Well, my cele­riac soup is on the cooker for lunch and I’m kick­ing up my heels for 15 min­utes or so, so here I am. With an amaz­ing story to tell, as it turns out. It starts out very sad, but ends up quite miraculous.

Yes­ter­day was, sadly, the first anniver­sary of my dar­ling father in law’s diag­no­sis with can­cer. I felt the day approach­ing and knew it would be a hard one for every­one, espe­cially my mother in law who has aban­doned us and gone back to Iowa. Would that she could have stayed for­ever! But dur­ing our week in Wales, one day she was prepar­ing for bed and real­ized that her pre­cious gold link bracelet, nearly a twin to mine and a gift from John’s dad, had dis­ap­peared. We spent all the next day retrac­ing our steps from shop to shop in Lan­gollen and Cor­wen, and report­ing the loss to the police. So sad! It seemed ter­ri­bly hard to have it gone, and although it was insured and Rose­mary had every plan to replace it, it would not have been the same as the orig­i­nal gift from Jack. Much distress.

Well, yes­ter­day we were all feel­ing down and pre­oc­cu­pied and not quite our­selves, when the phone rang near bed­time. It was Rose­mary. “You will not believe this, but I found the bracelet, in the bot­tom of my hand­bag. I had looked, of course, but there it was, under the pile of pens and pen­cils I seem to keep there.” There was a won­der­ful lilt in her voice, such a sense of relief. On the anniver­sary. It’s hard not to believe that some­one some­where decided the loss was just too much, and… put it back. Even my Orig­i­nal Skep­tic Hus­band has suc­cumbed to this feel­ing! How lovely.

Let’s see, I myself reread my Wales post and it made me ter­ri­bly home­sick to go back. There was some­thing quite mag­i­cal about the week: so removed from all the cares of nor­mal life like sched­ules and back­packs and exams. We stayed in a lit­tle 14th cen­tury house called Plas Uchaf, a place John and I had stayed many years ago as new­ly­weds with our adored cat Chelsea. We briefly con­tem­plated tak­ing Tacy, but decided that the pos­si­bil­ity of her get­ting out and being lost was too much. So it was a cat­less week, but other than that there were no com­plaints. When I describe it to you it will sound like some exer­cise in self-denial: no sig­nif­i­cant sources of heat, no tele­phone, tele­vi­sion, or com­puter obvi­ously, and for sev­eral days no hot water in the kitchen tap so that all the washing-up water had to be car­ried from the bath­tub (which itself did not yield any excit­ing quan­ti­ties of the pre­cious sub­stance, I can tell you: hip-baths!). O Pio­neer! But for all that, it was absolutely idyllic.

From the evening we arrived, fresh (or not) from a very long drive com­pli­cated by a wreck on the M1, we all breathed a sigh of relax­ation. I had brought along an enor­mous dish of mac­a­roni and cheese, shades of our Exmoor adven­ture for Avery’s birth­day. The per­fect thing to pop in the oven upon arrival, unpack a bit of lug­gage, and there was din­ner. There’s noth­ing like the smell of bub­bling cheese to make every­one feel at home! And what a home! Rose­mary and Avery headed imme­di­ately upstairs to find their bed­room: a mar­vel of antique fur­ni­ture and rugs, with two lit­tle ver­ti­cal win­dows look­ing down into the Great Hall. John imme­di­ately com­man­deered the enor­mous fire­place and from then on was the Com­pleat Pyro­ma­niac, obsess­ing over coals, starter sticks, logs of every shape and size. “This batch of logs is damp,” he would say bit­terly, bran­dish­ing a hap­less chunk. “They shouldn’t sell damp wood.” All after­noon he would tend his fire, so that we could eat in the FREEZ­ING Great Hall, watch­ing our breath in lit­tle white gusts, and then imme­di­ately hud­dle around the fire before bedtime.

To sit in bed after a long day walk­ing and shop­ping and cook­ing and explor­ing, and lis­ten to the hum of Avery’s and Rosemary’s voices across the land­ing, chuck­ling and chat­ting, was inde­scrib­ably cozy! After so many weeks and months of fret­ting that we could not take care of her, or just look her in the eye and see how she was doing, it was absolute heaven just to hear her laugh and peek in at them in their twin beds, tucked up with hot water bot­tles, read­ing the piles of Log Books that all Land­mark Trust houses boast: everyone’s accounts of their stays from past years! We even found my orig­i­nal log from 1991! Amazing.

Food shop­ping! I think we patro­n­ised every sin­gle food-purveying estab­lish­ment in a 30-mile radius. If you find your­self in North Wales, high­tail it to the Rhug Farm Shop just out­side Cor­wen and get some of the mirac­u­lous lamb, gar­lic and rose­mary pate from Cot­tage Delight. Lovely for a pic­nic sand­wich! Or even at mid­night on a piece of toast, truth be told.

The sweet lit­tle fruit and veg shop in Cor­wen became our local mecca: new own­ers, very anx­ious to please and, I think, slightly curi­ous about these Amer­i­can vis­i­tors who seemed to do noth­ing but buy fruit and veg! Try­ing to branch out a bit from our con­stant round of broc­coli, red pep­pers, beet­root, spinach and aspara­gus, I tried a nice cour­gette recipe that, while it didn’t make Avery sit up and beg, she ate. Warn­ing: you have to like garlic.

Baked Cour­gettes with Gar­lic and Cheese
(serves four)

3 nice skinny cour­gettes
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp sin­gle cream
1/2 cup grated Ched­dar or other strong cheese

Slice the cour­gettes nice and thin and layer them in a small glass bak­ing dish. Sprin­kle with the gar­lic and driz­zle with the oil and cream. Scat­ter the cheese across the top and bake in a medium oven for about 30 min­utes or until cheese is nice and bubbly.

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

This is nice because the cour­gettes keep a lit­tle bit of a bite, and the olive oil is velvety.

Let’s see, dur­ing the week we dis­cov­ered that Avery has an irra­tional fear of walk­ing DOWN hills. I’ve always known her to freak out slight at the top of very steep esca­la­tors, but this time, we were embark­ing on a huge hill just out­side a gor­geous area called Horse­shoe Pass, a val­ley filled with impos­si­ble mist, dot­ted with sheep and the occa­sional house. Avery got UP the hill with no prob­lem, leav­ing us elderly adults puff­ing in her wake. But then we all reached the top and stopped to admire the view, and she absolutely lost it. Nearly in tears, poor gull. Rose­mary taught her to walk diag­o­nally, but even so, she was just ter­ri­fied. Occa­sion­ally she left the path and clung to a scrubby lit­tle bush, try­ing not to cry. We felt so bad for her! Once we got to the bot­tom we dis­cussed the nature of irra­tional fears (namely, they’re irra­tional so peo­ple who don’t share them should stop try­ing to talk you out of them). I thought some of my old fear-of-flying tech­niques might help, like con­tin­u­ing to do the thing and mak­ing your­self notice that noth­ing bad is hap­pen­ing. So the rest of the hol­i­day we spent march­ing her up and down big hills, and I must say she got much bet­ter. Good old cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­apy at work.

But what really brought her out of her funk that par­tic­u­lar day was the sight of a large and very dirty sheep, stand­ing stock­still in the mid­dle of the road. “It’s escaped from its field!” Avery shouted. “We must save it!” So John drove ahead to try to block it, and we saw at the end of a field a gate and thought we might herd the thing toward the gate and let it in. Of course the sheep had other ideas and scut­tled down a lit­tle lane, toward some com­pa­tri­ots in another field. “We should tell the farmer he’s out,” I said help­fully, so John drove down an even smaller lane toward a house we could see in the dis­tance. As we did so, we noticed a cat­tle grid. “You know what,” John said, “That sheep’s not lost. All these sheep are MEANT to be over here. I can’t believe we are such city idiots that we thought we needed to SAVE that sheep.” So he began to back down the lane, until I sug­gested he turn around and go out straight. Sadly, my sense of where the back of the car was could not be trusted, and to Avery’s dis­may we nearly went through a very rick­ety fence and top­pled off a precipice into obliv­ion. “We’re going to die!” she shrieked, and “I’m get­ting out of this car.” So she hopped out, and I hopped out to try to give some direc­tion, but the back wheels were stuck in mud and the car was STRANDED.

Sud­denly, from up another lane came not one, not two or three, but FOUR sturdy off-road Jeep-like trucks, and out popped four strap­ping young men, shout­ing, “Do you need help?” They just hap­pened to be a Sat­ur­day club of off-road ram­blers, and there they were in the nick of time, to save us. One of the men clev­erly dis­cov­ered a winchy thing in the front of the car, and pro­duced a stout rope from his, and before we knew it, he was dri­ving ahead and the protest­ing rental car was saved. We were clearly the biggest for­eign idiots that the whole group had seen in some time, and the wives were not too sub­tly whip­ping out their mobile phones and tak­ing pic­tures of us. “BRITAIN RES­CUES AMER­ICA!” one man laughed, and his wife asked, “So how long have you been here?” and John, think­ing she meant “here in Britain,” answered, “Oh, about two years.” Burst of laugh­ter from all the ram­blers, and another wife asked, “What, HERE, stranded, for two years?” Then we all laughed and I said we some­times sent out for sand­wiches and it hadn’t been that bad.

And off they went! With a story to dine out on for weeks, no doubt.

That night we found our­selves with all food stores closed on our way home, and I had to think strateget­i­cally (my favourite Avery word of all time, along with “smallen”) about what to pro­duce from what I already had. What I came up with was a pretty good dish if you’re on a diet. It con­tained, amaz­ingly for me, no but­ter, no cream, no cheese. Give it a try if you’re feel­ing virtuous.

Miso Mar­i­nated Chicken With Aspara­gus and Mush­rooms
(serves four)

1 packet instant miso soup pow­der
juice of 1 lime
4 chicken breast fil­lets, cut in chunks
2 tbsps olive oil
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 bunch aspara­gus, cut into bite-size pieces
1 lb but­ton mush­rooms, quartered

Mix the miso with the lime juice and stir to a paste. Pour over the chicken breasts chunks in a medium bowl and stir well to coat. Set aside. Heat the oil in a skil­let and saute the aspara­gus and mush­rooms until the aspara­gus is bright green and the mush­rooms soft. Remove and set aside, leav­ing the oil behind as well as the mush­room liq­uid. Saute the chicken in the same skil­let, and when it’s done, toss in the veg­eta­bles, stir­ring until they are heated through again. Pretty good! Serve with steamed bas­mati rice.

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

I’ll never for­get the cozi­ness of sit­ting by the fire chat­ting with John while Rose­mary and Avery set­tled them­selves in their room, and look­ing up to their lighted lit­tle win­dows to see them wav­ing at us and mak­ing faces. Avery invented a crazy voice in which to say “Hello,” and we all began using it, “Hello? Hello!” And we played end­less, pos­i­tively end­less games of soli­taire, and dou­ble soli­taire, Avery and her grand­mother play­ing for hours at the kitchen table while I cooked. And Avery recited the entirety of “The Lady of Shalott” for us in a com­pletely absurd, fruity Eng­lish accent: “On either side the river lie long fields of bar­ley and of rye,” mak­ing Rose­mary and me laugh until we cried, rolling her Rs and her eyes and milk­ing it for all she was worth. She made Lady Brack­nell look relaxed and down to earth. Too, too funny. And one evening John went out to the back gar­den to throw cof­fee grounds over the fence, to find two sheep with tiny lambs! Avery and I pur­sued them in a gen­tle sort of way, but to no avail. That would have been too perfect.

Well, I think that was our Wales adven­ture. Oh, and a dar­ling lit­tle vil­lage called Llan­r­wst, no idea how you pro­nounce that with no use­ful vow­els, but pos­sess­ing a won­der­ful shop called Berry, filled with old books. I bought beau­ti­ful copies of lots of clas­sics that I’ve never had time to read, like “Mans­field Park” and “The Scar­let Pim­per­nel,” for Avery to have on our shelves, and the entire huge back of books was 12 pounds! If you find your­self there, do go in.

Sadly we had to come home, although frankly my mother in law makes Lon­don so much fun it wasn’t a tragedy to have the hol­i­day end. We went to the Tate Mod­ern to see the mag­nif­i­cent Doris Sal­cedo instal­la­tion: a long, long crack in the cement floor, wide enough in some places to lose a foot, nar­row as a piece of yarn in oth­ers. Really impres­sive! And a Juan Munoz exhi­bi­tion of fig­u­ra­tive work that is not my cup of tea, but made Rose­mary really happy. And we went to Por­to­bello Road, and the National Por­trait Gallery, and shop­ping for food at Sel­f­ridges and the farmer’s mar­ket, and out to din­ner at the glo­ri­ous “Star of India,” truly the best Indian food in Lon­don, I believe. A starter that you must try: light as a feather kadek jhinga, prawns in a saf­fron bat­ter, with tamarind chut­ney. Gor­geous! And a chicken dish that made Avery’s heart sing, she who eat mush­rooms in any form, murg khumb bahar, a breast stuffed with chopped mush­rooms and onions, mar­i­nated with yogurt cream and swim­ming in a sauce of wild mush­rooms and cashews. Sim­ply superb. And so nice to have a night off cooking!

Well, it’s John’s birth­day today and I am suc­cumb­ing to some­thing I nor­mally would rather walk across hot coals than pro­duce: tuna casse­role. The notion of tinned tuna served HOT is to me like heat­ing up a can of cat food. Urgh. But every year on his birth­day he asks, and every year I say no. The one year I actu­ally agreed to make it, I turned out to dis­cover I was expect­ing Avery: right on his birth­day! Isn’t that amaz­ing. So I thought, oh, go all out and make that awful dish as well. But I was so dis­tracted by being five min­utes preg­nant that I for­got to cook the noo­dles ahead of time, and just threw them in with the hideous tinned tuna and mush­room soup. The result was some­thing with a, how shall I put it, unique con­sis­tency. Nei­ther wet nor solid, with odd crunchy bits that threat­ened to break one’s teeth off, and over­all a per­va­sive odor of… cat food. Ah well, I’ve learned since then. Noth­ing on earth could make me actu­ally eat it, but tonight’s ver­sion will be made with gourmet yel­low­tail sus­pended in extra vir­gin olive oil, organic cel­ery, home­made mush­room soup and the best Ital­ian noo­dles. COOKED. Happy Birth­day, John!

Well, we’ve all taken a deep breath, the dust has set­tled, some of the eupho­ria has dis­si­pated, but Avery’s still pretty thrilled, pretty chuffed at her Big Achieve­ment last week. The gulls have all con­grat­u­lated each other with what looks like gen­uine sup­port and pleas­antry, the news has been extracted from each par­ent like crab­meat from the shell. You have to approach these things del­i­cately. Par­ent Num­ber One sidles over to Par­ent Num­ber Two and there’s a moment of awk­ward silence, then the sidler says to the sidlee, “I didn’t want to appear as if I wasn’t inter­ested in Avery’s ‘choices’ (the catch-all euphemism for ‘where did she get in, any­way??”), so I didn’t bother you.” Then Par­ent Num­ber Two says, “Oh, no, don’t worry! And… what is…er, how did… have you made a deci­sion your­selves?” It would be so much eas­ier just to ask bald­faced, “So where’s Lit­tle Who­ever going to school next year?” But no, one must sidle, or be sidled.

I spent today writ­ing nice lit­tle bread-and-butter let­ters to the schools we’re turn­ing down, and wrote a stag­ger­ing cheque to the one we’re accept­ing. In the inter­ests of pri­vacy (ha!), I’ve decided to call Avery’s school for next year, “St Barn­abas.” Those who know, know, and those who don’t, don’t need to. Sound good to you?

And now we can all relax and think about other things. Like putting you in the pic­ture with all the amaz­ing adven­tures we had on our half-term Welsh odyssey! And all the adven­tures we had in Lon­don with my mother in law Rose­mary, who was an absolute star about get­ting us off our desk chairs and out of our rou­tine, and actu­ally made us do things in Lon­don! Do you find that it takes a vis­i­tor to get you to appre­ci­ate your own home town? I cer­tainly find this. Left to my own devices I would clean the lit­ter­box, gro­cery shop, move Avery’s belong­ings from one flat sur­face to another, and then be absolutely des­per­ate because I haven’t done any­thing blog­wor­thy. But with Rose­mary around, there was no ques­tion of being bor­ing. She wouldn’t stand for it!

So our Land­mark Trust Welsh hol­i­day was COM­PLETELY suc­cess­ful, very heart­warm­ing, just what the doc­tor ordered for all of us. A huge relief to get Rose­mary all to our­selves, feed her, fill her hot water bot­tles, talk about impor­tant things or unim­por­tant things as the whim­sey took us. I had to post this pho­to­graph of the butcher shop because we spent SO much of our time hunt­ing and gath­er­ing for things to eat! And did we eat. The best roast pork EVER (cooked in milk, white wine and rose­mary, with quar­tered onions along­side), which then mor­phed into the best sand­wiches ever, with Welsh goats cheese that was sim­ply to die for. I love this web­site because not only does it extol the virtues of goats cheese, it does so by employ­ing the price­less phrase, “goat man­age­ment issues.” I have always had such a lot of those issues. Then we had the best roast chicken ever which mor­phed into the per­fect chicken stock for an inno­va­tion: cream of mush­room soup with rocket. Yes, I had a half a bag of baby rocket with noth­ing to be done with it and we were leav­ing the house: so, why not? It added a superb piquant flavour and who knows what nutri­ents. A def­i­nite score.

Creamy Mush­room Soup With Rocket
(serves four)

3 tbsps but­ter
1 white onion, roughly chopped
4 cloves gar­lic, roughly chopped
1 lb mush­rooms, any sort you like, roughly chopped
4 cups-ish fresh chicken stock
2 tbsps brandy
1 tbsp fresh chopped thyme leaves
fresh rocket, about a cup loosely packed
1/2 cup sin­gle cream
salt and pep­per to taste

The rest couldn’t be sim­pler. Saute the onions, gar­lic and mush­rooms in the but­ter until slightly soft­ened, then pour over the stock and brandy, sim­mer until mush­rooms are soft. Add the thyme and rocket and cook just until rocket wilts, then whizz with your hand blender (I had to buy one in a nearby town!) and add the cream. Sea­son to taste. Divine!

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

And did we WALK! Firstly we dis­cov­ered a dar­ling lit­tle vil­lage (not even, a town hall and a pub, a church and the local squire’s mag­nif­i­cent pile, that was all) called Llanel­i­dan, from which and around which we walked pos­si­bly five miles! Up the hill and down the hill, work­ing off the mag­nif­i­cent pic­nic lunch we ate in the ceme­tery: pate and smoked trout sand­wiches, cucum­ber, tomato and moz­zarella salad, yum yum. We walked through sheep fields, over kiss­ing stiles, up enor­mous hills (com­ing once on a very old and almost uniden­ti­fi­able sheep’s car­cass, very dra­matic), past bab­bling brooks and a gor­geous spring, spring­ing into the air! Do take the time to go to Llanel­i­dan if you get a chance and walk through the King George’s Field.

And my favourite lit­tle town of all: Llan­gollen, streets lined with beau­ti­ful UNIQUE shops, like a place that time for­got and the Star­bucks, Mon­soons, and Tescos of the world have never dis­cov­ered. Two butch­ers! Gor­geous delis, pro­duce stands, bak­eries, and a mar­vel­lous book­store where I came away with a lovely copy of “Lit­tle Dor­rit.” I must read it before my dar­ling Matthew Mac­fadyen appears in the upcom­ing BBC series! That’s excit­ing news. It was such a plea­sure to food-shop there that I’m afraid I dragged every­one to far too many lit­tle estab­lish­ments. But they were all kind and said that if I was going to feed them three meals a day, they could put up with a lit­tle shop­ping. Now that’s kind.

Want a break­fast idea for a lit­tle girl who’s tired of eggs, and there are no pre­cious Marks and Spencers apple turnovers to be had? How about goats cheese on toast? Avery devoured slice after slice as the week went on.

And cas­tles! We vis­ited four in the area: Den­bigh (closed for the sea­son, but that didn’t stop us climb­ing over the wall and sim­ply help­ing our­selves! scofflaws, we), Rhud­d­lan (pic­tured here), Caernar­fon and Conwy. Each lovely in its own way: ruined, evoca­tive of the 12th, 13th cen­turies. Now, it’s a mat­ter of taste, obvi­ously, but while the Welsh Cas­tles web­sites all seem to adore lots of com­men­tary, wall text, silly films with actors play­ing war­riors and gift shops, I myself pre­fer stark and lonely, with noth­ing to dis­tract you from the feel­ing of ancient drama. You go on the links above and decide for your­selves which you want to visit.

Lis­ten, I’ve loads more to tell you, but the din­ner hour approaches and there’s gar­lic and gin­ger to be chopped. Before I go, how­ever, let me tell you about the world’s nicest (well, one of them) chicken sal­ads. Now, where Rose­mary says she never met a chicken salad she didn’t like, I must aver that most of them have to my taste far too much may­on­naise, and not enough con­trast of tex­tures. That’s why this one is so nice. You should plan to have it when you have left­over roast chicken, but I am not above roast­ing one espe­cially for it. You can even throw in a bit of the crispy skin for a spe­cial treat.

Roasted Chicken Salad With Pine Nuts
(serves four)

whole breast of roasted chicken, shred­ded by hand
bunch of salad onions, white and green parts, thinly sliced
1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
1/2 red onion, chopped fine
2 stalks cel­ery, chopped quite small
hand­ful baby rocket leaves
grated peel of 1 lemon
grated peel of 1 lime

spicy dress­ing:
3 tbsps spicy peper­on­cino olive oil
1 tsp bal­samic vine­gar
juice of 1 lemon
tiny dash chilli flakes
1 tbsp may­on­naise
salt and pep­per
dash of dried thyme

Now, mix all the salad ingre­di­ents and shake up your dress­ing in a jar. Toss every­thing together care­fully. You can eas­ily pack up this salad and the dress­ing in its jar and have it on a pic­nic, whether at a cas­tle or in a ceme­tery. It’s LOVELY. The lemon and lime zest add such a fresh appeal that you could almost think it’s spring in February!

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

More tomor­row, espe­cially the best story of the entire hol­i­day: what to do when you find your rental car perched on the edge of a precipice with its wheels stuck in the mud? Tune in and find out…

We have news: Avery got in EVERY school she applied to! Every­where. We are all beyond proud of her, and so relieved and happy. More soon, but for now: hip, hip, HOORAY!!! Well done, Avery.

This is not, by the way, a ten­ter­hook. It appears that in the entire pan­theon of images in Google, there is not a ten­ter­hook. There is only the expres­sion, “on ten­ter­hooks.” Well, fish hook or no, this image will have to suf­fice. Ten­ter­hooks we are on and there shall we stay until the deliv­ery of the post in the late morn­ing tomor­row. Then, all six school let­ters shall arrive begin­ning either with, “We are thrilled to…” or “We regret to say…”

I must say that John’s mom’s pres­ence has greatly enhanced our sur­vival of the last week’s ordeal. Her energy! We have been to the Tate Mod­ern, we have been to the National Por­trait Gallery, we have been real estate shop­ping, we have been food shop­ping! She is inde­fati­ga­ble. And the best com­pany in the world. We have eaten at home (the best chicken salad I think I’ve ever made), we’ve eaten out (the best Indian in Lon­don I’m convinced).

But I have no time to tell you about these things! Nor about my near-genius pre­sen­ta­tion (I speak entirely objec­tively) at the King’s Col­lege Par­ents’ Edu­ca­tion night this evening, on “From Pro­fi­ciency to Pas­sion: The Joy of Read­ing Aloud to Your Child.” No! I have no time to dis­cuss these fas­ci­nat­ing sub­jects because I must go to sleep and get rested for… school noti­fi­ca­tion. You’ll be the first to know. And then it’s full steam ahead, blog-wise, on our Wales trip and our fran­tic week of mak­ing Lon­don so appeal­ing that we can con­vince my mum-in-law to move here… But more on all that later. To tomorrow’s POST!

What a week! I want to tell you all about it: what cas­tles to visit, what walks to take, where to buy every ingre­di­ent you need for roast pork with cream and white wine, where to find the fluffi­est sheep and even a lamb or two, in fact, a whole tour of our cor­ner of North Wales. But today we are going to Por­to­bello Mar­ket under the same per­fect blue sky that graced our entire hol­i­day (praise be), so all I will say for the present is this: with good enough com­pany, three decks of play­ing cards for duelling Soli­taire, and a huge pile of hot water bot­tles, your Land­mark Trust hol­i­day can be the high­light of your win­ter. No heat in the Great Hall to speak of, so John was the uber-Firemaster, no phone, telly, radio, inter­net or (for sev­eral days) hot water in the kitchen tap. But com­fort­ing com­pany, end­less chats, plenty of mashed pota­toes and long LONG walks in the coun­try­side more than suf­ficed for the slight paucity of ameni­ties. Any­way, we knew what we were get­ting into, and that’s what you go to the coun­try­side for. Peace and quiet. More soon. In the mean­time, get your­self a pot of:

Mixed Pep­per Soup with Brandy and Thyme
(serves four, just barely)

3 tbsps but­ter
half an onion, coarsely chopped
3 cloves gar­lic, coarsely chopped
6 pep­pers: red, yel­low and orange, coarsely chopped
2 soup-size cans chicken stock
chopped fresh thyme to fit in the palm of your hand
splash of good brandy
1 cup light cream

Melt the but­ter in a heavy saucepan and add the onions and gar­lic and saute gen­tly till soft, but NOT brown. Add the pep­pers, stock, thyme and brandy and sim­mer till the pep­pers are soft, about 35 min­utes give or take. Whizz with a hand blender till com­pletely blended, then add the cream and heat through. If your child is picky about tiny bits of pep­per skin, strain the soup through a fine-mesh colan­der. DIVINE. With this soup, all you need are lots of slices of toasted baguette piled with every­thing but the kitchen sink: moz­zarella, melted but­ter with mashed anchovy, pesto and goats cheese, tiny toma­toes cut in half. And don’t for­get the hot water bot­tles for that evening by the fire…

No, sadly I did not take this lovely pho­to­graph (the BBC did), nor have I any access to an actual Sad­dle­back pig. But I must tell you who does: The Gig­gly Pig Com­pany. Let me tell you more.

It’s become my Thurs­day rit­ual to stop at the dull but healthy-ish Pret a Manger in Ham­mer­smith in King Street on my way to my writ­ing class. There I sit eat­ing my blame­less half sand­wich (I do love that they offer a half) and a miso soup, watch­ing the world go by in the farmer’s mar­ket out­side in the square. Well, this par­tic­u­lar day I felt per­haps a veg­e­tar­ian, no-carb, no fat lunch was in order, so not even a half sand­wich! Just a salad. Well, all that went by the way­side when I wan­dered through the mar­ket look­ing for a chicken or beef pur­veyor for Avery’s din­ner while we have scal­lops, and there I came upon “The Gig­gly Pig.” The most charm­ing, apple-cheeked, cen­tral cast­ing farmer girl was there flog­ging her wares, and most con­vinc­ingly because she was cook­ing up sausages right there and cut­ting them into bite-size pieces with kitchen shears, all the while keep­ing a run­ning pat­ter. “Pick up a stick there, now do, madam, and try this Stil­ton and Aspara­gus. Hot out of the pan, just right for a lit­tle nib­ble. Or there’s also the Lime and Sweet Chilli, or my per­sonal favourite, the Jalapeno. Made from our own Sad­dle­back pigs, you know. Don’t be shy now.”

I wasn’t! I tried them all, and ended up after some seri­ous inde­ci­sion with the Jalapeno. So look for this com­pany at your local farmer’s mar­ket: they appear at over 20 mar­kets through­out greater Lon­don, from Epping to Dul­wich. Just lovely. They will be per­fect for tomor­row night’s din­ner in Wales, with John’s mom! That’s right, she’s wing­ing her way her from Iowa right now, one hopes, win­ter weather notwith­stand­ing, for a much-needed two week visit. Right after half-day pickup tomor­row at school, we shall head out, with a dish of mac­a­roni and cheese at the ready to pop in the oven when we arrive.

So I believe I shall be radio-silent for the next week. No inter­net access where we’re headed, if you can imag­ine! I don’t think we’ll mind. After the past six weeks or so of pres­sure, sor­row, drama, more pres­sure and RAIN, we all need a hol­i­day. A week, think of it, with no sched­ules, no goals, no wardrobe require­ments. Just fam­ily, long walks, lots of cook­ing, and… hot water bot­tles. You know when the Land­mark Trust warns you the house will be cold, the house will be COLD. See you in a week!

Whew. But WHEW. Last inter­view today for Avery, at the lovely South Hamp­stead High School, on a per­fect blue-sky day. Ever since our first visit there, it’s been one of our favourite school choices, and today’s expe­ri­ence only under­scored what a nice place it is. Beau­ti­ful old brick build­ing, sweet-faced help­ful gulls to help us find out way, the won­der­fully exu­ber­ant Head Girl chat­ting with our lit­tle ones as they waited for their appoint­ments, and the effer­ves­cent and charm­ing Deputy Head for Aca­d­e­mic Affairs, as always mak­ing us feel wel­come. I really do like the place, and Avery had an excel­lent inter­view with intel­li­gent ques­tions and a per­son who really lis­tened. Dou­ble Whew.

And no, I don’t really nurse secret hopes for her to end up at Mag­dalen Col­lege, Oxford, as this pho­to­graph so evoca­tively illus­trates, but I did want to fol­low up on my plea for infor­ma­tion in my last post: Mag­dalen or Maudlin? Well, thanks to one alert reader I now know all, or nearly all. This reader kindly sent me the fol­low­ing comment:

Regard­ing Mag­dalen Oxford, I believe the found­ing statutes in the mid 15th cen­tury gave instruc­tions that the pro­nun­ci­a­tion should be ‘Maudlin’. How­ever, the two col­leges in ques­tion — Mag­dalen (Oxford) and Mag­da­lene (Cam­bridge) are both his­tor­i­cally pro­nounced ‘maudlin’. The word maudlin shares the same root as Magdalen(e): (from SOED)

maudlin n. [(O)Fr. Madeleine f. eccl.L Mag­dalena: see MAG­DALEN. In branch II f. the adj.]
1 = MAG­DALEN 1. MEL16.b A pen­i­tent resem­bling Mary Mag­dalen. Cf. MAG­DALEN 2. EM17.
maudlin a.E16. [f. the n., w. allus. to pic­tures of the Mag­dalen weep­ing.]
1 Tear­ful and emo­tional as a result of drink.

Lovely! Now we all know. And in my search for even more infor­ma­tion (I didn’t really find any) I came across an absolutely side-splitting forum for a soci­ety called eGul­let, won­der­fully clever dis­cus­sions about all things food-related. This dis­cus­sion will really make you laugh, if the way lan­guage sounds hap­pens to make you laugh. Increas­ingly hilar­i­ous requests by mem­bers for help on how to pro­nounce var­i­ous culi­nary terms from other lan­guages, but also plenty of atten­tion on just plain boffo British pro­nun­ci­a­tions. Do click.

Well, yes­ter­day I learned some­thing about myself. When feel­ing rather (can’t help myself) maudlin, sad and point­less, the best thing for me to do is gather up a bunch of ingre­di­ents, some instruc­tions from my new favourite cook­ery writer Tamasin Day-Lewis (her Tamasin’s Kitchen Clas­sics is just mouth-watering), and get cook­ing. Truly, I spent the whole day try­ing to change my mood: I tried a game of soli­taire, a spot of email­ing, a look at the pre-Super Tues­day telly cov­er­age, a nice long walk. Noth­ing could break my gloom. But din­ner prep comes to all of us, and armed with Tamasin’s advice, I entered the kitchen, not feel­ing in much of a mood to be cre­ative, but needs must. And I must tell you: chop­ping and strain­ing, grat­ing and mix­ing, stir­ring and sautee­ing, TOTALLY changed my out­look on life! Plus at the end we all had a deli­cious meal to enjoy. But beware: the two side dishes are NOT for the fat-faint of heart. Two words: goose fat. Two more words: dou­ble cream. Read on… you know you want to.

Roasted Pork Ten­der­loin with Mixed Herbs and Pep­per
(serves 4 with good side dishes)

1 pork ten­der­loin, any sinews removed
olive oil to fill the cup of your hand
1 tbsp each: Aleppo pep­per flakes, sea salt, fresh chopped rose­mary, fresh chopped thyme, fresh chopped pars­ley, minced garlic

Lay the ten­der­loin on a cut­ting board or a piece of grease­proof paper, and rub all over with the olive oil. Then scat­ter your mixed herbs and what­not on the sur­face, the length of the ten­der­loin, and roll the meat around until you’ve pressed as much as pos­si­ble of the mix­ture into the meat sur­face. Roast at 425 degrees (220-ish cel­sius) for 25 min­utes, if you like the pork pink in the mid­dle, longer for more well-done. Remove to a cut­ting board and let rest for 10 min­utes while you put the fin­ish­ing touches on:

Tamasin’s Pota­toes Lyon­naises
(serves four)

1 lb pota­toes, in their jack­ets, scrubbed
1 large white onion
4 ounces goose fat
sea salt to taste

Boil the pota­toes until just cooked and set aside to cool slightly. Then slice the onion very thin and saute it in half the goose fat, till crispy and brown. Set aside in a lit­tle dish, and DO NOT clean the skil­let. Cube the pota­toes into nice shapes (Avery did turn up her presentation-obsessed nose at my impre­cise angles) and saute in the other half of the goose fat, in the onion skil­let, turn­ing fre­quently to brown on all sides as much as pos­si­ble. Throw in the onions and toss till mixed. HEAVEN. Espe­cially with…

Tamasin’s Spinach Gratin
(serves four)

1 pound (two large bags) baby spinach, washed and chopped (you can do this in batches in the Cuisi­nart, but not too fine)
1/2 cup dou­ble cream
1 medium egg
sprin­kle black pep­per
sprin­kle sea salt
sprin­kle ground nut­meg
1/2 cup grated Pecorino or Parmesan

Bring a stock­pot of water to boil and JUST cook the spinach, stir­ring thor­oughly, just for 30 sec­onds. Then press into a sieve or colan­der and get ALL the water out. Press into a gratin or small-ish bak­ing dish. Whisk together all the rest of the ingre­di­ents but the cheese and pour over the spinach, lift­ing the spinach lightly here and there with a fork to mix the creamy bits in. Top with the cheese and bake in a 425 degree oven (with the pork, why not?) for 20 minutes.

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

Now doesn’t that menu just make you want to sit up and beg like a dog? I would have, but hey, it was all in my kitchen, so I didn’t have to. And I didn’t even make Avery and John beg.

The beauty of this menu bog­gles the imag­i­na­tion on so many lev­els. The pork is lean, inex­pen­sive and the herbs make it ter­ri­bly flavour­some with­out any mess­ing about with but­ter, wine, etc. Plus it cooks itself. The pota­toes are cheap, suc­cu­lent and evilly glossy with the goose fat (and how often do you have goose fat, any­way? not often enough to dwell on its doubt­less artery-clogging nature). The spinach is vir­tu­ous in its bril­liant green, but lux­u­ri­ous in its coat of creamy cheese.

Tamasin does not chop her spinach, but I do because both Avery and I object to whole cooked spinach leaves on slim­i­ness prin­ci­ples. The key, too, is in tim­ing. Get the pota­toes boiled before you start any­thing else, and assem­ble the spinach. Then put the pork in, start sautee­ing the pota­toes and onions, and ten min­utes before the pork is done, slide the spinach in the very same oven. Its last ten min­utes are while the pork rests. It’s the mat­ter of two min­utes to slice the pork and every­thing else will be ready.

I can­not blither on too much about how much the cosy, fra­grant prep of this din­ner cheered me up, not to men­tion the twin plea­sures of gob­bling it up and hav­ing my fam­ily be so happy with me! Totally changed my out­look on life, and if an activ­ity can do that with just four ounces of goose fat, it goes on my list.

So after Avery’s very happy time at SHHS, we drove quite the entire width of the city to take her to meet her class at the Ragged School Museum, just about as far away from Hamp­stead as you can get and still be in Cen­tral Lon­don. A lovely Vic­to­rian insti­tu­tion, the Ragged School was, and now the museum sits to teach our spoilt, indulged 21st cen­tury chil­dren what it was like to go to school only for the lentil stew at noon. Bare­foot, and yes ragged, sad lit­tle crea­tures, lots of pho­tographs lin­ing the walls, and SUCH an atten­tive and enthu­si­as­tic vol­un­teer, a lit­tle old man called Bryn, more than happy to show John and me around after we’d found her form and dropped her off. They’re reputed to have activ­i­ties dur­ing half-term, so we might have to give that a try.

From there it was across the river for lunch with Vin­cent and Peter, a never-fail pick-me-up should one’s nerves be flag­ging after all these exams and inter­views (I know, I know, I’m not even tak­ing them, or doing any­thing, but you’d be sur­prised how stress­ful just get­ting her there has been).

Because Pete was feel­ing under the weather, we met them in their hood, the always-stimulating Bermond­sey. It was our sec­ond visit to the delight­ful bistro Vil­lage East, and it did not dis­ap­point. Except for the sti­fling tem­per­a­ture in the din­ing room, it was a won­der­ful lunch. Seared scal­lops and caramelised pork belly, with a car­rot puree, so LIGHT and gor­geous, and then soft­shell crabs tem­pura, with a (I thought) rather watery and mys­te­ri­ous water­melon and wasabi sauce. The boys went for enor­mous things like burg­ers (with sauteed foie gras, can you imag­ine? my choice next time), lamb rump, and roasted hal­ibut. Oh what a time we had. They are with­out a doubt two of my favorite peo­ple in the world, not the least because they play off each other so nicely: Vin­cent extrav­a­gant, author­i­ta­tive, utterly at home in the world, and Pete gen­tly mock­ing, wry, witty. I will never for­get the first time I met him and I asked, “So how did you and Vin­cent meet?” and he replied with­out miss­ing a beat, “I sim­ply went into Star­bucks and ordered a tall black Americano.”

I put my con­ver­sa­tional foot down and said that we were not going to spend the entire lunch talk­ing about the boys’ iPhones, so they sheep­ishly put them aside (not away, to be sure) and we moved on to our usual dis­cus­sions of vaca­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties, new recipes, dis­ci­pline for daugh­ters, and this time, how to turn my cook­book from just some­thing I wit­ter on about into REAL­ITY. Every­one needs a friend like Vin­cent: he is absolutely con­vinced that I am bet­ter at every­thing than I really am, better-looking, more tal­ented, more in demand, more… won­der­ful. One has to keep a tight grip on one’s mod­esty and sense of pro­por­tion, because oth­er­wise one could quite eas­ily come away from a Vin­cent ses­sion with an enor­mously swelled head and visions of sug­arplums danc­ing through pub­lish­ers’ offices. “You want the audi­ence who are going for ‘aspi­ra­tional’ cook­books, dar­ling,” he avers, and I have to say, “But Vin­cent, dar­ling, no one aspires to be me.” Still, I did feel encour­aged and rather excited at try­ing to make it all happen.

And apro­pos of our upcom­ing trip to Wales, Peter told a hilar­i­ous and com­pli­cated story about the can­cel­la­tion of some Welsh cul­tural min­istry, a so-called “Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organ­i­sa­tion. “And the news­pa­per head­line was,” he fin­ished up, “Last Qango in Powys.” See, I’d like to be one of those peo­ple who can think of an appro­pri­ate, rel­e­vant and very funny story, and tell it accu­rately on the spur of the moment, but I never will be. This is one of the many rea­sons I must keep Pete in my life. Plus he let me nick a cou­ple of his chips. I also asked Vin­cent if I could nick his gherkin, which sounded like I meant some­thing else entirely.

Ah, well, it was soon school pickup time and went to get our Raggedy Lit­tle Girl who was full of excite­ment about the trip. We are all quite drop­ping with exhaus­tion so I fore­see a quiet evening. Hope yours is, as well…

Let’s see: why does a house­hold with three chil­dren seem so much more…occupied than a house­hold with one child? This is not a trick ques­tion. It’s actu­ally hard to answer, given that none of the chil­dren requires dia­per chang­ing, bot­tle feed­ing, or in fact much atten­tion at all. It’s just the neces­sity to keep track of and think about so many peo­ple all at once! Like a long din­ner party, or a din­ner party that turns into a sleep­over and then lunch. I think peo­ple with mul­ti­ple chil­dren are very patient and self­less peo­ple, and also have an amaz­ing eye for safety and traf­fic haz­ards. I found myself absolutely con­vinced, all week­end, that cars would jump the pave­ment, vehi­cles with flash­ing lights and sirens appear at any moment to mow down my chil­dren, or that at the very least they’d merely be chat­ting away in the inter­sec­tion as an unsus­pect­ing Aston Mar­tin took them out. Actu­ally Avery would find that quite an accept­able method for leav­ing the known universe.

Then there’s feed­ing time. Who likes what? Bev­er­age pref­er­ences and knife skills! They were all delight­ful and appre­cia­tive and help­ful: it’s just the num­ber of details that sur­prised me. Par­ents of only chil­dren have, granted, more peace­ful din­ners, but none with so much energy and gig­gling as a fam­ily of three girls would be. And I must say, it was very good for Avery to have as her solemn and sworn duty all week­end: keep Ellie safe and happy. She had her by the hand, mar­shalled her at the end of today’s very crowded con­cert, shep­herded her indoors when she fell on one of the jumps and waited until we had Ellie safely under a cash­mere throw with a hot water bot­tle, before return­ing to the jump­ing course in the garden.

Sadly, they have gone home. I only hope their min­ders for the week under­stand what trea­sures they have, and no one tries to get Ellie’s loose teeth out. If John can­not accom­plish this, no one can, with­out tears and blood. For the record, I’d like to have all three girls ALL the time.

Now then: Con­tro­versy at the farmer’s mar­ket! Are some of our stall­hold­ers fid­dling the sys­tem? Are they sell­ing fruit and veg that they them­selves have pur­chased from a wholesaler’s stall that morn­ing at the crack of dawn? I con­fess I found this arti­cle hard to under­stand, or rather I couldn’t see, in some sit­u­a­tions, what the fuss was about. Take Isle of Wight Toma­toes, for exam­ple, admit­tedly very expen­sive, but with lovely peo­ple work­ing the stall and the toma­toes always taste won­der­ful. Can it be true that they’re merely BUY­ING their toma­toes from another Isle of Wight tomato pur­veyor and then bring­ing them to Maryle­bone to resell? And even more sig­nif­i­cantly, how much would I care if they were? As long as they are real organic toma­toes from the Isle of Wight, do I care if there was a mid­dle­man? I sup­pose I do, a bit. I sup­pose part of the farmer’s mar­ket expe­ri­ence is feel­ing that you’ve just bought some­thing from the per­son who grew it, or raised it. I think that’s why I’m inclined to buy fruit and veg from a small stall rather than Sun­ny­fields, if I can. Sun­ny­fields feels that much closer to a super­mar­ket them­selves, because I know they sup­ply the out­ra­geously expen­sive Nat­ural Kitchen up the High Street. But how point­lessly quixotic is that: surely sell­ing to a large shop is a mea­sure of their suc­cess? I’m really not built to work all these issues out. Oh, it’s a conun­drum, and a lot of trou­ble, just to feed one’s family.

Well, I did get a mighty tasty new let­tuce from Wild Coun­try Organ­ics called “miner’s leaf”, but I can’t seem to find out a thing about it. There’s some­thing called “leaf miner” that is appar­ently the most pesti­lent gar­den pest you can imag­ine, but miner’s leaf? Don’t know. It looks like a cross between pea shoots and lamb’s let­tuce, and has a very nice bite to it. But the star of the show after my mar­ket trip yes­ter­day was most def­i­nitely Vin­tage Lin­colnshire Poacher, quite sim­ply the most deli­cious cheese you will ever have toasted between two pieces of whole­meal bread. Of course real cheese conois­seurs will have it on a cheese board with the proper sort of cheese knife, but when you’re feed­ing chil­dren, grilled cheese is the way to go. Nutty, strong, creamy and salty, it is an absolute winner.

And you can’t beat High­land Sug­ar­works Blue­berry Pan­cake Mix for break­fast to make any child happy. At first when I make the bat­ter I am con­vinced there are no blue­ber­ries in it, but some­how they are dried so tiny that they hide in the flour (sev­eral dif­fer­ent kinds of flour, actu­ally) and then when the milk and oil and eggs go in, up pop the blue­ber­ries. I never obey the instruc­tions on these bags: milk is ALWAYS bet­ter than water in any sit­u­a­tion except swim­ming pools. Scram­bled eggs with water? Cream is more like it.

Well, I have very lit­tle news to pass along. Avery is, as we speak, at her penul­ti­mate inter­view, at Fran­cis Hol­land School in Sloane Square. It’s not so much an inter­view as a morn­ing spent in lessons at some­one else’s school. How tedious must that be? Then Wednes­day is South Hamp­stead High School, and that’s IT. Finally. I have a new game: think­ing up pseu­do­nyms for the school that we even­tu­ally choose. Because as I dis­cov­ered with our cur­rent school, if cer­tain types of par­ents find out about a cer­tain mother’s blog accu­rately iden­ti­fy­ing the real school, those cer­tain par­ents can be pre­dicted to freak out. So while those of you who know will know, those of you who won’t won’t, if that makes any sense at all.

Speak­ing of things not mak­ing sense, I would be ever so grate­ful if some British per­son could explain the fol­low­ing to me: why is the word “Mag­dalen” pro­nounced as it’s spelled when it’s the Mary who was devoted to Jesus, but if it’s the col­lege at Oxford it’s pro­nounced “Maudlin”? For years I have assumed that the Oxford Col­lege was spelt the way it sounds. But then, watch­ing “Uni­ver­sity Chal­lenge” as I must say we do, I saw it spelt out prop­erly, and there is was, “Mag­dalen.” Why, one won­ders? Some­one please enlighten me. I am so fond of these British ways, but I like to know the rea­son­ing if I can. If “rea­son­ing” it be…

Oh! But I do have news, I nearly for­got. For my birth­day John’s giv­ing me a week-long writ­ing course in Devon! It doesn’t come to pass until Octo­ber, but it’s my birth­day present nonethe­less. It seemed expen­sive to me until John pointed out that I’d spent more than that already on the var­i­ous writ­ing courses I’ve taken in Lon­don, the result of which has been merely to learn what I’m NOT good at writ­ing. Well, this one is called “Food Writ­ing,” and it is run by the Arvon Foun­da­tion, a fas­ci­nat­ing organ­i­sa­tion led by two writ­ers who were friends of Ted Hughes. I just read the descrip­tion in the brochure: “cut off from the dis­trac­tions of daily life: no friends, no fam­ily, no wifi, inter­net, vir­tu­ally no mobile sig­nals…” Eeek! Just writ­ing all day long, and in the evening lis­ten­ing to read­ings by the tutors. My tutors will be Tamasin Day-Lewis (sis­ter of Daniel, which descrip­tion must make her crazy some­times) and Orlando Mur­rin. Then there is a guest writer, Simon Parkes, whose func­tion I’m not com­pletely clear about. I’m sud­denly very ner­vous! Why?

Well, for one thing I never leave home. And if I do, I am sen­si­ble enough to take my fam­ily with me. Sec­ond, I am addicted to email and to my blog. No com­puter! Eeek. Third, how on earth will I be able to pack enough books to keep me com­pany with no fam­ily and no friends for four nights? And how will the food be? Appar­ently all of us on the course cook together every night, which should be good fun. What on earth is pos­sess­ing me to do such a thing? What if I am the only Amer­i­can? Doubt­less I will be. What if every­one else is a pub­lished food writer already, or restau­ra­teur, or caterer, and I’m the only one whose sole con­tri­bu­tion to the world of food is cook­ing din­ner every night for a hus­band and one dis­cern­ing 11-year-old? Waah!

Ah, well, I’ve paid my deposit and so I must go. And I think I have the ten­ta­tive agree­ment of my dear mother in law to come and be cook and chief bot­tle washer here. Am I nuts? John leaves home, Avery leaves home, John and Avery both leave home, but I? Never. I think the last time I was away was in 1998 when I went to Los Ange­les with my friend Sarah to inves­ti­gate find­ing pub­lish­ers for our book. It was for one night! Ten years ago. Well, per­haps it will be one of those oppor­tu­ni­ties peo­ple are always wit­ter­ing on about, how it shows them parts of their char­ac­ters they never knew they had. I have the sneak­ing sus­pi­cion that what­ever is revealed to me belongs where it is now, hid­den and unmissed. But we shall see! The good thing is that I will finally be con­cen­trat­ing on exactly what I want to write about: not sit­coms or films or short sto­ries, but mem­oirs and food writing.

In the mean­time, we are off to col­lect Avery from her morn­ing spent being charm­ing and intel­li­gent, home for a belated lunch of bolog­nese, and then to school for what­ever delights Mon­day after­noons offer. And I’m spend­ing the after­noon making:

Slow-Cooked Chicken Wings with Blue Cheese Dress­ing
(serves four)

2 dozen chicken wings
1/3 cup each: maple syrup, chilli sauce, tomato juice, black trea­cle
2 tbsps sesame oil
juice of 1 lime
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
small knob gin­ger, peeled and minced

Mix all the mari­nade ingre­di­ents in a large ziplock bag and toss the wings in, mak­ing sure they are ade­quately coated. Set aside for as long as you like in the fridge. If you’re like me and have a very crowded fridge, the bag method is best, rather than try­ing to find room for a large Pyrex bowl as I used to do with my sat­is­fy­ingly mas­sive Amer­i­can fridge (one of two in my kitchen, I weep to say). With a bag you can squish it around and make room.

Line a bak­ing dish with alu­minum foil and bake the wings in a slow-ish oven (325f, 160c, about) for at least an hour and a half. You can turn your oven even lower and cook them longer. Turn at least once. Serve with:

Blue Cheese Dress­ing
(serves lots)

1/3 cup sour cream
3/4 cup home­made may­on­naise (recipe below)
1/2 tsp Worces­ter­shire sauce
dash gar­lic pow­der
dash salt
dash black pep­per
3 ounces blue cheese, crumbled

Mix all ingre­di­ents well with a whisk, then fold in crum­bled blue cheese. Chill.

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

Home­made May­on­naise
(makes one cup)

1 egg yolk
1/4 tsp salt
pinch cayenne
pinch white pep­per
pinch dry mus­tard
juice of half lemon
1 cup olive oil

With a wire whisk, beat egg yolk with salt, cayenne, pep­per and mus­tard until thick and yel­low as a lemon. Then add half the lemon juice slowly and beat again. Now, one drop at a time for about a minute, add olive oil. Then after the first minute, a steady but TINY stream of oil will do, whisk­ing con­stantly until the oil is used up. Now whisk in remain­ing lemon juice slowly. Chill, and enjoy. And ask your­self: how do they get com­mer­cial mayo to be so… white? Doesn’t make sense. One of those life mysteries.

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

Well, I have to tell you Avery got back from her inter­view this morn­ing and it was a very reveal­ing lit­tle con­ver­sa­tion they had with her. Thumbs down on this school, I’d say. Avery says she went into the inter­view speak­ing Eng­lish as opposed to Amer­i­can as she’d been talk­ing with a gag­gle of Eng­lish girls before­hand, and that’s usu­ally what hap­pens. So the inter­view­ing crea­ture asked her if she had been a pupil at King’s Col­lege back when it was under another name, and she answered, “No, I moved from New York just two years ago.” “Oh. I did not realise you were an Amer­i­can.” Pause while Avery declines to elab­o­rate on the lady’s state­ment. So then she asked Avery, “Do you find that peo­ple tend to have… dif­fer­ent opin­ions about Amer­i­cans than they do about peo­ple from other coun­tries?” “What on earth did you find to say about that?” I asked in amaze­ment. “Well,” Avery said, “I didn’t want to say that British peo­ple think Amer­i­cans are fat and igno­rant, so I just said that it depended upon the indi­vid­ual per­son one meets.” Well done! “But she didn’t stop there, with what I thought was a very diplo­matic answer!” she wailed. “The lady said, ‘Well, when peo­ple DO judge Amer­i­cans dif­fer­ently, what do you think they think?’, so I said, “I sup­pose some peo­ple think Amer­i­cans are not as well informed as they might be,” and that was all I could think of!” Poor child.

I don’t think this is the school for us. What a ques­tion, or set of ques­tions, to ask! It cer­tainly gives an indi­ca­tion of the sort of social envi­ron­ment she’d be up against, doesn’t it? I think she did extra­or­di­nar­ily well, not defen­sive, not silly, not pre­tend­ing she didn’t under­stand the under­cur­rent. But yuck. I am not, as you know, one to flag-wave mind­lessly about my erst­while home, but I will go out on a limb and say that the only peo­ple who should make snap judg­ments about Amer­i­cans are… Amer­i­cans themselves!

First, can I just say how HAPPY I am to see the end of the month of Jan­u­ary? Every­thing has to start get­ting bet­ter now, just to have that awful month behind me.

To start things off, it’s a bad news/good news thing. Well, the bad news is, Becky and her hus­band are jet­ted off to New York City to find a place to live and schools for their three girls. The bad news also is, this means Becky and her fam­ily are mov­ing, alas, to New York. Not “alas, to New York,” but “mov­ing, alas.” What on earth will I do with­out her? Over the last two years we have shared birth­days, ill­nesses, gos­sip, exams, fam­ily tri­als and tribu­la­tions and the total joy of watch­ing our chil­dren become fast, fast friends. I am not even approach­ing imag­in­ing Lon­don with­out them. How­ever, needs must and when Becky flies away, the good news is…

We get her chil­dren! Two of the three, at least. At thir­teen, Ash­ley has moved on to greener pas­tures. Like Star­bucks and sleep­overs with friends. But at least we got Anna and Ellie, begin­ning this morn­ing. The girls imme­di­ately set up the jumps in the gar­den, as you see, and spent a lovely time jump­ing, scor­ing, tor­ment­ing Tacy and gen­er­ally get­ting more than our usual money’s worth out of the space. A gor­geous lunch at La Car­i­catura, fast becom­ing our Sat­ur­day favorite. Today was a spe­cial of wild boar carpac­cio, which was deli­cious (although I could not in all hon­esty coun­te­nance the raisins along­side), and the girls tucked into pizza and ravi­oli and wrote the lyrics for the songs of their upcom­ing evening play. Then it was onto Avery’s act­ing class, so Anna and I went SHOP­PING. Not for clothes or shoes, mind you, but for the raw ingre­di­ents of SLIME.

Yes, you read it cor­rectly. Yes­ter­day at school they all made SLIME, of ingre­di­ents sur­pris­ingly hard to obtain in our posh neigh­bor­hood of Lon­don. Food col­or­ing, white glue and Borax. Boots, Marks and Spencer, Sel­f­ridges, Ryman’s, we hit them all. We laughed over what a passerby would think should he see what was in our bags. “It’s the beef mince that would put some­one off the trail,” I said. “No one would know that in addi­tion to slime, we’re hav­ing bolog­nese for dinner.”

So they made slime, I made bolog­nese, they raided all Avery’s cup­boards and put on a very intrigu­ing play about three (appar­ently) orphaned girls, no, actu­ally the mother had gone inex­plic­a­bly to Malta, ful­fill­ing her prin­ci­pal role in fic­tion: absent. No good girls’ sto­ries have live, func­tion­ing moth­ers. Now they have been cajoled into clean­ing up and are hap­pily eat­ing pop­corn and watch­ing “Bal­let Shoes,” a regret­tably excel­lent BBC pro­duc­tion of the Noel Streat­feild novel. I want to dis­ap­prove on some high moral ground about not let­ting chil­dren slob before the tele­vi­sion set, but the cast­ing is excel­lent, the orig­i­nal book adorable, and in gen­eral, it’s lovely.

Tomor­row brings the Royal Acad­emy of Music con­cert in aid of Children’s Trust. They par­tic­i­pated in this con­cert last year and it was very, very mov­ing. I’m a lit­tle intim­i­dated by mak­ing an extra lunch for a noto­ri­ously choosey lit­tle girl, and enter­tain­ing Anna in between drop­ping the other girls off and actu­ally going to the con­cert. Wish me luck in my role as “Nanny.”