery’s age (nearly 11) who pro­tects her­self from her famous pianist mother and their unhappy home life by using the most dif­fi­cult words she can find. Until, that is, she meets her new next-door neigh­bor, an elderly lady who takes Cor­nelia in and enter­tains and com­forts her with anec­dotes from her unbe­liev­ably glam­orous past. It’s by turns funny, edu­ca­tional (lots of long words!) and sad. Avery espe­cially enjoyed the accounts of adven­tures in Paris and Morocco, as we’ve trav­eled to both in the last year, plus of course there’s some action in Lon­don which is our back­yard dur­ing the school year.

Well, that’s what we’ve been read­ing. Maybe it will keep you all out of trou­ble for what remains of this glo­ri­ous summer.

And food, can I tell you? For some rea­son we’ve been on a seafood kick. Lemon sole sauteed in plenty of but­ter, noth­ing wrong with that. My favorite scal­lops in pars­ley and gar­lic? Love it. But then there’s the peren­nial favorite: steamed lob­ster. From a quirky, unappealing-looking fish truck plonked uncer­e­mo­ni­ously down in a park­ing lot on Wood­bury, up the road, descended from Maine every Thurs­day. I’m not mak­ing this up. Give him a try, should you be in Woodbury.

Then, one sad after­noon came with the Maine guy ran out of lob­ster by the time we got there, but never mind, he had salmon.

Then, night before last I prac­ti­cally blew our heads off with a spicy shrimp dish that I’ve told you about before (be patient and scroll down! some­day I’ll orga­nize these recipes, I promise). But some­how, this time, the only chili sauce I had in my fridge was UBER hot! We could hardly eat it. But we man­aged to put away nearly a pound of the lit­tle guys. I’d highly rec­om­mend the sauce, from Huy Fong, if you can bear to blow your lit­tle spicy mind.

Well, other than eat­ing and read­ing, we’ve been play­ing ten­nis (I don’t know why I have missed ten­nis until now! I love it), Avery’s found a new rid­ing instruc­tor, Deb who runs Bounc­ing Pony Farm out of nearby Red Horse Sta­bles in South­bury, and my fam­ily have arrived! Tomorrow’s the big birth­day party for my mum, so stayed tuned. Watch this space for all party reports! But in the mean­time, I’ll get my brother in law to give me the fab­u­lous recipes he cooked for us last night: parme­san chicken and tomato risotto. Yum yum… You’ll have them when I do.

We had a lovely power out­age tonight: what a nice inter­val to find our­selves unable to watch the final episode of what­ever scary real­ity tele­vi­sion com­pe­ti­tion Avery’s got attached to since we got back to Amer­ica… absolutely won­der­ful to have no recourse but to light every can­dle we could find, includ­ing this lovely lamp that I light (and its twin on the next chest of draw­ers) every night, and watch its rays reflect on the dormer ceil­ing of our lit­tle farm­house. How cozy is that?

That plus light­ing the can­dles in the four front win­dows (two in the par­lor, one in the entry hall, and one in the guest room) for the across-the-road ben­e­fit of Anne and David… I adore that tra­di­tion, every evening. I often walk through the rooms down­stairs in the evening, after my early-bird child and hus­band have gone to sleep, and think what a peace­ful place it is to be: no wor­ries, no bad mem­o­ries, only good feel­ings and a pre­vail­ing sense that a lot has hap­pened here in the past 200+ years that puts most of our expe­ri­ences into perspective.

We fin­ished the fence and gate today! I painted the gate in between “Days of Our Lives” and “Gen­eral Hos­pi­tal,” and Avery kindly kept me com­pany by read­ing her Nancy Drews from the library on the front step, between the gera­ni­ums and the bego­nias, while John napped upstairs. Then, while we were at the pool, John painted the last four feet of the fence. So when we returned, EVERY­THING was per­fect, and fin­ished. So lovely.

Tomor­row will see us scrap­ing and paint­ing the teeter-totter! How excit­ing is our life here… Exactly what the doc­tor ordered for the August before school starts up again in Lon­don, and everyone’s blood pres­sure goes straight back up. My mother, father and brother will be here on Fri­day, and I can bask in the fun of fam­ily, sum­mer, and fun.