The best-laid plans…

I’m not meant to be blog­ging.  I’m meant to be just a few hours away from my Con­necti­cut farm­house, ready to pull the Christ­mas trees from the wait­ing barn, hang all the sil­ver balls and orna­ments, race to the shop for wrap­ping paper, jump over to the gro­cery for all the ingre­di­ents for our mam­moth Sat­ur­day din­ner, get John’s mom’s room ready, put the tra­di­tional Christ­mas Eve oys­ter stew on the stove, the dec­o­ra­tions just so…

Instead, I’m sit­ting in my Lon­don liv­ing room wait­ing for John and Avery to get home from “Harry Pot­ter,” her con­so­la­tion prize for being here.  Two words: flight cancelled.

As you all know, I am extremely fond of my adopted home and even find many things about it — sausages and the accent, for exam­ple — supe­rior to Amer­ica.  But there’s a can’t-do approach to snow removal here in Eng­land that bog­gles the Mid­west­ern Amer­i­can mind.  Here it is Wednes­day, and Heathrow is still reel­ing from the four inches that fell, let’s see, on Sun­day.  It’s sim­ply infuriating.

How on earth am I going to arrive on Christ­mas Night, with all my tra­di­tions turned upside down, and pro­duce a proper Christ­mas, all the shops being shut?  I can tell you that yes­ter­day was chal­leng­ing for me, who thrives on every­thing turn­ing out just as I want.  What was I to do?

I spent the after­noon on the phone break­ing the news to my brother in law that I won’t be there to make the gravy, to the girl who was to hous­esit for us, arrang­ing for her whole fam­ily to spend the hol­i­day here enjoy­ing our tree and dec­o­ra­tions.  A per­verse con­so­la­tion there: I’m not spoil­ing her hol­i­day, Heathrow is: her family’s flights were can­celled too.  John called his mom, who is bravely going to go ahead of us and open up the house the day before Christ­mas.  And our dear, dear neigh­bors across the road have kindly filled our refrig­er­a­tor to wel­come her.

But still.  A dis­ap­point­ment.  What is Christ­mas with­out all the prepa­ra­tions, the can­dles on the man­tel lit, the fire flick­er­ing over the sil­ver balls on the tree, all the right dishes cook­ing at the right time, the stock­ings ready for their bur­dens of chocolate?

We pushed it all aside to run off to the wretched, incom­pe­tent air­port to pick Avery up from her trip to St Peters­burg.  The var­i­ous par­ents gath­ered in the Inter­na­tional Arrivals area, trad­ing sto­ries of the texts we had received from our girls extolling the virtues of the Her­mitage and the shop­ping, the ici­cles and the snowdrifts.

And sud­denly there she was, red-cheeked with excite­ment, topped by an enor­mous fox fur hat, giv­ing and receiv­ing hugs from all her new best friends, shout­ing, “Merry Christmas!”

“It’s BOIL­ING in this coun­try!” she said, her down jacket falling off her shoul­ders.  “And you call this snow?!  As we were land­ing and we saw all the snow that had brought the coun­try to a screech­ing halt, we just had to laugh!”

We post­poned telling her to what a screech­ing halt her own plans had come to, and lis­tened to the sto­ries of room after room of lapis lazuli, mala­chite, carved plas­ter and gilded ceil­ings.  And presents!  Icons, scarves, a tiny matrushka doll set, the tini­est inside being the size of a pop­corn kernel!

Her mer­ri­ment was con­ta­gious!  The fur hat perched on her head, she leant for­ward in the car and talked a blue streak, story after story of the recur­ring jokes among her friends, the ter­ri­ble bed she had to sleep on, the awful food (“uncooked fish, but not fish that was meant to be eaten raw, just not COOKED!”), the end­less cups of tea with more and more sugar to make them palat­able, the fun of try­ing out her Russ­ian!  “I keep say­ing ‘pazhul­ste” and ‘spa­siba’ to every­one now!”

We got home and sat imme­di­ately down at the din­ing room table to upload all the won­der­ful pho­tos of her trip: “This is the chan­de­lier tour of St Peters­burg!” and to hear all the excit­ing sto­ries.  How thrilling to have her tell sto­ries of an exotic place we’ve never been.  “I want to take you there some­time and show you everything!”

We ate her favorite din­ner of broc­coli and toma­toey, cheesy pasta, and lis­tened end­lessly.  Then with the con­fes­sion that she had changed clothes not at ALL dur­ing the trip, merely adding lay­ers as the days went by, she went off for a long, hot, bub­bly bath and I started the wash­ing machine hum­ming in the background.

John and I sighed simul­ta­ne­ously and admit­ted that we were worn out!  The drama and dis­ap­point­ment of the can­celled flight had been com­pletely over­whelmed by the joy of hav­ing Avery safely home.  I hadn’t admit­ted to myself how far away she felt, how inse­cure I felt being sep­a­rated from her over such a dis­tance, both phys­i­cal and emo­tional.  I hadn’t admit­ted it until she returned, and I looked at her glow­ing, beau­ti­ful, famil­iar face and felt sud­denly, “This is all I need for Christmas.”

And it’s so true.  Who cares what day of the month it is when we finally walk in the door of Red Gate Farm and fold John’s mom in a hug?  What dif­fer­ence will it make whether or not the dec­o­ra­tions are up when my nieces Jane and Molly are run­ning around screech­ing and Avery is look­ing down at them from her great teenage height?  Once my stal­wart hus­band car­ries in the Christ­mas tree and lights the first of the hol­i­day fires, it won’t mat­ter a bit that I didn’t get to the gro­cery!  Thanks to my friends across the road, the house will be warm to receive us, and when my sis­ter and brother in law arrive for what­ever din­ner we’re able to man­age, we’ll all be together.

Maybe I needed a lit­tle snow, a lit­tle delay, a lit­tle dis­rup­tion, to shake me out of my silly wish to con­trol all the details.  Our Christ­mas will be right on time, when­ever it happens.

If you’d asked me yes­ter­day, I’d have said that our week­end break to West Sus­sex was just what the doc­tor ordered: all my energy back after the last chaotic weeks in Lon­don, ready to fly off to Amer­ica to host our Christ­mas celebration.

That was yes­ter­day.  In the snowy, gor­geous, peace­ful countryside.

Today, we awoke to news that at least two of Heathrow’s five run­ways are closed.  Snow.  And so our pre­car­i­ous calm has been shattered.

As a Mid­west­ern Amer­i­can whose win­ters meant snow that fell in Novem­ber and remained on the ground until March, I am com­pletely flum­moxed by the paral­y­sis that takes over Lon­don and par­tic­u­larly Heathrow when two inches of snow fall on the ground.  It’s as if every sin­gle win­ter, the occur­rence of snow takes every­one entirely by sur­prise.  “Wait, every­one, here it comes again, that white stuff!  For­get Keep Calm and Carry On, it’s time to Panic and Freak Out!”

So I am tak­ing a deep breath and try­ing to feel that it’s per­fectly all right for my teenage daugh­ter to be stranded in St Peters­burg — her flight was to be tomor­row — and our whole fam­ily was to travel to Amer­ica on Wednes­day.  Will any of this hap­pen?  Or will my poor mother in law arrive at my empty Con­necti­cut home to fend for herself?

Some­how this is all eerily rem­i­nis­cent of the last school trip, in April, to Pom­peii… stranded by the vol­cano!  It’s enough to make you just stay home.

Home, for the last sev­eral weeks, has been mad­ness.  There was the much-anticipated skat­ing show at Queensway, for which Avery and her skat­ing pal have been prac­tic­ing for nearly a year.  It’s one of those respon­si­bil­i­ties of par­ents: turn up at your child’s event no mat­ter what, even if it will take place on ICE with no heat and last three hours, only 92 sec­onds of which will fea­ture your child.

So off we went, I leav­ing a cast-iron dish of slow-braising shoul­der of beef and sausages and mush­rooms, repos­ing in a very low oven.  How nice it would be to return to a lovely, hot din­ner after all that ICE.  And of course there was drama.  Just after Avery’s piece was fin­ished — and she was lovely! — there was a bump­ing sound behind us and in the dark and con­fu­sion, it took some time for us to real­ize that an elderly lady had col­lapsed.  First with a faint­ing spell, then falling into the mir­rored wall at the edges of the rink.

Only John’s phone would work, so of course he was at the front­line of the res­cue attempts.  “Look at Daddy, how good he is to help out,” Avery whis­pered, shiv­er­ing with cold.  It was a bit dis­con­cert­ing to expe­ri­ence just how long it took for an ambu­lance to come: shouldn’t the rink have at least a para­medic on hand at all times?  I began to feel, as well, con­cern for my din­ner, and on a larger scale, for my house should my din­ner burn dry and catch the entire place on fire.

No wor­ries, all was well when we arrived home (plus the lady was revived and fine, I’m ashamed to say con­cern for her lagged a bit behind con­cern for my din­ner).  Do look up the recipe on the index and cook that dish.  It’s a total win­ner with every­one, and so flex­i­ble, as it turns out!

The fol­low­ing day Avery and I went with her friend Lille to a stun­ningly beau­ti­ful Christ­mas Carol con­cert last week­end at Holy Trin­ity Bromp­ton, a church adja­cent to the Bromp­ton Ora­tory in South Kens­ing­ton.  What a church!  The most var­ied group of parish­ioners I’ve ever seen in any church: young and old, black and white, from the obvi­ously very posh to the lowli­est stu­dent.  And the music… a pro­fes­sional cham­ber orches­tra, the church’s own choir.  How I love to sing, and hardly ever get the chance.

What a hol­i­day joy!

No report of our lives lately can be com­plete with­out a litany of the many, many veg­eta­bles it turns out can be suc­cess­fully roasted, and eaten by my hus­band.  He is a pos­i­tive pros­e­ly­tizer on the sub­ject.  All of them sim­ply cut in half or thirds, driz­zled with olive oil and sprin­kled with chili flakes, then roasted in a hot oven for 35 min­utes.  Roasted fen­nel and parsnips?  Check.

Pep­pers, turnips, swedes and car­rots?  Definitely.

Beet­roots and cau­li­flower?  Of course.

And since woman can­not live by veg along, there have been so many heart­warm­ing hol­i­day­ish moments in life lately… there was the day I bought my usual weekly “The Big Issue” mag­a­zine from my local guy, out­side the Tesco’s.  What a lovely project that mag­a­zine is: employ­ing home­less peo­ple right off the streets, giv­ing them some sup­port, some pride in pro­vid­ing a really nice read, and some respect from the neigh­bors walk­ing by.  “I almost bought one yes­ter­day, out­side Boots,” I assured him, “but I am loyal to you.”  He looked a bit shy of me, but then reached into his bag and brought out a large square enve­lope.  “Merry Christ­mas to you, love,” he said, “and thank you for your sup­port.” The card is signed “Dave,” so now I know.

And the snowy day when I walked to pick up Avery at school, for­get­ting my umbrella.  I stood out­side the gates get­ting wet­ter and wet­ter, when I felt a hand on my shoul­der.  “My dear,” said a very Greek voice, “you must not stand here.  You  must come wait for your daugh­ter in my car, while I wait for mine.  Come.”  I fol­lowed him cau­tiously, a big bear of a man.  We sat in the steamy inte­rior and he said suddenly,

“Is she your only child?”

“Yes, she is.”

“Mine too, and I have put every­thing I am, and every­thing I hope for, into my wishes for her future.”

“So have I,” I said, “and some­times I worry that it’s too much for her.”

“I also, worry this,” he said.

“But I don’t think any child ever died from too much love,” I said, and he pat­ted my hand and said, “I have con­cluded this as well.”

We intro­duced our­selves and exchanged sto­ries about school, then I saw Avery in the dark and jumped out, thank­ing him.  I looked back to wave at him and he pointed to a girl walk­ing toward the car.  “That’s my daugh­ter,” I could lipread.  I put my hand on Avery’s shoul­der and smiled, and he smiled back at me.

And the next time I was chat­ting with Dave over “The Big Issue,” I was clasped in an enor­mous down-coated hug.  “Kris­ten, my friend!” and it was Angelus, the dad from that wet day.  “This is a nice lady,” Dave said and Angelus said, “I have rea­son to know it.”  That is Christ­mas, to me.

And on these cold Christ­massy days, what we all need is a warm, sus­tain­ing din­ner to keep us going.  Do you fancy these?  My friend Karen can report that they are deli­cious, as she cooked them over the weekend!

Mozzarella-Stuffed Meat­balls
(serves 4)

1.5 pounds mixed beef, pork and lamb (or veal, or just one meat)
1 egg
1/4 cup bread­crumbs
1/4 cup milk
large tbsp Ital­ian sea­son­ing
large tsp gar­lic salt
8 leaves basil, chopped
1 large ball moz­zarella
3 tbsps olive oil
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 white onion, minced
1 large plus 1 small can whole toma­toes, squeezed
salt and pep­per to taste
grated parme­san to gar­nish
spaghetti

Get the meat to not-freezing-cold temp. Mix the egg, milk, bread­crumbs, sea­son­ings and basil in a large bowl. Add meat and mix thor­oughly. Form into hol­lows in the palm of your hand, adding a dol­lop of moz­zarella to each and form­ing meat around it. Tuck it in where nec­es­sary, rolling as best you can to keep moz­zarella inside, form­ing about 10 balls.

Heat olive oil in heavy skil­let. Fry meat­balls gen­tly on one side till brown, then using a com­bi­na­tion of spat­ula and tongs, turn them each over to cook on the other side till brown. Trans­fer to a plate and cover to keep warm.

Fry gar­lic and onion in remain­ing oil, scrap­ing up bits. Pour in toma­toes, squeez­ing as you go. Sea­son to taste, and cook for about half an hour, stir­ring. Then gen­tly add meat­balls to the sauce. Turn heat down LOW LOW LOW and sim­mer for an hour or so, longer if you can, stir­ring a few times.

Gar­nish with cheese and serve with spaghetti.

These were my reward for a long cou­ple of days prepar­ing for the Pre­view and the Sale of Lost Prop­erty at Avery’s beloved school… fran­tic pur­chas­ing of all aban­doned cloth­ing, jew­elry, train­ers, and the occa­sional bizarre item — a sleep­ing bag? a pair of bounc­ing bum­ble­bee antenna on a head­band? one year there were six large choco­late fish wrapped in foil — what fun.  Lots of girls wear­ing Christ­mas hats and burst­ing into spon­ta­neous car­ols as they stand in the lunch queue.

And an inno­va­tion for your next roast chicken: try stuff­ing a big flat mush­room under the breast skin, then push­ing in after the mush­room some but­ter into which you’ve mixed some chopped rose­mary… delicious!

With the “Nut­cracker” play­ing in the back­ground, the tree twin­kling in the win­dow, a warm­ing fire in the fire­place and a savoury pan­cake with my chicken, home is very cozy indeed.

Delia Smith’s pan­cakes, with fill­ings by me

(serves 4)

8 slices streaky bacon or ham, cut in small pieces

6 oz/165g plain flour

pinch salt

3 medium eggs

10 oz/300 ml milk, plus 5 oz/100 ml water

3 tbsps melted butter

a lit­tle extra but­ter for cook­ing pancakes

hand­ful chives, minced

4 oz parme­san cheese, coarsely grated

Saute the ham/bacon until crisp, and take out of the fry­ing pan.   Sift flour and salt into a medium bowl, then crack eggs into the flour and begin whisk­ing, scrap­ing the sides as you go.  Add the milk-water mix­ture grad­u­ally, whisk­ing con­stantly.  Scrape sides wtih a spat­ula and whisk one more time.  Just before you’re ready to cook, add the melted but­ter and whisk again.

Melt but­ter in the fry­ing pan you used for the bacon or ham, then when hot, add the bat­ter and ham and chives, and cook on one side until bub­bles appear, then turn over and sprin­kle the cheese.  Cook until done, then roll up and divide into 4 serv­ings.  So sim­ple, so savory.

I think I can avoid it no longer.  I’d bet­ter go on the British Air­ways web­site and try to find if Avery’s flight will in fact leave Rus­sia tomor­row.  That hur­dle crossed, I can turn my mind to whether we’ll get away the fol­low­ing day, and then to pack­ing up the Christ­mas presents, with all the faith in the hol­i­day that I can muster.  Wish me luck.

It’s to the point now, in my life, where I don’t feel I can say any­thing to any­one!  I am car­ry­ing around many, many secrets.  I’ll tell you why.

This Christ­mas I decided not to do ran­dom presents.  I really put my chin in my hands and thought about what made every­body tick and tried to think of a thing each per­son would REALLY like, would smile when open­ing.  A lot of my presents this year have no intrin­sic value at all, only value to the peo­ple who are about to receive them.  So if any pack­ages get mis­ad­dressed, I’m in trouble!

It’s been a lot of fun.  There have been secret emails with peo­ple I’ve never met, meet­ings with peo­ple I’d never met before and prob­a­bly will never meet again, who can do things, make things, trans­form things into just the right presents for the peo­ple I love.  As always with Christ­mas, it’s fun to have a cou­ple of presents that aren’t even THINGS at all, but expe­ri­ences, or sen­sa­tions.  One present might not come off, because I am count­ing on the kind­ness of one stranger, so my fin­gers are crossed that the hol­i­day spirit will move that per­son, just enough.

So between orga­niz­ing all my crazy gifts, and look­ing through last year’s Christ­mas cards to make sure I don’t leave any­one out this year, and clean­ing up after the drat­ted cat who seems to think the tree skirt is another lit­ter­box — grrrrr — I’m busy.  Not too busy, how­ever, to have two mag­nif­i­cent lunches out with girl­friends, which as you all know is just about my favorite thing.  Gos­sip, com­mis­er­a­tion, advice, laugh­ing a lit­tle too loud for the com­fort of the wait­staff… that’s glorious.

Tues­day saw me with my beau­ti­ful friend Dalia at Essenza, in Kens­ing­ton Park Road in Not­ting Hill.  I always love a lit­tle trip to Not­ting Hill, imag­in­ing its chic and expen­sive real estate in the depths of neglect, only 30–40 years ago.  Essenza is an unas­sum­ing lit­tle spot, you’d pass by it if you weren’t look­ing for it, tucked away on a quiet lit­tle street next door to a dar­ling nurs­ery school, so I got to see lots of cute lit­tle Eng­lish ankle-biters as I strolled by.  Overheard:

small boy, tug­ging at his mother’s hand: “Mummy, you know Daddy loves you, don’t you?  You know he does!”

Mummy: “Dar­ling, Mummy’s very, very cross with Daddy right now, we’re hav­ing a mas­sive row, so let’s just get you to school.”

Ouch!  I wanted to stay and hear the rest.  Some­how, spo­ken in such a beau­ti­ful accent, the words lost their men­ace.  How bad could a “mas­sive row” be, when she sounded like Princess Diana?  Like my plumber today, Irish Pete.  He sat back on his heels and told me how angry he was about the increase in uni­ver­sity fees, but all I could think was, “Did that rhyme?  I think that rhymed.”  All Irish sen­tences rhyme, I think.  I could have lis­tened to him read the phone book.

But back to Essenza.  Dalia had told me the food was to die for, com­pletely authen­tic, and since this obser­va­tion came on the heels of her week in Venice and mine in Flo­rence, we were ready to be impressed.  We decided to skip the main courses and share three starters, a very good idea.  And oh my, the creami­ness of the moz­zarella di bufala, the sort of tex­ture where you tear it gen­tly with your fork, creamy milk mix­ing with the olive oil on the plate.  With a real live tomato!  Not a hard, taste­less thing, but a juicy, red fruit.  “Where on earth did you find this tomato in Decem­ber?” I wailed to the waiter who smiled and said, “That I can­not tell you, it is my secret.”  Scat­tered with rocket, a salad to kill for, as my dar­ling father-in-law used to say.  Never to die for, oh no.  To kill for.

And then cala­mari and gam­beri fritti, fried squid and prawns, in a gor­geous bat­ter, with a sweet chilli sauce.  And king scal­lops with shaved cour­gette and roasted red pep­per, per­fectly cooked… heavenly!

Halfway through lunch Dalia said with clenched jaw, “Don’t look around, don’t pay any atten­tion, but Sienna Miller just walked in.”  With a dog, mind you.  And they let her.  And dear read­ers, she is stun­ning.  Dalia claims the dog was pret­tier, but I don’t believe her, we’re both cat peo­ple.  So it was fun to have a celebrity sighting!

And the very next day I was lucky enough to be with my friend Susan at Peter­sham Nurs­eries Cafe, in Rich­mond.  Ah, Peter­sham Nurs­eries, I’ve been once before, to the fancy room where every­thing is too expen­sive but you don’t care because it’s so exquis­ite.  This time, we repaired to what I can only call “the soup room,” because that’s what there was.  Actu­ally it was funny, and good that I am a good sport about odd ser­vice, because the chalk­board menu said, “potato and leek soup, or polenta with meat­balls, or ham and moz­zarella.”  So I said to Susan, “I don’t really like polenta, do you mind shar­ing the ham and moz­zarella instead?”  She didn’t mind, so we ordered, and when it came it was… polenta.  With ham.

“Excuse me, but we didn’t order the polenta, just the ham and mozzarella.”

Lovely wait lady: “Yes, the polenta with the ham.”

“No, we didn’t want the polenta, and any­way, doesn’t it come with meat­balls?” point­ing at the menu board.

“Ah… [long pause], I can see that that might be mis­lead­ing [def­i­nitely!].  Try the polenta any­way and if you do not like it, we will replace it.”

And it turns out that I just don’t like BAD polenta!  I def­i­nitely don’t like the runny kind, pre­tend­ing to be mashed pota­toes.  But this was the stiff kind, and quite but­tery and deli­cious.  I don’t think I’d order it again in my low-carb mode, but I was glad I tried it.  And so was the wait lady!  So pleased that I was pleased.

As usual, Susan and I talked over and over each other, about child-raising (“always take credit for the good stuff they do, and none of the blame for the bad stuff,” we agree was our motto), child psy­chol­ogy (did you know that aggres­sion and depres­sion stem often from the same set of feel­ings, in chil­dren?  I didn’t, but it makes sense), our girls’ lovely school and how much we love Lost Prop­erty.  In short, the com­pany of a girl­friend.  I don’t know what I would do with­out mine.

Tonight we are off to be cooked for by friends, an occa­sion that doesn’t come along ter­ri­bly often.  I am sorry to say that my obses­sion with cook­ing makes peo­ple afraid to cook for me.  I tell them all, but they don’t believe me: I like other people’s cook­ing at least as well as my own, and it’s such a delight to sit down and be given some­thing to eat that I didn’t slave over myself!  And tomor­row is the lun­cheon for school vol­un­teers, which is always lovely because it’s a great group of peo­ple.  Don’t you find that peo­ple who are will­ing to do thank­less tasks for noth­ing are nice to be around?

As for my own cook­ing, my only exper­i­ment this week was a chicken casse­role.  Now, I offer you this recipe with the pro­viso that you must cook it only if you like the con­cept of a casse­role.  I myself was raised on the con­cept: a meat, a starch, and some sort of lubri­cat­ing liq­uid (usu­ally out of a Campbell’s soup can), mixed in a dish and baked for half an hour.  Din­ner done.  For my mother, this basic con­cept kept us all alive for many years.  Campbell’s used to make a soup called, believe it or not, “Noo­dles and Ground Beef.”  They really called it a “soup,” even though it came rush­ing in a solid lump from the can just like cran­berry jelly.  I can’t imag­ine they make it any­more.  But my mother bought it by the gross, and I mean GROSS.  She then mixed it with more ground beef and noo­dles, I guess, and bob’s your uncle, din­ner was on the table.

Since I am mar­ried to a fel­low Mid­west­ern child of the 1970s, we under­stand casseroles.  There’s some­thing beau­ti­ful about every­thing being mushed up together.  My daugh­ter, raised in the 21st cen­tury on all home­made, all the time?  Not so much on the casseroles, I can tell you.  She favors dis­crete items of food, eas­ily dis­tin­guished from each other.  Fair enough.

But if you fancy a casse­role, I can tell you this one ticks all the boxes: creamy, savoury, inex­pen­sive AND I added a veg­etable to it, so you don’t even need a side dish.  Go on, you know you want to.

Chicken Casse­role with But­ter­nut Squash and Fried Sage

(serves 4)

four chicken breast fillets

Fox Point Seasoning

1 tbsp olive oil

2 cups bas­mati rice

1 but­ter­nut squash

smear of butter

3 cups home­made cream of mush­room soup (Campbell’s if you must!)

1 tbsp butter

8 sage leaves

It’s an assem­bly job.  Sprin­kle the chicken fil­lets with the Fox Point Sea­son­ing (or just salt and pep­per if you can’t get it) and the oil.  Set aside.

Steam the bas­mati rice, and mean­while, cut the but­ter­nut squash in half length­wise, scoop out the seeds and smear each half with but­ter.  Bake at 425F/220C while the rice steams, and a bit longer, about 35 min­utes total.

Turn off the heat under the rice and let it steam on its own for five min­utes or so: this will lessen the amount that sticks to the pan.  Mean­while, heat a fry­ing pan and place the chicken breasts in it, oil side down.  Cook until browned, then turn and brown on the other side.  The chicken will still be uncooked inside, and that’s fine.  Set aside.

Place the steamed rice into — you guessed it — a casse­role dish!  Lay the chicken breasts on top, pour the soup over.  Cut the but­ter­nut squash into bite-size pieces and drop them into the casserole.

Bake in the same hot oven, 425F/220C, for about 35 min­utes, turn­ing the chicken over once and stir­ring the rice-soup mix­ture.  Just before you take it out of the oven, melt the remain­ing but­ter in the fry­ing pan from the chicken and fry the sage leaves gen­tly, just till crisp.  Crum­ble them on top of the casse­role and serve.

This is a lovely, com­fort­ing, old-fashioned dish.  Any­one can afford it, no one will be intim­i­dated by the process, every­one will like it.  Even Avery ate it per­fectly hap­pily, allow­ing that she could see, “it’s the kind of thing you’ll like if you like that kind of thing.”

I can­not offer you a photo of this dish because there is no way to make a casse­role look pretty.  It’s why all those old-fashioned cook­books from the 1970s make food look so awful.  Because they were ALL casseroles.

Time for me to make sure no one’s been look­ing at my email or open­ing pack­ages addressed to me, or nos­ing around in parcels in my shoe closet.  Don’t any­one try to rat­tle me: I can keep all these secrets, at least for another cou­ple of weeks…

It’s one of the most per­plex­ing ques­tions to char­ac­ter­ize my hol­i­day sea­son so far.  When is a goose not a goose?  Why, when it’s a calf, of course.

I was con­fused too, believe me.

Cooks — at least those who cook every day — can get in ruts.  At least I can.  Well, John would say they’re not so much ruts as they are flights of obses­sion, which means I cook the same thing over and over, try­ing to get it just right, or try­ing vari­a­tions on the same theme.  Many dishes have fol­lowed this same route: slow-braised chicken with root veg­eta­bles, home­made pizza, things deep-fried, bean salad.  When I look through my beloved recipe index here, I see with embar­rass­ment that there are MANY ver­sions of ideas, as I exper­i­ment.  Cheesy spinach, the per­fect red pep­per soup, the per­fect brandy and sour cream sauce for chicken or salmon.  All of these ideas have set up camp in my kitchen, for my long-suffering fam­ily to eat their way through, night after night.

So when last week I came upon an ingre­di­ent I’d never heard of, I knew it was time to try some­thing new.  “Goose skirt!” I said to the butcher boy behind the meat counter in Wait­rose.  I turned to John, who said, “I’ve never heard of it either,” and since it wasn’t expen­sive, I said I’d take two of the vacuum-packed meat and roast it at home, so much sim­pler than a whole goose.

“I don’t think I’ve ever cooked goose of any kind,” I made con­ver­sa­tion with the butcher boy as he wrapped and weighed.  And very casu­ally he said, “This isn’t goose, you know.  It’s veal.”  VEAL?  “You’re telling me that some­thing called “goose skirt” is cow meat.”  “That’s right.”

Well, you’ll find if you google it that there are very few men­tions of goose skirt, and those there are only tell you to grill it, to treat it in fact like what in Amer­ica is called “skirt steak” or a very sim­i­lar cut, “flank steak.”  All the recipes I could find to use this cheap and tough cut indi­cated mar­i­nat­ing and grilling.  Not very blog­wor­thy, and not afford­ing many chances to get obsessed with pos­si­ble vari­a­tions.  So I decided to take a risk.

Slow-braising is the per­fect win­try way to treat meat.  We’re all feel­ing a bit poor, so it’s nice to honor the cheap cuts of meat that can be tough if treated the wrong way.

Slow-braising cooks itself, fills the house with savory and wel­com­ing aro­mas, and the left­over sauce is per­fect with pasta the next day.  I’ve been slow-braising shoul­der of beef - a bit obses­sively per­haps — and thought, let’s try it with a goose skirt.  And the result was spec­tac­u­lar.  Unfor­tu­nately it wasn’t pretty, so there is no photo.  But rich, deeply fla­vored and satisfying.

Slow-Braised Goose Skirt With Stout and Mushrooms

(serves four with leftovers)

1 kilo (about 2.2 pounds) goose skirt

juice of 1 lemon

2 tbsps olive oil

sea salt and pepper

1 pound chest­nut mush­rooms, sliced thick

4 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 tsp fresh thyme leaves

1 white onion, cut in eighths

1 cup stout

enough beef stock just to cover the meat

2 tbsps flour

1 cup sour cream

chives to garnish

At least 12 hours before you want to eat, put the meat in a shal­low dish and rub all over with lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pep­per.  Cover with cling film and refrig­er­ate, up to three days.

About 4 hours before you want to eat, take the meat from the refrig­er­a­tor and cut into large pieces, about 2 inches across.  Pour the mar­i­nat­ing juices and oil into a heavy-bottomed saucepan and heat till very hot, then throw in the mush­rooms, gar­lic, thyme and onion.  Add more oil if nec­es­sary and brown the veg­eta­bles.  Remove from pan and replace with the meat.  Brown the meat all over, then throw the veg­eta­bles back in, and cover with stout and stock.  Cover tightly and turn heat down VERY low, then cook for about 4 hours, stir­ring occasionally.

Just before you want to eat, pour a lit­tle of the cook­ing sauce into a bowl and add the flour, whisk­ing it till smooth.  Add this mix­ture to the cook­ing pan and whisk nicely.  Then add the sour cream, stir well, and heat up again.  Serve with the chives as garnish.

This dish was GOR­GEOUS!  Very much like my slow-braised shoul­der, and just as inexpensive.

What I have not been able to dis­cover is why on earth VEAL should be called GOOSE.  No one seems to know!  And I love things like that: small food mys­ter­ies lurk­ing from the mists of time.

For­ti­fied by this protein-laden, darkly deli­cious dish, I was able to throw myself into fes­tive preparations.

Avery has been long­ing, for sev­eral years, to have a proper Christ­mas party.  With Christ­mas crack­ers, and fes­tive foods, and the dec­o­ra­tions up around the house, and her guests all dressed to the nines.  And this year was the year.  She invited just the right group, we went shop­ping for table dec­o­ra­tions, and I asked if she’d like to order piz­zas as she had for her “mock­tails” party last spring.  “No, I have a menu in mind,” she said.  “If it’s not too expen­sive, let’s have steaks, and Orlando pota­toes, and green beans.  And then for dessert, hot chocolate.”

And so it was.  I enjoyed myself so much, put­ter­ing around for her, while she strug­gled with Russ­ian, maths, Reli­gious Stud­ies and Latin, threw her­self into prac­tice for her Singing Tea.  I dec­o­rated the table with things that cost almost noth­ing: pinecones, red can­dles at £1 apiece, nap­kins with rein­deer on them, and a packet of lit­tle glit­tery glass pieces to scat­ter across the table.  How lucky our daily din­ner plates are green Firek­ing, per­fect with all the red.

The girls arrived, dressed to the nines in every out­landish gar­ment you can imag­ine and heels?  Tot­ter­ing, my dears!  Fur hats, trail­ing scarves, lots of beau­ti­ful makeup, all exam­ined by each girl in the minut­est detail.  There were shrieks of excite­ment, bursts of song, and the most grat­i­fy­ing hugs from her friends.  And pulling of Christ­mas crackers!

We went into action, John grilling the steaks and me fry­ing the match­stick potato pan­cakes in goose fat, sim­ply heav­enly.  Thank you, Orlando, for this best of all potato recipes.

Orlando Pota­toes in Goose Fat

(serves 6 hun­gry teenagers)

1 medium-ish potato per girl

3 small shallots

sea salt and fresh pepper

3 tbsps goose fat

Slice each potato very thin length­wise, then turn the other way and slice very thin across, to make tiny match­sticks.  Lay the pota­toes on a thick tea towel and squeeze and roll in the towel until you’ve wrung as much water from the pota­toes as pos­si­ble.  Place in a large bowl.

Mince the shal­lots very small and mix with the pota­toes.  Salt and pep­per the mix­ture.  Form into six cakes.

Heat the goose fat in a very large fry­ing pan.  When a tiny bit of potato dropped in the fat siz­zles right away, it’s ready.  Put the cakes in as quickly as you can and fry on one side for 2–3 min­utes, then turn.  If they fall apart slightly when turn­ing, just push the ragged bits back toward each cake and press a bit.  Cook for another 2–3 min­utes on the other side, until golden brown.  Turn again if you’re not sat­is­fied.  Serve HOT.

I wish I had a photo of these pota­toes but hon­estly, the girls were prac­ti­cally chew­ing each other’s arms off, so we put a steak and a potato cake on each plate and every­one sat down to choose whether they wanted Bear­naise Sauce or Sauce Diane, and helped them­selves to gor­geous green beans, sim­ply steamed and tossed in melted but­ter and Fox Point Sea­son­ing.

It was so sat­is­fy­ing!  They ate like lit­tle wolves, not a scrap remain­ing on the plates, and gos­sip­ing, singing and light­ing the tiny sparklers.  They were… happy.  And, so were we.  In this world where we can con­trol so lit­tle of our children’s hap­pi­ness, to give an evening like that to them, safe and fun, was an enor­mous gift.

As soon as they were set­tled down, John and I pro­duced our own din­ner!  Have to take the oppor­tu­nity to eat some­thing Avery doesn’t like.  Roasted fen­nel, hot pep­pers and beets, tossed in chilli oil.  And our all-time favorite scal­lop dish.  You can’t have too much gar­lic, after all.

Scal­lops with Gar­lic, Pars­ley and Linguini

(serves 2)

lin­guini for 2

16 large scallops

2/3 cup olive oil

6 cloves garlic

1 whole bunch flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped fine

2/3 cup bread­crumbs, toasted

sea salt and pep­per to taste

Put the lin­guini on to cook.  Mean­while, heat the olive oil in a wok until really hot, then throw in the scal­lops, gar­lic and pars­ley.  Cook for about 2 min­utes until scal­lops are done, but not tough.  Turn the heat off.

Drain the pasta and throw it in the olive oil and scal­lops and turn the heat up high till bub­bling.  QUICKLY add the bread­crumbs and take off heat, toss­ing thor­oughly.  Salt and pep­per to taste.  Sprin­kle over hot dried chilli flakes if you like.

After cups of hot choco­late with every top­ping known to man — marsh­mal­lows, crushed candy canes, crushed bis­cuits and choco­late sauce — the girls repaired to the liv­ing room where the Christ­mas tree glit­tered, and watched a movie.  John had blown up air mat­tresses for them and they set­tled right down.  A happy evening.

We spent Sat­ur­day chauf­feur­ing Avery and her friend to Samba, then Avery to act­ing, then we rushed home and got ready for a truly side-splitting play, “A Flea in Her Ear” at the Old Vic.  I’ve never seen a French farce before!  It had every­thing: maids in white ruf­fled aprons, mis­taken iden­tity, a char­ac­ter with a speech imped­i­ment, a love affair gone wrong, a mis­un­der­stood let­ter!  You MUST see it.

Avery was agog with amaze­ment at the sheer over-the-top nut­ti­ness!  Some gems of lines: “You’re as bad as Oth­ello with that old hand­ker­chief!” delighted her because they’re study­ing Oth­ello in Eng­lish!  The char­ac­ter with the speech imped­i­ment loses his sil­ver palate expander behind, and it’s returned to him.

“How did you know where to find me?” he asks in astonishment.

“Your name and address are engraved inside.  Why bother with call­ing cards when you can just leave the roof of your mouth behind?”

We haven’t laughed so hard in an age.  A stel­lar cast of peo­ple we’ve seen on Spooks, onstage in sev­eral pro­duc­tions, in films.  Go, do!  It was the per­fect play to see on a night when, post-party, we were all too tired to pay atten­tion to any­thing serious.

Well, din­ner prep beck­ons.  I can’t cook some­thing new every night, it wouldn’t be very com­fort­ing.  So it’s fried had­dock and stuffed red pep­pers, two old stand­bys.  We can use a lit­tle standby and a lit­tle exper­i­ment, with a great party tossed in, now and then.

It’s that time of year, as I note every year, when the pages start to fly off the cal­en­dar and the hours on a clock spin around, just like in a car­toon.  In the three weeks before we head “home” for Christ­mas in Con­necti­cut, we have two plays to see, a carol con­cert to attend, two din­ner par­ties to go to and at least as many to host, a visit to the ortho­don­tist, a trip for us grownups to a land­mark house in West Sus­sex and a school trip to St Peters­burg for Avery.  It makes me tired just to write it all down, but the way I get around that is by remind­ing myself that all these things will be great fun indi­vid­u­ally; it’s just look­ing at the cal­en­dar that’s daunting.

Thanks­giv­ing has come and gone.  I think every sin­gle flat sur­face in my kitchen, that evening, was cov­ered with some­thing to eat.  And eat we did, with lots of blaz­ing can­dles and lit­tle fairy lights I’ve obses­sively ordered from a really cheap light­ing com­pany, Lights4Fun.  Our gar­den is full of them, our kitchen is draped all over.  Of course, John reminds me that all the money I save buy­ing them dis­counted, I will more than make up for in bat­ter­ies.  But it’s worth it, look and see.

The best part of the whole Thanks­giv­ing din­ner was, every­one agreed — even lit­tle chil­dren who took sec­ond and third help­ings! — the cheesy spinach.  After many years of offer­ing you seem­ingly end­less vari­eties of recipes for this dish, I have hit upon the per­fect ver­sion.  It’s sim­ply to die for: creamy, salty, bright green, gar­licky, cheesy.  You will be shocked at how much every­one can eat.

The Ulti­mate Cheesy Spinach

(serves 4 easily)

500 grams (about 8 loosely packed cups, or 2 large pack­ages in the UK) fresh baby spinach

3 tbsps butter

2 tsps flour

5 cloves gar­lic, minced

1/3 cup light cream

1 1/2 cups sharp Ched­dar cheese, grated

cel­ery salt to taste, per­haps 2–3 tsps

sprin­kle grated Parme­san cheese

Sim­ply chop the spinach in your food proces­sor, a large hand­ful at a time, puls­ing so the leaves are incor­po­rated from the top and the bot­tom leaves don’t turn to mush.  You want the con­sis­tency of chopped onions.  As you go through the hand­fuls, place the chopped spinach in a large bowl.

Now melt the but­ter in a large, heavy-bottomed fry­ing pan or saucepan.  Stir in the flour and cook, bub­bling, for about a minute, not let­ting the mix­ture brown.  Add the gar­lic and stir for a moment.

Add all the other ingre­di­ents but the Parme­san, and stir patiently over a low heat.  At first it may seem that the ingre­di­ents will never come together, but they do, after 4–5 min­utes.  Taste for cel­ery salt: don’t add too much at first because it is quite salty.  When the cheese is melted and the spinach creamy, pour the whole lot into a bak­ing dish, about 9x9 inches, and sprin­kle the grated Parme­san on top.  Bake at 350F/180C for about 25 min­utes or until nicely golden and bubbly.

Let’s hope that all the good­ness of this dish: the iron, the cal­cium, and let’s face it, the GAR­LIC, will give us all the strength to get through our Christ­mas prep, and maybe even enjoy it at the same time.