In the con­tin­u­ing saga of Pho­tographs on the Blog, here’s an exper­i­ment… when you click on it, does it enlarge?  John’s mom, this is for you!

Sim­ply lay out a nice big piece of heavy-duty foil.  In a big bowl, place all your veg­eta­bles: espe­cially BEETS which are a rev­e­la­tion grilled!  But heir­loom pota­toes too, and onions and gar­lic (squash is bor­ing, in my expe­ri­ence), then lots of fresh herbs.  Sprin­kle with olive oil, salt and pep­per, and pile onto the foil.  Cover with another sheet of foil, pinch the edges together to make a par­cel, and grill on a medium grill for about 20 min­utes.  Heavenly!

And you can spend those 20 min­utes with your kitty…

My bril­liant hus­band has saved the day!  The blog seems to be accept­ing pho­tos now!  I’ll inun­date you…

And…

And this…

This last was the plat­ter of top­pings for our LUS­CIOUS and crazily piled-up pizza last night: sausages with pro­volone and pars­ley, a superbly juicy red onion from the local farm­stand, hot poblano pep­pers, baby porta­bella mush­rooms, a sweet red pep­per, some slightly shriv­elly cherry toma­toes who needed to be eaten, Moroc­can cured olives, and a really good local moz­zarella… HEAVEN.

Sigh of relief, sigh of grat­i­tude to Foxy Tech Sup­port for solv­ing my pho­to­graph problem!

Here’s the thing about blog­ging.  It starts out as a lit­tle exper­i­ment in keep­ing your fam­ily and friends informed about your life.  Then slowly, insid­i­ously, it becomes a man­ner of self-expression as nec­es­sary as breath­ing!  And when you try to take a deep breath and all you get is a lit­tle mes­sage say­ing, “fatal error, out of mem­ory,” you col­lapse in a sort of toddler-ish mess of frus­tra­tion.  How dare you not be able to show the world your new kit­tens and your peaches and cream?

Sigh.  More soon.  But one more kitty pic­ture, just to whet your adopt­ing appetites…

Well, every new­born thing has its grow­ing pains, I sup­pose, and my new blog is going through one… I can­not post pho­tographs now.   My bril­liant designer is work­ing on it in far­away Lon­don, in a dif­fer­ent time zone, try­ing to con­vince the mys­te­ri­ous pow­ers that be who con­trol my blog­ging that it isn’t enough for me to tell you that Avery has invented the best dessert of peaches and fresh cream with vanilla.  I also want you to SEE the dessert.

And I want you to see a beau­ti­ful thing that hap­pened two evenings ago: the sight of Avery through the kitchen win­dow, across the dark ter­race and through the lighted bath­room win­dow, cajol­ing, caress­ing, spoil­ing each kit­ten in its own way.  That’s right: we have kit­tens!  Three of them, adopted on Mon­day from the Dan­bury Ani­mal Wel­fare Soci­ety in a pour­ing rain­storm.  These kit­tens were described as “nearly feral,” and if only I could post about one of the thou­sand and a half pho­tos we have taken of them, you’d see the magic that Avery has wrought.  Right now two of them are on her lap and the third beneath her chin.  Nearly feral?  Not any more.  Two of them are long-haired gray and white striped, one with a white mask over her nose and mouth, and the third is short-haired and dark gray, with the same white mask and white socks.  Jes­sica, Jamie and Jes­samy.  We have five weeks to find homes for them, so con­sid­ered your­self informed.

I want you to see Avery atop Red Baron, the retired thor­ough­bred she’s been rid­ing on these hot, still, humid days.  It’s a funny mother thing with me: I always can pick her out of the crowd in the pool even with­out my glasses, or in a big group of girls on ponies, by the straight set of her shoul­ders, the proud curve of her back.  Her instruc­tor was due to have a baby last week, but was teach­ing the morn­ing she was sched­uled to be induced!  Now that’s ded­i­ca­tion.  She finally had to be dragged kick­ing and scream­ing away from the horses, hav­ing left them in the capa­ble hands of a school friend of hers, who comes to the lessons com­plete with Hud­son, a mas­sive golden retriever.

“He is gor­geous!” I say, stroking him, I who nor­mally does not grav­i­tate to dogs.  “He smells so good!”

“Yep, sham­pooed him just last night, he needed it, I can tell you, after swim­ming in the pond.”

“That pond, the one cov­ered in algae?” I ask, pointing.

“That’s the one.  Loves it.  Can’t get enough of it, gives him a break from the heat.”

And as we watched, the super clean dog trot­ted out of our sight, up a hillocky path and down again, and we heard a splash, saw him go under the scummy sur­face.  Where­upon he emerged, ran back to the sta­ble, dug a hole in the horsey sand sur­face of the rid­ing ring, and lay in it.

“Guess we’ll be back to the sham­poo tub tonight,” Lynne said resignedly.

Avery’s been hav­ing such fun jump­ing!  Even drip­ping with sweat!  Hon­estly, it’s been nearly a hun­dred for days and days.  Then there are mas­sive thun­der and light­ning storms, alleged to break the heat, but it’s back in pun­ish­ing inten­sity within hours.  Today, how­ever, the sky has been threat­en­ing all the late after­noon, a dark­en­ing pur­ple men­ace in the stul­ti­fy­ing heat, but no rain has devel­oped so far.  If only it holds off long enough for us to head up the road to Rich’s Ice Cream with Anne, David and Katie from across the road.  Katie has been a mir­a­cle with the kit­tens: quiet as a mouse, her eyes big with their Vic­to­rian charm, gen­tle hands, a delighted smile on her upturned face.  There is noth­ing like a baby ani­mal, unless it’s a baby per­son, and the sight of both together is quite impos­si­bly touching.

The heat has not kept us from our mam­moth ten­nis games, try­ing to strate­gize our arrival at the courts to get one in the shade,  hold­ing our arms out in the instant of a breeze, shield­ing our eyes from the glare, decid­ing “one bounce, or two bounces?”  Some­times it’s just bet­ter to let the ball bounce twice than to race heed­lessly into the sun to get it in one.  I shud­der to think what would hap­pen to my weight if we stopped play­ing, because I’ve been cook­ing like mad!  Of course the lus­cious fried shrimp, pro­duced today for Anne, David, Katie and also Joel and his two angelic girls, Jane and Molly.  And a super-light cole slaw of red and white cab­bages and fen­nel, with a dress­ing of the oil from a jar of mar­i­nated arti­choke hearts, plus lemon juice, bal­samic vine­gar, a goodly dol­lop of may­on­naise and a ton of fresh black pep­per.  And potato salad, lit­tle red guys still warm from the steamer, piled with cel­ery and a dress­ing of chives sus­pended in yet more mayo!

Have you been enjoy­ing the recipe index?  And the ran­dom recipe?  I find that so inspir­ing, that ran­dom recipe.  Why can’t I get moti­vated on my own, with­out that lit­tle push?  After all, I wrote the recipes myself!  But it takes that lit­tle reminder, not nec­es­sar­ily to MAKE what pops up, but to think out of the fridge, out of the rut.  How about a hot , dark-green pablano pep­per stuffed with goat cheese?  Sea­son that goat cheese with my all-time best sea­son­ing friend, Fox Point from Pen­zeys, and grill them for 15 min­utes or so… runny hot cheese, a crisp lit­tle spicy bite of pep­per, that’s a win­ner.  Wouldn’t you like to see a photo of it?  I know I would…

Grilled Stuffed Peppers

(serves 4)

4 pep­pers, as hot as you like (my brother in law assures me, “the smaller, the hotter”)

1 long log goat cheese

4 tsps Pen­zeys Fox Point Seasoning

sprin­kle olive oil

Sim­ply cut the stem out of each pep­per, as you would a Hal­loween pump­kin.  Reach inside the pep­per gen­tly, tak­ing care not to rip it, and pull out the white mem­brane and shake the pep­per upside down to get the seeds out.  Place a good big dol­lop of goat cheese into the pep­per and sprin­kle in a tea­spoon of Fox Point.  Cover the sea­son­ing with another good slug of goat cheese.  Pour a lit­tle olive oil into your hand and rub it all over the pep­per.  Grill over medium heat for about 15 min­utes.  A pep­per per person!

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

We’ve indulged in an orgy of house-cleaning, believe it or not, unwill­ing to pay the lovely Maids who come just before we do at the begin­ning of the sum­mer, for a repeat visit.  And yet, if you had seen John’s t-shirt when he fin­ished vac­u­um­ing the entire house… he looked like he’d taken it straight from the wash­ing machine with­out ben­e­fit of dryer, poor man!  The three of us decided, after a few hours of back­break­ing labor and with the lin­ger­ing smells of bleach and Old Eng­lish pol­ish in the air, that we’d rather not be pro­fes­sional house­clean­ers.  But the house looked great, for a few hours, until daily life took its toll almost immediately.

I may have to roll up my sleeves one more time, before the big party in August to cel­e­brate the 200th birth­day of the house!

Can you believe it?  For some rea­son, my blog allowed me to post this ONE photo!  But not any oth­ers so far.  We’ll keep work­ing on it.  Every sum­mer, when we first arrive, one of the first things we do is to run inside, get the sign from the shelf where it lives while we’re away, and hang it on the fence.  It’s our sig­nal to our lit­tle stretch of Amer­ica that we’ve arrived.

For the party, we’re invit­ing all the mem­bers of the South­bury Land Trust who saved our land and the house from being cut up and sold to devel­op­ers.  And all our friends and neigh­bors who’ve been din­ner guests and lunch guests.  We are inves­ti­gat­ing rent­ing a mar­quee, which an extremely sober fel­low at the hard­ware store informed me is called a “tent” in this coun­try.  OK.  It’s hard to be flu­ent in both Eng­lish and Amer­i­can.  I’m madly think­ing what to cook for maybe 30 peo­ple.  Stuffed grilled pep­pers!  Peaches and cream!  Sticky chicken wings with home­made peanut sauce, my brother-in-law’s lus­cious orzo salad with salami, Parme­san, peas and roasted red pep­pers.  And, if it won’t give him too swelled a head, his amaz­ing hot arti­choke dip with may­on­naise and Parme­san.  Spread on a bit of toasted baguette, you’ve died and gone to heaven.  Recipe in the index of course!

It’s back to fondling a fluffy kit­ten for me.  And here’s hop­ing for pho­tographs of them soon, if all the blog­ging wiz­ards can give me a hand…

You know, dear read­ers, of my strug­gles in the past to rec­on­cile my occa­sional wish to let some­body else do the work for din­ner.  It’s under­stand­able, isn’t it, once in awhile, to want to pay some­one else to cook?  I don’t mean a lus­cious fancy-restaurant meal that you think about for ages after, mak­ing it OK that you parted with an insane amount of money.  I mean, food in a box, or a paper bag or a plas­tic wrap­per, or a lit­tle card­board boat.  You know what I mean here.

It’s your wish for a pizza, a burger, fish and chips.  Drive up, order, and slink away with your guilty treasure.

But then it hap­pens.  I decide to try to make the drat­ted thing at home and then the guilty trea­sure is no more.  I want my own ver­sion, from my own kitchen, made my own way .

So per­haps it was only a mat­ter of time until my all-time favorite sum­mer “let’s have din­ner at the fried-food shack on Main Street” treat took its place in the Pan­theon Of Things That Are Even Bet­ter If You Make Them Yourself…

Home-Fried Shrimp

(serves 4 as a gen­er­ous appetizer)

1 pound raw deveined shrimp, shells off but tails on

1/2 cup buttermilk

2 tbsps light cream

1 egg, lightly beaten

2 cups home­made bread­crumbs, rather fine

¾ cup corn­starch (corn­flour in England)

2 tbsps Pen­zeys Fox Point Seasoning

3 cups rape­seed or canola or saf­flower oil (or enough to come up 2 inches in your high-sided skillet)

I do not have a deep fryer (although I’m tempted now, what with the had­dock, fries and now shrimp on my menu).  So I choose a wide, high-sided skil­let for frying.

Mix the but­ter­milk, cream and egg in a wide, shal­low bowl.  Mix the bread­crumbs, corn­starch and Fox Point in another wide, shal­low bowl.

Dip the shrimps fully in the but­ter­milk mix­ture and then lay them in the bread­crumb mix­ture and turn over and over until they are as well-coated as you can get them.  Lay on a cookie tray or plat­ter in a sin­gle layer.

Heat the oil until a bread­crumb dropped in fries instantly.  Place as many shrimps as will loosely fit in a sin­gle layer and fry on one side until nice and pink (per­haps 1 minute, depend­ing on the size of your shrimps), then with a wire-mesh spoon, turn over each shrimp and cook on the sec­ond side, per­haps 30 sec­ond.  Lay on a thick layer of paper towel.  Con­tinue in batches till all shrimps are cooked.  Serve, for total deca­dence with:

Spicy Creamy Dip­ping Sauce

(serves 4)

¼ cup each: hot chilli sauce, may­on­naise and pre­pared horse­rad­ish sauce

juice of ½ lemon

fresh-ground black pepper

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

As my near­est and dear­est (as well as every­one I know on Face­book) will tell you, I was not in a cook­ing mood the night I pre­pared these divine lit­tle guys.  I was sick of cook­ing, it was hot and humid, and I felt heartily annoyed that every sin­gle night, the task of feed­ing my fam­ily falls to ME.  Couldn’t we just go out for once?  But pretty soon the ther­apy of play­ing with ingre­di­ents, of get­ting messy with creamy, bat­tery shrimps, of watch­ing as they turned mag­i­cally golden and crisp in the oil, took hold.

“Come see how cute these are!” I cried, and John came right away.

“I was wor­ried about you, not want­ing to cook,” he said, “but now you look happy again.”

And that’s the rub.  I am hap­pi­est in the kitchen, turn­ing the afternoon’s haul from gro­cery and farmer’s mar­ket into some­thing sub­lime to eat, lis­ten­ing to my fam­ily say through a mouth­ful of food, “This is so good,” and know­ing that 99 times out of 100, what­ever you pro­duce your­self, with love, will please you more than tak­ing the evening off.

And guess what?  We treated Avery to ice cream later on, and I was thrilled to see that the “shrimp bas­ket” at the food stand was $13.99!  Why, I had paid only $7.99 for the whole pound of shrimps!  Granted, I didn’t get a bed of limp ice­berg let­tuce and a dried-up pickle slice, and my din­ner didn’t come in a plas­tic boat.  But you can’t have everything.

Since Avery doesn’t do shrimp (cheap date, any teenager boys who might be read­ing), the same bat­ter and bread­crumb mix (with a bit of Parme­san added) worked per­fectly on chicken ten­der­loins.  I don’t know if I had to, but I dipped the shrimps and chicken into sep­a­rate but­ter­milk bowls.  Then the bat­tered chicken went into a 425 oven for about 15–20 min­utes.  Lovely

I think the only thing left on my truly “Some­one else make this for me” list is sushi.  I quail a bit at the idea of know­ing whether or not I’ve really got sushi-grade fish, prepar­ing spe­cial sushi rice, learn­ing to roll it all up.  But it’s prob­a­bly only a mat­ter of time.

Here I am, at home in Con­necti­cut, and it’s just as we all dreamed as we were strug­gling through the last insane weeks of Lon­don life.  Gary the Ground­hog is eat­ing all our over­ripe fruit (man­goes are this summer’s sur­prise favorite), John’s birds are scat­ter­ing sun­flower seeds over the ground for the chip­munks to carry away in their manic way, the horses are snort­ing in the back meadow, Avery has jumped on the tram­po­line, lit­tle Kate across the road has charmed us with her Vic­to­rian flut­tery eyes and appetite for lemon muffins.

My per­fect nieces Jane and Molly have come to jump over the horse jumps and con­quer the teeter-totter (once I dragged it out of the barn and scraped a dessi­cated bat off it, yuck).  We’ve gath­ered around the sup­per table wear­ing a vari­ety of mous­taches, just to mix things up.

All is nor­mal, in fact.

We’ve eaten our way through an enor­mous plat­ter of baby-back ribs, end­less ears of bi-color corn drip­ping with but­ter, steamed lob­sters, bison burg­ers and slabs of juicy Con­necti­cut tomatoes.

Ten­nis in New Eng­land heat and humid­ity is a whole ‘nother ball­game from the tem­per­ate games we play in Lon­don!  But a quick dip in the pool after­ward cools our faces and makes it pos­si­ble to jump in the car and go for a new adven­ture.  We got a mes­sage on the phone yes­ter­day, deliv­ered in Jane’s typ­i­cal breath­less prose, “Do you guys… want to go… pick blue­ber­ries… with us?  Call us back!  OK!  Thank you!  bye!”  So we did.

My God.  How any­one on earth makes a liv­ing pick­ing blue­ber­ries in 90-degree heat, I do not know, and I have enor­mous respect for any­one who can.  It was so HOT!  But an adven­ture, espe­cially as our sat­nav took us to Bell­town Orchards in Glas­ton­bury, Con­necti­cut by way of a most unex­pected route.

“Why is there a lit­tle boat icon on the sat­nav?” John asked in per­plex­ity, as we drove along merrily.

“What water could there pos­si­bly be?”  And then we saw.  A ferry cross­ing, over the lovely Con­necti­cut River, in fact, the old­est run­ning ferry in all of the United States of Amer­ica.  Who knew!

It’s a four-minute ride.  It costs $3, just so you know (I felt the sat­nav should warn us of this impend­ing expen­di­ture before we actu­ally landed on the ferry dock with no way to back up, but that’s just me carp­ing).  A com­pletely beau­ti­ful ride, with all of us clean and fresh on the way there, and then sweaty and exhausted on the way back.

We had barely recov­ered from our berry-picking when it was time for Avery and me to pack up a lit­tle bag or two, hop in the car, and drive into New York for a reunion with two sets of old and won­der­ful friends.  We slipped into Tribeca as if we’d never left, left the car at a blis­ter­ingly hot park­ing lot where, if there were no eggs actu­ally cook­ing on the pave­ment, it was only because the atten­dants were between meals.  Unbe­liev­able!  The heat in New York is a unique expe­ri­ence.  It’s some­thing to do with the height of the build­ings crouch­ing over you, hold­ing in the humid­ity, the peer­less energy of every­one around you, the excite­ment of being “home,” and the com­bi­na­tion won­der­ful and awful smells: exhaust, pee, hot dogs, asphalt and sun.  You have to love it, to endure it.  And we do.

Both Avery and I are unre­pen­tant New York­ers, no mat­ter our love for our adopted home of Lon­don.  New York seethes.  Strangers who do things for you, like park your car, or sell you a bot­tle of water, or drive you in their taxis to the the­atre, are ami­able enough, and always good at their jobs, but with an under­ly­ing poten­tial for… deal­ing with any­thing, a sort of “what­ever you might throw at me, it’s hap­pened before and WORSE” kind of shrewd­ness, and a promise of being able to dish it out as well as take it.  New York­ers are indomitable, incom­pa­ra­bly friendly, ready to chat about a news­pa­per head­line or the weather or a cer­tain bas­ket­ball player aban­don­ing the city for Miami of all places.  But there is a hard­ness, too, and an energy level ratch­ets above that of any other peo­ple I have ever known.  “We can take what the world dishes out, and we’ll even enjoy it, and we’ll find a way to rein­vent it and make money from it,” is the cheer­fully grim atti­tude of New York­ers, and Avery and I both sim­ply love it.  We for­get what it’s all about until we’re there, and then we can’t stop smil­ing fool­ishly, in our hap­pi­ness at being back.
We checked into the slightly dire but charm­ing Cos­mopoli­tan Hotel just a stone’s throw from my old art gallery, from Avery’s beloved pri­mary school, from the World Trade Cen­ter site, from so many memory-laden places and peo­ple.  Avery and I stood in the heat on the side­walk talk­ing about what restau­rants had gone out of busi­ness. or moved into some­one else’s restau­rant space, a favorite occu­pa­tion of New York insti­tu­tions, when sud­denly some­one said, “I rec­og­nize that voice!” and it was Avery’s old dance teacher, the fear­less Loretta who shep­herded our tiny girls, aged 3, in pink tutus for their first for­ays into “lis­ten­ing to their bod­ies.”  It was such a joy to see her, and to see the dis­be­lief on her face at the grownup  young lady with me, hardly rec­og­niz­able from the plump, unco­op­er­a­tive but adorable lit­tle thing from 10 years ago.

From there it was up Green­wich Street to meet with Avery’s first friend, Cici, and her mother Kath­leen, for a glass of iced tea and a delight­ful catchup, talk­ing all over each other about every­thing that had hap­pened since we last saw each other at New Year.  Schools, boys, music, vaca­tions, jobs, Kathleen’s paint­ing, my writ­ing, Lon­don, New York gos­sip.  It makes me so happy to see bits of Avery’s child­hood reap­pear and be just as beloved as before.

We walked in a leisurely way, wad­ing through our own sweat I hate to say, up to their new loft, in the build­ing where we all spent the ter­ri­ble morn­ing of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, watch­ing build­ings fall and other tragedies.  It was their office at the time, and they’ve since decided to turn it into a home, which I think it a mar­vel­lous way of exor­cis­ing the ghosts of that unfor­get­table day, when we walked uptown from the girls’ first day at kinder­garten, try­ing to shield them from the sights and sounds.  A happy home will be the best thing that could hap­pen to that space.

From a quick tour of the loft, then to a fab­u­lous din­ner at Gior­gone on Spring Street: tuna tartare with avo­cado and arugula (arugula! sorry, rocket, that’s your name here), then a soft­shell crab on a bed of sliv­ered green beans and smashed new pota­toes.  Avery had tortellini with ricotta and Cici and Kath­leen a glorious-looking crispy pizza.

And uptown in our first yel­low cab of the visit, in air-conditioned splen­dor!  “I can’t believe this, it’s FREEZ­ING!” I bur­bled to the Tunisian dri­ver, who smiled benev­o­lently and said, “Sweet­heart, if an under­cover cop gets in your taxi and it’s not run­ning cold air, you get a ticket.”  I think I must have known this, but it seemed a mir­a­cle of mod­ern Amer­i­can life anyway.

The play… the play!  We none of us had any idea what it was about, but it was David Mamet’s “Race” and a MOST chal­leng­ing piece of the­atre.  Be warned!  Mas­sive curs­ing, sex­ual con­tent, over-the-top in both really, but thought-provoking and well-acted, with Eddie Izzard doing a pass­able if uneven Amer­i­can accent, and Richard Thomas from “The Wal­tons” lend­ing an air of creepy self-importance to his role as perpetrator/victim.  It was a won­der­ful the­atri­cal expe­ri­ence, but as I’ve been the vic­tim before of peo­ple telling me how won­der­ful a play/movie/exhibition is and then watch­ing my child’s mouth open in utter shock and hor­ror, I thought I’d give you a heads-up.  Teenagers at the youngest, I’d say.  And maybe not your mother.  At least, not MY mother.

And my first-ever night­time visit to Times Square, if you can believe it!  New York­ers are like that about tourist sites, refus­ing often to go to the Statue of Lib­erty in a life­time of liv­ing in the city, and proudly announc­ing this fact to any­one who will lis­ten.  But it’s SUPERB.  Pedes­trian only now, for sev­eral blocks of traf­fic night­mare shifts, I imag­ine, and EVERY SQUARE INCH in sight cov­ered with mov­ing, glo­ri­ously com­plex, HD neon images.  Just absolutely stun­ning.  And most mes­meris­ing: a video dis­play, an ad for the trendy cloth­ing store For­ever 21, of a live feed of the crowd, with another video of a beau­ti­ful girl super­im­posed over the live feed, and then she takes a Polaroid of a por­tion of the live feed, blows in it and waves it about, holds it up so the crowd can see it and try to pick them­selves out of the image!  Am I explain­ing it at ALL?

Here it is.  So bizarre!

Finally it was time to head back down­town to the hotel, to col­lapse with a night­cap and a good book, and try to absorb all our adven­tures.  I’ve said it before: it’s good to get OUT once in awhile, do some­thing new, some­thing inde­pen­dent, and really enjoy life in all its variety.

Up in the morn­ing to meet my dar­ling best friend Alyssa at Avery’s old haunt Gee Whiz, across from her school!  All the same wait­ers!  The same menu!  (But a new, cool black cof­fee mug, so they aren’t entirely stuck in a rut).  A cheesy egg sand­wich, Avery plow­ing her way through choco­late chip pan­cakes, Alyssa and me try­ing des­per­ately to fill up the last six months with fran­tic gos­sip and infor­ma­tion exchange of the sort that can­not be accom­plished by phone, email or Face­book.  Must Be In Per­son.  It’s almost too painful to be with her, because I imme­di­ately begin think­ing how much more I will miss her when we part.

We met up again with Cici to head for an orgy of shop­ping in SoHo.  Sephora for the girls, JCrew for me, a pass through Dean and Deluca where I per­formed the nec­es­sary task of any long­time New Yorker of bemoan­ing how Joel Deluca’s famous hand­writ­ing on spice jars has been turned into… a FONT.  Unbe­liev­able.  “I remem­ber when ALL the price signs for the meat were in his REAL hand­writ­ing!” I say tire­somely, and Alyssa nods sagely.  finally into For­ever 21, where the girls shopped in aban­don, pick­ing up t-shirts of incred­i­ble cheap­ness and unknown fiber con­tent.  Alyssa looked around and said, “If some­one lit a match in here, the mer­chan­dise would go up in an instant.  It wouldn’t so much burn as melt, and what would be left would be this big” — she made a ges­ture the size of a base­ball — “and it would out­last the universe.”

And that was our New York adven­ture.  Surely not the last of the sum­mer, but the first, which makes it… the best.

That is one of my favorite phrases in the Eng­lish (as opposed to Amer­i­can) lan­guage.  “Be you upstand­ing,” intones the music mas­ter at Avery’s school, at the end of the Sum­mer Con­cert (I shall leave it to you to find Avery in this photo!), for all of us to clear our throats and sing “I Vow To Thee My Coun­try.”  Now, at times like this, I put aside the small feel­ing that “my coun­try” is not this one, because at moments when I am at my child’s school, cel­e­brat­ing the beauty of her Eng­lish edu­ca­tion, it IS my coun­try.  I’m more than happy to vow to it.

This coun­try has given us so much: Avery’s place at her two blessed schools, our friends who find our Amer­i­can­ness a beloved trait, the pageantry of Avery rid­ing in Hyde Park, the gor­geous Eng­lish pro­duce in our gro­cery stores, the peo­ple who have made our lives here a com­plete joy.  Rocco, my dar­ling ten­nis instruc­tor, who loves noth­ing more than for me to bring him an apple and banana cake, and then spend an hour teach­ing me to heal my ten­nis elbow.  Tony, my fish­mon­ger, who was happy to wave me off to Amer­ica, but said he’d miss my “cus­tom.”  Brooks, the snack place of choice, with its piles of delec­table brown­ies, lemon tarts and cook­ies for Avery’s after-school treats, glad that I came to tell them we were leav­ing for 52 days… “We’d have thought you stopped lov­ing us!” they said, laugh­ing.  “See you in September.”

The suit­cases are packed: lacrosse sticks for a cer­tain some­one who we are sure will LOVE them, red china tea sets for a cou­ple of other small peo­ple who will clap their hands in glee, birth­day presents for my mother, my cher­ished apron folded care­fully in antic­i­pa­tion of many, MANY cel­e­bra­tory meals to be cooked for Amer­i­can fam­ily and friends, favorite nov­els we can’t live with­out for two months, bathing suits for the POOL, recipes I’ve put aside all spring and sum­mer, plan­ning to cook them “when I have time for some­thing new that might bomb.”

The last gifts have been given to teach­ers, the last hugs to friends leav­ing for board­ing school, the last trip to Lost Prop­erty to sort through some unex­pected junk, includ­ing a first for me: a packet of cig­a­rettes?  Come on, girls, you are too bright for this!  The last sweaty game of ten­nis, the last filled dish of cat food… all those funny mile­stones that mean the end of our Lon­don life, the never-neverland of travel tomor­row, and then… HOME.

So… Be you upstand­ing.  Give your vows to those who love you, whether it’s Amer­ica or Eng­land, or BOTH.  That’s the glory of our lives!  We get both.  See you in the States.

Drum­roll… the inau­gural photo and recipe for my dar­ling new blog.  This is noth­ing more than an exper­i­ment, really, in order to post a link to Face­book, the quick­est way I could think of to get every­one to visit and ooh and ahh over the changes.

Thank you again, dear Julian, for your bril­liant exper­tise in bring­ing my new, improved “Kris­ten in Lon­don” to fruition, and most of all for the RECIPE INDEX!  Some­where in there is a potato salad already, but then, as Abra­ham Lin­coln said (or should have), “You can never have too many potato salad recipes.”

Fourth of July Potato Salad

(serves four)

1 large waxy potato per per­son, quartered

6 spring onions, sliced right through to the green bits

1/4 cup pine nuts

2 stalks cel­ery, sliced thin

1 stalk lemon­grass, outer skin peeled and the stalk minced fine

dress­ing:

1 part lemon juice to 3 parts mayonnaise

driz­zle hot chilli oil

1 tsp. dried oregano

1 tbsp. Satay (peanut) sauce

juice of 1 lemon

hand­ful tiny Eng­lish watercress

Sim­ply steam the pota­toes and cut into bite-size pieces, then set aside to cool.  When cool, mix every­thing else but water­cress together, toss­ing gen­tly so as not to break up pota­toes too much.  Sprin­kle water­cress on top and serve.  Per­fect with pier­rade, grilled burg­ers, bar­be­cued chicken, spicy wings… you name it.

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Gra­cious, it’s steam­ing hot here in Lon­don.  It was hot at the Lost Prop­erty sale, hot in the kitchen prepar­ing mac­a­roni and cheese for an early sup­per, and it will be HOT at school in the Great Hall for the year-end per­for­mance of “My Fair Lady.”  But unbe­liev­ably, one week from today will see us step­ping, hot, off a plane at Newark Air­port, ready for a sum­mer of fun.  So I can taken another week of Lon­don fun, and will prob­a­bly spend it all play­ing with my blog!

So…

Here we ARE!  I’m com­pletely thrilled.  Let me know what you think!  More soon…