Well, Avery’s been put on her coach, at 4:30 this morn­ing (get­ting up in the dark in April is def­i­nitely too early), the incred­i­bly youthful-looking teach­ers who are chap­er­on­ing the trip have herded them all together and pumped them up with words of girly encour­age­ment. It was really a land­mark sort of moment, a “this is the last time” sort of feel­ing: never again will we know every par­ent in her class, have happy mem­o­ries of birth­day par­ties, singing fes­ti­vals, Michael­mas Fairs and Christ­mas par­ties with all the girls, know them all by name. The last two years with this group of peo­ple have been so happy, so defin­ing. We all stood around on the pave­ment and com­mis­er­ated about miss­ing them, hop­ing they eat their lunches and don’t get car­sick, hop­ing they don’t need a loo until they get to the ferry… and I think we all felt some com­bi­na­tion of happy and melan­choly. How odd it will be to have no sched­ule this week: no dropoff, no rid­ing, no skat­ing, no pickup. Ah well, soon it will be Fri­day and we’ll be back to normal.

As it is, we’ve been in absolute Cul­ture Mode, try­ing to take advan­tage of all the myr­iad oppor­tu­ni­ties there are in this lovely town. I was dis­cussing this mat­ter with my lovely mother in law over the week­end: she was very dis­tressed that I feel our lives here are quite… ordi­nary! “No! Don’t say that!” she wailed, and I do feel guilty that after being in Lon­don for two and a half years, it’s not as exotic as it used to feel. I think that the real­ity is, the place where you gro­cery shop, clean the lit­ter box, do laun­dry and pick your child up at school becomes… ordi­nary. But I mustn’t let it! And life is def­i­nitely enhanced by doing some­thing out of the ordinary.

In that vein, there­fore, Fri­day morn­ing found me at the Real Food Fes­ti­val at Earl’s Court. It’s some­thing for you to put on your map for next year (the fes­ti­val fin­ished at the week­end), and don’t be put off by the rather heavy-handed spon­sor­ship of Whole Foods Mar­ket. At first when I went in and was con­fronted by smil­ing Whole Foods peo­ple wear­ing aprons embla­zoned with… “Whole Foods,” pass­ing out eco-friendly jute bags with… guess what, “Whole Foods” printed on the side, I thought, “this is merely an enor­mous adver­tise­ment for Whole Foods,” and given the con­tro­versy here over the huge­ness and extrav­a­gance of that place, I didn’t really want to be spoon-fed an entire fes­ti­val about how won­der­ful they are. But I per­se­vered and soon was immersed in a beau­ti­ful mael­strom of admit­tedly twee sawdust-covered floors, but also hun­dreds of unique food pur­vey­ors, offer­ing every sam­ple under the sun. I suc­cumbed to honey made in London’s Royal Parks (it will make the per­fect addi­tion to my chicken wings’ bar­be­cue sauce later this week), kip­pers from the Isle of Man, deli­ciously salty and my first taste of that revered break­fast food! I am tempted to sell John on kip­pers by mak­ing a tra­di­tional kedgeree: boiled rice, kip­pers, hard-boiled eggs, curry pow­der. Doesn’t that sound good?

Then there was the lit­tle lemon cake for Avery’s jour­ney lunch, from Coun­try Fare in Cum­bria, and hot chilli olive oil from Chilli Pep­per Pete. Only DO NOT sam­ple their “dragon’s blood” if you value your life! I thought I would die. “Where are you from?” the cheery pep­per lady asked, and when I answered “Orig­i­nally New York,” she beamed and said, “Oh, this dragon’s blood sauce just won a com­pe­ti­tion there!” so I felt I must try it. OH NO! I cried. I gasped. I rooted around in my bag for a bot­tle of water. “That doesn’t help,” she said.” You think? No, it doesn’t. I nearly died. But the chilli oil is lovely! Although John felt it quite over­pow­ered the crab­meat pasta dish I made that night, so I’ll have to adjust the recipe and get it prop­erly bal­anced before I blog it.

I sam­pled goat’s cheese, gar­lic and chive ched­dar cheese from Isle of Man Cream­eries, chorizo from York­shire, who knows what else. And: celebrity alert, I saw Matthew Fort, one of the judges from “Great British Menu,” our favorite cook­ery pro­gramme on the BBC. I screwed up my courage and went over to tell him how much we enjoy the show, and he replied, “Oh, how lovely of you to tell me, I’m very pleased indeed!” Then he turned away to greet Tom Parker-Bowles, which was also cool, and they walked on together. My last pur­chase was not a sam­ple, but a group of three spice blends from The Spice Spe­cial­ist, where a lovely atten­tu­ated young man assured me that their cel­ery salt is more cel­ery and less salt, which is what I’m look­ing for when I make my cheesy spinach casse­role. I’m find­ing that com­mer­cial cel­ery salt is sim­ply too salty, espe­cially because I used a lot in order to get the cel­ery fla­vor just right, and com­bined with the salt of the Gruyere is slightly off-putting, so I’m hop­ing this is the solu­tion. Then, too, last time I made it I added chopped cel­ery leaves and that made a difference.

I rode home on the bus feel­ing so for­tu­nate to live in a coun­try full of so many com­mit­ted small pro­duc­ers, pro­duc­ing such extra­or­di­nary ingre­di­ents. I hope I’m wrong, but some­thing tells me that the US is lag­ging behind in such a pre­vail­ing inter­est in hon­est ingre­di­ents, prop­erly grown and reared. In time…

Sat­ur­day evening saw us head­ing off to Wind­sor to the The­atre Royal to see Agatha Christie’s “Mur­der on Air.” Well, I say that, but what actu­ally hap­pened is that I was at the front door, my tart for our pic­nic in my hands, ready to head off to Rich­mond to the the­atre there, where I thought the play was to be, when I noticed that the ticket con­fir­ma­tion I was also hold­ing said quite plainly “The­atre Royal WIND­SOR.” Good grief, I could have got us all the way to Rich­mond only to realise we were at the wrong the­atre. John was briefly and silently apoplec­tic at my incom­pe­tence, Avery was defend­ing me, and then we all calmed down and headed off to… Wind­sor. And in the end it didn’t make any dif­fer­ence: we were in plenty of time to spread out our pic­nic by the swans float­ing down the river.

Goats Cheese Tart with Chi­aven­nasca and Spinach
(serves 6)

1 cup whole­meal flour
1/2 cup cold but­ter, cut in chunks
1/2 tsp dried thyme
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup soft goats cheese
2 tbsps creme fraiche
3 hands­ful spinach leaves
8 slices Chi­aven­nasca
2 tsps but­ter
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1/2 medium white onion, minced
1/4 cup grated pecorino or parme­san cheese

Now what, you ask, is Chi­aven­nasca? Well, it’s an Ital­ian air-dried beef, mar­i­nated in spices and pep­per­corns and white wine and aged, then sliced thin. It is sim­ply deli­cious, but if you can’t find it, you can always use Parma ham, or indeed, skip the meat and keep it a veg­e­tar­ian dish.

Put the flour and but­ter and thyme in your Mag­imix and whizz until the but­ter is wholly incor­po­rated and the mix­ture begins to stick together as a dough. Add more but­ter if needed. Press evenly into a 12-inch tart pan.

In a medium bowl, mix the eggs, goats cheese and creme fraiche. Whizz the spinach leaves in the Mag­imix until finely chopped, then mix in with the cream mix­ture. Saute the gar­lic and onion in the but­ter and mix into the cream mix­ture. Roughly chop the dried beef and mix in with the cream mix­ture, then pour all into the tart pan and sprin­kle with the grated cheese. Bake at 375 degrees for 25 min­utes or until the grated cheese is slightly browned and bub­bly. Deli­cious warm or cold!

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Along with the tart I packed up a light and refresh­ing crab­meat salad, and the two were deli­cious together.

Crab­meat Salad with Toma­toes and Lime
(serves 2)

1 cup lump white crab­meat, the best you can get
2 cups wild rocket
hand­ful San­tini toma­toes, quar­tered
1 tbsp snipped chives

dress­ing:
2 tbsps olive oil
2 tsps bal­samic vine­gar
juice and zest of 1 lime
pinch sea salt

Sim­ply toss all the salad ingre­di­ents together and pack it up in a plas­tic box with a tight-fitting lid, and shake the dress­ing ingre­di­ents up in a glass jar (also with a tight-fitting lid), and they can travel sep­a­rately, to be tossed together when you’re ready to eat. Very springlike!

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The play itself, “Mur­der on Air,” was such a plea­sure! Avery and I are tremen­dous fans of the BBC full-cast drama­ti­sa­tions of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Say­ers mys­ter­ies that were orig­i­nally broad­cast as seri­als on the radio, and are now avail­able on CD. I always felt envi­ous of the audi­ences who heard them around their fire­sides, and jumped at the chance to see this play. It’s actu­ally play­ing through May 3, so you could go see it your­self. The con­cept is won­der­ful: the set is an authen­tic repro­duc­tion of a 1930s radio sta­tion, com­plete with the prop man sit­ting behind his tables full of imple­ments to pro­duce all the proper atmos­pheric sounds like doors shut­ting, cof­fee cups and spoons tin­kling, glass break­ing, etc. Then the cast came in: actors dressed in period 1930s cos­tumes and tak­ing their places at micro­phones to read the plays! Three 30-minute Agatha Christie orig­i­nal plays, being read by actors play­ing actors read­ing plays on the radio! Tremen­dous fun. And there was the added bonus of one of my all-time favorite actors, Hugh Fraser, famous for play­ing Cap­tain Hast­ings to David Suchet’s Her­cule Poirot. There he was in the flesh, read­ing away. What fun.

Sun­day we dropped Avery at the sta­ble, all of us peer­ing anx­iously at the dark skies, but what can you do: some­one has to pol­ish all those bri­dles and sad­dles, and she always wants to go, no mat­ter the weather. John and I headed to Bat­tersea for the Dec­o­ra­tive Antiques and Tex­tiles Fair, and while it’s over now, you must make plans to go to the sec­ond open­ing at the end of Sep­tem­ber. Superb vari­ety of dis­plays, lots and lots of shops from all over the UK show­ing their wares. But you know what, as much as any­thing the fair was fun because it got us out of our rut and over to the other side of the river (such a gor­geous dis­play of Chelsea houses to be seen from the Park), and into some­thing NEW. And Avery would have been bored stiff, so it all worked out per­fectly. We are in shocked awe at the prices, of course, of any of the things we wanted, but I think we’ll be able to find some pieces we can live with. There was a won­der­ful ware­house rep­re­sented called Retrou­vius, a lit­tle pun on their stated pur­pose which is giv­ing new life to aban­doned objects. What caught our eye imme­di­ately was an elab­o­rate Vic­to­rian shelv­ing sys­tem from the gut­ted Patent Offices years ago. I think if Avery’s bed­room ceil­ing is high enough, we’ll get some of the shelves for her clothes and toys. There were also fab­u­lous ceil­ing light fix­tures taken from the aban­doned Rover fac­tory out­side Lon­don, and a pair of old leather arm­chairs whose pre­vi­ous life was I know not where.

So we came away pretty excited! As well, on Church Street on Sat­ur­day we found a 1930s green leather Chester­field sofa with what are called “drop ends,” or “drop arms,” so that it becomes a sort of set­tee you can stretch out on. So, once we get the keys on Wednes­day we can scout out where to put things, and then pre­tend we can afford them. Went by today to visit the house just from the out­side, and the vines over the door are begin­ning to flower, lit­tle pale pink flow­ers against dark-red vines, spilling over the blue door! It is really going to be fun, if a lot of work to get out of here and into there. Some poten­tial renters have been com­ing through our flat, which is pow­er­fully annoy­ing as every­thing must be neat and tidy at all times. Wim­sey seems to feel it’s his per­sonal duty to escort every vis­i­tor around the flat, whether they’re cat peo­ple or not. “How many cats do you HAVE?” the estate agent asked John. “I don’t have cats,” he mut­tered. She looked at him as if he were daft, and finally he said, “My wife and child have four cats. I don’t have any. Not a cat per­son.” No won­der Wim­sey and Keechie are insecure!

The house feels so empty! But no news is… as they say, and look­ing at the clock I think Avery is in the land of crois­sants and berets even as we speak. Hope she’s hav­ing fun…

Before I tell you about all our adven­tures lately, I must report that my crush on Richard Armitage pro­ceeds along quite a healthy path: aided and abet­ted by the lovely peo­ple at Richard Armitage Online, who pro­vided this gor­geous pho­to­graph. I am well on my way to watch­ing every sin­gle thing he’s ever been recorded doing, and I’m not even close to tired of him yet. Nice Avery and John to put up with watch­ing the entire series 1 and 2 of “Robin Hood” with me: good fun! What makes a great crush actor, you ask? Well, for me, it’s out­stand­ing smoul­der­ing good dark looks, an abil­ity to pay a lot of dif­fer­ent roles with con­vinc­ing emo­tion, and most impor­tant, a dan­ger­ous edge. A sense that just around the cor­ner, in this character’s life, total lack of con­trol could result. Richard ful­fills all in spades, always a sort of “I know I’m bad, but with your love I could redeem myself.” Hav­ing had a com­pletely unevent­ful boyfriend life myself, begin­ning and end­ing with a prac­ti­cally per­fect hus­band, it’s nat­ural I should go down these cum­ber­some emo­tional roads in fic­tion. “North and South” is sim­ply beau­ti­ful, and I do think you’d thank me if you went out and rented the DVD. Save it for a rainy day!

How­ever, real life does tend to make demands upon one’s time, and I have found myself actu­ally liv­ing, in addi­tion to fan­ta­sis­ing, so I sup­pose it’s a good bal­ance. On Wednes­day we go to the final inven­tory of the house! They make a note of the state that every inch of the place is in before we get there, the bet­ter to charge us against our secu­rity deposit when we even­tu­ally move out, leav­ing holes in the wall, etc. We in turn get to make sure that the very nice land­lady has done all the small things she promised: paint­ing all the walls white, get­ting the place cleaned, check­ing on the via­bil­ity of the var­i­ous Vic­to­rian fire­places: does the gas work, is the flue clear? She was also plan­ning to wash down the gar­den paving stones thor­oughly and I for­get what all else. So as of Wednes­day we’ll have a really good sense of the future in this house. Which is good because we’ve been doing some desul­tory but excit­ing imag­i­nary fur­ni­ture shop­ping. Not imag­i­nary fur­ni­ture, you under­stand, but fur­ni­ture that we’ve bought in only an imag­i­nary way so far, not want­ing to jinx the han­dover of the keys. But more on fur­ni­ture shop­ping later.

After sev­eral days last week of absolutely noth­ing inter­est­ing hap­pen­ing, more inter­est­ing, that is, than clean­ing clos­ets, sud­denly on Thurs­day every­thing hot­ted up. My new writ­ing course began! I was a bit on pins and nee­dles, because I had roped two of my good friends into tak­ing it with me, and sud­denly pan­icked: what if they hated it and blamed me? Or were (highly unlikely) unsup­port­ive class­mates and my old class­mates and tutor blamed me? Plenty of blame to go around, as you see. Thank­fully, none of these sce­nar­ios came to pass. The class was fab­u­lous: read­ings by the two most tal­ented (I think) mem­bers, lots of energy, the tutor seemed moti­vated and happy. Good all the way round!

Lis­ten, the title of this post is very mis­lead­ing: I really will tell you about all the stuff we’ve been doing, tomor­row, I hope (a fes­ti­val, a play, a fair! and a great recipe to go with this one below). I just wanted to check in and let you know all is well. But for now, I sim­ply must go help Avery fin­ish pack­ing for her week-long trip to Nor­mandy tomor­row. We must have her at school at 4:30 a.m.! I am in a fever of anx­i­ety that the coach not crash on the way, the ferry not sink, and that I not expire from miss­ing her too much. Let me leave you with the per­fect com­fort dish, should you need one. You must have a cast-iron casse­role with a heavy lid. And after­ward, sim­ply remove the rest of the meat, throw the whole lot, car­cass, extra veg, juice, every­thing, into a saucepan, cover with water and sim­mer for a cou­ple of hours, then strain, throw the chicken bits in, and you’ve got the BEST chicken soup you will ever, ever eat. It can cure any­thing. Even, MAYBE, miss­ing your lit­tle girl.

Slow-Braised Whole Chicken With Root Veg­eta­bles
(serves four for din­ner, then the rest for soup)

1 medium whole chicken
4 parsnips, sliced in 2-inch bits
4 car­rots, sliced the same
2 onions, cut in eighths
6 stalks cel­ery, cut in 2-inch bits
2 hands­ful but­ton mush­rooms, cut in half
6 cloves gar­lic
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup chicken stock
2 tbsps but­ter
3 stems fresh thyme
sprin­kle sea salt and fresh black pepper

Lay the chicken in the pot and arrange the veg­eta­bles all around, then sprin­kle the gar­lic over them. Pour the wine and stock over the chicken, and smear the but­ter over the chicken, and lay the thyme on top of the veg­eta­bles. Sprin­kle with salt and pep­per and cover.

Cook in a medium oven (350 fahren­heit, 180-ish cel­sius) for at least 2 1/2 hours. Your entire HOUSE will fill with the scent and com­fort of this dish. Enjoy, and say a quick prayer for Avery’s safety tomorrow!

So here it is! Unas­sum­ing, you say? Yes, but I think it will be cosy when it’s all kit­ted out with our gatril­lions of boxes of books, and boxes of cats, and art and such. Isn’t the kitchen appeal­ing? But look, there to the right of the glass doors: a cat hole! For a cat a third the size of mine, but still, it’s there.

I must say, for all the angst of mov­ing, there are some good points: namely, the prospect forces you to get rid of all your junk, because you know every piece of junk has a dol­lar sign (or pound sign, as it hap­pens) attached to it: “pic­ture me wrapped in brown paper and care­fully placed in a card­board box that you then will pay to see car­ried out to a truck and pay again to see car­ried in your new house and then unpack and find a place to store.” It makes you ruthless!

So last week saw me dis­pos­ing of half-eaten pack­ets of dried blue­ber­ries, bags of cous­cous (I don’t even like cous­cous), pasta in every shape you can imag­ine with best-by dates that revealed they had been brought with us from New York. In fact, I decided that any­thing with a price tag in dol­lars should prob­a­bly… go. Then it was Avery’s room, where the most cur­sory of searches led us to… home­work from kinder­garten? “PONY” mag­a­zines from 2006? Plus my per­sonal favorite, candy wrap­pers in her desk draw­ers. What makes a child think she should keep such things? It’s the same impulse that makes her, after eat­ing a banana at the skat­ing rink, for exam­ple, reach out to hand me the peel. With a rub­bish bin at her elbow.

Then there were the t-shirts far too tiny, some nice enough to keep for my niece and some not, the end­less draw­ings of skat­ing cos­tumes Avery dreams of design­ing one day, an unbe­liev­able num­ber of note­books, sketch­pads and jour­nals each filled with half-written sto­ries, all of them far too sweet to throw away. Still, we ended up with four garbage bags full of stuff from around the house, plus a box to go to Oxfam. There’s still the front hall closet to go, and con­sid­er­ing that I haven’t seen the flat sur­face of its floor since we moved in…

And I am hot on the trail of a Cat­tery in Kent to take our felines for the dura­tion of the hos­til­i­ties, I mean the move. It’s felic­i­tous, actu­ally: I can drop the cats off at our local vet, in their lit­tle plas­tic pris­ons, and the Cat­tery in Kent comes to col­lect them, then drops them back at the vet’s on the date of our choos­ing. Now all I have to do is coax our porter into let­ting me into the stor­age space under the house that con­tains the four kitty pris­ons, pray that I kept all the hard­ware in a plas­tic bag close to hand, and re-assemble them. Then set them up in the liv­ing room with some cat­nippy toys in them to make them appeal­ing, or at least not ter­ri­fy­ing. Then the kids will run in and out of them for the ensu­ing days and it will be much eas­ier to stuff them inside when the day of travel arrives. I say, with confidence.

To enliven this rather dis­mal list of chores, I must tell you that we were enter­tain­ing this week! No, not enter­tain­ing per se, but host­ing. Avery’s beloved babysit­ter Amy, from New York, came through on her way home from two months in India work­ing in orphan­ages and child-care homes. What a delight. If there are Amys in the upcom­ing gen­er­a­tion, the world has a chance. She is an absolute bub­ble of gen­eros­ity and energy, paus­ing at nearly every pho­to­graph she showed us of the chil­dren to say, “Oh, now HE was adorable…” How do peo­ple raise chil­dren to turn out like Amy? I remem­ber her babysit­ting days with Avery, once a week while I stayed late at my gallery, and I’d come home to the two of them flat on their stom­achs on the floor, sur­rounded by draw­ings. “I like your col­lar on that one, Amy,” Avery would be say­ing, “but look at how my fab­ric flows.” “Oh, cool, Avery, I think I’ll copy that for my next dress if you don’t mind…” She is a veg­e­tar­ian, so for din­ner we had an old favorite of Avery’s that for some rea­son has fallen off my radar screen. But it’s worth telling you about. It requires a fair bit of prep, but it’s col­or­ful and good for you.

Far­falle with Spinach and Roasted Red Pep­pers
(serves 4 with left­overs for lunch)

1 lb far­falle pasta
3 red bell pep­pers, roasted and peeled
2 tbsps olive oil
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 red onion, minced
2 tbsps Ital­ian sea­son­ing
sprin­kle hot red pep­per flakes
1 can plum toma­toes, crushed by hand
4 hand­fuls spinach, chif­fon­aded
1 hand­ful flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped fine
1 cup grated pecorino or parme­san cheese

Now, do you know how to roast red pep­pers? Of course you may buy them in a jar, ready-roasted. But they’re usu­ally sus­pended in either vine­gar or oil, and let me tell you that means… slimey. Why not cut them in half, remove the seeds and put them under your oven broiler? Or if you have a gas stove, turn on a burner and hold them over the flame with tongs, turn­ing them until they’re black­ened all over? Then put them in a brown paper bag you’ve been sav­ing from Star­bucks for that pur­pose, and let them sweat for a few min­utes, then peel. Slice small, in bite-size pieces.

And chif­fon­aded spinach? It’s fid­dly. Lay the leaves on top of one another with the stems stick­ing out to one side, and slice thin.

So do all these things as the pasta water comes to a boil. Then heat the olive oil in a skil­let, saute the gar­lic and onion till soft, throw in the Ital­ian sea­son­ing and pep­per flakes and add the red pep­per bites. Ask your house­guest to grate the cheese, then boil the pasta. Add the toma­toes to the sauce in the skil­let: just squeeze each one sep­a­rately, because did you ever think what nasty bits and pieces a tomato com­pany would save for a can of “chopped toma­toes”? Buy whole and squeeze.

Toss the spinach and pars­ley in at the last minute and stir till warm, then throw in the pasta and toss all together. Serve with the cheese on top. Lovely!

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In addi­tion to dear Amy, we had Avery’s best friend Anna all late last week while her par­ents house hunted in Amer­ica, poor things. What a joy to have Anna. The girls spent all three after­noons after school writ­ing a play, and then Fri­day night they acted it out. Mostly it was cos­tume changes, but there was a sort of pre-teen animal-obsessed theme as well: girls meet bun­nies, girls get bun­nies, girls lose bun­nies. Oh no! They find them in the end, don’t worry. It was very heart­warm­ing and innocent.

This all came on the heels of Avery’s act­ing agency send­ing us a script for a play for her to audi­tion for: play­ing a lit­tle Amer­i­can girl who becomes obsessed with her town’s local ordi­nance that orders sex offend­ers (yes!) to stay 2000 feet away from schools and play­grounds. It was but the lying-awake of a night to come to the con­clu­sion that we really didn’t want Avery com­ing any­where near that script. I just couldn’t pic­ture her utter­ing the words, much less hav­ing to explain the con­tent to her. Let the agency drop her if they must, but no. Too much. Much nicer to have her put on a play about… bun­nies. Anna is the per­fect influ­ence in that direction.

What’s my cur­rent worry? There always has to be one. This week it’s the upcom­ing school trip to Nor­mandy, leav­ing a week from today, on a coach that departs from school at 4:45 a.m. I can’t decide what to worry about first: the string of school trip coach acci­dents that have been mak­ing the news in Europe lately, or… no, that’s it pretty much. How can the dri­ver be prop­erly awake at 4:45 a.m.? Who on earth thought that was a good idea? And you know the speed limit will not be adhered to. I am really a bit con­cerned, but what can I do? The girls them­selves are far too obsessed with the audi­tions for the school play “Alice in Won­der­land” on Thurs­day even to think about what might hap­pen a week from today. Should I speak to the school and just say, “How are you going to keep that dri­ver awake?” But I’ll look like a lunatic. Plus what if they decided to the solu­tion was to pump him full of amphet­a­mines and then he put his foot to the floor and passed every other vehi­cle on the road?

Oh, what to do. I should just relax and make the cheese­cake our friend Peter made over the week­end: it’s the best you’ll ever have.

Peter’s Birth­day Party Cheese­cake with Lime Juice
(serves at least a dozen)

1/2 pack plain diges­tive bis­cuits
1/2-cup (ish) melted but­ter
500 grams mas­car­pone cheese
500 grams ricotta cheese
1/2 cup Greek yoghurt
caster sugar to taste
juice of 2 limes
4 sheets gelatin

Crush diges­tive bis­cuits and mix with enough melted but­ter for it to go moist but not so much that it is a heavy mix. Put that in a large flan dish (I think his was about 15 inches across and quite shal­low), spread out evenly and press it down fairly firmly. Put that in the fridge for 30 mins to cool and set.

Mix the cheeses and yoghurt till smooth, then add sugar to taste (I like a quite un-sweet cheese­cake, but it’s up to you) and lime juice.

Mean­while pre­pare the gelatin accord­ing to the instruc­tions, and when melted, add 2 large spoons­ful of cheese mix­ture and mix well with the gelatin. Then add all the gelatin to the cheese mix­ture and mix well. Pour the mix onto the bis­cuit base, level and then cool for a cou­ple of hours. Done.

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Peter adds that he’s exper­i­mented with a few vari­a­tions to this basic recipe: adding dou­ble cream to the mix­ture to soften it down and make it less sharp, adding some lime zest in to the mix­ture as well for some added colour and flavour and finally can­dy­ing some strings of lime zest and putting them on top.

I’m going to inter­rupt my blog­ging and laun­dry to go have cof­fee with Dalia. A lit­tle girl talk is in the air, I feel. Then can I just say how nicely my crush is pro­gress­ing? We have been slog­ging through the early part of Sea­son One of “Robin Hood,” and all I can say is, Richard Armitage’s evil sneer is far, far sex­ier than a smile or even a leer on a lesser man. The early part of the series is campy, badly writ­ten and very silly, but stick it out: toward mid-season every­thing gets bet­ter and by then, for what­ever crazy rea­son, you’ll care about Guy of Gis­bourne and his leather cos­tume and greasy hair and cruel twisted atti­tude. Trust me! He can act every­one else off the screen, and with­out much in the way of a script to get trou­bled about. He is sim­ply irre­sistible, and it’s put a lit­tle spring in my step. He could be any­where! Read­ing a script in Grosvenor Square as I saunter along to meet Dalia, pick­ing up a friend’s daugh­ter at what will just hap­pen to be my daughter’s act­ing class, hav­ing cof­fee at the deli around the cor­ner from my new house… one never knows! I’m glad I washed my hair.

Just what every girl needs to get her mojo back: yes, I’m back in crush world. I’ve sur­vived Matthew Mac­fadyen, James MacAvoy and Edward Pether­bridge, and they will all remain dear to my heart, but… it’s time for Richard Armitage. Do you get the smoul­der­ing thing? OK, he’s dressed in a leather suit for “Robin Hood,” but I couldn’t down­load the pho­to­graph of him as John Thorn­ton in the BBC drama “North and South” which has led to my suc­cumb­ing to his charms. This lovely pho­to­graph is from a great web­site called “The Stage News,” a great gos­sipy site per­fect for any­one who wants to keep up to date on what’s com­ing onscreen and stage. We have been watch­ing “North and South” lately and just fin­ished it last night: at times a bit too girly for John and at times a bit too grisly for me, so I sup­pose it’s the per­fect date-mini-series. He pos­i­tively tow­ers over the sto­ry­line, and like all my favourite actors, can do more by lift­ing his eyes than most can do with an entire set of body lan­guage tips. He’s about to join “Spooks” next autumn, which will offer a tremen­dous lift to that pro­gramme and help them sur­vive the inevitable depar­ture of Rupert Penry-Jones, also a lead­ing man not to be sneezed at, but blonde? Doesn’t do it for me. Give me the brood­ing dark lead­ing man every time. Poor John, hav­ing to put up with all this. At least he’s dark, if not the least brood­ing, smoul­der­ing per­son on earth. Jolly and indomitable, yes. Heath­cliff, no.

Let’s see, what have I been up to? Easter break is finally over, hav­ing spanned three weeks and far too much time on our hands. Although I argue that Avery is still recov­er­ing from exam and school accep­tance angst, and so prob­a­bly some down time accom­plish­ing absolutely noth­ing is no bad thing. The horses from the sta­ble are still down in Sur­rey for their spring break, so at least that part of our rou­tine has not got back to nor­mal, but there’s been ice skat­ing, time to see friends, and…cooking. I have a new fab­u­lous salmon recipe to tell you about, plus I can­not bur­ble on too enthu­si­as­ti­cally about the easy-peasy cheesy spinach I raved about recently. And they’re nice together.

Salmon with White Wine and Mush­rooms
(serves three)

3 salmon fil­lets, skin­less and bone­less
2 tbsps but­ter
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
two hand­fuls but­ton mush­rooms, sliced (you could go more exotic)
good splash white wine
driz­zle of cream
sprin­kle of dried thyme leaves
salt and fresh black pep­per to taste

So all you do it: melt the but­ter in a large skil­let and siz­zle the gar­lic gen­tly till soft, then add the mush­rooms and toss around till coated in but­ter. Move them to the sides of the skil­let and place the salmon fil­lets in the skil­let. Pour the splash of white wine around them and driz­zle the cream on top of them, sprin­kle with thyme. Cook over medium heat until the salmon is no longer bright pink but rather an opaque pink: per­haps 3 min­utes? All this while, spoon the mush­room sauce of the fil­lets. Now turn them over and turn off the heat. Pre­pare the rest of your din­ner and at the last minute, heat the fil­lets through again. Sea­son as you like. Done.

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The beauty of this dish are many-fold. Salmon is good for you. This method cooks it just through, but it’s super moist and ten­der from sim­ply lying in the hot skil­let. Dry salmon is ter­ri­ble, and this is not dry. Sec­ond, it’s flex­i­ble about time, so you can mash your pota­toes and steam your Chante­nay car­rots. And just the driz­zle of cream makes it lux­u­ri­ous, but it’s not over the top. The salmon actu­ally seems to absorb the sauce, and becomes infused with it. Lovely.

Well, John and I have decided to go legal and get our dri­ving licenses. Yep, you can all report us, we’ve been dri­ving with US licenses. So we actu­ally became moti­vated to study the High­way Code, then go online for prac­tice tests, which are a huge source of amuse­ment for us. “You have had an upset­ting argu­ment with a friend, and now you must drive home. Which of the fol­low­ing should you do before get­ting behind the wheel: 1) have a cig­a­rette, 2) have a quick alco­holic drink to calm your nerves, 3) take a deep breath, or 4) wait until you have calmed down before dri­ving.” I love it! And how about, “You have come upon the scene of an acci­dent involv­ing a motor­cy­clist. You should not remove the hel­met because 1) his head could get cold, 2) you could scratch the hel­met, 3) the hel­met could roll away, or 4) you could exac­er­bate head injuries.”

So far we’re doing really well, so now we can sched­ule an offi­cial the­ory exam, and then an offi­cial prac­ti­cal exam. I really can’t say that I’m enthu­si­as­tic about dri­ving in Lon­don, always feel­ing much more defen­sive than I used to in New York, as if any­thing dread­ful were just about to hap­pen to me. But it’s not intel­li­gent to live in a town where you can­not drive, so drive I shall.

Oh! I can’t believe I got this far with­out telling you: we have a house! Just a rental, with this crazy mar­ket, but it’s a lovely, sim­ple Vic­to­rian abode in a nice street, with a fairly won­der­ful kitchen, at least two work­ing gas fire­places, and two lit­tle rooms for Avery and her library (not sure which takes up more room) at the top of the house. The views from the top are just like watch­ing Mary Pop­pins: all uneven roofs and chim­neys and slate. And it has a paved gar­den with nice climb­ing things on the walls (you can tell I’m a real hor­ti­cul­tur­ist: “climb­ing things.”) and get this: a cat hole cut in the wall to let the cat out into the gar­den. But I’m sorry: none of my cats will fit through it! Wim­sey couldn’t even get his HEAD in that hole.

So we’ll move in the mid­dle of next month some­time. A very nice removal man came last week to look over all our pos­ses­sions, make enig­matic notes, ask us if there’s any­thing we feel “espe­cially strongly” about. That ques­tion always makes me ner­vous: why aren’t they going to pay atten­tion to EVERY­THING? Why must I triage my belong­ings? I’m cast­ing an eye over the two enor­mous piles of pho­to­graph albums, and think­ing, “Please don’t lose those.” Every­thing else could be replaced, but not those. Not to men­tion all the tubes of glue stick I’ve invested.

Lis­ten, I must go start din­ner. Avery and John have planted them­selves in my kitchen every din­ner prep time lately, with a chess board between them and an air of mas­sive com­pe­ti­tion in the air. They have 50 pounds going that Avery will never beat John, so this is seri­ous busi­ness. I thought John summed up his entire approach to life when he told her, after one spec­tac­u­larly bad move, “Avery, you can’t move your pieces for their own sake. You’ve got to move your pieces in order to smash the com­pe­ti­tion before he gets YOU. Always be look­ing for what he has planned for you, not what you have planned for your pieces.” Wise advice!

Thank you all for your patience wait­ing for me to get my blog­ging mojo back: it feels so nice to type! And I have appre­ci­ated all your kind words so very much. Back to normal!

Well, first I must say again that this blog will migrate to “invi­ta­tion only” in a few days (I’m happy to say that requests keep com­ing in so I want to give you all plenty of time to email me at kristen.blog.london@googlemail.com to request a spot on the invi­ta­tion list). Just let me know! All will be revealed when we’re on our own. Whew.

But we have been so incred­i­bly busy lately being tourists, in these days of Avery’s end of term break, that I thought I’d bet­ter let you know all the cool things there are to do within a tiny dis­tance of cen­tral Lon­don, or even within it. Then you can plan your trip!

First, last week saw us at Oster­ley Park, a stately home just out­side Lon­don proper, and an absolute mecca for fans of Robert Adam, which it turned out… Avery and I are not. John just rev­els in all the opu­lence, which is funny con­sid­er­ing that his idea of proper real estate for him­self would be a big Geor­gian house, com­pletely empty. I too like the odd Vic­to­rian ceil­ing dec­o­ra­tion and carved man­tel­piece, but Oster­ley: crazy! The paint­ings, the tapes­tries, the secret-drawer tables built just for the room. Just too much! But lovely if you like that sort of thing. What I think will bring us back, at least accord­ing to my friend Vic­to­ria, is the gor­geous park­land sur­round­ing the house where one is, appar­ently, wel­come to bring a pic­nic! This was, sadly, not an option for us, since as we left the house it began to SNOW. Hor­ri­ble! I love snow, but after Easter? No, thank you. I don’t even have a pho­to­graph of the place to show you because it was sim­ply too mis­er­able to doc­u­ment our visit. But I think it’s worth a sec­ond trip, when I’m able to be cer­tain the cli­mac­tic con­di­tions don’t drop a load of hail on us!

More to our lik­ing was the Han­del House Museum in Brook Street, where the great man wrote, I’m ashamed to say I had for­got­ten, “The Mes­siah.” We sat primly in the lit­tle video room and watched a short pro­gramme full of intim­i­dat­ing opera singers assur­ing us of the “human­ity, and the pas­sion” of Han­del (never thought of him that way), and we did find our­selves burst­ing occa­sion­ally into a stanza or two of the “Hal­lelu­jah Cho­rus,” whose strains have been known to get me in trou­ble before now. I tend to get very gig­gly when I try to sing seri­ous music. Imag­ine our con­ster­na­tion on leav­ing the video room for the museum, to find a sweet lit­tle vol­un­teer camped out just beyond the door, no doubt lis­ten­ing in hor­ror to our every note. Mor­ti­fy­ing! But it’s a lovely, tiny museum. Appar­ently Han­del was, between operas, quite the bon vivant, and one of the most amus­ing bits of the dis­plays was a pair of lith­o­graphs of him as a pig!

There was a dar­ling musi­cian perched at the spinet, or what­ever it is, prac­tic­ing away for an upcom­ing con­cert. They do con­certs nearly every Thurs­day night, and it seems that every­one I know has been to one. I’m embar­rassed to tell you that I can take only about as much opera and spinet music as the museum tour lasted: after that I start want­ing to pull my fin­ger­nails out. I am really not very cul­tured. Here’s how lame I am: my favorite part of the entire museum was the dress-up area where Avery found, to her intense hap­pi­ness, a full boy’s suit just her size! Vel­vet knicker­bock­ers, a waist­coat and frogged vel­vet jacket, plus a tri­corn hat! She looked absolutely adorable, of course we had no cam­era. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing place, and there are snip­pets of music you can lis­ten to over sim­ply the BEST head­phones I’ve ever expe­ri­enced. Amazing!

From the sub­lime to the com­pletely unbe­liev­able, Mon­day found us in Green­wich, hav­ing taken the absolutely delight­ful ferry from Embank­ment Pier. What a ride! And the LONG walk up to the Obser­va­tory at the top of the hill. I don’t know about you, but I find astron­omy to be very giggle-inducing indeed. When the learned experts begin talk­ing about mil­lions of years and bil­lions of some­thing else, I just can’t reg­is­ter the notions. I have a hard enough time with the Lon­don tube sys­tem, and remem­ber­ing what hap­pened last week, with­out try­ing to envi­sion galax­ies and how long light takes to travel from wher­ever, much less imag­in­ing what will hap­pen when the intri­cate grav­i­ta­tional pull from some­thing changes and we all go whirling off into the sun­set. And I mean SUN­SET. Avery and John lap all this infor­ma­tion up, how­ever, although Avery admit­ted to being a lit­tle “freaked” by the vast­ness. But what a fan­tas­tic museum, and it is always fun to stand on the merid­ian line and be first in the east, then in the west. I am always impressed by the knowl­edge that my beloved can trot out on these occa­sions, really under­stand­ing lon­gi­tude and lat­i­tude and where we are, and time zones. And who knew there was such a polit­i­cal con­tro­versy around “Day­light Sav­ings Time,” nearly 100 years ago? And the VIEW. And pos­si­bly our favorite bit: the cam­era obscura. There we were, hud­dled in a round room sur­rounded by black vel­vet cur­tains, look­ing down on a pro­jected image of the Christo­pher Wren hos­pi­tal and the street below. I didn’t believe it was a real live view until Avery pointed out a red bus mak­ing its way across the table. So impres­sive! One teenager dressed all in black breathed, “It’s a bleed­ing video pro­jected from the sky! Wicked!”

As we walked down the hill from the Obser­va­tory (it seemed a much longer walk UP! not for the faint of heart, be warned), Avery mused, “You could write a won­der­ful mur­der mys­tery about that, you know. A per­son is alone in the cam­era obscura, and wit­nesses a mur­der in the scene below, but by the time she gets to where she saw it hap­pen, there’s no sign of any­thing.” Yes, that’s an idea! I won­der if it’s already been done.

While you’re in Green­wich you must have lunch at the lovely, inex­pen­sive and ter­ri­bly friendly Ital­ian bistro “La Cucina Di Soteri,” in Nel­son Road. We’ve dis­cov­ered, after many pricey lunches out that left both Avery’s and my meals half-eaten, that the secret to suc­cess is to share. She was crav­ing steak frites, and I was skep­ti­cal about find­ing it, but would you believe the first restau­rant we came up walk­ing up from the ferry… steak frites! And lovely spaghetti car­bonara for John, plus a very fresh insalate tri­col­ore for me, with really nice moz­zarella, toma­toes and avo­cado. And if you and your puny appetite share with your small daugh­ter, let me tell you every bite gets eaten, which is very sat­is­fy­ing! Try this lovely lit­tle place, and you’ll have the energy to get up that Obser­va­tory Hill!

The week­end found us host­ing Avery’s dear friend Jamie, after a won­der­ful skat­ing les­son for the two of them. John and I actu­ally put on our skates ear­lier in the week just to keep her com­pany, and to get a lit­tle exer­cise, and boy are we BAD. It’s even more appar­ent how good Avery has become when you’re on her level on the ice! Mor­ti­fy­ingly bad. Well, we don’t hold on to the rail, but it’s not much bet­ter than that. John has “hockey skat­ing,” which means the only fun is going really fast and try­ing to knock down teenage girls, and I for­bade it. But Jamie and Avery are superb. We brought her home and had fab­u­lous Moroc­can meat­balls (with dilled cucum­bers in yoghurt, and but­tered noo­dles, it’s the per­fect din­ner in my opin­ion), and watched, I’m ashamed to admit, “I’d Do Any­thing.” Yes, it’s true. We’ve become quite addicted to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s lat­est cast­ing scheme for the upcom­ing revival of Oliver! “YOU COULD BE NANCY!” The hys­te­ria! But it’s good clean fun. And the recent BBC ver­sion was out of this world! That and “Bleak House” have been keep­ing us out of trou­ble over the hol­i­day, plus you can always tell your­self, “Hey, it’s Charles Dick­ens, it’s EDUCATIONAL.”

We met up over the week­end with Jamie’s fam­ily and they took us to their local Ital­ian eatery, and it’s well worth a visit if you’re in Not­ting Hill. Oste­ria Basil­ico is very dif­fi­cult to get into on a Sat­ur­day and they don’t book, but if it’s a nice day, put your name in and go shop­ping and come back. Lovely carpac­cio di manzo (I driz­zled it with rather too much chilli oil and was sweat­ing!) and gor­geous pizzas.

Finally, yes­ter­day we ambled up to High­gate and took in… the ceme­tery. You MUST do this. Not so much for the celebrity graves (odd phrase, that) but for the sheer atmos­phere. The West Ceme­tery take only guided tours at 2 p.m. (get there 15 min­utes early, because we didn’t and they cal­lously shut the gate in our faces), but the East Ceme­tery is just as much fun and totally open. Karl Marx is buried there! And Vir­ginia Woolf’s father Sir Leslie Stephen, and the man who invented the phrase “sur­vival of the fittest,” Her­bert Spencer. Now why did I think Charles Dar­win invented that phrase? And Avery was absolutely gob­s­macked to see her cur­rent favourite author, Dou­glas Adams. She’s deep into about her hun­dredth read­ing of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” right now, inspired by see­ing his mod­est lit­tle tomb­stone. It cer­tainly makes one think, read­ing all the encomi­ums, prayers and apho­risms peo­ple choose (or some­one chooses) for their grave­stones. I like the mor­bid ones about decay and bit­ter­ness, but Avery grooved to one par­tic­u­larly win­some notice: “To Mary, a Real Good Mother.” Fair enough. We all won­dered: is the place so run­down because of lack of funds, or because the pow­ers that be recog­nise the atmos­phere that over­grown ivy pro­vides? Once in awhile you come upon an obelisk or angel wrapped in cau­tion tape, and you know it’s com­ing down in a mat­ter of… min­utes. Wonderful.

Well, I must run and siz­zle up some lamb chops for din­ner, but not before telling you about the lat­est incar­na­tion of my ever-metamorphosing spinach casse­role. Let me tell you, recipes have to evolve when you can’t find the right ingre­di­ents, and then when you find bet­ter ingre­di­ents and think up bet­ter meth­ods. I still love my orig­i­nal ver­sion, but since you can’t get Mon­terey Jack jalapeno cheese here and I’ve yet to find some­thing that tastes just like it, and since my oven was on the fritz last night and I had no frozen spinach, I have come up with what I think is an even bet­ter method. Because it’s not baked, the spinach retains more of its nutri­tion, I’m sure, and it doesn’t take but a nano-second to make. Get your­self a big bag of baby spinach, already washed, and read on:

Quick Cheesey Spinach
(serves four)

1 large bag (a pound, about) fresh washed baby spinach
2 tbsps but­ter
4 cloves gar­lic, minced fine
1 medium white onion, minced fine
8 ounces Gruyere cheese, grated
4 ounces evap­o­rated milk
1 tbsp cel­ery salt

Now here’s all there is to it: put about half the spinach in your Mag­imix or Cuisi­nart and, puls­ing care­fully, chop till just chopped, but not smooshed. Take it out and put it in a bowl and put in the other half, same treat­ment. Now melt the but­ter and saute the gar­lic and onion till nice and soft. Throw in the cheese and milk and stir till melted and soft. Add the cel­ery salt and remove from the heat.

Now take care of the rest of your din­ner (my spe­cial baked chicken breasts are superb with this spinach) and just at the last minute, when every­one is seated and about to gnaw each other’s hands off at the aro­mas, throw in the spinach and return to the heat. Warm just through. Done.

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Lil­lian Hell­man Chicken
(serves four)

4 bone­less, skin­less chicken breasts, nicely trimmed
3/4 cup each: may­on­naise (get it? Hellman’s?), grated pecorino cheese
juice of 1 lemon
pinch gar­lic pow­der
1 1/2 cups fresh breadcrumbs

Sim­ply mix the mayo and cheese and lemon juice and gar­lic pow­der and smear it all over the chicken breasts. Coat them thor­oughly in bread­crumbs and baked on a foil-covered dish at 425 or so for 35 min­utes. Sim­ply deli­cious, and so SIMPLE.

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Right, I’m off to those lamb chops. Now don’t for­get to send me your email and I’ll migrate this all away to Ether­land very soon… hope to see you there!