Let’s see, this evening we’re in a moment of calm between an adven­ture in Gold­ers Green, a mag­nif­i­cent week­end in the coun­try, and Avery’s den­tal surgery tomor­row. We’ll start with the mat­zoh balls.

Because that is why I went to Gold­ers Green, deep in North Lon­don. Hav­ing spent a fair amount of my adult life in New York City, I feel a deep and abid­ing love for most things Jew­ish, and all things Jew­ish food. Chicken soup with mat­zoh balls. Potato Latkes, pas­trami, bagels. I miss it all. And so when my foodie friend Janet arrived for one of her all-too-infreqent trips to Lon­don from LA, off we went to Gold­ers Green, on a pil­grim­age to find the per­fect spot for lunch. And we did, in Blooms.

“What are knei­d­lach?” I asked my adorable young waitress.

“Those are the, how do you say, the… noo­dles. Homemade.”

“Thank you. What are kreplach?”

“Those are the dumplings, they are filled with minced meat.”

“Excel­lent. What are lokschen?”

“Those are the mat­zoh balls.”

“Fine, I’ll have chicken soup with ALL of them.”

This was lovely. Golden, rich, sim­ple, with that fla­vor that can be imparted, I truly believe, only by a Jew­ish hand, and with love of the dish. I have made it myself, to no real suc­cess (and I’m a mean soup-maker, I’d say). But get my friend Alyssa in front of a stove, in my very own kitchen, and her chicken soup with mat­zoh balls is a rev­e­la­tion in health-giving, life-giving elixir. It’s about the love.

There is no one like my friend Janet to have a food adven­ture with. We wan­dered into a Pol­ish del­i­catessen where she encour­aged me to buy kiel­basa, sauer­kraut from an old wooden bar­rel, lit­tle choco­late cook­ies and lit­tle sugar cook­ies in the shape of leaves (“leaf nov­el­ties” as I later trans­lated the label).

And then the next day, our lit­tle Cinque­cento stuffed like a tick with our overnight gear AND one of the chil­dren of our hosts, we were off to the country.

One gor­geous house, five won­der­ful chil­dren, a ten­nis court, an all-singing, all-dancing kitchen with an Aga, AND the fam­ily was happy for me to cook din­ner! Meat­balls stuffed with moz­zarella, with one of the mid­dle daugh­ters as my helper, gar­lic bread and sauteed sugar snap peas. The dad made bread in a machine, overnight! I am research­ing buy­ing just such a machine… the aroma was irre­sistible. Dur­ing the week­end I was taken to Beechcroft Farm where I hugged no fewer than two baby lambs, one born the day before, and met sev­eral new­born calves and pigs, and bought pork sausages, bacon, sir­loin steaks and lambs’ liver. Let me elaborate.

Lambs’ Liver with Marsala Wine, Bacon and Onions
(serves 4)

4 slices bacon, cut in small pieces
3 tbsps but­ter
2 white onions, sliced thick
3 tbsps Marsala wine
squeeze lemon juice
sea salt and pep­per to taste
8 slices lambs’ liver
scat­ter­ing of fresh chives

Fry the bacon in a medium skil­let and push to the edges of it, then add but­ter and fry onions until soft. Pour in the Marsala and scrape up all the lit­tle bits from the bot­tom, then add lemon juice and salt and pep­per. Push every­thing to the sides and place the slices of liver in the cen­ter. Fry gen­tly per­haps 3 min­utes on the first side and 2 on the other. This tim­ing will depend on sev­eral things: how thick the slices are, how high your heat, and how rare you like your liver. I mean, THE liver.

Pile every­thing on a nice plat­ter and scat­ter chives over. Serve with some sharp salad, like lentils with a chilli dress­ing, beet­root with bal­samic vine­gar, toma­toes with lemon juice. Also toasted baguette if you like. Rich with iron, only a small serv­ing needed: elemental.

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

Long walks in the coun­try­side as you see, with girls all around to make us laugh.

Tonight was the first night for pier­rade! Huge plat­ters of thinly-sliced duck and the sir­loin from Beechcroft: peer­less and deli­cious. Served with Sate sauce, Hoisin sauce, Dijon mus­tard. Plus dauphi­noise pota­toes (not beau­ti­ful, as you see, but gor­geously rich and creamy) and roasted car­rots and parsnips. Spring HEAVEN, although it sounds win­try. But to eat out­side, to saute each bite for one­self in the spring evening, EVEN though we were being rained on ever so slightly… heaven.

Roasted Car­rots and Parsnips
(serves 4)

8 car­rots
3 parsnips
driz­zle chilli oil
scat­ter­ing brown sugar
pinch sea salt
8 sage leaves
1 tbsp butter

Halve the car­rots length­wise (unpeeled, but washed), and quar­ter the parsnips length­wise (peeled). Lay in a bak­ing dish and driz­zle with chilli oil, then scat­ter brown sugar over, and salt, then scat­ter sage over all. Roast in a hot oven (200C, 400F) for 30 min­utes, then take dish out and add but­ter and toss the veg­eta­bles in the accu­mu­lated oil and but­ter. Place in oven for another 10 min­utes. Perfect.

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

All this has been lovely. Ten­nis, even though I keep strain­ing some muscle/joint in my elbow. Lost Prop­erty: the Sale of goods made a record amount of money yes­ter­day! Twelve moth­ers, 6 hours, and we raised… £400. Well, it’s some­thing, and most impor­tant, it’s tra­di­tion and we were there, and the ways of Avery’s school go on.

Today saw me writ­ing up the Sales Pro­ceeds, mak­ing up the rota for next term, a sched­ule of requests for next term’s fab­u­lous Lun­cheon, gen­er­ally accom­plish­ing things. And wor­ry­ing. About Avery and tomorrow.

One wouldn’t think that a child’s per­fectly rou­tine surgery could throw a fam­ily into a tail­spin, but we are, a bit, sim­ply because of our lack of expe­ri­ence with… Avery being in pain.

I just don’t like it. I know with­out a doubt that she will be absolutely fine, by tomor­row evening she will be safely ensconced back in the cir­cle of my arm (with a secret present in her hands), and a Chilly Billy to suck on, if she wants to.

But it seems to me, as I sweat and fret and worry, that there is some­thing ele­men­tal in a parent’s makeup that says, “No pain, please, for my child.” We would always rather go through it our­selves, what­ever it is, even though we know that the expe­ri­ence of pain is nor­mal, part of life, and some­thing that every­one learns to sub­mit to, to over­come. In fact, I sup­pose, the job of a par­ent is not to smooth the path for the child, to take away all poten­tial sources of pain, but to teach her to shoul­der up to pain, to make friends with it, to set it on the side of the road and move on.

But I don’t like it.

Onward and upward to tomor­row after­noon, Avery and her brav­ery and what­ever chew-less foods I can invent, as long as she needs them.

The past week or so has been an exer­cise in tak­ing my own advice: sim­ply putting aside the imag­in­ings of what I ought to be accom­plish­ing, in favor of the here and now of my rather needy fam­ily of late.

Avery’s day off school descended into that most dis­mal of all ail­ments, the com­mon cold. Not enough of an ill­ness to jus­tify stay­ing home (although if John weren’t breath­ing down my neck, I’d always rather she stayed home when the slight­est runny nose strikes), but enough to make life mis­er­able for the dura­tion. Achy, no appetite to speak of (which strikes ter­ror in my feeding-people heart), cranky and apa­thetic. One of Avery’s favorite jokes? “Are you igno­rant, or just apa­thetic? I don’t know and I don’t care.”

Then John’s tooth flared up again and he spent a mis­er­able week­end antic­i­pat­ing a root canal, which took place yes­ter­day. Then last evening, while I vol­un­teered at a school drinks party, John took Avery to the maxillo-facial sur­geon (can that be right?) for a con­sul­ta­tion on her upcom­ing surgery to bring down her incisors, to be met with her braces and pulled into place.

Ouch.

The poor guys. All I can do is make chicken soup and other soft, warm foods, and feel sorry for them both.

In the mean­time, I man­aged to meet up with my new blog designer here, over an enor­mous dish of mac­a­roni and cheese and a mam­moth salad of beet leaves, rocket, olives, toma­toes, arti­choke hearts. The plans that young man has for my efforts! Have you ever heard of SEO? Nei­ther had I, but it stands for “Search Engine Opti­miza­tion,” or how to get Google to pay more atten­tion to me. For instance, if I write about our trip to Venice, he has strate­gies for get­ting my blog to come up early in people’s Google searches for “Venice,” and the same for creamy sweet­corn and rocket soup. And he has won­der­ful ideas for randomly-appearing recipe hot links to pop up every time you log on, and a dif­fer­ent ban­ner photo for every post. And a logo! There will be a whole series of dead­lines, test dri­ves, opin­ion polls (you can weigh in if you like!), before finally going live with the New And Improved Kris­ten in Lon­don on… May 20.

That’s all very well for me, in the dull month of March, to keep me occu­pied. And John’s had more than enough to con­tend with vis­it­ing den­tists. Our entire house­hold has been livened up in a very minor way by our acqui­si­tion of a “toastie machine,” which makes any­thing between two slices of bread a hot, chewy, glo­ri­ous meal: buf­falo moz­zarella, bre­saola, rocket and home­made pesto, as you see. Some­thing to keep us entertained.

But dear Avery? Read­ers, I can hardly con­vey to you her frus­tra­tion with the piano. She hates the songs she’s been given to learn at school, her lessons occur dur­ing other lessons at school, so she must leave, miss the home­work assign­ment and rush to meet up with her teacher for a scant 20 min­utes or so of instruc­tion. Then she for­gets a les­son, then her teacher is called away and can­cels. You can imagine.

So the poor dear sits on the vel­vet bench, music propped dis­con­so­lately in front of her, bang­ing away as I cook din­ner. “But Avery, that’s meant to be an F sharp, I’m sure.” “I like it this way.” Dear me. Moments of silence fall between songs as she gath­ers her men­tal strength to con­tinue. The whole instru­ment seems to encap­su­late every­thing frus­trat­ing about edu­ca­tion: being at other people’s mercy, hav­ing to do what THEY say, hav­ing to fol­low all the stu­pid rules when YOUR way sounds just as nice. My sis­ter and I have agreed that to play the piano at least on a basic level, or at least to read music com­pe­tently, seems to us a skill akin to read­ing or sub­tract­ing. So I insist that Avery con­tinue, just for a bit.

So, the anti­dote for all this musi­cal mis­ery? Not, as I would have thought, immer­sion in Face­book or video games or tele­vi­sion. No, in a dis­play of the sort of wis­dom that makes me look at her in awe, she picked up, as you see, an old gui­tar, loaned to her by one of my friends, and began to impro­vise. Strum­ming away in the dimly lighted study, by her­self, she looked for all the world like the next Joan Baez. Even what she was wear­ing, and fall of her hair, seemed an image of seren­ity from bygone days. How beau­ti­ful the sound was, how it took me back to my child­hood with my brother’s incred­i­ble tal­ent play­ing itself out every day from his guitars…

How peace­ful the house sud­denly was, one sort of music act­ing as a cure for another. She played from “High School Musi­cal,” unrec­og­niz­able from its awful pop incar­na­tion, just softly thrum­ming chords. The cats set­tled down near her, can­dles flick­ered on the table, and my din­ner veg­etable bub­bled away in the oven. Quite per­fect, and so unex­pected! A cure for anx­i­ety: gui­tar and but­ter­nut squash.

Baked But­ter­nut Squash with Sage
(serves 4)

2 small­ish but­ter­nut squashes
4 tbsps but­ter
4 tbsps brown sugar
driz­zle olive oil
16 sage leaves
sprin­kle sea salt

Heat oven to 400F, 200C. Line a cookie sheet or bak­ing sheet with foil. Cut each but­ter­nut squash in half length­ways and scoop out the seeds. In the cav­ity left behind the seeds, place 1 tbsp but­ter and 1 tbsp brown sugar. Driz­zle with olive oil, place 4 sage leaves on each squash half and sprin­kle with salt. Bake for at least 40 min­utes or until very soft. Lift out care­fully because the squash may col­lapse, and mind the very hot butter-sugar mix­ture. Spoon the melted sugar but­ter over the whole half squash and serve hot or warm.

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

Speak­ing of music, we are on our way to a charm­ing Eng­lish school insti­tu­tion known as “The Singing Tea.” Just what it says on the tin (also one of my favorite Eng­lish expres­sions), it’s a teatime con­cert of per­for­mances by girls who are tak­ing singing lessons at school. You turn up in time for a cup of tea, or a glass of elder­flower, you take a lit­tle piece of date and wal­nut cake, and chat for a bit with other par­ents. Then the girls are called onto the stage in the Singing Hall, one by one, to per­form the pieces they are prac­tic­ing for the upcom­ing National Exams this week­end. Avery is singing one piece in French (very depress­ing words, but they sound lovely) and one piece in Ger­man (she assures me it’s a bucolic tale of frolic and may­hem, but it sounds like a funeral dirge).

I’ll take plenty of tissues.

I some­times go through phases when I won­der, “What pur­pose am I serv­ing, any­way?” Days pass when I don’t seem to accom­plish any­thing more sig­nif­i­cant than emp­ty­ing the laun­dry bas­ket, gro­cery shop­ping, putting a few things in envelopes and mail­ing them. Tasks any­body could do, I’m noth­ing spe­cial for it. These are days I will wish I had back when my days are more obvi­ously num­bered than I already know them to be.

At such times, I imag­ine myself with a proper job. Show­ing up at my local cafe every morn­ing to make lattes and serve unap­pre­cia­tive cus­tomers with shout­ing chil­dren. Show­ing up every day at my local fish­mon­ger to sweep the floor and tidy up after the peo­ple work­ing there who actu­ally know how to fil­let a hake (and how to tell a hake from a cod).

Or I could go back to school to get a degree in child psy­chol­ogy, and start a prac­tice help­ing teenage girls get along with their par­ents. Or open that myth­i­cal art gallery/bookshop and get used all over again to wor­ry­ing about how to pay the rent.

I know this is all an unbe­liev­able lux­ury. Most peo­ple don’t have the option to sit around hav­ing exis­ten­tial anx­i­ety; they are too busy sur­viv­ing. But I do have the lux­ury, and I do worry. What is it all about? My friend Bee has sug­gested that “mid­dle age” isn’t so much about hav­ing lived half your life, but rather being in the mid­dle: between your mother and your child, won­der­ing some­times what it is all about, and who we are meant to be for the time we have left.

Then, like clock­work, before I can indulge myself too much in my quest for self-expression, my phone rings.

“Hi, cutie, what’s up?”

“My throat is really sore. I maybe don’t think I can stay at school.”

“Well, I’m in a car with your father just pass­ing the school, so you have to decide RIGHT NOW.”

“But I don’t know what the teach­ers would say, or where to go, and I’m los­ing my voice.”

“Then do you want me to come get you? Quick!”

A trail­ing wail… “I don’t KNOW…”

I jump out of the car, say­ing, “I’ll get to school in five min­utes and then you can decide.”

The phone rings again. It’s that old clas­sic: the grumpy school nurse.

“Your daugh­ter is here say­ing she feels unwell.” (Avery told me later that when she turned up at the infir­mary, the dear lady har­rumphed and said, “I was just about to take a tea break.” A born nur­turer, clearly: Nurse Ratchet’s Eng­lish sister.)

“Yes, I know, I’m on my way and I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“Well, we don’t want our girls stand­ing about out­side the school in the cold, so you can tele­phone when you arrive, and I’ll send her up.”

So warm and fuzzy. I arrive, I ring up, a cou­ple of windy, unpleas­ant min­utes pass and Avery appears, gray-faced with her eyes look­ing, as my mother would say, “like burned holes in a blan­ket.” I take her school­bag, she but­tons her coat, she puts her arm around my waist and we head home.

“Did you at least have lunch?”

“Well, sort of. It was meant to be a chicken stir fry, but I put in my fork and up came a PRAWN.”

“Per­haps a bowl of chicken soup when we get home… I made some for Daddy’s toothache and there’s a lit­tle left.”

So we arrive at home, she has a bowl of soup and some but­tered crack­ers, I give her a cough drop, a warm throw around her knees, a new mys­tery propped up beside her. I share the throw and we lie at oppo­site ends of the sofa, legs stretched out, she takes her tem­per­a­ture, no fever. Relief.

And there we stay, all the rest of the after­noon, each with our book, doz­ing slightly and watch­ing the bare branches out­side wav­ing back and forth against the steely March sky, feel­ing lucky. And today, a gor­geous dish of apple crum­ble to reward her for going to school when I would much rather have kept her home.

I know there aren’t many years left when the voice on the other end of the phone could be my daugh­ter, need­ing to be picked up at school, given a lit­tle TLC, a child who wants to spend the after­noon curled up with me and a cat, recovering.

My plan for self-actualization can def­i­nitely wait awhile.

Apple Crum­ble
(enough for one child for at least six breakfasts)

150 grams/2/3 cup plain flour
60 grams/1/4 cup gran­u­lated white sugar
80 grams/1/3 cup cold but­ter
4 Granny Smith apples, peeled and cut in bite-size pieces
sprin­kle fresh-ground nut­meg
sprin­kle fresh-ground cin­na­mon (or powdered)

This is a lovely, light crum­ble, by Simon Hop­kin­son, one of my favorite Eng­lish cook­ery writ­ers. My crum­bles used to have too much but­ter, which resulted in a heavy top­ping. And my friend Livia gave me, for Christ­mas, a cin­na­mon grinder. I’m devoted to it now. The scent is so much fresher than ready-ground, and it’s fun to do. I’ve also turned my back on ready-ground nut­meg. The aroma of fresh-ground just runs cir­cles around the pow­dered stuff.

Place the flour and sugar in your food proces­sor and turn it on. Then, a lit­tle chunk at a time, drop the but­ter into the lit­tle hole at the top and clamp your hand over the hole: flour will tend to shower out the top when the but­ter dis­turbs it, the first cou­ple of chunks. Use up all the but­ter and whizz until the mix­ture is nice and sandy.

Scat­ter the apples in a nice oven­proof dish, sort of 8x6, or even a pie plate would do, I sup­pose. Scat­ter the crum­ble top­ping over all and grate a sprin­kle of nut­meg, and of cin­na­mon, over the whole thing. Just a dusting.

Bake at 180C/350F for about 25 min­utes, till the top is golden. Don’t let it burn. Serve warm with ice cream for that sore throat.

But first.

The rea­son I will never have a Kin­dle. (There are many rea­sons, but here is just one GOOD one).

I picked up a book to read tonight, and on the fly­leaf, com­pletely ruin­ing any resale value, I know, is a nota­tion, dated Octo­ber 25, 1999. Avery was just shy of three years old. It runs like this.

*******
I close her bed­room door.

“Wait, wait, “Avery says, “don’t close it yet. I have to say ‘sleep well’ to you.”

I open her door again.

“Sleep well, dar­ling,” Avery says. “Good night, darling.”

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

Tell me what Kin­dle will ever have THAT writ­ten on its fly­leaf, for me to find on a chilly Lon­don night, and you’re sold. Until then, I’ll stick with my book­shelves full of trea­sures, unsaleable to be sure, heavy to lug around yes, and all the more LOVED for that. Gro­cery lists for birth­day par­ties, ideas for exhibits at my old gallery, nota­tions of night­mares (involv­ing raw chicken and futons?? don’t ask), memos to thank some­one for a din­ner party. I could not live hap­pily with­out this flot­sam and jet­sam of my past, thank you, not even for a slim, con­ve­nient plas­tic thing full of words.

Speak­ing of jot­tings, I’ve sim­ply got to jot down the adven­tures of our last day in Venice before they are all per­ma­nently replaced in my brain by by the flurry of activ­ity here: a very late-night, lux­u­ri­ous din­ner out with a girl­friend vis­it­ing from the States, “Cin­derella on Ice” at the Royal Albert Hall (pro­duc­tion closed now, but look out for it next year: mag­nif­i­cent!), John’s birth­day, and my obses­sion with home­made pizza! Isn’t this the most gor­geous pizza you’ve ever seen?

It’s kind of a garbage, clean-out-the-fridge din­ner, with home­made crust (the eas­i­est thing in the world to make) tomato sauce from a jar (my only require­ment: no sugar!), pesto, left­over arti­chokes, half a left­over red pep­per, sliced really thin, left­over Gig­gly Pig sausages, some slightly shriv­elly baby toma­toes, red onions, moz­zarella, a hand­ful of olives stolen from John’s mar­tini stash, and after it’s all cooked, a hand­ful of rocket scat­tered on top…

Heaven. The dough recipe makes more than twice what you need for two piz­zas, but trust me, you want that left­over dough. Noth­ing makes Avery and John as happy as that dough, rolled out super-thin, baked on a red-hot pizza stone for 10 min­utes with some slices of buf­falo moz­zarella and a sprin­kle of pars­ley and gar­lic salt. The most won­der­ful, cheap­est, eas­i­est lit­tle slice of par­adise, per­fect lit­tle side dish for pasta.

So Venice, Day Three. We started out at sim­ply the most beau­ti­ful mar­ket I have ever seen: the famed Rialto Mar­ket of all the guide­books and nov­els. I thought all the descrip­tions were com­pletely over the top: how won­der­ful could it be? Well, as you see. And dear read­ers, the tragedy was that I could not buy any­thing! Never again will I stay in a hotel in Venice; we need a flat with a kitchen. The crispest look­ing fen­nel, the firmest onions, beau­ti­ful baby arti­chokes (I adore them now, want to put them on every­thing but ice cream), and the fish? Don’t even get me started! I don’t par­tic­u­larly love squid, but it was magical-looking. And cut­tle­fish and live prawns (these creeped Avery out, “Some­body get a bowl of water for these poor gasp­ing fish!”) and scal­lops in the shell… I did buy two heart-shaped salamis from a gor­geous char­cu­terie (or what­ever the word is in Ital­ian), reluc­tantly leav­ing behind the salame in the shape of a dinosaur, seriously.

And there was a horse butcher. I mean, horse meat, not a butcher who was a horse. Don’t ask Avery about that, either. The Rialto Mar­ket is not for the faint of heart.

From there, we hopped on the vaporetto and headed for the Peggy Guggen­heim Museum, and there, I saw my entire career as an art his­to­rian flash before my eyes. My field was inter­na­tional art from 1900–1940, and that… is the Guggen­heim Col­lec­tion. Boc­cioni, Bran­cusi, Kandin­sky, Duchamp, Mon­drian… I found myself smil­ing like a silly ass as the mem­o­ries of my teach­ing days came back: my lec­tures link­ing the ear­li­est Mon­drian paint­ings of light danc­ing on water, through the clas­sic red, blue, black and yel­low geo­met­ric works, to the ulti­mate, Broad­way Boogie-Woogie, that paean to New York city culture…

We played our usual “what would you buy” game, and I came down unable to decide between Brancusi’s Bird in Space and Boccioni’s Devel­op­ment of a Bot­tle in Space. John fell in love with a Gia­cometti group of walk­ing men, or maybe a Joseph Cor­nell box, and Avery went back over and over to a draw­ing by an artist I’d never heard of, a British doc­u­men­tary film­maker named Humphrey Jen­nings. A lovely lit­tle Sur­re­al­ist piece.

An unfor­get­table place.

From there we wan­dered to lunch at the nearby Al Vechio Forner, a tiny oste­ria devoted to… lasagne! Of every descrip­tion. It wasn’t the most bril­liant lasagne I’ve ever had, but it was homey, warm and tasty, and the staff were lovely to us, let­ting me speak my slow, basic Ital­ian. I had scal­lop and arti­choke lasagne (I know, arti­chokes again), John had rad­di­chio and Fontina, and Avery had what we decided was the best, a sim­ple bolognese.

We stum­bled upon the world’s best mar­bled paper shop! Alberto Valese Ebru, tucked away, just wait­ing for Avery to relin­quish her gelato to John and slip in with me to find presents for Anna whose birth­day is com­ing, I get a photo album for the hun­dreds of pho­tos I’ve man­aged to get printed but not put in albums… I also man­age to say “Thank you so much, no, we don’t need a bag, we can put every­thing in this one I have HERE!” Totally thrilling.

As we stood on the Accad­e­mia Bridge, admir­ing the view, sud­denly there was a flurry of boats below, all con­tain­ing peo­ple in black bran­dish­ing enor­mous cam­eras with tele­photo lenses. “It’s the paparazzi,” John said wisely, “Let’s wait to see who it is.” And it was the ulti­mate, if you like that sort of thing: Brangelina! Stop­ping at a gor­geous palazzo, Brad emerg­ing first, then reach­ing down into the boat to hand out child after child after child! Finally, Angelina stepped up to the dock and they rushed inside, not even stop­ping to give their ador­ing fans, who had gath­ered in the dozens on the bridge, a smile. Ah well, our brush with fame was sort of fun, in a shame-faced way.

We crossed the bridge finally and went into the Isti­tuto Veneto where there was an exhi­bi­tion of the paint­ings of Venet­ian artist Zoran Music. I am not even nor­mally very enthu­si­as­tic about fig­u­ra­tive art, but this man’s work was over­whelm­ing. A sur­vivor of the Holo­caust, he painted land­scapes, self-portraits and Venet­ian cityscapes for 25 years before his expe­ri­ences resur­faced and demanded to be expressed… and the result­ing series of paint­ings was very, very dif­fi­cult to look at. I can only imag­ine if one had actu­ally expe­ri­enced the Holo­caust one­self, what it would be like to look at those paintings.

Strangely, John had decided ear­lier in the day that he wanted to visit the Jew­ish ghetto and museum, so, our minds still filled with Zoran’s work, we went off to drop our parcels at the hotel and head off on foot. Such an innocent-looking lit­tle square, hous­ing the syn­a­gogue (which was closed) and the museum, under ren­o­va­tion. So hard to believe there was ever a mass exo­dus, a round­ing up of all the Jews in the quar­ter, only 8 of whom ever returned. Chil­dren were rac­ing around the square in a burst of energy after school, I sup­pose, and a tiny wet dog raced with them, chas­ing a ten­nis ball. How bizarre to think what the place had been like 70 years before.

The most last­ing result of our visit to the ghetto was our dis­cov­ery of the restau­rant where we had the best meal of our stay in Venice! And it was kosher. Gam-Gam, down a tiny, dark street off the ghetto square, where we passed the only man I saw in Venice wear­ing a yarmulke. Oh, the food! An Israeli tapas (weird fusion name, that) plat­ter of house­made pita bread with at least 8 salad-y bits: hum­mous, cucum­bers in oil, beet­root roasted and cubed with pars­ley, a sort of egg salad with paprika, roasted red pep­pers, a mixed bean dish. Avery had matzo-ball soup and it was the absolute best we’ve had since we left New York. I had mous­saka, lovely with vel­vety aubergines and a creamy bechamel sauce. John had wiener schnitzel which was sort of aver­age, but then we all shared a lovely plat­ter of latkes. Just gor­geous. And the staff were beyond friendly and help­ful, speak­ing to each other in Hew­brew and to us in Ital­ian and English.

And that was Venice. Well, except for our hor­rid depar­ture. We got up early to take the water bus to the bus sta­tion, and stood at the stop, chat­ter­ing about our adven­ture and watch­ing the rain begin to fall. And we waited, and waited and waited. Finally a woman stand­ing nearby answered her phone and said, “Sci­opera!” Oh no! A bus strike! Just going in the direc­tion we wanted to go, just announced that moment. What to do! We walked.

And walked, and walked, in the pour­ing rain, pour­ing so hard that when we got home, five hours later, the clothes and books INSIDE the suit­cases were wet! Just awful. We attached our duf­fel to Avery’s wheeled lug­gage (we may never again be able to make fun of her for suc­cumb­ing to func­tion over form: John usu­ally hates wheeled lug­gage! but it saved our life), and sim­ply ran and walked the 40 min­utes or so to the bus sta­tion. Jumped on for the wildest ride of our lives, at exces­sive speed through mas­sive throwings-up of pooled rain water at the side of the road. Avery sim­ply closed her eyes. A freez­ing cold air­plane ride in our soak­ing wet clothes, and home.

Well, my friends, I must close because we have a con­cert at Avery’s school to go to, and then guests for din­ner, and I’ve com­mit­ted that sin that peo­ple always warn me never to com­mit: I’ve cooked some­thing I’ve never cooked before, to offer to guests, and it’s really scary-looking. I’ll tell all when the worst is known.