Well, I can­not pro­fess to have a recipe for gnoc­chi, although I suc­cess­fully made gnoc­chi this evening. How to explain this conun­drum? It’s a very flex­i­ble dish. Let me explain.

My dear friend Char­lie, our house­guest this week­end, gave me a lov­ingly and extrav­a­gantly inscribed copy of Anto­nio Carluccio’s Sim­ple Cook­ing. In his over 50 years of cook­ing, it’s no sur­prise he can come up with a rather slim and gor­geously pho­tographed book of sim­ple tips, easy recipes, pantry advice, you name it. It’s a book you may have bought by many other peo­ple, many other times. Mar­cella Hazan? Guil­iano Hazan? Jamie Oliver, even, or in Amer­ica, Mario Batali or Giada di Lau­ren­tiis. Basic instruc­tions, things you would think I could follow.

Except that I sim­ply can­not fol­low a recipe. Unless I’m REALLY scared. And for some rea­son, because gnoc­chi was Ital­ian, I wasn’t scared. Enough.

So I thought, triple the spinach, why not? I love spinach. I’ll tell you why not. Because spinach adds, more even than fla­vor, LIQ­UID to a recipe. And if you’re mak­ing pasta, liq­uid mat­ters. Sigh.

I found myself hav­ing reli­giously fol­lowed the pro­por­tions of the other ingre­di­ents: flour, egg and mashed potato. So reli­giously that I dragged John out of the house to the hard­ware store to buy bat­ter­ies for my scale. And then, what did I do? I sim­ply flung spinach at the recipe as though it were being rationed. And the dough, my dears? Too, too sticky for words. Too sticky to live! What was a girl to do?

I had already clev­erly taken the left­over mashed potato (after its reli­gious weigh­ing) and turned it into proper mashed pota­toes, as with but­ter and cream. Well, I felt I should fling it in, to make up for the incred­i­ble amount of extra flour I knew was com­ing. And it WAS. A cou­ple of abortive technology-failed transat­lantic phone calls to my Ital­ian mother in law (with the brief inter­ven­tion of my annoyed hus­band: “why can’t you just fol­low a recipe, and no I will NOT be the trans­la­tor on this phone call because you’re cov­ered in flour!”) elicited the brief and wise advice, “Sift in some flour, very gen­tly and work it in.” Leav­ing aside the fact that I do not own a sifter, I drifted in some flour. And some more and some MORE. Finally I rolled the lit­tle dev­ils out and placed them upon plat­ters where… they STUCK. Like grim death.

Din­ner time arrived. “The tomato sauce smells ter­rific,” John said, and I thought, peo­ple have existed on less. I wrested the lit­tle blobs of green gnoc­chi from their plat­ters and sim­ply threw them in the boil­ing water. Sure enough, they blobbed to the top just as Anto­nio told me they would. I scooped them out, added a bit of the pasta water to thin the tomato sauce, topped them with moz­zarella cubes, a scat­ter­ing of chif­fon­ade of basil, and some parme­san, and…

DIVINE.

What on earth happened?

Light, fluffy (remind­ing me of Charlie’s nick­name for Avery, “part-time fluffy”), coated in per­fectly gar­licky tomato sauce. A rev­e­la­tion. What happened?

A very, very for­giv­ing recipe, is all I can say. The next time I try it, I promise — hand on heart — to fol­low the instruc­tions STRICTLY and report a real recipe. But my imme­di­ate advice would be: find a con­ge­nial recipe, change what­ever you like, and… fly by the seat of your pants.

So tonight we ate, hearts on our lips, and enjoyed a gor­geous salad to fol­low of an Ital­ian air-and spice-cured beef, with rocket, chilli oil, lemon juice and pep­per. Just bril­liant. And here I’d pic­tured family-wide scram­bled eggs at 9 p.m.

The les­son? None at all, except be grate­ful you have a fam­ily who will sit down to Lord knows what, and that there is a cui­sine like Ital­ian which pro­fesses to have recipes, but can accom­mo­date any num­ber of stu­pid errors. And for fresh-grated parme­san, which makes EVERY­THING all right.

Also, my din­ner was proof that if you have a lit­tle rocket, a lit­tle pre­served meat, and a good oil, you have a salad. In this coun­try, it’s sur­pris­ingly easy to accom­plish. Peo­ple may moan about pack­ag­ing (so much plas­tic, and yes it’s true), or so many air miles (Ital­ian meat, I know). But that aside, my con­science aside, it’s sin­fully sim­ple here in Eng­land to buy gor­geous Ital­ian cured meats, fab­u­lous buf­falo moz­zarella, bit­ingly sharp rocket, aged Parme­san, and with a lit­tle spicy olive or truf­fle oil, you have a salad. Such was our expe­ri­ence at din­ner at my friend Sally’s last week.

The lady has no fewer than four chil­dren, and a work­ing lad for a hus­band, tired out from the city. You’d never know it at their house: can­dles glow­ing, art with a very def­i­nite sen­si­bil­ity on the walls, two of their girls con­coct­ing Sally’s salad as we arrived. Figs! Pro­sciutto! Rocket, spinach, moz­zarella, bal­samic vine­gar. Quite perfect.

And this week­end, reunit­ing Avery’s friend Sylvie with her fam­ily, and intro­duc­ing Char­lie to them all, at La Fro­magerie. Quite sim­ply the most CHARM­ING of all com­mu­nal tables, in the heart of Maryle­bone, attached to the cheese-mongery but ris­ing far above such lim­i­ta­tions to offer a char­cu­terie plate to Sylvie’s brother of aston­ish­ing pro­por­tions: chorizo, salami, saucis­son sec, you name it, all sur­rounded by cor­ni­chons and cen­tered with an amaz­ing cele­riac slaw. Avery had a tomato tart, John and Char­lie a mush­room tart, I a fish plat­ter with smoked mack­erel AND smoked trout pates, smoked salmon, and fresh tara­masalata. Simon ordered the cheese plat­ter for us all to share. A friendly din, a happy shar­ing men­tal­ity, and adjoin­ing us, a Swedish fel­low about to go back there, and deter­mined to pay his entire bill in Eng­lish COINS! Labo­ri­ously piled in stacks per denom­i­na­tion! Some­how the lovely French wait­ress found this charm­ing, and did not bring out a pis­tol to shoot him in his Scan­di­na­vian knees.

Finally, off we went, part­ing from Char­lie (sob) and Sylvie’s fam­ily, to col­lect our… NEW CAR! Min­now, she’s been chris­tened, pearly gray as she is. TINY, sim­ply tiny. We tooled off in the after­noon sun, filled with sad mem­o­ries of Emmy, the beloved Mini, but ready to start a new era with the Cinque­cento. And in that Ital­ian frame of mind… gnoc­chi, as well. Sante!

How on earth has a week gone by with­out my check­ing in? Because, as so many blog­gers wish, I’ve been actu­ally LIV­ING, as opposed to try­ing des­per­ately to find some­thing to blog about because nothing’s been hap­pen­ing in my actual life.

The main thing, today, that’s been hap­pen­ing to me is mas­sive envy. I knew it would happen.

Today finally we saw “Julie and Julia”, after every­one I know said not only that I would love it, but that it IS me. Nat­u­rally, hear­ing this, I wanted noth­ing LESS than to see the film. Imag­ine my posi­tion: nobody food blog­ger sits alone in her home, cook­ing her heart out, car­ing for her hus­band and cat, typ­ing away about her exploits in the kitchen, wish­ing for self-fulfillment. And… along comes self-fulfillment, a book deal and a major motion pic­ture star­ring Meryl Streep.

And then there’s my life.

It’s like telling a min­i­mally tal­ented run­ner to get, say, “Char­i­ots of Fire” on Net­flix. Or a minor crim­i­nal to shake up some microwave pop­corn and rent “The Godfather.”

The film is a com­plete charmer. We’re sup­posed to buy “Julie” as a b**ch because the char­ac­ter tells us so, but I’m sorry, they should have cast some­one other than Amy Adams. Not for noth­ing did my child ask to see “Enchanted” four times… IN THE CIN­EMA. She’s adorable. Not believ­able as a nasty per­son. At ALL. She cooks like a fiend, fac­ing dis­as­ters and dis­ap­point­ments, while her hus­band tries to be sup­port­ive. Fair enough, I rec­og­nize that sce­nario. But hun­dreds of peo­ple read her blog with­out her mak­ing any effort what­so­ever, and they COM­MENT. I have my stal­wart com­menters, but hun­dreds? I could cry.

And then she’s cook­ing for the food critic for the New York Times and the next morn­ing, on the sub­way and at Star­bucks, everyone’s read­ing the arti­cle about her blog and that’s THAT.

In the hours after leav­ing the cin­ema today, John and I tried to ana­lyze rea­sons for the gap between “Julie” and me. One is, I was not unhappy to start with, when I began my blog, so I wasn’t search­ing for mas­sive mean­ing. But I WAS try­ing to doc­u­ment a process: the process just didn’t have a par­tic­u­lar goal. Liv­ing in Lon­don, rais­ing my daugh­ter, tak­ing care of my fam­ily, cook­ing. Not very Hol­ly­wood. Two is, about a thou­sand years ago, when my par­ents noticed that I was a very good gym­nast, they asked me a very impor­tant ques­tion. “Would you, lit­tle Kris­ten,” [they said] like to be the BEST at one thing, or pretty good at lots of things?” A very good way to phrase it. Did I want to give up voice lessons, or piano lessons, or my scout troop, or bak­ing choco­late chip cook­ies every Thurs­day night while we watched “Hill Street Blues”? Not really. Not even to be a truly great gym­nast. I’d rather do a lot of things fairly well.

This has trans­lated into adult life, I think. I take mea­sure: I’m a really good mother, I think. A ded­i­cated school vol­un­teer. A pretty good wife, a very good friend. A fair and steady cook, a decent writer, an enthu­si­as­tic host­ess. I can still play the piano and do a cart­wheel. But I’m not a star at any of them.

Would I trade hav­ing writ­ten the most influ­en­tial food blog ever, for hav­ing spent count­less hours walk­ing Avery home from school and lis­ten­ing to her fic­tion ideas while get­ting an admit­tedly pretty ordi­nary din­ner together? Of course not.

But I’d like to have BOTH.

Rant over. The film was lovely. It came on the heels of some­thing far more impor­tant: my friend Charlie’s visit to us. We are in mourn­ing at his depar­ture (he who in typ­i­cal fash­ion began his visit as “my” friend and inex­orably con­quered any­one who crossed his path, so now he’s “ours”, a sort of National Trea­sure, like Stephen Fry). His sis­ter appar­ently needed him in Hert­ford­shire, which I con­sider the height of self­ish­ness. He arrived on Thurs­day evening to great fan­fare — my tra­di­tional wait­ing on the brick wall with a book and the house­key, plus a mag­nif­i­cent wel­come din­ner. My read­ing mate­r­ial? Bird by Bird: Some Instruc­tions on Writ­ing and Life by Anne Lam­ott. One of my favorite bits upon a very short read­ing? “Writ­ing a novel is like dri­ving in the dark, with only your head­lights to light a very short dis­tance ahead. It’s scary, but you can do the whole thing that way.”

Char­lie arrived and we brought roughly half his earthly belong­ings into the house, intro­duced him to Avery (beside her­self with wel­come) and John (clos­eted in a very unpleas­ant tax phone call), then dragged his things up to the (I think) totally charm­ing guest room. A gen­tly slop­ing ceil­ing as befits our very crooked old house, a nice fake wal­nut wardrobe from eBay with its lit­tle shelves labelled “hats”, “col­lars” and such, a white four-poster bed that used to be Avery’s but wouldn’t fit up the final two flights of stairs! Two win­dows, one a tiny square one like in a prison cell, the other large and free-opening, over the green row of back gar­dens, over­look­ing everyone’s pic­nic tables and cats.

For that first din­ner? A starter of scal­lops sauteed in olive oil with gar­lic, red chillis and tons of pars­ley, tossed in toasted home­made bread­crumbs. Fan­tas­tic. Then grilled lamb chops mar­i­nated in rose­mary, gar­lic, olive oil and lemon juice. And for Avery’s delight, oven-roasted mush­rooms filled with sauteed chopped mush­rooms, bacon, gar­lic and goats cheese. Plus John’s favorite slaw, and then, a truly superb pud­ding. Served up by Avery.

Poached William Pears
(serves 4)

4 William pears, peeled and the bot­toms sliced off so they stand up
1 cup hard cider, or Perry
2 cin­na­mon sticks
1/2 cup dark brown sugar

clot­ted cream
short­bread cookies

Place the pears into the saucepan and pour in the cider, drop in the cin­na­mon sticks and scat­ter over the sugar. Put the lid on and bring to a boil, then sim­mer for 15 min­utes, turn­ing the pears over twice, on their sides in the liq­uid. Then remove them to a dish, turn up the heat and boil the liq­uid until it’s reduced to a syrup, per­haps 10 min­utes. You’ll have to remove the pan from the heat and let the bub­bles set­tle down to see what you have. If it’s dark­ish and thick, you’re good. Set aside until you’re ready to serve. At serv­ing time, driz­zle the syrup over the pears, and serve with a spoon­ful of clot­ted cream to each per­son, and a cou­ple of short­bread biscuits.

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

How we ate. And laughed. Char­lie is an old-fashioned gen­tle­man whose entire per­son­al­ity is geared to laugh­ter. Except when you tell him some­thing impor­tant and then his coun­te­nance turns to a sort of inno­cent lis­ten­ing, and you can FEEL him lis­ten­ing. He would do any­thing in his power to help me if I needed it, and give over his whole con­scious­ness to lis­ten while he was think­ing how he could help. But his great incli­na­tion is… laugh­ter. Avery adores him.

She described to him her lat­est maths home­work. Do you remem­ber pi? I hardly do. Unless it’s an apple one. This ver­sion is that vaguely famil­iar 3.14 chappy, the whole radius-of-a-circle-squared doo­dah. So it turns out, the cutting-off at 3.14 is totally silly. The dig­its go on INFI­NITELY. As in, mil­lions of dig­its. Scary peo­ple have devoted their lives, and more impor­tantly, web­sites, in the explo­ration of this phenomenon.

So Avery’s maths teacher, the dear Mr Smith who tap­dances in his spare time, assigned a poetry home­work. Poetry in maths? Yes. The girls were to extend the dig­its of Pi and write poetry using words of the num­ber of let­ters indi­cated by the dig­its. Seri­ously. As in, “Fun I have,” for 3.14. When Avery gives me per­mis­sion, I’ll pub­lish her efforts. She’s up to 82 digits.

Fri­day found me host­ing the cof­fee morn­ing for Avery’s class moth­ers. So beau­ti­fully dressed, such flut­ing voices, such rich offer­ings of mar­malade, crois­sants, fruit-stuffed muffins. Char­lie drifted in as we chat­tered (like birds on a wire) and I intro­duced him. “He wanted to be either my hus­band, for you all, or the but­ler. Take your pick.”

We accom­plished a sur­pris­ing amount of busi­ness in the way of pro­jected class events, fundrais­ers and bridge (?) lessons to be shared among Avery’s class and the boys’ class of one of her friend’s twin brother! We shall see about that.

Off to shop in Pic­cadilly (Fort­num and Mason, any­one?) and lunch with one of Charlie’s army offi­cer friends. More uncon­trolled laugh­ter, end­ing in a celebrity sight­ing: Janeane Garafolo, of SNL fame and more. Totally tatooed, very cool. I peeled off to take Avery and her friend Sylvie skat­ing (“That’s such an F. Scott Fitzger­ald phrase, Kris­ten: ‘I sim­ply must cut out by 3′”, Char­lie claimed). The usual mis­ery at the skat­ing rink, only this time under­scored by the pres­ence of a new mother, one hunched in a self-congratulatory way over a dog-eared copy of “The Opti­mum Nutri­tion Bible,” which she paused in read­ing to look askance at Avery’s pizza and Sylvie’s ice cream. Rats.

Sleep beck­ons. More on Charlie’s visit, more food, and a truly great fish recipe to to fol­low, the fish from, you guessed it… Julia Child. I can but try.

Like French women who can tell if a bot­tle of cognac has been opened in the next room (so my favorite nov­el­ist Lau­rie Col­win tells us), I can tell if a cucum­ber has been sliced three sto­ries down in my own house. And not, obvi­ously, because I sliced it, but don’t you notice that food prepa­ra­tion aro­mas travel in unpre­dictable and pleas­ing ways through­out your house? They do in mine. Slow-cooked lamb with lentils and rose­mary halfway to the laun­dry room, cin­na­mon from the three-berry crum­ble lin­ger­ing on the land­ing out­side my bed­room, crunchy cucum­bers at the door to the guest room!

The guest room! Which my dear friend Char­lie will occupy this Thurs­day and Fri­day, to my intense joy. He was part of my group of best chums in Devon last Octo­ber, and while we’ve enjoyed our email and phone rela­tion­ship, and the fan­tas­tic day out at Taste of Lon­don last sum­mer, what I think really MAKES a friend­ship is hav­ing a per­son to stay over, with you, at home. You get to know the per­son: tea or cof­fee? Dress­ing gown or paja­mas first thing in the morn­ing? Does he like cats? What cock­tail is his pre­ferred tip­ple? These mys­ter­ies and more will be revealed. I am plan­ning a feast for Thurs­day evening, but as with all my plans, they are sub­ject to change in the mid­dle of each night between now and then, and each ten­nis game, and each other moment when what passes for my mind is not oth­er­wise occu­pied. Scal­lops baked with a dux­elles (a sauteed mush­room and madeira con­coc­tion) and gooey cheese top­ping? Or the decep­tively sim­ple mush­room soup, also with madeira, and creme fraiche with fresh thyme?

And to fol­low? I am favor­ing a super-tender pork ten­der­loin, grilled expertly by John, hav­ing been mar­i­nated (the ten­der­loin, not John, just to clar­ify) in some herbs sym­pa­thetic to those in the starter course… and John’s favorite slaw of cele­riac, red and Savoy cab­bages, with a dress­ing of sharp Dijon mus­tard, fro­mage frais, poppy seeds and lemon juice… At this point Avery wails, “And what can I eat, any­way?” Fair enough. Not scal­lops or slaw, for sure. But chopped spinach sauteed with gar­lic and Gruyere? Now you’re talking.

But first I have to digest the last 24 hours of stu­pen­dous food that’s passed my palate. I should space our eating-out adven­tures a lit­tle far­ther apart, really, than great-dinner-great-lunch. It’s a bit of a waste, really. Nev­er­the­less, so it was. John and I had tick­ets to see John Simms (I’m sorry, but that’s how I saw it) onstage and all I can say is, the reviews were split. It must be pointed out that the play in ques­tion, “Speak­ing in Tongues,” was on the sec­ond night of PRE­VIEWS, so what­ever kinks there were may be worked out. But when the main objec­tions to the play are as per­va­sive as John’s were (let’s see, cast­ing, stag­ing, dia­logue, plot were among the ele­ments he didn’t like), no amount of tin­ker­ing is going to help.

John Simms, can we just spec­ify, was won­der­ful. We agreed on that. But John has laid down the law that he no longer wants to be taken to plays where we’ve gone merely to watch the actor. He wants to see the play, as well. Fair enough. There were prob­lems to be sure. Simul­ta­ne­ous speak­ing of dia­logue by all four actors, though not EXACTLY together, is bad. A bad idea, can­not be enacted well. It’s just mas­sively irri­tat­ing. All you can hear are the dis­so­nances, and the “him” rather than “her”. I argued in my best PhD style that the dis­so­nance was delib­er­ate, to show how all the four char­ac­ters were unique and yet inter­change­able. I was met with resistance.

The plot unfolded in a way that I thought was very clever, not chrono­log­i­cal, but out of sequence and illu­mi­nat­ing as such. “Oh, THAT’S what hap­pened to her!” John found it pre­cious, and since he didn’t care about the char­ac­ters, he didn’t care what hap­pened to them. Ah me.

So I was not fla­vor of the month last night, based on the play. I was, how­ever, pop­u­lar as ever for sug­gest­ing Kulu-Kulu for sushi before. I had rushed there by bus down Pic­cadilly, after leav­ing Avery with friends in Kens­ing­ton for the evening (“we’re walk­ing Bon­nie to a Dog Party,” my friend assured me, “while we wait for Lille to return from bal­let,” so I left them to it, dragged by the tiny pug). The traf­fic! Sim­ply LAGGED but I didn’t mind, partly because I could feast my eyes on the gor­geous scenery of Hatchard’s, Fort­num and Mason, the Meri­dien Hotel, the Park Lane Hotel (home of Lord Peter Wim­sey, after all). Any­one who’s begun to take liv­ing in Lon­don for granted must sim­ply jump on the Num­ber 9 bus and ride along to Pic­cadilly Cir­cus. I just adore it, and I had my Julia Child mem­oir to enter­tain me as well.

Can I just inter­rupt myself and say (as I watch the BBC) that I love liv­ing in a coun­try where the Pres­i­dent of another coun­try is fea­tured PROMI­NENTLY on the nightly news just because he appeared on five talk shows that morn­ing? My own beloved United States nightly news can­not be both­ered, much of the time, to pay atten­tion to the Pres­i­dent of any other coun­try at all, unless it’s to scare peo­ple to death occa­sion­ally with vague threats about Iran or North Korea. But here, the news cov­er­age actu­ally delves in depth, on a daily basis, into what is hap­pen­ing around the world. I do admire that.

But more about eat­ing. We dived into salmon with cucum­ber and daikon, tuna with spicy spring onions, cut rolls of all these com­bi­na­tions, and finally my favorite veg­etable dish of all time, freez­ing cold packed-tight slices of steamed spinach cov­ered with a spicy peanut sauce, sprin­kled with sesame seeds. I’m SURE I could fig­ure out how to make this, don’t you think? I’ll look into it.

From there was the play. Enough said. Then we awoke this morn­ing to go slightly sep­a­rate ways: John to col­lect Avery from Kens­ing­ton, me to the kitchen to make her lunch for the rid­ing day, and to con­coct tonight’s din­ner, which had to cook all day by itself, as we were away from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The result was a deli­cious but unpre­sentable dish which met with mod­i­fied rap­ture. I will tin­ker with the recipe, but the basics were a leg of lamb, perched on a bed of red lentils and fresh rose­mary, sur­rounded by sliced car­rots and my friend Jo’s parsnips (thanks, Jo!), onion quar­ters, and the whole splashed with white wine and chicken stock. The ver­dict was that the lamb was per­fect, cooked tightly cov­ered at 110C all that time. But the veg­eta­bles were a mushy, slightly baby-food-ish con­sis­tency. Nurs­ery food, invalid food (if one were a very lucky baby or invalid). I’ll tin­ker with it, as I say.

Into the oven it all went, and off we went to meet Avery at her fourth annual Horseman’s Sun­day. Now, when we first moved here we were com­pletely bemused by the rit­ual of peo­ple — chil­dren and adults alike — being will­ing to orga­nize rid­ing their horses up to the fore­court of a CHURCH to have them blessed by the local priest. Sounds odd, does it? Sadly, it sounds nor­mal to us now. They all gath­ered and were stepped on, slob­bered on, Avery strug­gled with her stir­rups, Mr Nye of the sta­ble (all his 84 years) ordered the girls to have their hair plaited, dogs were con­stantly under­foot being trod­den on. Off we all went to the church, hymns were sung, ser­mons read, cham­pagne drunk, cakes from local schools sold to sup­port the church. Truly an Eng­lish phenomenon!

We cal­lously aban­doned the rit­ual for lunch with our friends Ed and Twiggy at Angelus, one of my most favorite restau­rants in the world (infre­quently as we go out, we go there more often than you’d think). And Ed and Twiggy never fail to delight. I hope I never know them long enough that they lose their new­ly­wed splen­dor, although it’s been years now. They sim­ply bask in each other’s pres­ence, and bring their love of life, adven­ture and friend­ship to every time we’re lucky enough to meet. They are ded­i­cated veg­e­tar­i­ans, how­ever, and as such had to avert their eyes from the piece de resis­tance of our lunch: creme brulee de foie gras. Creamy, unc­tu­ously smooth, topped with an impossible-sounding crunch of demer­ara sugar and black sesame seeds. It is the PER­FECT DISH OF ALL TIME. As John’s dad would have said, “It’s a dish to kill for.” Unless one hap­pens to eschew all ani­mal prod­ucts, that is.

Twiggy had a gor­geous salad of sliced figs with hazel­nuts and a gen­er­ous flour­ish of mixed baby greens, Ed bravely ordered Eggs Flo­ren­tine even though they weren’t on the menu and… lo, there they were. For my main course I had the most melt­ingly ten­der lemon sole meu­niere, fil­leted per­fectly and then put together, the two halves, as a real fish. Quite, quite stun­ning. With capers and tiny brown pot­ted shrimps. MY! John had beef cheeks with mous­se­line of potato… how we dined. Through it all, as we ate out­side, Avery and her friends dashed to and fro, jump­ing off horses in the mews to bring ear­rings to be taken care of, lunch detri­tus to take home, and just to offer a wave and a grin. “Stop grow­ing!” Twiggy ordered sternly. “Right now.”

Finally, how­ever, we had to depart for the Gymkhana and take our leave of our pals. We made our way to the ring in Hyde Park and watched as the chil­dren jumped, can­tered, obeyed the shouted orders of the var­i­ous semi-adults in charge. As always in these sit­u­a­tions, I sim­ply sus­pend judg­ment and throw my con­fi­dence, unde­servedly placed as it may be (but it never is unde­served) behind the pow­ers that be of the Horse World. I alter­nately sneezed and coughed, hav­ing for­got­ten my anti­his­t­a­mine. “Who’s ten years old here?” bel­lowed Mr Nye in his Bar­bour and tweeds. “Here is your rosette. Do not let me see it in the dust, young lady. And say “thank you, MR NYE, if you please.”

Home finally with filthy, exhausted, dying-of-thirst Avery to throw her into a bath­tub and escape to the ten­nis court. An hour of getting-better-every-day ten­nis. Not good yet, mind you, on my side, but get­ting more deserv­ing of John every time we play, which is nearly every day! Have to do some­thing to work off all that foie gras, after all.

Tomor­row will bring Avery’s dreaded ortho­don­tist appoint­ment. We have mutu­ally agreed among the three of us that if action is advised this time, a sec­ond opin­ion will be sought. I opt for non-intervention in all med­ical sit­u­a­tions, so clearly I need help in decid­ing. Poor dear. She’ll be con­soled by miss­ing BOTH net­ball and lacrosse, and the dubi­ous joys of see­ing me at… Lost Prop­erty upon her return to school. It’s the sale tomor­row, and the soul quakes.

Now I’m just being annoy­ingly clever: I wanted to give you a heads-up that I will desire, here, to tell you about BOTH our new car (!!) and my new soup. And so I shall.

As you will remem­ber, we were cal­lously bur­gled last sum­mer, the most shat­ter­ing part of which expe­ri­ence was the burglar’s evil dis­cov­ery of my car key, in my plun­dered hand­bag, which they promptly walked out­side with and pressed the “where is my car key,” and sadly our Mini Cooper was only too quick to respond, so… off they went, in our dar­ling lit­tle car. How sad we have been. With it, of course, went my trea­sured Purdey woollen car rug that count­less lit­tle girls wrapped around them­selves on chilly school runs and trips to the coun­try. And two, TWO mind you, of TWELVE of my cas­sette tapes of Agatha Christie’s “The 4:50 From Padding­ton.” So I can lis­ten to the begin­ning and the end of this clas­sic story, but the mid­dle? Lost in the mists of thiev­ery. And Avery’s horse rid­ing hel­met and gloves (com­plete with name tapes labo­ri­ously sewn on by yours truly), and… and…

Not included in this deba­cle, how­ever, was John’s stal­wart Swaine and Adeney umbrella, given him by his dar­ling father nearly 20 years ago. Now, drum­roll… pre­pare your­selves for a story. Sev­eral days ago, John turned to me with a stricken face and asked, “Where’s my spe­cial umbrella?” “Don’t know, when did you have it last?” And we both had the same thought: it was in the car, when it was stolen. No, no, no! Say it wasn’t so. We swal­lowed our sad­ness, John said deter­minedly, “You know, to keep an umbrella for so many years was pretty amaz­ing…” Sadness.

Then a day or so later, I woke up at my usual sloth­ful hour to find John in his study, hav­ing walked Avery to school. And more than that… “You wouldn’t believe what hap­pened to me this morn­ing,” he said glee­fully. “I had a dream, a sort of fast-forward zip­ping through Shepherd’s Bush Mar­ket, where we went to that green­gro­cers’ where we got such good sweet­corn, and those tiny shal­lots…” “Yes, yes, what then?” I asked breath­lessly. “Well, in my dream, I sud­denly remem­bered putting my spe­cial umbrella down, hook­ing it over the sweet­corn shelf while I picked out some ears. So after I dropped Avery off at school, I went by, and started to ask, ‘Did you hap­pen to find…’ and the guy brings out… my UMBRELLA.”

How weird is that?

So we did not lose every­thing in the car rob­bery that we thought we lost. And now, or at least in 10 days’ time, we will have a new car! A Fiat Cinque­cento, a con­vert­ible of course! In a sort of sil­very grey, with a lighter top. Avery took one look, before we even test-drove it, and said, “We’ll call him Min­now.” So Min­now has been bought and paid for with our insur­ance money, and will be deliv­ered to the dealer next week­end. John has been slav­ing away since our pur­chase, reg­is­ter­ing it, order­ing insur­ance (hugely lower than a Mini!), and rejoic­ing over the extremely envi­ron­men­tally friendly nature of its emis­sions: the same as a Prius! And… it’s even smaller than a Mini. This for my 6’2″ hus­band makes us all laugh.

The rest of the week has been spent at Avery’s school, if I’m hon­est. Or at least, doing things related to her school. I had no idea what I was tak­ing on with being head of Lost Prop­erty. The paper­work, the phone calls, the emails, the actu­ally being AT school tend­ing to the room, and then, there’s the seat I now occupy on the Par­ents’ group at school, which requires atten­dance at meet­ings, and hand-holding at school events where a parental pres­ence is deemed desir­able. Heav­ens. And today was the Pre­view for Monday’s sale of Lost Prop­erty items, plus my indoc­tri­na­tion of all my inno­cent new recruits into their responsibilities.

The micro denim shorts! The Aber­crom­bie faux-fur trimmed gilets! The end­less piles of PE kit (“this smells slightly,” a girl offered shyly when she tried on a shirt, which made me laugh since we vol­un­teer in that lit­tle room sur­rounded by such smelly items every day!), the wet tow­els and swim­ming cos­tumes, the pen­cil cases and cal­cu­la­tors and today? An asthma inhaler. I ask you!

We had so much fun get­ting every­thing ready today. I was slightly aghast at being in charge of it all. To be truth­ful, my Achilles heel in any sit­u­a­tion is my dis­com­fort at telling any­one what to do. I came to rec­og­nize, as a pro­fes­sor, that this was my weak­ness. And as an employer, and truly, as a mother: I’m fine when peo­ple reg­u­late them­selves and behave per­fectly, but hand me a prob­lem case, some­one who needs cor­rect­ing, and I’m a fish out of water. Luck­ily, I got a child who needs very lit­tle cor­rect­ing, and thank good­ness, the same held true for Lost Prop­erty. Every­one was far more capa­ble of attack­ing the work at hand than I was, and as such, I sim­ply answered ques­tions, moved around racks of cloth­ing, addressed girls’ claims to cer­tain items I was sure did not belong to them…

At any rate, we had a very busy week at school. And through it all, I cooked many a delight­ful din­ner: grilled lam­b­chops, chicken stir-fried with red chillis, red pep­pers and peanuts, grilled salmon, creamy red pep­per soup, lasagna with five cheeses (mas­car­pone, ricotta, moz­zarella, ched­dar and parme­san). But the tri­umph of the week? A soup inspired by the glo­ri­ous sand­wich con­cern Pret a Manger, and my ver­sion turned out at least as delicious.

Sag Aloo Soup
(serves more than four)

4 medium pota­toes of any vari­ety, peeled and cut in cubes of 1/2 inch)
3 cups chicken stock
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp but­ter
1 medium white onion, minced
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 stalks cel­ery, minced
1 tbsp ground cumin
2 tsps ground turmeric
chilli pow­der to taste
sea salt and pep­per to taste
1 soup-size tin toma­toes, chopped
2 cups loosely packed spinach, then sliced into rib­bons
1/2 cup fat-free yogurt

Put potato cubes into a saucepan with chicken stock and bring to a high sim­mer. Cook until soft and nearly falling apart, per­haps 30 min­utes. Mean­while, saute the onion, gar­lic, cel­ery, cumin, turmeric and chilli pow­der in the oil and but­ter until the cel­ery is very soft. Sea­son to taste, keep­ing in mind that the chicken stock will con­tain salt as well. Throw the veg­etable mix­ture into the pota­toes and chicken stock and add toma­toes and turn the heat to VERY low. Go take a shower or check your email. Cook the soup until it is very thick and the pota­toes are REALLY falling apart. Stir thor­oughly and add the spinach and yogurt just before serving.

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

You will sit up and beg like a dog for more of this “soup.” I say this in inverted com­mas because it is so very thick. It is a stew, really. The name derives from the Indian for “spinach and potato,” but it is also the spice com­bi­na­tion that gives the soup its charm. And any left­overs, the fol­low­ing day, on steamed bas­mati rice… ooh… it makes me hun­gry just to think of it. And I’m full of grilled salmon.

And my first food-writing piece has appeared in print! At least, rumor has it, although it’s not avail­able yet in the UK. It’s called “The Recipe File,” in the newly-launched Vin­tage Mag­a­zine, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. The editor-in-chief is ring­ing me up next week to talk about my con­tri­bu­tion to Issue 2, so I am really on a cloud. I can’t wait to see a copy, which she’s send­ing me in the old-fashioned post. I’ll report when I get it!

Tomor­row will find us tak­ing Avery to her first act­ing les­son of the fall, then onto a friend’s to spend the night while we go out for sushi and to see a play in Soho. I, who am almost entirely actor-driven in my the­atre excur­sions, am extremely excited to see John Simms in “Speak­ing in Tongues.” While he is not exactly crush mate­r­ial (and I’m wait­ing for a new crush to come along), he’s deeply inter­est­ing, intense and moody. I think that live on stage, he could be quite com­pelling. Get your­self a bowl of Sag Aloo Soup, a DVD of his tour de force “State of Play,” and set­tle in for the weekend.

First, I must say, it’s simul­ta­ne­ously heart­warm­ing and demor­al­iz­ing to real­ize one has com­pletely passed on the reins of cooldom to one’s child. Of course we want Avery to be cool. We make sure she has all the right oppor­tu­ni­ties to do cool things, and she takes full advan­tage. But when there is such clear pho­to­graphic evi­dence of her hav­ing sur­passed us COM­PLETELY… we waver ever so slightly. How did we get to be so old, and she so cool? Some­how it hap­pened. Surf­ing in Corn­wall with her friend Emily’s fam­ily, sit­ting for a photo ses­sion in our gar­den for her act­ing agency… ah well, impor­tantly she’s still an enor­mous slob, leav­ing her wet tow­els and dirty horse­back rid­ing clothes scat­tered through the house, and she also couldn’t be any sweeter to her tiny cat sib­ling, recov­er­ing from her vet ordeal. So in short, the real Avery, warts and beauty and all, is intact. But she’s also… very cool.

Autumn has appeared in full spate. Tonight as I type, the plane trees of Ham­mer­smith are brush­ing might­ily against our bed­room win­dows, the wind is high, the leaves blow into the room, occa­sion­ally the sheets flut­ter and cats rush to chase. In town, the trees are turn­ing ever so grad­u­ally, falling down upon the ten­nis courts near our house, near Avery’s school, remind­ing us all of the gor­geous sea­son to come. There is some­thing heart­warm­ingly beau­ti­ful and social about the courts near school, bounded on one side by a Green cov­ered with peo­ple stretched out dur­ing their work lunch hours, faces to the sun, bags of lunch nearby, and also, chill­ingly, peo­ple let­ting their dogs wee on the same grass: guess why I don’t pic­nic in the Green? Never mind, no one seems to mind. The care­taker of Avery’s school, my part­ner in crime at Lost Prop­erty, strolls by walk­ing his dog. “Don’t watch my serve!” I cry. “You’ll lose any respect you ever had for me.”

On the other side of the courts is a play­ground whose sign admon­ishes, “Under 11s only”, so Avery is firmly barred, not that she has time for play­grounds these days. Home­work rules, for hours after school each day. Such is autumn. The cool­ing air rings with peo­ple call­ing the score, girls shout­ing in uni­formed girls’ school energy… as far as one can see, there are lovers kiss­ing on the Green, peo­ple rid­ing Shet­land ponies, if you can imag­ine! Across the road is the Queen’s Head pub, under con­stant refur­bish­ment it would seem, with men paint­ing all the time, and the most tempt­ing scents of fry­ing fish ema­nat­ing from the premises with wicked accu­racy the moment our ten­nis game is fin­ished. Din­ner? Let’s skip it and head straight for fish and chips!

Then there’s the per­fect autumn recipe: some­thing rugged, robust, fla­vor­ful and yet easy as pie, and best of all? In the end, it cooks itself, so you can do some­thing else: even leave the house for the Par­ents’ Guild meet­ing where you rep­re­sent Lost Property.

Mozzarella-Stuffed Meat­balls
(serves 4)

750 grams (1 1/2 lbs) mixed mince: pork, lamb and beef (or any one alone)
3 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup home­made bread­crumbs
hand­ful chopped basil
1/2 tsp Ital­ian sea­son­ing
1 large, per­haps 1 1/2 buf­falo moz­zarella balls (you must judge by the size of yours)
2 tbsps olive oil
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
3 soup-size cans peeled plum toma­toes, whizzed in a food proces­sor till smooth
salt and pep­per to taste

Mix mince, eggs, bread­crumbs, basil and Ital­ian sea­son­ing together VERY well. Knead it like a dough, and you will be able to see when it’s truly mixed, as it forms a lovely dough-like con­sis­tency, com­pletely amal­ga­mated and coher­ent. Form into small hand­fuls about 1 1/2 inch across, then pinch off an inch or so of moz­zarella and push it into the small hand­ful of meat. Then form the meat­ball around the cheese, seal­ing it as best you can. Some cheese may ooze out dur­ing cook­ing, but don’t worry. It’s deli­cious anyway.

Make all your meat­balls and set aside. Then cook the gar­lic in a large, shal­low, heavy saucepan, slightly in the olive oil, add the toma­toes and cook on a low heat for a bit, per­haps five min­utes. Then lower the meat­balls in a sin­gle layer into the sauce and cover the pot. The meat­balls will poach in about 20 min­utes, but you can turn it off after that and let sit while you do other things, just warm­ing it all slightly before you want to eat. Lovely with or with­out spaghetti, and cheese on top.

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

This meal is lovely on so many lev­els: it smells MAG­I­CAL cook­ing, it’s fun to make the lit­tle meat­ball parcels, it can sit per­fectly cooked for ages while you go to meet­ings, or help with home­work, or take a nap, you name it. Then just warm it, and bob’s your uncle. Saute a lit­tle aspara­gus on the side, or oven-roast some beets… done.

I must think of another such recipe for tomor­row night because: drum­roll… we are going out. Out! And no, it’s not to a play, which is nor­mal for us, and no, we’re not tak­ing Avery, as would be nor­mal. We’re going for drinks and to a gallery open­ing with friends, NOT with Avery. Very abnor­mal! So I have con­vinced Avery she will not be kid­napped while we’re away for two hours. We’re look­ing for­ward to it (lovely friends, and weird but inter­est­ing look­ing art­work in formed con­crete), but we’ve drawn the line at eat­ing out­side the home, nat­u­rally. So I must find some­thing to cook tomor­row after­noon that Avery can eas­ily place in a cold oven (she’s not ready for a hot oven all alone), then turn the oven on and cook it. It all smacks of a casse­role, doesn’t it? Or lasagna, or… this is the sort of ques­tion that keeps me awake at night. How about chicken stuffed with moz­zarella and pro­sciutto, baked under tomato sauce with some of the zuc­chini my friend Jo brought from her allot­ment? There’s an idea. More on her visit, and other pur­suits, on the mor­row. I’m going to be com­pletely self­ish now and return to my book of the moment, My Life in France, by Julia Child. No gim­micks, no fast talk, no queasy sub­ti­tles. Speak­ing of cool? Julia invented it, and Avery can only wish.

It is a bit of a mile­stone this year, maybe a nat­ural one. Every year since the ter­ri­ble events on our doorstep, eight years ago, we have observed the day in some way. Of course, early on it was an unavoid­able, all-too present anniver­sary, marked by mas­sive city-wide events, at first (I remem­ber that first anniver­sary was spent at my baby art gallery, with neigh­bors drop­ping by to light can­dles, what a com­mu­nity that was). There were sev­eral years of the “Tow­ers of Light” that we in the neigh­bor­hood loved so much: blue visions shoot­ing into the sky even higher than those top doomed floors had reached…

Then we moved away, from the expe­ri­ences, from the mem­o­ries. And the fifth anniver­sary hap­pened here, and how hard I found it. John was away on busi­ness, and how guilty he felt, not to be with me on the day. I went to the Grosvenor Square memo­r­ial and could not stop cry­ing. As well, the fol­low­ing year. Then last year, we observed the day so far as to have a din­ner with the friends we’d spent a din­ner with right after the day… and we remarked the next day that we had not even talked about the events. And this year? Tomor­row will be the Lost Prop­erty Lun­cheon, 30 ladies here at my house to feed, food to pre­pare, nap­kins and plates and forks and cham­pagne glasses to gather, busi­ness to report. And then ten­nis, and a drinks party cel­e­brat­ing the start of the school year, at my friend Annie’s house. Some­thing has passed, the need reflex­ively to observe a day. Is that a good thing?

I have read that there’s a move­ment afoot in the States to make the day a per­ma­nent… not to say “hol­i­day,” as a day to mark. Stores and schools and post office to remain closed. I don’t know how I feel about that. We always knew that we were at the clos­est cir­cle to the events that you could be, with­out los­ing some­one. So we can­not really say we under­stand those who want to remem­ber it for­ever. Yes­ter­day I told Avery that I was think­ing of it less and less as the years go by, and she said, shock­ingly, “I think of it more and more as I get older.” “Why on earth?” I asked, and she said, “I was so lit­tle when it hap­pened that I didn’t under­stand, and you never let the news be on, for years after­ward, when I was lit­tle… now I hear peo­ple talk­ing about it, and we dis­cussed the rela­tion­ship between reli­gion and ter­ror­ism in RS [reli­gious stud­ies], and I thought a lot about what had hap­pened.” Of course she would: she was embroiled, at age nearly 5, in one of the most sig­nif­i­cant moments in our country’s his­tory, and we did, I admit, try our hard­est to keep her shel­tered from it. It was just instinct.

At any rate, today found me out and about with my friend Gigi, always a tonic (two com­pletely unused PhDs in one room can be only a good thing, I feel), at the Saatchi Gal­leries look­ing at truly dread­ful art. More on that soon, since I must quote from the cat­a­logue, noth­ing less than a lit­eral trans­la­tion will do. But suf­fice to say at this moment that the beetroot-infused salmon salad at the gallery’s Mess is not to be despised, was in fact LOVELY. And to be with a truly intel­li­gent friend (who has, it must be admit­ted, worked as a copy writer for JCrew and as such can come up with any num­ber of clever words for ANY color she sees) was the best med­i­cine for the anniver­sary eve, when one hardly knows how to feel. Thank you, Gigi.

That’s actu­ally not a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion. That is the sort of ques­tion one can expect to ask when one devotes most of one’s wak­ing hours to Lost Prop­erty at one’s daughter’s school. One small rub­ber orca, resid­ing in a sealed glass jar on whose bot­tom is stuck a note that says “My mother’s quiche.” Could it be a prop from a school play? Then there was the lost half an apple from last term, a ther­mos of what I was VASTLY relieved to find was water, but it could have been fish chow­der from 1996. How about a cookie sheet? One of those turned up today. And then there’s a copy of the Sun news­pa­per from six and a half years ago, have you lost that?

As this pho­to­graph of Avery attests, the girls at her school can be extremely charm­ing, cre­atively attired, doubt­less very sweet. They can also be mon­u­men­tally care­less with their belongings.

Of course there are more seri­ous items to be lost as well, like one girl’s entire revi­sion (study, for us Amer­i­cans) note­book for her entire year. Her name, Phoebe, was drawn in many dif­fer­ent styles with many dif­fer­ent col­ored pen­cils through­out its con­tents, but how­ever enter­tain­ing and dec­o­ra­tive this might have been, note to girls: a last name is even more help­ful. The only fur­ther clue to her iden­tity was the repeated mes­sage also through­out: “PHOEBE LOVES HARRY,” or its alter­nate spelling, “PHOEBE HEARTS HARRY.” For­ever, mind you. We vol­un­teers thought of ask­ing the school sec­re­tary to post a mes­sage on the school­wide mes­sage white­board. “If Phoebe-Who-Loves-Harry-Forever could please come to Lost Prop­erty to col­lect her revi­sion note­book, we would be grateful.”

And get this: a British pass­port, can­celled to be sure, was found in the pocket of a leather bomber jacket. “This is how iden­tity theft hap­pens,” Avery said sagely, when she stopped by on her way to lunch (chicken and leek tart with puff pas­try and sage sauce). Count­less lacrosse sticks, mate­less train­ers, games skirts with and with­out name tapes. Fair enough. But a rub­ber orca and a cookie sheet? I ask you.

All this is an implaca­ble reminder that sum­mer is OVER. I feel that the last day is so far away now, the after­noon we waited for Avery to come home from Corn­wall. I put­tered around in the kitchen cook­ing all her favorite foods (or some of them, she has so many!): slow-braised chicken, potato pan­cakes with sour cream and home­made apple­sauce, cheesy spinach. Do you know how easy it is to make apple­sauce? I’ll tell you. It’s the only way I know of to get a child to eat four apples at one sitting.

Apple­sauce
(serves 1 child)

four tart apples (Granny Smith, Bram­ley are ideal)
1/2 cup apple juice or cider
1 tsp ground cin­na­mon
dash nut­meg
dash ground cloves

Sim­ply peel and core the apples, then cut into small chunks. Place in a shal­low, heavy saucepan and add every­thing else. Sim­mer low for per­haps 20 min­utes, mash­ing occa­sion­ally with a potato masher. That’s IT.

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

The beau­ties of this dish are many: it’s good for you, it uses up skanky apples that you wouldn’t offer to your near and dear raw, it’s cheap, it can serve as a side dish, a pud­ding or a DIVINE break­fast for your child. And it makes the house smell like the best child­hood mem­o­ries you ever had. Even my cookery-hating mother made applesauce!

While all this cooked, I whiled away some time play­ing “The Rain­bow Con­nec­tion” on the piano and dry­ing dishes, then I ended up in total pathetic antic­i­pa­tion, sit­ting on the brick wall out­side our front gar­den, with one of the sum­mer back issues of Gourmet Mag­a­zine to pre­tend to read while I waited, a most appre­ci­ated present from my sis­ter! It began to sprin­kle with rain, but I didn’t want to go in, so on I sat under the heavy pro­tec­tion of the Lon­don plane trees, talk­ing to neigh­bors as they walked by on seri­ous life errands, not spend­ing their after­noons wait­ing for a prac­ti­cally grown-up child to return home after five long days.

And so she did, return home, I mean! How happy we were to hug her, taller even than when we last saw her! Our dear friends dropped her off, dis­lodg­ing seem­ingly much more than one family’s belong­ings from the boot of the car to find her bulging suit­case, while she clutched her pre­cious bag of Cor­nish fudge. She dragged every­thing in and we sat down at the kitchen table to hear all the tales of body­board­ing, surf­ing (really!), fight­ing for shower space with 8 chil­dren, going out to the best restau­rant in Corn­wall for the best steak-frites of her life. The secret? “These chips were TRIPLE FRIED!” I think any­thing that was fried three times in salty oil would be tasty, even a rub­ber orca. Won­der­ful to have her back, shar­ing her excite­ment. It always shocks me a bit when she returns home from hav­ing done some­thing far away from us, full of sto­ries of things we did not do with her. Run­ning all through our evening was the real­iza­tion of how she is cen­tral to our hap­pi­ness. Just wonderful!

Then, one more week­end with­out the usual activ­i­ties, so no breath­less com­mute to the skat­ing rink or the act­ing school or the rid­ing sta­ble. Just long hours of hang­ing about, read­ing books that had new appeal because they were HERE all sum­mer while we were away. And we spent a nice after­noon in our old haunts in Maryle­bone: the world’s best (pos­si­bly only?) shop devoted entirely to but­tons! As I’ve told you before, there is noth­ing like the But­ton Queen, even in their new premises, saved from Marylebone’s dom­i­nant de Walden estate’s plan to tear down sev­eral Vic­to­rian build­ings and build who knows what mon­stros­ity in their place. The Estate seemed happy to evict all their other ten­ants, but not the But­ton Queen. It always seems a shame to spent a half an hour there, look­ing at all the cer­e­mo­nial but­tons, the price­less cameo and glass but­tons, and then… buy a replace­ment for a jacket sleeve but­ton. And that’s ALL. They never seem to mind! I sup­pose you’d have a unique atti­tude toward life and human nature if you devoted your life to buttons.

Home to have early drinks with Annie’s fam­ily in their cozy, ivy– and passionfruit-draped gar­den, gos­sip­ing, trad­ing sto­ries of last sum­mer adven­tures, and I gave them my two cur­rent favorite books as a com­pletely inad­e­quate thank-you for hav­ing Avery in Corn­wall. If you haven’t got A Table in the Tarn yet, get it. It’s the story and the recipes from my writ­ing tutor Orlando Murrin’s coun­try house hotel in the south of France. You’ll just want his life. And his food. I have cooked many recipes from this book, and you know what? They WORK. Then I gave them Risotto With Net­tles, the new mem­oir by Anna del Conte, sim­ply the best Eng­lish writer on Ital­ian food since Eliz­a­beth David, and if I’m hon­est, I like her even bet­ter. Self-effacing and yet some­how also com­pletely author­i­ta­tive. Her rem­i­nis­cences of her Ital­ian child­hood will make you very, very hungry.

Home from their lovely atmos­phere to cook a quick Sun­day din­ner of grilled salmon and Annie’s recommendation:

Olive-Oil Mashed Pota­toes
(serves 4)

4 large waxy pota­toes, like Maris Piper or Yukon Gold
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tbsps but­ter
milk for thinning

Peel the pota­toes and quar­ter them, then boil in salted water for about 30 min­utes until com­pletely soft, but not dis­solved. Mash thor­oughly with oil, but­ter and enough milk (or cream, if you want to lose the bat­tle with cho­les­terol) to get them to the con­sis­tency you want. I myself like rather loose mashed pota­toes, but some peo­ple like them quite stiff. Salt and pep­per them liberally.

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What I would say about this method of mash­ing pota­toes is that it is closer to a puree than a mash, more like the French would give you in a restau­rant, and they are very, very rich. A lit­tle goes a long way and this recipe may make more than you need for four.

Tonight we are recov­er­ing from an extremely hot and sunny (and there­fore stinky) ten­nis game and await­ing grilled lamb chops for din­ner. I can’t be both­ered to pro­duce any­thing very excit­ing, after my tri­als at Lost Prop­erty. I hate to think what tomor­row will bring: I keep expect­ing a sev­ered head. I’ll keep you posted.

Well, life in all its com­plex­ity and ordi­nary strife has reap­peared! First in line for atten­tion and drama was lit­tle Hermione, our small­est and nor­mally most inde­pen­dent, nay fiercest cat. We returned home from Amer­ica to find her limp­ing and ungroomed, but still wag­ging her tail when she heard her name, and eat­ing every­thing in sight. In short, a mixed bag, and as such, we were inclined to leave her to her inde­pen­dence and to see if she returned to nor­mal on her own. I was able to run my fin­gers along all her limbs and find them intact, so I was not spurred on to begin the unpleas­ant and con­fronta­tional process of get­ting her to the vet.

How­ever, we returned from Corn­wall to find her in much the same state, which boded ill. Another two days watch­ing her limp, and finally I made an appoint­ment with the vet, and promptly spent the dura­tion of hours between then and the book­ing fret­ting about get­ting her into her car­rier. Nor­mally she can­not be held, only stroked occa­sion­ally on major hol­i­days, and when she is sedated. So the prospect of fetch­ing her into the prison was not appeal­ing. My state of mind on this sub­ject car­ried over to our ten­nis game on Mon­day night, which meant I missed ALL my shots and sent such ter­ri­ble ones over the net to John that he had to run furi­ously, scram­bling like Andy Rod­dick, and in doing so… strained his calf mus­cle. No more ten­nis for a few days, drat.

Ah well, it was just as well to come home and hunt down the furry patient, which was eas­ier than I thought. She was all the way at the top of the house, which argued for her mobil­ity, but looked ter­ri­ble, so I was not sorry that I needed to get her to the doc­tor. She actu­ally let me pick her up, a few scratches along the way to be sure, and was in the car­rier. There she began to express her­self in no uncer­tain terms as to her feel­ings about her con­di­tion, the sprin­kling rain, her jour­ney in an embar­rass­ing cat car­rier, you name it.

The long and short of it is, 170 pounds and two days later, she had an abscessed wound, pos­si­bly an ani­mal bite, on her lit­tle shoul­der. Poor dear. This was dealt with in var­i­ous ways which I will not describe on the off-chance that you’re read­ing this to accom­pany a meal. Suf­fice to say, John brought her home today while I was at Lost Prop­erty at Avery’s school, and she’s shaved and thor­oughly humil­i­ated and smelling of vet. Poor thing.

Add to this feline med­ical drama, and John’s tiny immo­bil­ity, Avery’s first day of school today. How my mind went back to this time last year, the fan­tas­tic visit of my dear friends Bob and Ann, and the excite­ment of Avery’s first FIRST day at her new school. The anti­cli­max of the SEC­OND first day was not suf­fi­cient to stop her ask­ing both of us to walk with her, which was lovely: a typ­i­cal Sep­tem­ber Lon­don day. Grey, shift­ing clouds, the threat of a sprin­kle, and to be greeted at school by an entirely new entrance! And new dri­ve­way, and new land­scap­ing! How on earth was all this accom­plished in the eight short weeks we were away? We left her there, rush­ing in with all the other girls, all dressed fab­u­lously casu­ally and uniquely, yet all look­ing some­how alike. How do they man­age that?

By the end of the day, all the fresh new­ness of the school year had given way to mas­sive annoy­ance and dis­ap­point­ment. It won’t last. But the school play… The school play is being pro­duced jointly with an extremely posh and cool nearby boys’ school across the river. Avery was cho­sen along with just a few other girls to par­tic­i­pate and as such, should have felt great. But today was the allo­ca­tion of parts within this pro­duc­tion, and she got stuck in the cho­rus. This we found out after walk­ing in a stun­ning autumn evening across the gor­geous Ham­mer­smith Bridge (with its sub­tle placque com­mem­o­rat­ing an RAF offi­cer in 1919 who dived into the Thames to save a drown­ing lady, suc­ceeded in doing so, but died as a result of the injuries he sus­tained in the effort, poor lad). The sun was shin­ing, the blue sky beck­oned in that way it can do only in Sep­tem­ber, more’s the pity, as I always suf­fer flash­backs. But I rose above it, and the walk was sim­ply superb.

At din­ner, we sat down to creamy red pep­per soup and her favorite pasta dish, with the BEST lit­tle shal­lots I have ever, ever cooked with, from Ghana of all places, procur­able at my local and adored Shepherd’s Bush Mar­ket (in all its zany, dirty love­li­ness), at Straw­berry Hill Fruiter­ers. Go get some, aren’t they lovely?

Broc­coli Pasta
(serves 4)

2 tbsps olive oil
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
6 tiny Ghana shal­lots, or 2 nor­mal, minced
1 large can, or 2 small, plum toma­toes
1/2 cup pinenuts
1 tbsp Ital­ian sea­son­ing
1 head broc­coli, bro­ken into flo­rets
3/4 lb curly or bowtie pasta
grated pecorino to sprinkle

Saute the gar­lic and shal­lots in the oil and set aside. In a food proces­sor, whiz up toma­toes, pinenuts and Ital­ian sea­son­ing till pink and rel­a­tively smooth. Add to gar­lic mix­ture and heat gen­tly: it will blurb up at you!

Steam broc­coli flo­rets till they smell like broc­coli, per­haps 4 min­utes, then put in cold water with ice to stop cook­ing. Cook pasta and then mix together with sauce and drained broc­coli, top with cheese.

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Avery has eaten so much of this dish, in the past, that I called her the “snake who ate a rat,” and then could only flop flat and try to digest it. It’s guilt-free and com­pletely won­der­ful, espe­cially with these lovely shal­lots! I know I should feel guilty about their being flown in from Ghana, but I con­fess: I thought it was cool.

Well, cat emer­gen­cies and drama dra­mas aside, plus the odd ten­nis injury, the year has begun (I per­sist in observ­ing Sep­tem­ber rather than Jan­u­ary as the begin­ning of that “real” year, the aca­d­e­mic one) nor­mally enough. Today I headed off to Lost Prop­erty, just to accom­pany the vol­un­teer who would turn up on this first day, to be greeted with… CHAOS! Dirty, smelly, room-filling CHAOS! I sim­ply stood and stared for one dis­be­liev­ing moment, at dozens and dozens of black garbage bags (they aren’t any less smelly if you call them “bin lin­ers” as they do here) filled to the dusty brim with, I kid you not, apple cores, empty Diet Coke bot­tles, muf­fin lin­ers, THONGS, mouth­guards for lacrosse, not to men­tion hun­dreds of dis­carded post-GCSE books, and then what you’d right­fully expect: lacrosse sticks and ten­nis rack­ets, PE skirts and the odd incred­i­bly valu­able cash­mere jumper or Juicy Cou­ture jacket.

Beyond the pale! What on earth had hap­pened? Well, the answer was not long in com­ing. It’s the case of the New Broom. Our gor­geous young care­taker appeared, indig­nant at our dis­tress, and explained all. “There’s a new admin­is­tra­tor, and he made it his busi­ness to clear out every cor­ner of this school [this news thereby spoil­ing ALL my plea­sure at how clean every­thing looked!], and to ban­ish all bins. So every­thing came… here.”

Rats. My fel­low vol­un­teer and I were sim­ply dumb­struck, not to men­tion grossed out. We dug in. Girls appeared, from time to time, look­ing as if they might want some­thing, and we growled at them, “Take what­ever belongs to you, and what­ever you rec­og­nize of your friends’, too!” Tomor­row I shall be back there, suf­fer­ing anew. But with the new list of girls, and the names of their teach­ers, so I can begin to make new labels for all the boxes. What a job!

It’s at moments like these that I must take refuge in one of my name­less “Why I love Eng­land” games, and today, it was the “Town Names on Motor­way Signs You’d Never See in Amer­ica.” Take a look.

Devon:
Bar­ton Clovelly
Cheri­ton Bishop
Ted­burn St Mary

Wilt­shire:
Crooked Soley
Goldfinch Bolton
Upper (and of course Lower) Basildon

I sim­ply dote on these names. No one bor­ing or point­less could pos­si­bly live in them. Maybe, in fact, they’re inhab­ited only by bad­gers. Who drive vin­tage cars.

Clearly I need more sleep.

Ah, well, tomor­row will bring another set of chal­lenges. I am crav­ing the clam lin­guini dish Keith made for us, but I have sausages I must cook, so I’m think­ing: a clam and sausage dish? If, that is, there’s room in my house for that much drama.