I still can’t get over it. My bak­ing curse, the one in which I could not prop­erly pro­duce any­thing for dessert, seems to have lifted! Because while I have known for some time that I could pro­duce ONE cake with no dif­fi­culty, today I achieved its suc­ces­sor, and I can­not wait to share it with you.

Now, believe me when I tell you that I fully real­ize an Eng­lish lemon driz­zle cake is child’s play, learned at the knees of their moth­ers, to most Eng­lish peo­ple. It’s the basic, the one you set a bright ten-year-old to make on a nice sunny Sat­ur­day after­noon (well, that descrip­tion in and of itself sounds like fic­tion, the sunny bit) in time for tea. But I am a per­son who had a mother at whose knee I might learn to play Chopin’s “Minute Waltz” or mem­o­rize the com­plete Agatha Christie, but would never learn to cook any­thing because she detested cook­ing so. In fact, the only rea­son I learned to cook at all was to relieve the poor dear of her metaphor­i­cal apron and take over feed­ing the fam­ily so she could get back to needle­point­ing exquis­ite sam­plers while simul­ta­ne­ously refin­ish­ing some enor­mous piece of Indi­ana antique fur­ni­ture. I know, she doesn’t sound real. But she is, thankfully.

I digress. My point is, I have learned cook­ing by trial and error, for the most part, and there have been plenty of errors. Oh boy! I have one reader of this blog who is kind enough to tell me that my errors make her feel more con­fi­dent, and I can absolutely see the point of that. As I get older, I have less and less patience with peo­ple whose pur­pose in life seems to be to make me feel inad­e­quate, and I grav­i­tate more and more to the types who say, “Well done!” This is not to say I can’t accept crit­i­cism, because my writ­ing expe­ri­ences this year have done away with most of what­ever ego I ever had. But I like to be with peo­ple, whether in writ­ing or real life, who are REAL. Peo­ple who screw up and then can dust them­selves off, explain how, and get it right the next time.

That being said, I have made a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of mis­takes in the cre­ation of things to eat at the end of a meal. In part this is because my idea of dessert is another soft shell crab, or meat­ball, per­haps another piece of cheese. But mine is a life that includes a small­ish child to feed, Bake Sales to con­tribute to and the like, and it has become increas­ingly embar­rass­ing to have all din­ner guests say mildly and with com­plete con­fi­dence, “Would you like me to bring dessert?”

Well, I have my apple and banana cake now, Avery’s favorite break­fast of all. And today, the per­fect lemon driz­zle cake came out of my oven. I just can’t tell you how pleased, and relieved, and inspired I am. Per­haps other cakes are in my future. Of course this cake could be a lime driz­zle, or orange driz­zle cake just as eas­ily. A sat­suma and clemen­tine cake! A Meyer lemon cake, let’s get crazy! But for the moment, I give you:

Lemon Driz­zle Cake
(serves 10)

225 grams (one cup) unsalted but­ter, soft­ened
225 grams (one cup) caster (ordi­nary Amer­i­can) sugar
4 eggs
zest of 3 lemons, finely grated
zest of 1 lime, finely grated
225 grams (one cup) self-raising flour, or plain flour with 1 tsp bak­ing pow­der added

driz­zle top­ping
juice of 3 lemons
85 grams (1/3 cup) caster sugar

Beat the but­ter and sugar till soft and fluffy, then beat in eggs one at a time. Stir in zests and flour gen­tly until fully mixed (includ­ing the bak­ing pow­der if you are using plain flour). Tip into a loaf pan and smooth the top flat with a spoon. Lick the spoon.

Bake for about 45 min­utes in an oven set to 185C, 350F. Watch care­fully, because all ovens are dif­fer­ent. Take care not to burn bot­tom or brown top too much. The cake is done when the mid­dle of the top doesn’t jig­gle when pressed gen­tly. Err on the side of bak­ing less rather than longer.

Cool cake enough so that you can han­dle the tin. In the mean­time, mix the lemon juice and sugar till dis­solved. Prick the top of the cake all over with a fork and then SLOWLY driz­zle the mix­ture over it. If you driz­zle too fast, the mix­ture will end up all slid­ing down the sides of the cake. Serve warm.

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

Heav­enly! I adapted this recipe from Tana Ram­say, belea­guered wife of Gor­don. I’ve tripled her mea­sure­ments for lemon zest and juice, and added the lime zest. My fam­ily like cit­rus! But feel free to cut down on these if your fam­ily are not lemon freaks.

With my cake safely made, John and I went off in the driz­zly grey Lon­don after­noon to get Avery at school, and Emily traipsed along with us, down the cheery lit­tle expanse of shops down the road from their school. So cozy. We passed the mas­sive build­ing hous­ing the roman­tic swim­ming pool, at which I per­formed my first “recep­tion­ist duty” last night. Such respon­si­bil­ity! Col­lect the keys from school, try to remem­ber the code for the gate and door, turn on the lights, col­lect the cash box, swim­ming caps for sale, sign-in book. And so many swim­mers turned up! Among them, in the gath­er­ing chilly dark­ness, were Annie and Fred and Emily, all chat­ter­ing six­teen to the dozen as they do, partly why I love them: so cheer­ful and busy com­pared to our very quiet (too quiet) house­hold. And a lovely old man who signed his name, ran his fin­ger down the list of names and said, “Oh, dear, oh dear, I’m the 13th swim­mer. You know, my dear, in my block of flats the num­bers go from 12 to 12A to 14. Makes a hash of deliv­er­ies, but…” I offered the infor­ma­tion that many Amer­i­can hotels have no 13th floor. “Well, obvi­ously there IS one, but they skip the num­ber and just go right on to 14,” I bab­bled. He wisely ignored this sally and made his stately way to the pool.

Well, I can tell you that the cake met with the approval of Emily, Avery and John. Being me, nat­u­rally there was a screwup. I had put the bat­ter into the pan and the pan into the oven when I saw the con­tainer of bak­ing pow­der on the counter. Holy s&^t, I had for­got­ten to put it in. I sal­vaged the pan from the oven, poured the bat­ter back into the bowl, added the bak­ing pow­der, put it back in the pan, back in the oven. It’s a very for­giv­ing recipe, because all was FINE. And the driz­zle never glazed in the way that tra­di­tional lemon driz­zle cakes here do. All the driz­zle ran into the cake. Emily diag­nosed too much lemon juice to the amount of sugar, but just as I was plan­ning to try again tomor­row with more sugar, Avery said, “I pre­fer it with no glaze. It can be too sweet, and this ver­sion has just enough BITE.” Thank you, food critic on the hearth.

There you go. Enjoy, because it’s fool­proof and it will brighten up your day, grey or not. And you fam­ily in Indi­ana: throw a cou­ple of snow­balls for me!

Well, until it hap­pened to me, I wouldn’t have believed that some­thing look­ing like this could land on a din­ner table ANY­WHERE near me. I’ve lifted this photo from the Daily Mail, which in the per­son of Tom Parker Bowles was try­ing to con­vince peo­ple to cel­e­brate Burns Night even though a crea­ture like this might turn up unan­nounced and demand to be eaten. Yes, it’s hag­gis. I have heard many, many accounts of this sto­ried Scot­tish dish, but until Sun­day night it had never passed my lips. And before I say any­more, it was DELICIOUS.

Burns Night is a tra­di­tional evening meant to cel­e­brate the life and work (and appetite, appar­ently) of Robert Burns, the renowned Scot­tish poet who was born 250 years ago on Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 25th. The rev­els include the read­ing of a poem devoted to hag­gis (luck­ily there was a Scot­tish man on hand to per­form this), the rit­ual pre­sen­ta­tion of the hag­gis, and then in what must be a stun­ningly painful cli­max for the poor piece of lamb-stuffed intes­tine, the cer­e­mo­nial stab­bing and rend­ing from end to end of the hag­gis. Ouch.

We were lucky enough to be invited to Avery’s chum Emily’s warm and friendly house just a few streets away, for the big event. Emily’s mum Annie is fast becom­ing one of my near­est and dear­est. The whole fam­ily are full of energy, fast-paced and gen­er­ous to a fault: young Fred had come by the pre­vi­ous day with a bevy of choco­late fon­dants for us, and my good­ness that fel­low can cook. He and I have many impas­sioned dis­cus­sions about food, the absolute supremacy of cook­ing as part of daily life and the utter unfair­ness of the timed cook­ing round on “Mas­terchef.” “No one cooks under pres­sure in real life at home! It’s ridicu­lous!” he explodes. I so agree. So Sun­day night found us walk­ing to their house with the clean fon­dant ramekins, the plate on which Annie brought brown­ies for the Inau­gu­ra­tion, a bot­tle of Pol­ish vodka… you name it. Of course as we approached, John smote him­self on the fore­head: “Why the hell are we bring­ing VODKA to a Scot­tish man’s birth­day party?”

Lovely, lovely evening. Other friends were already there, tot­ing a very alert and well-behaved four-month-old baby girl that Emily imme­di­ately took charge of. Coo­ing, bounc­ing her up and down, Emily tried to con­vince my child, the least mater­nal crea­ture on earth, of the charms of baby­hood. Avery, while not actu­ally get­ting up and leav­ing the room, con­trived to get as far away from the baby as she could. I must remem­ber to tell my sis­ter and brother-in-law how divine Avery must think THEIR new baby is, to have treated her so nicely at Christ­mas. Never mind, early moth­er­hood isn’t for everyone.

We repaired to the din­ing room, one of my favorite spots on earth now, glow­ing dark red walls, gor­geous art col­lec­tion, Annie’s spe­cial hand-lettered place cards, everyone’s smil­ing faces. There was a gor­geous salad of lamb’s let­tuce, smoked salmon (Scot­tish!) and quail’s eggs, hard-cooked. My first quail’s egg not in a restau­rant, and I couldn’t help think­ing of dear Sebas­t­ian Flyte in “Brideshead Revis­ited,” for whom they were one of the four basic food groups along with whiskey, cham­pagne and gin.

Then our Scot­tish guest intoned the poem, with a MUCH more pro­nounced Scot­tish burr than I noticed in ordi­nary conversation!

Address To a Hag­gis

Fair fa’ your hon­est, son­sie face,
Great chief­tain o’ the puddin-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace
As lang’s my arm.

The groan­ing trencher there ye fill,
Your hur­dies like a dis­tant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o’ need,
While thro’ your pores the dews dis­til
Like amber bead.

His knife see rus­tic Labour dicht,
An’ cut you up wi’ ready slicht,
Trench­ing your gush­ing entrails bricht,
Like ony ditch;
And then, O what a glo­ri­ous sicht,
Warm-reekin, rich!

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

Here Christo­pher plunged the knife into the hag­gis and I got my first sur­prise: it doesn’t slice, as you expect it to, like a sausage: it… implodes. Well, it deflates and oozes. None of which make it sound very appeal­ing, I’m aware of that, but the odor is delec­table, and the tex­ture most sur­pris­ing. It’s merely ground lamb and oat­meal, for the most part, and quite, quite lovely. The sheep’s intes­tine serves merely as cas­ing, and when Avery said later, “I’ll never eat hag­gis because I’ll never eat intes­tine,” I men­tally crossed my fin­gers and hissed inaudi­bly, “John, don’t you say a word about sausages…” but no such luck. “Well, you know, ordi­nary bangers are cased in intes­tine, too.” This was said with great rel­ish by my hus­band, whose job it is NOT to find some­thing we will all three eat at din­ner, among which things was, until that moment, a sausage. For heaven’s sake.

With our hag­gis came the tra­di­tional neeps and tat­ties: with a nice flair for pre­sen­ta­tion, Annie added car­rots to the turnips, the “neeps,” and the mash was fluffy and quite a per­fect foil for the rich, lux­u­ri­ous hag­gis. Divine! The dessert was tra­di­tional as well, and very nice for peo­ple like me who don’t like heavy, sweet pud­dings. Here it is, from Xan­the Clay’s col­umn in the Daily Tele­graph:

Cranachan
(serves 6)

4oz/110g rolled oats or pin­head oat­meal
10floz/280ml dou­ble cream
11oz/300g crowdie or Quark
6 tbsp heather honey
5 tbsp whisky
1 bag frozen rasp­ber­ries, defrosted

Put the oats in a large fry­ing pan and cook over a medium high heat, stir­ring con­stantly, for 5–8 min­utes until they turn brown and smell toasty.

Tip on to a plate to cool.

Lightly whip the dou­ble cream and mix with the cheese, which will make the cream stiffen up more.

Roughly stir in 4 tbsp honey and all the whisky.

Layer the cream, oats and rasp­ber­ries in six glasses, fin­ish­ing with a drib­ble of honey and a few raspberries.

Eat imme­di­ately or keep in the fridge.

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

A delight. We of course stayed far too late, on a school night, but it was worth it. This sort of evening makes me feel even more than usu­ally grate­ful for good friends: and British friends! When we lived here in the early 1990s, I am ashamed at how few British friends we made. Part of that lack was to do with how many expa­tri­ate friends we had, but part of it was the lack of a school-age child to pull us into rela­tion­ships (and the atten­dant adven­tures) with real peo­ple who are part of real British life. I know I will never be an Old Girl from Avery’s school, as Annie is, nor am I mar­ried to an Oxbridge gen­tle­man as her hus­band is, but we can bask in their reflected glory, when­ever we’re lucky enough to be invited. A rare night.

An amaz­ing night at the Don­mar, watch­ing Derek Jacobi as Malvo­lio (the yel­low stock­ings! the smile!) in his ele­ment, in an unex­pected comedic turn in “Twelfth Night.” The last thing Avery’s con­sti­tu­tion needed, on Thurs­day night, after a week that included the inau­gural fes­tiv­i­ties late into the night, was another adven­ture before a much-delayed bed­time. But just you TRY to get tick­ets to the play on a week­end! It can’t be done. So there we were. It is with­out a doubt one of the most enjoy­able the­atre evenings of our expe­ri­ence, so go if you can. A mar­vel­lous jester with a beau­ti­ful voice, quite a con­vinc­ing pair in Viola and Sebas­t­ian, but Jacobi is the star, big sur­prise. At times he had the demeanor of Lane, the famously unflap­pable but­ler of “The Impor­tance of Being Earnest,” or Bunter of Lord Peter Wim­sey fame, but then the appear­ance of the life-changing love let­ter brings out all the humor. You’ll love it. Avery was in heaven. As we clapped and clapped, she said softly, “That’s def­i­nitely what I want to do.”

To think I played Viola in col­lege! How could I have so lit­tle mem­ory of the play? Every once in awhile a line came back to me, but let’s be hon­est, it’s 25 years ago at best.

What else has been hap­pen­ing? A cou­ple of failed din­ners (never buy cheap prawns for a fancy Thai dish, some­one print that on a t-shirt and sell it; not enough cream in tonight’s car­bonara, but still edi­ble), punc­tu­ated with a sub­lime if mis­taken ver­sion of my ever-changing “slow-braised chicken.” Two weeks ago I asked John to put it in the oven for me and we arrived at home that night to find that a recipe that called for a CUP of white wine had been trans­formed into one includ­ing an entire BOT­TLE of white wine, as well as the usual table­spoon of but­ter used to rub the inside of the pot being trans­formed into an entire BLOCK of but­ter, about a half cup. THAT was a nice ver­sion of the recipe!

The lat­est inno­va­tion occurred when yes­ter­day I put together the dish, clapped the lid on, and left the house to take Avery to the ice rink. Then I called John and said in shame, “I for­got to put the chicken in the oven. Would you turn the oven to 120C [240F] and stick it in?” No prob­lem, it was on time.

Some­thing, how­ever, prompted me to call sev­eral hours later to check to see how the chicken was going. “It should smell mar­vel­lous by now!” I assured him, and was sur­prised to be met with total silence. “What? Is it over­done?” I asked. “You won’t believe this, I am SO sorry,” my beloved said. “I turned on the wrong oven.”

So… slow-braised chicken became FAST-braised chicken, and in two hours at 200 C, 400F, it was lovely. Not quite as melt­ing, but lovely. And the chicken soup for lunch today was sub­lime. So fear not, you can do almost any­thing to this recipe and be home SAFE. Good luck, and remem­ber: a mis­take is only a vari­a­tion, told the wrong way! Avery and I decided that if I hadn’t called home that after­noon, and we’d been will­ing to wait about two weeks for din­ner, we’d have had “REALLY Slow-Braised Chicken.”

Slow-Braised Chicken With Root Veg­eta­bles
(serves four for din­ner, plus soup)

1 large chicken
1 bunch fresh thyme
3 parsnips
5 cloves gar­lic
1 onion
3 car­rots
hand­ful new pota­toes
1 bot­tle nice white wine
1 cup chicken broth
but­ter
Mal­don salt and black pepper

But­ter the inside of the large pot. Place the bunch of thyme on the bot­tom and put the chicken BREAST DOWN on top of it. Sep­a­rate your gar­lic, peel it and whack a few cloves with your knife, then slice your parsnips, onions and car­rots as you like them. Throw them all around the chicken, with the pota­toes. Pour a good cup of wine over all, then the chicken stock. Sea­son it all well.

Place in a very low oven (120 C, 240 F) with the lid on. Cook for at least three hours, but any time after three hours the oven may be turned off and the chicken left to rest. Just before serv­ing, turn the chicken over very care­fully (it will tend to fall apart) and remove the broth-soaked skin and dis­card. Place a pat of but­ter on the breast and put the lid back on so that it melts. When you are ready to eat, carve the bites you like best and serve with a baguette to soak up the juices, while drink­ing the rest of the wine.

Pull the extra meat from the bones and save them for sand­wiches, then cover every­thing in the pot with water and sim­mer for at least two hours for the best chicken soup of your life.

Have you ever eaten an arti­choke? You get one point if you have eaten an arti­choke in what I may call “dip-form.” I can account for a fair num­ber of you on that score because some of us lucky souls have been the recip­i­ent of my brother in law Joel’s incom­pa­ra­ble arti­choke dip involv­ing copi­ous amounts of may­on­naise and pecorino cheese, never to be under­es­ti­mated. The two-point answer is if you have actu­ally bought and eaten a jar of pre­pared arti­choke hearts, lovely in a salad or on a slice of toasted baguette with some goats cheese.

The three-point answer, the one that comes with the fluffy toy, is if you have bought a raw arti­choke and some­how dealt with it as an ingre­di­ent. And in the last few days of inten­sive polling, I have encoun­tered a sur­pris­ing num­ber of very foodie peo­ple who have if not an aver­sion, a sus­pi­cion bor­der­ing on prej­u­dice against the hum­ble choke. Why?

I think it is one of those foods, like the coconut or the crab, that must have taken a VERY, VERY hun­gry per­son to dis­cover it was edi­ble. Hon­estly, the thing is cov­ered with lethally pointy leaves that have left tiny pin­pricks on my fin­gers ever time I pre­pare one. Only one tiny por­tion of each leaf, should you sur­vive cut­ting off the tips, is edi­ble, and to eat it at ALL you have to steam the hell out of it. Then the alleged best part, the heart, is at the very bot­tom, and filled with the hor­rid choke that’s like a cross between den­tal floss and milkweed.

Well, if you’re like me, you are stub­bornly attracted to this bizarre veg­etable. I get crav­ings, and drag the things home, saw off their tops, cut the leaf tips with scis­sors, peel the leaves from the stem, and then steam them. And WITH­OUT FAIL, I boil the saucepan dry and only notice this when an acrid black smoke has filled the kitchen and ven­tured out into what­ever room I’m in at the time. What­ever sub­stance emanates from the arti­chokes into the cook­ing water turns absolutely adhe­sive when it boils dry, I can tell you.

Yet I per­sist. I take the half-cooked arti­chokes out of the dry pan and trans­fer them to another pan, and then doggedly watch it until it boils, deter­mined not to make the same mis­take twice. While it’s cook­ing, I make a drop-dead vinai­grette, although I know lots of peo­ple like to dip their chokes in melted but­ter, and oth­ers still more greed­ily in may­on­naise. No, my vinai­grette wins hands down: three parts olive oil to one part bal­samic, the juice of a lemon, some mus­tard, fresh thyme, salt and pep­per, a lit­tle pesto if I have any.

And here’s the sil­li­est part: I don’t even LIKE the heart. The Holy Grail of the arti­choke world, the heart holds no charms for me, Don Quixote-like as I am. So John gets the heart. I stick with the leaves.

Well, this week I decided that the roasted arti­choke dip made by my beloved local deli-eatery, Brooks on the Green, could surely be made by lit­tle old me, and I looked up a recipe for roast­ing arti­chokes. The recipe I found involved all the steps I described above, which is plenty of work already, THEN you slice the arti­chokes in half length­wise, remove that hor­rid choke, watch as the cut sur­faces instantly turn a very unap­peal­ing moldy-looking grey, no mat­ter how fast you rub it with lemon juice.

Once you’ve done all this, you rub the arti­choke halves all over with a mix­ture of fresh thyme, olive oil, salt and pep­per, then lay them cut side down in a foil-lined dish, with a gar­lic clove and a lemon slice under­neath each one. Then you cover the whole dish with more foil and roast it in the oven at 425 for 40 minutes.

And then…

Then what? The recipe didn’t say. So I served them, bless my igno­rant lit­tle heart, to us for din­ner, with a sharp knife and hope in my heart. Roasted arti­chokes! Finally. And I saved one to use in the dip I was so sure would be within my grasp to replicate.

Well, let me be the first to tell you, there are no cir­cum­stances on this earth under which the leaves of an arti­choke are edi­ble. They are tough. They are sharp. It was like eat­ing garlic-flavored mag­a­zine cov­ers. Or dri­vers licenses. I sim­ply could not under­stand it. I had fol­lowed the recipe pre­cisely and the recipe had many happy, con­tented com­ments fol­low­ing it. What on earth had I done wrong?

I slept on my fail­ure, dream­ing that I was being chased by arti­chokes, thrown to the ground and all my blood drained by being scraped with their nasty lit­tle leaf tops. When I awoke, I went straight to the com­puter and guess what I found? Would you believe there are videos on YouTube teach­ing peo­ple to roast arti­chokes? This is a very strange world. So I duly watched it. And I dis­cov­ered the dirty lit­tle secret. You eat a roasted arti­choke in pre­cisely the same way you eat a steamed one: you pull the leaves out one by one and scrape the base along your teeth. That’s STILL the only part of the leaf you can eat. After going to all that trouble!

I slunk into the deli yes­ter­day under the weight of my dis­as­ter. “Oh, we get the arti­chokes in ready-roasted. And we use only the heart. The leaves aren’t worth any­thing.” NOW they tell me.

I felt so dumb. Imag­ine being middle-aged and a not-inexperienced cook, and still think­ing you can eat the leaves of an arti­choke, even with a STEAK knife. It can’t be done.

I felt so exhausted by the whole endeavor that it will be awhile before I buy another arti­choke. Although it’s not the poor thing’s fault I was so igno­rant. But for the fore­see­able future, my table will be graced with some nice, harm­less, inno­cent and most impor­tant, SELF-EXPLANATORY… broccoli.

What a com­pletely thrilling after­noon and evening for us here in Lon­don, watch­ing our lovely man become Pres­i­dent. Eng­land is so excited! Europe is thrilled, expec­ta­tions couldn’t be higher. Fes­tiv­i­ties here started as soon as our lit­tle girls came home from school, since Avery’s friend Emily was com­ing with her fam­ily to cel­e­brate. They banged on the door in the gath­er­ing twi­light, “Why didn’t you pick us up, your phone doesn’t work, we waited in the cold…” all the usual litany of com­plaints from an after­noon when noth­ing went quite as planned.

I must explain why we had Eng­lish friends with us for the inau­gural: Emily’s fam­ily lived for years in Darien, Con­necti­cut, and heart­warm­ingly, they came away from their years in Amer­ica with a firm love of all things across the Pond. It was to them that we repaired on Thanks­giv­ing, and it was of them I thought first when I wanted to invite some­one to watch the inau­gural fun with us. So in they trooped, bear­ing gifts as always: a plate of lus­cious brown­ies, tubs of ice cream. I was putting the fin­ish­ing touches on my Alder­ton ham baked in mar­malade, and enor­mous dish of very Amer­i­can mac­a­roni and cheese: the smoothest Raclette in the world form­ing the basis of the sauce this time.

We watched the oath of office in the liv­ing room, on that insanely ridicu­lous sofa cush­ion of such drama. Annie and I cried off all our makeup, lis­ten­ing to our new pres­i­dent become so, and speak of his new respon­si­bil­i­ties. A remark­able moment, speak­ing to our ene­mies: “we will reach out our hand, ready to shake yours if you unclench your fist.” Amaz­ing! To hear the pres­i­dent speak of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, to hear him utter the word “curios­ity” as a virtue to be attained by the Amer­i­can peo­ple was a very invig­o­rat­ing and touch­ing expe­ri­ence! Things may not be per­fect, but there is a new breath, and it feels so good. The BBC describes his speech as embody­ing “the mix­ture of hope and real­ism that he has made his own.” How lovely. And when he said that the son of a man who could not have got a seat in a restau­rant in Amer­ica 60 years ago was now tak­ing the high­est oath of office in the land, we all felt quite over­whelmed, includ­ing the lit­tle girls who clapped and clapped. I’m so glad Avery is old enough to under­stand what hap­pened today.

And din­ner: “Oh, no!’ I remem­bered at the last minute. “I meant to make stuffed mush­rooms for a first course.” Emily’s cookery-mad brother and I looked at each other. “Let’s do it.” We worked fever­ishly and had a mar­vel­lous time pro­duc­ing them and wished instantly that we’d made about four times as many. It is really the best recipe, rich with goats cheese and bacon, shal­lots and gar­lic. With a huge salad of rocket and baby beet­root leaves, and a spicy dress­ing, it was a nice, warm­ing sup­per. In the back­ground played all the inau­gural drama. Avery brought out her first real self-made dessert, a lovely choco­late pot made from a recipe by Mark Hix, and a total suc­cess it was.

Alto­gether a gor­geous evening with such trea­sured friends, good food though I say it myself, and now, late at night, a chance to breathe and relax. I face a meet­ing of my writ­ing class first thing in the morn­ing, and feed­ing them lunch after. Left­over ham, anyone?

Con­grat­u­la­tions, Amer­ica. It has been a fab­u­lous day.

But before I get to the recipe, can I just say that I love cook­books. Well, not so much what you’d define as strict cook­books. What I grav­i­tate to is a story: the story of a life, punc­tu­ated with food. I tend to like to WRITE the sort of thing I like to READ. So it’s no acci­dent either that I’m work­ing so jolly hard on set­ting down MY sto­ries and recipes, nor that I spend the rest of my time read­ing other people’s. And then of course there’s the added layer of cook­ing their recipes, to vary­ing degrees of success.

Lately, though, my writ­ing project has become a blurred con­fu­sion to me. I can no longer decide if any of my chap­ters are worth­while, if any of them make sense, much less achieve that nirvana-like state called “flow.” In all my pre­vi­ous writ­ing life — school­work, dis­ser­ta­tion, art reviews and the like — flow was never any­thing I thought about. The writ­ing just DID. Flow. I was the sort of writer who irri­tated other writ­ers, because in gen­eral the first draft was just fine, so I devel­oped a lazy strat­egy in which the first draft was the last draft.

Not any­more.

I have diag­nosed my trou­ble as being a case of car­ing too much. Always before, my writ­ing projects were intel­lec­tual pur­suits, and mostly a means to an end. But now each mem­ory, each anec­dote, each chap­ter takes me back to a cher­ished part of my life, with trea­sured peo­ple and irre­place­able con­text. It all mat­ters too much! So I’m becom­ing labored and tor­mented and un-natural. No flow.

The solu­tion, every­one tells me, is to find a struc­ture for the book and then let the var­i­ous ideas I have for fill­ing it find their proper slot in the struc­ture. Like hav­ing rules to a game so the play­ers don’t just floun­der around run­ning into each other. When I wrote my dis­ser­ta­tion, my advi­sor gave me a piece of invalu­able advice: imag­ine your whole book as a chess­board. Each one of your ideas will play a role, and you sim­ply assign them to their place on the board, then flesh them out. I had no dif­fi­culty in doing that, for the pur­poses of a fem­i­nist analy­sis of late 19th-century sculp­ture in France. Some­how, doing the same thing for meat­balls, mac­a­roni and cheese and vichys­soise is prov­ing much trick­ier and fraught with dan­ger and confusion.

Let’s see: the choices for struc­ture are these. I could orga­nize it chrono­log­i­cally as I lived my life, start­ing with child­hood mem­o­ries and food, run­ning right to the present. Or I could orga­nize it sea­son­ally, pick­ing out sea­sonal events and mem­o­ries and set­ting them in order. Or it could be arranged by types of food (this sounds the least appeal­ing to me, since the book isn’t pri­mar­ily about food). I’m sure there are other orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ples that haven’t occurred to me.

So I’m in a bit of a block.

Read­ing every­one else’s highly accom­plished work helps on one level, in that it gives me some­thing to strive for, a stan­dard to meet. But the flip side of that is that I look at my own work and find it want­ing. And of course no book reads exactly like another, and mine needs to find exactly its own voice and struc­ture too. Sigh, dou­ble sigh.

How about some­thing prac­ti­cal? Let me tell you what NOT to do with your crab tart should you decide to make it. The mis­take I made yes­ter­day would have flat­tened my con­fi­dence sev­eral months ago, but hav­ing racked up some hours in the bak­ing depart­ment, I felt that surely I had made just one error, not even a dis­as­trous one, and the key was to find it, and not to do it again. I’ll explain.

Bak­ing is a sci­en­tific process, as you know (I am in con­stant denial of this fact, to my peril). I can’t just add a lit­tle of this, a lit­tle of that and expect it to work, as I do with soup, or pasta sauce, or meat­balls. I also can­not ignore the process itself, the rules and sequences of activ­ity. Well, need­less to say, I did. Yes­ter­day, for my beloved Lost Prop­erty group from Avery’s school.

Lost Prop­erty. There is some­thing amus­ing about the name, when you first hear it, and when some­one first approaches you at a school tea wear­ing a badge that says, “Molly, Lost Prop­erty,” your first reac­tion is bemuse­ment. The des­ig­na­tion sounds like a pathetic label worn by a child on a rail­way plat­form dur­ing World War II in East­bourne. In truth, it’s the sin­gle coolest vol­un­teer oppor­tu­nity at the school, in a sort of chicken-and-egg sort of way. Was Lost Prop­erty cool, and so cool peo­ple joined, or were the very first LPs extra­or­di­nary to begin with? We are well known for host­ing an epic lun­cheon of majes­tic pro­por­tions at the start of every term, each term hosted by a dif­fer­ent vol­un­teer mother (me, yes­ter­day), and attract­ing pos­i­tively Lucul­lan con­tri­bu­tions in every course. I may say indis­creetly that the wine is con­tributed by a Mas­ter of Wine (not many are women, appar­ently), who burst into the meet­ing say­ing, “Have you a radio? Some­one turn it on to Radio 4, I’m speak­ing.” The main courses were mon­u­ments of ele­gance, the sal­ads lus­cious, the cheese board ridicu­lously magnificent.

I was more than happy to enlist John’s help in bring­ing up a ban­quet table from the base­ment, bor­row chairs from my Lost Prop­erty friends up the street, make my friend Annie drive me all over West Lon­don search­ing for crab­meat for my dar­ling tart. Then the vin­tage linen table­cloth, the many mis­match­ing din­ner plates, salad plates, EVERY sil­ver fork and knife pol­ished by me the day before… I drew the line at cloth nap­kins, how­ever. For 30? Not in the mood.

But the tart. I was putting it together the night before the lunch, while also grilling salmon, fin­ish­ing cream of mush­room soup from home­made stock, steam­ing rice and sautee­ing broc­coli for din­ner. And some­where in the mid­dle of all this, accom­pa­nied by Avery’s singing “The Bare Neces­si­ties” and play­ing “Fur Elise” end­lessly on the piano, I decided it would be best to bake the tart halfway, refrig­er­ate it overnight, and fin­ish bak­ing it the next day just before the luncheon.

Well, I can tell you that this strat­egy is a dis­as­ter. There is some chem­i­cal reac­tion in the cook­ing process with things involv­ing eggs (I think) that means you CAN­NOT stop the process halfway through, a quar­ter of the way through, any POR­TION of the way through, and hope for suc­cess. How did I find this out? Because when I took the tart from the oven at serv­ing time, some­where about halfway through the cham­pagne, I could see that the fill­ing had not set. Not nearly enough. I put it back in the oven, turned the heat up slightly. Guess what hap­pened then? Any extra but­ter or cream or BOTH from the fill­ing slipped qui­etly out of the spring­form pan and onto the bot­tom of the oven floor and while it didn’t actu­ally catch on FIRE, it pro­duced a nox­ious smoke that bil­lowed into the kitchen when I opened the oven door. Shades of my par­ents’ first Thanks­giv­ing when their turkey fat exploded on THEIR oven floor.

I man­aged to ask some­one qui­etly to open the gar­den door, some­one else to open the front door, turned up the exhaust fan as high as it would go, and exe­cuted a sleight of hand manoeu­ver to lib­er­ate the tart from the oven and SHUT the door as quickly as I could. No harm done.

And I have to say that the tart was eaten, every last slightly gooey morsel, instantly. Sev­eral ladies com­plained that they did not get sec­ond help­ings. But I learned my les­son. Cook it all at once. That’s all you need to know.

Tonight I redeemed myself some­what. Hav­ing felt unin­spired for cook­ing din­ner, I jumped in with both feet and decided to make Moroc­can meat­balls. Always a good idea, and tonight it turned out to be an even bet­ter idea than ever before, in a most unex­pected way, I might add. I have always had a warm place in my heart for the “kefta,” the Lebanese lamb mix­ture I obtain at Green Val­ley in Edg­ware Road, for the meat­balls. I have nour­ished a roman­tic attach­ment for the mys­te­ri­ous and unnamed ingre­di­ents in this meat mix­ture, an ambrosial elixir of gen­tly spiced and exotic deliciousness.

Tonight, how­ever, John did the shop­ping, and not at Green Val­ley. “Just buy lamb,” I advised, “and pars­ley and gar­lic.” So at home I chopped flat-leaf pars­ley super-fine and minced gar­lic and squished in ras el hanout, that irre­place­able aro­matic spice blend from Morocco, mixed it all with the lamb, kneaded it like bread dough and formed meat­balls, which I dropped into the sim­mer­ing tomato sauce to poach. And do you know what?

FAR BET­TER than the mix from the Lebanese mar­ket! So fear not, any more, my friends who do not have access to a for­eign mar­ket. Mix your own. Just gor­geous. With eggs poached at the last minute into the top of the bub­bling, gar­licky sauce, there is noth­ing nicer on a cold, windy, rainy Jan­u­ary Lon­don night.

It turns out: after all this think­ing about my writ­ing, with this expe­ri­ence I pro­duced a sec­ond draft of my meat­balls and it was an improve­ment. A les­son learned. Enjoy.

Lamb Kefta Meat­balls with Tomato Sauce and Poached Eggs
(serve about 6)

1 kilo lamb mince, mixed with 1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf pars­ley, 4 cloves minced gar­lic and 1 tbsp Moroc­can ras el hanout spice, rolled into lit­tle 1-inch meat­balls
1/2 cup veg­etable oil
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 white onion, finely minced
2 large cans peeled plum toma­toes
1 tbsp ras el hanout
1 1/2 tbsps ground cumin
1 tbsp lemon-ginger pow­der
1 tbsp sweet paprika
1 tsp cayenne pep­per
1 tbsp salt
fresh ground pep­per to taste
5 extra tbsps fresh chopped flat-leaf parsley

In a very large, heavy-bottomed deep saucepan, saute the gar­lic and onion in the oil and add the toma­toes, break­ing them up with your hands as you put them in. In my hum­ble opin­ion, there is no place in this life for tinned chopped toma­toes. Don’t you won­der what sort of toma­toes they use when they know they can get away with them not look­ing like a tomato? Just buy whole and break them up dur­ing the cook­ing process, I say. Add the spices and the parsley.

This sauce must sim­mer for at least two hours, but it can sit almost indefinitely.

About an hour before you want to serve the dish, drop the meat­balls into the sauce, in one even layer, as many as you can fit (we ended up with 30 meat­balls and they all fit). Then cover the pan and leave to sim­mer for 20 min­utes. Again, these can sit almost indef­i­nitely with no risk of becom­ing tough.

When the meat­balls are thor­oughly cooked and you are about 10 min­utes away from serv­ing, break eggs, one at a time, and lower into the sauce, as many as you can fit (we man­aged about 4). Cover and cook until the eggs are poached, about 8 min­utes. Throw the remain­ing pars­ley on top. Resist the temp­ta­tion to play with the eggs until they are cooked through! A bite of egg yolk and a bite of meat­ball smoth­ered in the sauce was… divine.

This dish smells like noth­ing in this world. Your guests will feel they have died and gone to heaven, and you will be a star. I served this with steamed pota­toes driz­zled with olive oil and sprin­kled with pars­ley, and a salad made of cucum­bers and dill in sour cream.

Isn’t this pho­to­graph won­der­ful? I com­pletely for­got, in my zeal to tell you about Wash­ing­ton, D.C., to describe our most won­der­ful expe­ri­ence of all: the self-photography project at the Cor­co­ran Gallery! An artist called Mark van S has ini­ti­ated a ridicu­lously sim­ple inter­ac­tive project: he’s set up a cam­era against a white screen, and vis­i­tors can pho­to­graph them­selves with a lit­tle remote but­ton, and the pho­tographs are shown imme­di­ately on an enor­mous screen in the museum lobby, then acces­sioned onto a com­puter sys­tem. It’s open until Jan­u­ary 25, and I can­not tell you how much we enjoyed it! Silly expres­sions, John held up his shoe, then Avery hor­i­zon­tal, then Avery’s back of head. A lovely, spon­ta­neous way to express your­self. Go! Do it.

Well, as for my sub­ject line, I exag­ger­ate as usual. It’s a love affair only in my book­shelf, on my coun­ter­top, in my oven. Richard Cor­ri­gan is a divinely Irish Irish­man, and a divine cook, and what’s more, he can write a mean cook­book with recipes that actu­ally WORK. Which is no easy task, as I can tell you try­ing to do the same myself (with­out the Irish­ness or the divinity).

But first, how on earth has nearly a week gone by with­out my speak­ing to you? Oh, no no, I’m being too hard on myself: it’s only since Mon­day, the last day of Avery’s school hol­i­day. And would you believe, that very day I got an email from some­one ask­ing about our plans for HALF-TERM?? That’s right, she has another week off in just a MONTH. Lord have mercy.

Trag­i­cally the most mem­o­rable event of our week was the unbear­ably sad memo­r­ial, yes­ter­day, to the daugh­ter of friends, a child who went to school with Avery and died of a brain tumor after a year of suf­fer­ing. It seemed unbe­liev­able to be gath­ered, yes­ter­day morn­ing, in the same church where count­less Spring Con­certs, Christ­mas Fes­ti­vals and Har­vest Thanks­giv­ings had been sung with Avery’s school, all faces alight with smiles and pride and indul­gent love. Yes­ter­day all was dark­ness, to me. So much black cloth­ing, so many tears and tis­sues. Heart­break­ing recita­tions and read­ings and singing from the child’s best friends, her head­mistresses, fam­ily. Finally fin­ished and I could go home to wait until time to col­lect Avery at school, hold her tight, appre­ci­ate her whinge­ing about home­work, rejoice in her annoy­ing requests for per­mis­sions to be signed, bathing cos­tumes found. The joy in feed­ing her din­ner, watch­ing her talk with her father, chase the shy cats.

And we were invited next door to meet our new neigh­bors: two tiny black kit­tens! Indis­tin­guish­able, one boy, one girl, Mid­night and Smokey. I think we will be fre­quent visitors.

And per­haps the sin­gle fun­ni­est moment of all of John’s ongo­ing job cri­sis. I told Avery this after­noon that he’d spent all day on the phone with his “erst­while part­ners.” “What does erst­while mean?” Avery’s friend Emily asked ingen­u­ously. “Used to be,” I said suc­cinctly, but Avery added, “Well, they went from ersatz part­ners to erst­while rather quickly.” God love her education.

No, the sin­gle fun­ni­est moment for a long LONG time came when Avery burst out of school to ask us if we’d heard of the lat­est Ben and Jerry’s fla­vor of ice cream, “Yes Pecan.” That is what makes Amer­ica great, and may we have MORE of it in the com­ing four years.

Today bat­tling my stu­pid cough once more, which seems to come and go, some days lead­ing me to believe cock­ily that I’m through, and then I am com­pletely winded by run­ning up and down five flights of stairs to do laun­dry. Either I have some dread dis­ease or… I don’t. Either way, it’s mak­ing it a bit of a chore to host 30 ladies tomor­row after­noon from… Lost Prop­erty. Yes, lunch tomor­row will be all of us dis­cussing every­thing under the sun from pol­i­tics to chil­drea­r­ing to art his­tory to cater­ing to… what­ever these mind-bendingly impres­sive vol­un­teers from Avery’s school can get their minds up to. And my con­tri­bu­tion? Ah, here’s where Richard Cor­ri­gan comes in. It’s my irre­place­ably lux­u­ri­ous, ridicu­lously caloric, every-bite-counts crab tart. Just you wait, Lost Property.

Crab Tart with Scal­lions and Goats Cheese
(serves 12)

175 grams plain flour
75 grams corn­flour (corn­starch)
1 tsp salt
120 grams cold but­ter
1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
2 eggs, beaten
sprin­kles cold water

250 grams white crab­meat
250 grams goats cheese
1 bunch scal­lion, minced
600 ml dou­ble cream
6 eggs, beaten
salt and pep­per
1 egg, beaten

Make the pas­try by mix­ing, in a food proces­sor, the flour, corn­flour, salt, but­ter (in lit­tle pieces, grad­u­ally), and thyme. Then add eggs and water to make a nice stiff dough and form into a ball. Wrap in cling­film and refrig­er­ate for at least 20 minutes.

Roll out pas­try to be at least 2 inches larger all round than the tart tin (21 cm diam­e­ter and 3 cm deep). Line the tin gen­tly with the pas­try, drap­ing the extra over the sides (do not trim yet). Line with foil and weight with beans and bake at 160C for 40 min­utes, then take out the foil and beans and check to see if the pas­try is dry. If not, bake again for 5 minutes.

Mean­while, beat the eggs with the cream and sea­son well. Beat the left­over egg and brush the baked pas­try crust with it, all over. Scat­ter the scal­lions and crab­meat over the bot­tom, then pour over the cream and eggs. Bake at 180C for 20 min­utes, then lower the heat to 160C for another 40 min­utes. Leave tart to cool to room tem­per­a­ture before serving.

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

You will roll over and beg like a dog when you have tasted this recipe. I have rephrased Richard’s (can I call him that? after all, I do love him) instruc­tions as I do not have his cook­book to hand right here. It’s called “The Clat­ter of Forks and Spoons” and is a delight to read, but I can tell you now it is also a COOK­BOOK. Bless his lit­tle Irish heart, and may my Lost Prop­erty Ladies enjoy the fruits of my labors.

Right now the “some­thing old” seems to be ME. The Cough That Ate Ham­mer­smith has ren­dered me help­lessly worn out, this first week back in the sad­dle. Actu­ally I will not feel prop­erly back in any sad­dle until Avery returns to school, which hap­pens tomor­row. Then nor­mal life will resume. Last week was remark­able for pre­cisely noth­ing: unpack­ing, tak­ing down the TWO Christ­mas trees (two trees seemed like such a good idea when they were new and fresh, not so very when they show­ered nee­dles every­where and refused bel­liger­ently to fit into the plas­tic wrap with which we tried to haul them out the front door). Then we spent some time set­tling our Christ­mas belong­ings here at home, tak­ing naps at odd times of the day, shop­ping with friends (West­field Shop­ping Cen­tre is actu­ally quite bear­able on a week­day in Jan­u­ary with girl­friends, as opposed to a Sat­ur­day before Christ­mas with a cranky hus­band), and writ­ing class on Fri­day. I came away from the ses­sion with more sug­ges­tions than I can rea­son­ably get my mind around, at least until my child is gain­fully employed away from home, tomorrow.

Just a week ago found us at Red Gate Farm clos­ing up the house for the win­ter, help­ing Rol­lie store fire­wood in the shed, going sled­ding with Alyssa and her fam­ily, Jane and her dad (Jill stayed cozily at home drink­ing tea and rock­ing baby Molly), com­ing home to lunch around the din­ing room table. Is there any­thing more heart­warm­ing and savoury than toma­toey, gar­licky brisket on a cold, snowy day?

Slow-Braised Brisket
(serves about 8)

1 brisket (corned beef)
4 cloves gar­lic, sliced
2 white onions, sliced
1 large can peeled plum toma­toes
1 bot­tle beer
1/2 cup dark molasses or treacle

Now, here’s the dif­fi­cult part. Put every­thing in a heavy stock­pot, crush­ing the toma­toes in your hand as they go into the pot. Cover it and put on a very gen­tle sim­mer. DO NOTH­ING for at least 3 hours. Seri­ously. That’s it. Serve with noo­dles or mashed pota­toes, and a nice skil­let full of shred­ded Savoy cab­bage, sauteed in olive oil and gar­lic, sea­soned well.

***********

Not to be missed. Now here is an intrigu­ing ques­tion, how­ever. How is brisket dif­fer­ent from corned beef? It turns out that brisket is a cut, a part of the ani­mal, while “corned” is a process of cur­ing, usu­ally in salt. So while I bought a brisket, my brisket had been corned (but was still raw), and when I cooked it with my toma­toey method, I called the fin­ished prod­uct “brisket.” Are you thor­oughly con­fused? Do not despair. All briskets (whether corned or un-corned, flat cut or point cut) have one thing in com­mon: they are a tough, cheap cut of meat and as such need to be catered to, but ONLY in terms of cook­ing time, not the effort involved. Just keep your brisket on a low, friendly heat with a lid on the pot to keep the sauce from reduc­ing, cook it a long, gen­tle time, and you’re in busi­ness. It is melt­ingly ten­der and a real crowd-pleaser.

Sadly, at the same lunch I learned a hard les­son about my starter, the lovely Christ­mas oys­ter stew about which I raved before. Two lessons, actu­ally. Never ever let it freeze, and after that, never ever EVER let it boil. Because mine did, and I’ll apol­o­gize here on my pub­lic forum (since one is never meant to apol­o­gize at the time of eat­ing, at one’s own table) for the grainy, sep­a­rated nature of the soup. The fla­vor was still ambrosial, but once the freez­ing or boil­ing (or, dash it all, both) processes have had their way with the broth, it will never be creamy and per­fect again. I’ll admit it, I took my oys­ter stew for granted and didn’t cod­dle it. I went sled­ding, cal­lously, and left it on a hot stove to suf­fer as it might. Never again.

From that day, so peace­ful and pleas­ant and leisured (Alyssa and her fam­ily kindly helped to denude our lovely tree of its orna­ments, leav­ing just the lights to com­fort us over the end of the hol­i­day), life got put on fast-forward. We were up at the crack of dawn, actu­ally in the dark, to jump in the car and drive to Becky’s house in Green­wich, there to leave the car and be dri­ven by my saintly friend to the Stam­ford train sta­tion, there to jump on the slow train to Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

John’s mom had pulled every favor she ever had with her good friend Jane, a behind-the-scenes Repub­li­can party faith­ful, to get us a pri­vate tour of, if you can believe it, BOTH the West Wing of the White House AND the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. It was truly stun­ning to poke our heads into the Oval Office and the Roo­sevelt Room and the Press Room, to sit in the very seats occu­pied by the Jus­tices of the Supreme Court at the State of the Union Address. One pre­vail­ing theme hov­ered over our entire tour: every­thing was so much smaller in per­son that it looks on telly! I think cam­eras must do a sort of panoramic sweep of these rooms, mak­ing them look impos­ing and intim­i­dat­ing, because to the naked eye they are quite cozy and inti­mate. But mas­sively impres­sive. All of Wash­ing­ton was over­laid with a sense of antic­i­pa­tion: giant scaf­fold­ing projects in front of the Capi­tol Build­ing and the White House, ready for the inau­gu­ra­tion on the 20th.

And we WALKED. From the Capi­tol to the Lin­coln Memo­r­ial, imag­in­ing all that square footage FILLED with peo­ple in a cou­ple of weeks. Our tour guide for the House said wryly, “Let’s hope for sun­shine, because there are no umbrel­las allowed in the public.”

The most touch­ing thing, and per­haps the most unex­pected, about both our tour guides and all the staffers we saw run­ning around with IDs and clip­boards was their extreme YOUTH. One exam­ple in par­tic­u­lar put our age into per­spec­tive. When the House tour guide was walk­ing through the under­ground tun­nel with us from one build­ing through to the Capi­tol, I asked where he’d gone to school. “Wabash,” he said, smil­ing, and I said “My gosh, we went to DePauw! Old rivals, right?” and he said, “Oh, my mom went to DePauw. Maybe you knew her, class of 1980… well, 1980 some­thing.” For heaven’s sake, when did we get to be peo­ple who might know someone’s MOTHER?

It was an over­whelm­ingly Amer­i­can series of days, more flags than you’ve ever seen in one place wav­ing proudly, lots of uni­formed and other types of offi­cials, all hav­ing sworn one oath or another of loy­alty and ser­vice. And din­ner! We went both nights to the Old Ebbitt Grill, a bas­tion of good old-fashioned Amer­i­can food bought by local pro­duc­ers. Buf­falo wings with cel­ery and blue cheese dress­ing! The best cala­mari this side of Roc in Tribeca, and best of all, a dozen oys­ters on the half shell to share with John. Loud voices, boys chat­ting up girls over a beer, dark shin­ing wood, jolly barman.

And the lux­ury of spend­ing time with John’s mom, hav­ing her all to our­selves. She and Avery were room­mates in a room adjoin­ing ours and we sim­ply hung out each evening after we’d walked our­selves into a state of col­lapse. All too soon it was time to catch our train back to Con­necti­cut, sadly leav­ing Nonna to her air­plane flight later in the afternoon.

We spent the Mon­day (good­ness, only a week ago!) pack­ing up, fly­ing out, and here we are. Await­ing what­ever adven­tures 2009 will bring: Lost Prop­erty, get­ting bet­ter at ten­nis, work­ing on my book, find­ing some­where to vol­un­teer, learn­ing to drive (ouch). Happy New Year, every­one! Next post: a savoury pas­try shell flavoured with fresh thyme and filled with crab­meat, goats cheese, scal­lions, cream. Recipe to fol­low, as soon as I’ve paid my dues at the skat­ing rink…