Why the silence, you ask? I shall explain. Since I last put vir­tual pen to paper for my blog, I have: bought a lacrosse stick and meltable mouth­guard, run unsuc­cess­fully in a three-legged race, lost my cat (and found her again), eaten brill (a fish I had never before tasted) in three sep­a­rate recipes, found out that my vagabond uphol­sterer is actu­ally dead, and dis­cov­ered that my other cat, not the lost and found one, is aller­gic to… cat food, and had my street torn up and my water turned off. And I’ve had din­ner at the city’s best fish restau­rant and been taken to see “Romeo and Juliet: The Bal­let.” (As Avery said, at least it wasn’t “The Musical.”)

As well, I’ve been to the last pri­mary school Sports Day, the last pri­mary school Sum­mer Con­cert, the last pri­mary school Art Exhi­bi­tion, and have read aloud and had cri­tiqued my cook­book chap­ter on Moroc­can meat­balls. Plus I invited my next door neigh­bors to din­ner only to find I’d dou­ble booked them another fam­ily entirely. And I have met the sev­eral hun­dred girls and par­ents who will be our new school fam­ily next year, and fer­ried Avery to two hideous Offi­cial Royal Some­thing or Other singing and vio­lin exams. She is quite sure she failed vio­lin, and frankly the day she takes the wretched instru­ment back to the shop will be a day too late in my book.

Sigh.

Seri­ously. As you can see from the above beau­ti­ful pho­tographs, Avery came through the last Sports Day per­fectly well, not mind­ing when we were crushed in the three-legged race. And who were we crushed by? My hus­band and Avery’s friend Sophia, so that was galling. But it was a nice foxy day where when the sun was behind a cloud you rushed to bor­row a cardi­gan from some­one wise enough to bring two, and when the sun came back out, you smoth­ered. We brought an enor­mous pic­nic of shrimp with home­made cock­tail sauce, tomato, moz­zarella and pesto salad, smoked salmon sand­wiches and… the piece de resis­tance… two pound of Eng­lish straw­ber­ries dipped in melted choco­late. THAT was fun, not that I eat them, but Avery and I dipped them together and she had to test quite a few, I’ll tell you. “Well, I have to be sure they’re all right!” This adven­ture came at the end of the day that saw us at her new school, buy­ing said lacrosse stick and mouth­guard and sev­eral gatril­lion pounds’ worth of other essen­tial PE gear: the games skirt (what? I know, it sounded odd to me too), the trousers and match­ing hoodie, the lacrosse socks and dance leo­tard and swim­ming “cos­tume” and white t-shirts with the school logo… very impres­sive! A real mile­stone, and she was so gra­cious and grownup with the nice Irish lady who helped her find her sizes. Every time we go to the new school we’re more impressed with the seri­ous­ness and yet friend­li­ness of every­one involved.

And yes, we had a rene­gade cat. Tacy, who has always been the vis­it­ing type any­way, strolled out of the gar­den in the mid­dle of one super hot night (through a bed­room win­dow rather high up) with­out her ID tag and col­lar. Two ago­nis­ing days of search­ing ensued, with me walk­ing up and down the fronts of the houses whose gar­dens back onto our gar­den, knock­ing at garden-flat doors to see if any­one had seen “a gor­geous sleek tor­tie with one orange foot, one black foot, and aqua eyes.” Seen her? One dear lady called Pippa answered the door in her dress­ing gown and was quite shirty with me until I uttered the words “lost cat,” and then she all but dragged me in and couldn’t have been sweeter. “Oh, I know Tacy,” she assured me. “A fre­quent vis­i­tor here, but I can’t say my Tilly is too fond of her vis­its. But then Tilly is an old gen­tle­woman of 16 and doesn’t like sur­prises. Don’t mind my dress­ing gown. I have just seen my hus­band off to our house in France and I can’t BEGIN to tell you how exhaust­ing it is, hav­ing him in the flat here. Sheer bliss send­ing him away again.”

But alas, none of this pro­duced Tacy. Pippa did, how­ever, pro­vide an ency­clo­pe­dic inven­tory of every cat in the street, on both sides of the gar­den, and indi­cated which might let her pass and which would not. As well, she promised to enact the “Cat Neigh­bor­hood Watch” act which seems to oper­ate in my neck of the woods, and within an hour (I was out get­ting fly­ers lam­i­nated) two lit­tle old ladies plus Pippa had come to offer their com­bined con­do­lences and deter­mi­na­tion to John, promis­ing to find Tacy ASAP. I ran off to my writ­ing class feel­ing utterly sick. “I hate to say it,” John said, “but she’s our high­est qual­ity cat, really.” It’s true: she is friendly, good-looking, doesn’t beg for food, doesn’t fall off things and scare her­self, or chew off all her belly fur or vomit all over or run away when you try to pet her. Like SOME cats I could intro­duce you to.

Well, just before class began I got a rather inco­her­ent text from John, obvi­ously typ­ing quickly: “Racy is home!” Well, she can be rather racy. And here’s what hap­pened. John saw an RSPCA van in our street and thought there was just a chance… and sure enough, there she was! Wear­ing a paper col­lar say­ing that the RSPCA had dealt with her and the own­ers needed to call an agency to have her microchip reg­is­tered in the UK. Fair enough. She had appar­ently found her­self in gar­den sev­eral doors down and beaten on the lady’s gar­den win­dow to be let in! Thank good­ness it was the win­dow of a per­son who did not want a high-quality tor­toise­shell cat, but also didn’t NOT want one enough to, say, poi­son it. She merely called the author­i­ties. So home Tacy/Racy came, none the worse for her adven­ture. And now firmly col­lared and tagged at all times, although she’s learned to take it off if she really wants to. I’ve found it deposited politely on the lap of one of Avery’s dolls, and buried deep under Avery’s bed cov­ers, and most amus­ingly, set into my bed­side water glass. That is one funny cat.

In the midst of all the drama, John and I had din­ner out at the local fab­u­lous restau­rant, The Brack­en­bury, where I had brill for the first time. Totally sim­ply sauteed, on a bed of bean salad made with some­thing else I had never had: bor­lotti beans. Lovely! Then the next day I was taken to din­ner with Avery by one of her chums and mother for the child’s birth­day, to J Sheekey, quite the most divine fish estab­lish­ment in Lon­don. And there I saw brill on the menu again and thought, why not. This time it was on a bed of new aspara­gus and driz­zled with a mous­se­line sauce which sounded very exotic. Actu­ally it turned out to be noth­ing more or less than hol­landaise mixed at the last moment with whipped dou­ble cream.

So it was but the work of a moment this week to acquire some brill of my own and pro­duce a com­bi­na­tion of these two dishes, with a side of sauteed steamed new pota­toes. Can I tell you how pleased I am at how this din­ner turned out? And Avery and John devoured every bite, no one com­plained about any­thing, and the left­over sauce was just fine on broc­col­ini a few nights later. Let me tell you more. You can do the beans, aspara­gus and pota­toes ahead of time, pretty much, and leave them sit while you pre­pare the fish and the sauce. I’m not sure I’d be much good at pro­duc­ing this for more than about two extra peo­ple, but for our lit­tle fam­ily it was DIVINE.

Bor­lotti Bean Salad
(serves three)

3 tbsps olive oil
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 small red onion, minced
juice of 1 lemon
1 soup-size can bor­lotti beans
hand­ful each of fresh mint and flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped roughly

In a medium skil­let, heat the olive oil and very GEN­TLY fry the gar­lic and onion, then add the lemon juice and beans and stir over medium heat till the onions are soft. Remove to a bowl and add more oil or lemon juice to taste, and to cre­ate the sen­sa­tion of a soft, unc­tu­ous dress­ing. Set aside and use the same skil­let uncleaned for:

Sauteed Steamed Char­lotte Pota­toes
(serves three)

1/2 pound Char­lotte pota­toes
1 tbsp but­ter, 1 tsp olive oil
sea salt and pep­per to taste

In a dou­ble boiler, steam the pota­toes for about 25 min­utes or until per­fectly soft. Cut them into bite-size pieces if they are not already. Heat the but­ter and oil in the bean skil­let till quite hot and add the pota­toes. Stir­ring occa­sion­ally, crisp the pota­toes nicely and salt and pep­per to taste. These can be removed and set aside in a serv­ing bowl along­side the beans. Now in the same dou­ble boiler, prepare:

Steamed New Eng­lish Aspara­gus
(serves three)

Bring water to a boil in the dou­ble boiler and add the aspara­gus which you’ve snapped at the vul­ner­a­ble points on the stem and skimmed a bit of rough stem off with a car­rot peeler. Steam the aspara­gus JUST until it smells good, and is bright green, if you like it to have a lit­tle bite, and longer if you like it soft. Remove to a nice pretty place and set aside along­side the pota­toes and beans.

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Now you can go about your busi­ness telling your daugh­ter how won­der­ful she was on Sports Day and clean­ing the lit­ter­box, until about 10 min­utes before you’re ready to eat. Then…

Quick Hol­landaise Sauce (turned into Mous­se­line if you like)
(serves about six, 1 1/4 cups)

2 egg yolks
2 tbsps boil­ing water
1 cup but­ter (two sticks), melted and hot
2 tbsps lemon juice
sea salt to taste

Put the egg yolks in the blender of food proces­sor and blend at low speed just to mix. Then, keep­ing the blender going, add the boil­ing water and then the but­ter, VERY slowly! Just a thin stream. Add the lemon juice and salt, keep­ing the machine going all the time. Voila.

Now, if you want to turn this already per­fect sauce into the more fes­tive mous­se­line, fold in gen­tly about 1/2 cup whipped dou­ble cream RIGHT before serv­ing. Don’t add it ahead of time or the sauce will get runny. Oth­er­wise, you can keep the plain hol­landaise just at room tem­per­a­ture while you prepare:

Pan-Fried Brill
(serves 3)

2 whole brill fish, fil­leted assid­u­ously by your fish­mon­ger
3 tbsps but­ter
sprin­kle sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

Run the fil­lets under cold water and rinse well, then pat dry with kitchen paper tow­els. In a large skil­let, melt the but­ter and get it quite hot but not brown. Add the fil­lets skin side down and cook for about 4 min­utes, bast­ing with the hot but­ter. At the VERY last minute before serv­ing, turn onto the other side and cook just for a minute.

To serve: lay the aspara­gus on each plate, then top with the fish fil­lets and place a gen­er­ous dol­lop of hol­landaise over all. Add a spoon­ful of bean salad and a spoon­ful of pota­toes and… you’re in business.

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I will tell you: the per­fect din­ner, truly. I was so proud of myself! It was just like both restau­rants and I had the fun of doing it myself.

So let’s see, other than that, what else has been hap­pen­ing? Actu­ally, what else COULD have been hap­pen­ing? “Romeo and Juliet” was truly spec­tac­u­larly lovely, so do go if you pos­si­bly can. The sad­dest pas de deux at the end where Romeo tries to recre­ate his first dance with Juliet, only this time she is a dead, limp weight in his arms. Heartbreaking!

John’s been on a very strange eBay kick: he decided we needed a drinks trol­ley (have you ever had one? nei­ther have I), so off he went bid­ding to his heart’s con­tent and finally got a lovely cheap veneer and stain­less steel one which he has pro­ceeded to art-direct with fancy prop gin, prop Scotch and prop tonic water. Then he bought a sil­ver plate tea-seat that “if it were the real designer, would cost a LOT of money,” he assured me. I never make tea. Then I thought he’d kill poor Hermione last night when she slept on his com­puter and can­celled his bid for an ice bucket. Per­spec­tive, please? But the recep­tion room is look­ing lovely. Except for…

The miss­ing sofa and bench. Remem­ber them? The cats peed on them and scratched them and gen­er­ally made it highly likely that they would appear some­day with their knees bro­ken by their father. Then we found Ye Olde Eng­lish Uphol­sterer, who came to our house so charm­ingly and helped us choose durable yet lovely fab­rics and had all sorts of clever ideas for help­ing us save money. Chief among which, as it turns out, was sim­ply never doing the job, never return­ing my phone calls, never being at the shop when we stopped in, and, insult to injury, it turns out he’s… dead. I wish I were mak­ing this up. Finally after four months of wait­ing, we got a call from some sur­vivor or such of the poor man who broke the sorry news and then com­pounded it by con­fess­ing that the mate­r­ial we liked had been dis­con­tin­ued. It was not clear from his voice which tragedy was the greater.

So today we stopped by again and brought home sev­eral books of fab­ric. Can I tell you, from my secret heart, and don’t tell John… I really don’t care. That much. As long as it is nice qual­ity and will stand up to pets and chil­dren, and doesn’t clash hor­ri­bly with any­thing else we own, I don’t have my heart in the whole debate. Isn’t that awful. I fake it for John, that and look­ing over his shoul­der at all the poten­tial trea­sures we could own from eBay and feign­ing inter­est in umbrella stands, nest­ing side tables, the lot. Poor man. Luck­ily his mother arrives on Tues­day of next week and she can com­mis­er­ate. If only my interior-design happy mother could be here as well! It’s as if he inher­ited from MY mother all her home inte­rior inter­ests, and I got his mother’s cook­ing spoon. Odd.

Oh, and do you need, dur­ing these happy June weeks, a cou­ple of cool sal­ads that are super easy to make? Try these. I invented them both in that mood of “there must be some­thing I can make out of all these things I have in my fridge.”

Scal­lop, Beet­root and Goats Cheese Salad
(serves four for lunch, or as a din­ner starter)

1 tbsp olive oil, chilli infused if you like spice
1 lb sea scal­lops, mus­cle removed (and roe­less, if you’re me)
hand­ful cilantro (corian­der), hand­ful pars­ley, chopped
6 small beet­roots, roasted, peeled and quar­tered
how­ever much goats cheese you like, fla­vored or not
juice of half a lemon
sea salt and pep­per to taste
more olive oil for drizzling

Heat the oil in a skil­let and quickly sear the scal­lops over very high heat, turn­ing fre­quently with tongs and try­ing not to break them up (but it’s not a crime if you do). When they are just cooked through (per­haps 3 min­utes), pop them into a large-ish bowl, pour­ing any extra olive oil over them. Throw in the herbs and the beets and mix well, then crum­ble the goats cheese over top. Driz­zle with the lemon juice, sprin­kle with salt and pep­per and driz­zle over the oil. Toss lightly. This is per­fect with baguette slices, lightly toasted.

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Then there’s:

Lentil Salad with Red Pep­per and Onion, Pinenuts and Mint
(serves six-ish)

250 grams green lentils (about a cup)
1 red pep­per, diced
1 red onion, diced
1 cup pinenuts, toasted or not
hand­ful mint, chopped
juice of one lime
driz­zle bal­samic vine­gar
olive oil to taste

Cook the lentils in plenty of salted water until just soft (maybe 30 min­utes). Drain and rinse well and place in a large bowl. Add every­thing else, and test for the amount of dress­ing you have in the bot­tom. If you want more (to soak up with more baguettes?), add more lime juice and more olive oil, rely­ing rather more on the oil so it doesn’t get too tart. Divine.

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Well, I think I’m caught up. We just came back from the dis­tress­ingly sweaty school Art Exhi­bi­tion where Avery’s draw­ing graced the cover, and she has been soak­ing in a nice cool bath while I talked to you. John’s prob­a­bly been bid­ding on a leopard-print chan­de­lier or a cof­fee table made entirely of cat skele­tons held together with string, so I’d bet­ter check on him. Oh, but one last story: Avery and I got turned out of a tube sta­tion when it closed for “sig­nal fail­ure” and found our­selves instead on a bus yes­ter­day, with a very upset lit­tle woman who was clearly lost and also clearly not ter­ri­bly famil­iar with the Eng­lish lan­guage. I rec­og­nized her accent and we ended up speak­ing in French, hers from Geneva and mine suf­fer­ing from neglect, but we got along all right. She finally stopped sniff­ing after I reas­sured her that she headed in the right direc­tion, that we’d get off at the same stop. We fended off the friendly inter­ests of a large man with lots of bling who was sure that if he shouted and ges­tured pro­fusely, her com­mand of the lan­guage would improve.

Finally, just as we got to our stop, I said, “I’m cer­tainly sorry the train sta­tion closed and you had to go out of your way for no rea­son.” And do you know what she said? “Every­thing hap­pens for a rea­son, even if we know not what it is. We see a leaf fall, and it seems for no rea­son. But some­where there is a blade of grass that is wait­ing to be pro­tected from the hot sun, and the leaf falls there. We do not see the rea­son, but that does not mean it is not there.” Very nice…

Isn’t it funny how each day has a sort of karma of its own, an immutable fla­vor that you can’t alter, that really has noth­ing to do with what you’re doing but sim­ply infuses the day with a par­tic­u­lar mood? Well, yes­ter­day was a good one, a deli­cious day. Could it have been the per­fect blue sky and warm sun­shine? Pos­si­bly. After drop­ping Avery off at the sta­ble we headed over to Isling­ton for the lat­est install­ment of what has become akin to the search for the Holy Grail: a wardrobe for Avery’s bed­room. Hon­estly, some­times I won­der what on earth dif­fer­ence it makes when the child it the Com­pleat Slob: will she even hang things in it, put things in draw­ers if she has them? Not sure about that. But def­i­nitely she can’t if she doesn’t have a piece of fur­ni­ture to face up to.

We keep los­ing wardrobes on eBay, get­ting all excited, agree­ing on how much we want to spend, and then in the last sev­en­teen min­utes some evil per­son grabs it away from us. So we thought maybe real fur­ni­ture, as opposed to vir­tual fur­ni­ture, would be eas­ier actu­ally to buy. No luck on a wardrobe, but we did come away from Cas­tle Gib­son (our favorite place for vin­tage stuff, now sadly going out of busi­ness) with a lovely lit­tle metal table and two match­ing chairs for the gar­den, and leather foot­stool for the recep­tion room. John later accused the foot­stool of being “leatherette,” but I say err on the side of opti­mism. For once we were com­pletely deci­sive and sim­ply bought the things, instead of dither­ing and find­ing the next day that some­one else had beat us to it. It was so much fun! We left the things at the shop to col­lect later, and wan­dered up the high street, pop­ping into Oliver Bonas for a pic­ture frame for a birth­day gift, a tiny lit­tle fruit and veg stall for kebab ingre­di­ents (as you see!), and then dis­cov­ered (we must be the last to know) the Isling­ton Farmer’s Mar­ket! As it hap­pens, the old­est farmer’s mar­ket in Lon­don, would you believe it? A lot of the same pur­vey­ors as I encounter at the Maryle­bone Mar­ket, but it turns out that just before clos­ing time, as it was, you can get amaz­ing deals: two apple pies for the price of one and a choco­late muf­fin thrown in, an extra bunch of beet­root, the price of a jar of horse­rad­ish rounded down… bargains!

Finally we loaded up the poor Mini with all our pur­chases and raced home to put the things in their new places: the recep­tion room looks amaz­ing! Our bril­liant art installer Mark is here as we speak, hang­ing all our bits and pieces on the walls and gen­er­ally turn­ing the place into an art gallery right before my eyes. I always for­get dur­ing moves how much I love all the pieces we’ve col­lected over the years, so many of them from my very own gallery, gifts from artists, gifts from me to John and from him to me, a beloved por­trait of Avery here, an abstract col­lage there… and we’ve had sev­eral things framed over the past cou­ple of weeks, so there are even new things to look at! The poor clean­ing lady is beside her­self: Mark’s tools are every­where, he’s leav­ing dust from drilling holes in the wall… con­flict­ing agen­das for sure.

Back to town to pick upu Avery who was com­pletely filthy and wilted from the sun, and from lead­ing some hap­less lit­tle girl around the dusty rid­ing ring for an hour on Wode­house, never a happy task I fear. “I know you’ll laugh when I say this, but I NEED ICE CREAM. I don’t just want it, I NEED IT.” Even her dis­may could not dampen my enthu­si­asm for my day, and it got even bet­ter with:

Grilled Kebabs with Tamarind, Honey, Saf­fron and Lime
(serves four)

2 chicken breast fil­lets, cut in cubes
4 lamb steaks, cut in cubes
2 red bell pep­pers, cut in chunks
1 medium egg­plant, cut in chunks
1 dozen mush­rooms
1 dozen small tomatoes

mari­nade:
1/2 cup honey
1 tbsp tamarind paste, mixed with 1 tbsp very hot water
pinch saf­fron threads, dis­solved in hot water
juice of 1 lime
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
1-inch knob gin­ger, minced
1 tsp ground cumin
sea salt and freshly ground pep­per to taste

Place the chicken and lamb in one shal­low dish and the veg­eta­bles in another (this is for rea­sons of raw meat hygiene). Mix all the mari­nade ingre­di­ents together and pour half over the meat and half over the veg and leave them as long as you like, stir­ring occa­sion­ally. When you’re ready, shove all the bits and pieces onto metal skew­ers (if you use wood or bam­boo be sure to soak them in water before­hand to avoid scorch­ing) and grill over an open flame about 4 min­utes, then turn over and grill another 4 min­utes. I didn’t have an open flame, but I did have my handy grill within my oven which has ele­ments above the cook­ing sur­face, and the same tim­ing worked perfectly.

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With this (and didn’t John take a bril­liant pho­to­graph?) we had a nice cous­cous dish, and I’m going to cheat and tell you what I did wrong so you don’t make the same mis­take. Make sure you don’t cook too much cous­cous! I nearly always cook too much, or too much pasta for a pasta dish. Far nicer to err on the side of too many of the other ingredients.

Cous­cous with Beet­root and Goats Cheese
(serves 4)

200 grams (a lit­tle less than a cup) raw instant cous­cous
2 tsps olive oil
2 cloves gar­lic, minced
125 grams (about 1/2 cup) chicken stock
1 small white onion, minced
6 medium roasted beet­roots, cubed
1 cup crum­bled goats cheese
1/2 cup toasted pinenuts
sea salt and pep­per to taste

Put the cous­cous in a bowl and cover with water, JUST cover. The cous­cous will soak up this water instantly. Fluff a bit with a fork and set aside.

Saute the gar­lic and onion in the olive oil until soft. Heat the chicken stock until boil­ing and pour over the cous­cous and fluff well. Add all other ingre­di­ents and toss thor­oughly. Lovely!

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Well, then today decided to have its own fla­vor, and it was not quite so mag­i­cal. Wim­sey, poor guy, has been tak­ing all the white fur off his belly, the bot­toms of his feet and his fin­ger­tips. I know, I know, it sounds crazy. The vet calls it “over­groom­ing,” which seems like an enor­mous under­state­ment to me. It also sounds vaguely voli­tional, which I’m pos­i­tive it is not. Nobody wants to remove all his white fur! There must be another rea­son. When he stayed in the coun­try at the Fam­ily Cat Chalet (I’m not mak­ing this up) dur­ing the move, he got a cor­ti­sone shot to see if that would help, and he man­aged to let the fur grown back for nearly a week. But he’s been back it in a big way lately, so there was noth­ing for it but to get him back to the vet today. Sigh. I tried to dis­tract myself from his fate by study­ing all the items for sale in the wait­ing room. There is some­thing funny about a cat food labeled “Adult Chicken.” Of course there’s also “Senior Chicken,” not to men­tion “Kit­ten Chicken.”

Alas, laugh­ter was far from my mind when the nurse emerged with a rip in her tunic and the terse com­ment that they had decided to sedate the cat in order to draw his blood. I sim­ply saw the pound signs mount­ing up, but there was noth­ing for it, so off we went to leave him there being tor­mented. Awful! Home to help Mark the art installer mea­sure and mark the walls for all the art to be hung. Our clean­ing lady fol­lowed him around glow­er­ing, and I can’t really blame her, as the job sat­is­fac­tion meter can­not be very high when dust accu­mu­lates right where one just hoovered. A bet­ter organ­ised per­son than I am would have asked her to come tomor­row. Sigh. The sorts of prob­lems one has when one has no prob­lems, clearly.

Can I just tell you how much we adore our new neigh­bor­hood? Every day I dis­cover some­thing new to love about Ham­mer­smith. For one thing, a fab­u­lous lit­tle Ital­ian del­i­catessen tucked away on an unpre­pos­sess­ing street adja­cent to the Ham­mer­smith Tube Sta­tion, called Sun­drica, full of tempt­ing olives, pates, cheeses, pas­tries, yum yum. I was restrained and bought only a bit of sop­pres­sata for Avery’s break­fast and two lit­tle goats cheese disks swim­ming in herby olive oil. Deliri­ously good. Then on the way home I stopped at Turner’s Flow­ers, a lit­tle tiny bed­sit of a shop filled with grow­ing and green things. And a lovely grand­moth­erly owner who helped me, and then turned to the lady behind me and said, “You’re look­ing so well. Is it three and a half months now?” Imag­ine, a neigh­bor­hood where the shop­keep­ers know how preg­nant their cus­tomers are. We’re not in Mar­ble Arch any­more, clearly.

And why, you ask, did I need flow­ers? To say thank you to our next door neigh­bors, Sara and Selva and their two lit­tle chil­dren, who invited us all to din­ner Fri­day night, and intro­duced us to two other fam­i­lies, both with girls at Avery’s new school! That is, one is there already and one’s start­ing with Avery, so they already have plans to meet up at the New Girls’ tea next week and stand shoul­der to shoul­der, come what may. Isn’t it lovely to have a famil­iar face or two to look for­ward to? Din­ner was lovely: baked chicken stuffed with sun­dried toma­toes on a cous­cous bed (that’s what inspired me) and yogurt. And the com­pany: we laughed all evening long. Avery sim­ply dived in with the other girls (and one boy) and our host reported that he heard a lot of laugh­ter there, too, and that they were dis­cussing Shake­speare, which were their favorite plays. I think that’s what hap­pens with you get a bunch of eggheady girls together: they will all have their own inter­ests to bring to the table, but they share a gen­eral love of read­ing. After din­ner Sara gave us a tour of their house, the mir­ror image of ours, and then we all trooped next door and looked at OUR house. What a total plea­sure to be brought into the cir­cle, and to feel wel­comed. We are so happy here.

Well, lis­ten, some mind-bending noises are com­ing from the kitchen where Avery, Anna and Coco are mak­ing a snack for us. Did we want a snack? Is the clean­ing lady hav­ing a thou­sand fits because not only was the art hanger here, but three chil­dren are wreak­ing havoc in her until-then pris­tine kitchen? It’s bet­ter than com­puter games… and a small price to pay for an after­noon of fun.

Lastly, before I go I want to give you the recipe my reader Jack told me about, and has kindly pro­vided. I haven’t made it yet, and I think I’ll sub­sti­tute smoked trout for the had­dock, but it sounds lovely. Give it a go.

Rick Stein’s Mild Potato Curry topped with Smoked Had­dock and a Poached Egg
Serves 4

4 ounces undyed smoked had­dock
2 tea­spoons white wine vine­gar
4 eggs
Coriander

350g (12oz) waxy pota­toes, peeled and cut into small cubes
2 tbsps veg­etable oil (sunflower/rapeseed)
1/2 tsp (more?) yel­low mus­tard seeds
1/2 tsp (more?) turmeric pow­der
100gms (4oz) onions finely chopped
2 toma­toes, peeled, deseeded, and diced
1 tbsp chopped corian­der.
Mal­don salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cook the pota­toes in salted water for 6–7 min­utes until just ten­der, drain. Mean­while, heat the oil in the pan, add the yel­low mus­tard seeds and cover the pan with a screen, while you stand back from the pop­ping oil! When they pop, add the turmeric and onions and fry them until soft and lightly browned. Add the pota­toes, Mal­don salt, black pep­per, and fry a cou­ple of min­utes
.
Add toma­toes, stir in corian­der, set aside and keep warm.

Bring about 5cm (2 inches) of water to the boil in a shal­low pan. Add the pieces of had­dock, bring back to sim­mer and poach 4 mins. Lift out with a slot­ted spoon, cover and keep warm. At the same time bring another pan with 2 inches of water to a gen­tle sim­mer. Add the vine­gar, break in the eggs (as will fit), and poach for three min­utes. Lift out and drain on kitchen paper.

Serve potato curry on warm plates, remove the skin from the fish, place on top of the pota­toes. Put the poached egg on top of the fish, and gar­nish with coriander.

Doesn’t that sound tempt­ing? I wish I had some right now.

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Well, we did take a break from the whole annoy­ing mov­ing job to spend a day in Oxford with my dear friend Jo Ann, who shares my pas­sion for Richard Armitage. This is only one of the long list of qual­i­ties that makes her a hilar­i­ous and ener­getic com­pan­ion, though, so we man­aged to get through the whole after­noon with­out resort­ing to crush-talk, to the undis­guised relief of my hus­band, child and vis­it­ing child Sophie. (She did come to lunch today, how­ever, and once John went to run errands we were straight onto the com­puter, howl­ing with laugh­ter over the var­i­ous fan­sites devoted to our man. A girl has to have some silly fun now and then.)

Spent the night and next day in Stan­ton, Glouces­ter­shire, watch­ing the girls ride, had high tea in Upper Slaugh­ter, and as you see fed the ducks in Lower Slaugh­ter. And then real life reared its ugly head again and we were back to the boxes and boxes of stuff in the new house. But you know what, we are so happy here that we don’t even really mind any of the annoy­ing things we do in ser­vice of the house, and of set­tling in. I think we pro­tected our­selves while we were in the old flat, not think­ing about it too much, how much we weren’t suited to that house, how hor­ri­fy­ing the rent was, but now that we’re out I can tell you, Ham­mer­smith is HEAVEN.

Real peo­ple live here! We see lit­tle boys bounc­ing foot­balls across the road to each other, moth­ers wheel­ing babies, neigh­bors bicy­cling around so fre­quently that I already rec­og­nize peo­ple (some­thing that never hap­pened in two and a half years in May­fair). I am already great friends with my dry cleaner who suf­fered through remov­ing all the cat hair from two sweaters upon which, I fear, the tab­bies had been sleep­ing in my closet for, yes, two and a half years. Harry the dry cleaner, lately of Bagh­dad, the first Kurd I have ever met, and he treated me to a far more learned expo­si­tion on the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Iraq than I have man­aged to glean from any recent news­pa­pers. Imag­ine, an actual mer­chant who is a real per­son and doesn’t mind a chat.

And the cor­ner store guy knows now that I always have my own bag and he doesn’t need to offer one to me. And there is an Irish butcher, and a halal butcher to choose from, but so far nowhere that I can buy basil. Hmm. I must suc­cumb to Marks and Spencer because I am moved to make pesto for din­ner. Oh, how I can cook in this kitchen! Gas stove, a total delight, and that grill? It is chang­ing my life. AND a huge fridge and freezer with… drum roll please… an ICE MAKER! Let me never com­plain again, now that I have an ice maker and a dryer that is sep­a­rate from my wash­ing machine. Laun­dry had gone from being an absolute drudgery to quite a pleas­ant lit­tle task, and one that doesn’t absorb my entire day as well as tak­ing off all the var­nish on the ban­is­ter as it did in my old flat. Where else could I dry sheets and pil­low­cases? Ah well, we sur­vived the walk-through in the old flat yes­ter­day and it looks just fine, now that the carpet’s been cleaned and the holes in the wall filled in and painted over. Whew.

It’s so hard to believe that just three weeks ago, every­thing we owned was in an other postal code being lived with, and now we have almost com­pletely set­tled in. Yes­ter­day we hosted the homeowner’s insur­ance appraiser, and he com­pli­mented us on our degree of being set­tled. All we’re wait­ing for is to find a proper wardrobe and chest of draw­ers for Avery’s room, so we can empty the last three boxes. Her room is so charm­ing, set at the top of the house with her horsey rosettes strung along the ceil­ing and books every­where. And our room? Airy, light, sunny, gor­geous. We look out onto a long row of grotty look­ing houses that are mostly flats, lived in by some very inter­est­ing look­ing peo­ple. And the street and gar­den are filled with birdsong.

At our Indian feast the other night, we let Tacy out into the gar­den and she went away. Don’t know where, but she dis­ap­peared for a cou­ple of hours. So I have just now ordered a col­lar and tag for her, with my phone num­ber and her name on it. Just in case. Not that she has a mobile, but…

I’m a bit at loose ends because Avery’s class is going to the Globe The­atre tonight to see “A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Drea,” and she’s spend­ing the inter­ven­ing post-school hours at Anna’s house to avoid the long com­mute there and back, both ways. We’ll pick her up late tonight at the the­atre, so I’ve got to come up with some Avery doesn’t like, for din­ner. But first I must tell you about two per­fect new sal­ads. My friend Olimpia in par­tic­u­lar is look­ing for bar­be­cue side dishes, and I can rec­om­mend these totally. The first one I invented, but the sec­ond one is the brain­child of the great Anglo-Indian chef Atul Kochhar, and boy can that man com­bine fla­vors to make you sing. And guess what? They’re both chock-ful of super foods.

Chopped Spinach and Chick­pea Salad
(serves four)

1 can chick­peas, drained
4 cups spinach leaves, some­what tightly packed
1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
1 red onion, diced

dress­ing:
3 tbsps olive oil
dash hot pep­per oil
1 tbsp bal­samic vine­gar
juice of 1 lemon
2 tbsps fresh corian­der pesto (or basil pesto)
dash salt
1/2 tsp oregano

In sev­eral batches, care­fully blitz the spinach leaves in the Cuisi­nart or Mag­imix, in short bursts of power. Don’t let the leaves get mushy. Just pulse the power and take care to shift the leaves with a spat­ula occa­sion­ally if need me. You want the leaves chopped some­where between coarse and fine, but not mushy. Com­bine all the ingre­di­ents and dress­ing and toss VERY well. Lovely!

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Atul Kochhar’s Warm Salad of Ten­der­stem Broc­coli and Chick­peas
(serves four)

2 tbsps olive oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 cloves gar­lic, peeled and sliced very thin
1–2 small red chill­ies, deseeded and finely chopped
2 hand­fuls ten­der­stem broc­coli, cut into whole flo­rets with stems sliced diag­o­nally in bite-size pieces
1 can chick­peas, drained
1 medium red onion, thickly sliced
1 medium red pep­per, juli­enned
2 tbsps lime juice
sea salt
freshly ground black pep­per
hand­ful fresh corian­der (cilantro)

Heat the oil in a skil­let or wok and add the cumin seeds and gar­lic, cook­ing until the gar­lic is translu­cent but tak­ing care not to brown it. Add the chillis and broc­coli and cook until ten­der. Add the chick­peas, onion and red pep­per and saute for 30 sec­onds. Toss with the lime juice and serve on a plat­ter, topped by the corian­der leaves. Very refreshing!

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Now Atul says to serve his salad imme­di­ately, but I couldn’t as I had guests to enter­tain and wanted to cook ahead of time. Room tem­per­a­ture was won­der­ful, although I did wait to add the corian­der until just before serving.

Tonight is lamb chops because Avery’s not here to com­plain about our cru­elty to ani­mals, plus steamed pota­toes with pesto. And then tomorrow’s my writ­ing class and I’ve sub­mit­ted a piece on Moroc­can meat­balls, about which I’m quite ner­vous. I’m afraid that if some­one says, “I’m afraid I don’t quite see the point of the story, com­bined with the recipe,” I might just say, “Nei­ther do I,” and crawl under the desk. Such is the pres­sure of writ­ing for the public!