Merry Christ­mas! From Red Gate Farm.

It’s hard to believe we’ve been here five whole days, it’s been a blur. But a nice blur, lighted by can­dles and fire­light, enlivened by cold winds and washed down by oys­ter stew. And sprin­kled with nearly all the fam­ily we have, all in one place. It’s been lovely.

We arrived late Fri­day night to the usual mir­a­cle of the change in sea­sons when our backs were turned. It’s really odd to leave our cozy farm­house in early Sep­tem­ber, lay­ing down our ten­nis rack­ets, watch­ing the goldfinches dart in and out of the still-green oak leaves, chip­munks skit­ter­ing around in the green grass, and to return three and a half months later to… snow! A thick foot-deep blan­ket of per­fect white stuff stretch­ing out over the mead­ows. And no leaves on the trees! We can see from our bath­room win­dow upstairs straight across the road and to Anne and David’s frozen pond, a view that’s blocked by thick lilac bushes in sum­mer. And we can see our next-door neigh­bors across the meadow, a house that’s hid­den by enor­mous stands of oaks and birches in July and August. The pear tree full of still-hard fruit when we left? Bare, branches shin­ing in the full moon­light. Crazy!

But the house was far from neglected these months. Rol­lie the farmer had kindly shov­eled the dri­ve­way for us. Too funny: on the plane over, John laughed and said, “You know what, I had the fun­ni­est dream last night: that Rol­lie came and instead of shov­el­ing the snow, he just hacked it away with a giant back­hoe and took the lawn with it.” And when we woke up Sat­ur­day morn­ing, John laughed again, and said rue­fully, “A dream come true!” Not quite the whole lawn, but it was a bit of a blood­bath. Never mind, the kind­ness itself is worth the whole price of admis­sion. And Anne and David had left a bowl of clemen­tines (spe­cially for John’s par­ents, who were delayed a cou­ple of days unfor­tu­nately), and a fridge full of bread, soup, juice, eggs. And our beloved friend Olimpia saved our lives with a bas­ket of Eng­lish muffins, cran­berry bread and jam. Great friends, all.

More soon, but we are all cozy and happy this Box­ing Day. How’s London?

I remem­ber last year at this time I felt that the world was spin­ning much too fast. It must be to do with the age of my child, and there­fore the myr­iad activ­i­ties that spread their ten­ta­cles into our adult lives, which with­out her would involve mostly laun­dry, scoop­ing the lit­ter­box and blog­ging. Suf­fice to say that life with an 11-year-old with many diverse inter­ests fills up very quickly indeed. It’s nearly all good, it’s just… too much! Tonight we are all exhausted, and pack­ing still beck­ons. Tomor­row we go to Con­necti­cut for Christ­mas! But first, let me tell you about the last few crazy days. Some of it might be stuff you’d want to do in Lon­don next hol­i­day sea­son, but mostly I want to record it all in hopes that next year I’ll remem­ber how insane every­thing was and SLOW DOWN. My bet is, how­ever, on an exact repeat in 2008.

Well, after my fab­u­lous encounter with Matthew on Mon­day, the week pro­gressed to morn­ing rehearsals at All Souls church for the after­noon carol ser­vice. I have to say “ser­vice,” because this aus­tere terms explains why we can’t CLAP which I find ter­ri­ble. Espe­cially for the lit­tle lit­tles, who seem so puz­zled at the end of their per­for­mances to face… silence! The rehearsal went very smoothly with applause (a rehearsal!) from Mrs D and Miss C, and we felt very good about it! Then some Christ­mas shop­ping to fill in the hour or so between rehearsal and our lunch together. And a tip for you all? Do NOT go to the St George’s Hotel restau­rant for lunch! Ever. It is, as was reputed, the most gor­geous view of what I sup­pose you’d call The Greater Maryle­bone Met­ro­pol­i­tan Area, you could see for miles, but the scal­lops were, in a word, ined­i­ble, and other ladies’ tomato soup looked com­pletely for­get­table. Sorry, but stan­dards are standards.

Thence to the per­for­mance, and the entire con­cert was just gor­geous. From the tiny lit­tles barely able to squeak out “It’s a Baby,” to the senior choir and vio­lin­ists so impres­sive, and our own moth­ers’ song, it was very touch­ing and lovely. Lots of tis­sues needed on all sides. Finally out, to the school for every­one to gather together back­packs, change clothes, and off with Jamie and her mother, plus Anna and Ellie, to the Hyde Park Win­ter Won­der­land!

Now, as bit­ter cold as it was, I’d def­i­nitely go back. A beau­ti­ful sort of Lon­don Eye fer­ris wheel thingy (too scary for me, but John said it was gor­geous), a very nice carousel, a cou­ple of mildly scary rides and a nice Ger­man mar­ket with orna­ments and other stock­ing stuffers. But COLD! And we could not get tick­ets for the skat­ing rink, but from the report from on high, it was much too crowded for real skat­ing any­way. A word to the wise.

The next day dawned so early! Avery off to the last half day of school, and I for some last-minute Christ­mas shop­ping, then pick­ing her up and dash­ing off to lunch at the beloved Man­darin Kitchen with Avery’s school friend Sophia and her mother Susan. Deli­cious, and I tried to keep my mind from the fact that I was hav­ing din­ner… there! That night. A request from Becky’s hus­band Mark. From lunch to the skat­ing rink at Queensway to watch a truly needle-in-the-eyeball per­for­mance of “Sleep­ing Beauty,” per­formed by that sad­dest of ath­letes: the middle-aged, aver­age skater. I just wouldn’t! I learned what I love about skat­ing: watch­ing my child skate, or mind-boggling pro­fes­sion­als. No one in between, sorry! But the sec­ond half (one and a half hours into it, eergh, my feet have never been so cold) was much bet­ter: very short ren­di­tions of pop­u­lar songs by lots of dif­fer­ent skaters, very impres­sive and fun to watch. And most impor­tant, inspi­ra­tional to the girls. Still, WAS I glad when it came to an end! We raced home to get ready to drop Avery at Anna’s and go out to din­ner with her par­ents, and again a sim­ply lovely evening. Bril­liant con­ver­sa­tion about all the places they have lived, all the places we have lived, vis­ited, etc. And another very late night!

Up this morn­ing to dis­cuss all this, and then get ready for… the Olympia Horse Show! I remem­bered to pack enough anti­his­t­a­mines to get me through, and the show-jumping was stu­pen­dous. The crowds at the shop­ping! The Shet­land Pony races were adorable, the dog agility hilar­i­ous, and the Cos­sacks very impres­sive. By the time Avery and Becky’s girls had given their all to the char­ity raf­fle and come away with sev­eral com­pletely unnec­es­sary stuffed ponies, and the Christ­mas finale had taken place, the noise level was unbe­liev­able. We came home in a sort of daze of fun, admi­ra­tion, and also a grow­ing sense of scratch­i­ness. Time for some relax­ation. And I can report a culi­nary exper­i­ment gone very, very right. Give it a try.

Roast Chicken With­out You
(serves four with soup leftovers)

1 large roast­ing chicken, prefer­ably organic
1 tsp each: dried oregano, basil and thyme leaves
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 lemon, halved
3 tbsps butter

Place your chicken on a sheet of tin­foil in a large bak­ing dish. Sprin­kle with herbs, pour wine and stock around, stuff with lemon and smear with but­ter. Place in a 100 degree centi­grade (280 degrees fahren­heit) oven and GO AWAY. Leave it for SIX HOURS. Even more, prob­a­bly. Come home, baste it. Pour the juices into a gravy sep­a­ra­tor, whisk a dust­ing of flour into the juices in a skil­let and add a table­spoon of cream. Heat through. Serve the sliced roast chicken with mashed pota­toes and red pep­pers that you’ve cooked down in olive oil until they’re caramel-y. So comforting.

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Well, we’re packed. We’re still irri­ta­ble, a bit, which I put down to too much activ­ity, all of it won­der­ful, but… too much. Time for a good night’s sleep, travel tomor­row, and arrival at the bliss that is Red Gate Farm. Merry Christ­mas everyone!

Well, the pace of life is ratch­et­ing up as it does dur­ing this fes­tive, con­fus­ing, pres­suris­ing and lovely sea­son! Tacy has cho­sen her own inim­itable way to han­dle the stress: she’s going visiting.

The first lit­tle widen­ing of her tiny life was around Avery’s birth­day when we gave Avery the horse jumps for the gar­den. We opened the gar­den door to take them out, and before we knew it, Tacy was out and about. I felt ner­vous about it at first because of her no-front claws sit­u­a­tion, and her gen­eral air of adorable naivete, but hey, you only live once. Or nine times. So out she went, and then we began leav­ing our bed­room win­dow open and she and Hermione, the only two svelte enough to fit, spend many happy hours com­ing in and out.

Then one day in Novem­ber our neigh­bors Janet and John knocked on our door, and said, “Do you know that Tacy comes to visit us?” Appar­ently one family’s devo­tion is not enough. So she shows up at their sit­ting room win­dow, and if they’re in view, they open it, and she washes her lit­tle feet on the hand towel I can see in their win­dow sill, and spends a lit­tle time being pet­ted by other peo­ple. Well, now it’s got so cold that we can’t just leave the win­dow open, so if I see their light on, and one of them in the win­dow, I open ours and out she goes like a flash. Then I look over at their win­dows and there is Janet or John, open­ing up, and in she goes. One night it got quite late and I was con­cerned, see­ing no Tacy facey at my win­dow to be let in. But at the stroke of 11, I heard their win­dow scrape open, and there she was. When I saw Janet the next day she said in all earnest­ness, “Does Tacy have a cur­few? I thought 11 was all right.” And on Sun­day she came home at 10. “Well,” I rea­soned, “It’s a school night.”

The rest of us do not find the hol­i­day sea­son quite so escapable. It’s all lovely in and of itself. It’s the aggre­gate that gets to me! The sched­ul­ing, and deci­sions about what gift is appro­pri­ate for a teacher who has Avery part of the day but not every day, singing rehearsals, clean uni­forms, trans­port, mak­ing sure every­one eats prop­erly, the insis­tence of SOME CAT of sleep­ing on all the Christ­mas cards that arrive in the post. I line them up nicely on the lit­tle Chi­nese chest, and next minute they’re flat under a cat.

We dropped in one evening at the lovely, if neglected and falling down, Vic­to­rian St Mark’s Church here in May­fair, and heard an enthu­si­as­tic and inspi­ra­tion rather Bap­tist style of Christ­mas car­ols, lots of hand wav­ing and “Yea, Lord,” very heart­warm­ing. And the rev­erend (or what­ever the proper term is) gave a short speech express­ing the congregation’s wish that the church remain a place of wor­ship, and not a nail salon. A lit­tle research after­wards revealed the sad future of the build­ing itself, Grade I listed but lack­ing a donor to keep it up as a reli­gious insti­tu­tion. And in this real-estate obsessed town, of course some­one will snap it up and turn it into lux­ury con­do­mini­ums. I have to say I saw a look of cun­ning and avarice on my own husband’s coun­te­nance. “Grade I listed, you say?” But it was a sweet evening.

In the midst of all the play­dates, present wrap­ping, shop­ping, dili­gent home­work efforts and trips to and from the sta­ble, I have become addicted to a char­i­ta­ble web­site called FreeRice. I have to warn you: do not go there if you have any­thing press­ing to do in the next hour or so. Hour! I’ve spent more than that to reach level 50 (it took ages! and then I was obsessed with get­ting back). Here’s how it works. It’s a vocab­u­lary quiz, and for every word you get right, the site donates 20 grains of rice to feed the hun­gry. It’s all non-profit and paid for by the adver­tis­ers who get seen every time you click and get a new screen. Go on, try it when you’ve been online for 2 hours try­ing to order a t-shirt for your fourth cousin once removed and you can’t take e-commerce for anther moment.

And when you need to feed your own fam­ily but don’t have a ton of time of money to spare, try this inex­pen­sive, fool­proof and deli­cious repast, per­fect with some mashed pota­toes and steamed broc­coli for a com­fort dinner.

Pork Ten­der­loin in Milk
(serves 4)

1 pork ten­der­loin
2 sprigs rose­mary
2 small onions, quar­tered
6 cloves gar­lic, peeled and squished slightly
2 cups whole milk
salt and pepper

Now line a 9x13 dish with alu­minium foil and lay the rose­mary in the cen­ter. Then lay the ten­der­loin across it, sur­round with the onions and gar­lic, and pour over the milk. Salt and pep­per, and roast in the oven at 425 degrees for 35–40 min­utes, depend on how done you like it. Roasted, that’s all it takes.

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I know it sounds crazy, but it’s a clas­sic Ital­ian prepa­ra­tion. And while we’re on the comfort-food/cold night culi­nary theme, how about:

Meat­balls Stroganoff with White Wine and Fresh Thyme
(serves 8)

1 pound each: ground lamb, ground pork
4 tbsps but­ter
2 tbsps flour
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 white onion, minced
1 pound white mush­rooms (or fancy if you like), chopped
1 cup white wine
2 cups beef stock
2 cups sour cream (or creme fraiche, or a mix­ture as I used)
1 tsp fresh thyme, chopped
salt and pepper

Mix your meats and form into 2-inch balls, or what­ever size you like. Place on a plate and set aside.

In a large, heavy saucepan, melt the but­ter and add the flour. This is an ordi­nary roux, for thick­en­ing, so cook it but don’t burn it, until it’s golden and bub­bling. Now add the gar­lic, onions and mush­rooms and stir until they’re all mixed up in the roux. Add the white wine and stand back! Lower the heat and stir, then add the beef stock, and stir until thick. Add the sour cream, thyme, salt and pep­per. Now gen­tly drop the meat­balls, in a close sin­gle layer, into the sauce. Cover lightly, turn down the heat and sim­mer for 25 min­utes. You can stir and turn them occasionally.

Serve with but­tered noo­dles and steamed car­rots. Lovely.

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Well, I’m off to pick up some last-minute Christ­mas gifts for Avery, then the final school pickup of the term (yippee! no more alarm until Jan­u­ary), then lunch with a cou­ple of friends from school, and to see a skat­ing per­for­mance by the instruc­tors at Avery’s rink. Is John going with us? Let’s see, his exact words were, I believe, “I would rather poke my eye­balls out with hot nee­dles.” Fair enough. I, on the other hand, will mar­tyr myself. Sigh. That’s the hol­i­day spirit.

Can I just say? I of course must leave the Maryle­bone High Street now and then, I sup­pose: to eat, sleep, see my fam­ily, such­like. But may I remind you all that it was a mere few months ago that, while on an inno­cent kitchen-supply shop­ping trip there, I saw… Matthew? And today… fate smiled on me once again. Let me explain.

In the third week of Decem­ber a mother’s thoughts turn nat­u­rally to Christ­mas shop­ping. And, as well, to rehearsals for the Form Six Mums’ per­for­mance of “The Sus­sex Carol” at tomorrow’s school Christ­mas con­cert. We moth­ers turned up at school for what I can tell you was a tear-producing, at least for me, event. To enter the gor­geous Geor­gian pro­por­tions and carved plas­ter that make up the music room, to hear the pip­ing voices of so many gulls raised in song… I almost just sat down and cried. Their lit­tle hands tug­ging at my legs as I walked by, “Mrs Cur­ran, I read with you!” from gulls who would rather die, nor­mally, than acknowl­edge they’ve ever seen me before. Miss Potts clapped for atten­tion and said sternly, “Now, gulls, I know this is very excit­ing to have your mums here, but may I ask you PLEASE not to turn around and gaze at them?”

So we sang. I recov­ered my wits. Mrs D appeared and we were all silenced. Shan­non next to me said, “We have an AUDI­ENCE.” We were pre­pared. It should all sound divine tomor­row. If I can stop weep­ing. I was able to pat Avery’s head as I walked by. Then it was onto… shopping.

Becky and I braved the wind and entered a shop that shall remain name­less for Christ­mas sur­prise pur­poses, when I looked up from a rack of adorable girls’ skirts and sweaters and I had to grab her arm. “It’s Matthew! It’s Matthew!” I shrieked in an under­tone, and she looked up. “Oh, my gosh, Kris­ten,” she was kind enough to say in com­mis­er­a­tion, since I can­not in all sin­cer­ity say that she would care, but for being with me. And, dear read­ers, let me describe his appear­ance, just so we can all pic­ture him.

VERY tall and very slen­der, with that Tom Quinn jaw we all know and love. Could his hair have been high­lighted? Spikey and short on top, but longer in back. Glasses, yes. Jeans, a jacket, not a coat although it was frigid out, and a new-looking pair of those Tom Quinn wingtip leather lace­ups we’re so famil­iar with. He gazed around, met my eye (again!) and still, I did noth­ing. Rooted to the spot! Although I had the sense to con­tinue to hold the hanger in my hand, and not sim­ply drop to the floor. The shop wasn’t crowded and every­thing was so charm­ing that I can­not imag­ine why he didn’t stay to shop (what with a lit­tle girl of his own! but to each his own), and I swear I did noth­ing embar­rass­ing to drive him away. Still, it made me won­der greatly what it is that dri­ves him to shop in MY high street! Too, too thrilling.

Well, I have a sim­ply divine recipe for meat­balls stroganoff to tell you about, but that will have to wait until tomor­row. Yes, my dears, I did take time off from con­tem­plat­ing my amaz­ing luck to cook and eat and clear up after din­ner. Such things wait for no… Matthew. But it was LOVELY. Happy Holidays!

Well, it’s offi­cial: my last hope of remain­ing above the fray in this “11+ exam” insan­ity has been lost like a sock in the dryer. I had just been con­grat­u­lat­ing myself mildly on get­ting all the paper­work for all six schools on on time (just) and was plan­ning to stop think­ing about it all until the first exam in Jan­u­ary, and telling myself how lucky we are to be able to afford a fancy school, when in the post came… an invi­ta­tion to an inter­view at the top school. Now, we have no idea whether this is an indi­ca­tion of any­thing excit­ing (like a clan­des­tine tele­phone call between our head­mistress and the other?), or if every sin­gle appli­cant gets invited. In the absence of real data, we decided to err on the side of get­ting excited. Then in the post yes­ter­day came two more invi­ta­tions to inter­views. And we know for cer­tain that one fur­ther school doesn’t invite appli­cants for inter­views until after the exam, but that still leaves two more excit­ing and scary envelopes to anticipate.

And of course each invi­ta­tion requires a tele­phone call AND a fur­ther­ing of the invi­ta­tion back to the school to con­firm that yes, she’s com­ing on that day. So in fact the mad­ness con­tin­ues. Lis­ten to the child’s sched­ule so far in Jan­u­ary: school starts up again Jan­u­ary 8. Then:

Jan­u­ary 11: exam #1
Jan­u­ary 12: inter­view #1
Jan­u­ary 15: inter­view #2
Jan­u­ary 18: exam #2
Jan­u­ary 21: inter­view #3
Jan­u­ary 25: exam #3

Will she still be stand­ing by Groundhog’s Day? Will any of us? We lay in the pre-school cud­dle this morn­ing and dis­cussed it all in the bleak Decem­ber light, with cats crawl­ing all over try­ing to get to the radi­a­tor and press their faces against it. Sur­rounded by all her horsey rosettes that hang from the rib­bon around her bed­posts, it seemed like the world was a cosy enough place to pro­tect her from all the pres­sure and com­pe­ti­tion that will be her life in a month’s time, but who knows. And me? I def­i­nitely hit a secret panic but­ton and have been a lit­tle nervy ever since.

What really scares me is not that she won’t get into a good school, or two good schools, but that she WILL. And then every­thing will change. I hate change! I had a really vivid dream this morn­ing about being back at her old school in New York, where we were so extremely happy, but where she was receiv­ing at best a lack­lus­tre edu­ca­tion. But I was head of the Book Fair! And on the Win­ter Fair com­mit­tee, and the Taste of Tribeca com­mit­tee, and the Auc­tion com­mit­tee. I prac­ti­cally lived at school. Saw Avery nearly every day dur­ing school hours! And that was, if not quite the norm, cer­tainly a com­mon life for a Tribeca mother to live. We all lived at the school.

So in my dream the New York school was relo­cated to Sloane Square, but we were all still Amer­i­can. There were par­ents in my dream who I haven’t thought of more than twice since we moved, but who were life­like to the touch as I slept, and we were all gos­sip­ing and keep­ing tabs on our children’s activ­i­ties. And the amaz­ing thing when I awoke was this: I feel nearly as at home now in our new school. Cer­tainly I don’t live there. But then, no one does. There just isn’t the same level of parental involve­ment in an Eng­lish school as there is in Amer­i­can schools, although I am com­par­ing apples to oranges a bit: what if she had gone to a fee-paying school in Amer­ica? Maybe they are as hands-off with par­ents as our school is, and yet our school con­sid­ers itself to be very wel­com­ing to par­ents, unusu­ally so. It’s just a dif­fer­ent level of expec­ta­tion, and I can’t help but think that it has some­thing to do with money. Our New York school wouldn’t have an art pro­gram with­out the Win­ter Fair to raise the money for it. The Silent Auc­tion paid for the librar­ian. At Avery’s school now, all fund-raising efforts go to the Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Well, in any case I’m sure my dream was pre­cip­i­tated by my impromptu meet­ing yes­ter­day with Avery’s head­mistress, she hav­ing caught me as I went upstairs to be read to by my Form Three gulls. “Don’t leave, Kris­ten, with­out com­ing to see me about a date for your lec­ture!” This announce­ment gave me but­ter­flies. What on earth made me think last sum­mer that I was any kind of expert on lit­er­acy? When Mrs D invited me to speak this upcom­ing spring on the sub­ject of read­ing aloud and children’s lit­er­acy, why did I accept? What on earth do I know, other than some hor­ri­bly trite things like “it will bring you closer to your child,” or “it will help your dyslexic hus­band over­come his fear of the writ­ten word”? Because the lat­ter is absolutely true, and maybe that’s enough to begin the lecture.

In any case, after all my chil­dren had dili­gently read aloud to me from their var­i­ous lit­tle books in their pip­ing voices, I headed down to Mrs D’s office to talk about my lec­ture. But although our com­ments on read­ing aloud flew fast and furi­ous, what warmed my heart most was her absolute love for the chil­dren of King’s Col­lege. She knows Avery like the back of her hand, bet­ter than we do as far as her life as a stu­dent goes, and every anec­dote and obser­va­tion came with a fond, wise smile. And her irre­place­able Eng­lish expres­sions! She is the only per­son I have ever heard actu­ally utter the words, “but what really creased me up…” about some­thing that made her smile! And “going after these exams like billy-o,” and say­ing that when some­thing wor­ries her, “and it occa­sion­ally does, Kris­ten!” she reaches for… Mal­ory Tow­ers! Com­fort read­ing for the head­mistress set!

I just wanted to leap across the desk and hug her. How lucky we have been to have her in our lives. I’m grate­ful, in a cow­ardly way, that we’re leav­ing when she retires. King’s Col­lege with­out her is unthink­able. At last I stood up to go, and saw the Christ­mas card from a for­mer school fam­ily whose elder daugh­ter is now gravely ill, and we talked for a moment about the fam­ily, our mem­o­ries of them, the fright­en­ing prog­no­sis. And then she did hug me. I’ve never cried in a head­mistress’ office before, but as she did as well, it seemed all right. “Right, that’s enough of that, then, onward and upward!” she sniffed, and walked me to the door. What a lady.

Let’s see, what else are we up to? We’ve been dec­o­rat­ing Christ­mas cards, and it’s really embar­rass­ing when your child pats you on the hand and says, “Your ivy is get­ting much bet­ter, Mummy! Good on you! You’re mak­ing great progress.” Clearly she has been tak­ing note of the Eng­lish meth­ods of encour­ag­ing back­ward pupils. She is an amaz­ingly con­fi­dent artist, and angels, bells, trum­pets bear­ing tapes­tries, and snowflakes of every descrip­tion flowed from her metal­lic pens. “The good thing about snowflakes is that no two are exactly alike, so it’s all right if yours are a bit… unpredictable!”

Do you by any chance need a nice hol­i­day dip? I must pass along a quin­tes­sen­tially American-tasting con­coc­tion kindly pro­vided by my dear friend Shan­non, one of the Form Six Mums’ Choir (that just makes me laugh), who made it for us to tuck into after our choir prac­tice on Mon­day. It’s sim­ple, sweet, and you dip apples into it, so it’s even good for you.

Shannon’s Pump­kin Dip

3/4 cup light cream cheese
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup canned pump­kin
2 tsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Place first three ingre­di­ents in a medium size bowl, beat until well blended. Add syrup and cin­na­mon, beat until smooth. Chill and serve with sliced apples.

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And Christ­mas shop­ping by mail! My new favorite store is Ped­lars, and I guar­an­tee you a quick look will solve your shop­ping tri­als for at least one per­son, adult or child. I have made some very sat­is­fy­ing pur­chases for cer­tain peo­ple, so give it a try yourself.

Remem­ber my scal­lops in scotch and creme fraiche, from Vincent’s recipe? Well, in my time-honoured tra­di­tion of never being able to leave a recipe alone, I made it again last night with the addi­tion of saf­fron, which made a lovely aroma and colour. It’s worth post­ing again here to save you the trou­ble of going back, but one of my goals for the New Year is to fash­ion some sort of index for all my recipes. I can call it “work­ing on my cook­book,” to jus­tify the time spent.

Scal­lops with Single-Malt Scotch, Creme Fraiche and Saf­fron
(serves 2 really hun­gry people)

16 King Scal­lops (the biggest you can get, roe on or off as you like)
4 tbsps unsalted but­ter
1 cup creme fraiche (or a mix of sin­gle and soured creams)
two shots good sin­gle malt scotch
juice of a half lemon
salt, pep­per
pinch of saf­fron threads soaked in hot water for 10 minutes

In a heavy skil­let, melt the but­ter and sim­mer until it begins to brown, then lay the scal­lops in, clock­wise so you remem­ber which went in first. Cook until the edges begin to brown on the under­side, and then turn the scal­lops over in the order in which you laid them in the skil­let. Expect major splat­ter­ing of but­ter. When the sec­ond side browns nicely, remove the scal­lops (again, in the proper order) to a wait­ing plate. This whole process should take about 4 min­utes. Do not overcook.

To the skil­let add the creme fraiche or creams. Sim­mer until the mix­ture is thick and coats the back of a spoon. Add the scotch and cook down until no more smell of alco­hol rises from the skil­let. Taste and add lime juice, then salt and pep­per and saf­fron. Return the scal­lops to the skil­let and toss in the sauce for a minute. Plate up with sauce on the bot­tom, a nice help­ing of celeriac-potato mash, top with scal­lops and serve with sauteed asparagus.

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

We had some bizarre gim­micky pur­ple aspara­gus from Marks and Sparks, but don’t bother. It stays very lit­tle pur­ple after being cooked and tastes just like reg­u­lar asparagus.

Now I’m hav­ing trou­ble with the green notion of eat­ing only things that can be had sea­son­ally in Britain (or wher­ever you live). I do get ner­vous at the proud lit­tle air­plane on some Marks and Sparks veg­etable pack­ages, since we’re meant to be AVOID­ING food with air miles, not grav­i­tat­ing toward it. And I know some cook­ery writ­ers say valiantly that no one REALLY wants straw­ber­ries in Feb­ru­ary, or aspara­gus in Decem­ber, and that if we fol­lowed our taste instincts we would all want to eat noth­ing but root veg­eta­bles in all the months end­ing in R, and then live on toma­toes and corn on the cob dur­ing the sum­mer. But in my heart of hearts, I want what I want, when I want it, and so does my fam­ily. Avery absolutely thrives on a bowl of mixed fruit every after­noon when she does her home­work. And in Decem­ber, it can’t be only apples! And any­way, don’t we need to sup­port the peo­ple who grow bananas at Christ­mas­time, for exam­ple? And what would we in Britain do for an avo­cado or lemon, I won­der? I’m get­ting cur­mud­geonly and it’s just from guilt. I’d be inter­ested in hear­ing how other real peo­ple get on in food shop­ping and cook­ing, and how we can get away with order­ing soft shell crabs from Thai­land. Help, someone!

Oh, we’ve been lov­ing the new BBC pro­gramme, “Monar­chy: The Royal Fam­ily at Work.” It’s a series of episodes watch­ing the Queen make a state visit to Wash­ing­ton (Pres­i­dent Bush actu­ally appears in a very charm­ing light, as a real per­son rather ner­vous to meet the Queen, as he is ner­vous about dis­pleas­ing his own mum!), and receiv­ing del­e­ga­tions from Com­mon­wealth nations, and hav­ing tea with Tony Blair at Bal­moral. It’s very relax­ing because it is so far removed from any nor­mal person’s way of life that the viewer can just sit back and enjoy, with no pos­si­bil­ity of empathy!

Lastly, I wanted to tell you about a cook­ing dis­as­ter I had, turned suc­cess­ful. Bless my mother in law for ris­ing to the occa­sion and com­ing up with a solu­tion. The real mes­sage here is that I should never try to bake. My friend Twiggy has a the­ory that one can­not suc­cess­fully cook any­thing that one does not look for­ward to eat­ing. The upshot of this for me is that any­thing that includes sugar will not be some­thing I want to eat, and yet every once in awhile some mater­nal instinct gone hor­ri­bly wrong forces me to reach for the bak­ing pow­der and hand blender and try to pro­duce some­thing sweet. I can rec­om­mend these cook­ies, partly because they’re not par­tic­u­larly sweet, and partly for the burn of cin­na­mon that, frankly, makes them not much of a kid-pleaser. So last week when the itch to bake hit me, I thought, “Those cook­ies are fool­proof, and if I make just half a batch, we should be able to appre­ci­ate them all. Plus cin­na­mon smells so Christ­massy.” With these mind­less jus­ti­fi­ca­tions to hand, I began.

And promptly screwed up. Because if you change two cups of sugar to one cup, and a tea­spoon of some­thing or other into a half tea­spoon, guess how two eggs should end up? Not as two eggs! But I did, put in both eggs, I mean, and imme­di­ately could see that I had turned cookie dough into… some­thing not cookie dough. Dou­ble hog­wash! I was so annoyed with myself that I just left it all on the counter, and walked out in a huff to pick Avery up at school. On the way I called my mother in law in defeat. “Just pitch it and start over,” was her first very wel­come sug­ges­tion, but then we started to feel guilty over the air miles of my organic caster sugar, so she said bravely, with the air of a sur­geon propos­ing one last, des­per­ate mea­sure to save the patient, “How about spread it in a big bak­ing dish and make brownies?”

And it worked per­fectly. They are dark, chewy, spicy and they keep for­ever (so far, over a week in an air­tight bis­cuit tin). So try it your­self, do.

Trea­cle Brown­ies with Cin­na­mon
(makes about 32 brownies)

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp each ground cloves, cin­na­mon and gin­ger
dash salt
3/4 tsp bak­ing soda

1/2 cup but­ter, soft­ened
1 3/4 cups caster sugar
1/2 cup black trea­cle
2 large eggs

Mix all dry ingre­di­ents in a medium bowl, and the but­ter and sugar in a larger bowl. Beat the but­ter and sugar till fluffy, then add the trea­cle and mix well, then the eggs (both of them!). Finally with a beater on low speed, grad­u­ally add the dry ingre­di­ents to the wet, then spread in a 9x13 glass dish that’s been sprayed with non­stick spray. Bake at 325 degrees for about 35–40 min­utes, till cen­ter is cooked through.

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

And you know what? The ARE Christmassy.

But first: a mile­stone! The first evening that my fam­ily have taken more than 20 min­utes to eat din­ner. I am sorry to say that I do take these things into account now and then, espe­cially when the time and effort put in are SO out of pro­por­tion to the length of time spent chew­ing and swal­low­ing. I’m pleased to say that this evening’s exam­ple was a healthy 2:1. It was easy, every­one loved every­thing, and if I was still left with the dishes while Avery and John trot­ted down to catch “Top Gear,” at least that meant I didn’t have to watch. And the evening’s fare, brill? My first choice was and always is lemon sole, but there wasn’t any left. And some gor­geous and mys­te­ri­ous European-looking man was saun­ter­ing away from Fish­Works as I approached and was iden­ti­fied as the fel­low who grabbed the last Dover sole. So brill was sug­gested, and not a bad thing INDEED.

Brill with But­ter
(serves 4)

2 whole brill fish, fil­leted and skinned (I’m squea­mish) by your fish­mon­ger
4 tbsps but­ter
sprin­kle sea salt

First of all, go over your fish from the fish­mon­ger. Much as I love Fish­Works, they’re not as metic­u­lous as I am. For one thing, in my expe­ri­ence fish­mon­gers believe you should buy and go home with the WHOLE fish. Well, I don’t do whole fish. Except at the restau­rant itself where it’s been cooked by some­one else and all I have to do is gal­lantly eat one half then lift up the tail and thereby the spine and atten­dant bones. No, if I’m going to cook it, I want some­one to clean it beforehand.

But it’s never clean enough. So on a nice clean cut­ting board take each fil­let and search it for skin, extra bones, what­ever, and remove them so you have a per­fectly soft and lovely eat­ing experience.

Then in a large non­stick skil­let (I don’t have one! waah!) melt the but­ter and bring it to fairly high heat with­out brown­ing it. Then in go the fil­lets, as many as you can fit (I had to go in two rounds). Sprin­kle with salt and let cook. After per­haps 2 min­utes, turn, and swish the but­ter round. Add more if you need it. That’s IT.

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

With this we had my most sin­ful lazy indul­gence, pota­toes dauphi­noise from Wait­rose. Sim­ply fab­u­lous and so much bet­ter than my attempts at home (prob­a­bly because of my shy­ing away from buy­ing a con­tainer with “dou­ble cream” on the label). And sauteed sugar snap peas with red pep­pers, so it was colour­ful and tasty and every­one was happy. Plus salsa verde and gar­lic may­on­naise, do you know about those? Every­thing tastes bet­ter with:

Salsa verde
(makes plenty, save it)

1 large bunch flat-leaf pars­ley, leaves only
1 clove gar­lice
juice of half a lemon
sea salt to taste
extra vir­gin olive oil till liq­uid (per­haps 1/2 cup?)

Blend every­thing in the cuisi­nart and bask in the green glory. It’s lovely.

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

Aioli
(again, makes plenty)

1 tsp white vine­gar
3 egg yolks
1 tbsp Dijon mus­tard
1/4 tsp white pep­per
3–5 gar­lic cloves
3/4 cup olive (not vir­gin) oil
1/2 tsp salt
juice of a lemon

Mince the gar­lic as finely as pos­si­ble and add it to the olive oil. If you have a small food proces­sor or blender, the two can be blended together. Whisk the egg yolks with the mus­tard in a small bowl. Whisk for two min­utes, then as you whisk, begin to driz­zle in the gar­lic oil in a very thin, steady, slow stream.

The yolks and oil will begin to come together. When about half the oil is in, and the mix­ture is begin­ning to resem­ble may­on­naise, add the vine­gar and salt and pep­per. Whisk together, then con­tinue to driz­zle in the oil while whisk­ing. Stop before you’ve used all the oil.

Squeeze in a lit­tle lemon juice, stir it in well, then taste. If it needs more salt, lemon juice, pep­per or gar­lic oil, add it now and whisk it in until it tastes right. It should be thick and creamy, not overly gar­licky, with none of the other fla­vors too strong.

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

These two lit­tle gems with fish are just bril­liant (I love that “brill” is Brit short­hand for ‘bril­liant’), and not bad with the pep­pers and peas either. I was trans­ported back to our hon­ey­moon days when, I kid you not, every Sat­ur­day evening we had lob­ster (cold and gor­geous), sauteed red pep­pers, crusty warm baguettes, and salsa verde and aioli. EVERY WEEK. How deca­dent is that? But so deli­cious, col­or­ful and not at all bad for you.

Let’s see, back to Christ­mas. If I could morph all the lit­tle per­fect gifts I have for my niece Jane (nearly three) and turn them into things to give to all the peo­ple I’m stuck for… sadly this does not seem to be pos­si­ble. Also, I am sorry to say that nearly every other gift I have to offer is… a book. Not the same book mind you, but… books. Well, it’s the gift that keeps on giv­ing, isn’t it? Fathers are com­pletely impos­si­ble, and some moth­ers are harder than oth­ers. Sis­ters, don’t get me started. I’m hop­ing some seri­ous inspi­ra­tion will hit me, say, tomorrow.

We did pick up a num­ber of excit­ing things to give at Saturday’s Christ­mas Fair at the Godol­phin and Latymer School, one of Avery’s choices (we hope) for next autumn. Our friends the McBs have two girls there now, and were in the stal­wart posi­tion of sell­ing Christ­mas cards to ben­e­fit the schol­ar­ship fund, so a num­ber of you will see the beauty of this in your post soon! We wan­dered all around the school, bemoan­ing the uni­ver­sal cos­tume of SUPER skinny jeans, scary scarves draped around LONG hair with lots of prod­uct, shiny gold bal­let flats and lit­tle t-shirts that leave much too much exposed between shirt and jean, in our opin­ion. Oh dear. But Avery assures us that if she doesn’t care about the fash­ions now, she prob­a­bly won’t when she gets to senior school. “I’m mostly about the 1940s any­way, and if I don’t mind that it’s not fash­ion­able now, it shouldn’t be a big deal next year.” Fair enough.

It’s com­pletely exhaust­ing, I find! Tonight at the Form Six moth­ers’ choir prac­tice, Anne’s mother and I com­mis­er­ated about the joys and pains of their get­ting to be so OLD. “You know, Kris­ten, next year I keep think­ing, we won’t be wel­come at the school. We won’t sing together, or even know each other. Last year at the Christ­mas sing I caught Anne’s eye as we both sang a carol, and I have to tell you, FLOODS of tears. From me!” I admit­ted to just the same and we both got teary just remem­ber­ing. And this evening’s drama! As we moth­ers were blame­lessly singing, Avery and her friend Car­o­line were in the school cafe­te­ria work­ing on a book of remem­brance for their two teach­ers who are retir­ing (one will not be missed), when the fire alarm rang. “Never mind,” the singing teacher ges­tured, and on we sang. At the end, when we had par­taken of Caroline’s mother’s PER­FECT pump­kin dip with apple slices, she and I mean­dered down to the cafe­te­ria to find them, and there they were, draw­ing away, but SHAK­ING with fear.

“We thought it was a real fire!” Avery broke out. “And we obeyed all the fire drill instruc­tions and tried the fire door but it was LOCKED! We though we would burn up!” The care­taker, Mr Nixon, came for­ward and said proudly, “They behaved beau­ti­fully! Never strayed from their instruc­tions [although later Avery con­fessed that if she could have got to the music room sooner she would have been hot on my trail, what­ever the instruc­tions].” Good­ness. The poor child had post trau­matic stress dis­or­der in the super­mar­ket after­ward when someone’s cart went past the bar­rier and an alarm went off. Poor dear.

But noth­ing com­pares to her thrill at hav­ing won a duet with Ami at the upcom­ing carol fes­ti­val for which we’re all prac­tic­ing. Whew, she has a part. That’s a relief.

Let’s see, aside from the Christ­mas school fair over the week­end, mostly… it rained. All over our Not­ting Hill shop­ping trip to Gra­ham and Greene and Veran­dah, with a glo­ri­ous lunchtime side trip to E&O. That restau­rant just can’t put a foot wrong, in my opin­ion. We had a starter of “sesame crispy spinach,” but the rev­e­la­tion was a layer of some­thing vaguely mush­roomy, sub­tly salty… it was tofu! Soaked, we decided, in a mix­ture of soy sauce and tahini, prob­a­bly. But a lit­tle sesame cracker with a slice of this stuff, then topped with crispy fried spinach and sesame seeds. Delight­ful. It made me feel more con­fi­dent in my side dish of the weekend:

Warm Asian Hand­ful Salad
(serves 4)

1 tbsp peanut oil
dash sesame oil
3 car­rots, grated on a box grater (mind your knuck­les!)
hand­ful red cab­bage, grated
hand­ful white cab­bage, grated
hand­ful baby kale, chopped
hand­ful bean sprouts
hand­ful mint leaves, chopped
hand­ful fresh corian­der, chopped
hand­ful peanuts, chopped
dress­ing: 2 tbsps fish sauce, juice of a lime, 1 tsp sugar, shaken

Now, sim­ply heat the oil in a wok or large skil­let, and throw in all the veg­eta­bles up to the mint. Saute till slightly soft. If you don’t want liq­uid in the bot­tom, spoon it out, but oth­er­wise pour into a large bowl and add all the rest of the ingre­di­ents and toss well. LOVELY. Espe­cially with lamb chops. Go on, don’t be intim­i­dated. They’re tiny, del­i­cate, and from Green Val­ley not too expen­sive, and every­one can gnaw. But allow at least three per­son, even children:

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

Per­fectly Sim­ple Lamb Chops
(serves 3)

2 tbsps olive oil
10 rib lamb chops (room tem­per­a­ture)
2 tbsps chopped fresh rose­mary
sea salt
fresh pepper

Heat oil in a large skil­let and lay in the lamb chops, sin­gle layer. Sprin­kle with rose­mary. Cook about 2 min­utes, then turn to other side and add salt and pep­per. Now, after another minute or so, care­fully turn each chop to its fatty side and sear the fat, so you can hap­pily eat it if you like. When the fat is brown (another minute or so), turn back to the chops’ flat sides and roll skil­let so oil trav­els about. Done.

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

Even the most hard­ened “I can’t eat lamb, they’re too cute” child will suc­cumb to the aroma. Enjoy.

I’m back to Christ­mas shop­ping… what do you want, anyway?

No, I’m not pro­duc­ing my own escar­gots! But this is awfully funny. I put out a stock­pot full of chicken stock, out in my “larder,” oth­er­wise known as the space out­side my bed­room door, lead­ing toward our com­mu­nal gar­den. I used a lid that was larger than the pot, hav­ing the sneak­ing feel­ing the true lid was in… Con­necti­cut. Well, I brought the pot in to skim off the fat yes­ter­day, and there, on the under­side of the lid, was this lit­tle fel­low! He was amaz­ingly brave, even when I showed him to the cats (who with true domes­ti­cated dis­in­ter­est just gazed at him). I was tempted to keep him for Avery when she came home from school, but he moved so quickly in just a cou­ple of min­utes that I knew I’d have no idea where he was, very shortly, so off he went back to the garden.

It’s offi­cial: I’ve sent off the last piece of paper­work for Avery’s senior school appli­ca­tions. Each school has a dif­fer­ent sys­tem: some want a copy of her birth cer­tifi­cate (pre­sum­ably so we can’t send a very small 18-year-old to take the exam), some want a pass­port photo, each wants a sub­stan­tial check for their pains. Then there’s the sec­ond tier of paper­work: once you’ve applied to the school, then they send you a form to fill out to apply to the exam. Sigh. Finally, though, done and dusted, all six sets of stuff off my desk and out to the schools. Now it’s up to Avery, poor dear. After a lit­tle early-week melt­down over the hor­rid “mock exams,” she has found her stride again and is pretty cheer­ful. We were walk­ing home in the unbe­liev­ably early dusk last night and stopped off at the news­stand for a lit­tle light read­ing, then headed home. “You know what I want to do when I get home, Mommy? I know it sounds triv­ial, but I just want to draw and lis­ten to the sound­track to “White Christ­mas.” I had to laugh, “Lis­ten, you’re talk­ing to a per­son with Hello! mag­a­zine under her arm, so triv­ial is not really a prob­lem.” “Good point,” she said, and it struck me that she’s a real per­son these days, not really to be treated as a child very much any­more. A real con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist, a per­son who loves Bing Crosby on her own, knows things I don’t know, has had expe­ri­ences I can only imag­ine, can do so many things I can’t do! How did it hap­pen so quickly?

The Christ­mas tree is up (it’s a lit­tle runty, but in the end I chose aroma over size, as the large trees smelled like pre­cisely noth­ing and this one emits a won­der­ful fla­vor) and dec­o­rated as you see, and I’ve been able to turn my atten­tion to lit­tle mat­ters like The Ulti­mate Shrimp Dish. Try it and be amazed.

It’s a vari­a­tion on a recipe I found in Red mag­a­zine while I was hav­ing my hair cut. My Ital­ian hair guy was going on and ON in sweet but unin­tel­li­gi­ble detail about his grandmother’s recipe for chicken escalopes (“her secret, Kris­ten, she cook them twice,” what this means I know not), so I asked him if it was kosher to rip the recipe out of the mag­a­zine, and as it was an Octo­ber copy, yes. The author is an Indian cook called Vicky Bho­gal, from her “A Year of Cook­ing Like Mum­myji,” and I’ll def­i­nitely look for the book. You can also try her web­site. It’s really annoy­ing: in addi­tion to being no doubt a great cook, she’s gor­geous. Just what I need in my life: another Nigella Lawson.

I left out the sug­gested grated coconut (yuck) and sub­sti­tuted ground cumin for cumin seeds, red chill­ies for green, and added gar­lic (how can what’s essen­tially a curry dish not include gar­lic? for shame!). But you can turn all those bits around if you like. I served the shrimps shell-on, with just the back cut with scis­sors, but on sec­ond thoughts I’d shell them: less mess and less effort at the table. But sublime.

Coconut and Cumin Prawns
(serves 4)

1 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsps but­ter
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 tsps ground cumin
1 white onion, minced
1 can plum toma­toes, squeezed by hand over skil­let
1 tsp sea salt
3 red chill­ies, deseeded and chopped
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp red chilli pow­der
1 tsp garam masala
1 can coconut milk
2 pounds raw prawns, shelled
hand­ful fresh corian­der, roughly chopped

In a large skil­let, melt the but­ter with the oil and then add the gar­lic, cumin and onion and saute until soft. Squeeze the toma­toes to crush them, and add all the juice. Add the salt, chill­ies (wash your hands before you rub your eyes! I didn’t), turmeric, chilli pow­der and garam masala and cook down until toma­toes are thick. Add the coconut milk and blend well. At this point you can put the sauce aside and get on with your other dishes. Then five min­utes or so before you want to eat, heat the sauce again till bub­bling and add the shrimps. Cook until they turn thor­oughly pink, then stop the heat and serve with rice.

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

With this I made a dish of sauteed green mixed veg­eta­bles with a sauce that was very nice, and could also be very good on, I thought, beef ten­der­loin or chicken breasts.

Mus­tard Seed Cream Sauce
(serves 4)

1 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsps but­ter
1 tbsp black mus­tard seeds
1 tsp ground cumin
1 white onion, finely chopped
2 cloves gar­lic, finely chopped
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 red chill­ies finely chopped
1 tsp garam masala
1 cup creme fraiche
whole milk to thin
aspara­gus, sugar snap peas, broc­col­ini, baby pak choi

Melt the but­ter and oil together and add every­thing except the creme fraiche, stir over medium heat until onion is soft. Then add the creme fraiche, mix well, and set aside. Saute the aspara­gus and broc­col­ini until cooked through, then add the peas and pak choi (be care­ful not to over­cook them as they are very del­i­cate). Heat the sauce again and serve every­thing pip­ing hot.

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So good and so simple.

Let’s see, if you’re feel­ing really pre­cious and want to impress a hol­i­day guest with your pre­sen­ta­tion skills, try this:

Beet­root Tower with Goats Cheese and Cucum­ber
(serves 4)

6 beet­roots, roasted in tin­foil for 90 min­utes, then peeled and sliced thin
1 hydro­ponic cucum­ber, or 3 small British cucum­bers, sliced thin
100 grams goats cheese with chill­ies or chives
1 avo­cado, sliced thin
dress­ing: fresh pesto shaken up in a jar with peper­on­cino oil
hand­ful of chopped chives

To assem­ble this beau­ti­ful salad, start with a white plate. Arrange three slices of beet­root in a spi­ral, then layer a slice of goats cheese, three slices cucum­ber and two slices avo­cado. Con­tinue to layer until you run out of ingre­di­ents, then driz­zle the dress­ing over all and sprin­kle the entire plate with chives. Lovely.

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

Tonight we have a Christ­mas party at the ultra-stylish St John’s Wood home of one of Avery’s class­mates, which should be great for John’s ever-present real estate mis­ery. Our rot­ten land­lords have raised the rent for our flat to a truly astro­nom­i­cal level, rub­bing salt in the wound of our house-less state. But there is truly no point at all in buy­ing a house now, when we won’t know where Avery’s going to school next year until Feb­ru­ary. I would really like to live near enough to her school that she can com­fort­ably walk, since every­one with older chil­dren assures me that by mid-autumn next year she won’t want me within sight of the school. No more dropoff and pickup heaven for me. Good­ness, that stage went quickly. I’m sure my mother radar will con­tinue to go off at 3:20 for the rest of my life, and what­ever I’m doing at that hour, in per­pe­tu­ity, I’ll look in panic at my watch and won­der how I could have for­got­ten to pick her up. Maybe some­day she’ll let me pick up her children…

Have you ever heard of a John­nie? That is, a Petit­Jean from Brit­tany who comes to Britain in the win­ter months to sell his pink onions and pink gar­lic? Well, nei­ther had I, until today. That is, I had bought his onions and gar­lic but had never know that he had a National Iden­tity. But he has.

Appar­ently a French gen­tle­man in 1828 decided that there might be a bet­ter mar­ket for his lovely smelly veg, and headed across the Chan­nel. And ever since (although in lesser num­bers today than in 1828) French men in berets on bicy­cles have sold their wares through­out Britain. And one just hap­pens to park his bicy­cle adja­cent to the Maryle­bone Farmer’s Mar­ket, where I spend nearly every Sun­day of my life.

Includ­ing today, although I was sorely tempted to stay home. We had just dropped Avery off at the sta­ble (the threat of all-day rain is no deter­rent to her, even though she’ll have the hated job of scoop­ing wet poo from the streets), and the skies sim­ply opened. I had an umbrella, but it was large and cum­ber­some and off-putting. “Sure you don’t want to give up?” John offered, but no, I was deter­mined that if the mar­ket peo­ple were there, I could be there. And in fact it rained heav­ily only for ten min­utes or so and then sub­sided into the desul­tory but still drench­ing lit­tle driz­zle that char­ac­terises so much of Eng­lish life. And occa­sion­ally a stall awning that I was stand­ing under chose that moment to invert itself and dump the hour or so’s accu­mu­lated water on me. Ah, the devo­tion I feel to the market.

And it was worth the rain. I picked up two logs and one round of goats cheese from Nut Knowle Farm, my absolute hands-down favorite for goats cheese. Whether it’s the logs cov­ered in chives or hot chill­ies, or the round cov­ered in gar­lic and herbs (“Lit­tle Gar­lic,” it’s called), you will not go wrong. Strongly flavoured, creamy, crumbly. Per­fect with the rose­mary bread from the Ital­ian stall. And the lemon cake lady! I don’t know the name of her bak­ery, but Avery is pas­sion­ately devoted to the lemon cake, for break­fast. Her stall is sim­ply piled with cakes, casu­ally cut into slices right there for you, and I always wish I had a sweet tooth so as to enjoy the sam­ples of coconut cake and Vic­to­ria sponge.

The Christ­mas pud­dings are back! Order one now, and some car­rot cake to go with it. And then there was the butcher chant­ing, “We’ve got all your wild game needs: pheas­ant, quail, your Sun­day lunch, our plea­sure…” But I didn’t suc­cumb. A pork ten­der­loin from Down­land Pro­duce, sim­ply the most ten­der bite of meat you will ever taste.

Pork Ten­der­loin with Sesame, Gar­lic and Lime
(serves 4 with left­overs for the sand­wich of your life)

1 pork ten­der­loin
4 cloves gar­lic
3 tbsps sesame oil
juice of two limes, save the limes
1 white onion, sliced thick
dash of Mal­don Salt

Put the ten­der­loin in a ziplock plas­tic bag and throw all the other ingre­di­ents in. Close tightly and mas­sage the ten­der­loin around, then put in the fridge and leave it there while you do every­thing else for your dinner.

Spray a glass dish with non­stick spray and place the ten­der­loin in it, along with every­thing in the plas­tic bag. Roast at 400 degrees until done but still pink, about 35–40 min­utes. Let rest five min­utes before slicing.

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And a new veg­etable! Jerusalem arti­chokes: new to me, that is. Prob­a­bly the rest of you cook with it all the time, and lord knows I’ve seen it on loads of restau­rant menus and have occa­sion­ally ordered some­thing con­tain­ing it. But until today I have never bought one. I think I was lured by the burlap sack filled to the brim and accom­pa­nied by the charm­ing sign: “Raised on pure mush­room com­post.” Yum yum. Seri­ously, though, the lit­tle mush­room pur­veyor looked so cold and wet that I felt I owed it to him to buy some­thing, and there were the lit­tle guys, hud­dling together as if to gain courage in num­bers. The seller assured me that they are very nutri­tious (some­thing com­pli­cated about being use­ful for dia­bet­ics because of the way their starch is processed?), so I scooped up a hand­ful of the nasty lit­tle tuber­ous things and man­aged to get my freez­ing hands to find some coins.

Then it was home with my bur­den and to find a sug­ges­tion about how to cook them. My instinct said, “Soup, dear lady, and puree it,” so I obeyed. First, though, a quick inter­net search led me to this adorable blog, and a recipe not unlike what I was plan­ning myself. And can I just kvell a bit? This was the best soup EVER. And a sim­pler recipe you will not find.

Veloute of Jerusalem Arti­choke
(serves four as a starter, or two as lunch)

3 tbsps but­ter
1 pound Jerusalem arti­chokes
1 clove gar­lic, roughly chopped
1 large shal­lot or small rose onion, chopped
chicken stock to cover, per­haps 3 cups?
salt
dash white wine
1 cup whole milk

Now, I must first say that if you can get raw milk, do so. I am a firm sup­porter of unpas­teurised milk from rep­utable sources. SO deli­cious, and since it’s not homogenised either, the cream stays at the top. If you carry it home care­fully, ths milk at the top of the bot­tle will be really rich and per­fect for your soup. Hur­dle­brook are bril­liant. You could eas­ily use cream, creme fraiche or sour cream, too, what­ever you have.

To pre­pare the arti­chokes, wash them well and peel them com­pletely. You’ll be amazed by the tex­ture. Not an arti­choke leaf or heart to be seen. More like a radish, only taste­less. Com­pletely taste­less raw. I was seri­ously dis­turbed at this point and won­der­ing at my wis­dom in pro­vid­ing noth­ing more for lunch.

Melt the but­ter and saute the arti­chokes, gar­lic and shal­lot until the gar­lic is soft. Then cover with chicken stock, add salt to taste, the white wine, and cook at high sim­mer for about 24 min­utes or until the arti­chokes are eas­ily pierced with a fork. Puree with a hand blender, add milk and… you’re in HEAVEN.

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Well, I’ve dried off now, and am think­ing of tack­ling the Christ­mas tree lights. Avery is most anx­ious that the annoy­ing work all be accom­plished when she comes home, so that after scrap­ing the pony poo off her in a quick bath, she can hang orna­ments. Here’s the per­fect present, by the way, for any­one who loves Lon­don, espe­cially my lit­tle cor­ner, Maryle­bone. “Between the Lines: The Howard de Walden Estate in 2006.” I have bought so many copies as presents that my wal­let is suf­fer­ing. But you’ll have to ring up Daunt Books to get it. Gor­geous and evoca­tive pho­tog­ra­phy, really infor­ma­tive his­tor­i­cal com­men­tary, and if you look closely, prob­a­bly lots of peo­ple you know, if you live here.

Now as for those lights…

First, I must credit the lovely pho­to­graph here to a won­der­ful spe­cial­ist web­page: this man really loves truf­fles. I some­times find that learn­ing this much about a food ingre­di­ent can… put me off, so I have not delved very deeply into his work. But I think it’s a gor­geous image, and I’ve never been able to afford enough truf­fles at one time to TAKE a pho­to­graph, so more power to him.

Well, last night was Fri­day and as such, every­one was tired. We had Avery’s dear friend Jamie with us, and had taken them both to the skat­ing rink. The din! The bad cook­ing smells! The crowds. They had their les­son with beloved Nicky (who is a saint, full stop), and then had very lit­tle inter­est in stick­ing around. I had arranged for us to go hear Christ­mas car­ols in the neigh­bor­hood, but we emerged from the skat­ing rink into a dank driz­zle that, as we headed home (the Mini stacked to the GILLS with back­packs, skate bags, gym kits, etc.) devel­oped into a steady down­pour. It was but the work of a moment to decide to stay home, and our din­ner out turned into din­ner in. John bravely went to fetch piz­zas from La Car­i­catura in North Aud­ley Street, and I must say: it was SUB­LIME. Let me explain.

Now last year at some time this lovely new pizze­ria opened up and so nat­u­rally we went. And as I reported, that last visit yielded the infor­ma­tion that the ser­vice was spotty but the food really good. Now I am very sorry I can’t report any news on the ser­vice since we took our piz­zas away. We intended fully to visit! Next time. But in any case, I would have put up with a lot of wait­erly incon­sis­ten­cies had there been any for… the truf­fle pizza. Called the “Simone,” you sim­ply must RUN there and have one. The moment wet and unhappy John entered the kitchen and opened the box… the aroma! The unbe­liev­able aroma. Of course the girls were also in heaven with their margherita and quat­tro for­maggi, but we knew the real truth: it’s truf­fles or bust. We both agreed we could have eaten a pizza EACH. Sad but true.

So head straight over there, and order the Simone. But also have the carpac­cio di manzo, because while it’s nice take­away, a large part of the appeal is in the lovely pre­sen­ta­tion at the restau­rant itself. Huge sliv­ers of parme­san, per­fect rocket, and the beef itself as fresh as can be and so tender.

Thanks, Car­i­catura, for bright­en­ing up our damp and dis­mal Fri­day night. We’ll be back.