But first, before I tell you about my new approach to cook­ing (I know there’s noth­ing new under the sun, but it’s new to me), just look at our Easter. Snow! I ask you. I am a big fan of snow, but on Easter? It absolutely pelted down for the bet­ter part of the morn­ing, even stick­ing on the grass in the gar­den for a bit. Insane. First we were caught in the hail­storm the day before, and now this. Poor Easter bunny. But our egg-dyeing was a huge suc­cess. As we found on our first Easter in this lovely land, there are no white hen’s eggs to be found, at least I’ve never found any. Blue, green, pink and brown, but no white. And no egg dye, but we have long known a dirty lit­tle secret: just plain food colour­ing works a treat. The colours turn out so intense, as you can see, that they put white eggs and all those fancy dye­ing kits to shame. We had a ball, but Avery’s apron will never be the same. Oh, and you want white eggs? Gotta go for duck.

So, enough about unsea­son­able weather and the ever­last­ing smell of post-Easter sul­fur in the air, what I want to tell you about is my new cook­ing method. It’s some­thing I have seen on all the fancy cook­ing shows like Mas­terchef and Great British Menu (we are pathet­i­cally addicted to these pro­grammes and it’s turn­ing Avery into quite the lit­tle food critic), but I’d never tried it myself. I have named this approach “pan-basting,” because that’s what you do. Now, nor­mally when I cook from a skil­let it’s pretty bor­ing. I heat up some oil or but­ter or a com­bi­na­tion of both, stick the food­stuff in and let it cook. But lis­ten to this: how about if you tip the skil­let to one side now and then to gather up the oil, but­ter and cook­ing juices in a large spoon, and then pour it all over what­ever you’re cook­ing? If you do this con­stantly through­out the cook­ing process, and you don’t just let your meat or chicken or fish sit there while all the bast­ing liq­uid trav­els to the edges of your skil­let into a waste­land of obliv­ion, the flavours are amaz­ing! And it makes cook­ing more fun, as well, because there’s some­thing to do and you can watch and keep track of the juices accu­mu­lat­ing and USE THEM.

I dis­cov­ered this in the Cotswolds with a lovely pork ten­der­loin. The poor lit­tle thing looked so dry and lonely! And then I noticed all that lovely juice and olive oil, plus the chopped rose­mary and grated lemon zest I’d mar­i­nated it in, accu­mu­lat­ing at the edges of the skil­let. So I poured in a dot of white wine and let the skil­let deglaze, tipped the skil­let, scooped up all the lovely glop, poured it over, and my life will never be the same. It’s such a rich, cel­e­bra­tory method! Then, right at what I thought should be the end of cook­ing time, I decided that since it was only us, I’d cut into the fil­let in the mid­dle and just check, and lord have mercy, it was nowhere near done. So I rashly cut each half in half, giv­ing me four tidy lit­tle pork logs, and pro­ceeded with my bast­ing, plus I stood each lit­tle log on its ends so they got seared and juicy too. Oh, it was a rev­e­la­tion. If I were will­ing to go whole hog on the but­ter, it would be even bet­ter, but for some mis­guided health rea­son, I kept it to olive oil.

Well, since then I’ve been “pan-basting” with reck­less aban­don. Salmon fil­let? You bet, baste him with that lovely dill but­ter he’s cook­ing in. Pour it all over the fil­let, then turn it over and do the same again. Lovely! And per­haps the nicest exper­i­ment was this:

Pan-Basted Chicken Breasts with Pro­sciutto, Moz­zarella and Spinach
(serves 4, with a bit left over, prob­a­bly)

4 large chicken breasts, bone­less and skin­less (although skin might be nice)
2 balls buf­falo moz­zarella, sliced thick
8 slices pro­sciutto
2 hand­fuls baby spinach
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsps but­ter
1/2 pound but­ton or chest­nut mush­rooms, quar­tered
sprin­kle dried basil
sea salt
fresh-ground black pep­per
8 tooth­picks (or you could tie them up if you know how: I don’t)

Lay the chicken breasts one at a time on your cut­ting board and flat­ten them out, push­ing that nice lit­tle ten­der bit to the side but keep­ing it attached. Cover the sur­face of each breast with moz­zarella slices, pro­sciutto and spinach leaves. Then roll it all up, or fold it, depend­ing on how thick it is, and secure it with the tooth­picks, fold­ing any strag­gly bits in and catch­ing as much as you can with the tooth­picks. The idea is to keep as much moz­zarella as pos­si­ble inside the pocket, since the ham and spinach won’t try to move.

Now heat your oil and but­ter in a large skil­let and sprin­kle in the basil, salt and pep­per. When it’s all siz­zling and bub­bling and lovely, place the breasts care­fully in. Throw the mush­room quar­ters in as well. Cook the chicken on one side until it becomes opaque and white, no longer pink (about five min­utes, per­haps). Turn and do the same on the other side. By this time some juices will have been released and turned into a deli­cious liq­uid with the oil and but­ter. Don’t taste it, though! Too raw. Wait till it’s thor­oughly cooked before you taste it for salt. Tip the skil­let and spoon up the juices in a soup spoon, and driz­zle it over each breast in turn, con­tin­u­ing to tip the skil­let when the spoon’s empty.

What you’ll find is that the moz­zarella melts and some of it escapes into the cook­ing juice, which means you’re pour­ing INTO and on top of the deli­cious pocket of chicken a com­plex ambrosia of oil, but­ter, cheese, basil, salt, pep­per and chicken juices. Turn the pock­ets on their sides, too, and brown all over. It’s hard to over­cook this dish because the ham and cheese mois­turise the chicken, so don’t worry too much. Keep spoon­ing those juices as often as you like. It’s fun!

When you’re sure the breasts are thor­oughly cooked (you can ver­ify this by look­ing at the bit of inside pocket that’s vis­i­ble, and make sure it’s no longer pink at all), taste the cook­ing liq­uid and add salt or more pep­per as needed. Finally, lift the breasts and mush­rooms out care­fully with tongs and just leave all that oil and but­ter fat behind: it’s done its job. Lovely.

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I’m devoted to this method now. It would be a won­der­ful way to cook a beef fil­let, as that cut can run to dry­ness. A rack of lamb would be sim­ply fab­u­lous this way, with fresh chopped rose­mary and lemon juice added to the oil or but­ter. Sadly, a by-product of our lovely Cotswolds hol­i­day and visit to the Mecca of Baby Lambs has meant that Avery is no longer will­ing to coun­te­nance lamb as FOOD. But there will come her school hol­i­day to Nor­mandy next month and you can bet that hard-hearted John and I will be reach­ing for that rack. “Mummy, how CAN you? After you fed it with a bot­tle!” Needs must.

Right. We must run Avery over to her friend Sophie’s house for a sleep­over and tomorrow’s mati­nee of “The Jer­sey Boys.” I’m cel­e­brat­ing the only good thing about hav­ing her gone: eat­ing things she doesn’t like. It’s crab­cakes and that lovely scal­lop dish I told you about a bit ago, with beet­root and pota­toes. We’ll see if the first time mak­ing it was a fluke… I think I’ll pan-baste them! And then I promise to stop talk­ing about it. Seriously.

Oh, and I nearly for­got to tell you about the dessert Avery invented on Easter Sun­day. We had an absolute ball cook­ing together, but I must con­fess: she’s rub­bish at wash­ing up. I guess great chefs have peo­ple to do that sort of thing for them (mothers).

Avery’s Straw­berry Nests
(one per person!)

8 sheets puff pas­try, cut a lit­tle larger than the size of your indi­vid­ual tart pan
3 tbsps melted but­ter
hand­ful choco­late chips, melted
home­made straw­berry whipped cream (recipe below)
2 straw­ber­ries, halved
1 tbsp rasp­berry coulis (recipe below)

Brush but­ter on each sheet of puff pas­try in turn and pile them up. Then nes­tle them into the tart pan. Spread the bot­tom with melted choco­late, and fill up the tart with whipped cream. Arrange the straw­ber­ries on the cream and driz­zle with coulis. Gorgeous!

Straw­berry Whipped Cream

1/2 pint whip­ping cream
dash vanilla extract
2 tbsps sugar (less if you like)
3 straw­ber­ries, quartered

Place all the ingre­di­ents in your Mag­imix and whizz until the cream is whipped, tak­ing care that you don’t whip it too long and end up with straw­berry butter!

Rasp­berry Coulis

1 pint rasp­ber­ries
2 tbsps sugar
juice of 1/2 lemon

Sim­mer all ingre­di­ents in a small saucepan, press­ing on the berries with a spoon. Cook down until liq­uidy, then pass through a sieve into a cup, to elim­i­nate the seeds. Return to saucepan and cook down till reduced by about half.

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Enjoy!

I love Easter Eve. I love dye­ing eggs and mak­ing a mess, and ever since Avery was two and a half, she’s been an enthu­si­as­tic side­kick, don­ning her apron (at first a Hello Kitty spec­i­men, but now she’s grad­u­ated to plain white as befits the bud­ding gas­tronome), and we used to put wine glasses in the sink, filled with dye, and let her dip to her heart’s con­tent, secure in the knowl­edge that any drips would run down the drain. I’m happy to report that at age 11 1/2, she’s still very happy to spend the day with her mother and father dye­ing eggs. “Whoa, this blue is too intense. Let’s add some red and dilute it, and see if we get lavender…”

We are com­pletely caught up this week­end with, if you can believe it, pol­i­tics. Now mind you, I haven’t been truly polit­i­cal since grad­u­ate school when I cam­paigned for Dukakis (lord, that’s a long time ago now), but I’ve always been hap­pily Demo­c­rat. My beloved has, by con­trast, always been a stal­wart Repub­li­can. We always voted any­way, know­ing that we can­celled each other out. One has to vote, after all. Well, since lis­ten­ing to the Barack Obama speech on race issues in Amer­ica, I am pleased to say that we are united for the first time ever. Any pres­i­den­tial can­di­date who can com­bine his intel­lect and peace-loving nature with the abil­ity to use “com­plic­ity” in a sen­tence (and I bet he can spell it too) has my vote, and amaz­ingly, John’s as well. To Avery’s cha­grin, we brought her in to watch the speech, and she was soon trans­fixed. “How can any­one not see the sense and the good­ness in this speech?” I asked rhetor­i­cally. “Well, Mommy, if there weren’t some of those sad peo­ple out there, he wouldn’t have to make the speech to begin with.” It takes the wis­dom of a child.

Which led to a very inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion of the “I Have a Dream” speech and the Get­tys­burg address. Did every­one lis­ten­ing to those speeches stand up and applaud? No, sadly, much as we all wish to think so now, and to revere these peo­ple, they were shot dead. Some­thing to learn about what sounds like absolute received wis­dom: for some peo­ple lis­ten­ing, it takes awhile.

But enough about seri­ous things. We went out this after­noon for a nice brisk walk and found our­selves, in the Maryle­bone High Street, in a HAIL­STORM! Some­thing between hail and snow, but at the end of March? Come on! Our heads low­ered, we pressed on to buy our Easter weekend’s worth of food, and by the time we got home, blue skies pre­vailed. But as my friend Becky reported later, it didn’t last long. These storms time them­selves for the moments one is out of doors and unpro­tected. Ick!

I must tell you about these last pho­tos from our Cotswolds hol­i­day: the Cotwsold Farm Park! You must all go, right away. Sit­u­ated just between Stowe and Chip­ping Cam­p­den, it’s a nir­vana filled with baby every­thing you might want to hold: chicks (you can’t even see any­thing but a tiny black head in my hands!), lambs, goats, guinea pigs, bun­nies, you name it. We were able to see a lamb being born, believe it or not, and then the guys brought over a lamb need­ing a mother and cov­ered it in the birth fluid and voila: the mother adopted it. I felt quite woe­fully inad­e­quate in my fuss­ing over Avery’s birth lo these many years ago: the sheep said noth­ing! Out in the acres beyond the birthing pen there were Exmoor ponies, pigs, goats with dread­locks, bison and sheep and ducks and pea­cocks, a heaven of ani­mals. Do go, you’ll be so glad you did.

Before I go I must tell you about a lovely tart I made for our lunch today, in between madly juic­ing beet­root, cel­ery, gin­ger, car­rot and pear for break­fast, and dye­ing eggs. Here goes:

Goats Cheese and Parma Ham Tart
(serves at least 6)

1 full pack­age short pas­try, squeezed and prod­ded to fit a 12-inch tart pan
2 tbsps but­ter
2 shal­lots, sliced thin
8 but­ton mush­rooms, chopped
1 tsp dried thyme
6 slices Parma Ham, torn up into pieces
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup sin­gle cream
100 grams goats cheese
grated parme­san cheese to sprinkle

This is so heav­enly sim­ple. Just saute the shal­lots and mush­rooms in the but­ter and drain them on kitchen paper. Then cover the bot­tom of the tart crust with the goats cheese and the Parma ham. Beat the eggs with the cream. Pour them over the tart and top with parme­san cheese, and bake at 350 degrees for 15 min­utes or until the tart looks cooked and the top golden brown. Deli­cious hot or cold, as Avery and John can tell you, hav­ing eaten slices both ways all afternoon.

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Tomor­row, once the Easter Bunny has come and gone, I shall tell you about two things: my new cook­ing method for all meats and fishes done in a skil­let, and Avery’s invented straw­berry tart. Both are worth a look. In the mean­time, set out those car­rots for the bunny, and… wait.

We’re back! All I can say is, three days in Chip­ping Cam­p­den, in our old famil­iar places, were not enough. Actu­ally it wasn’t even that long. We arrived around 4 in the after­noon on Mon­day and left first thing this morn­ing. But it was long enough for us to remem­ber every­thing we adore about that part of the world, and the East Ban­quet­ing House in par­tic­u­lar. I know, it seems all I do is rave about the Land­mark Trust, but if I get even one of you to can­cel your trip to Mom­basa or Lucerne or wher­ever, and decide to explore the British coun­try­side from the van­tage point of one of these irre­place­able houses, I will con­sider my time here well worth it. We must sup­port these peo­ple! Trust me, you will find that the magic, the his­tory, the majes­tic grandeur, and the cozi­ness, well worth the lack of ade­quate hot water at times! Avery read glee­fully in the log­book (all vis­i­tors are invited to write up an account of their stay) my 1991 entry, wax­ing lyri­cal about every­thing except… not enough hot water. But it’s worth it!

Plus, it’s been an absolute plea­sure for us while we’ve lived in Lon­don to spend most of our hol­i­days explor­ing our adopted land, whether it’s the incred­i­ble green of Ire­land, the end­less fields of sheep in Wales, the wild ponies of Exmoor (guess who voted for THAT hol­i­day) or the golden stone of the Cotswolds. Good­ness, I sound like a tour guide. But I do love this coun­try. And every pound you spend stay­ing in these places goes toward res­cu­ing more derelict and deserv­ing buildings.

So on our lit­tle errand of giv­ing (oth­er­wise known as our hol­i­day), we headed out of town on Mon­day after­noon with our tiny Mini COM­PLETELY filled (Avery could not move, and we had to lift up a suit­case in order for her to buckle and unbuckle her seat­belt, poor child) with the clob­ber nec­es­sary for even a brief stay away from home: plenty of can­dles for the din­ing room table, a hand­blender (nat­u­rally, for the cream of mush­room soup), a very amus­ing vari­ety of hot water bot­tles, a giant dish of mac­a­roni and cheese, a huge (but as it turned out, insuf­fi­cient) stack of books, Blunny boots for those end­less hikes we seem to find our­selves on. Gosh that’s a small car. For­get cloth­ing! We just resign our­selves to look­ing the same every day, pretty much. Oh, and add to the list all the rid­ing gear with which Avery must travel to nearly all des­ti­na­tions. Once we filled the car so full, she had to wear her rid­ing hel­met. There wasn’t room any­where but on her head for that last item.

Our approach to Chip­ping Cam­p­den and the East Ban­quet­ing House was filled with nos­tal­gia. We have been com­ing to that vil­lage, to stay in that house, on and off since 1990, by our­selves, with John’s par­ents, before and after Avery. And it’s always the same. A sim­ply mag­nif­i­cent build­ing, one of two ban­quet­ing houses flank­ing the orig­i­nal manor house that was burned down some­time in the 17th cen­tury. And sheep graz­ing every­where! To our cha­grin we realised we were too early for lamb­ing sea­son (at least for OUR sheep, but we found some more who were on our sched­ule, but more on that later). We retrieved the two wheel­bar­rows from their shed at the dri­ve­way and trun­dled all our bits and pieces along the sub­tle lit­tle mowed path across the sheep field, up to the house, and to set­tle in. Mac­a­roni and cheese in the oven, red pep­pers sim­mer­ing on the hob, and bob’s your uncle. It’s worth post­ing the mac­a­roni and cheese recipe again, because it’s just that good, if I do say so myself. It’s cur­rently Avery’s favorite meal, and it’s got every­thing to rec­om­mend it: good British cheese so you get your cal­cium, bread­crumbs that you thriftily pro­duced your­self with your stale baguette and Mag­imix, a hint of nut­meg: per­fect. And don’t worry that this doesn’t match my pre­vi­ous mac and cheese recipes: I do it a lit­tle dif­fer­ently every time. You can too.

Mac­a­roni and Cheese
(serves 8, and the left­overs are superb)

1 lb elbow or other tra­di­tional mac­a­roni shape, cooked and drained
4 tbsps but­ter
3 tbsps flour
1 pint whole milk, the best you can get (Jer­sey is my favourite)
1 1/2 lbs British cheeses (Wens­ley­dale, Ched­dar, Dou­ble Glouces­ter, any­thing!)
4 slices good old Dairylea, for creami­ness
pinch nut­meg
pinch or two Mal­don sea salt
pinch white pep­per (unless you don’t mind the black pep­per look)
1/2 cup fresh bread­crumbs
1/2 parme­san cheese, grated

Now, make a roux with your but­ter and flour, melted nicely and bub­bly, but not browned. Whisk in (the whisk is very impor­tant!) the milk and bring to a near-bubbling point, then add the cheeses, cut in cubes. As near as you can, whisk con­stantly until the cheese is melted, then add the sea­son­ings and check to see that it’s perfect.

Nonstick-spray a large glass bak­ing dish (we like our mac­a­roni and cheese deep and round, but some peo­ple like it shal­low and rec­tan­gu­lar) and throw in the cooked noo­dles. Pour over the cheese sauce and stir thor­oughly to make sure that all the noo­dles are sub­merged and their lit­tle air bub­bles released. Now, you can travel to the Cotswolds with this dish, cov­ered in alu­minium, and it will be fine for hours. When you’re 45 min­utes away from want­ing to eat, bake it in a medium oven (375-ish) and there you go. With a cou­ple of bangers on the side and a sauteed colour­ful veg or two (broc­col­ini, pep­pers, aspara­gus, what you want is colour), you’re good to go.

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Evening saw us march­ing around the grounds, inves­ti­gat­ing the rab­bit war­rens where we always leave a lit­tle some­thing (they don’t like toma­toes, it turns out), watch­ing the sun­set light up the exquis­ite leaded win­dows fac­ing west (and the West Ban­quet­ing House that’s under ren­o­va­tion right now, no doubt financed by our series of hol­i­days this year!). The sheep munched hap­pily, some on their elbows, which com­pletely cracked Avery up. One brown sheep! Just one.

Tues­day found us off to the nearby vil­lage of Stan­ton, home to Jill Carenza’s rid­ing estab­lish­ment where Avery has been put, over the years, through tougher paces than at any other rid­ing school she’s tried (and Lord knows we’ve tried MANY). At first we were slightly miffed that Avery was not being taught by Jill her­self, who I’d specif­i­cally asked for on the tele­phone, but it soon became appar­ent that who­ever Anna the Instruc­tor was, she was SERI­OUS busi­ness. Big jumps! On a dar­ling pony called Gypsy, with a rear end like an ottoman (how Avery hates it when I say that, but it screamed Ralph Lau­ren Home) and a heav­enly lit­tle face. John and I kept think­ing about the num­ber of times Avery’s grand­fa­ther leaned on the same fence we were lean­ing on, proudly say­ing over and over, “She has such a good seat. Look at that straight back,” and on and on. The joy he took in her, and the plea­sure she gave him, com­forted us a bit, but not enough to make up for the loss. But hon­estly, what more can you do than pro­vide a beloved grand­fa­ther with chances to enjoy his grand­daugh­ter? The fact that it can­not last for­ever seems almost impos­si­ble to believe. But her grand­mother will be the first to smile at any pic­ture of Avery on a pony and remem­ber the times we all stood at the fence together, in totally fatu­ous admi­ra­tion of Avery.

Lord, it was cold! But we couldn’t say so, because Avery was pink-cheeked with exer­tion and brav­ery. Eight jumps in a course, and they got pro­gres­sively higher as the hour went on. For what­ever rea­son, as much of a wor­rier as I am, I don’t really fret when she’s rid­ing. I think it’s because after all the gazil­lions of hours I’ve put in hang­ing on a fence watch­ing her, I have faith in her knowl­edge of her skills. She’s the least reck­less of chil­dren, and no mat­ter how often she falls, she gets back up fear­lessly. Can I tell you how I did fret, how­ever, when I arrived to col­lect her at her Lon­don sta­ble last week to be regaled with sto­ries of how her pony ROLLED OVER with her on his back? Not a funny story. “I man­aged to get off before he actu­ally crushed me,” she said non­cha­lantly. Well, I guess that’s SOMETHING.

Lis­ten, I must go pro­duce din­ner. Tonight’s going to be chicken fil­lets stuffed with parma ham, moz­zarella and spinach. No recipe, because that’s all it is! Just stuff them, tooth­pick them, and saute in olive oil with some oregano thrown in. I’ll be back soon, though, with more sto­ries from the Cotswolds. Now book your hol­i­day, I mean it.

Good­ness, I often feel that too much is going on to absorb with­out just falling down. The lat­est is that Avery was given an enve­lope from her act­ing school with a mil­lion forms to fill out as to her eye colour (“green-gray,” “blue-brown,” who could say?) and teeth qual­ity (“suit­able for tooth­pase advert”? not really), and skin tone (“fair” or “golden fair” or “milky fair”? couldn’t pos­si­bly say). Heav­ens. So we filled out the forms as best we could and got her pho­tographed as for a pass­port, and then began the prepa­ra­tions for the… audi­tion DVD. Any­thing fur­ther I ever have to hear about “Princess Esme and her aban­don­ment on the island await­ing res­cue” will be too much, too soon. Maybe this stage mother thing is not for me.

Impor­tantly, tomor­row we leave for three days in the Cotswolds, in a Land­mark Trust house that we’ve stayed in many, many times, from our days as new­ly­weds lo these nearly 20 years ago, to just a few years ago on our “shall we move to Lon­don” trip with Avery. What will bring tears to all our eyes will be our mem­o­ries of Grandpa Jack in that house, on those grounds, tramp­ing about in his sturdy walk­ing boots, help­ing me track sheep I might hug, look­ing for the proper foot­path and care­fully observ­ing the kiss­ing gates with my mother in law. How we wish either of them we were with us tomor­row. The mem­o­ries of the meals cooked and eaten, the baths nego­ti­ated and hot water doled out (“Just once: if you could think of me FIRST!” being our favourite hol­i­day leg­end ever), the lambs pet­ted and the rab­bits lured with veg­etable remains, the trawl­ing through Chip­ping Cam­p­den antique shops and butcher stalls, the cock­tails drunk by a small but valiant fire­side. It will be so won­der­ful and yet so dif­fi­cult at the same time. That’s the point of mem­o­ries, I guess: to com­fort you and also tempt you. To go back…

But we don’t really want to! Tonight was a lovely evening with Becky and her girls: she brought them all, two plus our one, filthy from the sta­ble, and her own per­fect teenager, to have din­ner. Becky brought her fab­u­lous but by no means diet “Cheesy Pota­toes,” which I com­ple­mented with my own by no means diet:

Chicken With Pojarski Sauce (adapted from a ter­ri­bly com­plex recipe from a 1949 New York Times)
(serves eight)

4 tbsps but­ter
3 tbsps flour
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 medium onion, minced
2 tbsps sweet Hun­gar­ian paprika (NOT smoked, too strong)
2 tsps dried thyme leaves (or 1 tsp fresh thyme)
8 chicken breast fil­lets, cubed
1/2 cup brandy
1 cup chicken stock
1 1/2 cups sour cream
salt to taste

Melt but­ter in heavy saucepan and add flour. Stir and cook until frothy but not brown. Add gar­lic and onion and cook over low heat until soft. Add paprika and thyme and brandy and stir until thick. Add chicken breast chunks and stir until chicken is coated thor­oughly. Cook until chicken is no longer pink and remove chicken to a rest­ing bowl.

Into the stock­pot, pour in chicken stock and sour cream, whisk thor­oughly and sim­mer for 25 min­utes. Puree with a blend­ing stick (a hand­held pul­veriser). Add chicken chunks and sim­mer while you pre­pare the side dish (in case you’re not for­tu­nate enough to have Becky bring her cheesy pota­toes): rice, mashed pota­toes or noo­dles, and a nice col­or­ful veg­etable (broc­coli, beets or red pep­pers) because it is a pale dish on its own.

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With this bounty we had broc­col­ini with aspara­gus sauteed in olive oil with sea salt, a fruit salad of rasp­ber­ries, straw­ber­ries, blue­ber­ries, pineap­ple (“guess why?” I teased Anna, and she said “because it’s my favourite?”) and bananas, and Becky’s spe­cial dessert of peanut but­ter Rice Krispies treats with choco­late icing. A fan­tas­tic evening of just being together: the teenager, so charm­ing and grownup, yet vul­ner­a­ble, the mid­dle girls being sweet to the lit­tle one, and just appre­ci­at­ing being together. How we missed Mark. He’ll be home soon! In the mean­time, have a great week, every­one, while we slosh through Oxfordshire…

Yes, I’ve been try­ing really hard to tuck a reusable shop­ping bag in the bot­tom of my hand­bag, so I don’t have to take any plas­tic bags at the super­mar­ket or farmer’s mar­ket, even spur of the moment. And, much more fun but almost equally green, are these milk bags from Wait­rose. You buy a lit­tle plas­tic jug one time, and then you bring home these dar­ling lit­tle bags and slip it into the jug, and voila! It’s appar­ently 75% less pack­ag­ing than a car­ton or plas­tic bot­tle. And the milk tastes lovely as well.

We’re off to Avery’s skat­ing les­son, then she’ll change her clothes light­ning fast in the car and we’ll race to Maryle­bone to get her friend Sally, and then race to the Globe to see “Much Ado About Noth­ing,” armed with a pic­nic of sand­wiches: Parma ham with Dou­ble Glouces­ter cheese, home­made chicken salad with tar­ragon and red onion, and salt beef with mus­tard. Plus pears and toma­toes, should be nice. I’m try­ing to pic­ture if we will have time once we get to the the­atre to sit out and eat, or if we should have a nosh in the car. I can’t believe we’ve lived here for two years and have never been to the Globe. Except to visit it, closed for the sea­son, when John’s Shakespeare-mad lovely sis­ter came and insisted that we go! We have just stand­ing tick­ets, so fin­gers crossed the lit­tle sprouts with us will be able to see any­thing but people’s trouser pockets.

The­atre is much on the lips of our house­hold today, because Avery had an audi­tion this after­noon at an act­ing agency and was not only taken on as a client, but they already have a role they are putting her up for! I’ll tell you more when I know, but suf­fice to say she is chuffed to bits. Gob­s­macked! Tomor­row morn­ing we must fill out reams of paper­work, drop it off at the agency, pick up the script, video­tape her at home read­ing the part of the princess (nat­u­rally) while one of us reads the other part, and race the tape over to them. Appar­ently cast­ing is well under­way but they feel she’s right for the part, so they’re going to get her in under the wire. Excit­ing! I told her I was actu­ally very pleased that is such a very, very bad vio­lin player. “Why is that, Mommy?” “Because as Lord Peter Wim­sey said to Bunter about bell-ringing, ‘I’m always pleased to find there’s some­thing you CAN’T do.”

Right, off we go for our whirl­wind of activ­i­ties. TGIF!

Yes, I’ve tried a new restau­rant, believe it or not! I know, I can get in such a rut with the few restau­rants I feel loyal to, but unfor­tu­nately today’s lunch, while very nice, just con­firmed my cur­mud­geonly atti­tude toward most restau­rants. Let me explain.

My friend Gigi and I met up today at the much-hyped Cafe Anglais in Bayswa­ter for a gos­sipy lunch out. I think I am not alone in pre­fer­ring lunch out to din­ner out, almost every time. Why? Well, look at it this way: you don’t need a babysit­ter because your child is gain­fully employed at school, you tend to eat less at lunch and so feel less guilty, you’re (at least I’m) not tremen­dously tempted to drink a cock­tail or wine as you would be at din­ner, so you spend a lot less, and maybe my favourite bit, you can walk the longish walk home after­ward and work off some of your glut­tony. Plus most of my girl­friends are not really inter­ested in girls’ din­ners out, since most of them hardly ever see their hus­bands (not a prob­lem in my 24/7 state of wed­ded bliss). It makes me laugh to remem­ber some­thing my GP said when John quit his job. “My hus­band can never retire. I have told him, I mar­ried you for life, but not for lunch.”

Well, 29 days out of 30 or so I’m happy to have lunch with my beloved, but then there comes a day when it’s time for a spot of girl­friend time. And Gigi’s one of my favourite lunchtime com­pan­ions. Whether it’s kvel­ling about our remark­able daugh­ters (hers at age five is an absolute read­ing prodigy), catch­ing each other up on films and tele­vi­sion series that each other sim­ply has to see, or dis­sect­ing the food, we always have fun. And as you well know, I’m no intel­lec­tual snob, but there’s some­thing to be said for raw intel­li­gence in a lunch com­pan­ion. She’s just clever. We had a great time.

How­ever… the food. It was all nice, I don’t want to mis­lead you. The menu is inter­est­ingly con­structed: lots and lots of hors d’oeuvres each priced at 3 pounds, so it was tempt­ing to order about six of them. Then a num­ber of fish choices, lots of gamey roast options, and a sur­pris­ingly large selec­tion of side veg­eta­bles. I was attracted by all the var­i­ous potato options: Bor­de­laise, dauphi­noise, Anna. But I didn’t really want the roast that they would nat­u­rally accom­pany, and I didn’t want to look like a freak and order three potato dishes and noth­ing else. So I opted for two hors d’oeuvres (anchovy toast sol­diers with a pot of parme­san cus­tard, and cubed yel­low­tail tuna with a dot of wasabi and soy) and a ter­rine de foie gras. And here was my prob­lem. Every­thing was nice, but I could have made it all at home, and greatly enjoyed doing it. And I’m no rocket sci­en­tist when it comes to cook­ing. I just find increas­ingly that all I want to eat out at a restau­rant is some­thing I couldn’t con­ceiv­ably pull off at home. Asian deep-fried soft­shell crabs, a real Indian saag paneer, creme brulee de foie gras.

That being said, it’s a lovely, lovely place. It’s located in what was, unbe­liev­ably, a McDonald’s in the iconic Whiteley’s depart­ment store build­ing in Queensway and the ambi­ence is very chic and yet peace­ful. We were the first din­ers today, and I was quite skep­ti­cal at the notion that all 170 chairs would ever be filled, but they were. So go along, do, and bring a large appetite because then you can order up one of the roast entrees and have all those potato side dishes, and report back to me.

Let’s see, today brought us a visit from arguably the most Eng­lish per­son I have yet met here in our adopted land. As you may remem­ber, crazy Keechie has caused an awful lot of fam­ily strife, to say noth­ing of hun­dreds of dol­lars in dry clean­ing, by her incli­na­tion to use the fur­ni­ture as a lit­ter box when she gets stressed. And iron­i­cally, while she used to get stressed by peo­ple, now she appar­ently gets stressed by… no peo­ple. As in when we try to go away. Over the sum­mer she had an absolute field day with the sofa cush­ion, and at Christ­mas with the lovely bench cov­ered in suit­ing fab­ric. This has not made her pop­u­lar with her father who is always look­ing for ways to reduce the num­ber of cats in his house­hold. At any rate, for months now we have been try­ing to find an uphol­sterer, and actu­ally did find one, who took our sofa cush­ion and then appar­ently went into the wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gram, for he’s never been seen or heard from again. I just can’t imag­ine that the sud­den acqui­si­tion of one very smelly sofa cush­ion would drive him from his home and busi­ness, but he never answers phone calls or the bell if we visit him. Fair enough, by now I don’t think we want the blasted thing back.

My friend Susan is a dec­o­rat­ing mar­vel, with a truly deserv­ing house, and so I turned to her. And up sur­faced her lit­tle man today, one C.H Frost of Abing­don Road, with a pullover AND an ancient suit jacket (but not the suit trousers to go with it, you under­stand), a very con­spic­u­ous hear­ing aid and a won­der­ful turn of phrase that took me right back to, oh, say 1939? Well, it took me there, if not BACK. “Oy, I’m a mean man myself, sir, not want­ing to spend other people’s money. But you’ll get every farthing’s worth from a good fab­ric,” dis­re­gard­ing the dis­ap­pear­ance of this cur­rency from the realm. Shall we have to pay him in shillings?

And when his mobile phone rang, “If you’ll excuse me, sir and madam…” and then when he fin­ished his con­ver­sa­tion, “Now I don’t ‘old with these things as a gen­eral rule, because peo­ple can ring you any time. Mind you, there was a day when I was a young man when a client called me on Christ­mas Day! Christ­mas Day! Peo­ple will take lib­er­ties, they will take lib­er­ties.” He caressed our sofa and admired its pro­por­tions, albeit cush­ion­less, and asked if we’d like the mate­r­ial on the arms replaced by the mate­r­ial under the cush­ion. “Just as well use it, since folks won’t be see­ing it, ‘idden as you might say it is under there.” Now that’s com­mon sense! John and I felt that we were lying safely in the lap of com­pe­tence and fru­gal­ity, and he went away with assur­ances that he would be back soon with sam­ples for us to choose from. Whew. I don’t even care about the cush­ions: I feel we got our money’s worth just to meet him. I do love elderly Eng­lish gentlemen.

Well, home­work beck­ons. I can’t make the last class next week, so I’ve got to pro­duce my writ­ing sam­ples for the final now, as well as tomorrow’s bit. Get this exer­cise: first you choose a neigh­bor, some­one you know but not well, and list his or her salient qual­i­ties. Then you make a sep­a­rate list of peo­ple you know who have had “bombs” in their lives. That is, events that define them, that change their lives. Then you have to give one of those “bombs” to your neigh­bor and write up the moments before the “bomb” and after. It’s so dif­fi­cult! I can describe my neigh­bor (I chose Janet who bor­rows Tacy) with no dif­fi­culty, and I can think of any num­ber of peo­ple I know who have had “bombs,” but some­how the assign­ment to com­bine them is totally throw­ing me. As well, why do I have no prob­lem pro­duc­ing thou­sands of words for this blog, but the neces­sity of thou­sands of words for my home­work is so daunt­ing? I think it’s the fic­tional aspect of it. Also it’s the dreaded adage, “Show, don’t tell” that I find com­pletely impos­si­ble. I have to tell! Don’t know how to show. But I must buckle down. It’s very hard to turn my atten­tion to fic­tional mat­ters when real life is so… interesting!

Well, Fri­day night saw us sans Fifi as she went swan­ning off to see “Much Ado About Noth­ing” with Julia’s fam­ily so, nat­u­rally I took the oppor­tu­nity to cook some­thing she doesn’t like. Now I know, nor­mal women would take the oppor­tu­nity to go OUT to din­ner, but hon­estly, restau­rant prices are so astro­nom­i­cal in this adopted town of mine that it’s a bit of a buz­zkill, frankly, get­ting the bill. Whereas for around 25 pounds for even the most expen­sive ingre­di­ents, I can cook some­thing really deli­cious, and any­way it’s fun to exper­i­ment. I must say, how­ever, that the things she doesn’t like are dwin­dling to pretty much: seafood. No shrimp, no crab­meat, no scal­lops or lob­ster or mus­sels. Which lim­its the choices. That being said…

I’d had my gen­tle man­date from my beloved about his wish for “scal­lops three ways,” and whereas two of the ways were old, tried and true ways I led you to at the end of my last post (with a creme fraiche and sin­gle malt Scotch sauce, and the ever-delicious Coquilles Saint Jacques Grati­nee), I decided to go all out on the third and try to recre­ate the fab­u­lous starter at my new favourite restau­rant, Angelus near Avery’s sta­ble. The lunch we had there the day we got her school results will go down in my mem­ory as one of the most deli­cious and cel­e­bra­tory meals ever. Yum yum. And you know what? My attempt was more than suc­cess­ful! I added beet­root because I love it. And it was all a lovely com­bi­na­tion, plus I had a really play­ful time get­ting the pre­sen­ta­tion just right, and mak­ing it really pretty. I wish I had taken a photo but I did not. Next time!

Warm Scal­lop Salad with Beet­root and Char­lotte Pota­toes
(serves two as a starter)

1 tbsp gentle-flavoured oil (not olive)
6 extra-large king scal­lops, roe removed
2 large beet­roots, roasted and peeled
2–3 Char­lotte pota­toes, peeled and steamed
2 hand­fuls fresh rocket

dress­ing for rocket: (shake this up in a jar)
3 parts olive oil to 1 part white wine vine­gar
dash lemon juice
salt and fresh pepper

sauce for scal­lops: (you can whisk this in a teacup)
2 tbsps but­ter, melted
good pinch Aleppo pep­per flakes

hand­ful chives, snipped

Get a heavy skil­let very hot and add the oil. When the oil is hot, place the scal­lops in care­fully. Let cook until browned on one side (about 2 min­utes) then turn care­fully and brown the other side for 2 min­utes. Remove from skil­let to a wait­ing cut­ting board and slice them each in half from side to side (not from top to bot­tom, if that makes sense). Now for the assembly.

If you are lucky enough to have a lit­tle metal ring about the size of a scal­lop, get it out of that drawer where you threw it and wash it. Then press it down on the peeled beet­roots and peeled pota­toes to make cylin­ders of them (you can save the rest of the beets and pota­toes, cut them up and toss them with a lit­tle dress­ing for a salad next day). Slice the cylin­ders of beet­root and potato until you have 12 slices of each. Divide up all your sliced things between the two plates. Now, you can choose: either stack them on top of each other in four piles, or layer them around the edge of a white plate. Then place a hand­ful of dressed rocket in the cen­ter of each plate and driz­zle the melted but­ter and Aleppo pep­per over the scal­lops, beets and pota­toes. Scat­ter the snipped chives over all and VOILA!

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I am a huge fan of this lovely salad now. It has every­thing: red, green, white, soft scal­lops, crunchy rocket, refresh­ing beet, relax­ing potato. The pep­pery but­ter (or is it but­tery pep­per?) goes beau­ti­fully with the salad dress­ing, so every bite is a per­fect com­bi­na­tion of sweet, spicy gor­geous­ness. And did you know how good all these ingre­di­ents are for you? Well, you know beet­root is a super­food, and scal­lops them­selves are a dream as far as nutri­tion goes; low in all the bad stuff and high in the good.

Tomor­row I’ll tell you about the nice Indian chicken dish I made last night, with mush­rooms and cashews and yogurt. But right now I have three filthy, cold, wet and hun­gry lit­tle eques­tri­ans in my sit­ting room demand­ing pop­corn. I must fly. Enjoy your Sunday!

Well, we’ve been in a bit of a tizzy this week, although things have calmed down now. On Mon­day night, in the wee hours, Avery became very ill and by the morn­ing had devel­oped a really fright­en­ingly high tem­per­a­ture, nearly 40 degrees (that’s nearly 105, to you at home). Being a “heli­copter mother” under the best of cir­cum­stances (my friend Carol’s adorable term for moth­ers who “hover”), I was imme­di­ately thrown into a panic. Then mat­ters turned from bad to worse when my friend Becky called with a let­ter from school in her hand: a warn­ing that a kinder­gart­ner had been hos­pi­talised with menin­gi­tis and a list of symp­toms to look for. The first two on the list: vom­it­ing and a high tem­per­a­ture. TOTAL panic by then. It was very dif­fi­cult to be ratio­nal and calm and ask Avery if she had any other symp­toms (just so you know, they’re stiff neck, sen­si­tiv­ity to light and headache). She didn’t, but then she went into her usual tail­spin of fear at the thought of going to the doc­tor. I called and got an emer­gency appoint­ment, and sit­ting in the taxi with her, all I could think was that we have had too much good luck, too many good things have hap­pened to her, and the price was going to be… you can imag­ine my thoughts.

Avery sat on my lap wait­ing for the doc­tor and repeat­ing over and over, “I can’t do th is, I can’t do this,” just shak­ing with pure fear. This is the child who walked fear­lessly into six inter­views and three exams a few short weeks ago! The doc­tor asked her how she was feel­ing and she piped up, “Well, not very good, but what really wor­ries me is that the Form Six Enter­tain­ment is tomor­row evening, and we’re doing Shake­speare, and I’ve worked so hard! And there’s no under­study…” On and on, war­bling away in per­fect com­fort. The doc­tor took a long look at her and said, “24-hour virus,” and admon­ished her about drink­ing plenty of flu­ids. She took her tem­per­a­ture and it was falling already. Waves of relief replaced the panic.

In the taxi going home, I said, “Now, you have to admit that that was noth­ing to get pan­icked about. She is so nice, and you cer­tainly seemed to enjoy talk­ing to her.” Avery just looked at me over her glasses and said acidly, “Mommy, that’s called ACT­ING.” Sigh.

Any­way, the chicken soup I had put on the stove as soon as she got ill was the per­fect panacea, and the Calpol didn’t hurt either. All she wanted was for me to read aloud to her, and from a com­fort­ing baby book, so Betsy-Tacy it was. By bed­time she felt miles bet­ter and in the morn­ing was good as new. Dou­ble sigh. The doc­tor had said that if she had no fever in the morn­ing and rested all day, she could go to the Enter­tain­ment, so she rested deter­minedly, sit­ting and read­ing in her box of soft toys, which always cracks me up. There she is, sur­rounded by a bed and a chair and a floor, and she sits in her toy box.

The long and short of it is that she’s fine. No sword of Divine Ret­ri­bu­tion has as yet fallen on the heads of my fam­ily, but no doubt, given my capac­ity for rea­son­less anx­i­ety, I will con­tinue to expect one to do so. Hon­estly, if I could find the part of my brain that pro­duces anx­i­ety and dig it out with a grape­fruit spoon, I would. But John objects, say­ing that it’s prob­a­bly con­nected to some other trait of mine that he likes. Like being super-super appre­cia­tive of all the good things I have. Fair enough, but it makes life very, very stress­ful when any­thing remotely bad happens.

So it was in this mood of intense appreciation/fear that I approached the Enter­tain­ment on Wednes­day evening. And it was absolutely the sort of event that makes me want to take Avery, and all the other lit­tle girls, and put them under a nice glass jar to keep them safe. They had put them­selves into groups of four or five, and each group had cho­sen a Shake­speare play, one girl had writ­ten a short syn­op­sis of it, which they took in turns to read out to the audi­ence, then they per­formed a scene from it with the real words, THEN they per­formed a mod­ern ver­sion of the scene which they had writ­ten them­selves! It was just stun­ning. Avery’s group chose “As You Like It,” which she already loved (we gave her a lit­tle stack of the old red leather “Pocket Fal­staff” edi­tions of the plays for her birth­day), and she was given the job of writ­ing the syn­op­sis. We heard a great deal about the impos­si­bil­ity of this task in the weeks lead­ing up to the Enter­tain­ment, but she did an amaz­ing job! They all did. Mrs D said at the end, “I have been a teacher for a very long time, but I’ve never under­stood these plays as well as I do now!”

In between the plays were dar­ling musi­cal num­bers, one hilar­i­ous song we’ve been hear­ing a LOT of at home that includes lines like, “Romeo, Romeo, I think you’re ter­ri­fico!” and a lovely bal­lad with lots of “hey nonny nonny” bits. I tend to want to cry when­ever I hear Avery and her friends sing, so it was a bit of a strug­gle not to embar­rass her completely.

I have had to cut the apron strings today: Avery has gone off to see “Much Ado About Noth­ing” at the National The­atre with her friends Julia’s fam­ily, and to spend the night. She’s been on quite the Shake­speare kick, hasn’t she? In Eng­lish class at school they’ve been watch­ing the old Franco Zef­firelli “Romeo and Juliet,” and when I looked it up on imdb to find the name of the actress who played Juliet (it was Olivia Hussey), I saw the fun­ni­est thing. imdb lists “Plot Key­words” and one of the cat­e­gories is “dys­func­tional fam­ily”! Well, that’s one way to put it!

I told John I would cook what­ever he liked for din­ner, and he rashly said, “Scal­lops: three ways.” Hmm. Now, I love scal­lops, so this is a wel­come chal­lenge, if a bit daunt­ing. I think I’ll do my dar­ling friend Vincent’s scal­lops with creme fraiche and single-malt Scotch, then I’ll also try to repli­cate the divine dish at Angelus in Bayswa­ter: grilled scal­lops with steamed char­lotte pota­toes, truf­fle oil and snipped chives. But the third way? I can­not decide. Seared, with a but­tery Aleppo pep­per sauce? Swim­ming in a parsley-laden creamy broth? Or how about the old favourite:

Coquilles St. Jacques au gratin
(serves four as a starter)

1 dozen fresh scal­lops
1 cup white wine (or dry Ver­mouth)
1 tbsp Madeira wine
dash cayenne pep­per
3 tbsps but­ter
2 tbsps flour
2 shal­lots, finely minced
1 hand­ful curly pars­ley, finely minced
1 egg yolk, beaten slightly
salt and pep­per
fresh soft bread­crumbs
grated pecorino or parme­san cheese

If you’ve got your scal­lops on the shell, as I did (first time! scary), care­fully remove the red roe and the mem­brane that con­nects it to the scal­lop. Remove the tough mus­cle that clings to the out­side of the scal­lop, too. Is it all nice and smooth and white and clean? Wash and rinse and lay the scal­lops on paper tow­els, then scrub out four of the shells and rub with butter.

Pour the wine and Madeira in a small saucepan, dust with cayenne and bring to a sim­mer. Place scal­lops in the saucepan and sim­mer (don’t boil!) for five min­utes, then remove with a slot­ted spoon to a cut­ting board and cut each scal­lop in half, and place six halves in each scal­lop shell. Add the flour, but­ter, shal­lot and pars­ley to the saucepan and whisk until mixed, then add the egg yolk. Pour this mix­ture over the scal­lops and top with bread­crumbs and cheese. You can do all this ahead of your din­ner. Five min­utes before you want to eat, place the scal­lop shells in a glass dish big enough to hold them all and put in a very hot oven (425 degrees) for five min­utes. Serve hot, with a fork AND a spoon. You will want every bite.

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Ah well, some­thing will come to me. It always does. And you know, all’s well that… well, you know.

Nearly for­got: one thing I dis­cov­ered (sadly dur­ing John’s mom’s visit, so she had to suf­fer through it) dur­ing my cook­ing extrav­a­ganza over break: NEVER, EVER buy chicken wings with the skin removed. Or, let me rephrase that: you may BUY them, but do not COOK them. Use them as sculp­ture, or doorstops, or cat food. But do not ruin my lovely recipe for slow-cooked wings by not notic­ing that the butcher from whom you bought them has gone to all the trou­ble to remove all the skin. John looked at them dubi­ously and said, “But isn’t the whole point of chicken wings the skin?” I was fool­ish enough to con­tra­dict him, and I paid the price. Dry, dry, dry. So to under­score this basic tenet of cook­ery, I am repro­duc­ing here my most favourite way to pre­pare the wings. Skin, skin, skin!

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.

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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.

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Ah well, one can­not know what one hasn’t learned. But there’s no point in YOUR learn­ing from expe­ri­ence when you can learn from MINE. Seriously!