from Lost Prop­er­ty to Chinatown

Is your gar­den full of these lit­tle guys? For that mat­ter, is your house? Mine are. Yes­ter­day Tacy leapt, from an appar­ent­ly dead sleep, to cap­ture a spi­der on the wall of the din­ing room and wolf it down. Yuck. But bet­ter than just see­ing them crawl about. My friend Toni assures me it is the sea­son, and they’ll stop mul­ti­ply­ing very soon. I seem to walk through the house and gar­den sev­er­ing webs every­where I go, and then have to won­der sick­en­ing­ly if I’m car­ry­ing the web’s cre­ator in my hair. Tacy!

Well, I am com­ing to the real­iza­tion that my very qui­et and soli­tary house is my present, and my future. All those love­ly months of hav­ing John at home, all the hap­py sum­mer weeks of hav­ing at least Avery at home, then both of them at home, have giv­en way to my cur­rent atmos­phere of “now what?” And I have not been remiss in answer­ing the ques­tion! I shook off my dol­drums and joined… The Lost Prop­er­ty Ladies!

Now, I am going to tell you about this with the assur­ance that I have no inten­tion of men­tion­ing the name of Avery’s school on this jour­nal. At first I thought about just nev­er men­tion­ing any­thing that hap­pens there, for fear of invad­ing some­one’s pri­va­cy. But now I think that would make me crazy: the gaps in the sto­ry, the long­ing to share with some­one how mar­vel­lous the place is. So I came up with the solu­tion that as long as I don’t divulge here what or where the school is, I can still express the won­der­ful details that are mak­ing us wan­der around late­ly think­ing, “too good to be true, this Shangri-la…” Because it is. Too good to be true.

Last spring when I was feel­ing the upcom­ing sad­ness at leav­ing Avery’s old school there was a meet­ing of new par­ents at her NEW school, invit­ing us all to vol­un­teer for some­thing, just to help out. And I was intro­duced to the head of “Lost Prop­er­ty,” who I will call Mary. There was some­thing warm and friend­ly about the way she held out her plate of wal­nut bread, and inquired eager­ly about how excit­ed my daugh­ter was to start her new school, that made me ask, “Do Lost Prop­er­ty need any help?” To be clutched by the hand and told, “My dear, of course! And I will tell you some­thing you don’t know: Lost Prop­er­ty have a superb lun­cheon to kick off every term, and you can come. In September.”

I near­ly cried with grat­i­tude! Some­where to go! Peo­ple to meet, and an occa­sion­al excuse to vis­it school and see what’s what.

Well, the first lun­cheon could not have come at a more oppor­tune time: just as my dear house­guests left me on a grey Fri­day morn­ing, I real­ized I had not much time to get myself way down south to Put­ney where the lun­cheon was hap­pen­ing. And of course it rained, all the way there, and of course it turned out I had WAY under­es­ti­mat­ed the dis­tance between the tube sta­tion and the home where the lunch was to be. With John’s advice “Just take a cab” ring­ing in my ears, I slouched toward my des­ti­na­tion, buy­ing flow­ers for the host­ess along the way, feel­ing sor­ry for myself. But not for long: the wel­come of the oth­er vol­un­teers and the house itself made the whole day worth­while. You could hard­ly get up the walk for the lux­u­ri­ous, over­tow­er­ing trees, flow­er­ing shrubs and plants at your feet: they all bent under the rain and made you feel as if you were in a fairy sto­ry. Then I was greet­ed and giv­en the task of set­ting one of the tables, and encoun­tered in the din­ing room an enor­mous, fuzzy and wet Maine Coon cat! Per­fect. I car­ried it around, look­ing into var­i­ous rooms filled with ladies arrang­ing a tray of lasagne, glass­es of cham­pagne, and, out in a mag­i­cal con­ser­va­to­ry pos­i­tive­ly drip­ping with grapes on their vines, I encoun­tered a very friend­ly moth­er toss­ing a sal­ad of her own design. I had dis­cov­ered as I came in that the food con­tri­bu­tions are on a rota, so I did­n’t have to feel guilty for bring­ing flow­ers instead.

This lady fin­ished her task and we chat­ted about our chil­dren, and it was the first of many con­ver­sa­tions I have had that go some­thing like this: “Is your daugh­ter enjoy­ing school?” “Oh, she is absolute­ly BLOS­SOM­ING! Thriv­ing. How about yours?” “Just loves it.” I know there will, some­day, be some­thing that is not won­der­ful about this school, but for right now I breathe a sigh every day of “thank good­ness this all worked out.” It feels like just the right place, and just the right group of peo­ple. I loved hear­ing the high flutey tones of lots of Eng­lish ladies talk­ing to each oth­er, and the food? Gor­geous lasagne with spinach noo­dles, a Moroc­can chick­en dish with olives and pre­served lemons, a love­ly sal­ad with mung beans, and very rich cheeses at the end. I had to tell my dear moth­er in law about the enor­mous tart, the size of a Wall Street Jour­nal opened up, cov­ered with… figs, under a shiny glaze.

So as the rain fell and the day got ever dark­er, we all exchanged ideas about the school, our own jobs, the schools we had come from, sto­ries about sib­lings and the sum­mer hol­i­days. In short, what one writer I know has called “the com­fort­ing com­pa­ny of women.” Quite so. Then we got down to busi­ness and lis­tened to the joys of man­ag­ing Lost Prop­er­ty: the girls who typ­i­cal­ly lose every­thing they bring to school every sin­gle day, the girls who come into the Lost Prop­er­ty office just to… shop! The girls who explain that they think they might have left a black sweater in the the­atre block last March, is this it? We all signed up for our vol­un­teer days. And would you believe who was there? Avery’s new friend Izzy’s moth­er, from up the street, and our neigh­bor a cou­ple of doors down! “Kris­ten! Do you want a ride home?” Bliss.

Today in my email box I received one of the many mes­sages I still get from Avery’s old school in New York, announc­ing the cel­e­bra­tion of the school build­ing’s 20th birth­day! And you know what? I felt only a tinge of sad­ness, because already I feel quite wel­come at the lat­est school, and that things will only get nicer.

It’s nice liv­ing near to school for sev­er­al rea­sons: while I am no longer allowed to walk her to school, I can still res­cue her when things go pear-shaped, as the morn­ing I found, in my phone voice­mail, a mes­sage from her piano teacher from the evening before, announc­ing a meet­ing THAT DAY. And as I lis­tened to it, my eyes alight­ed on Avery’s lock­er keys, besides her emp­ty break­fast plate. It was but the work of a moment to stuff the keys in my pock­et, write a note to Avery about the piano teacher, and walk to school, where I braved the extreme­ly intim­i­dat­ing lady in recep­tion (although her eyes did twin­kle as I chat­tered through my con­fus­ing mes­sage to Avery). She divest­ed me of the enve­lope full of keys, note and pock­et mon­ey, and said, “I imag­ine we’ll be able to res­cue the sit­u­a­tion.” I stam­mered, “Well, these first few weeks can be hard to man­age, can’t they?” For me if not for you, I real­ized as she mere­ly smiled me out of the room.

And then too there’s the fun of pick­ing her up at the end of the day, which thank­ful­ly she still likes for me to do! We near­ly always walk along with her friend Mol­ly who lives just around the cor­ner, and I get to hear about the mag­nif­i­cence of the lunch, the unfair­ness of some sched­ul­ing con­flict, get a report on the crush­wor­thy sci­ence teacher! “Like an atten­tu­at­ed James MacAvoy!” Avery diag­nosed. I hope I get to meet this hunky paragon at some point. And then there was a fun­ny morn­ing when just as the front door closed behind Avery and her walk-along friend, I heard a taxi pull up and dis­gorge John and his lug­gage. “Run and catch her up to say hi, she just left!” I said, fol­low­ing him out. He ran and caught them up, and I wait­ed on the cor­ner for him to come back and let me in. And I wait­ed. And wait­ed. For heav­en’s sake, had he reg­is­tered him­self at school? Had a heart attack? Stopped for a full Eng­lish break­fast? Our neigh­bors came by one by one and asked, “Just hang­ing out here on the cor­ner, Kris­ten?” I laughed and said, “If I’m still here by the time you come home from work, maybe you’ll let me in.” Final­ly back John came, hav­ing stopped to catch up with a moth­er at school. Cozy.

And I have not been idle at my com­put­er, although I’ve been rub­bish at blog­ging. No, last week I was a good girl and went back over the blog, writ­ing down every sin­gle recipe since I began writ­ing in Jan­u­ary 2006. And you know what: I have 220 recipes. Lots of them, of course, not par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy, and some a bit repet­i­tive, like how many vari­a­tions of salmon in cream can there be? Or bean sal­ad? But still, that strikes me as enough recipes to thor­ough­ly dis­pose of any excus­es for post­pon­ing REAL­LY writ­ing this cook­book that’s in my head. And we had the first meet­ing of our new writ­ing class last week and ironed out our plans for struc­ture, and lis­tened to every­one’s expla­na­tions of projects to be worked on. And our hostess’s house­keep­er fed us quite the most deli­cious cake I have ever, ever had. And you know how I am about sweets. She has kind­ly giv­en me the recipe!

Fely’s Banana and Apple Cake
(serves about 8 for tea)

1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp bak­ing soda
1 tsp bak­ing powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup mashed bananas
1 cup chopped apples
1 tbsp con­fec­tion­er’s sugar

Com­bine all dry ingre­di­ents. Cream but­ter and sug­ar, eggs and vanil­la. Mix togeth­er dry and wet ingre­di­ents and add mashed banana and chopped apple. Bake at 180 c (350 f) for 45 min­utes. Cool slight­ly and dust with sug­ar. Serve warm.

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I imag­ine that giv­en my child’s delight in any­thing sweet and fruity, this cake would make the most wel­come warm break­fast food. I think I’ll try it this weekend.

So far, as far as the cook­book goes and my writ­ing class, I’ve had just two chap­ters to con­tribute: mac­a­roni and cheese, and Moroc­can meat­balls. So this week I worked on “Birth­day Soup.” It’s all about vichys­soise, and boy I wish I had some right now. What I do have is a pot of chick­en soup with gar­lic and lit­tle star noo­dles, in which I will poach some tiny lit­tle chick­en meat­balls lat­er this after­noon. For some bizarre rea­son I woke up dream­ing of such a soup, and then real­ized I had some ran­dom chick­en parts in the freez­er, plen­ty of car­rots and cel­ery, so why not?

We had our rit­u­al Sep­tem­ber 11 anniver­sary din­ner last week, which although a tra­di­tion, is chang­ing. For instance, I don’t think any­one men­tioned Sep­tem­ber 11 all evening. We all knew that was why we were togeth­er, but… and new friends to add to the guest list! Dear Toni, the neigh­bor with sev­er­al cats who threw her­self heart and soul into the “Episode of the Miss­ing Tacy” last spring, came along and brought anoth­er friend from our street, Alice, who also… has five cats. So there was an unusu­al air of appre­ci­a­tion for Tacy and Wim­sey, the two who nor­mal­ly join us on social occa­sions. For a cat lover, I have a strange­ly high pro­por­tion of friends (and hus­bands, if it comes to that) who are either aller­gic (they say) or down­right unin­ter­est­ed in cats. So it was a plea­sure to talk cats! And for what­ev­er rea­son, the chick­en cur­ry went down an absolute treat, so I shall give you the super sim­ple recipe now. It is inex­pen­sive and takes no time and very lit­tle effort, which makes the inevitable praise and sec­ond help­ings all the more satisfying.

Per­fect Par­ty Chick­en Curry
(serves 10 and then some)

3 tbsps veg­etable oil
1 tbsp each: cur­ry pow­der, ras el hanout, turmer­ic ground cumin, ground coriander
8 cloves gar­lic, minced
4 onions, minced
10 chick­en breast fil­lets, cut in bite-size pieces
6 col­ored pep­pers: I mixed red, yel­low and orange, cut in bite-size pieces
2 soup-size cans coconut milk
salt and pep­per to taste

In a very large skil­let or pael­la pan, heat the oil. Add the spices and cook until bub­bling well. This step is very impor­tant. Do not think you can add the spices at any old time, although an adjust­ment of a bit more as you taste is all right. These spices release their fla­vors and at the same time cook off their bit­ter­ness but only if you cook them in the oil first.

Add the gar­lic, onions and chick­en and cook, stir­ring well, until the chick­en is near­ly cooked. Add the pep­pers and stir until well-coat­ed. Pour over the coconut milk, tak­ing care to shake the unopened cans first to blend. Now, turn down the heat and bub­ble very low until the chick­en is thor­ough­ly cooked, about 10 min­utes. Obvi­ous­ly, do not taste the sauce until this point! But now taste away and begin adding salt. It will require quite a bit. Add pep­per to taste. Serve with steamed bas­mati rice. LOVELY.

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The fra­grance of this cur­ry cook­ing as every­one opens the front door will make instant con­verts of any­one who says meek­ly, “I don’t real­ly like Indi­an cook­ing.” And of course you can make it spicy if you are feed­ing peo­ple who like spicy: just as much chilli pep­per flakes or pow­der as you like.

Well, Sat­ur­day found us drop­ping off Avery at her first act­ing class, and then Sun­day to the sta­ble to greet the hors­es after their sum­mer loung­ing in Sur­rey on the farm. Sad­ly, old, old Bun­ny went to his reward over the sum­mer. I think it is extreme­ly healthy that the instruc­tors and barn own­er are open with the girls about ponies’ dying, being put down by the vet when their time comes, and that it’s not a tragedy or some­thing they can’t talk about. Very good. John and I had planned to have lunch at Angelus, the superb French place by the sta­ble, but all the love­ly out­door tables were tak­en, and we sim­ply could not sit inside on one of the rare fine Lon­don days, so we end­ed up at Chez Kristoff, on our cor­ner, shiv­er­ing because the sun was behind the build­ing! Why was it imper­a­tive that we have lunch on that par­tic­u­lar day? Because it was the 25th anniver­sary of our first date, that’s why. There you go. And we had divine steak tartare and quite the best mus­sels mariniere AND the best frites! We will be back.

Mon­day I had a total adven­ture! Has it ever hap­pened to you: that you had a per­fect­ly good oppor­tu­ni­ty to have a friend, who hap­pened to live next door to you, but you did­n’t take advan­tage of the chance until, say, the per­son decid­ed to move to LA? That’s what hap­pened to me with my friend Janet. There she was, next door, host­ing Tacy on reg­u­lar vis­its through the liv­ing room win­dows, but did I ever do any­thing to make friends with her? No, not until she and her hus­band stopped by to tell us they were mov­ing. Then for some rea­son we went out to lunch togeth­er, and over sev­er­al dish­es of unbear­ably spicy Thai food in Uxbridge Road, pro­ceed­ed to make fast friends. Then she moved away. So when she emailed to say she was com­ing for a vis­it (appar­ent­ly the car-yoga-sun­shine cul­ture of LA is mak­ing her crazy and in need of some traf­fic, grey skies and pes­simism, as only Lon­don can offer), we imme­di­ate­ly made a plan. To go to Chi­na­town! Where I had nev­er been.

And you must. Go, that is. You would sim­ply not believe you were in the West­ern world at all, at all. We met in Leices­ter Square, and then roamed all around Ger­rard Street, Mac­cles­field Street, the quaint­ly named Horse and Dol­phin Yard. Janet is an old habituee of the area and knew where the best place to get my sprouts would be, the finest sesame oil, the most exot­ic spicy bean sauces. My bags were so heavy! Think­ing that her hotel would not appre­ci­ate her arriv­ing with an entire deep-fried duck­ling, she let me do the hon­ors on that one. “At least it’s not oily at all,” she laughed as the paper bag imme­di­ate­ly soaked through, to be put into a plas­tic one. Still, even when I tied the top, it was quite a fra­grant com­pan­ion in the bus on the way home!

I bought gar­lic shoots, aged soy sauce the qual­i­ty of bal­sam­ic vine­gar, bags of rice and bean sprouts. Black bean sauce and chilli oil. We end­ed up starv­ing at a fan­tas­tic restau­rant called Haozhan, at 8 Ger­rard Street, and I had my first tofu. And, I’m sor­ry to say, my last, although I think it was as good as tofu gets. Light­ly fried, topped with a seared scal­lop and spinach paste and red caviar… I think if I was going to like tofu, that would have been the dish. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the qual­i­ties I did­n’t like were the things that make it tofu. As in, slimy. Gooey. But I could see the point of the dish. More to the point for me was the light-as-a-feath­er soft­shell crabs, in a crunch cream-crack­er bat­ter. Oh, if I could pro­duce THAT at home! But I nev­er will, I know. And anoth­er scal­lop dish that I real­ly could pro­duce at home: a silky and light oys­ter sauce with sauteed scal­lops, aspara­gus tips and green onions. Go, you’ll be glad to have a des­ti­na­tion when you’ve shopped till you drop.

Her hus­band joined us for tea, and then we made one last pil­grim­age to the Japan Cen­tre in Pic­cadil­ly, where I bought the cutest thing: emp­ty tea bags! For bou­quet gar­ni, in my Indi­an biryani. I have, I am ashamed to say, sac­ri­ficed sev­er­al lit­tle tea hand­ker­chiefs in the mak­ing of this dish, because the cloves stain the linen and I can nev­er get it out. Now I have lit­tle dis­pos­able fil­l­able tea bags. Hap­py! I also bought two dif­fer­ent kinds of very thin-sliced beef, one called “shabushabu beef” and one called “sukiyai beef,” although they look iden­ti­cal. I do not real­ly know the dif­fer­ence, but my plan is, tomor­row evening, to mar­i­nate them in soy, sesame, gar­lic and gin­ger and then wrap them around aspara­gus tips, put them on skew­ers and grill them. Does­n’t that sound nice?

Today I am forced to keep myself out of trou­ble and accom­plish­ing things for even longer than usu­al: Thurs­days are the cov­et­ed “Gym­nas­tics and Tram­po­line After-School Club” days, and can you imag­ine any­one more deserv­ing of a spot on an offi­cial tram­po­line club than Avery? Does every­one else spend all sum­mer prac­tic­ing? I’ll be glad to get the report. Every day after school brings me a slight­ly more grownup, more artic­u­late, more ener­getic per­son home with me: I’m aston­ished at the words she choos­es to tell me things! Of course right now I can’t think of any, that’s what I get for fail­ing to blog for so long. But I will try to remem­ber and write some down, for “pros­per­i­ty’s sake,” as my col­lege room­mate used to say.