Have I aged over the last 21 years?  What do you think?  In response to an implicit chal­lenge from my age­less buddy Alyssa, who posted on Face­book a sim­i­larly time­less photo of her­self and her age­less hus­band… WHERE did I get that hair­cut?  That eye makeup?  Avery is shud­der­ing on my behalf.  But I do think that the last cou­ple of months have taken their toll on my appear­ance.  Could any­one EVER have been as young as I was in 1990?

Here I am, sit­ting at the long ban­quet table in my kitchen, a rem­nant of yesterday’s lun­cheon for my 25 Lost Prop­erty vol­un­teers, try­ing to sum­mon up the energy to fold up the table, carry the extra chairs back up to the top of the house, to carry the boxes of cham­pagne glasses back down to the basement.

Sigh.

Am I exhausted from, and recov­er­ing from, the glo­ri­ous hol­i­days?  Yes.

Then, I go back to read my own accounts of those two weeks, snow­bound in Amer­ica, and I am over­come with nos­tal­gia for a life that hap­pened just over a week ago.

I con­fess to being some­what over­whelmed by the sep­a­ra­tion from those won­der­ful times, to be replaced by jet­lag, sweep­ing up nee­dles end­lessly, being back at Lost Prop­erty, sewing on but­tons on for­got­ten pre-holiday clothes, order­ing an autumn’s and holiday’s worth of pho­tographs to fill albums I was given for Christ­mas, dither­ing over Avery’s home­work anx­i­ety… in short, real life.

These are, offi­cially, the kind of prob­lems one has when one has no prob­lems.  All is well.  I’m just slightly over­whelmed by the sweep of emo­tions that come around when one spends two weeks in that alter­nate life — too short a period of time really to set­tle in, as we do in sum­mer, but long enough to get entrenched — and then by the rush of love I feel for our life here in Lon­don.  For our quirky and bizarre cats, for Avery’s gor­geous school, the joy of 30 dif­fer­ent cheeses in just the super­mar­ket shop.  Even the end­less gra­da­tions of the GREY of a Lon­don sky.

In this mood, I feel a desire to cook dark, savoury, slow foods.  Do you cook sea­son­ally?  By that I don’t mean what foods are IN sea­son, but what foods are appeal­ing in cer­tain sea­sons.  In the sum­mer, I want to cook things quickly, on the grill, or even not at all — cold soups, enor­mous sal­ads.  But in the win­ter, when it’s dark by 5 o’clock, and you’ve got to have some­thing cook­ing itself while you’re at a Par­ents’ Guild meet­ing, it’s time for…

Savoury-Rubbed Slow-Braised Shoul­der of Lamb

(serves at least 6)

1 whole lemon

6 cloves garlic

hand­ful frsh rosemary

hand­ful fresh thyme

2 tbsps capers

ONE anchovy

plenty of black pepper

hand­ful flat-leaf parsley

Put ALL these ingre­di­ents in your food proces­sor — really, the whole lemon, quar­tered — and blitz until a nice smooth paste.  Rub the mix­ture all over the shoul­der of lamb, on both sides.  Roast in a nice sealed tent of alu­minum foil for at least six hours, at 120C/220F.  In the last half hour, drain all the cook­ing liq­uids from the dish, pour in a cup of cooked Bel­uga lentils, and sep­a­rate the fat from the cook­ing liq­uids.  Dis­card the fat, then hear the cook­ing liq­uids with a table­spoon of flour whisked in.  Per­fect gravy.  PERFECT.

When the lamb is fin­ished cook­ing, let it rest for 15 min­utes and then sim­ply tear apart with two forks.  The meat will sim­ply FALL off the bone.  Serve with the gravy, and stand aside for the avalanche of com­pli­ments and gratitude.

Serve the lamb with this, the most savoury of all side dishes.

Sausage and Spinach-Stuffed Mushrooms

(serves 4, one mush­room per person)

5 large flat mush­rooms (one to chop up for stuffing)

1 tsp olive oil

1 large sausage, cas­ing removed

1 shal­lot, minced

3 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 tsp fresh thyme leaves

hand­ful fresh spinach leaves

1/3 cup fresh breadcrumbs

3 tbsps goat cheese

sea salt and pep­per to taste

olive oil to drizzle

Remove the stems from the flat mush­rooms and chop them with the extra mush­room.  Set aside.

Heat the olive oil in a heavy fry­ing pan and add all the ingre­di­ents up to the spinach leaves.  Saute till soft.  Mix in a bowl with the spinach, bread­crumbs, goats cheese and sea­son to taste.  Pile the stuff­ing mix­ture onto the flat mush­rooms and driz­zle with olive oil.  Bake at 200C/425F for about half an hour, till hot and cooked through.

***********

And then there is the incom­pa­ra­ble aroma of a roast­ing duck, in the dark evening while your daughter’s at a birth­day party.  The recipe for this dish is shock­ing.  In that there is no recipe.  Put it in the oven.  Let it cook.  Eat it.

Roast Duck

(serves 4)

1 Gress­ing­ham free-range duck (about 2 kilos)

salt and pepper

Lay the duck with its giblets in a large roast­ing tin, breast side up.  Prick all over with a sharp fork, just deep enough to pierce the skin.  Sprin­kle plenty of salt and pep­per over the duck.  Roast for 2 1/2–3 hours, till skin is nicely browned and the legs sep­a­rate eas­ily from the body.

You could eas­ily serve this duck, sliced beau­ti­fully, just on its own with a cou­ple of side dishes.  But if you steam a pile of Chi­nese pan­cakes and pile bites of duck on them, driz­zle them with Hoisin sauce and sprin­kle with a cou­ple of match­sticks of cucum­ber… HEAVEN.  Sadly, though, the cook­ing juices are mostly fat, so gravy is not an option here.

These are the foods I dream of prepar­ing when I wake up in the night, with jet­lag, wor­ry­ing about Avery wor­ry­ing: dis­cus­sions her wor­ries ver­sus adult wor­ries.  “I know adults say, ‘your wor­ries don’t really mat­ter; wait till you have to pay taxes,’” she said one after­noon after school.  “But our wor­ries are the ones we have, and it’s really hard to keep remem­ber­ing every­thing, where to be, what to bring, and hav­ing to put up with adults not treat­ing us with any respect!”

I actu­ally read of the results of a study that deter­mined adults could tol­er­ate the life of a second-grader for only a week!  No author­ity, no power, lit­tle respect: just peo­ple all around telling the poor child what to do, rather arbi­trar­ily most of the time, invok­ing empty author­ity as an inducement.

I’ve tried to be dif­fer­ent as a par­ent, to give author­ity to Avery as much as pos­si­ble unless it REALLY mat­tered that she do what I said: will that help with the pres­sures of being an almost-adult?  I don’t know.  Most of the time she seems quite happy, if stressed with all the pres­sures that her life– again, a life with no prob­lems — has to offer.

Some­times it seems that the sum total of what I can give her is secu­rity.  The sense that she can col­lapse at home, com­plain with aban­don, and get up the next day to face it all again.  In the mean­time, of course, I can give her din­ner.  And blue­berry lemon cake for break­fast.  Not a bad job for a mother, after all.

And now that the hol­i­days are past, I can get down the busi­ness, once again, of just liv­ing, and help­ing my fam­ily to live, through January.

Lemon Blue­berry Cake

(makes one loaf cake)

225 grams (one cup) unsalted but­ter, soft­ened
225 grams (one cup) caster (ordi­nary Amer­i­can) sugar
4 eggs
zest of 3 lemons, finely grated

1 cup blue­ber­ries, dusted with a bit of flour

zest of 1 lime, finely grated225 grams (one cup) self-raising flour, or plain flour with 1 tsp bak­ing powder added

driz­zle top­ping
juice of 3 lemons
85 grams (1/3 cup) caster sugar

Beat the but­ter and sugar till soft and fluffy, then beat in eggs one at a time. Stir in zests and flour gen­tly until fully mixed (includ­ing the bak­ing pow­der if you are using plain flour). Fold in the blue­ber­ries.  Tip into a loaf pan and smooth the top flat with a spoon. Lick the spoon.

Bake for about 45 min­utes in an oven set to 185C, 350F. Watch care­fully, because all ovens are dif­fer­ent. Take care not to burn bot­tom or brown top too much. The cake is done when the mid­dle of the top doesn’t jig­gle when pressed gen­tly. Err on the side of bak­ing less rather than longer.

Cool cake enough so that you can han­dle the tin. In the mean­time, mix the lemon juice and sugar till dis­solved. Prick the top of the cake all over with a fork and then SLOWLY driz­zle the mix­ture over it. If you driz­zle too fast, the mix­ture will end up all slid­ing down the sides of the cake. Serve warm.

We are safely home.  We have not slept, hoisted lug­gage, opened mail, unpacked, done laun­dry.  The usual.  Changed credit cards and money in wal­lets.  Yawned.

I have spent the day drag­ging, with John, the Christ­mas tree out of the liv­ing room and down two flights of stairs, a feat I com­pared, to my friend Alyssa, to drag­ging a pile of Pringles out of a tiny space with­out crunch­ing them.  Agony.  And the orna­ments.  Why so numerous?

We all took naps.  Then I opened the empty, pris­tine refrig­er­a­tor and felt hungry.

“Gee,” I said to myself, “Self, your jeans are tight.  Why would that be?”

The two choices seemed to be that they have smal­l­ened, or I had largened.  And it was but the work of a moment from that obser­va­tion to my own mem­ory of the sheer LIST of ingre­di­ents that marked our hol­i­day, for me to come to the obvi­ous con­clu­sions: food is GOOD.

I thought, just for fun, I’d list what I remem­ber buy­ing and cook­ing.  This will help me in my quest to fit into my jeans, as well as pro­vid­ing a VERY happy gas­tro­nomic mem­ory of my hol­i­day.  And onward to a bit more restraint!

THE LIST (as I would shop it if I were at Stop ‘N Shop in my town in Connecticut)

shrimp to stir fry

had­dock to fry

oys­ters for stew

duck legs for cassoulet

pork belly for cassoulet

pork ten­der­loin for roast

lamb shoul­der for cassoulet

pork sausage for Christ­mas morn­ing, and for cassoulet

beef ten­der­loin to grill

buf­falo mince for chilli

whole chicken to roast

chicken parts to bake

count­less eggs to scram­ble for break­fast or a mid­night snack

beets to roast

cau­li­flower to roast

but­ter­nut squash to roast

fen­nel to roast

car­rots to roast

aspara­gus to saute

cel­ery and onions, sage and mush­rooms for stuffing

pars­ley, cilantro, basil, tar­ragon for garnish

broc­coli to steam

spinach to cream

red pep­pers to make into soup

mush­rooms to make into duxelles

toma­toes, avo­cado, red onion, basil for salad

gar­lic to roast

green beans to saute

pota­toes to mash, to grate with cheese, to steam for hash

straw­ber­ries, blue­ber­ries, black­ber­ries, rasperries

melon

pears

apples and bananas for cake

moz­zarella, goat cheese, ched­dar, feta, Parme­san, ricotta

home­made chicken stocks, turkey stocks for soup

the olive oil, lemons, bal­samic vine­gar, salt, pep­per, Fox Point, cel­ery salt, Ital­ian sea­son­ing, paprika, cumin, cayenne, chilli seasoning

chick­peas, black beans, red kid­ney beans, can­nellini beans, Bel­uga lentils

pas­tas, toma­toes, pine nuts, Vodka for the occa­sional emer­gency pasta

**********

and Nonna’s Christ­mas cap­puc­cino, lime and savoury cheesy cook­ies as a garnish!

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

I am quite sure I could set this all to music if I weren’t so… jet­lagged. Soon, I promise!  In the mean­time, a tiny bit of aus­ter­ity shall pre­vail.  Plus ten­nis… I hear rumors from John that indoor ten­nis is in our future.  More to come.  But in the mean­time, I’m tear­ing up that gro­cery list.  It only encour­ages me.

I am CER­TAIN that some­where, it’s bed­time.  So good night.

Well, that’s the glass half full sce­nario.  What’s really true is that I try not to think about how much I miss these par­tic­u­larly lovely things while the many months away unravel… includ­ing this heart­stop­ping (to my New Yorker’s soul) view of Prince Street from today.  But that’s not all I’m remembering.

Our gor­geous French din­ner with Shel­ley and Erik, snowy frigid night with­out, warm food, out­ra­geously gen­er­ous Christ­mas presents and friend­ship within…

Brunch and board games with Jill’s fam­ily… watch­ing Jane mas­ter­ing “Camp” and Molly her col­ors and shapes.  “There is only one brown octagon”…

Bor­row­ing Egbert and Regina’s snow­shoes and rac­ing across the snow in blind­ing sun­light… com­ing across not one, or two, but three deer car­casses, vic­tims of the local coyotes.

A late after­noon gos­sip with Judy, Rol­lie, Young Rol­lie and gor­geous Tri­cia… to think that the next time I see her, she will be hold­ing a two-month old baby in her arms.  It wasn’t pos­si­ble to thank Judy enough for her friend­ship with John’s mom in those first hours of the crazy Christ­mas hol­i­day, here just the two of them, prepar­ing with­out me.  That is friendship.

And and even later after­noon hot chai tea and kitty games with Anne, David and Kate, play­ing Jenga (“Jes­samy don’t like Jenga, it’s too loud for her,” Kate observed many times), Anne and David as usual play­ing the best chal­leng­ing advo­cates for Avery.  “Go for it, lobby for that psy­chol­ogy class!”  Anne encour­ages, and they both look on with admi­ra­tion at the Tom Lehrer note.  What heart­warm­ing friends they are, and pos­si­bly my favorite mem­ory of the hol­i­day, the night they arrived in the dark and turned on their out­side lamps to shine on the snow and receive our friend­ship.  How lucky we are to have fallen into each other’s laps, across this mag­i­cal road.

John’s last cud­dle with Jes­samy (too bad he really doesn’t like cats)…

Finally today, a drive into New York — that city of our hap­pi­est mem­o­ries, our sad­dest mem­o­ries, our strongest mem­o­ries — to drop Jes­samy off with Alice, her Pri­mary Mother, and to drop me off for lunch in town with Alyssa, for Avery to spend a bliss­ful after­noon shop­ping — Avery Goes Shop­ping Alone! — at Sephora, Amer­i­can Eagle, JCrew, in SoHo all on her own!

Alyssa and I ate splen­didly at The Lit­tle Owl in the West Vil­lage.  Their sig­na­ture tiny meat­balls on a cheesy bun, scal­lops and lob­ster with a rocket salad and a dress­ing of capers, lemon juice, baby leeks and melted BUT­TER, and pos­si­bly the best French fries in the city.  Mostly, it goes with­out say­ing, gos­sip, shout­ing with laugh­ter, our usual menu of friend­ship.  As we stood out­side on the cor­ner wait­ing for cabs, we agreed that we sur­vive quite well see­ing each other only twice a year, until… we see each other.  Like chil­dren who are fine about babysit­ters until they get one.  It’s as won­der­ful to be together — shar­ing mem­o­ries of our daugh­ters’ ear­li­est years as babies in Tribeca — as it is sad to con­tem­plate not being together.  Let’s con­cen­trate on the former.

And how gor­geous to amble into Dean and Deluca, choose three of the hunki­est pork chops in the world, relive all the years I spent gro­cery shop­ping there as if it were a gro­cery store!  Lo, in the olden days of our new­ly­wed­hood.  Car­ry­ing baby Avery in a Baby Bjorn, pick­ing up the first of the world’s fin­ger­ling pota­toes, baby radic­chio, goat cheese fresh from France, del­i­ca­cies New York had just discovered.

I crossed the blink­ingly sunny New York street, rev­el­ling as usual in the unbe­liev­able right of pedes­tri­ans ahead of cars!  How funny to trade in two so dif­fer­ent car cul­tures.  On to Sephora, look­ing for my daugh­ter, up to JCrew, and there she and her daddy were, fresh from a shop­ping spree, her first alone in New York.  The first of many, I hope and fear.

Home to begin to orga­nize our depar­ture.  The last loads of laun­dry, orga­niz­ing din­ner to use as many ingre­di­ents as pos­si­ble!  Clear­ing coun­ter­tops of hol­i­day paper­work, fin­ish­ing the “Alice in Won­der­land” puz­zle.  Avery and I decide to leave both puz­zles in place, to dis­cover at sum­mer­time, to help us remem­ber our holiday.

And so it has wound down to the last few hours.  We are anx­iously watch­ing the weather fore­cast, heavy snow fore­cast for just around the hour our plane is due to take off.  I refuse to worry.  All will be well, and with any luck, you’ll hear from me next, suf­fer­ing from jet­lag, pre­sid­ing over Lost Prop­erty, in Lon­don.  But what  mem­o­ries we will carry with us.

I love noth­ing more than a weather emer­gency.  I put this down to my Mid­west­ern Amer­i­can child­hood where we LIVED for snow days.  Lis­tened fever­ishly to the local news on the evenings where snow was fore­cast, hop­ing des­per­ately to find, in the morn­ing, that the accu­mu­la­tion was enough to war­rant a DAY OFF.  Lord knows what our poor moth­ers thought on such days.  “I’d give my [some­thing incred­i­bly valu­able, like one of the chil­dren] not to have the kids off school tomorrow.”

Then, when I was about eight months preg­nant with Avery, on the last week­end I was allowed to fly, I went to South Car­olina to sur­prise my folks who were there on hol­i­day.  At least, I sur­prised my mother — I think it was decided at least one of them had to know I was com­ing to make sure they’d really be there!  And while I was there, an enor­mous hur­ri­cane devel­oped.  I was the last per­son allowed on the last plane out, because of my advanced state of preg­nancy.  I arrived home in New York in a mas­sive state of excite­ment to fol­low the storm on telly that I’d so nar­rowly escaped in real life.

So when, a few days ago, a snow­storm was pre­dicted here in Con­necti­cut, it was but the work of a moment, with Dorothy L. Sayers’s “The Nine Tai­lors” play­ing on the old-fashioned tape player, for me to climb in the car and head to the gro­cery, to pro­vide us with the raw ingre­di­ents for sev­eral sus­tain­ing meals, to get us through the com­ing cri­sis.  A lit­tle ham, a but­ter­nut squash, aspara­gus, buf­falo mince and beans for chili, eggs.  And when I got home, of course, I dis­cov­ered it was dif­fi­cult even to fit these in the fridge because of the pot of chicken stock, the left­over roast chicken, the beets, fen­nel and car­rots I’d already stockpiled.

Overkill on storm prep, in other words.

But storm it did.  Except that there was no wind.  The snow just fell, and fell and fell, qui­etly and gen­tly, all yes­ter­day after­noon.  And with no wind, all the snow stayed in place, on tree branches and roofs and fences and cars.  Just beautiful.

It fell all day as we worked a puz­zle of “Alice in Won­der­land,” played with Jes­samy, cleaned out the upstairs clos­ets, and the chili cooked… We went for a walk up the road, unplowed as yet, pris­tine and time­less, white as far as the eye could see.  When we got home, John shov­eled a path­way for us, but we could see it was really point­less as the snow con­tin­ued to fall.

Avery decided to make a snow angel, nat­u­rally, get­ting wet­ter and colder than any Lon­don teenager would ever get.  Every once in awhile, we remem­ber clearly why we kept this house, when we moved away.

We came inside and read our books by the fire­light and imag­ined the snowy world to come in the morning.

This morn­ing we awoke to the stillest day you can imag­ine.  Not a breath of breeze, not a branch stir­ring.  Just silent, snow-covered sen­tinels every­where you looked, with the occa­sional star­tled squir­rel try­ing to find its way across the branches and send­ing down a flurry of snow when he did.  Just peace.

All day we enjoyed the scenery, a true fairy­tale won­der­land.  I can’t describe the peace and quiet!  Finally we went out to load the car with all the things we’d gath­ered from the clos­ets, to donate to Good­will.  John and I took turns shov­el­ing out behind and around the car to be able to move.  Then we went for a long walk, and encoun­tered our friends Regina and Egbert, and Tom and Mika, out on snow­shoes on the Land­mark Trust land, plan­ning a long excur­sion.  And we found Kon­nie whose horses occupy our meadow in sum­mer, out with her dog in the snow.  New Year’s greet­ings and hugs.

“Walk in the path we make!” the snow­shoers urged, in the wan­ing almost-sunlight, as we made our way across the snowy mead­ows.  “Onward to the bench!”

To John’s Dad’s Bench, in fact, at the lit­tle swell in the hill, snugged by trees.  We all sat down to catch our breath.  Avery had come out in ankle boots and, it tran­spired, ankle socks which had trav­elled down inside said boots and when we reached the bench, she held out her feet and showed us the SNOW inside her socks!  We hit the trail back toward home, shout­ing good­byes to the intre­pid snow­shoers on their way down the trail.

A quiet after­noon and early evening fol­lowed.  I looked inside the refrig­er­a­tor and saw left­overs com­ing out our ears, not to men­tion the pots frozen in the snow out­side our back door.  I brought in the chilli and the oys­ter stew from the back step, put them on the stove to warm, put the but­ter­nut squash in the oven to bake with but­ter.  And guess what I found when I opened the back door?  Regina and Egbert’s snow­shoes, lent to us for tomor­row!  Neighbors!

Avery and I had just set­tled in with the puz­zle again when we saw an unusual sight: car head­lights com­ing up our road and STOPPING.

Excite­ment: Anne and David and Kate had come home for the week­end, unexpectedly!

“I wanted to shovel their dri­ve­way all day!” John said.  And I had told him to wait, it would snow again.  He rushed out with a shovel, meet­ing David who was rapidly clear­ing a path in the 15 inches of snow, up to their door­way.  Avery slipped into the car to sit with Katie, and I ran home to put a higher light under the chilli and to put the chicken soup into the microwave, pack it all up with some sour cream and grated cheese, take it over to them.

“You sound awful,” I said to Dave, and he said, “Been sick.  Kate 102 yes­ter­day, I’ve lost my voice.”

So it was espe­cially nice to hand them the warm food, see lights go up in their house across the road, exchange hugs.  They trooped inside, we hugged again, I came home to get our own din­ner ready, to clean out the fridge.

A clas­sic day in our road, then: much the same whether it’s the hot sum­mer after­noon of a birth­day party for the house, or a snowy stormy after­math.  There are always the neigh­bors, and the exchange of favors and food and hap­pi­ness, what­ever the sea­son.  That’s our road, and why we love it, no mat­ter the weather.

But snow is FUN.

Red Gate Farm Chilli

(serves 8)

2 tbsps olive oil

1 white onion, minced

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

2 lbs buf­falo mince (or beef, if you must)

2 pack­ets McCormick’s Chili Seasoning

2 soup-size tins red kid­ney beans, with liquid

1 soup-size tin black beans, drained

1 cup le Puy lentils, cooked

1 large can whole plum tomatoes

1 tbsp chilli powder

2 tsps ground cumin

sour cream to garnish

grated ched­dar cheese to garnish

cilantro leaves to garnish

This couldn’t be eas­ier, if I tried.  Sim­ply saute the onion and gar­lic in the olive oil, then add the buffalo/beef and stir until cooked through.  Add the beans, lentils, toma­toes and sea­son­ings and stir well.  Leave at a sim­mer for least an hour, up to three hours.

Ladle into soup bowls and add sour cream, cheese and cilantro as you wish.

There is a point, at least for me, dur­ing every hol­i­day sea­son when all the prepa­ra­tion, the wish­ing and hop­ing, antic­i­pa­tion, and even the very real enjoy­ment of the excit­ing days and evenings begin to give way to a wish to sim­plify my life!  To clear away the trees, the dec­o­ra­tions, the burnt-down can­dles, the nee­dles EVERY­WHERE, and put every­thing care­fully away for next year.  The sil­ver bells get wrapped in tis­sue paper and packed away…

The frag­ile orna­ments go in their own tis­sue paper, the more robust things like tiny pairs of skates and ponies and fairies dressed in hol­i­day clothes are placed care­fully on just a bed of tis­sue paper, to spend the next 11 months dis­cussing how they hate hang­ing from hooks.  The lights are wound up around John’s arm and packed away with the stock­ings and the tree skirt…

But before I can rest and enjoy my clean, post-holiday house, I must tell you a bit of our adven­tures and share a cou­ple of recipes that will put you right back in the cook­ing mood, ready to pitch the last crust of pump­kin pie and start fresh.  So off we go.

Our wed­ding anniver­sary takes place on Decem­ber 30, which is always a bit of an awk­ward day because Christ­mas is still fresh in our minds (espe­cially when we cel­e­brated it a day late to begin with!), and New Year’s is loom­ing.  Of course in our early days we gave a great deal of thought to the per­fect, secret gift for each other: cuf­flinks with Avery’s ini­tials for John, tiny gold ear­rings for me with five dia­monds in each, for our 10th anniver­sary.  Then, some­where along the line, we took up a tra­di­tion of wak­ing up on the day, say­ing, “Happy Anniver­sary” to each other in the warmest of tones, and… for­get­ting about it for the duration!

This year our anniver­sary was marked mainly by The Snow­ball Fight of the Cen­tury.  I wish I could tell you it was fought between equals, but… alas… Avery’s father can never find any­one his own size to pick on.

He began in fine pater­nal pro­tec­tive style, say­ing as she raised the first snow­ball, “Don’t start some­thing you can’t fin­ish.”  And from there it degen­er­ated into total aban­don.  She’s on the ground at his feet?  Check, cue for smash­ing the snow in her hair.  A big blue saucer sled appears?  Fine, he uses it to throw even greater quan­ti­ties of snow in her face.  Does she give up?  No way.  Not this girl.

Tena­cious is the word.

Anne and David looked on in what I think was the silence of sheer hor­ror, as their adored tod­dler daugh­ter Kate played at their feet.  Will the day come when Dave beats up his lit­tle girl in a freez­ing mis­sile bat­tle?  Time will tell.

Home we came under a per­fect blue sky, to put Avery in a nice warm bath with a cup of hot choco­late.  She stayed in that bath for about three hours.  Fully deserved.   Mean­while, John’s mom and I con­cocted a really deli­cious, exotic, sort of essen­tially anti-Christmas anniver­sary dish.  Not a clove, potato or pump­kin in sight.  Pure Asia.

Sweet and Spicy Anniver­sary Shrimp

(serves 4)

2 dozen large shrimp, shells on, heads off

3 tbsps toasted sesame oil

4 tbsps soy sauce

chilli sauce (to taste, depend­ing how hot it is and hot you want your sauce)

juice of 1 lime, plus zest

2 tbsps hoisin (plum) sauce

2 tbsps Japan­ese mirin (rice wine)

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 tsp pow­dered ginger

bas­mati rice to steam and serve with shrimp

Cut up the back of each shrimp till you get to the tail, then set all the shrimp into a large shal­low bowl.

Mix all the other ingre­di­ents but the rice and pour over shrimp.  Mix them with your hands, push­ing the mari­nade into the backs of the shrimp.  leave to mar­i­nate as long as you like (we had about an hour).

Heat a large fry­ing pan till very hot indeed, and pour in the shrimp, stand­ing back as it spits!  Stir fry the shrimp until just cooked, per­haps 2–3 min­utes total depend­ing on the size of the shrimp.  Serve with steamed rice and plenty of napkins.

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

This dish is the per­fect “Christ­mas is over” dish!  Savory and unusual, exotic and fun to peel, you’ll love these shrimp.

The next day I spent in the kitchen with my intre­pid com­pan­ion John’s mom, prepar­ing one of my favorite dishes of all time (and now a firm favorite of our tra­di­tional New Year’s Eve guests, Anne and David — and unbe­liev­ably Kate as well!).  It was the sort of day I dream of when I’m just slog­ging through a day of work and domes­tic­ity in Lon­don: look­ing at out our snowy farm­land, the red barns against the white, watch­ing the birds on John’s feed­ers, and tak­ing in a whole slate of soap operas as the day winds on.  Cozy!

Cas­soulet

(serves at least 12)

for the con­fit:
4 duck legs
coarse sea salt
4 fat gar­lic cloves, finely chopped
4 bay leaves, bro­ken in half
1 cup white wine

for the cas­soulet:
4 Toulouse sausages (or mild Ital­ian in the US)
350g/12oz belly pork, skinned and diced (just plain bacon if you’re in the US)
350g/12oz lamb neck fil­let or rolled breast, diced (shoul­der chops will work)
1 large onion, chopped roughly
2 large car­rots, chopped roughly
2 cel­ery sticks, chopped roughly
400g/14oz can chopped toma­toes
1 tbsp tomato purée
2 heaped tbsp fresh flat leaf pars­ley, chopped
1 heaped tbsp fresh thyme, chopped
sea salt and pep­per
290ml/½ pint dry white wine
2 cans hari­cot or can­nellini beans, drained and rinsed
850ml/1½pt chicken stock

for the top­ping:
1 large day-old baguette (or 1 cup fresh home­made bread­crumbs)
2 fat gar­lic cloves, halved
4 tbsp but­ter
2 heaped tbsp fresh flat leaf pars­ley, chopped
1 heaped tbsp fresh thyme, chopped

Place the duck legs skin side down in a skil­let with a lid, sprin­kle with the salt, gar­lic and bay leaves and pour the white wine around. Place the lid on top and cook at the tini­est sim­mer pos­si­ble, for two hours. Of course, for real con­fit you’d pour the winey fat over the duck and pre­serve it, but no need for that step here, as you’ll be using the duck straightaway.

Mean­while, place the sausages in a 220C/425F oven and bake for 20 min­utes. Set aside to cool.

In a large stove­top– and oven­proof dish that will hold all the ingre­di­ents, place the belly pork and heat gen­tly until fat begins to be released, then raise heat and cook, stir­ring occa­sion­ally, until all the fat has been released and the pork is crisp, but not dry. Lift the pork onto a plate with a slot­ted spoon, leav­ing all the fat behind.

Add the lamb to the pork fat and cook until col­ored on all sides, then lift out with slot­ted spoon and set aside with the pork.

Add the diced veg­eta­bles to the pork fat and cook till soft. Tip the ingre­di­ents from the plate back into the dish. Add the toma­toes, tomato purée and herbs, then sea­son with sea salt and pep­per to taste.

Add the wine, hari­cot beans and chicken stock to the dish and bring to the boil. Stir, then lower the heat so the liq­uid is just sim­mer­ing. Keep the mix­ture in the same dish to cook or trans­fer it to an earthenware dish.

When the duck has cooked for two hours, remove it from the wine and fat and cool to han­dle. Remove the skin from the duck, then tuck the duck legs into the cassoulet.

Peel off the sausage skins, slice the sausage­meat thickly on the diag­o­nal and add to the dish.

Cover the dish and bake for 1 hour, stir­ring once. Stir, then cook uncov­ered for a fur­ther 1–1½ hours, stir­ring halfway, until the meat is really ten­der and the sauce is thick­ened. Take the dish out of the oven and remove the duck legs. Strip the meat from the bones (it will fall off eas­ily) and return the meat to the dish. Stir and add a lit­tle water, if nec­es­sary. Sea­son if nec­es­sary, then return to the oven and bake for another 15 min­utes until all the meat and beans are very tender.

For the top­ping, cut the crusts off the baguette, tear the bread into pieces and put in a food proces­sor. Add the gar­lic and chop into coarse crumbs (you should have about a cup of gar­licky bread crumbs).

Heat the but­ter in a large fry­ing pan until siz­zling, then stir fry the bread­crumbs and gar­lic over a mod­er­ate to high heat for 7–8 min­utes until crisp and golden. Remove from the heat, toss in the herbs and stir to mix, then sea­son well with salt and pepper.

Ladle the cas­soulet in gen­er­ous serv­ings into warm bowls, sprin­kle on a bit of top­ping, and serve.

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

Don’t be intim­i­dated by the seem­ingly end­less list of ingre­di­ents!  It’s just an assem­bly job, and if you have plenty of time and some­one — like John’s mom — to chat with as you cook, it makes for a delight­ful day.  And with a salad and some baguette bites, you have a MAG­NIF­I­CENT sup­per.  It’s rich, each bite is slightly dif­fer­ent from the last, it’s com­plex and gar­licky and sus­tain­ing.  Just right to get your New Year started on a deli­cious note.  I didn’t take a photo because it’s not a pretty dish, it’s a peas­ant dish.  But the table looked lovely.

And to have our dear, beloved neigh­bors with us that evening, enjoy­ing Kate’s grow­ing con­ver­sa­tional skills, lis­ten­ing to Avery’s tales of her Russ­ian adven­tures, sip­ping hot cups of tea after din­ner and just relax­ing, was the sort of treat we dream of and all too rarely get to enjoy.

And we needed our energy, because that after­noon, Jill and Joel arrived to drop off Jane and Molly so they could attend their beloved (well, Joel’s beloved) Phish con­cert!  The next 24 hours went by in a blur of Jane’s energy, Molly’s sud­den abil­ity to say what­ever comes to mind (mostly “what is THIS?” when she sees a new thing), and feed­ing the two insa­tiable chil­dren.  “Break­fast for din­ner” was the requested menu, so we tucked into pan­cakes with my friend Judy’s home­made plum pre­serves, sausages and bacon.  Story after story (John read­ing to Molly, I to Jane) and then a rather wel­come bed­time.  How embar­rass­ing that two small chil­dren could drain four adults of all energy!  I counted Avery as an adult for the dura­tion, and her enter­tain­ing skills were more than up to the task.

The next day brought adven­tures on the swingsets across the road, and a frisky game of “Fox and Geese” sug­gested by John’s mom.

Once we’d fed the girls a quite amaz­ing pizza from our local pizze­ria and Molly had enjoyed a nap, their par­ents arrived and took them home, full of the sto­ries of their sleep­over date.  And just in time because as they pulled away, another car pulled up con­tain­ing Jes­sica, another of the kit­tens of the sum­mer!  Here for a play­date with Jessamy.

Yes, that’s right, a kitty play­date.  Jes­sica came accom­pa­nied by her two par­ents, which means that for the dura­tion of their time together that cold after­noon, there were two cats sur­rounded by six adults, all of us totally trans­fixed by the sight of the two furry sis­ters, try­ing to get to know each other again.  We are all fools, but it was great fun.

And how our entire hol­i­day was dom­i­nated by The Puz­zle That Ate Christ­mas!  It was my bright idea to order a per­son­al­ized puz­zle from Went­worth, a great com­pany in Eng­land (there must be some­thing sim­i­lar here?) who will take your favorite and cre­ate a gor­geous wooden puz­zle from it.  But beware: these puz­zles are men­ac­ingly dif­fi­cult!  John’s mom, Avery and I spent end­less infu­ri­at­ing hours on it.  But here ’tis.  Well worth the torment!

I think, though, that my entire fam­ily would agree on the most won­der­ful moment of the Christ­mas sea­son.  Remem­ber how I told you I was plan­ning presents that would be wanted only by the peo­ple who would receive them?  Well, no gift fit this descrip­tion bet­ter than what Avery found in the mail­box, two days ago.

Are you among the lucky folks who know the satir­i­cal song­writ­ing of Tom Lehrer?  He is a singer-pianist-performer who is also really a Har­vard math­e­mati­cian, and his songs, mostly from the 1960s, have been part of my per­sonal lore since child­hood, because my par­ents were mas­sive fans.  “Poi­son­ing Pigeons in the Park,” “The Vat­i­can Rag,” all his other wickedly clever works are with­out peer in the song­writ­ing world.  He actu­ally stopped per­form­ing and went back to teach­ing math because he got tired of repeat­ing all his own songs!

Our family’s favorite, prob­a­bly, is “The Ele­ments,” in which he lists in per­fect rhyming order all the ele­ments of the chem­i­cal table, end­ing with “These are all the ones from which the news has come to Haaaaar-vard, and there may be many oth­ers but they haven’t been dis-caaaaahvered.”

It sounds crazy.  Prob­a­bly he is.

But one day Avery recited this song in her chem­istry class to the avowed amaze­ment of her teacher, who men­tioned it in her report card.  So I, stealth­ily, put it in an enve­lope and sent it off to Pro­fes­sor Lehrer with a note from me explain­ing Avery’s addic­tion to his music and ask­ing him to sign it and send it back.  And this is what came in the mail, that frosty late after­noon of the New Year.

She is, need­less to say, in a state of com­plete amaze­ment.  He WROTE TO HER.  “Dear Avery.”  How cool is that?

My Christ­mas was com­plete, at that moment.

And so we slide gen­tly into 2011, ready for what­ever adven­tures our busy Lon­don life will con­tain.  But to sus­tain us will be mem­o­ries of our happy, crazy, busy, can­dlelit, deli­cious, love-filled hol­i­day of 2010.

And of warm fires burn­ing, a kitty sleeping.

May your New Year con­tain no obsta­cles big­ger than this snow­ball Avery launched at her father!  Have the hap­pi­est of New Years, everyone!