Well, for heaven’s sake. After a com­pletely crazy after­noon and evening yes­ter­day (let me see, what was involved? four girls at the sta­ble, four girls for din­ner, a cham­pagne bot­tle falling out of the fridge door and explod­ing, Avery’s bed col­laps­ing in what all four girls insisted was a com­pletely inno­cent game of Sar­dines), I fig­ured today would be a yawn. Quite lit­er­ally, as we’re hav­ing to get up a half hour ear­lier than in our old place because we’ve moved so far west. I got Avery fed (blue­berry pan­cakes are the new break­fast of cham­pi­ons, so I’ll give you the recipe), off to school on the very crowded Ham­mer­smith and City line, and I came back home to find John back from his trav­els and host­ing the British Gas guy, inves­ti­gat­ing all our chim­neys and the boiler.

Yes, you’ve twigged to the story, I know. The gas man actu­ally LIT the coals in my study, actu­ally LIT them, and out of the chim­ney leapt Hermione. Through the flames, mind you! It’s a mir­a­cle she didn’t catch on fire. “Well, I’ve seen some things in my career, I have,” mused the gas guy, “naked ladies answer­ing the door, walk­ing in on old grannies as they was in the loo, but a cat in a chim­ney, that’s a new one.” I bet.

He ral­lied, how­ever, to com­plete his task AND to point out to me that one of the bricks in my lime­stone instal­la­tion, so painfully assem­bled on Mon­day, was turned around. Fair enough. My whole body went into dread­ful total recall as I bent down to rec­tify the prob­lem. Actu­ally I’m pretty much recov­ered. And John’s back! So we can put Avery’s bed back together (I was the mother from h**l last night with absolutely no sym­pa­thy for a small girl who did not want to sleep in the guest room: “then think about that, per­haps, before you jump on your bed the next time!” I snarled, but she denies it absolutely). John’s dashed off to school col­lect Avery and assorted friends for a cel­e­bra­tory “half-term” lunch at our house. It’s one of my favorite Eng­lish girls’ school tra­di­tions: on half-term half-days, the girls can wear their Own Clothes, for which priv­i­lege (actu­ally to pay for which infrac­tion) they must each donate a pound to char­ity. Much mus­ing went on last night over what to wear. Also, they were to bring in a favorite teddy bear dressed in some spe­cial way, for a com­pet­i­tive (nat­u­rally) Assem­bly. Avery dressed her bear up in the Amer­i­can Girl-sized school uni­form her grand­mother made for her, and if that doesn’t win a prize… I’ll set my cat on fire.

The cats have actu­ally been remark­ably nor­mal in their set­tling in. Oh my, get­ting them home from the vet was a scream. John was unavail­able for assis­tance, so I bravely set out on my own in a taxi whose dri­ver lis­tened with com­mend­able inter­est to my story and offered to wait out­side the vet while I went in, set­tled up, and brought them back out. “They will be… restrained, won’t they?” I briefly toyed with the idea of telling him I had planned merely to throw them in the back and let them fight it out. But I felt sorry for him, and my good­ness, with good rea­son. The entire 20-minute jour­ney from the vet to the house, they… meowed. All four, con­stantly, in slightly dif­fer­ent tones and voices. Keechie in par­tic­u­lar uttered one word over and over, plain­tively, “AIR!” That is her ver­sion of meow­ing. Wim­sey on the other hand cried quite con­vinc­ingly like a cat in a novel about ani­mal cru­elty, Tacy screeched in a high repet­i­tive yowl, and Hermione uttered lit­tle yelps while blink­ing very rapidly, as if hold­ing back tears. Never again! But I got them out of the taxi, onto the pave­ment, paid off the dri­ver who looked mas­sively relieved he wasn’t me, and then trun­dled them, one by one, into the foyer.

They slunk around on their bel­lies for awhile, and since then have seemed per­fectly at home. They sniff with fas­ci­na­tion at all the Ham­mer­smith smells com­ing in the win­dows, they gaze in fas­ci­na­tion at the dove and robin life in the gar­den. In fact, one morn­ing while Avery was hav­ing break­fast, Hermione saw the robin land on the paving stones and ran full tilt toward it… into the plate glass win­dow. Poor dear. She really has judg­ment issues.

Let’s see, today we made a very wise and pru­dent pur­chase (and look at the new partner’s desk and chairs to go with! I love them), the only down­side to which was that we had to bring it home at the same time that Avery had intended to take up that space in the car her­self. There’s a won­der­ful lit­tle place around the cor­ner from her act­ing school called Church Street, lined with antique and junk shops, some very high end, some com­plete rub­bish, and many in between. At one of the in between shops we found our old leather sofa and chairs, so we always go back while wait­ing for her to achieve the­atri­cal splen­dor on Sat­ur­day after­noons. And today we found a gor­geous, dusty Vic­to­rian wicker log bas­ket, per­fect for Avery’s stuffed ani­mal col­lec­tion which is now resid­ing in her laun­dry bas­ket. Inex­pen­sive and deep and very charm­ing. So I said to Avery at pickup, “Do you want the good news or the bad news?” “The bad news.” “Well, you’re going to be com­pletely squished in the back seat to make room for a piece of fur­ni­ture.” “What’s the good news?” “It’s for you.”

I am get­ting excited at the prospect of our next din­ner party: a get-together of all our old friends, three cou­ples, from the old flat. Let’s see, there’s one who can­not eat sig­nif­i­cant fat, and one veg­e­tar­ian. These two con­straints point to, I think, a sort of pan-Asian feast. I think I’ll make lots of pap­pad­ums with var­i­ous chut­neys and yogurt dips to start, then my Thai prawns in a spicy coconut milk curry sauce, my many-versions creamed spinach with, this time, garam masala in addi­tion to the cel­ery salt, a really nice veg­e­tar­ian ver­sion of my biryani, and John’s all-time favorite potato dish:

Stir-Fried Pota­toes with Turmeric and Mus­tard Seed
(serves 8)

3 lbs new or Char­lotte pota­toes
3 gen­er­ous splashes veg­etable oil (rape­seed is the new rage)
3 tbsps mus­tard seed
3 tbsps turmeric
juice of 1 lemon
salt and fresh-ground pep­per to taste

Steam the pota­toes in batches and set aside. When they have cooled, cut either in half or in quar­ters depend­ing on the size. You want bite-sized pieces. Set aside.

Plan to work in three batches. Heat a gen­er­ous splash of oil in your wok until very hot, and throw in 1 tbsp mus­tard seed. STAND BACK! Be sure to wear an apron as the oil can fly a bit as the seeds heat up. Grad­u­ally they will POP! It’s so much fun to watch and lis­ten. When you reckon the pop­ping is fin­ished, throw in 1 tbsp turmeric and a third of the steamed pota­toes. Stir reli­giously and pour in a third of the lemon juice. Salt and pep­per to taste and remove from wok. Do this all two more times and stir it all together in a large serv­ing bowl. Delicious!

And did you know turmeric is an anti-carcinogen? It has been known for years to have med­i­c­i­nal prop­er­ties in fight­ing can­cer, so be gen­er­ous! It does not have a tremen­dous fla­vor, but it’s bright yel­low and just looks… healthy. And it adds a smoky, exotic fla­vor to the pota­toes. You’ll love it.

Well, Avery has returned from Pony Club Day filthy, exhausted and frus­trated, in equal mea­sure, so I think a nice long bath with a bowl of straw­ber­ries on the side is in order for her. Why frus­trated? “The 10–11 year-olds had a GREAT time,” she fumed at pickup. “That should be good news,” I said, “since you’re 11.” “Not at the sta­ble, I’m not. Kirsty says I’m too skill­ful to be with the 10-11s, so I had to be with the 12-16s, and all we did was lead the other chil­dren around the park with ropes!” Ah well, noth­ing a nice soak­ing won’t cure. And tomor­row for breakfast:

Per­fect Blue­berry Pan­cakes
(makes about 4 large, and the bat­ter eas­ily stays good for four days)

1 egg
3 tbsps but­ter
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup plus 2 tbsps all-purpose flour
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsps bak­ing pow­der
dash salt
1 cup blue­ber­ries (Avery likes a lot)

Beat the egg in a small-ish bowl and set aside. Melt the but­ter with the milk in a small saucepan and let cool a bit, then mix in with the egg (if it’s too hot it will scram­ble the egg). Put the flour, sugar, bak­ing pow­der and salt in a medium bowl and mix well, then add the milk mix­ture to it and stir JUST until blended.

Heat a skil­let with a lit­tle bit of but­ter in it until quite hot. Turn down the heat to medium and pour about a quar­ter of the bat­ter in the mid­dle and scat­ter with as many blue­ber­ries as you want. Now, resist the temp­ta­tion to play with the pan­cake. Leave it be until lit­tle bub­bles appear, then turn it over and cook till firm. Now you can but­ter it, or sprin­kle pow­dered sugar over it, or driz­zle warm Ver­mont maple syrup over it. Or if you are a mother who is a fool about her daugh­ter, you can do all three.

This with a piece of the Gig­gly Pig’s unsmoked bacon (vir­tu­ally fat-free) and a sliced banana is the per­fect break­fast for a lit­tle girl, whether she’s really 11 or not. Enjoy!

Yes, I know this looks like a Vic­to­rian fire­place, and it is. But look closely. See the lit­tle stripey hands and pointy face? That’s Hermione, the world’s small­est tabby and lat­est inhab­i­tant of my… chim­ney. That’s right, she climbs over the pretty con­vinc­ing (but cold) fake coals and shim­mies right up inside. Can I con­vey to you how dirty she is after she’s done this?

Yes, the cats are home. I can­not ade­quately explain to you what it was like to get them into a taxi, all of them mewl­ing and yowl­ing (thank­fully I had a cat-friendly taxi dri­ver: believe you me, I ascer­tained this before hir­ing him for the dura­tion), all of them in their incred­i­bly heavy and bulky kitty pris­ons. They yowled all the way down the Bayswa­ter Road, all the way through the Shepherd’s Bush Round­about (it’s sad that I no longer find that name amus­ing), and finally home. I dragged them all out to the pave­ment and then had to pay off the taxi ran­som, refus­ing the driver’s half-hearted, “You don’t need help, then, miss?” and then dragged them indi­vid­u­ally through the door of the house and opened the cages. Free­dom! Crazi­ness! Chim­neys, obscure base­ment cor­ners, try­ing to weasel through tiny win­dow open­ings, all the while meow­ing like they were being skinned. A VERY LONG DAY. Add to that: I spent the morn­ing recon­struct­ing our 90-piece lime­stone brick sculp­ture in which each brick has a spe­cific place, only the codes on the back of each had been worn away in the pack­ing. Grrr! Hours later, ham­string mus­cles com­pletely shot… and a Sharpie code on the back of EACH!

Now a new wrench: I can­not divulge the details because the secret is not mine to tell (one of my favorite Vic­to­rian dra­matic phrases), but John is off on a mis­sion to per­haps accept a job. He’s in a sandy land far, far away doing lord knows what for the next two days (I cer­tainly have but a sketchy notion of his where­abouts and activ­i­ties). Why dur­ing mov­ing week, you ask? To keep life interesting.

So I am beat. I apol­o­gize for the brief, recipe-less post. Tomor­row is even less promis­ing as far as writ­ing time goes, as I have my class in the early after­noon, and then no fewer than four girls from three dif­fer­ent fam­i­lies to ferry to the rid­ing sta­bles, home for din­ner, and back to their respec­tive homes. OK, OK, one of them is mine, but it makes a bet­ter story to say three dif­fer­ent fam­i­lies. It will be an insane day among insane days. Wish me luck… And thanks for all the great com­ments! Yes, the din­ing room is very cozy, and invit­ing. I will try to post more house pic­tures soon. And the dishy antiques guy who deliv­ered the partner’s desk? Crush­wor­thy? Perhaps…

My good­ness, I know all 24 hour-periods add up to a day each, and pre­sum­ably the whole 24/7 is true, and there are seven such peri­ods per week, but this has been the longest week ever! And yet a good one, and so much has changed.

Since I last spoke to you, the cats have been deliv­ered to their week in Kent relax­ing in their “Fam­ily Chalet”, and I finally stopped call­ing to check on them because the news was always… no news! Still the friend­liest cats any­one has ever met. No doubt they will have to be dragged kick­ing and scream­ing to come home tomor­row. And we spent our last few wretched days in the Mar­ble Arch flat, watch­ing as the last ves­tiges of our own pos­ses­sions that made it homey were stripped away. Poor Avery felt quite bereft the last night, and spent her read­ing time that evening ensconced in her (dry) bath­tub, sur­rounded by pil­lows, say­ing, “It’s the only room that’s still the same.” Only Becky’s lus­cious gift of chicken cooked with prunes, olives and capers made the night bearable…

But then it was onto the onslaught of mov­ing itself, and more on that later. Suf­fice it to say that we are very much set­tled in, on day four, at the price of total and com­plete exhaus­tion. Our great friends Vin­cent and Peter came to din­ner tonight to help us cel­e­brate, and it was a fab­u­lous moti­va­tion to get things arranged. As you see, the kitchen and din­ing room were ready to feed peo­ple! Slow-baked bar­be­cued chicken wings, potato salad with chives, dill and red onion, and red cab­bage and fen­nel cole slaw with a spicy dress­ing. Plus choco­late mousse with straw­ber­ries! A proper din­ner party. We are SO happy to be here. Tomor­row we get the kit­ties back, plus we have Becky’s girls for the evening, and an audi­tion for Avery, out in the hin­ter­lands. And the deliv­ery of our long-mused-over partner’s desk: blue leather, gild­ing, all very worn and untidy, but that’s all right! And a pair of worn-out red leather arm­chairs to go with. Pic­tures when ready! But right now… I’m col­laps­ing. Wish you were here…

Well, in the mad run-up to mov­ing day on Tues­day (yikes) I’ve been fill­ing our cal­en­dar with things to do to keep our minds off the impend­ing drama and chaos. And for once, I have a play to tell you about that I didn’t see on its last day! In fact, it’s still in pre­views, and you sim­ply must go if you can. The delight­fully ver­sa­tile Tim Pigott-Smith plays Pro­fes­sor Henry Hig­gins in “Pyg­malion” at the old Vic across the river, and his per­for­mance, while to my mind lack­ing a sub­tlety in the last act that would have ele­vated the play, is well worth see­ing. This photo is from a site devoted to him and believe you me, once you start think­ing about it, you’ve seen him in lots of things. He was in one of my favorite early “Spooks” episodes, and did the voiceover for the lovely lit­tle BBC series about the life of the British monar­chy behind the scenes, and then he was in “North and South” with my beloved Richard Armitage (it’s hard not sim­ply to post a pho­to­graph of Richard every day, but that might be tan­ta­mount to… stalking?)

Plus the gor­geous new­comer Michelle Dock­ery is divine: to my ear per­fect Cock­ney, but then as well cut-glass posh Eng­lish, very funny, but also touch­ingly vul­ner­a­ble. That’s my only tiny com­plaint about the play in this incar­na­tion: I wish Pigott-Smith had made Hig­gins more vul­ner­a­ble. I think to care about him, to feel sorry that the rela­tion­ship will never work (I had for­got­ten the play does not have a happy end­ing, sorry Lerner and Lowe) the audi­ence must feel for Hig­gins, if only in the very last act, must see him as truly, if inar­tic­u­lately, heart­bro­ken, and Pigott-Smith played him more petu­lant, with­out a con­vinc­ing level of regret for what he’s los­ing. I sup­pose that could have been the direc­tion, too. In any case, it’s a very small quib­ble about a very good play. Avery was in heaven! But we did all agree after­ward that we kept expect­ing the char­ac­ters to burst into song, which was dis­con­cert­ing. And: our din­ner at the Pit under the the­atre was lovely too, and just in time for the cur­tain going up. So go, do.

Well, that’s not all that’s been keep­ing us busy these days. We took Avery for her first time to Cam­den Mar­ket, or rather the Sta­bles Mar­ket across the road since the fire destroyed so much of the place last year. We did admit­tedly drive all over north­west Lon­don try­ing to find it, since our lat­est sat­nav was lifted from the car (grr). I know real Lon­don­ers will com­plain that the mar­ket has lost some of its truly quirky appeal, but there was enough idio­syn­cracy and charm to make us happy (not to men­tion the still-warm home­made dough­nuts sprin­kled with cin­na­mon sugar that made even no-sweet-tooth me sit up and beg like a dog). Avery dis­cov­ered a latent pas­sion for vin­tage cloth­ing, and we could sud­denly fast-forward about five years to see her shop­ping there with her friends for the lat­est 1950s bar­gain. In the end she bought a fab­u­lous fit­ted (well, it will be some­day!) leather jacket, a tweed hat and pair of slinky white gloves. One of her friends is hav­ing a birth­day party next week with a “cock­tail party” (I know, I know), so the gloves will come in handy. It was a gor­geous sunny day and noth­ing could burst our bub­ble, not even find­ing out that the bean-bag stall we’d come to visit had… burned down. Now we must find another source, for Avery’s new room.

Speak­ing of new room, we’ve been spend­ing a lot of time there tak­ing over bits and pieces, wait­ing for fur­ni­ture deliv­er­ies, try­ing to fig­ure out why the phone doesn’t work (and con­se­quently our broad­band), lay­ing out news­pa­pers in the shapes of rugs and fur­ni­ture to see if they fit. One day I sat in the kitchen wait­ing for some­thing or some­body and just drank in the seren­ity. Of course it will con­sid­er­ably less serene when the kitchen is filled with our stuff and our peo­ple and our issues, but that day… it was quite windy and the many plants and trees in the gar­den waved in the breeze, throw­ing shad­ows on the gar­den paving stone. Our lit­tle res­i­dent pair of tiny robins flew in and out, some­times perch­ing on one of the Moroc­can lanterns our land­lady kindly left behind. Pure peace. Won’t last, I know, but it was a nice moment.

What am I most wor­ried about with the move? With­out a doubt it’s the sit­u­a­tion with the cats. I know that at 9 a.m. tomor­row morn­ing I must get them stuffed into their car­ri­ers, the car­ri­ers stuffed into a taxi and us all dri­ven to the vet, where the cat­tery will col­lect them and take them to Kent for their “hol­i­day.” Ner­vous! I don’t really want to do any of that, and I’ll miss them for the week. Avery is beside her­self when­ever she thinks about it.

To dis­tract her, we went yes­ter­day to the Royal Wind­sor Horse Show, always a great event. We took Anna along, and because last year we stood seat­less in the rain for the dura­tion of the after­noon, I bought tick­ets to the Mem­bers’ Enclo­sure, for not a lot more money (I’d def­i­nitely rec­om­mend it, if only for the really clean loos). For all it sounded so snooty, the peo­ple were per­fectly nor­mal, just dressed up (John huffed and puffed over hav­ing to wear a TIE). And the Queen came and sat quite near to us! All our favorite events hap­pened: the accu­mu­la­tor, where each suc­ces­sive jump is worth more than the last, with “the joker” at the end: a jump that if you dare to try it, wins you lots if you get over it, and costs you lots if you don’t. It was thrilling! The win­ner was a chap I had never heard of called Gra­ham Love­grove (great name, but not crush­wor­thy sadly) who sim­ply tore through the course (as well as clear­ing the jumps, the win is based on time against the clock) and pos­i­tively gal­loped out of the “joker.” Won­der­ful stuff! Then there were the Pony Club games, and at the end of the day the Shet­land pony races, which the girls absolutely loved. It was hot, hot, hot, and by the time we left we were all a lit­tle wilted and dusty. A great day out, although the Food Fes­ti­val asso­ci­ated with the show gets more piti­ful every year, which is a dis­ap­point­ment. I won­der if the orga­niz­ers have con­cluded that horsey peo­ple don’t buy much in the way of exotic ingre­di­ents? At least not for humans.

Well, it’s nearly time to get Avery from the sta­ble (she will be pos­i­tively FILTHY after both yes­ter­day and today, but it hardly seemed worth it to scrape the dust off her last night when today would only bring more horsey muck). First, how­ever, I must give you an absolutely SUPERB recipe that struck me as the per­fect buf­fet dish, should you need one. I think, too, that mixed with some chilled wild rice it could be even nicer. I’ve been think­ing a lot lately about what prompts me to cook a given thing (I took a bit of cook­ery writ­ing with me for my home­work to class this week and got loads of help­ful feed­back). I must find a way to orga­nize all my recipes, and I’m fairly com­mit­ted to hedg­ing them all round with some rem­i­nis­cences, some con­text, some sug­ges­tions of the friends and fam­ily I feed. This dish really took me back to old New York days, not even Tribeca but before that: as new­ly­weds in SoHo (before it became the Short Hills Mall, back when the neigh­bor­hood still had real charm, before every fab­ric and sta­tionery store became a Gap or a Star­bucks… end of rant).

Back in those golden olden days, there was a Thai place that deliv­ered, and we ordered out every Mon­day night after I taught my art his­tory class and got home pumped and full of myself, but not inter­ested in cook­ing. Our favorite dish was called “larb,” an unap­peal­ing name, but a fab­u­lous light dish. We’d eat it directly out of the alu­minum con­tainer, feel­ing hip and cool and New Yorky, stand­ing out on our fire escape and look­ing at the view to the south of the Wool­worth build­ing, and the view to the north of the Chrysler build­ing. What fun that was! It was in that first New York loft that we dis­cov­ered Avery was on the way, so we both have very fond mem­o­ries of the whole period in our lives: the last as irre­spon­si­ble babies.

Well, for some rea­son John has been talk­ing about “larb” all the time, only nei­ther of us remem­bered the name. Instead we resorted to the clumsy moniker “that chilly minced chicken spicy dish.” And since we have no Thai deliv­ery place (in fact I have no Thai place at all), it was grad­u­ally borne in upon me that I would have to learn to make it myself. I finally asked him why he was obsess­ing about one of the few things I have never tried to cook and don’t know how to cook, and after think­ing about it for awhile, he said, “You know why? It was the first meal we had in our old Tribeca loft, the first night we moved in. Sur­rounded by boxes, eat­ing that chilly minced chicken Thai thing.” Fair enough! Well, as long as it’s not some com­pli­cated dessert that I’ll undoubt­edly screw up and not want to eat any­way, I’m game to try to make any­thing. All I had to do was type “Thai minced chicken” into google, and I was sent right to the excel­lent BBC “Good­Food” site (although their solemn assur­ance that “every recipe is tested before pub­li­ca­tion” makes me laugh a bit: is there any other way to pub­lish a recipe? do some cooks not bother to test it before publication?).

There it was! Larb, in all its glory. Being me, of course I had to mess around with the recipe a bit since it is against my nature to enter the city of Mecca or to fol­low a recipe exactly. I had no lemon­grass or lime leaves as the recipe required, so I sub­sti­tuted the grated zest of a lemon and a lime. Per­haps it would be even more exotic with the proper cit­rus bits, so I’ll try it again (I’ll test it! hee hee) and see if it makes any dif­fer­ence. But I’m pretty sure that most of you don’t always have lemon­grass and lime leaves on hand, so let’s be flex­i­ble. I also was lazy and blitzed the chicken in the food proces­sor instead of chop­ping it, and it was per­fectly fine. I also omit­ted the sug­gested red chill­ies and used chilli-infused olive oil instead, and it was lovely. And just so you know (I didn’t), Thai fish sauce sounds off-putting, but is actu­ally a very sim­ple clear mix­ture of anchovies and oil. Essen­tial for any Thai cook­ing, it turns out.

Larb
(allow one chicken breast fil­let per per­son; this serves four)

zest of 1 lemon and 1 lime
5 gar­lic cloves
1-inch piece of gin­ger­root, peeled
1 tbsp chilli-infused olive oil
1 tbsp sesame oil
4 chicken breast fil­lets, skin­less
50 ml (about 3 1.2 tbsps) Thai fish sauce
1 red onion, finely chopped
3 tbsps lime juice
hand­ful each, roughly chopped: corian­der, mint, basil leaves
1/2 cup chopped mixed nuts or pinenuts
1 head but­ter let­tuce or 2 heads Baby Gem let­tuce, sep­a­rated into leaves
1 cucum­ber, seeded and cut into strips lengthwise

Throw the zest, gar­lic and gin­ger in the Mag­imix and whizz until very finely blitzed. Scoop it all out with a spat­ula and then throw in the chicken and whizz it until finely chopped, but not mush. I don’t know if it could become mush, but don’t let it!

In a large skil­let or wok, heat the oils and siz­zle the cit­rus mix­ture briefly, then add the chicken. Fry the chicken, con­stantly chop­ping and sep­a­rat­ing it into tiny bits, for 4 min­utes, then add the fish sauce. Turn down the heat and let the chicken bub­ble for a few more min­utes, then add the chopped red onion and bub­ble just briefly, about a minute. Remove to a serv­ing bowl and chill until it’s at the tem­per­a­ture you like: it’s lovely warm, we found, but very refresh­ing cold.

Just before you’re ready to eat, pour in the lime juice and sprin­kle over the herbs and nuts, and toss. Serve in the let­tuce leaves with the cucum­ber strips: it’s messy!

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

This is sim­ply DIVINE. And since I am occa­sion­ally accused of try­ing to clog your arter­ies and cre­ate love han­dles with too many creamy but­tery recipes, MAY I respect­fully point out the osten­ta­tious lack of any such ingre­di­ents? It’s prac­ti­cally a diet dish! You might want some steamed rice on the side, to catch all the lit­tle bits that will fall out of your let­tuce leaf as you eat. Lovely, I guar­an­tee it. I tested it! Just for you.

We’ve been tak­ing a cou­ple of breaks from the end­less list of details that is The Mov­ing Process (why are activ­i­ties called “processes” always unpleas­ant: “recov­ery,” “griev­ing,” “heal­ing”… no one really wants to do any of them). But between buy­ing a new laun­dry bas­ket, decid­ing where the lit­ter boxes will go, giv­ing away yet more cloth­ing, toys and elec­tronic items, and pretty much con­stant wran­gling over which sofa we like, we’ve had a cou­ple of amaz­ing restau­rant expe­ri­ences that I want to tell you about.

Our good friends and neigh­bors Andrew and Laura have been try­ing to get us to go out to eat ever since we had them here for Thanks­giv­ing in Novem­ber, so I sup­pose it’s slightly pathetic that it’s taken until May to find an evening! But Wednes­day saw us troop­ing together in the rain toward La Petite Mai­son here in May­fair, in Brooks Mews behind Claridge’s, and boy was it worth the wait. The place opened in July to much fan­fare, but such is my expe­ri­ence of the big city that I have never even heard of it, and it’s right around the cor­ner from my house! I am such a stick in the mud. Thank good­ness for friends, to get you out of the kitchen. The sig­na­ture dish must be ordered UPON your arrival, as it takes upwards of an hour to cook and they don’t start till you order it. French black leg chicken, whole, cooked with an enor­mous knob of… wait for it… foie gras, along with some crusty crou­tons of baguette in the roast­ing pan, soak­ing up the but­ter and chicken juices. Now, as divine as this was, and it was, I am going to be brave and say that I think my method of slow brais­ing chicken in a tightly sealed con­tainer might be the bet­ter way to go, rather than roast­ing, as the chicken was slightly dry, although very flavour­some. The ques­tion would be: how to pre­pare the foie gras in that case, as I’m sure what made it so won­der­ful was its prox­im­ity to the juices that emanate from a roast­ing chicken, as opposed to the more liq­uidy envi­ron­ment of braising.

I plan to exper­i­ment at some point and I will report on the results. Maybe it’s a mat­ter of tak­ing the lid off the brais­ing casse­role a half hour or so from the end and let­ting things siz­zle, also maybe rais­ing the cook­ing temp at the end? I don’t know exactly, but I fear copi­ous amounts of but­ter are involved. We had such a good time. It’s rare for us to hang out with peo­ple who don’t have small chil­dren (theirs are long grown and pro­duc­ing grand­chil­dren by now), and let me tell you, it raises the con­ver­sa­tion level some! Our friend Vin­cent is always moan­ing at his din­ner par­ties. “Here I have a fore­most expert on 19th cen­tury French art, sev­eral of the best archi­tects in Lon­don, a for­mer suc­cess­ful invest­ment banker, a famous entre­pre­neur, and you’re talk­ing about… SCHOOL UNI­FORMS!” True enough, we do. Or how high is too high for a fever, or what school our chil­dren aspire to attend. Boring!

So the four of us tucked into first our starters (divine tem­pura cour­gette flow­ers, and my per­sonal favorite, thinly sliced raw scal­lops sprin­kled with snipped chives, chili pep­pers and flaked almonds, driz­zled with olive oil and lime juice), and we talked.. pol­i­tics. They had been with John at an Obama fundraiser last week and so we had a very ener­getic (if some­what depress­ing) dis­cus­sion of the future of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. It was won­der­ful to stretch my brain, remem­ber things I had read in the paper that had noth­ing to do with beet­root or pesto or the best books on explain­ing puberty to one’s child. Hon­estly, my mind is about as flex­i­ble as a ruler these days. But we had a won­der­ful, won­der­ful time. I envi­sion a reunion of this apart­ment build­ing in our new kitchen, about five min­utes after we move in. “Foie gras three ways?” John joked. Maybe!

Then today we repaired for lunch to the ven­er­a­ble J. Sheekeys just off Char­ing Cross Road, near St Mar­tin in the Fields, which has under­gone an enor­mously expen­sive ren­o­va­tion lately. We picked Avery up from Anna’s where she had spent the night (with poor Becky slav­ing over the dirty clothes of Avery’s brought back from Nor­mandy and mys­te­ri­ously stuck in Anna’s lug­gage!). I must digress and say that this batch of dirty clothes emerg­ing from Avery’s bags is sim­ply the most dis­gust­ing chore I have ever taken on. Worse than a child with stom­ach flu, because it goes on for days, not just 24 hours. The smell? I can’t describe it: well, I’ll try. There are notes of sewage, with an after­taste of dog poo, and over­tones of box­wood, or some­thing other nox­ious plant. “What on earth did you DO, Avery?” I asked in some mys­ti­fi­ca­tion. “We rolled in mud. Smelly, smelly mud.” It is not for me to ask why.

But any­way, we arrived at J. Sheekeys and were greeted, seated and tended to by an end­less parade of def­er­en­tial, lovely men who treated Avery quite as another adult, which I love. We made the mis­take we nearly always make of hav­ing Avery and me each order the same thing, when in the back of my mind I knew we should share. Sure enough, minor con­ster­na­tion when it was evi­dent that she would eat… half of her fried had­dock and chips, and so did I. But John knows what he’s hav­ing for lunch tomor­row, any­way! The fish was incred­i­bly fresh and the bat­ter light and delec­table, but I must take issue with the chips which were com­pletely for­get­table. Rather limp, not hot, not charm­ing. But the first help­ing of so-called “mushy peas” that has ever tempted me to lift my fork and try some, and they were lovely! I don’t love the flavr of peas, but I was happy to see that “mushy peas” means just that: no scary ingre­di­ents, not a bad pea to begin with, just lovely new sweet peas that have been… mushed up. Why this is a cher­ished Eng­lish tra­di­tion I do not know, why they don’t merely serve them whole? But it proves that tra­di­tions are good when they are good. We’ll be back, and for some­thing more adven­tur­ous than fish and chips. My starter was incred­i­ble: crab pate, with a slick of pot­ting but­ter on top and a very nice kick of chill­ies in there some­where. Lovely.

This has all been gor­geous, but it’s basi­cally a dis­trac­tion from try­ing to fur­nish the house and yet leave some money for Avery to go to school. After much wran­gling on both our sides, and vis­it­ing a (to me) end­less array of antique shops and auc­tion houses (John would not say it took very long, but then he loves fur­ni­ture), we have cho­sen a won­der­ful 1940s French leather sofa with two not-quite-matching chairs! And to go under­neath, yes­ter­day we got a very impres­sive (but not expen­sive!) HUGE Per­sian antique rug, at Lots Road Auc­tion House. And a sweet lit­tle red, blue and green really worn-out run­ner for the entry hall. When we picked them up today, the auc­tion­eer assured John, about the big rug, “You got the bar­gain of the day, sir. There are only about 10 looms in the world that can pro­duce a rug this size, you could eas­ily have paid 10 times what you did.” As John was gloat­ing over his incred­i­ble per­spi­cac­ity when it comes to rug bar­gains, the auc­tion­eer con­tin­ued, “And you also got the biggest ripoff of the day. That run­ner is crap.”

Ah well. You can’t win them all. So we strug­gled up the steps to the recep­tion room with the rug and it fits… just barely! Lit­er­ally an inch on either side to spare. But it just glows, with appre­ci­a­tion more than any­thing, at hav­ing been res­cued from the auc­tion house where it suf­fered in silence being trod­den on, picked at, fur­ni­ture dragged over it. Poor thing. Now it resides in soli­tary glory in our house, ready to spend its life being scratched at by cats, probably.

We still are in des­per­ate need of a wardrobe for Avery, and not quite so des­per­ate need for a rug for her. I think tomor­row we’ll go pick up a set of bean bag chairs for her.

Avery’s form teacher called me up in dis­tress this morn­ing, say­ing she had com­pletely for­got­ten to get par­ent chap­er­ones for tomorrow’s field trip and could I help? Nat­u­rally, so I’m leav­ing John to super­vise the book­shelf peo­ple as they mea­sure at the new house to make sure (just make sure! we’re nearly sure) the unit from here will fit the kitchen wall. Becky and her fam­ily had a pizza lunch with us yes­ter­day, sit­ting on the floor of the new kitchen, imag­in­ing where every­thing will go. And we met our new neigh­bor to the right, who is really really sweet. Good thing too, because I had to beg her for a pizza cut­ter! Might as well begin as we mean to go on. How nice it will be to have a proper neighborhood.

Right. Noth­ing much else to say except that Avery’s on pins and nee­dles for tomorrow’s expected announce­ment of the parts in “Alice in Won­der­land,” the school play. Maybe Wednes­day, though, with the field trip? I’ll let you know…

Just to let you know: after pre­cisely five days, ONE shower, NO teeth-brushing, mud­bathing, bunk-bedding and other adven­tures we shall learn about tomor­row… she’s safe and sound. It was quite the reunion at the school tonight in the dark: they were two hours late and we all hud­dled around on the pave­ment exchang­ing “how hard was it for you to have her away” sto­ries, and then the coach pulled up and we all cheered, and they piled out, sun­burned, filthy, full of chat­ter and exhaus­tion. “I can really speak some French now! I feel like say­ing “bon­jour” to every­one!” Home. Home! We’re all here tonight. What a joy.