A thought occurred to me in the mid­dle of the night: some­times I feel snow­balled, as in, run­ning in the trail of down­hill snow­ball, by events that come around only every few weeks or months, and then sud­denly, whoosh, they’re all there at once.

These things all hap­pened last week. Writ­ing class, with excel­lent advice given to me on piece now sub­mit­ted to the next issue of Vin­tage mag­a­zine. Bless the editor’s heart, to be inter­ested in, of all things, a piece that was Cam­panol­ogy born on my blog a year or so ago, on the art of bell-ringing. Some god­dess of edi­to­r­ial match-making must have been look­ing out for me, as this same lovely edi­tor wanted my “Recipe File” for the mag­a­zine last year. I know that there are writ­ers who com­plain about dead­lines, but so far, not me: a dead­line means some­one wants my work!

Com­ing home from writ­ing class I sat across from two men on the Tube: over­coats and shak­ing out news­pa­pers, decry­ing the state of mod­ern cul­ture and the fail­ure of “civil servants.”

“I say, old thing, most of them not the LEAST bit civil and most cer­tainly with no idea of how to be a servant!”

“Well, old boy, Churchill said some­thing very witty you know, about two peo­ples being sep­a­rated by a com­mon lan­guage, he had an Amer­i­can mother, you know, a Van­der­bilt or some such.”

“What we need, what this coun­try needs, is fewer small men mak­ing small mis­takes, and more GREAT men mak­ing GREAT mistakes.”

Com­ing from writ­ing class, all about char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, I felt I had been thrown into a Tube car thirty years ago with­out warn­ing, with men who might have served in the War, came home to rationing and too few ser­vants to look after one…

Then, you know, if it’s Jan­u­ary, it’s time for Avery’s sort of quar­terly hair­cut, only this time it seems to sit atop a per­son who is chang­ing right before our eyes: vin­tage Fer­reg­amo pumps from an antique shop in Con­necti­cut, sil­ver Gap tutu, blue-spotted tights, pink mohair sweater, Her­mes scarf pur­loined from me on her head, a gen­eral look of eccen­tric self­hood com­ing over her fea­tures. She’s always had an eye for fash­ion, even as a tod­dler crawl­ing around in a com­bi­na­tion of cor­duroy, silk and denim, pulling open the door to the dish­washer so she could sit on it, sur­vey­ing her world with skep­ti­cism and inter­est from that slight height. Then she would tod­dle over to the full-length mir­ror and look her­self up and down, maybe to return to her room and change her socks.

We got a very funny email from one of Avery’s teach­ers who hap­pened to come upon her singing Tom Lehrer’s “Chem­i­cal Ele­ments” for her chem­istry teacher… that com­bined with a very unusual fash­ion sense means we’re NEVER BORED.

Of course, every few months along comes the Lost Prop­erty lun­cheon, which means that I, plus 30 of the best vol­un­teers that Avery’s school has to offer, dust off our hands, fold up the moldy swim tow­els, dirty lacrosse sticks, smelly ten­nis train­ers, and gather together, in a pour­ing rain­storm, in my kitchen, to share gor­geous dishes of food. Ladies brought veg­etable lasagna (chock-ful of but­ter­nut squash, car­rots, egg­plant and mush­rooms), a salad of roast chicken, orzo, pine nuts, romaine let­tuce and parme­san shav­ings. My dear­est friend Annie brought her tiny meat­balls stuffed with moz­zarella, swim­ming in a sea of tomato sauce under a blan­ket of home­made bread­crumbs and cheese.

“Do you mind just get­ting this warmed up and grati­need, Kris­ten?” Annie men­tions, so I push the casse­role gen­tly into the oven and move onto var­i­ous other tasks, like gos­sip­ing. Finally I peek into the oven and it seems so SLOW, and noth­ing really bub­bling. Why not put it under the grill for a moment?

Sud­denly every­one seems to be cough­ing. “Open the gar­den door!” I shout, as my heart sinks and I open the oven door. Bread­crumbs black­ened. The smoke alarm goes off.

“Is this just browned and tasty, or… car­cino­genic?” Annie asks, scrap­ing it off, the best of all pos­si­ble sports.

Ah well, the after­noon was lovely any­way. Some­one brought quite sim­ply the best cheese EVER, some­thing called Wig­more from Jeroboam’s in Hol­land Park Avenue. Slightly smelly, creamy, melt­ingly rich. And a rhubarb tart, and a trea­cle tart with fresh whipped cream, a plate of Lebanese treats of honey and pis­ta­chios and pastry.

We all pitch in to tidy up a bit so Annie can give me a lift to school — I’m car­ry­ing a plate of left­over tart for Jamie and Avery to snack on! — , and then I pick them up at the gate, carry their clob­ber over to Jamie’s mother’s car where we pile in to head to the skat­ing rink, every­one shar­ing the tart.

“I’ll carry it in to the skat­ing rink,” Avery offers, “hid­den like this beneath my sweater.”

“Stick it in my skate bag!” Jamie shrieks, but Avery insists.

“No, between my two files it will be fine,” and we sneak in, with our for­bid­den out­side snack included.

Sat­ur­day we suc­cumb to that other sort of quar­terly impulse: Cam­den Mar­ket. Nor­mally, of course, noth­ing could drag John to a place that man­ages to be both cold and stuffy, windy and full of cig­a­rette smoke, and con­tain­ing nearly all the peo­ple in Lon­don between the ages of 17–28. All in search of a dress from the 1960s and a pair of go-go boots, for an upcom­ing party given by one of Avery’s friends. I say “nor­mally,” because in fact John will do a lot of things he won’t nor­mally do, in order to help Avery out.

Poly­ester dresses by the YARD, stink­ing of the ages, all the shops play­ing the Bee-Gees but not quite synched up, so you end up hear­ing bits of “Stayin’ Alive” six­teen shops in a row. All the shop girls con­vinc­ing Avery that each dress is the one she needs, and also that she really CAN walk in knee-high (someone’s knee, some­one John’s height) boots with plat­form, or stiletto heels. Finally we ran a dress to earth: pur­ple, green, orange and blue rayon, with white col­lar, tie and cuffs, knee-high, and plas­tic jew­elry to match. But no go-go boots. Not yet.

From the Mar­ket in a rush across town and across Pic­cadilly to the the­atre dis­trict where we were to see a play and have sushi before, but it became clear with traf­fic that we wouldn’t make it to sushi. That sort of semi-silent treat­ment between mar­ried peo­ple ensued. No one wanted either to blame the other or com­pletely sup­port the other, so we sim­ply fumed slightly and then arrived at the the­atre, picked up the tick­ets and real­ized we had an hour. Not quite sushi time, but time for something.

“What are you in the mood for, Avery?” Pre­dictably, Ital­ian. But huge queues.

“Would you rather run for sushi, or try this Korean place?”

“You guys aren’t lik­ing each other too much right now, so I’m not get­ting involved!” she wisely decides, so Jin­dalle Korean Grill it was, and actu­ally, very good it was, although we were rushed. The place was vir­tu­ally next-door to the the­atre, so we could relax and enjoy grilled beef, duck, pork and chicken, while I wished for some sort of carb and we looked at our watches.

Finally, one of those clas­sic things I seem to sched­ule for us to do once every few weeks and then suf­fer ago­nies of pres­sure as to whether or not every­one will enjoy it: the­atre tick­ets. Last night it was “The Mis­an­thrope” with Damian Lewis and Keira Knight­ley, and it was a total joy. Amaz­ing rhyming schemes, ener­getic per­for­mances, very pointed social com­men­tary set in con­tem­po­rary life, but with recur­ring hilar­i­ous ref­er­ences to 17th cen­tury France. And some very funny lines… one from a celebrity play­wright to a failed writer… “What do you mean, you’re going to MAKE a scene? You can’t even WRITE one!”

Home chat­ter­ing about the dia­logue (how much did Avery mind a lot of curs­ing? not much: “I hear a lot worse at school, from TEACH­ERS!”), the cos­tumes at the party in the last scene of the play, how well Keira pulled off an Amer­i­can accent (pretty well). Tired on a Sat­ur­day night, from the bits of adven­ture that seems to keep us busy.

As for cook­ing, I can tell you that one of the favorite dishes at the Lost Prop­erty lun­cheon was my own:

Crunchy Col­or­ful Slaw
(serves at last 8 as a side dish)

1/2 head each shred­ded: red cab­bage, white cab­bage, Savoy cab­bage
3 large car­rots, julienned

dress­ing: equal parts lemon juice, bal­samic vine­gar, Dijon mus­tard, fro­mage frais or yogurt
1 tbsp may­on­naise
1/2 tsp dried oregano
sea salt to taste

Sim­ply shake up the dress­ing in a jar, then toss every­thing together.

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

This slaw went beau­ti­fully with all the lasagne and meat­balls, and my roasted salmon.

But prob­a­bly the most pop­u­lar side dish was this invented by my friend Eliz­a­beth:

Orzo Chicken Salad
(serves at least 8 as a side dish)

4 chicken breasts with skin on
Orzo – half a pack
Cos (but­ter or Boston, in Amer­ica) let­tuce – chopped into small pieces
Other mixed leaves includ­ing rocket
Aspara­gus tips
Pack of pine nuts (about 1 cup)
Block of parme­san
Flat leaf pars­ley — bunch

Vinai­grette
4 table­spoons olive oil
2 table­spoons white wine vine­gar
2 tea­spoons dry mus­tard
Mal­don salt to taste

Roast the chicken breasts, cool, remove skin, and slice thinly. Set aside.
Mean­while, boil water for the orzo and cook for 15 min­utes and drain. Cool but make sure that you add olive oil so that the pasta does not stick.

Roast the pine nuts briefly – make sure they do not burn. Set aside.

Boil salted water for aspara­gus and cook for 5 min­utes. Drain and cool.

Put the orzo in a large salad bowl and stir in the let­tuce and rocket. Add the chicken and mix in. Mix in the vinai­grette and add the aspara­gus and pine nuts, cov­er­ing all the ingre­di­ents with vinaigrette.

Sprin­kle shav­ings of parme­san and chopped pars­ley on top, add Mal­don salt to taste, stir again, and serve.

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

This week? Quiet. Peace­ful. Unevent­ful. At least that’s the plan, but then… it’s only Sun­day night. Watch this space.

Here’s where I’m just not a very mod­ern per­son, at heart. Because it doesn’t make the slight­est sense in the world to me that a week ago tonight I was in Orange, New Jer­sey with my most extrav­a­gant hostessly friends, drink­ing Scotch and watch­ing them pre­pare pot roast, noo­dles and summer-grown lima beans in but­ter sauce.

But I was.

I was fed mag­nif­i­cently, tucked into a bed of white flan­nel sheets, kissed good­night, and then min­utes later the alarm went off at 5 a.m. for us to get to Newark. Nightmare.

Twelve hours later, we arrived to four cats sim­ply starved for affec­tion, moun­tains of mail includ­ing beloved Christ­mas cards from farflung friends, a COM­PLETELY empty refrig­er­a­tor. I mean, two onions and some condi­ments. That was ALL. And a host of emails remind­ing me that I was in charge of Avery’s class ice skat­ing trip to Som­er­set House the NEXT DAY. And two moth­ers beg­ging, “Can you take Lit­tle So-and-So because it turns out I can’t make it?” And of course I could. Maybe respon­si­bil­ity for three teenagers with skate blades in the Tube would keep me awake.

And so the week went. I skated, I chap­er­oned the chil­dren in the chill, gray City world. Feel­ing we might be nearly lost on the way, the chil­dren and I stopped a likely-looking City Chap and asked, “Where is Som­er­set House?” To our total delight, he pointed us in the right direc­tion and then said, and I am not mak­ing this up, “Toodle-loo!” The girls all col­lapsed in laugh­ter. Sev­eral of them came home with us for movies on the sofa, pop­corn, try­ing on makeup, and finally baked chicken and paprika pota­toes. We were offi­cially HOME.

Wednes­day I took charge of a friend’s daugh­ter while my friend was, sadly, con­sol­ing her sis­ter on the death of her child. THAT sit­u­a­tion puts life right in per­spec­tive. “Could you have my daugh­ter for the day?” Could I? I’d keep her for life if I could have stopped that sit­u­a­tion from hap­pen­ing. There can be no whing­ing of jet lag in a world where chil­dren sim­ply cease to exist from one moment to the next. I was THRILLED to have a house­hold full of girls, drop­ping in to say hello, bring­ing “We missed you” brown­ies, moth­ers stop­ping for a cup of tea and to catch up.

And Thurs­day Avery went back to school, and I went for a sushi lunch with my friend from Cal­i­for­nia, Janet, who had the temer­ity to live next door to me for two years and we were noth­ing but “hi, how are you” friends, but up she moves to Los Ange­les, and now we can’t get enough of each other! So when­ever she comes to town, we’re off on a foodie adven­ture and to chat, chat, chat.

Here’s an intrigu­ing ques­tion. Janet’s been spend­ing some time in a nurs­ing home with an aging rel­a­tive, ask­ing that elderly lady and all her friends, who are also 90-year-old ladies, what age they would go back to if they could. And do you know what these ladies answer? Their mid-80s. Why do I find that so sur­pris­ing? Per­haps because I waste a fair amount of time wish­ing I had my 30-year-old fig­ure back, or my 2-year-old child back, or I’m nos­tal­gic for my gallery six years ago. So I sup­pose I imag­ine I would return to my 30s.

But appar­ently my friend Janet’s anec­do­tal evi­dence isn’t an anom­aly. Appar­ently, some sci­en­tific stud­ies of “hap­pi­ness” have been done (this is what comes from hav­ing a friend visit from Cal­i­for­nia, you know) and some sur­pris­ing things have been dis­cov­ered. One is that while peo­ple with chil­dren stay mar­ried more often than peo­ple with­out, peo­ple with­out chil­dren report them­selves as being “hap­pier.” And, sure enough, if you live past 80, to your 90s, you remem­ber your 80s as the best age. Why?

Because those peren­nial ques­tions that dog us in our 30s and 40s (and beyond, I guess) like, “Am I doing what I should be doing? Am I liv­ing a worth­while life? Am I per­form­ing well at the things I see as my job? Is my child devel­op­ing well? Do we have enough money?” have all been resolved and set aside. Can that be true? That by age 80 we get wise enough to stop fret­ting? These ladies reported to Janet that they truly suc­ceeded, in their 80s, in liv­ing in the moment. Enjoy­ing what was there to be enjoyed, with­out look­ing ahead and fret­ting. Or maybe… ladies with that atti­tude were the only ones to live past 80.

I don’t know. But it made for very good lunch con­ver­sa­tion over teriyaki salmon, tuna sashimi, chilled steamed spinach with sesame sauce, and a soft­shell crabs in a fresh-made roll just for us. I’ll tell you one of the many things that make me happy, that have lasted from child­hood till now: the fun and joy of girl­friends. A lunch like that, swoon­ing equally over big­eye tuna and John Malkovich, makes life worth liv­ing and sud­denly sun­nier than it was an hour or so before. Girl­friends are wonderful.

Here’s another thing that makes one day in the life of being almost 45 in Lon­don a great thing. I still am allowed to leave the house at 3:50 every week­day, walk about 8 min­utes to Avery’s school, wait a moment with a paper­back to amuse me, and out comes my deli­cious daugh­ter, in some out­landish out­fit (white shorts with grey tights and a grey cash­mere sweater, belted and the whole thing fin­ished with hot pink Con­verse high tops). She’s still happy for me to appear at school and walk her home, car­ry­ing half her load of books, stop­ping for a snack, lis­ten­ing to the day’s accu­mu­la­tion of hilar­i­ous sto­ries, gos­sip, com­plaints about lunch (“I had one bite of sausage and that was ALL, and WHAT is suet pud­ding?”), descrip­tions of people’s outfits.

The main topic walk­ing home with Avery and Emily on Thurs­day was, can Avery rea­son­ably be expected to answer the door while John and I are at the Par­ents’ meet­ing, receive the pizza and tip the pizza guy?

“How,” Avery wails, “will I know that the guy at the door isn’t some homi­ci­dal maniac?”

“Well,” I say with labo­ri­ous rea­son­able­ness, “He’ll be stand­ing beside a motor­bike, wear­ing a hel­met and car­ry­ing a giant insu­lated bag that will con­tain our pizzas.”

“But there could be any­thing in that insu­lated bag!” Avery shrieks.

“It could even be a sev­ered head,” I say hopefully.

“My mother wants every­thing to be a sev­ered head,” Avery says indulgently.

“And it never is.”

Off to the Par­ents’ meet­ing, gaz­ing at the head (not sev­ered) of the school wear­ing a gor­geous woollen suit with a long, flow­ing skirt and per­fectly, softly match­ing silk scarf, totally in con­trol of every moment of her life, seem­ingly. How is that pos­si­ble? I’d love to see the cracks, the real life some­where. But it never hap­pens. A glo­ri­ously con­trolled, kind, appre­cia­tive, ele­gant lady who never puts a foot or a word wrong. How, how.

Ah well, life can­not pos­si­bly be that per­fect. But I offer you two veg­etable side dishes that will make you think it can be, for just one din­ner. With a roast chicken, or even just a bowl of steamed rice, these two dishes will enhance your week, dare I say it, your life. Your hus­band and child will thank you. And one more week will have gone by, how­ever impos­si­bly filled with changes and events and loved ones and crazi­ness, and you’ll be com­forted by each bite.

Roasted Beets with Bal­samic
(serves four enthu­si­as­tic eaters)

6 medium-sized beets, leaves and stems removed
gen­er­ous splash bal­samic vine­gar
tiny splash chilli olive oil
hand­ful chopped flat-leaf parsley

Lay out a sheet of heavy-duty alu­minum foil (there is really no rea­son in life to buy any other kind, trust me) and pile the beets on it. Wrap com­pletely in foil, and set in an oven heated to 450F, 220C. Roast for at least 1 1/2 hours and test by insert­ing a sharp knife into a beet from the out­side. If it pen­e­trated very eas­ily, the beets are done. If not, err on the side of cook­ing longer.

Now, cru­cially, do NOT unwrap for at least 10 min­utes. The steam gen­er­ated by leav­ing the beets wrapped tightly will aid enor­mously in peel­ing the beets.

After at least 10 min­utes, open the packet and grab each beet in turn, under flow­ing cold water, and sim­ply slip the skins off. Trim the ends and cut each beet into bite-sized pieces, plac­ing them in a medium bowl. Sprin­kle with vine­gar and oil and pars­ley and serve either hot, room temp, or cold. Lovely.

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

But­ton Mush­rooms with Marsala, Thyme and Creme Fraiche
(serves four)

6 tbsps but­ter
2 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 shal­lot, minced
1 lb (1/2 kilo) but­ton mush­rooms
hand­ful fresh thyme leaves
good splash Marsala
1 cup half-fat creme fraiche, 2 tbsps reserved
hand­ful chopped flat-leaf pars­ley
sea salt and fresh-ground black pepper

Melt but­ter in a heavy skil­let and add the gar­lic, shal­lot and mush­rooms on medium heat. Toss and turn until mush­rooms are slightly browned and the whole mix­ture siz­zles nicely. Add thyme leaves and Marsala and cook until a thick, but mea­gre sauce devel­ops. Add all but 2 tbsps of creme fraiche and stir well until mixed and saucy.

Just before serv­ing, stir in the final 2 tbsps of creme fraiche, turn­ing heat up, and then toss with pars­ley and sea­son. Perfect.

It’s not Sat­ur­day night unless you set fire to some­thing, that’s my motto. Can I just tell you how close to the house this bon­fire was last night? Nor­mally both John and I are extremely, uh, respon­si­ble, but for some rea­son, we both thought it would be a fine idea to stack up all the tinder-dry Christ­mas wreaths in our ancient cop­per fire pit, and set fire to them.

The smoke! Sim­ply plumes of it a mile high. I can’t believe none of our neigh­bors called the fire depart­ment. Finally I made John shovel snow onto it and THEN the smoke was truly some­thing to behold. We smelled like the Grim Reaper.

End of story: it’s out. Of course the snow melted in the pit and then froze to the burned-out car­casses of the wreaths so that all John could do this morn­ing was lug it behind the fence and pitch it into the snow. Now we can look for­ward to haul­ing it out in July.

It’s always so hard to believe that six months will pass between now and our next vision of Red Gate Farm. It’s odd to be here only in the most intense months of the year: we arrive in deep snow, and in the green­est days of sum­mer, skip­ping the interim weeks of growth and decline. Before we see our beloved house again, there will have been plays and din­ner par­ties in Lon­don, home­work trau­mas, tune-ups at the ortho­don­tist, Lost Prop­erty sales, job inter­views, skat­ing com­pe­ti­tions, another issue of “Vin­tage” mag­a­zine will appear, con­tain­ing another arti­cle from me. And then it will be July, and we’ll be back.

The fridge is empty, the beds stripped, the can­dles removed from the hydrangea tree, mail stopped, the last laun­dry load done. In a few hours we’ll be pick­ing Avery up from the air­port after her Fab­u­lous Adven­ture (I sur­vived!) and off we’ll go to New Jer­sey to spend the night with our lovely friends, before head­ing to Lon­don in the morning.

I’ll leave you with our last meal, a very Amer­i­can sup­per, and per­fect for the sort of weather we’re all hav­ing, on both sides of the Atlantic. Serve it with a crunchy slaw of red and Savoy cab­bages, car­rots and fen­nel. And I’ll see you from London.

Bison Chilli
(serves 6)

2 lbs ground bison (buf­falo)
1 white onion, minced
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 soup-size can black beans
1 soup-size can red kid­ney beans
1 soup-size can North­ern beans
2 large cans diced toma­toes
1 packet McCormick chilli sea­son­ing
extra: chilli pow­der, ground cumin, turmeric to taste
sea salt and fresh black pep­per
condi­ments: cilantro leaves, sour cream, shred­ded Ched­dar cheese

Brown the bison thor­oughly in a heavy, large saucepan. Add onion and gar­lic and cook for sev­eral min­utes, then add all the other ingre­di­ents and stir well. Cook at a sim­mer for at least an hour. Bet­ter even on the next day. Serve with condi­ments and every­one can choose for herself.

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Warm, hearty, stick-to-your ribs, snowy day per­fec­tion. Bliss!

I’m try­ing des­per­ately not to feel like this lit­tle fel­low, here at Red Gate Farm tonight.

How I would love to keep Avery tied to my apron strings, or stuffed in my jeans pocket, or even stored in a nice roomy glass Ball jar. Alas, tomorrow…

She gets on an air­plane by herself.

BY HER­SELF.

Now, as you well know, I have air­plane issues. I try to acknowl­edge them so they don’t peo­ple my night­time dreams, but I think it’s only rea­son­able that if you com­bine my big irra­tional fear of fly­ing with my big irra­tional love affair with my daugh­ter, there will be prob­lems. Like those won­der­ful pairs of cof­fee mugs in Lon­don: “Keep Calm and Carry On” and “Now Panic and Freak Out.”

But the impor­tant point is, I’m let­ting her go. Tomor­row she flies off to Char­lotte, her big Christ­mas present, to spend two days with her beloved friend Anna who moved away from Lon­don a year and a half ago. How bereft they have been ever since. And isn’t that the point of being mature? We over­come things we fear in order to make good things come true for the peo­ple we love.

Or some­thing like that.

Sigh.

And in the ser­vice of liv­ing daily life and not freak­ing out, I must report that last night the kitchen drain­board and coun­ters were full of the washed but un-dried dishes of yet another din­ner party, which must mean one thing: Rosemary’s gone. She’s the kitchen elf of my blessed acquain­tance, the magic helper who restores my house to per­fec­tion behind my back, fold­ing laun­dry, shin­ing sil­ver, set­ting the table, light­ing can­dles. And dry­ing pots and pans. So along with the gen­eral lone­li­ness of her empty bed­room, not help­ing her look for her cof­fee cup dur­ing the day (“I really thought I left it just HERE”), not hav­ing her bright and inter­ested lis­ten­ing ear to all the details of daily life, we also hav­ing a drain­board full of dispir­it­ing dishes to remind us of her absence.

And the dishes them­selves? The detri­tus of, seri­ously, the LAST party of our Christ­mas hol­i­day at Red Gate Farm. Last night it was my sis­ter and her fam­ily, and Rol­lie and Judy, bring­ing with them sev­eral culi­nary gifts that reflect both who they are and who I am: a giant snowman-shaped Rice Krispie treat, a pep­per­mint ice cream log, a choco­late ice cream log. These were from Judy, for the chil­dren. And from Rol­lie, for me? Two slabs of home­made smoked blue­fish. He winks rogu­ishly at me. “Judy yelled at me for putting them on top of the ice cream. They do smell, fishy, but I know you and you’ll want them.” Lord, how I do! “I even brought the crack­ers to go with,” Rol­lie nudged my arm. I could eas­ily have can­celled all of din­ner and sat down hap­pily to a plate of smoked blue­fish and creme fraiche.

And because I was self­ish and didn’t feed every­one my smokey trea­sure, we helped our­selves instead to:

Riga­toni alla Vodka
(serves 8)

3 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp but­ter
1 white onion, finely minced
5 cloves gar­lic, finely minced
2/3 cup vodka
2 large cans peeled plum toma­toes
1/2 cup grated Pecorino or Parme­san cheese
1 cup light cream
sea salt and fresh ground pep­per to taste

1 1/2 lb rigatoni

Sim­ply saute the onion and gar­lic in the oil and but­ter in a large skil­let or saucepan, then add the vodka and cook high for 1 minute. Put the toma­toes through a food proces­sor and add to the skil­let. Stir together and add cheese and cream and sea­son with salt and pep­per, and sim­mer for at least 1 hour.

Cook the pasta and when it is drained, turn the heat up under the sauce and tip the pasta into it. Toss well and serve with LOTS more Parmesan.

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

Rol­lie and Judy. They never seem to tire of our ques­tions about the past life of Red Gate Farm. “Where was the sec­ond fire­place? Did Tessie’s heirs REALLY throw away all her china and rag rugs when they inher­ited the house? Was she a good cook?” Tessie, Tessie, the last lov­ing inhab­i­tant of this house, famously the first lady of her fam­ily to get a Christ­mas tree into the place. “Her father didn’t believe in such things,” some­one told me when we bought the house. “So when her young man, John, brought on in the front door, we knew it was over, he’d won the day, and they got married.”

Tessie’s spirit lives on in the “born­ing room” at the back of the house, now the kitchen, double-heighted since the ren­o­va­tion opened it up to the old attic. And when­ever Rol­lie and Judy come, they give us another tid­bit or two about the past of this beloved place, end­ing always with, “How Tessie would smile, to see you here now, cook­ing and all.” I think of her so often, more than I think about any­one else I never knew.

Today I drove to Green­wich to meet up with my girlie friend Alyssa from New York days, to shop and have lunch at Morello Bistro, to gos­sip and catch up in that ellip­ti­cal style we have. “Are you wear­ing LIP­STICK, Kris­ten? Do I see lip­stick on you?” “What’s up with Elliot’s tooth? Some­body HAS to take that scary thing out of his mouth…” Dis­cus­sions that can­not be car­ried out on the phone about children’s school­bus sched­ules, Annabelle’s bat mitzah plans and presents (ha, Annabelle, I gave your present to your mom and it’s STILL a secret!), Avery’s fash­ion sense described but still not to the extent that we felt com­fort­able choos­ing a dress for her at Rugby. I had no prob­lem choos­ing a tiny lit­tle plaid woolly skirt with fringe, and a pair of hound­stooth trousers, for myself.

And my lunch salad? Divine.

Morello Bistro’s Beet Salad with Hazel­nuts, Ricotta and Scal­lops
(serves 1, GENEROUSLY!)

1 tbsp but­ter
2 large sea scal­lops
3 tbsps ricotta
2 hand­fuls arugula
2 medium beets, roasted, peeled and diced large
1/4 cup chopped toasted hazelnuts

dress­ing:

3 parts olive oil to 1 part bal­samic vine­gar
chopped chives
sea salt and fresh pepper

In a heavy skil­let, melt but­ter till it “stops speak­ing to you,” as Julia Child would say, then lay scal­lops in the but­ter and cook on one side, high heat, for 2 min­utes. Turn and cook for another 1–2 min­utes depend­ing on how you like your scal­lops cooked. Set aside.

On a large plate, arrange dol­lops of ricotta in three spots. Place hand­fuls of ricotta in the cen­ter. Scat­ter beets and hazel­nuts across the greens and driz­zle with dress­ing. Place scal­lops between the ricotta dol­lops. Serve with toasted bread.

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

Sim­ply divine.

Home safe and sound with nary a wrong turn (stop the presses) to an evening of mixed feel­ings for me: happy to sit on Avery’s bed and help her pack, but Pan­ick­ing and Freak­ing Out about WHY.

“So do you want this tiny t-shirt any­more, or can it go to the char­ity shop?”

“Oh, I wore that night­gown for YEARS. Save it for Jane, unless she thinks it’s a dress.”

“Do you really want to take the whole cal­en­dar of cute ani­mal pic­tures with you to Charlotte?”

“Yes, I have to show them to Anna, plus here’s the enve­lope of pic­tures from days that have already gone by.”

“Is this sweat­shirt REALLY dirty, or just sort of per­ma­nent lip­sticky dirty? And what’s that you’re kick­ing under your bed?”

“Do we have time for a library run tomor­row before I go?”

So hard to believe that the next time Avery’s installed in her tiniest-of-all liv­ing bed­rooms, it will be July. Jane and Molly will be com­pletely dif­fer­ent and lit­tle Kate across the road might well have traded in her shoe obses­sion (they refer to her as “Lit­tle Imelda”) for some­thing more sin­is­ter, like cut­lery. The house will be stuffy and air­less when we come in, far from the chilly regions of tonight. Avery will prob­a­bly be 1n inch or more taller. My blue­fish will be in the freezer.

In the mean­time, we have tomor­row to get through, I mean enjoy. And John and I will spend the next two days pack­ing up the house for the long win­ter ahead. Then we’ll col­lect Avery at the air­port and I can breathe again.

Wake me up when she’s back.

Well, it’s been a flick­er­ing and lovely end to the Christ­mas hol­i­days… our anniver­sary lunch at Nobu on Wednes­day was, quite sim­ply, the best meal ever eaten by either one of us, any­where. It’s going to be painful to get used again to ordi­nary won­der­ful Lon­don sushi, because Nobu exceeded any of our golden mem­o­ries, from Tribeca days gone past, when it was, unbe­liev­ably, our neigh­bor­hood hang­out. The times, the times the maitre d’ looked over the heads of hope­ful would-be din­ers, telling them, “I’m so sorry, we’re COM­PLETELY booked,” to beckon to us, with lit­tle Avery, and say, “Come right in, how’s the family?”

All the old remem­bered favorites: the yel­low­tail tartare with caviar and wasabi-ponzu dress­ing, sus­pended on a bowl of ice. The tuna with jalapeno and cilantro, the tuna tataki with ponzu sauce, the big­eye tuna sashimi that a baby could gum, it was so impos­si­bly ten­der! Soft-shell crab rolls, spicy tuna, giant clam sashimi. Finally rock shrimp tem­pura with creamy sauce, shi­itake mush­rooms and minced chives… all washed down care­fully with a pre­cious Mat­suhisu mar­tini com­plete with float­ing cucum­ber and sake…

And our con­ver­sa­tion wan­dered every­where: best play seen in 20 years of mar­riage? Ralph Fiennes in Ham­let in 1994, or David Suchet in Timon of Athens in 2000? Or “War Horse” last year? Best vaca­tion? Sey­chelles, or Rome with Avery, or one of the end­less Eng­lish Land­mark Trusts? Best Avery mem­ory? Her school noti­fi­ca­tion day last year. Favorite apart­ment in 20 years? Prob­a­bly where we are right now.

While we were indulging in this unbe­liev­able fish­fest, Avery and her Nonna were uptown, rev­el­ling in shop­ping galore! Takashimaya, Ben­del (where Avery acquired a peer­less green flow­ery head­band), Saks to see the win­dows and try on EVERY pair of shoes, and end­ing at Dylan’s Candy Bar on 60th Street, where we picked them up in the late, bloomy after­noon. Hap­pi­ness all around.

Awake the next morn­ing to find SNOW! Snow falling with a vengeance, for New Year’s Eve. Blowy bursts of flakes rush­ing past the win­dows, high­lighted against the red barns and black tree branches, impos­si­ble to pho­to­graph and sim­ply gor­geous. Fes­tive and beau­ti­ful! How we wor­ried that the weather would pre­vent our guests from mak­ing it from New York City, and in the midst of all of it, up pulled a car con­tain­ing Avery’s first best friend ever, Cici, and her lovely fam­ily, on their way from NYC to their house on the coast! Cof­fee all round, the kids out to give the pugs a walk in the fresh snow, all of us rem­i­nisc­ing as you do, with old, old friends (Avery met Cici when she was 3 days old!) with whom you’ve shared school days, Sep­tem­ber 11, gallery ups and downs, being sep­a­rated by 3000 miles. And yet friend­ship endures. A shared his­tory warms the heart, and see­ing two girls (and brother Noah!) stretched up tall, with mem­o­ries of their baby selves hov­er­ing in the back­ground, brings tears to the eyes.

At sun­set, they drove away, and Rose­mary and I resumed our work of all day to pre­pare the New Year’s Feast to come. Salmon to roast with olive oil and my beloved Fox Point sea­son­ing, a side dish of can­nellini beans with rose­mary, bread­crumbs and parme­san, aspara­gus with hol­landaise. Pos­si­bly Avery’s favorite of the evening:

Prosciutto-Stuffed Mush­rooms
(serves 6)

6 large flat mush­rooms, stems removed, set aside and chopped
olive oil to driz­zle
12 slices pro­sciutto, chopped
2 tbsps but­ter
1 small white onion, finely minced
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
1/2 cup fresh bread­crumbs, toasted
sprin­kle fresh thyme leaves
hand­ful grated Parme­san or Pecorino
3 slices deli Pro­volone, torn in half

Sim­ply set the mush­rooms on a cookie sheet and driz­zle with olive oil. Then in a heavy skil­let, saute the pro­sciutto till cooked and set aside, then add but­ter to the skil­let and cook the onion and gar­lic till soft. Add bread­crumbs, thyme and cheese, toss the pro­sciutto in and mix well. Spoon the mix­ture into the mush­rooms, top each mush­room with a folded half of Pro­volone, and bake at 350F for 20 min­utes. Perfect.

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

So can­dles lit, the Christ­mas trees look­ing lovely for one last evening, Anne, David and Kate trooped across the road for one more hol­i­day party, and we had a stu­pen­dous time. There is noth­ing nicer than a whole SIDE of salmon, oven-roasted for 25 min­utes, moist (though I hate the word) and fes­tive and cel­e­bra­tory! Glasses of bub­bly all around, Kate ask­ing for Avery to sit next to her! I even for­got to toss the Parme­san in with the can­nellini beans and no one seemed to mind, we ate like peo­ple pos­sessed. Happy New Year’s to everyone!

New Year’s Day found us sled­ding in the back meadow with an enthu­si­as­tic Avery and a ter­ri­fied Kate: not ter­ri­fied for her­self, but for the loved ones she saw putting them­selves in mor­tal dan­ger as they hur­tled down the bumpy hill. “Done! Mommy done, Dada done, Avery done!” The sun slanted on the shim­mer­ing, crisp snow and we all remarked on the land­scape. “I love this view of your com­pound,” David said wryly, as we all sur­veyed the out­build­ings. “Every­thing is falling down,” we agreed with no great degree of dis­may. Some­how that seems all right, dark, weath­ered boards creak­ing under the weight of crack­ing glass and heavy snow. Weath­ered is the word for our whole prop­erty, here at Red Gate Farm.

Finally, the last cel­e­bra­tion of the hol­i­day sea­son: prime rib at my sister’s house! My brother in law is sup­plied with every pos­si­ble gad­get and recep­ta­cle to make cook­ing such a scary piece of meat fear-free, and John helped by sup­ply­ing advice from the side­lines about ther­mome­ters, bone con­tact, the usual back­seat dri­ver non­sense. I escaped all the decision-making by cre­at­ing place cards with dear Jane (“I love these mark­ers, they’re so… chem­i­cally!”) and Avery, while Molly slith­ered around under­foot. My sis­ter was as usual the most patient of all peo­ple, being every­thing to every­thing, while Joel sup­plied his gor­geous hot artichoke-cheese appe­tizer. There is noth­ing better.

Joel’s Hot Arti­choke Dip
(serves 6-ish)

1 cup arti­choke hearts, drained of oil and chopped
1 cup may­on­naise
1 cup grated Pecorino or Parme­san cheese

Sim­ply nonstick-spray a large ramekin or sev­eral small, then mix all and decant mix­ture among the ramekins. Bake at 350F for 30 min­utes. Serve with crackers.

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

A per­fect cel­e­bra­tory end to the fes­tive sea­son: my sister’s house glow­ing with the crazi­ness of Jane and her “Cere­bral Hul­la­baloo” Twister-like game, Molly’s fur­rowed brow and deter­mined “trans­fer­ring” of her hand from one walking-helper to another. Warm, fam­ily, red meat. Noth­ing could be better.

Home to elec­tric blan­kets to pro­tect against the cold, snowy wind, and a mid­night snack of a lime cookie from Rosemary’s stash, packed in her carry-on. Who else has a mother in law who arrives with gin­ger­bread men, cap­puc­cino cook­ies, lime cook­ies, Chex Mix, brown­ies and home­made caramels? They all bring out the hid­den sweet tooth in me… but I think it’s more the secret ingre­di­ent: love.

It’s over, isn’t it? The pack­ing of hol­i­day fun into suit­cases, travel, the fran­tic wrap­ping and dec­o­rat­ing to the back­ground of “Char­lie Brown Christ­mas,” the oys­ter stew and turkeys and stuff­ing and Christ­mas cook­ies, the cham­pagne and par­ties and cel­e­bra­tions. Some 300-something days from now it will all begin again, but for the moment, a sigh of hap­pi­ness at fam­ily nearby, food trea­sured, presents opened and loved. Well done, every­one. Surfeit.