How odd to think that a month from today we’ll be tool­ing down an unknown road from Lon­don to Corn­wall, to stay with our lovely Annie and her fam­ily? A dif­fer­ent uni­verse, quite apart from its being a dif­fer­ent con­ti­nent and time zone… sim­ply impos­si­ble to believe the two worlds belong to the same lives. But they do, and they will. In the meantime…

Say: did you know that your local phar­macy may have a Nurse Prac­ti­tioner to con­sult should your trip there to buy tooth­paste end up in being diag­nosed with a mas­sive case of Poi­son Ivy? Well, now we know. John’s been suf­fer­ing for sev­eral days from itch­ing scratches on his fore­arms, swollen, hot and mis­er­able. I’ve had the very same, mys­te­ri­ously, on my abdomen, which I didn’t want to tell any­body. Then, sadly, the rash moved to my face, so it was unavoid­able. How we itch! How hot it is, how mis­er­able when sweat­ing from play­ing ten­nis in the sun­shine. So tonight we were looked at by a lovely Ital­ian girl sport­ing an impres­sive dia­mond engage­ment ring (“I’m get­ting mar­ried next July!”) who con­firmed poi­son ivy. So in short, the gor­geously revealed stone wall that Rose­mary and John slaved away on over the week­end (and I, unfor­tu­nately, pitched in to help just long enough to get infected), was not worth the trou­ble. I’d rather have a wall cov­ered with ivy and not have touched any of it with my face.

So that was our evening tonight. Plus, would you believe that we had decided to go out for pizza, to give me a break (not really needed) from cook­ing, but the pizza place was, quixot­i­cally, closed on Mon­days (per­haps they’re owned by the same peo­ple who own the bak­ery that’s closed on Mon­days). So we ended up des­per­ately at Denmo’s, for fried food. Which would have been fine, except all the fried food ended up closed up in the car while our brief phar­macy trip turned into a full-blown Visit To The Doc­tor. Let me tell you, you haven’t lived till you’ve opened up a car in 90-degree weather that’s been filled with fried clams and shrimps for half an hour. Arrgh! And there is noth­ing, repeat, NOTH­ING to rec­om­mend fried food that’s been closed up and turned to approx­i­mately the tex­ture of damp paper tow­els. Tomor­row night’s bar­be­cued pork ten­der­loin and warm salad of can­nellini beans with rose­mary and gar­lic is sound­ing bet­ter and better.

Any­way, we came home to down all the pills the lady gave us, and to eat our awful din­ner and to wait, now I’m watch­ing the clock, for the med­i­cine to work. Heat makes it worse, I find, and it’s HOT. I hate to think back to our ten­nis game this morn­ing, sweat­ing like crazy in the blaz­ing sun. No ten­nis tomor­row unless I feel a LOT bet­ter than I do right now.

Could I whine any more? I do apol­o­gize for my mood. It will pass. But our AC is bro­ken! Another project for tomor­row. Once I make the moral deci­sion to turn on the air con­di­tion­ing, I hate being stymied.

I think I’ll feel bet­ter if I think back to last Thurs­day when I got to intro­duce two of my favorite friends: Becky and Shel­ley. And very excit­ing: Shel­ley brought along the feline friend we gave her last sum­mer, and who Avery has never for­got­ten: Cap­tain Hast­ings. He hasn’t changed a bit, except for hav­ing grown even more than Avery has (she comes in at four inches and untold pounds, in a year). But I’m get­ting ahead of myself.

The day itself dawned as look­ing par­tic­u­larly sat­is­fy­ing: the prospect of cook­ing all after­noon, after a good sweaty ten­nis game, watch­ing the skies as the storms gath­ered: my recipe for hap­pi­ness. The menu: a corn chow­der with cream and fresh chives, then a grilled chicken satay dish on a bed of rocket/arugula.

The soup is sim­plic­ity itself:

Corn Chow­der
(serves 8 with left­overs, and it’s BET­TER cold!)

3 tbsps but­ter
12 ears corn, cut off raw
6 cloves gar­lic, roughly chopped
4 shal­lots, roughly choppped
6 cups chicken broth or stock
1 cup heavy cream
white pep­per to taste
hand­ful chives, roughly chopped

Sim­ply melt the but­ter and throw in the corn, gar­lic and shal­lots and sweat till translu­cent and the corn is warmed through. Add the stock and bring to a high sim­mer for 15 min­utes, then blend with a hand blender till as much of the corn as pos­si­ble is pureed. Pass into another stock­pot through a large-hole sieve, then in a Cuisi­nart blend what’s left behind in the sieve with some milk to get as much as pos­si­ble fine enough to go through the sieve. Reduce the soup slightly by cook­ing over a low heat for a half hour or so. Add cream and pep­per and take off the heat. Just before serv­ing, heat again, and top each bowl with a sprin­kle of chives.

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

Just as I fin­ished this, and Rose­mary put together the satay sauce (but I won’t report on my recipe because it wasn’t com­pletely suc­cess­ful, another ver­sion will fol­low), sev­eral things hap­pened all at once: John real­ized it was time to take Avery to rid­ing, the rain began to fall, and… the power went out. “Well, dinner’s cooked!” Rose­mary laughed, and since it was true, I waved them off to Avery’s les­son and drifted idly through the house in the gath­er­ing rainy dusk, light­ing can­dles, set­ting the table, stir­ring the soup, and indulging in a quiet hour of think­ing about my fam­ily, my friends, scat­tered to the four winds, but soon to be gath­ered around my table, to be fed, to meet each other, laugh and feel cher­ished, I hoped. I sat for a moment in the front door­way with a book and a cock­tail, being lightly sprin­kled with rain, gaz­ing out past Avery’s tree swing (marked with her name, but hardly read­able any­more), to the meadow where turkeys and deer stroll, to the trees beyond which become so incan­des­cently col­or­ful in the fall. The breeze blew rain­drops onto my book and I closed my eyes to feel it on my face, and was happy.

First came Becky, laden with shop­ping bags in the rain. Figs for Rose­mary! A fruit tart and choco­late tart for us, tiny pains au choco­lat and short­breads for Avery, a book for me, a sweater Avery had left behind. In short, her usual bounty, and offered all with her inim­itable Becky smile of total gen­eros­ity, fun-loving and wait­ing for the next adven­ture. And it didn’t take long: the rain was really pelt­ing down in a gray cur­tain of wind and fury when Erik and Shel­ley arrived with… Hastings!

Our dear fos­ter kit­ten from last sum­mer, the tini­est lit­tle fel­low you can imag­ine: now he’s long, and sleek and impres­sive! But with the same tiny scream­ing wail he emit­ted as a lit­tle boy. Shel­ley smiled on us gen­tly as she always does, with her quiet air of enjoy­ment, tinged this time with her antic­i­pa­tion of miss­ing the lit­tle guy when she left him behind. Erik as always stands behind her, if not lit­er­ally, metaphor­i­cally, pro­tect­ing and shield­ing her, seem­ing to sur­round her with sup­port and love. What a joy to see them again. And then in an instant, I saw our car pull up in the dri­ve­way and there, through the dri­ving rain, in flew Rose­mary, John, cry­ing, “We’re soaked and smelling of horses! Beware!” and then Avery, rac­ing to change her clothes (yes, the horsey ones stayed on her bed­room rug till I found them later, her ONLY flaw!) and to take charge of her boy. The reunion between girl and cat was quite wonderful.

The drama! The windy rain, the dark gray skies, the warm light within (the power had come back on!), the soup bub­bling and the cat dash­ing here and there… Becky and Shel­ley took to each other as I knew they would: two gen­tle, gen­er­ous souls with nev­er­the­less a slightly skewed sense of humor or else they wouldn’t have any time for me! How I have come up so lucky with my friends, and lord knows with my mother-in-law, I can­not begin to say. But I take not a moment for granted.

We gath­ered around the table for din­ner, trad­ing crazy sto­ries about trav­els, our chil­dren, our pets, favorite foods, fam­ily tri­als and tribu­la­tions. The old brass church can­dle stand given to us years ago by my friend Livia flick­ered over us all, as moths kamikazied into them… Finally it was time for Becky to run away, to meet her daugh­ter home from Guatemala, for Shel­ley and Erik to brave the high­way, for Hast­ings to set­tle in to his week away from home, heaven for Avery. How dear of them to share him with us, how we appre­ci­ate it. A gor­geous evening.

How heart-wrenching to say good­bye to Becky, for who knows how long. But we have always over­come these sep­a­ra­tions in the past, and the same will hold for the future, with a cou­ple of extra added plane flights to be sure. We hugged an extra cou­ple of times, each hug encom­pass­ing for me so much his­tory and love.

Well, I’ll close tonight (and just con­cen­trate on itch­ing) with my rec­om­men­da­tion of a new blog: it’s Avery’s blog, and it’s ded­i­cated to desserts! Well-written, eru­dite, a spe­cial blend of friend­ship and sweet things: give it a try and con­tribute your desserts to her effort! Lord knows with her sweet-tooth-challenged mother, she needs all the help she can get! You go, Avery. Well done.

Some­times Con­necti­cut is sim­ply too good to be true. This early evening I was dri­ving home from the super­mar­ket (a bag of ice cubes and a tube of cor­ti­sone, which tells you that our hol­i­day is full of cock­tails and bug bites), and I passed a lawn sim­ply COV­ERED with wild turkeys. Seven or eight or ten of them, all in a row, but not a mother and babies. More like a busi­ness meet­ing or a book sign­ing. And they were all gath­ered under… an Amer­i­can flag atop a mail­box, with a red barn in the back­ground. Too, too much.

And lit­tle Kate from across the road, lend­ing her “hi!” and “bye-bye” and her china-blue gaze to all endeav­ors… aren’t she and Avery the most beau­ti­ful pair?

We’ve been ele­vated by our usual sum­mer­time social whirl. Rose­mary has set­tled into her guest room with­out undue cer­e­mony, after arriv­ing late enough to want noth­ing more than a roast beef sand­wich and a look at Avery’s school report, which does make awfully nice bed­time read­ing, I must say. I’ve stopped short of xerox­ing it for ALL fam­ily mem­bers, but you know who you are. Actu­ally, no one. But I will if you ask.

My point being, Avery sim­ply has thrived at her new school. She is so relieved, she says, to have a sum­mer where she’s not antic­i­pat­ing mov­ing, or start­ing exams, or won­der­ing what school she’ll get into, or how it will be. Now she knows all of the above, and can spend her sum­mer in its right­eous pur­suits like tram­polin­ing, think­ing about tram­polin­ing, and announc­ing that she is almost ready to begin trampolining.

Our quiet lives were spiced up last week by the arrival for a late lunch of our old, old (yes, they’re old) friends Craig and Renee, they of long-ago Tribeca days, our first loft when it was still cool to have a loft in Tribeca. And they were seri­ously cool: music pro­duc­ers for com­mer­cials, so Craig had a sound-proofed room (or do I just hope so, after some par­tic­u­larly amorous encounter with him at a din­ner party?! Renee would kill me and then ask ques­tions later), their son Ben was high-school cool, they even had a cool dog, a boxer called Oscar who Avery called “Okker” and heartily feared after get­ting stuck in the ele­va­tor with him, her face just at the level of his mouth.

Renee swears now that her first intro­duc­tion to me involved her admir­ing my stainless-steel coun­ter­tops, when she said, “So con­ve­nient for either cook­ing or gyne­co­log­i­cal exams,” which I wish I remem­bered, but since I had Avery hang­ing from my chest in a Baby Bjorn, I must have been dis­tracted. But for sure, every­thing Renee and Craig ever said was filed, in my mind, under “how I wish I’d said that,” and I sim­ply decided to have them around as much as pos­si­ble to absorb the coolness.

We screamed with laugh­ter the whole of their lunchtime visit, to the point that I wor­ried a bit about Kate’s nap­time across the road! It isn’t just the jokes or the one-liners, it’s the con­stant sparkle of fun in Renee’s eyes, which sparkle any­way just on their own, and Craig’s ador­ing (yes, it’s true) audi­ence for her zany sense of humor… and then, just when you least expect it, he pulls out his iPhone to take a lit­tle video of us all together, “This is Kris­ten, and she cooked this food [moves the cam­era phone to the empty plat­ter that had con­tained tow­ers of moz­zarella and tomato], which doesn’t look like much, but I’m sure it’ll be deli­cious,” then to the stacked empty plates from lunch piled up with cut­lery, “this will be on offer, too, din­ner from last night,” and finally to Renee, who smiled sweetly, then picked up a steak knife, and Craig uttered the most blood-curdling scream! A snuff film on on iPhone, at my pic­nic table. Which is FINE.

Avery tried hard to get Renee inter­ested in her all-time favorite novel (which I have to aver is pretty mar­velous), “The Sil­ver Don­key,” relat­ing its heart-warming tales of WWII brav­ery, sol­dier res­cue, metaphor­i­cal beauty, only to find Renee gaz­ing at her beat­if­i­cally. “I always say, ‘dunkey,’ because why is it ‘munkey’ and not ‘dunkey’?” You must say it aloud your­self to get it. That’s Renee.

But what’s also Renee is that she BROUGHT even more food than I COOKED. “But you’ve come TO lunch,” I protested, as dish after dish appeared from the car. And what’s more, the dar­ling, clever lit­tle con­tain­ers they’re pack­aged in were gifts as well. Cab­bage and meat­ball soup, apple cake (made with oil instead of but­ter so it could be served at a meal with meat!), gefilte fish, tatziki (a gor­geous dip of yogurt and dill and cucum­ber), potato kugel, all the Jew­ish favorites that Renee, who feels as my friend Alyssa feels, that I am a closet Jew, should have at her lunch table. This in addi­tion to the shrimp salad with cel­ery and pep­pers I had made…

Janice’s Cold Sum­mer Shrimp Salad
(serves 6 as a main course for lun­cheon or a late supper)

1 1/2 lb cooked large shrimp, tails removed, cut in thirds
1 1/2 cups cel­ery, chopped fine
1/2 red pep­per, cut fine
tiny bit of shal­lot, minced
1 cup may­on­naise
1 tbsp Worces­ter­shire sauce
squeeze of lemon juice (plus the squeezed bit stirred through the salad)
1 tsp salt
dash Tabasco
hand­ful chopped chives

Serve sur­rounded with endive, sprin­kled with chives, very cold.

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

I had also thought­fully pro­vided tomato moz­zarella tow­ers with pinenuts and lemon zest and basil! But they were all eclipsed by Renee’s million-dollar cook­ies (whose recipe I’ll post, if I get per­mis­sion). Actu­ally I won’t post it, I’ll let Avery do that, as she’s started her own food blog! Strictly desserts, mind you, to fill in the gaps that I can’t fill, due to my sad lack of a sweet tooth. Well done, Avery: it’s beau­ti­fully writ­ten, sim­ply pre­sented, and will pro­vide you with some much-needed sweet treats for sum­mer and beyond.

Well, we laughed our way through the after­noon. John left to fetch his mama from the air­port, and after a bit Craig and Renee insisted they had their own home to go to as well. Avery and I waved them off, wish­ing they could sim­ply move in. Old friends, who remem­ber you from the old days. Who say, “Remem­ber that birth­day party of Avery’s, where all you served was vichys­soise? And… those lit­tle cheese puffs, what were they called?” “Gougeres! Puff Dad­dies!” we all say together, and Renee remem­bers, “That was a recipe from Saveur mag­a­zine,” and I real­ize that my copy of the recipe, back in Lon­don, is the page torn from that very mag­a­zine. Old friends who kindly say, “You haven’t changed at all,” and then point out the under-eye wrin­kles, but say they add char­ac­ter. Which is fine.

There was a brief inter­lude where I cleaned up the kitchen and watched the sun set, and then in swept John and his mom! Tight hugs, “oh, my good­ness, Avery, stand there for a minute and let me see how tall you are!”, bring­ing in suit­cases, set­tling her things in her room, set­tling in the kitchen where we all stood around build­ing impromptu sand­wiches of roast beef, ham, pesto, cheese, red onions. I’d mar­i­nated salmon with gin­ger and gar­lic in case we wanted “din­ner,” but it was soon set aside in the fridge for the much more fes­tive pic­nic. And catch­ing up. And Avery’s magic paper airplanes…

John’s and my ten­nis has been def­i­nitely ele­vated by our new rack­ets! We rushed off in the morn­ing to play a crazy game in hideous humid­ity, and has my face ever been red­der? I think Rose­mary was about to call 911. Typ­i­cal me. Cleaned up, a nice lunch of the salmon from the night before, grilled, and the steamed rice turned instantly into fried rice. Try it with your left­over steamed rice.

Instant Fried Rice
(serves 4)

1 cup bas­mati rice, steamed in a 1 1/2 cups water and set aside
2 tbsps peanut oil
1 tbsp sesame oil
2 cloves gar­lic, minced
hand­ful green onions, minced (includ­ing green parts)
hand­ful pinenuts
2 eggs, beaten
soy sauce to taste

Heat the oils in a heavy skil­let or wok, then quickly fry the gar­lic and green onions. Add the pinenuts and eggs and stir quickly, break­ing up the eggs as they scram­ble. Add the rice and sprin­kle with soy sauce, then stir fry until the rice is warmed through. How easy is that?

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

The rain began just as we fin­ished lunch, and the piano tuner appeared to tune my bar­gain piano that wouldn’t play into a rather expen­sive piano that would… almost.

More on all things piano, plus the return of a cer­tain feline char­ac­ter from our sum­mer world last year… soon!

Big news from Red Gate Farm: our din­ing room, so recently con­verted into a library, has inched even fur­ther up the inte­rior design lad­der and mor­phed into a Music Room! Truly, and here is the pho­to­graph to prove it.

In the inter­ests of full dis­clo­sure, I must aver that the newly-acquired piano pic­tured here is now on the adja­cent wall, with the advice of the tuner extra­or­di­naire who spent the after­noon with us. “Inte­rior walls, only, and NOT in con­tact with any heat source,” he instructed he, and so be it. But I’m get­ting ahead of myself.

I arrived in Con­necti­cut two weeks ago with the def­i­nite dream of find­ing a piano. My mother will be so happy to hear how much I’ve loved get­ting a bit closer to where I was after the hun­dreds of dol­lars my par­ents spent get­ting me edu­cated in the ways of piano play­ing. The hours I prac­ticed! The recitals and sheet music and com­pe­ti­tions (most of which involved me try­ing to get my friend Amy’s brother Mark, on whom I had an enor­mous unre­quited crush, to accom­pany me)… Well, here’s the way it works to get a used piano in Con­necti­cut. To set the com­par­a­tive scene, in Lon­don, in order to get a piano, I ask my friend Becky who’s mov­ing away to sell me hers, and she does, and the Lon­don Piano Mov­ing Com­pany moves it the next day. Let me tell you it’s not that sim­ple in the Nut­meg State.

I began on Craigslist, at John’s advice, and it’s a brave new world out there, I can tell you. In the site for my small area of Con­necti­cut ALONE there were hun­dreds of musi­cal instru­ments for sale, many of them pianos, and I tracked down a fair num­ber, some of whose details were a bit sob-making. “Looks OK, most keys don’t work, no ped­als, really heavy. Move it your­self.” That’s tempt­ing! Finally I emailed six or so peo­ple who had pianos that sounded work­able, and also found a mover in my neck of the woods who was happy to go get any num­ber of the pianos I described to him, from their var­i­ous loca­tions. Steve of Astro Movers and I had sev­eral heart­warm­ing con­ver­sa­tions about my search for a piano, how expen­sive they were, how no one would tell me if they really worked or not, peo­ple were all secre­tive about how many steps up or down it required to reach the piano.

Finally, I had to call Steve and con­fess that my last piano hope sounded very dodgy. “Steve, the guy just says for me to come get it, he’ll give it to me for free, but he doesn’t have any idea if it WORKS or not!” And do you know what Steve said? In a typ­i­cal laconic, easy­go­ing tone, he said, “You know, I have a piano here you could have.” Silence. “You have a WHAT?” “A piano. Beau­ti­ful lit­tle thing, let you have it for… [names an unbe­liev­ably low price], mov­ing included.”

It is not for me to won­der why this piano was not offered to me in any of the many early con­ver­sa­tions I had with Steve. The point was, all I had to do was email all the peo­ple who were try­ing to get me to buy THEIR pianos and say no thank you, and get to the cash machine.

Sadly, not Steve (“he doesn’t come out in the rain,” his col­league explained sim­ply) but three of his com­pa­tri­ots arrived this morn­ing in, it has to be admit­ted, the rain, and deliv­ered a lovely upright piano to my dining-room-turned-library. Well, it’s the Music Room now! We could tell imme­di­ately sev­eral things: it fits per­fectly into our space, it’s a lovely old-fashioned thing that looks quite at home with our belong­ings, and… it was dread­fully out of tune. So this after­noon up turned a chap called Terry, with a bag full of tricks, among them his Ger­man grandfather’s tun­ing fork and a hand­ful of news­pa­per arti­cles about him, an immi­grant who brought his skills over with him to the New World. Also in Terry’s bag was a DVD of his daughter’s ren­di­tion of “Ave Maria” at the Sacred Heart Christ­mas con­cert. “Any­body can see what a big voice she has,” he said, com­pletely unable to con­ceal his enor­mous pride in her. Fur­ther con­ver­sa­tion elicited that his son was a prodigy in the devel­op­men­tal pedi­atrics depart­ment at Yale. Is there any­thing more touch­ing than the white heat of parental devotion?

Terry explained many things about our piano to us, includ­ing things about the length of the strings and there­fore the tons of ten­sion car­ried within them (“right to this solid cast-iron frame here,”) and the try­ing nature of the pads or keys, or some­thing which meant that some num­ber of them could not be meant to play. He was here for three and a half hours, crash­ing through any num­ber of Chopin, Beethoven and Rach­mani­noff pieces to demon­strate his progress, or lack thereof. Many com­ments were uttered sotto voce, with no one really within hear­ing dis­tance as I sliced sir­loin for pier­rade and John installed a shelf in the bath­room and Avery shelled peas, against her will. But he seemed to need to express himself.

Through­out the long, gray, caco­phanous after­noon, the rain fell, the washer and dryer hummed, I sliced meat, made a slaw of red cab­bage, Savoy cab­bage and red pep­pers with a mus­tardy dress­ing, and my first Bear­naise sauce! It’s a bit of trou­ble, but I think there is noth­ing more tempt­ing to serve with beef.

Clas­sic Bear­naise Sauce
(serves 6)

1 stick unsalted (impor­tant!) but­ter (about 120 grams)
1/4 cup each white wine, white wine vine­gar
1 tbsp tar­ragon leaves
2 shal­lots, minced
pinch white pep­per
2 egg yolks
cayenne pep­per
salt

Now, this may sound involved, but it’s really not. For­get all the instruc­tions about dou­ble boil­ers. I never heard of any­thing so silly. You merely need two saucepans of same or nearly same size. First, melt the but­ter JUST to melt­ing, don’t brown, in a microwave if you have one. If not, use a saucepan. Put the melted but­ter in a bowl some­where and wash out the saucepan. In this pan, boil the wine and vine­gar, tar­ragon, shal­lots and pep­per until the liq­uid is reduced by half. Strain this into a bowl and throw away the solids. Now boil some water in a saucepan, rinse out the one you boiled the wine mix­ture in, and pour the strained mix­ture into this sec­ond saucepan. Before you place this on the boil­ing water pan, whisk in the egg yolks. Now place the saucepan on top of the one con­tain­ing boil­ing water and whisk until the the MOMENT the eggs thicken. Take off the heat. Put four ice cubes in the boil­ing water and return the saucepan with the sauce in it to the top of the hot water one, whisk­ing in the melted but­ter VERY grad­u­ally until thick and yel­low and all the but­ter is used up. If at any time the sauce seems to be break­ing up, sim­ply remove from the hot bot­tom saucepan and whisk till smooth.

When all the but­ter is incor­po­rated, add a dash of cayenne pep­per and salt to taste.

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

This sauce is incred­i­bly tasty, a lit­tle goes a long way, and it’s the per­fect accom­pa­ni­ment to beef of any kind. But espe­cially our favorite, pier­rade, with veal and duck (and its gor­geous satay sauce). Anne and David brought Kate across the road in the rain to join us (and Terry the tuner, for half an hour or so as he fin­ished up). So cozy to sit on the din­ing room floor (I did find time today to scrub it, know­ing we’d spend some time down there with a 1-year-old), kind indul­gent Avery offer­ing Kate hats to try on, watch­ing her unique method of loco­mo­tion: hitch­ing her­self with one hand and two bent legs, sur­pris­ingly effective!

Finally Terry could do no more (a fur­ther visit is nec­es­sary for our prob­lem piano child, but he enthused, “a great piano when it’s all said and done,” as all prob­lem chil­dren are, I sup­pose). A fab­u­lous, if fre­netic din­ner, with Dave look­ing on his fam­ily ador­ingly, Anne fetch­ing dropped bananas, rejected rasp­ber­ries, feed­ing her water from a cof­fee cup she found in our crazy kitchen, painted with kit­tens. The fat from the pier­rade spat­tered us all, we passed sauces to and fro, the usual debate ensued: “Is this your duck bite? I for­got my veal and it’s burn­ing…” We man­aged to dis­cuss Obama’s rep­u­ta­tion abroad, Avery’s school, pianos and music in gen­eral… but there is never enough time with them. We fin­ished up with the cab­bage slaw, so crunchy and refresh­ing, and then sadly it was time for the baby to go to bed. How lucky we are in our neigh­bors, I thought, and wanted ridicu­lously to take a pic­ture of them cross­ing the road through the red gate, car­ry­ing their longed-for and so-adored baby, head­ing across to their own white farm­house in the rain. I real­ized that the pho­to­graph I imag­ined was only in my own head… just a snap­shot of a lovely moment, on our road, in our lives, with our children.

I wan­dered around down­stairs when every­one had gone sep­a­rate ways, scrub­bing up the pier­rade stone, admir­ing the piano, curat­ing my refrig­er­a­tor, fold­ing laun­dry, all the lit­tle tasks that make being home so pre­dictable, so repet­i­tive, and there­fore so cozy!

We’ve had more than our fair share of fun lately. Anne and David came also on Sat­ur­day to meet up with Jill, Joel, Jane and Molly: the great encounter of the babies! I think no one was less inter­ested in each other than Molly and Kate. We all oohed and aahed, but truth be told, the babies were MUCH more enthralled with Avery and Jane, who put on their bathing suits and braved the set­ting sun for some fun on the slip ‘n slide. Were any four chil­dren ever more assid­u­ously pho­tographed? I think not! They’re all so pho­to­genic, we think, and we often laugh at us, like a row of paparazzi, doc­u­ment­ing their every move. Irre­sistible, really. That night we feasted on a favorite of mine, although cooked for the first time in America.

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, goats cheese 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.

**********

Now, I real­ize mak­ing this for the first time in Amer­ica, it’s impor­tant to demys­tify the met­rics. Just think: it’s merely equal mea­sures of crab and goats cheese (about a cup of each in the recipe, but I always use more), and basi­cally a stick of but­ter (a bit more for good mea­sure). It’s a lit­tle more than a pint of whip­ping cream, not to worry.

And the pas­try? You know what? Get a scale. You can mea­sure all these things by vol­ume, no doubt, as I’ve done all my life. But at the risk of seem­ing anti-American, it’s heav­enly sim­ple to weigh things and then you KNOW. So much eas­ier to put but­ter on a scale than to slodge it into a mea­sur­ing cup, smash it down, then try to get it out again. And try­ing to remem­ber to use your mea­sur­ing cup for dry ingre­di­ents FIRST so the dry ones won’t stick to the but­ter or cream you just put in the cup? Get a scale.

And before you get your knick­ers in a twist (one of my favorite Eng­lish expres­sions) about tem­per­a­ture, fig­ure to dou­ble the Cel­sius num­ber for Fahren­heit. The legal con­ver­sion is much more com­plex, but dou­bling works.

Sun­day morn­ing found the kitchen immac­u­late as if a party had never hap­pened (trust my orga­ni­za­tional skills if not my poetry), and us in the car on the way to Brook­lyn and a real trip down mem­ory lane. Some­how, when we made our plans to see my fab­u­lous for­mer gallery assis­tant, the amaz­ing pho­tog­ra­pher Rebecca Veit, in her stu­dio in Brook­lyn Heights, it didn’t really occur to us that we’d be tak­ing a vir­tual tour of Places John Has Lived in order to get there.

My good­ness, the mem­o­ries came flood­ing back. His first brown­stone in 1987 on Pres­i­dent Street, sur­rounded by Ital­ian fam­i­lies who planted Nativ­ity scenes in their gar­dens as if they were rhodo­den­rons… I remem­ber arriv­ing there to visit dur­ing his sec­ond year at Gold­man Sachs, I a first-year grad­u­ate stu­dent on the run from my the­sis… Then the rather fab, mod­ern loft on Scher­mer­horn Street, where I helped him move in and cook Szechuan chicken and watch “Flash­dance”! Then finally a charm­ing but dodgy apart­ment on Atlantic Avenue (how dishy that block has become now, all home decor and antiquey)… with the owner’s huge smelly black labrador occu­py­ing the filthy walkup steps… and the owner’s nightly rit­ual say­ing good­night to him (fuelled, John recalls, by the owner’s copi­ous inges­tion of beer). “Blackie, I love you. Blackie, you’re my life.”

How can so many years have flown by? I think of those times with enor­mous nos­tal­gia: the glamor of John’s job, my enrap­ture­ment with Decon­struc­tion, Post-Structuralism, fem­i­nist art his­tor­i­cal the­ory, dress­ing the part all in black, about as thin as a splin­ter. But you know what? We are much hap­pier now. I have to be hon­est and remem­ber that as much fun as those days sound in mem­ory, we argued all the time! About John’s work sched­ule, about my lack of money, about what we would do when and with whom. Either there was more to argue about or we just invented it! With the arrival of Avery there has seemed very lit­tle to argue about. We just sort of float through the days feel­ing lucky we all have each other, as sappy as that sounds.

But it was huge fun to do The Grand Tour, and show Avery all the sights. She man­i­fests a polite and pro­found lack of belief that we were ever boyfriend and girl­friend, anx­iously nego­ti­at­ing our pas­sion­ate long-distance romance! Well, more power to her. The next big romance will be hers, and it will be very intrigu­ing to see what form it takes.

From there we headed to Rebecca’s place, which she shares with her wildly cre­ative boyfriend Mason, he of the splen­didly quirky and addic­tive blog “Daily Rou­tines,” which has now hap­pily been sus­pended because it’s com­ing out as a book next year! It’s all about the daily rou­tines of cre­ative peo­ple (I count it as a mat­ter of mere tim­ing that he did not seek to inter­view moi). We did not get to meet Mason as he was (his daily rou­tine) at the library, but it was won­der­ful to see Rebecca. She is a mys­te­ri­ous, dark-horseish per­son, with hid­den depths that pop up now and then in con­ver­sa­tion, and fully in her pho­tog­ra­phy. With Rebecca, there’s a curi­ous anom­aly of the daily/everyday being quite full of mys­tery, and yet enor­mously mys­te­ri­ous things being pre­sented as quite every­day and com­mon­place. Through it all her dark eyes sparkle and her dark curls bob: a truly insou­ciant per­son who I’ve missed more than I let myself real­ize. Ah, well, we’re now in the proud pos­ses­sion of two of her pho­tographs which, when we hang them, I’ll show you. What a plea­sure to see her, and to re-introduce Avery to her. Fully a third of Avery’s life has gone by since she saw Rebecca last, what a thing. Their hug was much more on a level than it was the last time they met.

Then it was on to Tribeca, another tour back into time (we moved away nearly four years ago). But you know what? With my best friend Alyssa as our guide, there is never room for sen­ti­ment (we save that for our post-visit emails which are pos­i­tively tear-making). We marched off to Gig­ino, our old favorite pizze­ria in the nabe, where Avery aston­ished me by remem­ber­ing that every Wednes­day I took her out of school and we had lunch there! How on earth does she remem­ber that? The old pizza bianca with ricotta tasted just like those Wednes­days, when I had a much smaller daugh­ter in tow, one who wanted to hold my hand when cross­ing the street. What won­der­ful after­noons those were, and how I cher­ished all my school vol­un­teer jobs that allowed me to fol­low her back, walk in the doors with her, and keep my eye on her all the time.

Of course fol­low­ing us through our tour of the much-changed and yet still-wonderful Tribeca were count­less ter­ri­ble mem­o­ries of Sep­tem­ber 11, which I find myself think­ing of less and less. But sur­rounded by the past-saturated build­ings, the street cor­ner where I was stand­ing when the first plane flew over­head, the restau­rants who gen­er­ously fed the fire­men, the cor­ners where count­less news trucks were parked, the school where I ran to fetch Avery when it hap­pened, the sand­box that had to be emp­tied by work­ers with haz­mat gear before the chil­dren could play there again… so many mem­o­ries came flood­ing back. One of the won­der­ful, unspo­ken things about my friend­ship with Alyssa is that all these things are in our minds, as we stroll along in the unbro­ken sun­shine, pass­ing the street where once, in a cold Sep­tem­ber rain after that awful day, she told me she was expect­ing Elliot… We never dis­cuss these things, but the fact that we went through them together, scared stiff and yet still stand­ing, are part of the glue that binds us.

It was so bloody hot on Sun­day! We sweated our way, with Steve and Elliot, on a tour of the new build­ings, the real estate that’s switched hands and for how much (the never-ending pas­sion of any true New Yorker, how­ever trans­planted across the pond), gal­leries that have closed (here’s mine, now a LIN­GERIE store! how we laughed, the cul­ture replaced by crotch­less panties, ah well, we know which one made enough money to pay the rent)… restau­rant spaces thrice changed over, and yet some dear places still the same: hap­pily for John’s wal­let, Avery’s beloved Shoofly shoe store was closed for Sun­day! The child is def­i­nitely a shoe horse.

The sin­gle best addi­tion to the hood? Whole Foods. I came away with sim­ply the best salmon ever, and thus was hatched:

Grilled Salmon Teriyaki
(serves 4)

4 fil­lets salmon
1-inch knob gin­ger, grated
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
hand­ful chives, loosely chopped
zest of 1/2 lemon or lime
driz­zle sesame oil
gen­er­ous driz­zle soy sauce

Let all these ingre­di­ents rest together on a plat­ter till the fish comes to room tem­per­a­ture. Then grill or bake in a very hot oven (425F, 220C) for four min­utes, then turn over and cook for a fur­ther four min­utes. Sim­ply (and I mean that) irre­sistible. So light, so savory.

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

I stayed up very late Sun­day night, think­ing of all we had seen, done, felt, thought… One of the great and ter­ri­ble things about mov­ing far away is com­ing home, to find that as happy and secure as we are in our lives in Lon­don, there is an alter­nate life here that pulls at us, that was won­der­fully warm and sat­is­fy­ing when we were here, and that is always here to come home to. It’s impor­tant not to dwell on the past, though, as hard as that is: not to imag­ine myself back where an after­noon with Alyssa was a daily thing, not an oppor­tu­nity to sched­ule on a cal­en­dar, look for­ward to for months, cher­ish for a cou­ple of hours. Every­thing changes! It’s the intense joy of sev­eral lives, each of which deserved liv­ing and would be nice to have run­ning, on sev­eral chan­nels, all the time.

Mon­day we recov­ered with a quiet day while John gar­dened to obses­sive smelli­ness, bless his heart, Avery and I went to the library, the book­store, then spent a lazy time on her tram­po­line, then to a rid­ing les­son (more nos­tal­gia think­ing back to her show­ing days on the New Jer­sey cir­cuit), a rough game of ten­nis and a quick freez­ing swim in our lovely grotty munic­i­pal pool. Today the rumors of storms came true, and tomor­row, who knows? Vis­i­tors from New York for lunch, more nos­tal­gia as we have not seen them since Avery was a baby! And best of all, Rose­mary! Here for her sum­mer visit. How lucky are we… her room is set­tled with the tra­di­tional barn-red cov­er­let on the bed, the old red rug on the floor, a pic­ture of John’s dad, Scotch in hand, on the bed­side table, a pile of tempt­ing books care­fully cho­sen from our laden shelves, a heavy brass whale to weight them down, a new green table lamp (will she notice? we’ll see)… More fun in store.

Let’s see, tomor­row brings the close of Camp Kris­ten, or more fairly Camp Red Gate Farm, since John has been at least as active a coun­selor as I have been. We’ll have to take Anna and Ellie home in the after­noon, so so sadly, as our house­hold could very hap­pily encom­pass three girls (or as Avery points out, THESE three girls) all the time. What fun we’ve had: pool, slip ‘n slide, tram­po­line, shop­ping trips, and quite the most fantab­u­lous (or “fab­u­lis­tic”, we can’t decide) din­ner that ever hit the Camp: pier­rade. And an unex­pected and quite divine addi­tion to the tra­di­tional menu of sir­loin and duck: VEAL! It turns out to be the Meat of Choice for the camp girls, so two nights in a row found me slav­ing over the thin-slicing rou­tine… such a plea­sure, then, to see so much pro­tein digested by such ener­getic girls. And in addi­tion to the usual mus­tard accom­pa­ni­ment, there was a sur­pris­ingly pop­u­lar sec­ond sauce:

Satay Sauce
(serves 12)

1 10 ounce can coconut milk
1/2 cup crunchy peanut but­ter
1/2 small onion, grated
1 table­spoon dark soy sauce
2 tea­spoons brown sugar
1/2 tea­spoon red pep­per flakes

Boil all ingre­di­ents at a low boil for three min­utes, then set aside to cool. PER­FECT for duck pier­rade.

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

Mostly what we have done for the past week is revel in what every at-home par­ent will rec­og­nize as the self­ish lux­ury of bore­dom with an at-home child, or three. Of course it’s a bore! Their games are of no inter­est to me, or to John, their con­ver­sa­tion is often noth­ing that stirs a heart­beat. But we lux­u­ri­ate in the total gift of that bore­dom, the heart-warming love­li­ness of that long-term invest­ment of hav­ing this per­son, or peo­ple in our life, for such a short por­tion of ours. Adding a cou­ple of extra girls to it all only enhances the fun. In such a short time we will be of no inter­est to them! Not even as trans­porta­tion. The years when they ask inter­minably, “Mommy, Daddy, lis­ten to this,” are so painfully short that we’re happy to live through the “But that’s so bor­ing!” Thank good­ness they want to tell us.

Today under a threat­en­ing sky, we took Ellie with us to our ten­nis game, leav­ing Avery and Anna alone for a nice period of time just on their own. Ellie played, served (“I’m much bet­ter at serv­ing than hit­ting!”), and finally earned some spend­ing money as “Ball Girl,” serv­ing up balls to each of us, cor­ralling all the stray balls as we played. The clouds gath­ered, how­ever, and just as we were stop­ping play, and I was men­tally review­ing the con­tents of my larder so as to know what to feed my charges, the heav­ens opened! We hud­dled at home, and I must say I adore the vista from my kitchen win­dow as the rain pelts down. Very cozy.

Off to Dan­bury to shop after­ward: fon­due forks for pier­rade, a new lamp for the new library, a shelf to hold all our bath­room bits and pieces, train­ers and san­dals for Avery, and just plain candy for the other campers: sorry, Becky, to have let them have so much, but what is one lone camp coun­selor to do?

Oh, and the girls had a lovely, if not very chal­leng­ing rid­ing les­son, on the most per­fect after­noon ever. Deb the instruc­tor was under­stand­ably con­ser­v­a­tive about let­ting Anna and Ellie do things she wasn’t sure they could do, but let Avery jump a bit, which seemed unfair. We were all relieved it didn’t go on too long, and I was happy to sign Avery up for six lessons for the next six weeks. Dusty, allergy-making, but a gor­geous after­noon in the sun, and as Becky said later, “Any time spent on a horse is bet­ter than time NOT spent on a horse.” True enough.

When we got home and were hav­ing din­ner, one dish being fresh-shelled peas, I said, “I don’t know how the expres­sion ‘like peas in a pod’ ever came to be. There are never any two peas alike, which you’ll find if you shell them!” And Ellie spoke up imme­di­ately, bring­ing tears to my eyes. “But Miss Kris­ten, that expres­sion doesn’t mean the peas are ALIKE. It means they are CLOSE. Like, Anna, Avery and me.” She ges­tured along the table to encom­pass the two older girls on either side of her, and I imag­ined the lov­ing secu­rity she must feel, so safe between them. What a lovely thing.

This morn­ing dawned bright and fair and with the promise of MANY tasks undone: before I could blink I had scaled the lovely plants left for us by Rollie’s wife Judy, had jumped into the car with Avery and gone to the bak­ery for dough­nuts for the upcom­ing Three-Girl Camp, thence to the Town Hall to pay our vehi­cle tax, thence to the New Town Hall to get our South­bury Com­mu­nity Pool Sum­mer Pass, the lam­i­nated pos­ses­sion of which always spells Real Sum­mer to me. Thence to Starchak’s Farm Stand for Avery’s sum­mer favorite, black plums, and red pep­pers, peaches, white onions, local blue­ber­ries. Thence to the super­mar­ket for every­thing else needed for a camp like sausages, mel­ons, pasta, milk, you name it. The Gap hap­pened to be next door, so Avery’s sum­mer wardrobe was accom­plished in about ten min­utes in a humon­gous sale. She’s in that funny space between the old­est Gap Kids size and the small­est Ladies’ Gap, but we man­aged to find plenty of bits and pieces to kit her out for the fore­see­able growth spurt.

Home to kiss John good luck for his mas­sive den­tist appoint­ment, to drop off all our pur­chases, I fried a quick egg to get me through the next two hours in a car, and off we were to Green­wich, to find Avery’ camp-mates Anna and Ellie! A lightning-fast kiss for their mom Becky and sis­ter Ash­ley who is, in her inim­itably ele­gant teenage way, off for a trip to Guatemala tomor­row… such drama! I could hap­pily kiss Becky every day of the week, and used to in the old, golden days in Lon­don, so once a Mon­day worked for me. Packed the girls up, and off back home.

A sand­wich for lunch, a trip to the local book­store for mag­a­zines for the pool, and we thought we were off there when up popped John, in Quincy! Who, dare you ask, is Quincy? Our 1967 Land Rover, of course, who reg­u­larly starts up with more reli­a­bil­ity than our 1999 VW sta­tion wagon, but there you go. John home from the den­tist early and with a burn­ing desire to play ten­nis. So off we went, to drop the girls at the pool with their hot new sum­mer pass, and we to play at the adja­cent courts (lovely to hear “Avery” occa­sion­ally drift across the inter­ven­ing pine-scented lawn). We played until clouds made the air entirely too cold for three urban chicks to tol­er­ate, so up they came to the courts for snack money and to sit out the cloud cover in the car. “Isn’t any­body going to swim with me?” I wailed after our ten­nis game (much improved by sev­eral new trys at rack­ets, so hard to decide). I got Avery and Ellie, and Anna went home with John to get an early start on their tram­po­line routine.

A quick stop at the pool, then, to dive and swim and remem­ber, as I do each sum­mer, how the green of the pine trees against the blue of the sky reminds me of our old sum­mers in Maine… why is that? A sub­lim­i­nal con­nec­tion, so pow­er­ful and sweet, of old sum­mer times in a far­away island.

Home via the super­mar­ket where I had to sup­ple­ment my ear­lier trip with the requested riga­toni for my vodka sauce! The per­fect recipe for sev­eral starv­ing girls.

Riga­toni alla Vodka
(serves six with leftovers)

1 lb dried riga­toni
2 tbsps olive oil
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 white onion, minced
gen­er­ous splash vodka
2 tbsps Ital­ian sea­son­ing
1 large (larger than soup-size) can whole Ital­ian plum toma­toes
1/2 cup light cream

Boil the pasta. In the mean­time, saute the gar­lic and onions in the olive oil. When soft, add the vodka and cook high for two min­utes. Add the Ital­ian sea­son­ing and mix well. If you like smooth sauce, puree the toma­toes in your food proces­sor and add to the gar­lic mix­ture and cook till warmed through. If you like chunky sauce, add the toma­toes plain to the gar­lic mix and stir often over a medium heat till heated through.

When pasta is cooked through (10 minutes-ish), drain well and coat with sauce. Serve with grated pecorino or parme­san cheese.

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

This is so sim­ple, so inex­pen­sive and so lovely that you’ll for­get how much you love it till your child begs on bended knee.

Tomor­row will depend upon the weather. Quassy Amuse­ment Park if the fates smile well on the girls (and a bit cru­elly on me? to be hon­est?) or an after­noon at home with the tram­po­line and the library of books, if it rains?

But mostly it has been such heaven to have three of our favorite girls (granted, one of them I gave birth to) with us, when we know that sep­a­ra­tion is in the off­ing, as they move entirely too far away. Anna and Ellie have been there for years for all my cook­ing, all Avery’s par­ties, all John’s silly jokes, count­less rides in our now-gone con­vert­ible in Lon­don, end­less rides on num­ber­less ponies (with emer­gency shared gear, no doubt) and their mother Becky my con­stant com­pan­ion for all of the above plus mind­less gro­cery shop­ping, cof­fee drink­ing, errand run­ning love­li­ness. Their pres­ence and their charm marks out one of the most grace­ful peri­ods in my whole life: our early time in Lon­don when a lonely new­comer (me) was picked up by a gra­cious, sophis­ti­cated world trav­eler (Becky) and we spent three happy years together just enjoy­ing it all, watch­ing our girls grow up through one of the most intensely changeling-ish peri­ods (how long is a piece of string?), with each other’s always empa­thetic com­pany to share the moments. Thank you, Becky, for all of that, and for the loan of your sweet girls this week.

What lux­ury, on the one hand, this week has been with no more press­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties than to set­tle in to Red Gate Farm, fix the lit­tle bits and pieces that have gone astray in our six months’ absence. But how lonely on the other hand, with no Avery! We’re look­ing for­ward to get­ting her back tomor­row, and then Mon­day we’ll have her part­ners in crime as well, Anna and Ellie, to wreak havoc and eat us out of house and home, I hope.

We have turned quite the Home Improve­ment Team, with John wak­ing up super early filled with ideas on how we can try to stem the tide of dis­in­te­gra­tion here, and gen­er­ally make things more liv­able. To that end, we spent all of Mon­day switch­ing the din­ing room and entrance halls with each other. Why have we spent all these years with the din­ing table and all its many chairs (and there­fore guests) crammed into the small­est room in the house, just because it was pre­sented to us as the “din­ing room”? And equally, why did we leave the largest room in the house as the entry way, used only for the Christ­mas tree, since every­one who comes over comes in the back door? It was but the work of a moment (well, a back-breaking day) to swap them around, pure and simple.

But as Oscar Wilde said, things are never pure, and rarely sim­ple, so in point of fact it was a mas­sive under­tak­ing. The din­ing table would not, of course, fit through the door­way between the din­ing room and the entrance hall and so had to be car­ried out the back door, down the ter­race steps and all the way around the house. Keep in mind, now, that I’m 5’6″, my stal­wart hus­band is 6’2″. We are not, there­fore, the best of part­ners to be car­ry­ing enor­mously heavy fur­ni­ture around half of the state of Con­necti­cut. “Keep your end up! Don’t let the leg scratch the door­way! Come around the cor­ner a bit faster!” he adjured me, and I was well tempted to point out that the world was filled with many wives who would refuse point-blank to play Happy Movers, but I held my tongue, and we got it done.

Equally, how­somever, the Shaker desk that we thought would look so much nicer in the dining-room-turned-library would not… fit through the door­way, so around the house we went again. We decided that in order to count as a library, the room needed more book­shelves, and if there is one thing this crazy house has, it’s book­shelves and the books to go in them, so back to the nasty room off the kitchen that we’ve always euphemisti­cally referred to as the “pantry,” con­tain­ing as it does the mice-eaten rem­nants of pack­ets of wild rice, flour and crack­ers from pre­vi­ous sea­sons. In that room were lan­guish­ing a gor­geous book­shelf from Scott Jor­dan, fur­ni­ture pur­veyor to our new­ly­wed days in SoHo, and a Vic­to­rian shelf from much the same period in our lives, dusty and neglected both of them.

Out they came, we man­aged to throw away nearly every­thing that had lived on their sur­faces, I wiped them down with fur­ni­ture pol­ish (and a tooth­brush for the curlicued carved orna­men­ta­tion on the Vic­to­rian piece!), and we car­ried them (through the door­way, bless their leg­less hearts!) through to the newly-arranged rooms. And then, my friends, the real work began.

Because guess what’s in the big red barn? In addi­tion to bats and Rollie’s second-hand trac­tor parts and the shut­ters that should adorn our house? Books, my dears, hun­dreds and hun­dreds of books that for some rea­son we left here dur­ing the big move to Lon­don. I made the exec­u­tive deci­sion to leave my art his­tor­i­cal past behind me, and so I marked out dozens of boxes, imper­fectly labelled to be sure, as “art his­tory books,” and the long-suffering movers sim­ply dumped them in the barn, where­upon we cov­ered them with big blue tarps and looked upon them no more.

Well, Mon­day was their big come­back day. I dug into box after box after box, dis­cov­er­ing many trea­sures of fic­tion, Avery’s pic­ture books that some­how hadn’t made it to cousin Jane’s book­shelf, cook­books and biogra­phies, and finally, yes, some art his­tory. All told, I car­ried in about 300 books, dis­trib­ut­ing them in that Quixotic way all book col­lec­tors will under­stand: not accord­ing to sub­ject but accord­ing to how tall they are. For this rea­son “Great Paint­ings From the Her­mitage” rubs shoul­ders with “Mor­ro­can Bar­be­cue” and “Amelia Earhart’s Adven­tures.” No Dewey Dec­i­mal Sys­tem for me, that’s for sure. But it’s all col­or­ful and pretty and there’s noth­ing to bring back mem­o­ries like shelves full of beloved books. I even found my under­grad­u­ate the­sis, “Michelangel’s Neo­pla­tonic Sculp­ture and Poetry”! What on earth was it doing in my big red barn?

Well, that was the early part of our week. Every­thing has taken on that newish feel­ing, as objects do when you move them out of their accus­tomed places. Art from my old gallery that we had just propped up on flat sur­faces got hung on the walls, mer­cury glass can­dle­sticks that had become invis­i­ble on a desk here or man­tel­piece there were put in new places and sud­denly shone. It’s all really lovely, and I have the sore mus­cles and bruises march­ing up and down my inner arms to show for it. And guess what: the barn is STILL full of books. I didn’t even scratch the sur­face. We found one more book­shelf out there, but with­out the shelves or the pegs to lay them on. Hmmm. Food for thought.

This project com­pletely exceeded my inter­est in home dec­o­rat­ing, so we moved on to other things, like greet­ing our dear neigh­bors Kon­nie and Mark, here to deal with the horses they board in our back meadow. At some point they’ll mosey over with their nearly four-year-old daugh­ter Stephanie, so I’d bet­ter get some cook­ies and be ready. And just as I was get­ting my baby-back ribs under some bar­be­cue sauce and the corn on the cob OFF the cob and under some cream and gar­lic, Jill, Joel, Jane and Molly arrived! Jill and Joel were as hand­some and chip­per as ever, Jane as full of con­ver­sa­tion and bounce, but lit­tle Molly has been com­pletely trans­formed from slightly wob­bly Christ­mas baby to a bun­dle of real per­son: bright eyes and placid gur­gling, com­pletely happy and con­tent. She allowed me to carry her around, but she saved her real enthu­si­asm for John, who always looks much taller and big­ger all around when he holds a baby.

Jane enter­tained us all with the recount­ing of sev­eral intri­cate pic­ture book plots, we all tucked into bar­be­cued ribs and scal­loped corn, and gen­er­ally basked in the lux­ury of being reunited. It’s always the same, every sum­mer: stand­ing the chil­dren up care­fully in the door­way to the laun­dry room to put the lat­est mea­sur­ing marks up: this sum­mer Avery has grown two inches since Christ­mas, and Jane nearly as much. I sug­gested we prop Molly up for her first mea­sur­ing, but I don’t think any­one lis­tened to me.

The next day brought us the first visit and ram­bling account of local events from Farmer Rol­lie, pulling up in his bat­tered blue Ford truck, smil­ing on us benev­o­lently, declin­ing to shake hands because he’d got his fin­ger­nail torn off the night before by a “cow who’d gone down.” “She whipped her head around and caught me, just like that, so it was off to the emer­gency room…” We are now com­pletely caught up on South­bury gos­sip, of the sort, that is, that inter­ests Rol­lie, namely second-hand farm equip­ment and its pric­ing meth­ods. He reported glee­fully to John, “Got some really good milk­ing equip­ment last week, didn’t cost me more than 10 cents on the dol­lar, because I got it from a local guy who got arrested for run­ning a crys­tal meth lab.”

Life has not been with­out its typ­i­cal Con­necti­cut encoun­ters, to be sure. It’s hard to define, but there is such a thing as a Typ­i­cal Con­necti­cut Encounter, espe­cially with a mem­ber of the sales com­mu­nity. Finally exas­per­ated beyond tol­er­ance by our drip­ping kitchen tap, we took our­selves off to the ven­er­a­ble Allen’s Plumb­ing in nearby Sey­mour. Defec­tive cylin­der in hand, Pete behind the counter turned the pages of the cylin­der hand­book with a well-licked thumb and motioned to a pile of flu­o­res­cent papers to his right. “Fill one of those out, if you have a mind to,” and we picked up the “Entry for Free and Dis­count Propane Con­test.” Hmm. “What if I didn’t want any propane, but I won the con­test. What else would you give me?” John asks. “But you DO want propane, we have a propane grill,” I object on the grounds of truth­ful­ness, and John replies placidly, “I’m just ask­ing. What else could I have? How about this Dis­ney key­chain?” “Don’t know as we could do that, Disney’s my nick­name,” says Pete equally placidly. “Now, we could do you for some of this here Nat­ural All-Purpose Cleaner.” “How about Squidge-Free Drain Unclog­ger?” John per­sists. Pete con­sid­ers, then shakes his head. “Don’t think that’s included.”

As we drove home along the old Oxford Road, John laughed sud­denly. “Lookee over there, there’s a cop parked by the side of the road, with an actual Dunkin Donut and a cup of cof­fee. That’s what we come home for.”

And then there are the inevitable strip malls lin­ing the road, count­less nail salons and pack­age liquor stores, pizze­rias and mort­gage bro­kers, piano tuners and day-care cen­ters. But my favorite is the lit­tle series of shops with “Inter­nal Med­i­cine” sand­wiched between “Grand Prix Cig­ars” and “Pets ‘n More.” I just don’t think I’d be com­fort­able hav­ing my kid­neys exam­ined in between peo­ple pric­ing out sto­gies and clump­ing cat lit­ter, call me a snob.

Being home for the sum­mer always arouses in me a latent junk-foodie. I fill the cup­board with Dori­tos and Chee­tos, the freezer with some sort of shred­ded pota­toes that I am con­vinced, each sum­mer, will be just as good as the hashed browns at the nearby Lau­rel Diner (but they never are, prob­a­bly because I don’t cook them with a pound of but­ter each time). But this sum­mer I drew the line at one of my child­hood favorites, because it’s always so dis­ap­point­ing: Rice Pilaf, in a boil-in-the-bag. Things boiled in bags were a sta­ple of my mother’s kitchen when I was a child, and the sight of the lit­tle Birds-Eye boxes in the freezer sec­tion always sends me into a mild nos­tal­gic frenzy. But some­how the Shoepeg White Corn in But­ter Sauce and yes, the Rice Pilaf With Mush­rooms and Green Beans never taste as yummy as I remem­ber them. So this sum­mer I decided to make my own. And you know what? It’s just as good as I remembered.

Rice Pilaf with Mush­rooms, Green Beans and Gar­lic
(serves 4 as a side dish)

1 cup mixed white grain and wild rice
2 cups chicken broth
3 tbsps but­ter
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
6 white mush­rooms, chopped roughly
1 cup green beans, sliced roughly
sea­son­ing to taste

Sim­ply steam the rice care­fully (do not boil dry!) in the broth in a cov­ered saucepan for 50 min­utes. Then take off the heat, still with the lid on, and leave aside while you saute the gar­lic, mush­rooms and green beans in the but­ter. Then toss all together, salt and pep­per to taste. LOVELY.

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

With this we grilled some mar­vel­lously fresh tuna steaks, mar­i­nated as I’ve described before in every­thing under the sun: chives, gar­lic, cilantro, sesame oil, lime zest, you name it. I couldn’t find any lemon­grass here, so I sub­sti­tuted even more lime zest than my orig­i­nal recipe called for. And for lunch the next day? The tuna salad of your life, quite sim­ply the most lux­u­ri­ous tuna salad you will ever have.

Grilled Tuna Salad
(serves 4 as a lun­cheon dish)

2 grilled (left­over!) tuna steaks
2 tbsps may­on­naise
1 tbsp chili sauce
2 stalks cel­ery, split in three and minced
1 small cucum­ber, deseeded and sliced thin
1/2 red onion, minced
juice if 1/2 lime or lemon
fresh ground pepper

Pull the tuna apart into bite-size pieces with your hands, or I sup­pose you could cut it with a knife if you were feel­ing all neat and tidy. Then gen­tly mix all the other ingre­di­ents with the tuna, and serve with toast or Triscuits or Ryvita, and a sliced avo­cado on the side.

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

Well, our ter­race has been enlivened with sev­eral flow­er­ing plants in bas­kets, deliv­ered by Rol­lie, along with a blue­berry pound cake from his wife Judy, which I promptly put in the freezer to be part of the menu at Camp Avery next week, when we have three lit­tle girls to feed. John was tak­ing a nap when Rol­lie arrived, so we sat together on the stones of the ter­race, look­ing out over the peace­ful after­noon land­scape, some­times chat­ting, some­times silent. I enquired sternly if he had been tak­ing proper care of his injured fin­ger and he allowed as how he’d soaked it the night before and taken off all the dress­ings, which I’m sure the hos­pi­tal staff did not intend him to do. Finally he said, “Well, I’d bet­ter mosey along, although if the boys catch sight of me they’ll have a whole list of stuff I should do, so maybe I’d bet­ter not go home…”

This after­noon will bring, we hope, the deliv­ery of a whole batch of ten­nis rack­ets from an inter­net scheme: you get to try out a whole lot of them, and just send back the ones you don’t want! Since I’ve become rather a bet­ter ten­nis player than I was last sum­mer (as in, I don’t com­pletely suck all the time), John feels I deserve a bet­ter racket than the one I’ve cur­rently got, which has a nasty habit of sort of grab­bing at the ball and send­ing it all over king­dom come. Yes­ter­day we actu­ally played twice, feel­ing ambi­tious! We arrived in the early evening for our sec­ond game and there, slightly awk­wardly for me, was Val, my teacher of last sum­mer, who in com­par­i­son with Wacky Rocco in Lon­don sim­ply did not teach me any­thing. I had won­dered what I would say when I saw Val, since I haven’t signed up for lessons this sum­mer, but I soon saw I had no rea­son for qualms. Fully the entire female pop­u­la­tion under 45 of my lit­tle town lined them­selves up for an enor­mous group les­son! All high­lighted blondes of a cer­tain age, dressed in fancy lit­tle out­fits (I sim­ply must rise above my bor­ing shorts and t-shirts!), bran­dish­ing fancy rack­ets and toss­ing their hair: Val won’t miss me at all!

Well. John’s stub­ble is length­en­ing, my inter­est in makeup is dwin­dling, the num­ber of corn­cobs in my rub­bish is pil­ing up: it’s sum­mer vaca­tion. The barn is red, the goldfinches golden, Avery has been kid­napped by her best friend, the tiger lilies in the front yard are orange, the lawn guys have arrived with their earplugs and sun­tans, we’ve arrived.

We arrived, in fact, on Sat­ur­day evening to the blue skies and sun­set col­ors of a New Jer­sey Fourth of July, and to a shower of over­whelm­ing mem­o­ries. Twenty years ago, as a nearly-married girl of 24, I moved to Maple­wood, New Jer­sey to plan my wed­ding and set­tle down for a life­time of mar­ried bliss. My first step in this direc­tion was to enter the book­shop of my small town and intro­duce myself to the girl behind the counter. She was none other than Livia, a per­son whose smile and meet­ing of the eyes was per­fect magic. I fell in love (not at all awk­wardly, since my almost-married state could def­i­nitely encom­pass falling in love with just one more per­son), and we made fast friends within an instant. Livia and her mother, the effort­lessly ele­gant and time­lessly adorable Jan­ice, became our con­stant com­pan­ions for the fol­low­ing year. And then… John was trans­ferred to Lon­don. Eleven months after we’d spent all our time cement­ing our friend­ship, we were… gone.

And yet such was our mutual admi­ra­tion soci­ety that we have remained the most devoted of friends through the last 20 years. Livia came to us in Lon­don, we came to them every sum­mer when we came home from Eng­land, we spent count­less week­ends with them after we returned to live in New York. I remem­ber well the evening din­ner party with them when I was just hours from giv­ing birth to Avery, and the pho­to­graph of John cradling a giant piece of quartz from Livvy’s col­lec­tion that she reck­oned was about the size our baby would be when born… her gift of a mono­grammed ster­ling sil­ver cig­a­rette case for Avery upon her birth was the most, let’s see, char­ac­ter­is­tic gift of all Avery received.

In the inter­ven­ing years, we have had marathon phone calls from Lon­don to New Jer­sey, fran­ti­cally intense vis­its on our returns home, a snowy din­ner out at an Indian restau­rant in Tribeca, the odd snatched din­ner at their house, an unfor­get­table mil­len­nium house party in 1999… and finally a ter­ri­ble, encom­pass­ingly lov­ing arms-opening ges­ture to us in the days after we escaped our expe­ri­ences of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001. Our days there recov­er­ing from what we had been through will never be forgotten.

And through it all, many, many Fourths of July together, on the park hills of South Orange with glow-in-the-dark neck­laces strung around Avery’s sweaty lit­tle girl neck, she don­ning a white dress with smock­ing of an Amer­i­can flag for YEARS until she could scarcely breathe in it!

And so our arrival on Sat­ur­day night was, for me, sim­ply steeped in love and mem­o­ries. Impos­si­ble to live up to and yet, because they are who they are, their wel­come to us sur­passed any­thing we had ever had before. “Noth­ing ever changes here,” Livia said placidly, pulling us into the white, white kitchen of the 1920s stone house. A glass of old Scotch, exchange of gifts, end­less tale-telling, then a rush out to see fire­works… and back for the dish I had so hoped I would get: Janice’s pink gaz­pa­cho! Ice cold, flecked with roasted almonds and per­me­ated with the per­fume of cumin… We remem­bered the old days of try­ing to decide what Avery would call Jan­ice, when she was a tiny tot, and the agree­ment upon “Jan­ice­mommy,” because for ages Avery could not seem to dis­tin­guish between “Jan­ice” and “Mommy.” I couldn’t have been happier.

Can­dle­light both tall and in votives, Janice’s grand­daugh­ter Anas­ta­sia there in all her 25-year-old glory, inclin­ing her head grace­fully when we real­ized that she was the age Avery is NOW, when Avery was born. How felic­i­tous, how delight­ful! She who taught us to sing “Over in Kil­lar­ney,” to com­fort new­born Baby Avery, and we still sing it to her every night.

Fol­low­ing the gaz­pa­cho was the most sub­lime cold shrimp salad, whose recipe I must share with you here:

Janice’s Cold Sum­mer Shrimp Salad
(serves 6 as a main course for lun­cheon or a late supper)

1 1/2 lb cooked large shrimp, tails removed, cut in thirds
1 1/2 cups cel­ery, chopped fine
1/2 red pep­per, cut fine
tiny bit of shal­lot, minced
1 cup may­on­naise
1 tbsp Worces­ter­shire sauce
squeeze of lemon juice (plus the squeezed bit stirred through the salad)
1 tsp salt
dash Tabasco

Sim­ply mix all, add the best of grate­ful friends and can­dle­light, and enjoy…

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

We suc­cumbed in our own ways that evening to jet­lag, or sim­ply real­is­tic exhaus­tion: first Avery who crept off to her old accus­tomed bed­room, sleep­ing with the plushy swan she has always slept with at Janicemommy’s house, her room lit sub­tly by the ceramic night­light “Gladys the Goose,” tucked away in the cor­ner of the room, dark shin­ing wooden floors, white shelves filled with old children’s books, the shades pulled down against the ancient ivy climb­ing up the windows.

John set­tled down on his own sleep­ing porch, a screened-in room adjoin­ing my own bed­room, where he has always slept for the years we have descended on the fam­ily… I cov­ered his sleep­ing shoul­der with a silk white eider­down, turned off his bed­side lamp, low­ered the shades…

And I myself kissed every­one good night and retired to my high four-poster, propped up by vin­tage white pil­lows in cases with knit­ted and cro­cheted edg­ing, look­ing at the fire­place man­tel with the carved wooden cat, its nose embed­ded in its wooden tail, a ceramic cow on a ceramic bit of lawn, on the table a pile of books, from “Cold Com­fort Farm” to “Pride and Prej­u­dice,” with “Crime and Pun­ish­ment” in between…”

It is a place of pure com­fort, under the best and worst of cir­cum­stances, hav­ing seen life and death and fear and lux­ury. That is real com­fort, I think, when where you are, and who you are with, have seen it all, and can still… com­fort you.

Off in the morn­ing to Red Gate Farm! A crazy after­noon set­tling in, unpack­ing our bits and pieces, look­ing up to see Anne, David and Kate com­ing across the road! John imme­di­ately races out the front door to open the gate (the RED one), which promptly falls off its hinges! “Wel­come home!” Anne shouts! And there is baby Kate, a beau­ti­ful, plushy-haired, blue-eyed little-girl ver­sion of the baby we saw at Christ­mas, pulling her­self up to Avery’s knees as she sat beneath the tree hold­ing Avery’s tree swing, star­ing her in the eyes calmly while unleash­ing a cease­less soft bab­ble of unin­tel­li­gi­ble… language!

A slow, early evening, then every­one to sleep to awake early to the morn­ing glo­ries of Red Gate Farm… the chip­munks, John’s birds begin­ning to return, and finally Becky’s fam­ily, arrived to take Avery away to Green­wich for the week! We suc­cumbed to the local bril­liant fried-food joint, Denmo’s, for an indul­gent Amer­i­can lunch: can you imag­ine us eat­ing all this food! Shrimps, clams, chicken, burg­ers, curly fries… and then ice cream if you can imag­ine (I could not!). It was heav­enly to see Becky, to catch up on gos­sip, to pass Avery off with all adjure­ments to shop for clothes, we’ll pay you back, be polite, have a fab­u­lous time, enjoy it while you can (the unspo­ken under­cur­rent of every reunion with our old Lon­don friends)…

No won­der we feel exhausted by the first week of being back among our Amer­i­can ties: we haven’t even described yet the joy­ous reunion with Jill, Jane, Joel and Molly! Much less Rol­lie and the horses…

More soon!

Praise me, please: for once I’m telling you about a play JUST as it opens, so you can all go to see it. “The Impor­tance of Being Earnest,” a play so dated it is time­less, is play­ing now at the Regent’s Park Open Air The­atre, and it is pure delight. A fab­u­lous mir­rored set (so clever, with all the dou­ble iden­ti­ties going on in the play), a curi­ous klesmer group that I’m not sure added any­thing to the evening, some hilar­i­ous mishaps with a gar­den full of wav­ing roses that each had to be “planted” indi­vid­u­ally dur­ing the inter­val, and then were stepped on and tripped over in the sec­ond act! It was the first night, so we have to imag­ine they’ll work out the kinks in the com­ing days. And there were some trou­bles with bits of the floor not fit­ting prop­erly as the set was changed and hav­ing to be stuffed in by the admirably cool back­stage crew. “I don’t think you really want to have your stage crew get applause,” Avery whis­pered. “They should be invis­i­ble, really.”

But this is all churl­ish com­men­tary on what was a truly charm­ing and very fresh ren­di­tion of Avery’s absolute favorite play. The girl play­ing Cecily was com­pletely adorable, and there is one scene between her and Alger­non that was a com­pletely orig­i­nal inter­pre­ta­tion involv­ing a giant doll­house: I won’t spoil it for you!

The trees waved, the sun set, the fire­flies and swal­lows cir­cled above us. As always, a beau­ti­ful night, and we were so lucky with the weather! Take along a pic­nic and have your­selves a gor­geous sum­mer evening.

Our pic­nic, eaten in the set­ting sun on the grass of Regent’s Park on a funky lit­tle blue plaid rug was this: Gig­gly Pig Welsh Dragon sausages with Maille Dijon mus­tard, Pave d’Affinois cheese, cor­ni­chons, potato salad with cilantro, yogurt and red onion, egg salad with curry, Span­ish cher­ries and Eng­lish meringues for Avery, Ketel One vodka in my sil­ver flask, Fever Tree tonic: such a Euro­pean feast!

It did make me shake my head, aim­ing as we are today for Amer­ica and for Amer­i­can food: beef­steak toma­toes, basil, crab­meat, lob­ster from Maine, sweet­corn in all forms (just off the cob, scal­loped with cream and cheese, in sal­ads with black beans and red onions and sugar snap peas), baby back ribs, rock oys­ters for broil­ing with cheese and spinach, chicken breast salad with spinach and pine nuts…

By the time we arrive, the lovely Amer­i­can Andy Rod­dick will or will not have trounced the arro­gant Roger Fed­erer with his pre­ten­tions of golden robes (in his case, waist­coats, t-shirts with gold-lined col­lars, sneak­ers with golden rack­ets rep­re­sent­ing the num­ber of times he’s won some­thing or other). We’ll be in New Jer­sey in time for fire­works, for the first time in four years! There has always been some­thing a lit­tle… off, about spend­ing the Fourth of July with Avery in school and NO cel­e­bra­tions (fair enough).

I must just set down here what a funny time I had at my pool recep­tion duty this week. Avery’s friend Mer­rie came by with her house­guest Jonathan, a 17-year-old boy, son of friends of her par­ents. He was so touch­ing, tee­ter­ing on the brink between child­hood and man­hood, smil­ing fondly on the “lit­tle” girls, shak­ing hands with me very charm­ingly, then start­ing vis­i­bly when he saw the life­guard, daugh­ter of one of my Lost Prop­erty moth­ers. “I met her at a PARTY last night!” he whis­pered in some mix­ture of excite­ment and dis­may. “Well, go and say hello,” I encour­aged, “she’s a nice respon­si­ble girl and if you fall in, she’ll res­cue you. What are you doing in town with Merrie’s fam­ily, any­way?” “Oh, we don’t have a house right now, so they’re tak­ing us in,” he explained. Mer­rie and I said at the same time, “Don’t tell her that!” “Well, we do have a house in the South of France…” he hes­i­tated. “Tell her that!” we chorused.

So he went in and they all swam, and he spent quite a bit of time on the lifeguard’s bench, chat­ting up his prey. I could NOT believe that as a per­son just a year older than he is, I was ready to choose my life’s mate! And I did an awfully cred­itable job, to be sure. But still. Heavens.

They all came out, drip­ping and pulling on their going-home clothes. Mer­rie took one look at Jonathan, wear­ing a towel as a sort of sari, and said, “I’m not walk­ing home with you look­ing like THAT,” and he looked down. “What’s wrong, because I’m wear­ing a towel, you mean? Let go of your self-consciousness, Mer!” he called after her as she stalked out of the build­ing. I said, “She can’t let go of it yet, she just got it, you know,” and he said, “True, true,” look­ing down at Amy, Merrie’s lit­tle 8-year-old sis­ter. Amy chimed in, “I’m not self-conscious!” “Yet,” I said.

Jonathan looked sud­denly quite old. “Wouldn’t it be nice if they could stay that way,” he said. What a dear. The future has a brighter look than I thought, with boys like that com­ing up. If only I could put a sort of hold on him for Avery, in ten years’ time or so. Ten? Who am I kid­ding? It’s right around the cor­ner, with her teenage years loom­ing in just November.

Right, we’re off to Heathrow. Happy Fourth of July, every­one, and we’ll see you from Connecticut!

How I wish inter­est­ing things would space them­selves out: in JAN­U­ARY for instance, or the more bor­ing moments of Octo­ber. But NO, it all hap­pens at once: Lost Prop­erty Sale, vis­i­tors, bill-paying, permission-slip-filling-out, pack­ing to go away for the sum­mer, end of school, Wimbledon!

All made slightly more chal­leng­ing by the fact that I’ve been sick as the prover­bial dog for a week, with what my doc­tor imme­di­ately feared (hoped?) was a return of scary diges­tive things from sev­eral years ago. Days of mis­ery, med­ica­tion, worry. Then up comes a test result: a rather rare “food-borne bac­te­ria.” What, where did I eat? John and I nearly always eat the same things. A mys­tery. But so much bet­ter than a life­long diag­no­sis of some­thing life-changing. Still, the bug floored me for quite a while, and I still find myself long­ing for a chance to lie down in the mid­dle of the day. One day finally John pushed me down on the sofa, gave me a glass of water, and left the room say­ing, “You just sleep,” and that 45 min­utes or so saved me for the rest of the day, which included hav­ing friends to din­ner! Let noth­ing slow me down, is the motto of yours truly.

In the mean­time, while I was cod­dling myself, it’s hap­pened, his­tory has been made: the roof over Wim­ble­don Cen­tre Court has been moved into place, Mon­day evening, for the his­toric Andy Mur­ray win over Mr Swiss Per­son (I can­not remem­ber his name). How I wish we had been there to see it, and I’m not even (yet) a huge Mur­ray fan. But he is the Great British Hope, and for that, I’ll fight for him.

The British com­men­ta­tors breathed deeply, “Never thought we’d see the day,” the cam­eras return­ing again and again through­out the evening to the glow­ing, sur­real lights of Cen­tre Court sur­rounded by the dark­ness and the nurs­ery cov­er­ings of the other courts, as well as the rest of the City of Lon­don which goes to bed with much more final­ity than Man­hat­tan ever does. And I sim­ply dote on the phrase­ol­ogy of the com­men­ta­tors. Andy Mur­ray, was, they claimed, “ask­ing awk­ward ques­tions” of his oppo­nent, and as the ten­sion became quite unbear­able and the cam­eras veered to Mrs Mur­ray, one expert asked rhetor­i­cally, “Who would be a mother at the moment?” And there’s always the laconic cut-glass des­ig­na­tion of “Juice!” which of course we Amer­i­cans pro­nounce “Dooce.” Two peo­ple sep­a­rated, as always, by a com­mon language.

Speak­ing of lan­guage (or “talk­ing of lan­guage,” as the British would say!) Avery and I have decided that we a new Pet Peeve as far as expres­sions go, and that is “which is FINE.” As in, at my recent writ­ing sem­i­nar, “This cover let­ter you’ve writ­ten, So-and-So, is one of the worst you can write, WHICH IS FINE.” Which it patently is NOT! So con­de­scend­ing, so annoy­ing. “Which is fine, since every­one does it, or which is fine, because for £300 I can tell you how not to do it again, or which is fine, because I would never be stu­pid enough to do it in the first place, but since you DID…” Awful! I hope I’ve never said it.

So the Lost Prop­erty almighty Pre­view and Sale have come and gone under my fear­less (ish) lead­er­ship, and the truly fear­less help of Annie. As usual, all the expected per­son­al­i­ties emerged: the shout­ing, quirky, slightly scary head of Expen­sive Cloth­ing, grab­bing lit­tle first-years and hold­ing jumpers up against them say­ing, “Hello, lit­tle alien, this jumper looks just right for you, and YOU [to her friend stand­ing nearby star­ing as if at a train wreck], lit­tle Friend of Alien, this t-shirt is per­fect for YOU.”

I myself came away with a cun­ning felted croc­o­dile brooch! Which had sat dis­con­so­lately in the jew­elry drawer, feel­ing infe­rior to the fake gold bracelets and lone ear­rings, for months. Now it’s mine. A bright orange cash­mere scarf emerged from the months-old pile of scarves, to be snatched up for a pretty penny. Cups of tea were brought to us in the swel­ter­ing heat by din­ing room staff, our hands grew filth­ier and filth­ier, count­less girls iden­ti­fied items at the sale as “def­i­nitely mine” when of course they hadn’t missed them for aeons. Noth­ing new under the sun.

Now my thoughts are turn­ing ever more to our Con­necti­cut par­adise (or so it always seems from the van­tage point of Lon­don respon­si­bil­i­ties, sched­ules, oblig­a­tions). I pic­ture my old green and white quilt on my bed under a slop­ing ceil­ing, wavy glass to look through to the meadow, Avery’s room strung with rib­bons and all the old paper dresses she makes every sum­mer. Laun­dry room hum­ming with bathing suits (swim­ming cos­tumes!), tow­els, khaki shorts, dish­tow­els that form the basis of our laun­dry loads at sum­mer time. After a few days, John’s beloved birds and our ground­hog and wild turkeys and red foxes and blue herons will return for food, poor things, for six weeks! They do it every sum­mer. Avery will trap cray­fish, we’ll haul her tram­po­line and see­saw from the barn, dis­turb­ing the bats who will fly at sun­set for sev­eral nights, in alarm.

But until we get there, we’ve still got Avery’s ortho­don­tist appoint­ment tomor­row, my recep­tion and lifeguard-paying duty at her school pool to put in dur­ing the evening, and one more day of school, one more ice skat­ing les­son, one more play to go to. What to take for the pic­nic, in Regent’s Park, under the glo­ri­ous sum­mer sun­set? I’m think­ing chicken wings with blue cheese dress­ing, or slow-roasted pulled pork in wraps with sour cream and black beans. Or I could go all Indi­ana child­hood and make a meat­loaf in the morn­ing and turn it into sand­wiches? Avery votes for sim­plic­ity: egg may­on­naise sand­wiches on good Eng­lish white bread, crusts removed, of course. In the mean­time, there’s the post-pool din­ner. And it’s a win­ner. Although I must ask: can any­one tell the dif­fer­ence between rain­bow trout and salmon? I surely could not, either in appear­ance or taste, and I admit guiltily that I didn’t note the price dif­fer­ence. It went down just as hap­pily no mat­ter what the fish it ulti­mately might turn out to be. And if you lack Fox Point Sea­son­ing, sub­sti­tute another savoury salt mixture.

Grilled Rain­bow Trout with Red and Savoy Cab­bages and Cele­riac Slaw
(serves 4)

1 side rain­bow trout
1 tbsp olive oil
Fox Point seasoning

2 cups each: shred­ded red cab­bage, Savoy cab­bage
1 cup cele­riac, cut into match­sticks
1/2 red onion, sliced very thin

dress­ing:

2 tbsps chilli-infused olive oil
3 tbsps may­on­naise
juice of 1 lemon
big dash cel­ery salt
loads of fresh ground black pepper

Place the trout on a large plat­ter, driz­zle with olive oil and sprin­kle with sea­son­ing. Let arrive to room tem­per­a­ture before grilling.

Place all dress­ing ingre­di­ents in a jar with a tight lid, and shake till mixed thor­oughly. Toss with the cab­bages, cele­riac and onion and refrig­er­ate till needed.

Grill the trout skin side down for 4 min­utes at high heat (210C, 425F), then on the other side for 4 min­utes. Remove skin.

To serve, mound the slaw on a plate and place the serv­ing of fish on top. A nice side of mashed potato is very good with this dish.

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

You’ll LOVE this slaw. If you make it right before eat­ing, it will be quite crisp. If you refrig­er­ate it for awhile, dressed, before eat­ing, the fibers wilt a bit and pro­duce more the tex­ture of an Amer­i­can cole slaw. Pure nutri­tion, really crunchy, and beau­ti­ful to look at with the red, green and white.

Right, I’m off to begin pack­ing. Who cares what I take? Red Gate Farm is a place where NO ONE will care what I look like (as if any­one does here, either, to be hon­est!) for at least six weeks. The pile of books to take is much more compelling…