“Drake: the Musi­cal” has receded into the mists of time, car­ry­ing along with it the mem­o­ries of such dit­ties as “It’s Rain­ing Again in Green­wich” and the cam­paign song for Sir Fran­cis run­ning for Mayor of Ply­mouth against Lord Kil­li­grew, whose famous refrain, “Thank you, Mother,” will live on in the minds of all of us who saw two, three or even four per­for­mances. It was such fun! Such a happy reminder of my own high-school days in musi­cals, that feel­ing of group effort, fel­low sup­port, admiration.

The play ended in tri­umph on Sat­ur­day night but I wasn’t even there, for two rea­sons: one, you couldn’t get a ticket for love or money, and two, I was sick as a dog. I hardly ever get sick, and so when I do, it’s with a vengeance. I spent Sat­ur­day, Sun­day and yes­ter­day in a lump of mis­ery, slug­gish­ness and tis­sues. Today I am begin­ning to feel bet­ter, which is a good thing con­sid­er­ing… Thanks­giv­ing is in less than 48 hours.

In any case, we’re all mourn­ing the pass­ing of “Drake,” and there is much Face­book activ­ity in Avery’s life as a result. But never mind: next week she has her very first pay­ing act­ing job! She’s pro­vid­ing a voiceover for “Bob the Builder,” a ter­rif­i­cally pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion series here. At least, she is if she gets per­mis­sion from school. In one of those flur­ries of notes to school, that par­tic­u­lar request is in a pile along with “Yes, we’ll be at the parent-teacher con­fer­ences” tomor­row night. I always get excited about these con­fer­ences, even when I know from long expe­ri­ence that what will hap­pen is this: each teacher will gaze at us calmly and say some­thing like, “Everything’s fine.”

Tonight was the Soiree Musi­cale at school, a lovely evening of musi­cal feats (too much flute, not enough swing band). Avery and her “Junior Madri­gal Choir” per­formed a hair-raisingly touch­ing “Ave Maria,” and can I just say? I will be so pleased when, some­day, I can lis­ten to my child sing in a con­cert with­out my break­ing down into hid­den tears. I always have to pre­tend I have some­thing in my eye, or that I must blow my nose (at least tonight I had a cold). There is some­thing about the utter inno­cence, the knowl­edge of the effort put into the per­for­mance, the touch­ing invest­ment of all these girls into their achieve­ments that makes me unbear­ably sen­ti­men­tal. I find myself think­ing, “You’ll learn to sing these lovely solos and play the sax­o­phone and write your own arrange­ments of ancient songs, and then what? You’ll wake up one day and YOU’RE the mother, sit­ting in the audi­ence, won­der­ing where it all went.” I am really in a mood!

Such was my funk­i­ness last evening when, in the throes of an annoy­ing hack­ing cough, I felt very blue. I think I can iden­tify part of my sad­ness: I’ve been work­ing for sev­eral weeks on a chap­ter for my “book” on Thanks­giv­ing. And it turns out, Thanks­giv­ing in Eng­land makes me sad. It’s an Amer­i­can hol­i­day! No mat­ter how lovely our guests, and they will be, they are Eng­lish and as such, vis­i­tors to our hol­i­day. The child­hood feel­ings of fam­ily, bick­er­ing and famil­iar and beloved as they are, will not be present. I’ll wake up on Thanks­giv­ing morn­ing with that odd feel­ing of being in charge that never fails to amaze me, no mat­ter how many (20 at least!) years I have been in charge. It’s meant to be my Aunt Mary Wayne and Uncle Kenny who host us and take care of it all. My dad should be dri­ving and my mother bick­er­ing about direc­tions to Ken­tucky, and my sis­ter and brother and I squab­bling about hav­ing enough room in the back­seat. I haven’t spent so much time think­ing about Thanks­giv­ing in years and years, and I miss every­one quite des­per­ately. But I imag­ine that I’ll come out on the other side, still feel­ing nos­tal­gic for the old days, but with my mind firmly aware that it’s my house, my hol­i­day now.

I’m mak­ing lists. Yes­ter­day John and I picked up the huge turkey and placed him in his briney bath of sea salt, pep­per­corns, fresh rose­mary, sage, cel­ery and onions. So he will repose until Thanks­giv­ing after­noon, when for the first time, I’m going to roast him upside down. So much for the Nor­man Rock­well photo oppor­tu­nity: this year his legs will be stick­ing down the wrong direc­tion, but let me tell you, that breast will be TEN­DER, not dried out. Then there will be the mashed pota­toes, the cheesy pota­toes my friend Becky has told me how to make (how we will miss her and her fam­ily on the day), green beans. John’s argu­ing with me over the beans. Should they be canned, with mush­room soup and fried onions on top? Yuck, but tra­di­tional. I’m not get­ting much sup­port for my view that they should be steamed, with a but­tery, gar­licky, lemony dress­ing. It’s tra­di­tion ver­sus a food some­one might actu­ally want to eat.

Then there’s stuff­ing made of the torn-out insides of Ital­ian bread, sauteed sausage, cel­ery, onions, gar­lic, mush­rooms, fresh sage and a glug of heavy cream… and spinach with Gruyere cheese and cel­ery salt, and pump­kin pie!

I’ll do a post-mortem after the hol­i­day itself and give you some per­fect recipes. In the mean­time, let me tell you what will make any school­girl sit up and take notice at break­fast, when “Drake” has fin­ished and the hol­i­days are just begin­ning to beckon. It’s warm, it’s fra­grant, col­or­ful, sweet and wel­com­ing. Just right for those dark morn­ings with the rain pelt­ing down the windows.

Per­fect Fruit Crum­ble
(serves about 4–6 breakfasts?)

6 nec­tarines or small peaches
2 dozen straw­ber­ries, hulled and halved
1 cup whole­meal flour
1 cup Demer­era sugar
1 tsp ground cin­na­mon
1/2 tsp each: ground cloves, ground nut­meg
125g/1/2 cup cold butter

Cut up all the fruit and lay it in a glass dish about 9 x 5 inches. Then place flour, sugar and spices in a Cuisi­nart, turn it on, and grad­u­ally add, in small cubes, the cold but­ter. Let the mix­ture whizz until it has the con­sis­tency of a rough, crumbly dough.

Scat­ter the crumbly dough over the fruit and bake at 180C/350F for 40 min­utes or until the fruit bub­bles and the top is brown.

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

Onward and upward then, past nos­tal­gia for musi­cals, past doses of Day Nurse and Night Nurse for colds, past gro­cery lists and table-setting strate­gies. It’s time to assume the man­tle of adult­hood and be thankful.

It’s hap­pened at last: “Drake: the Musi­cal” has been staged not once, but twice in the small lives we all inhabit here in our lit­tle cor­ner of Lon­don. And con­trary to our rather churl­ish expec­ta­tion, fed by our children’s vile atti­tudes (which have changed remark­ably since per­form­ing), the musi­cal was FABULOUS.

Granted, I will go to my grave won­der­ing why on earth any­one thought that Sir Fran­cis Drake (“Frankie” to his many admir­ers onstage) was a com­pelling fig­ure for a musi­cal lead. He was a lad­dish rake of the first order, noth­ing more than a pirate! (“A pri­va­teer,” his 11-year-old por­trayer insists). Added to that skep­ti­cism may be put the ques­tion­able wis­dom of 13-year-olds putting on a musi­cal that deals with, let’s see, ram­pant anti-Spanish pro­pa­ganda (I’m not Eng­lish, so I can frown at the laugh­ter in the audi­ence at all the slurs!), randy sea­far­ing pirates, and much ado about mem­bers of the drunken aris­toc­racy. Lines like, “If I’m Knight of the Garter, can I say whose garter it should be?” and “I’ll show you to the ladies in wait­ing,” fol­lowed by, “They don’t have to wait no longer!” You get my drift.

Still and all, the pro­duc­tion man­aged to be com­pletely charm­ing. The kids have worked unex­pect­edly hard, it’s clear. I guess I fell into the old trap of believ­ing a child’s descrip­tion of any ongo­ing expe­ri­ence, espe­cially when you gather a whole bunch of them together and THEN try to get a grain of truth from their tales of woe. How ter­ri­ble the songs/dance/speeches were going to be (they were mar­velous and almost fault­less), how hor­ren­dous the makeup (pretty much stan­dard), how per­ilous the sets (noth­ing col­lapsed). In gen­eral, they warned us about how embar­rass­ing the whole expe­ri­ence would be, and yet, all the per­form­ers seemed happy to have us turn up, fill the house, and clap wildly. They were WONDERFUL.

“Tarry a tick, old chap!” was typ­i­cal of the ban­ter, as was, “Her Majesty’s a bit tetchy today, and who can blame her?” “Love a duck!” exclaimed one girl upon see­ing a beau­ti­ful neck­lace, where­upon an eaves­drop­ping Lord said, “Duck? Duck? Ah, Drake… a highly unsuit­able expres­sion, given the cir­cum­stances…” I chuck­led even more at these Wodehouse-esque, out­dated expres­sions. I do love liv­ing here.

The atmos­phere of a boys’ school itself strikes amaz­ing feel­ings of inad­e­quacy in me, the aver­age son-less Amer­i­can who did not grow up sur­rounded by chil­dren in knee britches, match­ing jack­ets, neck­ties and bean­ies. With kneesocks and lit­tle briefcase-y satchels. And loads of match­ing stair-step broth­ers. These boys are called things like Hor­a­tio and Simon, and the huge blowups of them in the pas­sages, play­ing rug­ger and the like with con­cen­trated expres­sions of aris­to­cratic com­pet­i­tive­ness only under­score the huge cul­tural gap between peo­ple like us and peo­ple who take this sort of thing for granted. Large groups of boys who go to a boys’ school are a breed apart: they really do say things like, “Jolly good!” and “I say…” They wres­tle and push and shove and mock-bite like any boys in Amer­ica, but they do it with per­fect hair­cuts and gor­geous accents like David Cameron’s, and I for one am besot­ted. Will Avery end up with some­one like that, and I’ll feel infe­rior for every fam­ily hol­i­day for the rest of my life? She seems per­fectly at home in the setting.

Tomor­row is an evening off. A break from the makeup removal at nearly 10 p.m., the rehash­ing of “Did you hear when Elizabeth’s micro­phone stopped work­ing dur­ing her duet with Drake?” and whose fluff­ing of lines caused tears (never let them see you sweat, I advise). Then another per­for­mance on Fri­day night, and another on Sat­ur­day, then never to be seen again.

I’ve learned sev­eral things from the whole process of “Drake: the Musi­cal.” One, boys at this age are nice. They’re pre­sentable and tal­ented and cute, and I wish Avery had more of a chance to know them. Two, I should not pay too much atten­tion to moan­ing and com­plain­ing and pre­dic­tions of dis­as­ter, because these chil­dren work too hard at every­thing for any one thing not to be done well, and this was truly a thing for them to be proud of.

Most impor­tant, I’ve learned that I will greatly miss the late-afternoon strolls across the orna­men­tal bridge to the boys’ school as the sun sets, with one, two or three girls at my side, not quite ready to walk them­selves across the Thames to rehearsal. There are so many land­mark “last times” I never thought to notice: the last time I was asked to chap­er­one a school trip? Didn’t make a note of it. The last time Avery reached out nat­u­rally to hold my hand cross­ing a street? The last time I read out loud to her before she went to sleep? What WAS I pay­ing atten­tion to that these things passed by with­out a whimper?

But I will miss these walks to rehearsal, because the next time she has to go across the river for some­thing with her friends, she’ll undoubt­edly go on her own, and the delight­ful con­ver­sa­tion about fash­ion, makeup, who likes who, even the dreaded moan­ing about home­work, will all hap­pen like that tree in the for­est. Will any of it hap­pen if I’m not there to listen?

The short answer is, yes. The cliche that chil­dren only get more won­der­ful as they get older is true, which is meant to make up for the fact that you spend more and more time with­out them, and the times you hold their hands are fewer and far­ther between. The fact is, the lit­tle ver­sions of Avery from the past that she’s left behind in my mem­ory are just as pow­er­ful as her present self: they’re sepia, fuzzy, little-girl ver­sions of the bright blue, vel­vet Drake-costumed girl I see today. I trea­sure them all.

So onward and upward to final per­for­mances of “Drake.” I hope I live to see “Joe Biden: the Musi­cal.” In the mean­time, Avery has a call-back audi­tion tomor­row after­noon for, get this, an anti-alcohol pub­lic adver­tise­ment. Talk about grow­ing up quickly! It’s odd when your child acts for a com­mer­cial dis­cour­ag­ing her against doing some­thing it had not, so far, occurred to her to do. The per­fect anti­dote to all those mugs of ale aboard the Golden Hinde with Frankie! Now I can rest easy. And we can all come home to:

Home­made Tomato Soup
(serves 8)

2 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp but­ter
6 cloves gar­lic, roughly chopped
1 white onion, roughly chopped
2 pounds fresh plum toma­toes, quar­tered
3 cups chicken stock
hand­ful fresh rose­mary stalks, leaves removed and roughly chopped
1/2 cup sin­gle (light) cream

zest of 1 lemon
1/2 cup sour cream
fresh ground black pepper

Prep is sim­plic­ity itself. Heat olive oil and but­ter in a large saucepan and add gar­lic and onion to wilt slightly. Add toma­toes and stock and rose­mary, sim­mer for 1/2 hour or until toma­toes soft. Puree with a hand blender and put through a sieve into another saucepan. Add light cream. When serv­ing, sprin­kle each bowl with a bit of lemon zest, a dol­lop of sour cream and a grind of pep­per. Done, dusted, PERFECT.

*******

There is noth­ing more per­fect than this soup. Inex­pen­sive beyond belief, almost effort­less, ele­gant and com­fort­ing. With a grilled-cheese sand­wich, this is the per­fect after-Drake sup­per. With a mug of ale, of course. Hip, hip, hooray!

I must kvell! This is my first food arti­cle (well, the first two pages of it) pub­lished in the glo­ri­ous Vin­tage Mag­a­zine, out of New York. The edi­tor, Ivy Sher­man, is truly a vision­ary, and has made each writer’s work stand out with pro­duc­tion val­ues from a bygone era. My grandmother’s actual recipe cards are repro­duced in card form, spots and stains intact, and my work has been edited to per­fec­tion. I’d for­got­ten how it felt when a piece I’d writ­ten a long time ago appears in print; I find myself think­ing what a clever girl this writer is, and per­haps I could meet her! Write a fan let­ter. Then I remem­ber it’s me.

I’m truly thrilled. Ivy has com­mis­sioned a sec­ond piece, so I’m hard at work research­ing the his­tory of women and cam­panol­ogy in mid-20th cen­tury Eng­land. Don’t ask: it will be bril­liant when it appears, I’m sure, if Ivy has any­thing to say about it, and she does.

Well, food has cer­tainly been my life in the last week. I’ve been to “Mas­terchef Live: the BBC Good Food Show” at Olympia on Fri­day, pro­duced (though I do say it myself) a com­pletely fab­u­lous grilled lamb chop din­ner on Fri­day night and a lasagne-fest Sat­ur­day night for some of my absolute favorite guests, and last night was stir-fried sir­loin with thick slices of gin­ger, broc­coli flo­rets, red pep­pers and roasted peanuts in a soy-sesame sauce. I feel I should announce some sort of fast­ing pro­gram. Every day I’m aston­ished I can still fit into my clothes. Hon­estly. It’s been a food frenzy.

Blame it all, in the first instance, on the pure appetite-adrenalin caused by the arrival of my Edin­burgh friend Char­lie. How I adore him! Do you have friends who just lift the lid on your per­son­al­ity, who make you rejoice in the spice of life? I am more than lucky in this regard. My thoughts alight on my friend Jo, who no mat­ter my stalled ambi­tions, less than stel­lar con­fi­dence in myself, never fails to change my mood com­pletely. She is effer­ves­cent, squeez­ing my arm to under­score some impor­tant point in our non­stop con­ver­sa­tion, dou­bling up laugh­ing. She and I spent an after­noon together on Tues­day feast­ing on sushi at the South Kens­ing­ton Kulu-kulu, and there is noth­ing bet­ter. Salmon fifty thou­sand ways, plus cold steamed spinach in sesame sauce, soft-shell crab, the best tem­pura shrimp. And laugh­ter. The V&A after for some cultchuh, more hys­ter­i­cal laugh­ing over a painted minia­ture of one Sir Crap­per, who was in charge of… London’s san­i­tary engi­neer­ing. I couldn’t make this stuff up.

And then there’s Charlie.

Per­haps if we spent more than a few hours, or a few days together, we’d stop laugh­ing con­stantly and com­pet­ing for clever ban­ter, but our friend­ship began over a five-day iso­la­tion course together, and we never ran out of things to laugh about then, so my hopes for a sort of forever-friendship are high. The fun of the Good Food Show is well-known to my read­ers, as is my addic­tion to the Taste of Lon­don in June. But some­how I am never quite pre­pared for just how much I can EAT in one after­noon. And although I’m telling you about the show too late for you to go this year, you’ll be pre­pared for the next show on offer in Lon­don, once you’ve read my tales of gluttony.

Char­lie and I met up in the rain out­side Olympia, hugged and kissed, and imme­di­ately began the com­pletely ridicu­lous end­less silli­ness that we do enjoy so much. Added to the gen­eral eupho­ria is his new­found love for a cer­tain some­one the details of whose charms took up much of our con­ver­sa­tion. New love, it is a joy to hear about, espe­cially with the van­tage I and my beloved occupy from 27 years down the road! Let me tell you that all deli­cious foods taste bet­ter when they’re washed down with the drunken hap­pi­ness of some­one you hold dear. Good for him!

But about the food. My God, the vari­ety! We began with very posh fish fin­gers and home­made tartare sauce from Roast, home of the fab­u­lous chef Lawrence Keogh in Bor­ough Mar­ket. Light, crisp, nos­tal­gic: the per­fect intro­duc­tion to an increas­ingly chal­leng­ing food expe­ri­ence. Because next was Launce­s­ton Place, with my secret-crush chef Tris­tan Welch. If he’s bro­ken into the big 3–0 I’d be sur­prised, so young and so ener­getic! He was there meet­ing and greet­ing, but I was too shy to approach him. Instead I tucked into his lob­ster soup with brandy and saf­fron cream. Now, I con­sider myself quite a good soup maker. Red pep­per, mush­room, potato and leek, com­fort­ing chicken soups all appear reg­u­larly from my hob. Today will be jerusalem arti­choke with cham­pagne and fresh thyme. But lob­ster? I wouldn’t know where to start. With lob­ster stock from the shells and head of a pre­vi­ous lob­ster feast, prob­a­bly, which scares me. I’ve never boiled a fish head.

Char­lie enjoyed the veni­son burger with Keens ched­dar and the house­made LP sauce. We lin­gered for a moment over my copy of Vin­tage mag­a­zine which he kindly praised, and we stood there imag­in­ing our glit­ter­ing food-writer careers, just on the cusp, push­ing aside dreamed-of mem­bers of the intru­sive press who just wanted a word or a photo, invad­ing our lunch…

Then we were onto Min Jiang, a gor­geous Chi­nese restau­rant offer­ing “leg­endary wood-fire Bei­jing Duck,” and deli­cious it was, wrapped in a pan­cake and offer­ing the per­fect spicy sauce to drip onto Charlie’s jacket. From there, we joined the queues at the Mas­terchef kitchen set, pro­duced our tick­ets to the cookoff between Nadia Sawalha and Thomasina Miers. I admit it was very cool to see John Torode and Gregg Wal­lace in per­son, after fol­low­ing the Mas­terchef pro­grammes on the telly, but I did not feel tempted, as did the ladies in front of me in the audi­ence, to scream, “There they are, oh my God!” when they appeared before the crowd. Good­ness, food celebrities!

Nadia and Thomasina were given bags of mys­tery ingre­di­ents, three min­utes in which to decide what to cook and 20 min­utes to pro­duce a dish for judg­ing. Nadia cooked a toma­toey Moroc­can stew with eggs poached in it at the last minute (too last-minute, as it turned out, because they did not fin­ish poach­ing in time! the same prob­lem I had last week with my Moroc­can meat­balls for Gigi and Saad). Thomasina pro­duced puff pas­try bis­cuits with flam­beed rasp­ber­ries, cus­tard and melted white choco­late. Char­lie and I felt after­ward that we were aching for just such a chance to cook under pressure!

Far more won­der­ful than puff pas­try was Thomasina’s offer­ing in the Mas­terchef Restau­rant, our final treat. Ravi­oli with duck liver and hazel­nuts, in a sage but­ter sauce: sim­ply sub­lime! She is the owner of Wahaca restau­rant (one located in nearby West­field shop­ping cen­ter) and I’m tempted to go, even though the Mex­i­can bent offered there will not prob­a­bly include a duck liver pasta. But any­one who can cook that dish can COOK. Do you sup­pose it was foie gras plain and sim­ple, or pre­pared duck liver pate? Just sub­lime, so rich and simple.

Well, we sim­ply stag­gered away. Sipped a glass of cham­pagne, then mean­dered around to visit the many, many food stalls with sausages (I came away with “welfare-friendly Bocad­don Farm Veal” sausages from South-East Corn­wall which look amaz­ing) my favorite chilli oil from Apu­lia, the pep­peri­est and most fla­vor­ful with­out sim­ply blow­ing your head off. Char­lie ran into a friend run­ning the Cor­nish Cheese Com­pany stall, and we sam­pled and bought a creamy, sub­tle blue that isn’t merely stinky, it’s really com­plex and tasty.

Upstairs, we tracked down my inspir­ing cook­ery teacher of last win­ter, the gor­geous Han­nah Goodyear of The Kitchen Queen! Things have just gone from strength to strength for Han­nah, who’s quit her day job since I worked with her last year and is teach­ing and cater­ing like crazy. I have to admit, I showed her my mag­a­zine as well and we jumped up and down together in child­ish glee! I’ve said it before: I rec­om­mend a day cook­ing with Han­nah as just about the most fun you can have in a kitchen. There are some “teach­ers” in this world who go into the busi­ness, I fear, in order to stamp down their stu­dents’ con­fi­dence and ambi­tion, while shoring up their own egos. That is dread­ful. Han­nah is the polar oppo­site: she stands back to let you shine, picks up your mis­takes and sets them right, and it’s all backed up with a pure love of food, both cook­ing and eat­ing it. I love her. A few hours with her would be an awfully nice Christ­mas gift for your favorite cook, I can tell you, because there is always some­thing we can all still learn.

That was our day out at the Good Food Show. How we hated to part, in the driz­zly rain, shar­ing ambi­tions and mem­o­ries of all the dishes we had enjoyed. Oh, so deli­cious. Thanks, Charlie.

It’s amaz­ing how a day like that can inspire a per­son to go shop­ping and cook. That, plus the mem­o­ries of the Ottolenghi lasagna I was fed on Hal­loween, spurred me on to invite my friend Annie and her lovely fam­ily to din­ner on Sat­ur­day night. I must say, the exper­i­ment was pretty suc­cess­ful. What I was after was a rather pale, creamy lasagna, as con­trasted with the very meaty, cheesey, toma­toey ver­sion I usu­ally pro­duce. And amaz­ingly, because the creami­ness comes from a light bechamel sauce rather than pounds of cheese, it’s a very light dish. I’d like it still creamier next time, so guess what? You should come and join us.

Creamy Lasagna
(serves 8)

12 sheets lasagna noo­dles
6 large car­rots, sliced in rounds and the slices cut in half
2 tbsps olive oil
1 lb beef mince
6 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 shal­lots, minced
1 large can peeled plum toma­toes
1 tbsp Ital­ian sea­son­ing
4 tbsps but­ter
2 tbsps flour
1 pint whole milk
1 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
sprin­kle nut­meg
pinch sea salt
fresh-ground black pep­per to taste
1/2 cup grated pecorino or parme­san cheese
1 large ball buf­falo moz­zarella
hand­ful basil leaves, shredded

Begin by boil­ing the lasagna noo­dles till cooked, then drain­ing them and brush­ing them with olive oil to keep them from stick­ing together.

Steam the car­rots until eas­ily pierced with a fork and set aside.

For the meat sauce, heat the olive oil in a large skil­let and begin fry­ing the mince. When it is nearly cooked through, throw in the gar­lic and shal­lots and fry until they are soft­ened and meat com­pletely cooked. Add the toma­toes and Ital­ian sea­son­ing and sim­mer for about 15 minutes.

Mean­while, in a large saucepan, to make the white sauce, melt the but­ter and add the flour: cook together until bub­bling but before it begins to brown. Whisk in the milk slowly, mak­ing sure there are no lumps. Cook until the roux begins to thicken, then add the ricotta, nut­meg, salt and pep­per and stir until thor­oughly mixed.

To assem­ble, ladle enough meat sauce into a 9x13 inch glass dish to cover the bot­tom. Place 4 lasagna sheets on top of the sauce. Pour over half the white sauce. Sprin­kle on the steamed car­rots. Lay down another layer of noo­dles and another layer of meat sauce. Sprin­kle with the grated cheese. Fin­ish with the last 4 lasagna sheets, the last of the meat sauce and pour over the rest of the white sauce. Sprin­kle on the moz­zarella and top with the basil leaves.

Bake in a slow oven (150C, 300F) for about 45 minutes-1 hour until the lasagna is bub­bling and top begin­ning to brown.

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

We ate it all! Nor­mally when I say “Serves 8″ I am really gen­er­ous, because no one eats as much as my fam­ily and nor­mal peo­ple will have left­overs. But not on Sat­ur­day night. I was thrilled to see the dish com­pletely empty, as well as the bowl of gar­licky, lemony steamed green beans and the pile of toasted baguette slices. My friend Annie brought a divine dark choco­late tart, per­fect for me since I don’t like sweet things. If you wanted it sweeter, you could use milk chocolate.

Annie’s Choco­late Tart
(serves 8)

12-inch short­crust or sweet pas­try tart shell
11 ounces dou­ble cream
2 tbsps caster sugar (plain gran­u­lated sugar in the US)
pinch salt
4 ounces soft­ened but­ter
1 lb best cook­ing chocolate

Spread grease­proof paper over the tart shell, cover it with beans or pas­try beads and bake at 180C/350F for about 20 min­utes or until thor­oughly baked. Remove the beans and paper and cool completely.

Bring to a boil the cream, sugar and salt, then add the but­ter and choco­late and stir until they are melted. Annie says if the mix­ture sep­a­rates at all, you can add a tiny bit of cold milk and whisk thoroughly.

Once the mix­ture has cooled slightly, pour into tart shell and cool at room tem­per­a­ture for at least 2 hours. Dust with icing sugar or cocoa or both, if you want it to look posh. Serve with dou­ble cream and strawberries.

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

This was very, very good. Creamy, sim­ple and perfect.

Well, I think that is enough about food to keep any­one busy and chew­ing for some time. I’ll be back later in the week with reports of… “Drake: the Musi­cal,” which reveals itself to the world on Tues­day night! And there­after Wednes­day, Fri­day and Sat­ur­day. By that time Avery will have dis­ap­peared com­pletely under a layer of pan­cake makeup and we will all be singing the cho­rus about the defeat of the Span­ish Armada. Watch this space.

We’re sit­ting back, hands folded over stom­achs more than sat­is­fied with John’s first proper din­ner since his return from Ire­land. Cream of mush­room soup with home­made chicken stock, grilled salmon with steamed rice, roasted car­rots and corian­der, and steamed arti­chokes with the best vinai­grette: mus­tard, a tiny hint of mayo, chilli oil and lemon juice. We are surfeited.

John’s back! I warned Avery that his flight would get in too late for her to stay up to wel­come him, so she had just gone to bed when we heard that most unusual of sounds in dark­est Ham­mer­smith: an idling taxi! I sim­ply knew it was him. Threw up the win­dow (one of my mother’s favorite expres­sions) and stuck my head out and there he was, shades of his many hun­dreds of returns from busi­ness trips, haul­ing suit­case and brief­case from the dark innards of the cab, look­ing up joy­ously to see me. “I’m HOME!”

Well, just look at these two pho­tographs. The Hon­or­able Desmond Guin­ness, host of one of the Geor­gian Society’s evenings dur­ing John’s Irish adven­ture, at his coun­try pile. First in 1963, the year of John’s birth, and the sec­ond, this past year, these pho­tos were taken. How the bril­liance of genet­ics shines through, over 45 years! The blue glow of his aris­to­cratic eyes undimmed, the intel­lec­tual gen­eros­ity as intense as ever. What a fam­ily, form­ing the Geor­gian Soci­ety to save all these build­ings John loves so dearly. He had a mar­vel­lous, unusual, note­wor­thy time with all his fel­low devo­tees of Geor­gian archi­tec­ture. The first of many such adven­tures, we hope!

We are so glad to be reunited. How were we ever so accus­tomed to his many absences, more fre­quent than his times at home? But of course we could get used to it all over again, if he found the right job and was happy doing it. Avery and I sur­vived quite well, if miss­ing the smoothly oiled machine that is two par­ents on duty! Heaven for­bid, we had to take pub­lic trans­port all over the place, as I absolutely refuse to drive our lovely Cinque­cento until I have a proper dri­ving license. As many of you know, I have an unfor­tu­nate his­tory of a mas­sive and nearly fatal traf­fic acci­dent almost 20 years ago, and it was but a mir­a­cle that I wasn’t thrown in jail THAT time. I really can’t revisit it. So with­out John, Avery and I jumped on more buses and tubes than we nor­mally do, and walked in many rain­storms to achieve our goals. Fair enough, we got where we needed to go.

The only true adven­ture in our time alone was Mon­day evening, when I had double-booked Avery’s skat­ing les­son and my own vol­un­teer time at a school event, at pre­cisely the same time. I racked my brains for a likely mother to whom I could say, “Wouldn’t your daugh­ter love to accom­pany Avery to her skat­ing les­son, on the the­ory that two lit­tle girls alone are safer than one?” My imag­i­na­tion failed.

So I posed it to the girl her­self. “Would you rather skip your skat­ing les­son, or get to it your­self, and back home, in a taxi?” She con­sid­ered this and then decided she was more than equal to the task. “Don’t worry, Mommy! I’ll be fine. Who would dare to kid­nap me? It’d be like Clue.” She assumed a dra­matic stance with her skate bag. “Mr Cab­man, in a black taxi… with a SKATE BLADE.”

So I put her, my heart in my mouth, into a taxi, in a dri­ving rain­storm, pitch dark. I stuck my head in the win­dow as the dri­ver let it down. I made severe eye con­tact with him, gave him the address. “No wor­ries, love,” he said cheer­fully, so I smiled grimly, handed Avery in, repeated all the instruc­tions about pay­ment, tip, her skat­ing ticket, pay­ing her instruc­tor, where to get the return cab, the address of the school… I was utterly exhausted as I slammed the door to, and walked to school, mak­ing an emer­gency phone call to my friend Annie as I went. “I think I’m hav­ing a panic attack…” Annie was, as one expects from such an expe­ri­enced mother, calm. “It had to hap­pen, she’ll be home safe and sound, she can call me if she needs me.” Right. All true.

I stag­gered into the school, wet and upset. There is a great British state­ment from WWII, “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Of course. There is also, now in the 21st cen­tury, a follow-on slo­gan appear­ing on cof­fee mugs and com­puter mouse pads. “Now Panic and Freak Out.” I decided on a sort of mid­way ground, and hung up my coat, greeted the cater­ing man­ager, the High Mis­tress, the admin­is­tra­tion liai­son, and promptly con­fided in every­one. “She’s on her first taxi ride alone…” Loads of hand-holding and con­fi­dences in turn. Every­one understands.

Well, need­less to say, two hours later, hav­ing pushed wine and snacks and wis­dom on the new par­ents who were there for their parent-teacher con­fer­ences, I looked up to see Avery walk­ing in, safe and sound. No Panic and Freak Out needed! She dropped her skate bag, her home­work bag. “She’s here!” sev­eral moth­ers shouted in muted tones. “As you see,” Avery inclined her head, qui­etly con­fi­dent, as befits the one in our rela­tion­ship who has no clear mem­o­ries of child­birth and so can be quite cavalier.

Well done. Well done on your inde­pen­dence, Avery! And do you know what the child said? “Well done, you, Mommy, I think it was harder for you.” Sigh.

The only thing a mother can do on such an occa­sion is fill her oven at 5 p.m with the fol­low­ing, and know she’ll walk into a fra­grant home three hours later, with din­ner on the table in a thrice.

Upside-Down Slow-Roast Chicken
(serves 4 with soup leftovers)

1 large chicken, spatch­cocked
3 tbsps but­ter
1 large white onion, quar­tered
5 cloves gar­lic, peeled
3 tbsps olive oil
sea salt and pepper

In a large bak­ing dish lined with foil, place the chicken, rubbed all over with the but­ter, breast DOWN. Trust me, the breast will not dry out, even if the fin­ished prod­uct is less than elegant-looking. Spatch­cock­ing means, of course, sim­ply remov­ing the back­bone and flat­ten­ing the chicken.

Scat­ter the onion and gar­lic all round, then sprin­kle every­thing with olive oil and salt and pepper.

Place in a slow oven, 120C, 240F. You should also place in the same oven a foil-wrapped pack­age of small whole beets, or parsnips, or but­ter­nut squash. Any­thing of a root veg­etable nature will take to this method of cooking.

Come home three hours later to… din­ner. I promise.

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

You will enter the house, your heart (my heart) still beat­ing slightly too fast from what­ever trauma has kept you from home dur­ing those lovely hours of 5–8. Your head will lift, your nose sniff like a cat’s, your child will say some­thing like, “Aren’t you clever to have din­ner cook­ing while we were out!” You will cut some French bread and put out some but­ter. The chicken will fall apart when you try to turn it over, but be sure to snag some of the crispy, salty skin from the car­cass before you begin to take the chicken apart. Eat that skin WITH­OUT APOL­OGY, as my best writer friend Lau­rie Col­win would say. You did all the work: you deserve it.

Well, strictly speak­ing, no one did much work this time. But just for gen­eral prin­ci­ples, you eat that skin.

Once you’ve plucked enough chicken from the bones to serve you as din­ner, driz­zle it all with the cook­ing juices and tuck in. On the side you’ll have what­ever lovely roasted veg­eta­bles you stuck in the oven. And when you’re fin­ished, throw every­thing left­over into a large stock­pot, cover it all with water, and sim­mer it for soup.

Well, dear read­ers, the rain pounds com­fort­ingly out­side my Lon­don bed­room win­dow. I am not wet. This after­noon I was wet, tak­ing Avery and her friend over the Ham­mer­smith Bridge to their “Drake” rehearsals. Then I was wet again, food shop­ping in the High Street, and wet again as I walked home from the bus stop. But now? I am dry and cozy, my fam­ily is home safely from parts dis­tant and parts just new and scary. I can relax.

Just a word to say, for many dis­parate rea­sons both per­sonal and pub­lic, our minds are on the armed forces tonight, under so much pres­sure in so many places, for so many rea­sons, with so many fam­i­lies miss­ing them and mourn­ing them. We appre­ci­ate that it’s not a choice for so many of you to be where you are, and that in many ways our safety in cozy, lovely Lon­don (and the rest of the world) is due to the scary lives you are liv­ing. Thank you, on Remem­brance Sun­day. We will wear our poppies.

I real­ized that I left you all with the impres­sion that our Devon sojourn was occu­pied merely with sit­ting around read­ing Daphne Du Mau­rier books (check), eat­ing (check) and otters (check). But even more over­whelm­ing, per­haps, was Avery’s first expe­ri­ence with wild ponies.

Wild, you ask? What does this mean?

Wild means, you’re on the quiet road between Sir Fran­cis Drake’s beloved home Buck­land Abbey (gor­geous, as you see above, Avery pos­ing reluc­tantly, “Drake the Musi­cal” already occu­py­ing far too much of her time) and the hor­rid post­war town of Ply­mouth. You’re ask­ing idly, “Where do you think we ought to pull off in order to find these wild…” “PONIES!” Avery says with awe, point­ing. “PONIES?” we all ask, in dis­be­lief. There was no hunt­ing and find­ing to be done. There were sim­ply ponies, shaggy, fat, friendly and lovely, approach­ing us from all direc­tions. Dear read­ers, we were naughty and brought them count­less car­rots in the pock­ets of our Bar­bour coats. Our law-abiding daugh­ter was shiv­er­ing in her Welling­tons not with cold, but with fear that some park atten­dant would find us and arrest us. “Maybe we’re not sup­posed to feed them…” she moaned in inde­ci­sion. More and more of the crea­tures fol­lowed us about. “You can’t tell me we’re the first peo­ple who’ve fed them,” I argued. “They’re very assertive!”

Sure enough, a park atten­dant did approach us to ask what we were doing. “Pet­ting the ponies and giv­ing them a car­rot or two,” John said blithely, his pock­ets weighted down with treats. “Oh, well, that’s all right, then, as long as you’re expe­ri­enced around horses. They can be quite pushy!”

Impos­si­bly mag­i­cal to find these gor­geous ani­mals qui­etly eat­ing grass, just behind a shrub, or walk­ing along a path in twos and threes, run­ning to us as we approached. My favorite, I admit, was this white lovely, a bit shy at first, but very happy to accept car­rot pieces after a moment or two. Avery was speech­less with delight at the crea­tures’ sim­ply appear­ing to us. How on earth do they sur­vive in win­ter, we wondered?

These days, in the wild with ponies and car­rots, seem a mil­lion years ago now, hav­ing set­tled into two weeks of the long win­ter term of school. Keep­ing Avery’s nose to the homework/musical/riding/skating grind­stone seems one long utter­ance of “Are you ready to…” But life is in the con­trasts, is it not?

Speak­ing of which, our house­hold of three has been reduced, for the next four days, to just two (and any num­ber of cats, of course). John flew off this after­noon for his Dublin adven­ture, and so it’s just Avery and me. We feel quite bereft, happy as we are together, as if a limb were miss­ing. John brings such a feel­ing of secu­rity, joy, con­fi­dence and energy, sadly appre­ci­ated only too lit­tle until he’s gone. We shall not take him for granted any­more, once he’s home! To offer you all a bit of secu­rity, I shall post an old favorite recipe, one I would back against any­thing more expen­sive, more sophis­ti­cated, more intri­cate. Roast your­self a chicken, enjoy it for din­ner, then plunge all the car­cass into a huge pot of water, sim­mer it for two hours with some car­rots and onions. Strain it, leave it in the fridge overnight and next morn­ing, scrape off the fat layer. Then…

Creamy Red Pep­per Soup
(serves 4)

3 tbsps but­ter
6 red pep­pers, cut up roughly
1 white onion, quar­tered
4 cloves gar­lic, cut up roughly
a good dol­lop Marsala or brandy
chicken stock to cover veg­eta­bles
2 tsps dried thyme, or 1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
1/2 cup sin­gle cream or creme fraiche

Melt but­ter in a heavy saucepan and saute pep­pers, onion and gar­lic until slightly soft­ened. Add Marsala and sim­mer high till alco­hol is reduced by half. Add chicken stock to cover veg­eta­bles, and sprin­kle in thyme. Sim­mer high until red pep­pers are soft, per­haps 20 min­utes. Blend with a hand blender, then push through a sieve into a clean pan. When ready to serve, heat again and whisk in cream.

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

This is the best soup I have ever made, and pos­si­bly the best THING I have ever made. I have served it to dozens and dozens of peo­ple, and every­one: chil­dren, babies, old peo­ple, veg­e­tar­i­ans (if you make it with veg­etable stock), EVERY­ONE sim­ply sighs with delight.

So tonight we had this soup, for com­fort with no John (who rang to tell us he was at a per­for­mance of Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons!). With a nice fil­let of beef in a mush­room sauce, some mashed pota­toes, and a pile of green beans, you can con­vince your­self that all is right with the world. If only you had a wild pony in your gar­den, says Avery. Fair enough.

It’s true: after a mar­ried life of Extreme Sep­a­ra­tion for many years, I have got so used to hav­ing my beloved right at home that his upcom­ing absence is wor­thy of a blog post. He is tak­ing him­self off to Dublin, as in Ire­land, on Sat­ur­day for four whole days.

Alone.

Well, he will be join­ing a group, of like-minded devo­tees of Irish Geor­gian Archi­tec­ture, for a series of learned lec­tures (is there any other kind), tours of houses nor­mally closed to the pub­lic, plates of indi­gestible Irish food and who knows what sort o’ mayhem.

We’ve had many lively dis­cus­sions among our friends as to the prob­a­ble nature of his fel­low sym­posi­asts. I vote for Lit­tle Old Ladies who thought gar­dens were included in the tour. Annie says, wet-blanket-like but undoubt­edly right, Old Men Who Always Wanted To Be Archi­tects But Inher­ited Father’s Accoun­tant Firm. John’s hold­ing out for A-level stu­dents (as in, age 17, and GIRLS) who just can­not be torn away from a Robert Adam ceil­ing and think 46 is actu­ally the new 28. I say, in for a penny in for a pound, and he should be pre­pared for any even­tu­al­ity. When I think of the social con­se­quences of my own sweet lit­tle Devon sojourn with food writ­ers a year or so ago… life­long din­ner com­pan­ions and house­guests when­ever I’m lucky enough for them to arrive in Lon­don! Birth­day wishes for my small daugh­ter! Could the same be pos­si­ble with John’s adventure?

No.

He filled out the “extra sup­ple­ment for sin­gle room” with far too much glee, I fear. New friend­ships will have to leap out at him (and they will, since he is quite irre­sistible) in order for any­thing much to tran­spire. But I thought, “Hey, there might be some­one on the tour who is in des­per­ate need for a finan­cial genius to run his estate.” As in pos­si­bly the man host­ing the first night’s din­ner at his… cas­tle?

A mur­der is a def­i­nite pos­si­bil­ity. The cater­ing com­pany hired to feed the sym­posi­asts has, on its staff, the hid­den, never-acknowledged heir to the entire estate of The Cas­tle, and he/she (the dis­guise is really com­plete) has lived his/her entire life wait­ing for revenge, in the form of an inher­i­tance. One person’s por­tion of wild funghi risotto is not what it seems…

We shall miss him. Four days of my being respon­si­ble for the entire house­hold (con­sist­ing of one quite inde­pen­dent child and four cats, admit­tedly). I shall have to get her to rid­ing, skat­ing, act­ing, musi­cal rehearsals, school on Mon­day AND Tues­day… not to men­tion laun­dry, meal prepa­ra­tion, sym­pa­thetic lis­ten­ing to all issues… oh wait. I shall be doing pre­cisely what all my friends with­out at-home hus­bands are doing EVERY day.

I know I can do it. And think how enter­tain­ing he’ll be on Tues­day when he gets back. Unless he can’t make bail for that murder…

It’s hap­pened: Avery is a teenager. Yes­ter­day was the big day, and I must say I scru­ti­nized her closely this after­noon when she returned from school, and dare I say it? She’s just the same. Lovely and loyal, friendly and stead­fast, enter­tain­ing and intel­li­gent, alto­gether some­one we are thor­oughly proud to call our own.

We spent the after­noon at Fort­num and Mason for ice cream, then a friend came home with her to do home­work (out­ra­geously, the school staff did not honor her birth­day by with­hold­ing any assign­ments), then the requested birth­day din­ner: creamy red pep­per soup, and riga­toni with a sauce of toma­toes, ricotta and pine nuts. Presents galore, mostly books! And charms for her bracelet, and a gor­geous vel­vet skirt from my par­ents… today a lovely out­fit arrived from my sis­ter and her fam­ily, so she’s thor­oughly kit­ted out now, in appro­pri­ately fes­tive, 13-year-old-friendly wear.

I spent all day yes­ter­day in my usual Avery-birthday fog. I remem­bered all day where I was 13 years ago, des­per­ately walk­ing the island of Man­hat­tan, try­ing to get used to labor pains and avoid­ing the hos­pi­tal like it was the sev­enth cir­cle of hell (it came pretty close, even­tu­ally). Finally pick­ing up that suit­case with one tiny out­fit and my tooth­brush and tooth­paste in it, and bring­ing her home the very next day with guests for din­ner! How lucky we feel to have her. Thank you, dear girl, and here’s to another warm and won­der­ful year together.