I can­not tell you how I have been LONG­ING for a break with my beloved. We have not been away together (Christ­mas at home in Con­necti­cut does not count) since Octo­ber, and we’re des­per­ate. We’ll have with us, of course, our child and her best friend, leav­ing on Mon­day to Lin­colnshire, a place none of us has ever been, to spend a bliss­ful (we hope) four days explor­ing, read­ing, enjoy­ing each other’s unin­ter­rupted com­pany not accom­pa­nied by iCal, iPhone, iPhoto, iTunes, or any other i-insurgent. Just the four of us (and, I’m hop­ing quite often just the two of us while two lit­tle girls find other things to do) on our own in the Eng­lish coun­try­side. I think it will be lamb­ing sea­son, or close to it. We’re hop­ing for a close expo­sure to some new sheeply mothers.

As for food? I am pack­ing away home­made pesto, a bag full of can­dles and matches to light our din­ners, a side of salmon, an arm­ful of sausages from the Gig­gly Pig from my beloved local mar­ket (“3 for a ten­ner, love, even in this rain!” the lovely girl shouted yes­ter­day, I suc­cumbed), a dish of mac­a­roni and cheese as is our tra­di­tion on arriv­ing at Land­mark Trust houses. We’ll arrive, I’ll leave my near­est and dear­est to unload the car while I take in the mac­a­roni and cheese and sausages, light the oven and the can­dles, make the kitchen our home for the dura­tion. They will set­tle in (max­i­mum laugh­ter now that we’ll have two girls instead of one), my hus­band will light the open fire promised in the sit­ting room… within 45 min­utes the bub­bling, brown­ing aroma of mac and cheese will per­me­ate the house and we’ll be… HOME. I’ll see you next week, unless some­thing earth-shattering hap­pens in between. Of course, tomor­row night’s air­ing of “Robin Hood” nearly counts… Have a lovely week.

But before I get to that (and a fab­u­lous new side dish), thanks for the unprece­dented num­ber of com­ments on the post a week or so ago, about the recipe file that I inher­ited from my grand­mother. How did that par­tic­u­lar topic come to be such a mag­net for inter­ac­tion from so many of you? I was very pleased.

And just think, the blog wasn’t even OPEN when I posted it, so who knows how many more inter­ested cooks and grand­daugh­ters could have found it appeal­ing, had the b**dy thing been open. I’m pass­ing through sev­eral stages in my reac­tion to open­ing up the blog: first I was grate­ful. Why? To whom? Then I felt like a big fat idiot that I had reacted the way I did orig­i­nally, but hon­estly, when some­one threat­ens your child, un-dreamed-of facets to your per­son­al­ity come to the sur­face. Namely, “I’ll do any­thing, per­jure myself, sell my soul, close my blog? No prob­lem!” Then I decided that feel­ing like an idiot was point­less because it was all over. And then anger kicked in. Anger that I had been forced into hid­ing, all because of one person’s irra­tional­ity. Do you know what? I have four actual friends in real life, not just on a com­puter screen but peo­ple I have cof­fee with and write sto­ries with and com­plain about my child with, that I met through my blog, before I closed it. And those of you who know me well know that friend­ship is para­mount, even cen­tral, in my life. How many more friends could I have made dur­ing all those months I was underground?

Any­way, enough of that because it’s a Brave New World. One task I have is going on my hands and knees to Google, Yahoo! and all the other search engines that my long-suffering hus­band spent many hours eras­ing me from, last year. I must say, “Mea culpa, mea culpa, I was a fright­ened filly, but now will you relist my blog?” Don’t know what that entails yet. I’m loath to sit and wait for read­ers to come to me, and seri­ously annoyed at all the read­ers and momen­tum I lost dur­ing my year as a nun.

So, my orig­i­nal point was that some­thing about old recipes, and my evil grand­mother, struck a nerve with you. Nos­tal­gia, child­hood mem­o­ries, a yearn­ing for the old days when we were defined by being someone’s grand­daugh­ter, when those ladies were still alive to tor­ment the gen­er­a­tion in between… Well, I am hard at work on a chap­ter for my book on scal­loped pota­toes, which for bet­ter or worse will push all the same but­tons: ined­i­ble food, dire child­hood mem­o­ries, my mother’s head on the chop­ping block once again for hat­ing to cook. She assures me that she is not at all both­ered by my describ­ing her thus to you. “But if you ques­tion my inte­rior design, I might take umbrage.” Fair enough. When my scal­loped pota­toes chap­ter has taken its final shape, I’ll post it.

In the mean­time, life has taken on a fre­netic pace lately that I don’t quite under­stand. Nor­mally I spend a lit­tle time scratch­ing my head over what to write about here, but since the week­end there has been so much going on that I am only now, on Wednes­day, sit­ting down to sort through pho­tos and form some sen­tences. First up: change ringing.

Cam­panol­ogy, I know, is not a pop­u­lar past­time any­more. Most churches have auto­matic ring­ing, I think, and surely the art of change ring­ing is dying out. But I love the sound of bells, and the thought that actual people’s arms are involved in ring­ing them in some far­away bell cham­ber is quite mag­i­cal to me. And I love Dorothy L Say­ers who loved bells. She was to my mind the great­est mys­tery nov­el­ist of all time, and life in the 20th cen­tury was greatly enhanced by her inven­tion of great Golden Age detec­tive Lord Peter Wim­sey, whose finest hour may well have been in “The Nine Tai­lors,” a mur­der mys­tery all about change ring­ing. Are you still with me?

So when I learned that the Dorothy L Say­ers Soci­ety, of which I am a mem­ber, was award­ing a prize to the Best Young Change Ringer to a 13-year-old girl in St Mary’s Church, Bluntisham, Cam­bridgeshire, where Sayers’s father had been vicar before the First World War, I knew my chance had come.

Now I know you’re all think­ing, “What could be more pathet­i­cally nerdy than an Amer­i­can in Lon­don putting a copy of ‘The Nine Tai­lors’ in her hand­bag and buy­ing a ticket to Bluntisham to spend two hours in a church lis­ten­ing to change ring­ing and watch­ing a teenager get an award from Dame Norma Major,” and you’re right. It is nerdy. But I men­tioned my odyssey to my friend Jo, who really under­stands what life is about, and she said, “Any­thing you do because you love it and it’s some­thing you’ve never done before is a GOOD thing.” Well put.

It was but the work of a moment to google Bluntisham and find that… it would take me for­ever and a day to get there. John could not drive me there because Avery had fif­teen dif­fer­ent things to do on Sat­ur­day that required trans­porta­tion and hand-holding (tis the sea­son of music exams). I blub­bered about this state of affairs to my friend Annie who promptly sug­gested that I look up Bluntisham on a map and see what was the near­est big­gish town, take a fast train to there, and then get a taxi to the church. Done. Up early Sat­ur­day, dressed in sober, church-going clothes (my vision of coun­try tweeds), and… deep breath. Tube to Kings Cross, train to Hat­field, BUS to Hunt­ing­don, taxi to Bluntisham. In all, three hours. Insane. But I had my copy of “The Nine Tai­lors” to amuse me, and the lovely Fen Coun­try speed­ing by out­side my win­dows. It is FLAT.

The taxi dri­ver was lovely, answer­ing all my ques­tions about flood­ing (big plot­line in the book), sound­ing exactly like the char­ac­ters in the book, writ­ten some 70 years ago. “Gov­ern­ment long ago sorted out the flood­ing, got us some new sluice gates…” He said flatly that I was nuts to have come so far for some bells, but gave me his busi­ness card and said, “Now when you’re done, like, and you’ve had a cup of tea, give me a ring. HA HA.” I arrived at the church with 45 min­utes to spare, so I spent them in the gar­den of the nearby pub with a bit­ter lemon, look­ing up at the church spires and imag­in­ing myself in the novel. Then off to the ceremony.

There were per­haps 50 peo­ple in all in the church (com­plete with cheru­bim in the South Aisle, just like in the book! I was thrilled to see them). Most of them were mem­bers of the Ladies Guild of Change Ring­ing, whose help had been sought by the Soci­ety to find a suit­able recip­i­ent for the award. And they were all dressed in track suits or jeans, as befit­ted ladies who were about to pull hard on mas­sively heavy, long bell ropes. I felt slightly silly in my churchly clothes. And my cam­era was about sev­en­teen times the size of their lit­tle dig­i­tal jobs, but it was a once in a life­time expe­ri­ence, and I wanted proper pic­tures. The Chair­man of the Dorothy L Say­ers Soci­ety spoke. The Pres­i­dent of the Ladies Guild spoke. The Rev­erend of the Church spoke. Then lit­tle Chloe came for­ward to receive her award from yes, the wife of the for­mer Prime Min­is­ter, Dame Norma Major (I won­der what she did to get her Dame-ness: surely just sur­viv­ing being mar­ried to John Major was not enough). And what was Chloe wear­ing? A black cock­tail dress and three-inch red heels. I am not mak­ing this up.

Then we had bells! The local ladies rang, with Chloe throw­ing off her shoes in order to join them. “She’s a good girl, Chloe is,” her mother said when I con­grat­u­lated her. “She’s a one for the rug­ger, and she will flirt with the boys, but she’s a good girl, and the ringing’s been great for her.” The idea of a teenager with an eye for the boys, a closet full of Jimmy Choos and her heart in the bel­fry struck me as almost unbear­ably touch­ing. I asked Chloe to sign my book, and you’d have thought she was asked for her auto­graph every day of the week. “Sure, no prob­lem!” she chirped, and dot­ted her “i” with a smart lit­tle cir­cle. More ring­ing, from any­one in the audi­ence who was expe­ri­enced. Then the church­war­den opened the steps to the bell cham­ber and we could climb up, gaze down at the bells, which were lov­ingly restored dur­ing Sayers’s father’s tenure as vicar. And re-dedicated a few years ago with money from our Soci­ety. One bell now bears the leg­end of the Dorothy L Say­ers Soci­ety, which I think is lovely.

To the Church Hall for tea, which I drank alone as befits the odd­ity from town who came all by her­self, but grad­u­ally two Soci­ety mem­bers edged over to me. “Come from far away, did you?” “Lon­don,” I said. “Fan, are you?” “Oh, mas­sive, I even named my cat Lord Peter Wim­sey,” I said warmly, and that did it. I was accepted. The two ladies told some sto­ries about “gorm­less things Amer­i­cans say” on the Yahoo! Lord Peter email group, and as I did not jump up to defend my coun­try­men, they dropped their guard. Out we went then into the ceme­tery where I was led to the grave­stone of a woman called Tho­day, one of the vil­lage names in the novel. Such fun to see it, as if a fic­tional per­son had come to life (well, strictly speak­ing, death). And I wan­dered around with these two Eng­lish ladies and we played ceme­tery games: find­ing every asso­ci­a­tion we could between the names on the grave­stones and char­ac­ters in mys­tery fic­tion. It was def­i­nitely a spe­cial­ist sort of day. How I missed my mother! She would have dived into the game with both feet.

Then it was time to retrace my steps back to Lon­don, my head pos­i­tively filled with the past, fic­tional and real, with a sense of won­der that a person’s life­time achieve­ments — a row of mys­tery nov­els on a shelf — could engen­der such devo­tion and long-lasting wish to com­mem­o­rate her. A link between lit­er­a­ture before the war, and a red-haired rugby-mad bell ringer just out of child­hood. Lovely.

I spent Sun­day recov­er­ing from this extrav­a­ganza. And cook­ing the most gor­geous side dish, copied as best as I could from our local Ital­ian del­i­catessen, Sun­drica, near the Ham­mer­smith Tube Sta­tion. Guess what? There’s rocket in it.

Warm Chick­pea Salad with Feta and Rocket
(serves 4 as a small side dish or 2 as a lunch salad)

4 tbsps olive oil
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 medium red onion, minced
2 tsps mild curry pow­der
2 soup-size cans chick­peas, drained and rinsed (about 500 grams drained weight)
juice of 1 lemon (this suits my lemon crazed fam­ily, but cut down if you like)
8 oz feta cheese, crum­bled into bite-size pieces
2 cups rocket, loosely packed
salt and pep­per to taste

Heat the olive oil in a heavy skil­let or saucepan and fry the gar­lic and onion gen­tly till soft. Add the curry pow­der and cook for another minute, tak­ing care not to burn the gar­lic. It is essen­tial to cook the curry to avoid the bit­ter­ness that can come from merely adding it raw, as it were, to the dish.

Add the chick­peas and the lemon juice and more olive oil if the mix­ture seems too dry, and cook very gen­tly for about 20 min­utes, stir­ring fre­quently. Add the feta cheese and toss well till the cheese is warmed. Tip the whole lot into a large bowl and toss with the rocket, then sea­son and serve.

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This is a lovely dish, warm and com­fort­ing, but with a sophis­ti­ca­tion that comes from the curry and rocket, a zing from the lemon and plenty of salt from the feta. Per­fect with a grilled pork fil­let, roast chicken, shoul­der of lamb.

Mon­day found me at school (look, I can just SAY that and I won’t get arrested! and I’m not hid­ing!) to vol­un­teer for the Lost Prop­erty Sale. This is an event of mam­moth pro­por­tions, requir­ing the efforts of at least a dozen vol­un­teers, the mus­cle of both school handy­men to bring tables, rolling racks. The whole Lost Prop­erty room with its smelly PE kit, mis­matched train­ers, count­less lost cardi­gans, for­got­ten down jack­ets, swim­ming tow­els and lacrosse sticks had to be turned out, orga­nized and laid out to sell. A mount­ing fury took over all of us at one point: “What is the mat­ter with our chil­dren that there is an entire room full of their belong­ings and they don’t even appear to MISS them?” I haven’t even men­tioned the locked cab­i­net full of watches, cam­eras, cell phones, iPods, jew­elry, HOUSE KEYS and Oys­ter cards for the Tube. How do these chil­dren func­tion? Do they have spares of EVERYTHING?

So Mon­day was the last oppor­tu­nity for the girls to come by and claim their belong­ings with­out hav­ing to buy them. All the ladies I work with there are fod­der for a novel some­day. Peggy plucked a hair from a jacket and started to drop it in the bin when she sud­denly stared at it and said, “DNA! We could find out EXACTLY who this jacket belongs to! Let’s start get­ting sam­ples…” And Mar­i­anne turned to me, as I was strug­gling to move a huge rack of sweaters to one side of the hall, put her head on one side like an inquis­i­tive bird, and said, “Surely you are not under the impres­sion that the rewards for Lost Prop­erty are earthly ones? No, one must wait until the next life to be thanked for these sacrifices…”

The girls ambled up, mostly on their way to or from lunch, pawed through things, made inef­fec­tive claims to items that were clearly not theirs but just looked appeal­ing. And through it all, there was crown­ing glory of the sale, the mys­te­ri­ous five choco­late fish which appeared sud­denly some weeks ago between the hymn­books and the dis­carded French texts. Choco­late fish the size of, say, a screw­driver. Not Easter bas­ket choco­late fish, but BIG ones. Where did they come from, and why on earth did some­one donate them to Lost Prop­erty and not sim­ply scoff the lot?

It was really funny to take these super-cool girls, all slung about with Aber­crom­bie and fringey scarves, ask them, “Is there any­thing in par­tic­u­lar you’re look­ing for?” and when they shrug and gig­gle and say, “Not really,” you say, “Are you sure you haven’t lost a… choco­late fish?” Never failed to get a reac­tion, and some actual con­ver­sa­tion. “They rat­tle when you shake them!” it was dis­cov­ered. We priced them at a pound each, and I deter­mined to get one for Avery. What is the point of being the incom­ing head of LP if you don’t take advan­tage of the oppor­tu­ni­ties attached thereto?

Tues­day dawned bright and fair and the sale started at promptly noon. Pan­de­mo­nium! One par­tic­u­lar mother has a boom­ing voice and absolutely no hes­i­ta­tion about mak­ing a total fool of her­self in a good cause, so she ran about wav­ing t-shirts at girls and say­ing plain­tively, “Take me home, says the lit­tle t-shirt. I don’t want to live in Lost Prop­erty any­more, I want to live with YOU, and I’m only a quid!” The hour-long sale seemed to last for about three min­utes, three very loud min­utes. Avery drifted in and picked up some Con­verse high-tops, a Gap jacket, a plaid cash­mere scarf, and… a choco­late fish. Thank good­ness. I stayed behind after, to learn the ropes for my even­tu­ally tak­ing over after Easter. Another meet­ing at school tomor­row WITH my lap­top, to receive instruc­tion, wis­dom and a dose of humility.

Today I ambled into Maryle­bone to have cof­fee with my friend Angela (she of the thinly dis­guised school scan­dal mem­oir in my writ­ing class, bless her), who kindly intro­duced me to her neigh­bor, the excel­lent cook­ery writer Sybil Kapoor. Her lat­est book, Cit­rus and Spice, is a very inven­tive approach to struc­ture: she chooses twelve “flavours,” like cit­rus, ozone, ver­dant, smoke, and cream, to embody each month of the year. I’m not sure I like the struc­ture, actu­ally, which tries very hard to explain what I think is essen­tially an intu­itive sense — what fla­vors go with what other fla­vors — in a sci­en­tific way. Yet she seems to real­ize this is a conun­drum, because there are many instances in which she says, “For what­ever rea­son,” which I think under­scores that we don’t really have a def­i­nite sense of why crab goes with cit­rus. It just does.

So whether you agree with her approach or not, the recipes sound mem­o­rable and tempt­ing, a good sign in a cook­book, and she is a delight. Shy, thought­ful, absolutely will­ing to share her exper­tise in pub­lish­ing food writ­ing. Quite an intim­i­dat­ing morn­ing, how­ever, leav­ing me to won­der if I should just sit back and let the big girls run the show. The thought of try­ing to pen­e­trate all these mar­kets where there are already quite enough tal­ented writ­ers is daunt­ing to say the least.

Right, I’d bet­ter put aside my own petty life and see how Avery’s com­ing with her Eng­lish project, the life and career of Agatha Christie. I have never con­verted her to Dorothy L Say­ers, but it’s still early days. Let the bells chime.

No photo, no recipe, just a heart­felt THANK YOU to my loyal sub­scribed read­ers who suf­fered through 1) iso­la­tion, 2) pass­word annoy­ance, and 3) my sad mood upon clos­ing down the blog except to reg­is­tered readers.

Well… drum roll please… we’re OPEN! It was so sim­ple. I approached Avery’s school through the most offi­cial of chan­nels and no prob­lem: they are com­pletely happy for me to have my blog. It under­scored the com­plete and utter insan­ity of the school offi­cial tan­gen­tially related to dear Avery’s last edu­ca­tional insti­tu­tion just about a year ago. This lady, who was a com­plete stranger to all of us, flipped her lid to the extent that thanks to her threats to Avery’s hap­pi­ness and secu­rity (I wish I were mak­ing this up) I closed the blog to all but password-holders.

It sounds so sim­ple now, but the hideous and cruel threats of those old days held sway over me for months, right up until now. My ever-sensible hus­band said, “Why not just ask how the school feels?” and so, heart in my throat, I did. And they were LOVELY. Under­stand­ing, almost unin­ter­ested, just calm and modern.

So here we are. You can send the link to your friends! You can rec­om­mend my blog to your mother. You can do any­thing you like because we’re… open and ready for busi­ness. I thank you from the bot­tom of my heart for stick­ing with me through the rough patches. You know who you are.

I think the crush is revived. Rejun­ve­nated, brought back to life like when you soak dried le Puy lentils overnight and sud­denly they’re all plump and invit­ing! Actu­ally, it’s prob­a­bly exactly that sort of metaphor that kills a crush. No sexy actor in his twen­ties wants to be com­pared to a lentil, not even the expen­sive ones from le Puy, France that keep their shape in a stew. But more on James McAvoy later. Oh, to see him in per­son! It was thrilling.

Life has been slightly fre­netic lately, owing on the one hand to a heavy but excit­ing load of writ­ing, worked into my nor­mal life sched­ule. Betty Crocker, any­one? Bundt cakes? My grandmother’s life as a hab­er­dasher in post­war Wis­con­sin? These things occupy my mind, or what’s left of it after Avery and Emily fin­ish their hys­ter­i­cal ren­di­tion of “Had a Bad Day” in the style of Alvin and the Chip­munks (Emily’s new cell­phone ring­tone, if you have to ask), and the builders frighten Keechie into the chim­ney with their lad­ders and drills. She emerged hours later, as you see, none the worse for wear.

All these things make for a lovely daily life, punc­tu­ated by the most divine six-hour-braised shoul­der of lamb with (see, you knew I’d come to it) le Puy lentils and gar­lic. I’m not jok­ing here. Gar­lic. It’s amaz­ing how much one 12-year-old child can put away. The lamb was a mere accompaniment.

Six-Hour-Braised Shoul­der of Lamb with le Puy Lentils, Rose­mary Pesto and Gar­lic
(serves four with leftovers)

1 2-kg shoul­der of Welsh lamb
4 heads gar­lic, one minced, the oth­ers whole with tops cut off
3 tbsps pesto
leaves of 2 stalks rose­mary
1 cup le Puy lentils, dried

Line a roast­ing dish with alu­minum foil (trust me, you will thank me later) and place the shoul­der of lamb in it. Run the pesto through the food proces­sor with the rose­mary leaves and the minced gar­lic. Smear the lamb with the pesto and place the three whole gar­lic cloves upright in the cook­ing dish. Scat­ter the lentils all around. Don’t worry that they are dried; the lamb juices will cook them.

Cook at 140C, 280F for about six hours, cov­ered with foil. After about three hours, begin bast­ing every half hour or so (only if you’re home to do so; obvi­ously you can leave it to cook on its own if need be).

About half an hour before you want to eat, drain all the cook­ing liq­uid (leav­ing the lentils and gar­lic behind in the dish) from the dish into a fat sep­a­ra­tor (a very clever imple­ment that looks like a mea­sur­ing cup, talks like a mea­sur­ing cup, but actu­ally sep­a­rates the fat from the good stuff in poten­tial gravy). Pour the good stuff into a lit­tle saucepan and dis­card the fat.

Scoop up all the nicely cooked lentils and hide them under the lamb. Turn up the heat to 220C, 450F and place the lamb, uncov­ered, back in the oven. Mean­while, heat the gravy in the saucepan and add just a lit­tle flour (depend­ing on the amount of liq­uid you have, prob­a­bly you will not want more than a table­spoon) and whisk care­fully till flour is dis­solved. Remove lamb from oven 15 min­utes from serv­ing time, cover with foil and let rest. Let the gravy cook for the time the lamb rests. Serve the lamb sliced thick, with lentils on the side. Scoop the cooked gar­lic from the cloves and spread on toasted bread.

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Now it’s hard to know whether to call this “roast­ing” or “brais­ing.” Truth be told, it begins by roast­ing and then lets out so much juice and fat that some­where the alchem­i­cal magic turns the process into brais­ing. You choose the terminology.

Well, that was Sun­day and then all hell broke loose. Meet­ings all day Mon­day, party here Mon­day night. Tues­day more meet­ings, phone calls, writ­ing, then Avery’s “Singing Tea” at school, so beau­ti­ful and touch­ing. I want to sit and lis­ten to her sing a capella all night some day. Maybe for Mother’s Day. Then a rush to get her to her overnight date and us to… “Madame de Sade” at the Don­mar, the third in their series of four (we’ve now seen the three, don’t think I can stom­ach Jude Law as Ham­let in May).

In point of fact, the only rea­son we ended up at Sade was because our dear friend Annie turned up the night before with tick­ets they could not use. And through a com­plex web of computer-equipment swap­ping, it was an even deal. But it was an odd, odd per­for­mance. Rosa­mond Pike, as gor­geous as they come, shouted a great deal, in a very wide dress, about Sadism (not sur­pris­ing). What was sur­pris­ing was how un-Sadistic it felt, not naughty or wicked at all, not even painful. Judi Dench her­self seemed very off. Frances Bar­ber was won­der­ful, but all too infre­quently onstage. In gen­eral, sorry to say, while it was beau­ti­fully staged, I found it tor­ment­ing to lis­ten to. Add to that, about fif­teen min­utes before the end of the play, the woman in front of me… vom­ited. Into her pash­mina scarf. More than ONCE. I could not believe any of my senses. And believe me when I say ALL my senses were involved in the repul­sive expe­ri­ence: I could hear it, see it hap­pen­ing, then sad to say… smell and nearly, well, you know, enough said.

The next few min­utes were the longest since, pos­si­bly, I was in labor for 18 hours. Why didn’t the sick woman bloody leave? But she didn’t. She care­fully made up her pash­mina into a scary lit­tle par­cel which she inserted into a plas­tic bag in her hand­bag, and… sim­ply stayed in her seat. Stink­ing to high heaven.

Lis­ten to this hilar­i­ous story my friend Patri­cia told me: she was sit­ting in the inter­val at “Les Mis­er­ables” here in Lon­don some years ago and over­heard an Amer­i­can lady next to her say to her Amer­i­can com­pan­ion, “Well, I’m glad we didn’t MAKE plans to go to Paris, if the con­di­tions are going to be like THAT!”

Well, after the vom­it­ing inci­dent, I prac­ti­cally had to be dragged out of the house the fol­low­ing evening to see “Three Days of Rain.” As so often hap­pens, I was grate­ful to have the ticket in hand, so I could not change my mind and stay home. I left John and Avery in the kitchen with two pots of boil­ing fab­ric dye and sev­eral hun­dred finger-knitted string bracelets (can you say ‘school fair’?), and escaped to my first conveyor-belt sushi expe­ri­ence, at Kulu-Kulu in Brewer Street. It is sad that I have got to my advanced age, and dare I say it with a more than pass­ing famil­iar­ity with the menu at Nobu (both New York and Lon­don), but have never sat myself down at a sin­gle seat in a sushi bar and watched the dishes go by. You just help your­self and then when you’re fin­ished, you pile up your dishes and the cashier adds up your total from the dif­fer­ent pat­terns of the dishes! Free tea! At first I grabbed a seat between two Japan­ese peo­ple and then thought, “No, I’ll never sur­vive,” so I moved my stuff to a seat next to two nice Eng­lish girls and they ran me through the ropes.

My god, I ate. Two plates of yel­low­tail, two hand rolls of soft-shell crabs (per­fectly fresh fish, prob­a­bly not sus­tain­able, but fan­tas­tic, and crunchy tem­pura to die for). A com­mu­nal pot of wasabi, a jug of soy sauce, and a host of dishes fly­ing by that I could not iden­tify. I nearly grabbed a plate of what I hoped was tuna in a spicy sauce, but found out just in time it was roe of some kind. No thank you. If it’s not caviar I don’t want roe, and I don’t even like caviar. Shrimp sushi, tuna sashimi, finally a cut roll of some­thing vaguely cucum­ber and avo­cado with prob­a­bly crab stick, and I couldn’t eat another bite. There were weird plates of mashed pota­toes with spring onions, gor­geous look­ing shrimp tem­pura which I will try next time, and salmon sashimi that I just didn’t have the appetite for. I said good­bye to my lovely com­pan­ions, picked up my dishes and paid… 14 quid. A mir­a­cle. I can­not wait to go back. Per­fect pre-theatre.

And then it was… James. I have never seen him, until last night, live. He was a rev­e­la­tion. Every time his head turned even slightly toward the audi­ence, the blue, blue bea­con of his vul­ner­a­ble, tragic gaze was beamed out­ward… he did not have to speak. But he did. And those iconic move­ments, very spare, very bal­letic, that I’ve seen on screen, were all there in per­son. No wasted move­ments, no acci­den­tal ges­tures. A gor­geous play of fam­ily tragedy in what seemed to me a clear copy of the Don­ald Judd studio/home at Spring and Greene Street, our old stomp­ing grounds in SoHo. The entire cast was cred­itable with believable-ish Amer­i­can accents, but James… his char­ac­ter haunted by the silence, neglect, genius, tor­ment of his father, the acci­den­tal love of the woman he’s taken from his part­ner, the sense of betrayal. If you go, sus­pend judg­ment for the first half which, it is true, runs slow. The sec­ond half more than makes up for it, and you’ll find your­self dur­ing the tube ride home ask­ing, “So why…?”

Just lovely. I looked up dur­ing MY tube ride home and there was my friend Char­lotte, com­ing home from a din­ner in the city. We kicked some­one out of the seat next to me and chat­ted all the way home, feel­ing grate­ful, ridicu­lously, for a fel­low walker home through Ham­mer­smith in the dark.

Tonight out AGAIN to Maryle­bone for a lovely sort of pan-London drinks party for a mixed group of Obama peo­ple, banker peo­ple, fem­i­nist peo­ple, arts peo­ple. All in all a group I could prob­a­bly have hap­pily spent sev­eral hours with but, alas, I had cho­sen this evening to teach my child, via mobile phone on the way home in the car, to turn on the oven AND the stove, hence mak­ing pos­si­ble a baked salmon and mashed potato din­ner. She was not markedly any more self-confident when we got home than when we left, but I have high hopes. Needed an evening home eat­ing my own food any­way… and we’re out AGAIN tomor­row night for a din­ner party. This is def­i­nitely not a nor­mal week.

The weather has been unbe­liev­ably gor­geous for the past week or so: blue skies every day, lovely breezes at night. But being Eng­land we know it can­not last and of course the weath­er­man aids and abets us in this fear. Just lis­ten to this fore­cast… “It’s lovely and blue up there now, but soon, we might have a few spit-spots of rain, look at this rain band, but then it will tend to fiz­zle out, really almost com­pletely, as we approach lunchtime… to give way to just a sort of patchy cloud.” That’s the Eng­lish spirit for you, lov­able as always.

I’ll end with a sad good­bye to the lovely Natasha Richard­son, just my age, leav­ing behind two lit­tle boys and a fam­ily who loved her. An extra kiss and hug for every­one you love tonight.

Well, it’s about the most fun you can have with a stack of 3 1/2 x 5 index cards. Last week I opened, really for the first time as a seri­ous cook, my grandmother’s recipe col­lec­tion which I inher­ited when she died. It’s an enor­mous stack of yel­lowed, torn, spilt-upon trea­sures, but trea­sures in not exactly the way you might think. There is almost no chance that a mod­ern per­son will want to cook any­thing described in these cards, but that is really beside the point.

What emerges from these cards is a pic­ture of a life gone by, on many dif­fer­ent lev­els. Only a por­tion of the cards comes from my own grandmother’s kitchen; the vast pro­por­tion of them are gifts to her, from ladies (and I mean exclu­sively ladies, which is a topic all its own) in her inti­mate cir­cle. One Irene Traw passes along her notion of an “Angel Pie,” a frothy con­coc­tion of sep­a­rated eggs and gra­ham cracker crust, on a dear lit­tle card bear­ing her name and the leg­end, “A truer friend there can­not be than one who shared her recipe.” My mother remem­bers Irene vaguely as a bridge-playing crony of my grandmother’s, in the posh retire­ment com­mu­nity of Sun City, Ari­zona, where she and my besot­ted grand­fa­ther moved when I was a lit­tle girl. Irene, Ruth Pen­te­cost, Eve­lyn Adamy, Betty Joy, the name­less lady who took the time to cut out mag­a­zine pic­tures of sun­flow­ers and glue them to her recipe card con­tain­ing instruc­tions for “Fudge Cup Cakes Supreme,” all these ladies emerge from the dusty cards, wip­ing their hands on their aprons and smil­ing at me.

These ladies inhab­ited a world in which brides-to-be were given per­son­al­ized recipe cards on which to note down their cre­ative efforts (woe to my poor mother who must have looked at her cards with a sense of impend­ing doom, as her cre­ative efforts were more likely to find an out­let in embroi­der­ing sam­plers than in sep­a­rat­ing eggs). I sup­pose then they ate at each other’s houses, admired Ruth’s “Molded Fish Mousse” (a name that had my mod­ern daugh­ter rolling on the floor laugh­ing) and asked for the recipe. And of course they were all ladies, not a Sam or Cyrus among them, and this fact brings out in me the lit­tle bit of fem­i­nism that says men may be (and are) great chefs, but the really impor­tant stir­ring and mix­ing, boil­ing and chop­ping in this life is done by ladies.

Were these the early Ladies Who Lunch? Only instead of pay­ing for Gor­don Ram­say to wow them with foie gras parcels and con­fit of duck leg in a Jerusalem arti­choke veloute, they fed each other at home, maybe potluck style? Each lady would surely arrive armed with a dish designed to impress. Dur­ing the end­less hot, dry after­noons in the desert, they would light their inevitable cig­a­rettes and begin with Ruby’s “Crab on Hol­land Rusk” (what is a rusk?), fol­lowed by Miriam’s “Pis­ta­chio Pie” (con­tain­ing no pis­ta­chios, and also pre­sentable as a salad, the recipe assures us). It must all have been washed down with “Invi­ta­tions to Love,” a potent-sounding con­coc­tion of lime juice, orange juice, vodka, apri­cot brandy and grena­dine. A few more cig­a­rettes, a cou­ple of hands of bridge and then home, to con­coct “Shrimp Dish,” from the kitchen of Sally John­son, for their hus­bands, fresh from the golf courses and their own three-martini lunches.

Sally Johnson’s Shrimp Dish

1 pkg. Uncle Ben’s long grain and wild rice mix­ture
1 can mush­room soup
10 oz. pkg frozen cooked shrimp
1/2 cup cubed Amer­i­can cheese
2 tbsps green pep­per, chopped
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp Worces­ter­shire sauce
1/2 tsp dried mus­tard
1/4 tsp black pep­per (no Salt though)

Pre­pare rice as directed on pack­age, com­bine all ingre­di­ents and bake in cov­ered greased dish at 375F for 30–35 min­utes. Serves 6.

Try this by your swim­ming pool.

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

This last instruc­tion stopped me in my tracks. Maybe with an excla­ma­tion mark it would have read in a dif­fer­ent way, “Try this by your swim­ming pool!” That would have con­veyed a nice, cel­e­bra­tory atmos­phere with plenty of cock­tails and dark glasses. As it is, it sounds slightly threat­en­ing. This impres­sion was under­scored by my mother’s assur­ance that my grand­par­ents did not have a swim­ming pool; they swam at the com­mu­nity pool. Was the author of this recipe throw­ing her obvi­ous pos­ses­sion of a pool in my grandmother’s face?

My great-aunts Andrine, Rae and Han­nah (who I grew up think­ing was not Aunt Han­nah, but “Antenna”) are present and accounted for in many recipes in my grandmother’s file, as is my father’s cousin’s mother Miriam, with recipes for Eagle Brand Pie, Oat­meal Refrig­er­a­tor Cook­ies, Hot Ham Strata, and some­thing called Flint­stone Dip. All the recipes share one thing in com­mon: an unspo­ken but intense fru­gal­ity of ingre­di­ents. No savory recipe seemed com­plete with­out a can of Campbell’s Cream of Mush­room Soup; it seemed to be a sort of uni­ver­sal lubri­ca­tor of such diverse items as bacon, spinach, hard-boiled eggs and canned lima beans. Almost noth­ing in these recipes started out life fresh: spinach was frozen, milk evap­o­rated and canned, toma­toes juiced, red pep­pers sus­pended in vine­gar and called pimen­tos. Even the main dishes were manip­u­lated. What was not casseroled was molded, stewed or formed into a loaf. Not for my grand­mother and her friends a sim­ple fil­let steak, roasted chicken or pork ten­der­loin. As my mother explained, these ladies had a mis­sion, first in their post-war poverty and later in a state of habit­ual fru­gal­ity, to eke out the expen­sive pro­teins in their diet with cheap and fill­ing starch, and to change its orig­i­nal appear­ance as much as pos­si­ble to achieve some­thing spe­cial from some­thing very ordi­nary indeed.

To this end, veg­eta­bles (never fresh to begin with, even cel­ery was canned) were mixed with gelatin, cov­ered with a white sauce, braised in chicken stock from bul­lion cubes, mixed with frozen fruit and fla­vored with an end­less array of mys­te­ri­ous sea­son­ings. Dips were made to accom­pany bread chunks or cock­tail sausages at par­ties, their may­on­naise (or even cheaper, Mir­a­cle Whip Salad Dress­ing) fla­vored with Lowry’s Sea­soned Salt, Lip­ton French Onion Soup Mix, Accent Sea­son­ing (its only ingre­di­ent being monosodium glu­ta­mate) or Beau Monde sea­son­ing which com­bined a mot­ley array of both sweet and savory spices. There was even a condi­ment called Liq­uid Smoke, which imparted a char­coaly (and no doubt car­cino­genic) fla­vor to meat dishes. And you know what I just real­ized? In all these hun­dreds of recipes, there is no men­tion of gar­lic. Do you sup­pose it was too “foreign”?”

One recipe stood out for me among the many cookie recipes, “Jew­ish cook­ies.” In the mar­gin of my grandmother’s recipe card was the nota­tion, “A favorite of Bert Weiss.” Surely they could not be called “Jew­ish Cook­ies” just because some­one named Weiss liked them? Even for my very Protes­tant grand­mother this could not be true. I read the list of ingre­di­ents, look­ing for pas­trami or mat­zoh meal or brisket (in this pile of recipes, any­thing was pos­si­ble), but there were only the most ordi­nary items like flour, but­ter, eggs, shred­ded coconut, orange mar­malade. When I read this recipe out to Avery, how­ever, she promptly said, “Oh, those are haman­taschen, a tra­di­tional cookie for Purim. It’s the mar­malade that tells you that.” I thought back to Purims in New York with my friend Alyssa, who made them with apri­cot jam, I think, and blessed my daughter’s ecu­meni­cal wis­dom. But did my grand­mother know the rather obscure food tra­di­tions for one of Judaism’s less famous hol­i­days? I wish, as I have wished so many times hold­ing her recipes on my lap, that she was here to ask.

When I think of the way I cook now, buy­ing sev­eral fresh ingre­di­ents for every sup­per and always cook­ing more than the three of us need (and inor­di­nately proud of myself for using left­overs even most of the time, cer­tainly not all), I am ashamed of my profli­gacy. Tonight’s sup­per will be fresh sea scal­lops sauteed with gar­lic and tons of flat-leaf pars­ley in a sea of extra vir­gin olive oil, to be served with spaghetti and bread­crumbs made from my own home­made focac­cia. It’s shame­ful! I have prob­a­bly spent my grandmother’s entire food bud­get for the week, even the month, on one supper.

My grand­mother was a very dif­fi­cult per­son. She was a rather mean mother, a demand­ing wife, a crit­i­cal and unlov­ing mother-in-law, a self-centered and for the most part unin­ter­ested grand­mother. Her infre­quent vis­its to us were fraught with ten­sion that my rather gen­tler grand­fa­ther tried to defuse. Noth­ing was ever good enough for her and in fact was very much not to her lik­ing, and she told us so. But she brought us raisins from grapes she and my grand­fa­ther had picked in the Ari­zona fields and dried on white bed­sheets in their back­yard, and she let me watch as she made a yeasty, cin­na­mony tea ring stud­ded with their chewy good­ness. In their front gar­den, she picked kumquats for me and laughed as I tasted the bit­ter­ness, and was grimly proud when I liked them. She taught me, both at her knee on our very occa­sional cook­ing after­noons, and also I now think through the mys­te­ri­ous gift of genet­ics, to love food and cook­ing. And if Irene, Ruth, Betty, Eve­lyn and the dozens of other Ladies Who Lunched are any indi­ca­tion, she loved her friends, and they her.

I must find a box for these cards, every one of them bear­ing the hand­writ­ing, and behind that the per­son­al­ity, of a lady. It’s what I’ve always believed about food, and what my own mot­ley col­lec­tion of recipes will prove about me. To cook for those you love, and to share your recipes with them, gives you just that lit­tle piece of immor­tal­ity on someone’s desk in far­away, for­eign London.

How do you get three peo­ple to eat a pound of spinach? Mix it with a ton of cheese, throw in a gen­er­ous sprin­kling of gar­lic and you’re pretty much there. The only rule is that the cheese must be a melt­ing kind, not a crum­bling kind, although in a pinch I have to say I think most cheeses will melt. Last night’s ver­sion used up the tail end of a Gruyere from our din­ner with Vin­cent, and a large wedge of a Dutch Gouda from a won­der­ful cheese importer called UnieKaas, lovely and tart. And keep the name of the recipe simple.

Cheesy Spinach
(serves 4)

1 pound baby spinach, washed and spun dry (many bags of spinach are already thus)
2 tbsps but­ter
2 tsps flour
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1/2 cup light cream or evap­o­rated milk, per­haps a lit­tle more
1 cup grated cheese (Edam, Mon­terey Jack, Gouda, Gruyere, etc.)
cel­ery salt to taste

Run the spinach in batches through the food proces­sor until chopped fine, but not mushy. Set aside.

Melt the but­ter in a large skil­let and gen­tly fry the flour until bub­bly. Add gar­lic and gen­tly fry until soft­ened. Don’t worry if the floury but­ter sticks to the skil­let because you can scrape it off when you add the cream. Do so and stir until mixed. The cream will be absorbed right away, but do not fret. The tex­ture of this dish all amal­ga­mates grad­u­ally when the liq­uid from the spinach is released.

Add the cheese and the spinach to the skil­let and begin gen­tly stir­ring over low heat. Sea­son with cel­ery salt to your taste and stir gen­tly until the mix­ture turns bright creamy green and the spinach is softly cooked.

***********

Here is my dilemma: my daugh­ter and I have incred­i­bly high salt tol­er­ance, but my hus­band does not. We all love the cel­ery fla­vor imparted by cel­ery salt. How to get enough cel­ery fla­vor with­out get­ting too much salt? It is tricky. I may try cel­ery leaves next time.

This dish will make any­one, even chil­dren, sit up and beg. It’s an inven­tion of mine that skips the typ­i­cal bak­ing step advised by many cheesy spinach recipes, and as a result I think more of the iron must be retained. With a huge pile of sim­ply grilled baby lamb chops, or a slightly pink grilled pork ten­der­loin, or a roast chicken, you’re good for din­ner. If, how­ever, you feel the need for a truly deca­dent potato dish, here’s the one for you.

Aligot Gratin
(serves 6)

1 3/4 pounds bak­ing pota­toes
3 tbsps unsalted but­ter, room tem­per­a­ture
4 gar­lic cloves, minced
3/4 cup milk
1 pounds fresh moz­zarella, chopped fine
1/4 cup grated Pecorino cheese

(optional top­ping)
2/3 cup chilled heavy cream
2 tbsps drained bot­tled horseradish

Peel and boil pota­toes until cooked through and soft, about 40 min­utes. Drain and mash with but­ter, gar­lic, milk and moz­zarella over a low heat until the moz­zarella melts into long elas­tic strands.

Either divide the aligot into six but­tered 1-cup gratin dishes, or one large 6-cup gratin dish. Top with grated Pecorino. Bake at 350F (180 C) for 20 min­utes, or add optional top­ping by whip­ping the heavy cream, mix­ing it with horse­rad­ish and spread­ing over the aligot. Put under a broiler until golden, about 4 minutes.

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

Because I was feed­ing a child who I guessed would not like horse­rad­ish, I left the top­ping out, but I can imag­ine that with the top­ping the dish would be even more inter­est­ing, and the per­fect foil for beef.

Well, let’s see, there was an adven­ture at Lost Prop­erty last week, involv­ing an unusual bit of inven­tory. I let myself into the chilly room piled high with the usual unnamed gym kit, unnamed lacrosse sticks, swim­ming cos­tumes, school diaries, geol­ogy text­books and the like, only to find, lined up demurely on a shelf… not one, not two, not three or four, but FIVE good-sized foil-wrapped choco­late fish. Hmmm. As each girl came in look­ing for the stuff she had left ran­domly all through­out the school, I asked, “Did you hap­pen to lose a choco­late fish?” The ques­tion was guar­an­teed to raise a smile! Would you turn in five choco­late fish to Lost Prop­erty if you found them? That takes real hon­esty. The week after next will fea­ture the sale of unnamed Lost Prop­erty, which promises to be the social event of the term. Whether or not the fish are on offer remains to be seen.

Over the week­end I met up with my dear friend Jo for a spot of shop­ping in Isling­ton. I know the pow­ers that be are try­ing to squeeze out the small mer­chants of the back streets, in favor of more reli­able (but much more bor­ing) chains, but there are still intrigu­ing bits and pieces to be had. I found a porce­lain dish with a her­ring on the lid, nearly an exact replica to one given me by my friend Cyn­thia many, many years ago who suf­fered a fatal blow dur­ing one of our moves. So happy to have a Mr Her­ring back on the desk, hold­ing paper clips! And a lovely sil­ver brooch with a pony on it, for Avery. We had a credit crunch lunch at a crazy serves-everything vaguely Euro­pean bistro and talked our heads off, then walked her to the Almeida in time for her to catch the mati­nee of Duet for One with Juliet Steven­son (she later reported that it’s a tremen­dous pro­duc­tion), and I made my way home, in my usual glow of post-Jo opti­mism. She is a lady to whom life has not always been kind or easy, and yet there is an irre­press­ible joy in her eyes and lilt in her voice that makes her a most inspir­ing and jolly com­pan­ion. How I wish she lived in Lon­don and our get-togethers could be commonplace…

Oh, oh! I have a ticket, just for me, to see James McAvoy in Three Days of Rain! A week from today. Although my crush on dear James has abated some­what, I have never seen him live and feel this could be very excit­ing. It’s an Amer­i­can play so we’ll see what sort of accent he man­ages. John flatly refused to go, even though it’s about archi­tec­ture; he’s feel­ing credit crunchy and as such not in the mood to accom­pany me to a crush­fest. It’s a good thing I’m very secure and won’t feel a fool all by myself. I will remem­ber to report, so that you may go by your­self if it’s worthwhile.

Last night found us at school to sup­port one of Avery’s class­mates in quite a spec­tac­u­lar dance show, not some­thing I would nor­mally attend being the com­pleat Philis­tine when it comes to dance, but Avery really wanted to be there for her chum, so off we went. Why does even a dance per­for­mance that my child is not IN make me want to cry? It’s in part the inno­cence of these girls, their energy and shiny hair and sweet smiles, and also a nos­tal­gia for what John and I termed the Lost Com­mod­ity: youth! Avery’s maths teacher came out for a much-anticipated turn as a tap dancer! Just priceless.

Today I’ve been wrestling all day with my recipe file, espe­cially the ancient and hilar­i­ous recipes that I inher­ited from my dad’s mother. I think I’ll get a chap­ter of my cook­book out of these file cards, detail­ing recipes like Veal Scalop­pini cooked in, I’m not mak­ing this up, Sprite. And a shrimp dish whose last instruc­tion is “Try this by your swim­ming pool.” I haven’t the slight­est idea what that even means. How about “Tuna Glop”? I know it’s entirely pos­si­ble that “glop” means some­thing deli­cious in the orig­i­nal Swedish, but I’m afraid it’s got hot tuna writ­ten all over it. Then there’s a recipe from my Aunt Andrine termed suc­cinctly “Rocks,” which looks to be a type of very heavy cookie. The last instruc­tion on that card is “Drop on a tin.” And dump in the garbage, pre­sum­ably. It is a lot of fun. But even a lot of fun makes for an exhaust­ing day, and my head is spin­ning. Writ­ing class beck­ons on Fri­day, so I’ve sent my piece off to my long-suffering class­mates and now must decide what to cook for them when they come. I have about a thou­sand recipes on my desk for things involv­ing a can of mush­room soup, so I know what’s on my gro­cery list. Yum yum.

And, finally, it’s offi­cial, I have a new crush! Are you all famil­iar with the Irish musi­cian Damien Rice? He is divine. Broken-hearted, sex­ily unshaven, and even respectably aged, born in 1973. I dis­cussed this last bit with Avery who agreed with me that there is some­thing wrong with peo­ple hav­ing been born in the 1980s. “They’re too old to be chil­dren, but too young to be truly adult,” she opined, and I had to probe. “What makes some­one truly adult?” I won­dered. “Is it Daddy trav­el­ing all over the world and mak­ing deci­sions that cost or made peo­ple gatril­lions of dol­lars when he was 22?” “No,” she said, “that’s not grownup.” “Is it me writ­ing a 400-page paper when I was 26?” Appar­ently not. A thorny prob­lem to mull over, nib­bling on an after-school snack for some days to come.

But I digress. My point is, you must lis­ten to Damien Rice and join me in crush world. It’s not that he’s hand­some, exactly, but his face is appro­pri­ately mourn­ful and there is just noth­ing as won­der­ful as that Irish accent. I have high hopes that we’ll get Avery off to Trin­ity Col­lege, Dublin, in about 6 years and when we visit, the accents will be all around.

Gee, that phrase takes me back to col­lege, when it must have been the title of some Top Forty clap­trap song that we danced to… an innocu­ous lit­tle asso­ci­a­tion, con­sid­er­ing the havoc that such a sit­u­a­tion really entails. But I’m get­ting ahead of myself.

So I was on my way to the den­tist the other day, toil­ing up the end­less hill that is the Welling­ton Road, walk­ing the cou­ple of miles or so that Trans­port for Lon­don assured me was the most effi­cient way to get to St John’s Wood (this can­not be so, but I needed the exer­cise). As I ran into Panzer’s Deli (quite the most expen­sive place to buy any­thing, in this most expen­sive of cities, but the fresh dill was cry­ing out to me), some­thing was nag­ging at me, some­thing unnamed, inde­ter­mi­nate, but nag­ging. Had I for­got­ten an appoint­ment, for­got­ten to send Avery’s swim­ming cos­tume to school with her, for­got­ten to call some­one back? I could not get at exactly what it was. So I moseyed on over to the incom­pa­ra­ble Kent Butch­ers in the High Street for some new sea­son lamb (wasted a bit, mixed with gar­lic and spices for Moroc­can meat­balls, but… it was there). And still that annoy­ing sen­sa­tion of hav­ing left some­thing… undone.

“AAGGH!” I nearly screamed as I left the butch­ers. “I left the stove on, under­neath my pot of sim­mer­ing black beans!”

Now, as I learned from every­one I spoke to in the fol­low­ing fif­teen fran­tic min­utes or so, this is a moment we have all expe­ri­enced. I rang John, not at home, not pick­ing up. I rang my next-door neigh­bor Sara in the hope that her nanny was home and would be able to find the spare key they have for us. No answer. I skipped up the steps to my dentist’s office and asked Paula the Irish Recep­tion­ist for a phone book. “I’ve left the stove on under my black beans,” I said in a rush. “A phone book, now? You’re ask­ing for a PHONE book? That’s a blast from the past. I think it might here some­where [drags a chair over to cup­board, stands on tip­toe, feels around on a high shelf]… ah yes, here it ’tis. Wrapped in its plas­tic, still, it is! I always think I’ve left the iron plugged in…” Just give me the phone book, I think. I found the num­ber for our estate agents and rang them in des­per­a­tion. “Paul, do you have a key for our house? I left the stove on under my black beans.” Why did I feel com­pelled to spec­ify what I had been cook­ing, to every­one I met? I do not know.

Finally Paul the estate agent advised that I call our land­lady Joyce, so I hung up sum­mar­ily on his tale of once think­ing he’d left the cof­fee maker on when he was at an air­port. I rang Joyce. As I apol­o­gized and apol­o­gized, she said, “Not to worry, Kris­ten, for me it’s always the hair straight­ener I think I’ve left on. I’m out and about and I’ll run over right now.” This seemed so incred­i­bly nice of her, until John pointed out to me later that while I think of it as my house, in point of fact it’s HER house. Of course she ran over to check. This logic did not stop me from tak­ing a nice flat of daf­fodils over to her later, however.

Then I was bun­dled into the dentist’s chair whilst he chor­tled over once hav­ing thought he left oven turned on, and the hygien­ist remem­bered dri­ving all the way back from Cam­bridge to unplug a curl­ing iron that was already unplugged. My mother in law, how­ever, wins the prize for retrac­ing her steps once over the four-hour drive to Min­neapo­lis for the cof­fee maker that… was already turned off. My phone rang. It was Joyce. “Of course you turned it off, there was no prob­lem. I hope everything’s all right at the den­tist…” Then John rang, and I told him an abbre­vi­ated tale of the adven­ture, to which he replied, “Well, that’s all right then,” and hung up. My den­tist was amazed. “I’d think he’d be within his rights to give you a right wind-up over that one, Kris­ten,” and I explained that when you have been mar­ried as long as we have, you have LONG since learned to restrain your­self from the tempt­ing scold. Why? Because tomor­row, or the day after that, it will be YOUR screwup for which you want a long back­log of hav­ing been tol­er­ant of his screwup. Any mar­ried per­son will know whereof I speak.

Whew. Cri­sis averted. Then the place where I bit my cheek two weeks ago that hurts like hell turned out to be not oral can­cer at all, but, guess what, a place where I bit my cheek. “This is a good day, then,” said the den­tist with British under­state­ment. “Two bad things that didn’t hap­pen after all, and it’s only noon.” I assured him that I was Scan­di­na­vian and there was plenty of time left in the day for some­thing bad to hap­pen. My next-door neigh­bor rang to say she was sorry she missed my call, and how awful to think I’d burned down the house when I ALSO had to go to the den­tist. It tells you some­thing about British den­tistry, that every­one I spoke to was at least as sorry I was hav­ing my teeth x-rayed as that I had torched my kitchen.

Long sigh.

Other than that, life has been quiet. I’ve been plow­ing, as we all must do now and then, through the mounds of paper on my desk. School per­mis­sion slips, untried recipes, reviews of plays I think I want tick­ets to, bits of writ­ing that might turn into a chap­ter or a blog post, thank-you notes I haven’t writ­ten but at least I bought the cards for them. The detri­tus of a very quiet, pre­dictable life full of pre­dictable details. But punc­tu­ated by glo­ri­ous times with friends! This week found me, when not run­ning around after a myth­i­cal fire brigade, at the tow­er­ing Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea with my friend Gigi. She and I feel com­pelled every now and then to bring out our PhDs, dust them off, say some intel­li­gent things about some­thing cul­tural, and then retreat to the real pur­pose of the meet­ing: lunch and gos­sip. Gigi is one of those peo­ple whose thoughts spring full-formed, in real sen­tences with punc­tu­a­tion and flair, so that con­ver­sa­tion with her is very enter­tain­ing. We wan­dered through the gallery filled with the cur­rent exhi­bi­tion of Mid­dle East­ern art, talk­ing about veil­ing, try­ing not to look at one par­tic­u­larly dis­agree­able instal­la­tion of pup­pets rep­re­sent­ing Iran­ian pros­ti­tutes, admir­ing some blurry and evoca­tive pho­tographs cov­ered in silk.

But the tri­umph of the whole show for me was this room, filled with life-size alu­minum fig­ures of women in full veil­ing, hol­low and haunt­ing. The instal­la­tion had a very Rachel Whiteread feel about it, which of course made me happy. I can be made happy with almost any art­work that involves abstracted objects made out of unex­pected mate­ri­als in mul­ti­ples (it was just that aes­thetic that, as you can imag­ine, that made my gallery such a rous­ing finan­cial suc­cess). But trust me, the room is beau­ti­ful. Each fig­ure is bent in a slightly dif­fer­ent way, as if lis­ten­ing to a dif­fer­ent prayer, yet there is an anonymity to them all as a group that I’m sure says some­thing about the artist’s atti­tude toward women in Islam. Worth the whole price of admis­sion (which is actu­ally free). Go, do. Take an intel­li­gent friend (I’m not sure Gigi’s avail­able, though) and open your mind. It was funny, our com­ing at this show from dif­fer­ent cul­tural per­spec­tives: me the uncon­nected Agnos­tic, and she a multi-cultural Mus­lim. And the next day she sent me our shared horo­scope, which ran some­thing like this. “Try not to spend all your time with peo­ple who think like you do.” It was as if some­one had been fol­low­ing us around the show!

Oh, and such a funny taxi expe­ri­ence yes­ter­day; I keep think­ing I have already writ­ten this down, but I don’t think I have. I flagged one down in Chelsea, and asked the dri­ver, “Would you take me to Whole Foods please?” and he said, “Don’t see any rea­son why not!” so I jumped in and to be friendly said, “What a beau­ti­ful day!” and he replied, “Can’t buy weather like this. In fact, the only weather that’s worth wor­ry­ing about is whether you can get up in the morn­ing or not!” That’s a proper Lon­don taxi dri­ver for you.

Last night Vin­cent and Pete came round to sup­per, after a long absence. It was heav­enly to hear their knock at the gar­den win­dow, open the door, be crushed in big bear­like cash­mere arms, kiss cold cheeks. And we ATE. Din­ner was, if I do say so myself, sub­lime. I really want you all to go straight to the shops and load up on sweet­corn and rocket, and make my soup, the only thing I think I’ve ever invented all on my own. I’ll give you the recipe again to save your hav­ing to hunt for it, plus for extra fes­tiv­ity last night (I always have to put on a bit of the dog for Vin­cent) I added sauteed scal­lops. I was com­pletely happy with it, and even Vin­cent who (what­ever he said last night!) really does not like soups very much, enjoyed it. We could not have sec­onds because… we ate it all the first time around.

Creamy Sweet­corn and Rocket Soup with Scal­lops
(serves 4)

2 tbsps but­ter
4 cloves gar­lic, sliced
2 shal­lots, sliced
4 ears sweet­corn, ker­nels cut off
3 cups chicken stock
3 bags (about 6 cups loosely packed, or 200 grams total weight)
1/2 cup cream
2 addi­tional tbsps but­ter
1 dozen large scal­lops, sliced in half across the width

Melt but­ter in heavy stock­pot and saute gar­lic and shal­lot just until soft, then add sweet­corn and cover with stock. Sim­mer high for about 10 min­utes, then add rocket and stir just to soften. You will be aston­ished at how it sim­ply dis­ap­pears. Blend with hand blender, stir in cream, and pass through a sieve to catch the corn ker­nelly bits (or not, if you like more of a potage than a smooth liq­uid). I find that the best way to get soup through a sieve is to put the stock­pot that is your des­ti­na­tion pot into the sink, pour the soup into it through the sieve, and then SHAKE the sieve gen­tly till the solids are left behind. It’s a bit messier than just stir­ring (hence the sink), but it’s much faster.

Just before serv­ing, place shal­low bowls in a warm oven to take the chill off. Melt the addi­tional but­ter in a large skil­let and when it’s really hot, add the scal­lops in a sin­gle layer. Fry until there is a bit of color on the hot side, per­haps 2 min­utes, then care­fully flip over to the other side, roughly in the order in which they went in the skil­let. Fry on the sec­ond side until JUST cooked, less than a minute. Take off the heat. Quickly ladle soup into each bowl and divide the scal­lops among the bowls. Serve immediately.

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

We sim­ply wolfed it down. I had for­got­ten how sat­is­fy­ing it is to feed Vin­cent and Pete, how enthu­si­as­tic they are, how appre­cia­tive. We talked our heads off: the Saatchi show, Hes­ton Blu­men­thal and the Fat Duck (they will never con­vince me to go! I swear!), Vincent’s girls’ amaz­ing com­mand of the Ital­ian lan­guage after just months liv­ing there, my cook­book. And we tried a new method of keep­ing Avery happy after a series of adult evenings: she repaired upstairs with a pizza and a movie! It was nice, just once in awhile, to be able to cook two courses that she doesn’t like and not worry about her. For the main I served Richard Corrigan’s crab tart, and although I’ll never be a pas­try chef and bak­ing always still fills me with a bit of fear, it turned out gor­geous. I added a bit of fresh thyme and cayenne to the pas­try which gave it an extra sort of flair, and may I say as well: buy the fan­ci­est crab­meat you can find, with the biggest chunks, and do NOT flake them as you sprin­kle them into the tart. Com­ing upon a big juicy chunk of claw meat cra­dled in cream and goats cheese was a delight.

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
dash cayenne
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.

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

I laugh as I read this, “serves 12.” Not if three of your guests are big, hun­gry men who like their crab­meat. We barely had two serv­ings left over with only FOUR of us! These men are Lucul­lan in their appetites and tastes. Make a big nice salad of yet more rocket, lamb’s let­tuce and chicory, with a good spicy dress­ing, to serve alongside.

We could barely bring our­selves to attack the cheese board, straw­ber­ries and grapes, but we man­aged. A feast, and a wel­come return of old friends.