Yes, bless­ings, even lit­er­ally, because last Sun­day saw us at that most touch­ing of all Sep­tem­ber hap­pen­ings in Lon­don, Horseman’s Sun­day, or “The Bless­ing of the Horses” at St John’s Church in Bayswa­ter.  Dozens of horses from the two sta­bles in Bathurst Mews gather around in con­trolled chaos, lit­tle girls in bright blue jumpers and jodh­purs, big­ger girls con­trol­ling their ponies with deter­mined tugs on bri­dles, girls step­ping behind with giant buck­ets and shov­els and brooms, clean­ing up the inevitable mess.  All the sidling, whin­ny­ing and clap­ping of hooves that means Sep­tem­ber is here, the school year has begun, and it’s time for the horses to be blessed.

The vicar, who is known to be ter­ri­fied of horses, waits until the last pos­si­ble minute to be hoisted, in his green cer­e­mo­nial cas­sock, onto the back of some pony deemed to be the calmest on the day.  Once in place, the poor cler­gy­man fixes a deter­mined smile on his face and rides around the block to the church, where all the girls, plus dig­ni­taries (not the Pope, we were dis­ap­pointed to see) and vis­it­ing horses from all over the UK, gather.

And they are blessed!  They are thanked for their ser­vice through­out the year, and for their com­pan­ion­ship, and funny sto­ries are told.  The vicar tells about a horsey col­league of his who named his favorite pony “Parish Busi­ness,” so that when parish­ioners came to claim him for some annoy­ing task, his wife could in all hon­esty report that he was “out on parish business.”

Avery is one of the big girls now, and as such is not on horse­back but is given a lit­tle girl to lead around the fes­tiv­i­ties.  The sun shone on them, because it would not dare to do any less on Horseman’s Sun­day.  Mr Nye, the beloved 85-year-old owner of the sta­ble, held tight to his micro­phone as befit­ted the organ­iser of the event for the past 43 years and held sway, telling many ques­tion­able anec­dotes and caus­ing all the other adults to hold their breath at what might be com­ing next.  Every year, exactly the same.

After the bless­ing, but before the gymkhana in the park, John and went for a com­pletely spec­tac­u­lar meal at the nearby French bistro Angelus, quite sim­ply one of the taste sen­sa­tions of Lon­don.  Foie gras creme brulee, if you please!  I have tried to make it, to no avail.  Creamy, del­i­cate mousse of foie gras under a crack­ling, slightly sweet layer of poppy seeds and Demer­ara sugar.

The lux­ury!  My favorite dish in all the world, I think.  And com­pletely sat­is­fy­ing to eat it in the only restau­rant in the city that makes it, all the more because I’ve been defeated in mak­ing it myself.

But I can come home, after a long after­noon watch­ing Avery on Wick­ham, buck­ing and rear­ing in the foxy sun­light, and make:

Roasted Root Veg­eta­bles with Chilli Oil and Sage

Sim­ply peel and cut in bite-size pieces the root veg­eta­bles of your choice: beet­root, but­ter­nut squash, car­rots, parsnips.  Driz­zle them with chilli-infused olive oil, sprin­kle with chopped sage and dust with salt and pep­per, and roast in the oven at 200C/400 F for 30 min­utes, then toss in the oil and serve.  Autumn on a plate.

And for com­plete per­fec­tion in a soup bowl, there is:

Creamy Red Pep­per Soup

(serves 6)

2 tbsps butter

6 red pep­per, chopped roughly

1 shal­lot, chopped roughly

4 cloves gar­lic, chopped roughly

3 tbsps Marsala wine

sprin­kling of fresh thyme leaves

chicken stock to cover, per­haps 3 cups?

1/2 cup dou­ble cream

For­get the fid­dly busi­ness of roast­ing the pep­pers: it doesn’t mat­ter.  Sim­ply saute the pep­pers, shal­lots and gar­lic in the but­ter, then add the Marsala wine and sim­mer high for a bit.  Sprin­kle on the thyme leaves and cover the whole lot with chicken stock.  Sim­mer for 20 min­utes until pep­pers are soft, then pul­ver­ize with your hand blender and run through a sieve into a clean pot.  Swirl in the cream, and get out your straw: this is the best soup ever.

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

Then it was onto the real busi­ness of life: the arrival of our dear New York friends Olimpia and Tony.  Olimpia once worked with John, and for that rea­son she has his num­ber.  All of them.  She has seen him at his best — a gen­er­ous and kind-hearted coworker — and at his worst — prob­a­bly blam­ing every­one in sight for a plane ticket gone wrong, or in the depths of despair over a deal he’d worked his heart out for that was not going to pan out.  In short, she knows him. And still loves him, which is real friendship.

They arrived late at night, with John and me wait­ing for them in the spitty, Lon­dony rain (Avery annoyed that we had vetoed her stay­ing up as well!).  Wildly wav­ing through the car win­dows, smil­ing with excite­ment, they arrived.  We hus­tled their suit­cases up to the serene guest room, all white bed linens and soft blue walls, the green beauty of the back gar­den hid­den in the dark, a can­dle lit on the fire­place man­tle, pic­tures of Avery every­where, a stack of books — the lat­est Ian McE­wan, an old Lau­rie Col­win, a Gladys Taber, an Agatha Christie — on the bed­side table.

Thurs­day morn­ing dawned wet and gray.  “This is what we should expect of Lon­don weather,” Tony said bravely, but it seemed TOO bad when the weather had been gor­geous all month.  Noth­ing, how­ever, could stop us from our adven­tures, so we piled hilar­i­ously into the Fiat (“next time you do that, Tony, I need my video cam­era!” Olimpia crowed as he squeezed him­self in, shov­ing the seat back and nearly break­ing her knees), and drove off to Bor­ough Mar­ket, where the tar­pau­lins and ancient roofs pro­tected us from the downpour.

We bought every­thing in sight.  Eggs, creme fraiche, Nor­mandy but­ter with huge flakes of sea salt in it, and the cured Ital­ian meats!  Don’t even get me started.

And the pro­duce!  I bought cele­riac, basil, Ital­ian pars­ley, and a bright orange pump­kin from the most per­fect pro­duce stand, exchang­ing wis­dom with the pro­pri­etor on why my pump­kin soup of last week turned out so un-pumpkiny.  “Love, you need a bright orange squash for that, and roast­ing it ahead of the soup wouldn’t hurt none either,” he allowed, so I am in his debt.  If the soup turns out to be some­thing other than creamy chicken stock, as it was last week, you’ll be the first to know.

To Sill­field Farm, finally, after scop­ing out all the other butch­ers for Olimpia’s gift to us, that after­noon.  For WILD BOAR.  The shop­ping high­light of the after­noon.  What fun we had.

You will never eat any­thing like it, until you have cooked with Olimpia.  I am offer­ing you the elixir of the gods, here, by shar­ing her inim­itable, peer­less recipe.  Enjoy.

Olimpia’s  Meat­balls

(makes 24 palm-sized meatballs)

800 grams/ 1 3/4 pounds Sill­field Farms wild boar mince

3–4 slices whole wheat bread, soaked in bread and squeezed dry

½ cup grated Parme­san cheese

3 eggs

salt, pep­per

4 cloves gar­lic, finely chopped

8 leaves basil, finely chopped

hand­ful Ital­ian pars­ley, finely chopped

olive oil for frying

In a large bowl, mix the mince with the squeezed bread, shred­ding the bread as you go.  Sprin­kle in the Parme­san cheese and mix very well.

In a smaller bowl, whisk eggs fully and mix in all other ingre­di­ents except olive oil.

Pour egg mix­ture into meat mix­ture and knead well with your hands until com­pletely mixed, at least 5 min­utes.  Shape into 1 ½ inch balls and set on a platter.

Heat a very large fry­ing pan with enough olive oil to cover the bot­tom and come up the sides ¼ inch.  Fry the meat­balls in a sin­gle layer, in batches until browned and fully cooked inside, turn­ing twice and if nec­es­sary brown­ing on the edges as well.  Serve with…

Olimpia’s Magic Tomato Sauce

(makes 6 cups)

olive oil to coat bot­tom of pan (approx­i­mately 2 tbsps)

6 sausages of your choosing

4 cloves gar­lic, finely chopped

1 large shallot

6 leaves basil, cut in half

½ cup good red wine, like Chianti

4 soup-size cans or 2 large cans crushed tomatoes

hand­ful Ital­ian parsley

salt and pep­per to taste

Heat olive oil in large saucepan and fry sausages until brown on all sides.  Add gar­lic, shal­lot and 1 leaf of basil and fry till gar­lic and shal­lot are translucent.

Pour in the red wine and cook down till reduced by half.  Add toma­toes.  If you can­not find crushed toma­toes, sim­ply put whole or chopped toma­toes through the Cuisi­nart until smooth.  Add pars­ley and the remain­ing basil leaves, then sea­son to taste.

Cook sauce, cov­ered, for at least 1 hour, prefer­ably up to 4 hours.  Place meat­balls gen­tly in sauce and sim­mer uncov­ered for at least 1 fur­ther hour.

Serve with pasta and Parme­san cheese.

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

We had the time of our lives cook­ing, that after­noon.  The rain fell, Tony took pic­tures, we dis­cussed the nature of life and love.  I was Olimpia’s devoted slave and chopped, minced, pul­ver­ized ingre­di­ents to her sat­is­fac­tion.  We talked about wild boar.  So much more deli­cious than beef, or pork!  “And just think, Olimpia,” I said, “some­body will prob­a­bly make head cheese out of all the scraps at that butcher,” and she laughed uproar­i­ously and said, “John’s the head cheese,” which made us laugh so hard we could hardly break eggs or grate cheese.

John came in and poured Chi­anti all round, and Olimpia fried her meat­balls, and sauteed sausages, made sauce.  The most per­fect afternoon.

We headed out, then, we to pick up Avery from a late play rehearsal at school, and Tony and Olimpia to go to see “Death­trap,” then we all recon­vened late that night to hear the reac­tion (they loved it) and share sand­wiches of fresh baguettes, shav­ings of culatello with finoc­chio (lit­tle pro­sciutto slices with fen­nel), slices of good Eng­lish Dou­ble Glouces­ter cheese, rocket and my fresh pesto.

In the morn­ing it was rain­ing, if any­thing, even heav­ier.  But Tony was adamant.  “I pre­dict it will stop in the after­noon,” and Olimpia chimed in, “He’s never wrong about the weather,” so we donned rain gear, packed umbrel­las, and headed off to some­thing I never in my life thought I would see my hus­band do: climb onto a Lon­don tour bus.

On the way, we stopped off at our old May­fair house, where we moved when we first arrived lo these six years or so ago, and rang the bell of the porter, Lau­rie, an old friend.  He promptly arrived and let us in so we could show Olimpia and Tony the secret gar­den, the walled splen­dor behind the houses lin­ing that square, undreamed of from the street.  We climbed to the roof and sur­veyed all of the Mary Pop­pinsy roofs of May­fair, the Amer­i­can flag float­ing serenely above them all, strangely incon­gru­ous, but point­ing to the Amer­i­can embassy below.  The spitty rain fell, and we enjoyed the nos­tal­gic trip.  How happy we were there.

On to the bus, and to our tour of all scenic points of the city, stop­ping at St Paul’s Cathe­dral, where we got out and had a tour with an idio­syn­cratic and lovely lady tour guide, lead­ing us from mon­u­ment to paint­ing to cof­fin.  We decided not to climb to the top in such awful weather, and then left Olimpia and Tony to con­tinue their tour while we raced off to meet Avery at the skat­ing rink.  Fri­days are Fri­days, after all, and skat­ing lessons stop for no man.

Out in a whirl to The Pope­s­eye for a meat-fest — rump, sir­loin and fil­let steaks all round, plus mas­sive piles of chips (we ate them all), and four dif­fer­ent kinds of mus­tard, plus ketchup, horse­rad­ish and a divine Bear­naise sauce.  Heaven, dis­cussing travel plans — Olimpia and Tony to Por­tu­gal in the morn­ing, we to Flo­rence in Octo­ber — laugh­ing, feel­ing grate­ful to have each other, in the white-paper-tableclothed inti­macy of the restau­rant, can­dles every­where, a gor­geous din­ner.  Happiness.

And in the morn­ing, after one of John’s famous scrambled-egg brunches (roasted toma­toes an unex­pected hugely pop­u­lar addi­tion!), they were off, to points south and warm.  The visit was over.

John and had a lit­tle adven­ture that after­noon, while Avery and her friend Lille samba-ed away in May­fair: we rented bikes from the new Bar­clays hire scheme and went all round Hyde Park!  What I want to know is why my legs were killing me, when we play ten­nis four times a week!  Avery informed me solemnly that it’s like com­par­ing horse back rid­ing to ice skat­ing.  You use com­pletely dif­fer­ent mus­cles, appar­ently.  A really lovely, civ­i­lized way to spend an hour, even if I am totally con­vinced that the park is uphill all the way.  All the time.  How that can be, I do not know.  But I was puffing.

So nor­mal life has returned.  It’s Mon­day, and rainy again.  A quiet day of home chores.  Lunch of a new chick­pea salad.  Just Sep­tem­ber, wind­ing her­self down and gear­ing up for autumn.  The darker days are coming.

Have you ever looked into your refrig­er­a­tor, seen a big bunch of leeks and a con­tainer of cream and thought you ought to do some­thing with them?  So you moseyed on over to your com­puter, typed in the search box “leeks and cream recipes” and found a whole host of sug­ges­tions.  From a whole host of sources, in fact, which in turn rep­re­sent a whole host of cooks, who’ve con­tributed their recipes to these vast com­pen­dia, online.  And did you find a recipe that you wanted to try?

Have you, on the other hand, ever sat down in a com­fort­able chair with a cook­book, or even a mem­oir by a cook­ery writer, and read beyond all the time you really had to spare, dog-earing pages that con­tained recipes you were tempted to try?

Well, I’ve done both.  Many times, both.  So I’m intrigued by the debate cur­rently pop­ping up around Face­book and other places I dart around on the inter­net: is there any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for online recipe data­bases, or should we all be rooted firmly in the cook­book tra­di­tion?  One chef I like a lot, Clif­ford A. Wright, has come down firmly on the side of cook­books, call­ing inter­net recipe trawl­ing noth­ing more than “cook­ing by num­bers,” insist­ing that if you want to become a bet­ter cook, you need to read real books, writ­ten by real peo­ple and, impor­tantly pub­lished by real publishers.

What’s the point, he asks, of look­ing up “lemon cake” for exam­ple on an inter­net search, and com­ing up with a recipe by (I’m para­phras­ing here) Betty, handed to her by her friend Louisa?  Who is Betty, any­way, much less who is Louise, and why should we care about their recipes for lemon cake?  Have these ladies any bona fides, after all?

Wright insists that the bat­tle toward good cook­ing is to be won by read­ing and learn­ing from advice from tried and true sources, taken in con­text.  Mar­cella Hazan, for exam­ple, doyenne of Ital­ian cook­ery, just look at the cook­books she has to her name, the pub­lished his­tory, the famed rep­u­ta­tion.  Any­thing Mar­cella tells us has weight, believ­abil­ity, and CON­TEXT.  We know some­thing about the recipe just because Mar­cella has given it to us.

Betty and Louise?  Some­where in Wis­con­sin?  Not so much.

I think there is room for both, as far as inspi­ra­tion, direc­tion and just plain recipes go.  Let me explain.

Clearly I have no trou­ble col­lect­ing cook­books.  When I first started cook­ing, and buy­ing cook­books, a quar­ter of a cen­tury ago, I looked for titles like “The Essen­tials of Clas­sic Ital­ian Cook­ing,” or “Mrs Chiang’s Szech­wan Cook­ing” (actu­ally both of these were gifts from my adored mother in law!) or “The Break­fast Book,” by Mar­ion Cun­ning­ham, a book that I read avidly, dog-earing nearly every other page.  In short, I was an igno­rant begin­ner, and I needed as many clas­sic sets of instruc­tions as pos­si­ble.  Olive oil for Ital­ian cook­ing, peanut oil for Szech­wan, rose­mary for Ital­ian, soy sauce for Szech­wan, gar­lic for both, pasta beyond spaghetti and mac­a­roni, Chi­nese food that involved chop­ping and stir-frying, rather than pick­ing up the phone.  And break­fast!  Every­body needs a basic muf­fin recipe, and a way to make hol­landaise in a blender, not a dou­ble boiler.  Basics.  Inspi­ra­tional basics.

The longer I cooked, the more con­fi­dent I felt in my own opin­ions.  And the more I got inter­ested in the life sto­ries of the cook­ery writ­ers I liked.  As nec­es­sary as I found the recipe for Lau­rie Colwin’s beef stew, as a new­ly­wed, even more sus­tain­ing was her com­men­tary on “Alone in the Kitchen With An Egg­plant,” her mus­ings about how much she hated Thanks­giv­ing stuff­ing and why, until she thought of one with Ital­ian sausage and heavy cream… her mem­o­ries of the worst hang­over of her life and how much it was helped by toast and lemonade.

In short, I love cook­books.  I read them like fic­tion.  I find hun­dreds of recipes I want to cook, I mark all the pages, I day­dream and am inspired, and then… I read another.  They enrich my life, their spines smile gen­tly at me from my book­shelves when I have an idle moment, mem­o­ries come back.  That story about a whole beef filet, on New Year’s Day, with the tar­ragon mus­tard sauce… must make that again, and what about Orlando’s straw pota­toes cooked in hot goose fat?  How I love Orlando, how his writ­ing work­shop changed my life… Avery loves those potatoes.

That is an irre­place­able part of my life, that shelf full of cookbooks.

Now then.  What about those leeks and cream in your fridge?  What to do with them?  Or the big plate of pears your neigh­bor Char­lotte brought over, picked from her own back gar­den tree?

There is noth­ing eas­ier than to run to the com­puter, type in “leeks and cream recipes” and decide to try a tart, adding some diced ham and a bit of fresh thyme you hap­pen to have sit­ting in a glass on your counter.  Or how about a hot soup, or cold vichys­soise?  All won­der­ful ideas.  Pear tart, pear and apple­sauce, pear salad with gor­gonzola and rocket?  Great ideas, to be found by typ­ing in “pear recipes.”  But pos­si­bly not one cook­book on your shelf would have recipes for them.  You wanted laser-guided research for this one.

Or a left­over brisket stares you in the face.  Couldn’t you make corned-beef hash of that, you think.  What else is IN corned-beef hash, any­way, you won­der?  Run to google, find sev­eral hun­dred recipes, all of which assure you: onions and pota­toes and a life­time sup­ply of but­ter.  Done.

Of course, you don’t get any sense of the life his­tory of the author of Recipe Num­ber 101 for leek tart.  You don’t know if the corned-beef hash lady with the nicest pho­to­graph of her dish is Eng­lish, or Amer­i­can or French.  You just like her photo and the basics of her instruc­tions.  So be it.  As Audrey Hep­burn said in “Cha­rade,” “I don’t have room in my life for another friend.  In order for me to make a new friend, a friend I have now would have to die.”  Some­times you just want a recipe.

I pro­posed this debate — to find recipes online or not, that is the ques­tion– to my long-suffering hus­band and recipe guinea pig, John.  And he imme­di­ately con­firmed what I thought.  (So con­ve­nient, that trait, in a hus­band).  Both online and on-bookshelf are com­pletely nec­es­sary.  What you lose in the online search, he says, is sim­ple.  “There’s no acci­den­tal dis­cov­ery.”  Look­ing for corned-beef hash, you won’t acci­den­tally come upon cas­soulet, and be trans­ported back to Paris in all its gar­licky, bean-laden glory.  You’ll find corned-beef hash.

It’s the old debate between the mer­its of Amazon.com, and the mer­its of Daunt Books in the Maryle­bone High Street.  You go to Amazon.com when you want the lat­est in the Donna Leon mys­tery series set in Venice.  There it is, you buy it.  Corned-beef hash all over again.  But if you don’t know WHAT you want, you just know you haven’t any­thing to read, you go to Daunt, and browse.  You turn from Agatha Christie to Stephen Fry to street guides of Morocco to the Man Booker Prize short­list.  You are inspired.

You could make cas­soulet after all.

So I am pleased that I don’t have to choose between allrecipes.com and “The Clat­ter of Forks and Spoons” by Richard Cor­ri­gan, that sex­i­est of all portly Irish chefs.  I can look up the pro­por­tion of flour to yeast online when I want to make pizza, and accom­plish that in 30 sec­onds, no dis­trac­tions.  And when I want to read about Dublin bay prawns and be lured into a recipe for a creamy crab tart with goats cheese, I can cozy up with Richard and be transported.

Isn’t it nice to have both.

And for a com­plete diver­sion, don’t for­get that most spon­ta­neous way to find a recipe.  It’s on that plate of salad you had for lunch, at your local deli, and in your taste­buds and taste mem­o­ries and the inspi­ra­tion of your life’s cook­ing.  Taste, be inspired, and cook.

Chick­pea and Cour­gette Salad with Mint, Chill­ies and Goats Cheese

(serves 4 as a side dish)

2 soup-size tins chick­peas, drained

1 large cour­gette (zuc­chini), inner seedy core dis­carded, and the cour­gette diced

3 cloves gar­lic, minced

8 leaves mint, minced fine

hand­ful flat-leaf pars­ley, minced fine

1/2 red onion, diced

juice of 1 lemon

LOTS of olive oil, per­haps 1/3 cup

sea salt to taste, fresh ground black pepper

sprin­kling of minced hot red chillies

100 grams goats cheese, crumbled

In a big, shal­low bowl, mix every­thing but the goats cheese very well, stir­ring as you add ingre­di­ents, let­ting stand a bit.  Just before serv­ing, sprin­kle on goats cheese and mix gently.

What a dif­fer­ence it makes to have our fam­ily com­plete again!  Since we are both work­ing from home these days, John and I have become com­pletely spoilt in the amount of time we spend together, nat­ter­ing across the part­ner desk in the front study, send­ing each other emails as we speak, gro­cery shop­ping together, run­ning Avery to and from her var­i­ous activ­i­ties, always both of us.  Why?  Because doing things with John ele­vates them from just tasks, just errands, to lit­tle spe­cial occa­sions, infused with his own spe­cial brand of good humor, his bound­less energy, opti­mism, self-confidence and gen­eros­ity of spirit.  “Let me carry that for you,” or “Do you need any help with that?” are the sorts of things he says all day, because that is how he sees life.  There must be some­thing he can do to help.

So Avery and I returned to Amer­ica with­out him with heavy hearts, a bit, but a lit­tle ashamed, because we used to do with­out him all the time, when he was on long busi­ness trips, or just long hours at the office.  Why is it so much eas­ier to get used to good things than to bad things?  There is a philo­soph­i­cal dis­ser­ta­tion in that.  We have all got used to being together much eas­ier than we learned to accept being apart.  Of course, hav­ing the big kids around made every­thing a bit bet­ter… here they are, three Three Mus­ke­teers (Tacy refuses to join them, too princesslike is she).

And Avery and I did all right by our­selves!  Even with my stom­ach bug, and jet­lag and not being a morn­ing per­son in any case, under the best of cir­cum­stances, we did just fine.  It was actu­ally kind of fun to get both the pre-school morn­ing accounts of what was to come, and the post-game analy­sis at the end of the day.  It was sort of sweet both to make the rasp­berry crum­ble for her break­fast late at night, and be up to warm it up for her the next day.

One day last week, I got more than a day’s worth of exer­cise in that most time-honored of all ways, which all par­ents will rec­og­nize… walk­ing to and from school.  Once to and from first thing in the morn­ing (find­ing Avery’s PE shoe on the way home, so actu­ally a lit­tle extra that trip), then back for Lost Prop­erty duty at noon, and home again.  Back to pick Avery up at the end of the day, home with her.  THEN back again for the Par­ents’ Guild meet­ing at 6.  I say my piece at the meet­ing, vote on some things, lis­ten to some debate, then sneak out to meet Orlando, my dar­ling tutor from our Arvon writ­ing class, for din­ner.  I dial his num­ber to say I’m ready.

“This num­ber is not in ser­vice.  Please check your infor­ma­tion and try again.”

Grrr.  I try again.  Same again.

I dial up Avery, at home, to get her to check my email to find the right number.

“You have reached Avery.  Please leave a num­ber at the beep, at least I think it’s a beep, I don’t really know.”  Beep.

In frus­tra­tion I leave my mes­sage but then real­ize I must go home AGAIN to get the proper phone num­ber if I’m ever going to see Orlando, have a bite of sup­per, and get home AGAIN to get Avery to bed.  I get home.

“Avery, why aren’t you answer­ing your phone?  I needed you to check my email so I didn’t have to come all the way back.”

“Uh… I think it doesn’t have any bat­tery.”  Grrr.  I repro­gramme the num­ber, the phone rings, it’s Orlando already AT the restau­rant, so I speed off again.

If you are a car­ni­vore, and ONLY if, The Pope­s­eye in Ham­mer­smith is for you.  To say the menu is lim­ited is to utter an under­state­ment.  It’s steak.  And chips.  And salad.  That’s ALL.  Sir­loin, rump, rib­eye, fil­let.  All dif­fer­ent sizes.  But that is all.  White paper table­cloths, lots of can­dles every­where, a glo­ri­ous wine list, appar­ently, and the best steak you could ever want, plus a charm­ingly enor­mous tray full of every condi­ment known to man and some unknown.  Horse­rad­ish, mus­tard, ketchup, check.  But the other six glass bowls?  No idea.

Furi­ous chat­ting.  I love Orlando, and his lovely friend Susie, and the hour and a half at my dis­posal sim­ply sped by.  And ONE MORE walk home.  I think five trips in one day is a record.  I plan that it shall remain so.

And the next day I man­aged to get ready for the famed Lost Prop­erty lun­cheon all by myself, haul­ing extra chairs down from the top floor of the house, and the big ugly buf­fet table up from the cel­lar.  Once I dragged the table out to the gar­den, how­ever, and cov­ered it with a thick old white linen cloth, it looked quite dis­tin­guished, and not at all as if it had a plas­tic top and fold­ing metal legs.

But I was defeated by the kitchen island, made of a heavy Vic­to­rian wrought-iron base and an unat­tached 2-inch-thick slate top.  I sim­ply could not budge it, which John had warned me.  “Get Selva to help you,” he advised.  Well, get­ting Selva to help me do any­thing is a com­plete joy, not only because he is my dear neigh­bor and a really sweet man, but because he is drop-dead gor­geous.  I have con­fessed my weak­ness to his beau­ti­ful wife Sara, who must hear such things every day, or at least wit­ness them as the path before Selva is lit­tered with the help­less bod­ies of females who can­not resist his urbane charms.  He just can’t do any­thing about it.

So it was but the work of a moment to accost him with his fam­ily on the way to school and plead my case, and barely an hour later, there he was, ready to roll his sleeves up and drag that puppy across the kitchen floor.  “How many peo­ple did you say were com­ing?” he asked, clearly think­ing I had lost my tiny mind, look­ing around the kitchen at the neat piles of plates, glasses full of upended knives and forks, straight rows of cham­pagne glasses.  “Thirty,” I said, “and I know you won’t believe me when I say it’s the most relax­ing after­noon of the year.”

But it is true!  There are many rea­sons for this.  I love to have a party, and this is the best kind: it’s filled with peo­ple who have great atti­tudes and charm and will­ing­ness to help.  It’s in the after­noon so you can have a lovely time and then still be on time for pickup, and it’s potluck, which means the kitchen counter is filled to capac­ity with the gen­er­ous and deli­cious dona­tions of other peo­ple.  All I con­tributed was stuffed mush­rooms (they were very nice).  Oh, and a gor­geous bowl of potato salad which… I for­got about, and found only after every­one had left.  Rats!

The ladies arrived, some bring­ing lit­tle presents, some flow­ers, like this gor­geous dis­play of very posh hydrangeas in dusty, muted tones of rosy gray.  They brought sal­ads of rocket and salmon, of beet and chard leaves with sun­flower seeds, a huge plat­ter of smoked had­dock cakes with a tatziki dip, chicken with pre­served lemons, olives and cous­cous, an enor­mous cheese plate, and a choco­late and rasp­berry Pavlova, deca­dent with both meringue AND whipped cream.

It’s one of the great plea­sures of life, I think… time to talk with like-minded moth­ers about the things that mat­ter to us: what books we read over the sum­mer, how our girls are adjust­ing to the new school year, David Cameron’s new baby, and of course Lost Prop­erty itself.  How to get the girls to stop leav­ing their house­keys, their bus passes, their asthma inhalers, their father’s cash­mere sweaters, ALL over the school to be sorted through and reassigned?

Through it all the sun appeared and dis­ap­peared in a sky that threat­ened rain now and then.  We sat on with our cheese plates and gos­sip, sim­ply enjoy­ing each other’s company.

And being the sort of ladies they are — prob­lem solv­ing LP ladies, that is — they left the kitchen in a state of absolute pris­tine per­fec­tion, dish­tow­els hung in front of the stove to dry, plates neatly stacked, glasses back in their card­board boxes ready to be hauled down to the cel­lar again.  My dear friend Sally even brought her own apron to wrap her­self in as she washed count­less plates and forks, chat­ting all the while, and giv­ing me a ride to school after­ward.  How I love those ladies.

Avery and I more than ready to col­lapse that evening with a pizza, and spin out the hours till John came home, and before mid­night, he did!  Fill­ing the house with his big pres­ence, his jolly laugh, draw­ing the cats to him as they tried to remem­ber who he was, devour­ing a piece or two of pizza while he filled us in with last details of the house, Con­necti­cut life, his good­byes to our friends.  I laughed and told him that my friend Tri­cia had said on his last night there, “I think you left some­thing behind in Con­necti­cut, and it’s LONELY.”

We had all been a bit lonely!

So life took off again in its usual Sep­tem­ber fash­ion.  Sadly, of course, one of the rit­u­als included in this unfold­ing of the month is the awful anniver­sary of Sep­tem­ber 11.  This year we went to the Memo­r­ial to British vic­tims, in Grosvenor Square, where the Amer­i­can Embassy crouches heav­ily over all the green.  We went, and remembered.

And that night we went to see the best play any of us can remem­ber see­ing!  “Death­trap”!  An old clas­sic, but well worth revis­it­ing.  Actual scream­ing from the audi­ence, and TWICE, if you can believe it.  We were all sur­prised out of skins TWICE.  Go, do.

And on the Sun­day we went to Hyde Park to try to rent bicy­cles in the new Bike Hire scheme, intent on get­ting some exer­cise.  Alas, the scheme requires sign­ing up ahead of time by com­puter, and although John whipped out his trusty iPhone, the web­site was down.  But what a clever idea: once signed up, all you have to do is turn up at one of the hun­dreds of sites around the city, with bikes teth­ered elec­tron­i­cally to stands, enter your infor­ma­tion, and bob’s your uncle… you have a bike for as long as you want it!  Then you return it to any of the sites, anywhere!

All we could do was to wan­der around in the blinky sun­light, and alight on some chairs by the Round Pond (guess why it’s called that) and read for a bit.  A slow wan­der back home, and would you believe that dur­ing all this activ­ity, din­ner was cook­ing itself.

Slow-Cooked Shoul­der of Pork with Beets and But­ter­nut Squash

(serves at least 8, or 4 with left­overs for sand­wiches)

1 shoul­der of pork, boned and tied

hand­ful each: fresh rose­mary, fresh thyme, fresh marjoram

3 large beets, peeled and halved

1 large but­ter­nut squash, peeled and cut into large chunks

1 head gar­lic, cloves sep­a­rated and peeled

driz­zle olive oil

2 tbsps butter

sea salt and pepper

Sim­ply lay the herbs in a large bak­ing dish and lay the pork on top.  Arrange the beets, squash and gar­lic around the pork, driz­zle olive oil on veg­eta­bles and smear but­ter over top of the pork.  Sprin­kle with salt and pep­per and wrap the whole dish in a piece of heavy foil, try­ing your best to seal it.

Roast at 110C/220F for six hours.  Remove foil and lift veg­eta­bles onto a serv­ing dish.  Return pork to oven for one more hour.  Fall down in heav­enly happiness.

That’s autumn, on a plate.   And next day, get your­self a nice floury cia­batta, slice the left­over pork, a lit­tle sharp Ched­dar cheese.  Spread some home­made salsa verde on one half of the bread and some mayo on the other half, then pile on some sliced red onion and a hand­ful of rocket.  There will be no bet­ter sand­wich than that.   Enjoy yours…

I’m a bit down, truth to tell.  Walk­ing home from drop­ping Avery off at school, with the first of the autumn leaves falling around me, I ana­lyzed this situation.

Recov­er­ing from a dire stom­ach bug that hit me on Sat­ur­day… that’s part of it.  Jet­lag and shiv­ery aches sort of elided, impos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish, and I spent all of Sun­day feel­ing firmly sorry for myself.  Avery stepped right up to the plate, run­ning around the cor­ner to the Every­thing Store to bring back all the fizzy bev­er­ages I felt would bring me back to the land of the liv­ing.  But the alarm clock waited for no sick per­son, so up we were for the school week on Monday.

Partly, it’s down to the weather.  I am ter­ri­bly spoiled by our sum­mer hol­i­day!  London’s grey, foggy skies are charm­ing in their own way, but the con­trast with Connecticut’s bril­liant blue skies, green grass, creamy hydrangea blos­soms is star­tling to say the least.  It will take me awhile to get used to it.

I also must admit shame­fully that I sim­ply hate to see Avery go off to school again.  I miss her!  She has become, over the sum­mer, an unques­tioned young lady, full of hilar­i­ous obser­va­tions about Doc­tor Who and its bril­liant sound­track, the vary­ing ben­e­fits and pit­falls of foun­da­tions, con­ceal­ers, shim­mer­ing bronz­ers and eye-popping mas­caras.  The house is so quiet with­out her; I find myself look­ing at my watch and say­ing piti­fully to the cats, “She’ll be home soon.”

And added to that, our lovely sum­mer con­ver­sa­tions about kit­tens, fash­ion, and such are replaced by rather intense back-and-forths about Russ­ian home­work, out­grown PE kit, painful ortho­don­tist appoint­ments.  Real life!  That’s what I’m moan­ing about.  Every day I look for­ward so much to see­ing her after school, but I have to steel myself for the bar­rage of con­tro­versy and wor­ri­some top­ics!  We try to salve these with a calm­ing snack at the deli: a slice of mil­lion­aire short­bread, per­haps, or a blue­berry muffin.

This is a funny age, I think (hers, of course, there is NOTH­ING funny about being 45).  Four­teen in Novem­ber!  New bits of inde­pen­dence seem to come at me from all sides.  On Sat­ur­day she and her friend Lille ran all around Kens­ing­ton with their own money, their own Tube cards, their phones, and their unshake­able self-confidence.  I perched on the sofa, sewing a name tape onto Avery’s new school hoodie, look­ing at my watch and try­ing not to panic.  And of course they turned up per­fectly well.  Sigh of relief.

But what about a ques­tion with her school­work?  Is that still my busi­ness?  The mater­nal instinct in me wants to inter­vene in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion, to sit down with the teacher myself, to take care of it all and let her be a child.  But you know what?  She isn’t any more.  If she wears lit­tle kit­ten heels, she tops me by a smidgen.  She teaches me how to add fea­tures to my blog!  She deals with friend­ships and respon­si­bil­i­ties with total aplomb.  I have to learn to step aside, stay out of the space between her and the rest of the world, let the space close up, absorb­ing her lit­tle girl­hood.  I’m not very good at it.

And we miss John!  He’s still in Amer­ica, hav­ing real estate adven­tures in Maine, send­ing us tan­ta­liz­ing pho­tographs of inim­itable pur­ple sun­sets, lob­ster boats drawn up to the dock, beloved friends that we miss so much.  He is headed today back to Red Gate Farm for the unen­vi­able task of emp­ty­ing the refrig­er­a­tor, plus mun­dane things like turn­ing off the water, going to the dump and bring­ing in the beau­ti­ful sign made by my father, which should not have to weather the win­ter winds and snow to come.  He will then finally get on a plane and come back to us!  Just in the nick of time, I think.

And Lost Prop­erty!  How I love it, the vol­un­teer ladies with a sparkle in their eyes, see­ing the girls in all their vari­ety (and vari­ety of lost items! I’m very curi­ous about where the pair of black mari­bou wings came from).  The famed Autumn Term lun­cheon is Fri­day, and to stave off my gloom today, I did a lux­u­ri­ous Marks and Spencer food shop, came home to my cozy kitchen, turned on the BBC News, and set­tled down to exper­i­ment with two new recipes.  Don’t you think these will please my Ladies Who Vol­un­teer (and Then Lunch)?

Por­to­bello Mush­rooms Stuffed with White Crab, Goats Cheese and Chives

(serves 4 as a light lunch)

200 grams/7 ounces white crabmeat

200 grams/7 ounces goats cheese

12 chives, finely chopped

4 green onions/scallions, white part only, finely chopped

3 tbsps panko (Japan­ese) breadcrumbs

1 tbsp dou­ble cream

squirt lemon juice

extra chives, chopped large, to garnish

Remove the stems from the mush­rooms and set aside for another recipe.  Brush each mush­room with olive oil and bake at 180C/350F for 8 minutes.

Mix all other ingre­di­ents well and spoon into each mush­room evenly, pil­ing high if nec­es­sary.  Bake in the heated oven for 10 min­utes.  Gar­nish with chives.  May be served hot, warm or at room tem­per­a­ture.  Serve with baguette chunks if you like, for a heartier meal.

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

This dish is very pretty, very light, very lady­like.  The panko really serves merely to absorb the com­bined juices of the cook­ing mush­room and the crab­meat.  I thought about leav­ing out the cream, as the first ver­sion I made emit­ted a lit­tle pool of juice on the serv­ing plate.  But the lux­u­ri­ous tex­ture and taste of Eng­lish dou­ble cream is not to be despised, so the addi­tion of the bread­crumbs seemed to be a good idea.

For some­thing a bit heartier, a bit more of an autumn dish, try:

Por­to­bello Mush­rooms Stuffed with Chilli Sausage, Mush­rooms, and Pecorino

(serves 4 as a light lunch)

4 por­to­bello mushrooms

4 highly-flavored pork sausages, with chilli if you can find them (added chilli flakes if you cannot)

chopped stems of these mush­rooms, plus 2 more chest­nut mush­rooms, chopped rather fine

1 tbsp dou­ble cream

3 tbsps panko (Japan­ese) breadcrumbs)

2 tbsps Pecorino cheese

hand­ful chives, chopped large to garnish

Brush each mush­room with olive oil and bake at 180C/350F for 8 minutes.

Remove the sausages from their cas­ings and saute until fully cooked.  Add chopped mush­rooms and saute until soft.  Mix in a bowl with all the other ingre­di­ents besides chives.

Spoon mix­ture into each mush­room and bake in heated oven for 10 min­utes.  Gar­nish with chives and serve hot or warm.

***********

Deli­cious!  Rich!  I felt duty-bound to eat one of each, “just to make sure they’re OK,” as John always says, to pro­tect my guests, of course!  I don’t know which I pre­fer, so I think on Fri­day I will make 6 of each and let my ladies fight over them.

This lovely cook­ing project has cheered me up, I admit.  There is some­thing warm­ing and com­fort­ing about put­ter­ing around with ingre­di­ents, tast­ing and exper­i­ment­ing, fill­ing the kitchen with savory aro­mas.  The kit­ties milled around, sure there would be a scrap for them.

This evening I will deliver the extra mush­rooms from my exper­i­ment to my dear neigh­bors, Sara and Selva, and hope I can rope Selva who is even taller than John, into help­ing me move the HUGE buf­fet table up from the cel­lar, dusty and spi­dery as it is, and to move the unbe­liev­ably heavy slate-topped kitchen island off to one side.  The weather on Fri­day is — guess what — del­uges of rain, so any hopes I had of plant­ing half my guests into the gar­den must be scuppered.

Tonight Avery, with her too-tight braces, can have the most per­fect creamy mush­room soup, nice and soft…

This soup was made with the most per­fect stock from a roasted chicken… have you ever tucked beets in with your chicken?  Sim­ply peel one raw beet per per­son, cut them in half, and place them in the roast­ing dish with the chicken.  Sprin­kle with fresh thyme, whole gar­lic cloves, olive oil and sea salt, and roast the chicken at 180C/350F.  You will find the result­ing beets per­fectly cooked, densely rich, and SO good for you.

You know, I’ve cheered myself up!  Thank good­ness for my kitchen, peo­ple to feed, and for my blog, where I can moan at will.  A thin lit­tle sun­ray has decide to favor my gar­den!  And in a few hours… Avery will be home.

Yawn.

Excuse me!  It’s the jet­lag talk­ing.  Our lives involve a fair amount of spec­u­la­tion as to what method will pre­vent jet­lag.  Or reduce jet­lag.  How to man­age jet­lag.  There’s no fool­proof approach.

Now, fly­ing the other way, west, that is, is fine.  We feel like it’s later than it is when we get there, so get­ting to sleep straight­away is no prob­lem.  I wake up early for about three days, but that just puts me where nor­mal peo­ple usu­ally are, feel­ing great at 7 a.m.

Going east, on the other hand, poses a small set of insur­mount­able lit­tle obsta­cles, pri­mary among them the fact that we don’t want to GO!  We want to stay where we are.  A sec­ond prob­lem involves Avery and me being nightowls to begin with, so when the clock tells us it’s bed­time, we’re just begin­ning to think about din­ner. We tend to give Avery a week or so for her body to fig­ure out the sit­u­a­tion, then school starts.

This fall, we adopted a rather more rad­i­cal approach that I’m call­ing “Pre­tend It Isn’t Hap­pen­ing.”  We hopped on a day flight on Wednes­day, spent eight delight­ful hours in the com­pany of a young, gor­geous British com­edy screen­writer (I’m not mak­ing this up), arrived in our Lon­don home at nearly mid­night, and got up at 6:30 for school.

Did it work?

We thought it did, Thurs­day and Fri­day.  I spent the days at Lost Prop­erty, sort­ing through piles of nox­ious flot­sam, and Avery spent them in Latin, His­tory and Biol­ogy, sort­ing though her own intel­lec­tual jetsam.

No prob­lem!

Today, how­ever… I can­not seem to keep my eyes open!  My lat­est strat­egy (I tried laun­dry, BBC News 24 and gro­cery shop­ping) is mak­ing pizza dough.  Avery’s beloved friend Lille is over for din­ner, and as such I’d bet­ter pro­duce some­thing.  Cap­pellini alla car­bonara and home­made gar­lic bread it is.  But I’m still yawning.

My good­ness, our flight com­pan­ion was sim­ply the best.  Paul sat down, strug­gling with his car­ryon which was a back­back tied up with shoelaces.  “This is my new method of secur­ing my belong­ings, since I don’t really believe in belong­ings, peo­ple who steal just don’t have enough them­selves,” he assured us as he wove and unwove the shoe­strings to remove a bat­tered note­book cov­ered in illeg­i­ble but entertaining-looking graffiti.

“I’m just com­ing down from 89 days of couch-surfing,” Paul offered, and we fell for it.

“What’s couch-surfing?” I ask, ready to lis­ten to just about any­thing this hand­some, win­some and very young charmer had to tell us.  Avery’s face was a pic­ture.  It was as if you’d given her a list of boxes to tick for “what makes a per­son fas­ci­nat­ing” and there was her list, ticked off and only one mother’s air­plane seat away.  Slightly unshaven, flash­ing white smile (which flick­ered con­stantly), America-admiring, adventure-seeking Eng­lish chap, hers for eight whole hours.

And couch-surfing!  It’s dot.org, so you know it’s a good idea.  My good­ness, if I were 23 again I’d be all over the idea.  You log in and go to the place you want to go, say New York, and find peo­ple who are will­ing to share their couches (and din­ner tables, and sage advice, and prob­a­bly a fair amount of alco­hol) in exchange for the very vague, karma-friendly notion that some­day they might need a couch in, say, Sydney.

So Paul and his three lovely friends — one brave girl among them! — who knew each other to vary­ing degrees when the adven­ture began and, one imag­ines MUCH bet­ter by the time it ended — spent the whole sum­mer tour­ing the United States of Amer­ica.  On people’s couches.

And in ham­mocks!  Their blog… well, it’s a heart­warm­ing list, really, is here.  Yes, if they couldn’t find a couch, they resorted to the ham­mocks they brought with them, and each other.  “There had to be some spoon­ing,” Paul reveals.

Can you imag­ine the adven­ture?!  I can’t wait for Avery to be old enough — her father will say it’s a LONG WAY AWAY — to do some­thing like this.

Our con­ver­sa­tion ranged from Stu­pid Informer­cials We Have Known (Avery con­tributes “How often have you wished your blan­ket had ARMS?”) to food fads (Paul: “I have friends who are veg­e­tar­i­ans but they eat fish.  They are veg­e­quar­i­ans.”), and every­where in between.  What fun.

John’s worst night­mare, to get on a plane and have to talk for eight hours.  But it turns out that Avery is at least partly me.

Eng­land is just as won­der­ful as when we left.  We are try­ing to remem­ber our flu­ency in the lan­guage like “apart from” instead of “except for,” “cash­point” instead of “ATM,” and said machine ask­ing if you’d like an “advice slip” instead of a “receipt.”  And last night Avery said, with­out miss­ing a beat, that some­thing at school was “Manda-tree,” instead of the pro­saic Amer­i­can “Manda­tory,” so I know we’re home.

The cats are ENOR­MOUSLY fat, both com­pared to how they were when we left (a sum­mer of eat­ing and not mov­ing from their chairs except to eat) and com­pared to the tiny kit­tens we fos­tered.  But the ter­ri­to­r­ial fights with neigh­bor cat Char­lie are as fierce as ever…

I’m ashamed to say I let this par­tic­u­lar con­flict last long enough for me to take a pho­to­graph, then I shooed Char­lie away.  After all, it counted as exer­cise and maybe Hermione peeled off a few ounces, out of sheer anxiety.

Partly what is mak­ing Avery and me so sleepy is our lone­li­ness for our Third Mus­ke­teer.  John has stayed behind in Amer­ica, actu­ally dri­ving all the way up the East­ern Seaboard to spend some Him Time with old friends in Maine.  He sends his love, and this view…

But real life is here at my din­ing room table, which soon must hold plates of creamy, gar­licky pasta and wedges of crunchy, cheesy gar­licky pizza dough, none of which will hap­pen if I don’t run.  Or walk.

Yawn.

Capellini Car­bonara

(serves 4)

8 oz dry capellini
1 cup good Eng­lish bacon, diced
4 coves gar­lic, minced
1/2 cup grated Pecorino or Parme­san cheese
1/4 cup creme fraiche
3 tbsps light cream
1/2 tsp salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
fresh ground pepper

About 15 min­utes before you want to eat, boil pasta accord­ing to direc­tions, about 10 min­utes. Drain over a bowl so you can reserve 1/2 cup of the cook­ing water. Set aside. In a large heavy skil­let, fry the bacon and then add the gar­lic, stir­ring over the flame until the gar­lic is JUST cooked but not burned. Add the pasta, toss well and take off the heat.

In a large bowl, mix the cheese, creme fraiche, creme, salt and eggs. Then add the reserved pasta water and whisk well. Pour over the ham and spaghetti in the skil­let and turn the heat up high for just long enough to toss the whole mix­ture together with tongs. Serve imme­di­ately with grated Parmesan.