In honor of my half-Irish hus­band, I feel absolutely com­pelled to share with you all the recipe for a soup I think I sort of invented today.  It is, for a short time, the GREEN­EST food I have ever seen!  Then as time goes on, it gets a lit­tle less vivid.  Is that due to oxi­diza­tion?  In any case, you can prac­ti­cally feel the nutri­tion seep­ing into your bones when you take a warm, vel­vety spoon­ful of:

Creamy Spinach and Cel­ery Soup

(serves 4)

2 tbsps butter

1 shal­lot, minced

4 cloves gar­lic, minced

3 small pota­toes, cubed (about a large handful)

1 cup cel­ery, chopped roughly

2 tsps cel­ery salt

480 grams/about 18 ounces, or in Eng­land two large bags washed baby spinach

2 cups chicken or veg­etable stock

1/2 cup whip­ping cream

Melt the but­ter in a large heavy saucepan and add shal­lot, gar­lic, pota­toes and cel­ery.  Saute until the gar­lic is soft­ened.  Add the cel­ery salt and the spinach.  It will seem like a great deal of unwieldy leaves, but do not despair.  Pour over the stock and bring to a sim­mer.  The spinach will quickly wilt.  Sim­mer for about 20 min­utes until the pota­toes are soft.  Puree with a hand blender, then add cream.

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

It is hard to describe the expe­ri­ence of this soup: it actu­ally TASTES green.  The spinach fla­vor is intense, but it’s also enlivened by the two notes of cel­ery.  The pota­toes add just the right amount of thick­ness and the cream cuts down the mas­sive iron jolt from the spinach.  It is mar­vel­lous.  And each per­son is eat­ing a half a bag of spinach in one sitting!

This pleas­ant expe­ri­ence today at lunch came on the heels of a  morn­ing at Lost Prop­erty.  Now, you all know of my devo­tion to this activ­ity, the Lost and Found Room at my daughter’s school, scene of many mar­vel­lous adven­tures fold­ing dirty net­ball shirts with the other Ladies Who Vol­un­teer, unpick­ing num­ber­less name tapes so that we might sell unclaimed games skirts, home to many pecu­liar “lost” items, many of whose pres­ence begs the ques­tion of what they were doing in school in the first place.  We’ve had six match­ing choco­late fish, a rub­ber orca in a Ball jar, a giant stuffed clown bear­ing the logo of a promi­nent boys school.  What we have not had, until this morn­ing, is a tin of Refried Pinto Beans.

My fel­low vol­un­teer, Diana, placed her head on one side and con­sid­ered.  “It’s good to know they’re veg­e­tar­ian,” she said in mys­ti­fi­ca­tion.  “How could they not be?  They’re beans.”  “No,” I explained, “most refried beans are fried in lard.”  “Ugh,” she said.”  “That image will be hard to get out of my head.”

We waded through piles of dirty unmatched train­ers (Eng­lish for sneak­ers), sweaty games shirts cov­ered in mud, lacrosse sticks sim­i­larly bedaubed, and piles of class notes.  “Who­ever Nel­lie is, she lost EVERY­THING today.  How will she get any work done?”  As always, we spent a tiny bit of time think­ing about how many advanced degrees will be rep­re­sented in the women who vol­un­teer at the Sale on Tues­day, how many hours of our time we will devote to mak­ing a small amount of money to pay for, say, a day and a half in the edu­ca­tion of one of the girls on schol­ar­ship.  Ah well, it all makes for con­vivial fun.

And a wel­come dis­trac­tion from the mind­bend­ingly irri­tat­ing job of house-hunting.  How many hours of my life have I spent tour­ing other people’s houses?  More than I care to imag­ine.  We think that some real estate peo­ple must get paid per house they man­age to drag you to, because none of them seem to pay any atten­tion to our mea­gre require­ments: a great kitchen, a cer­tain num­ber of bed­rooms, a rea­son­able dis­tance to school, a cer­tain bud­get.  In response to these guide­lines we have seen houses with gal­ley kitchens in which I would not be able to extend both arms at the same time, houses with many,  many bed­rooms extend­ing up into the gray Lon­don sky — “but we have only one child!” we wail -, houses with no pub­lic trans­port within hail, and houses cost­ing 30% more than we can afford.

Ah well, at least it isn’t raining.

And yes­ter­day after­noon was the much-anticipated Singing Tea at Avery’s school.  I always think that’s the fun­ni­est phrase, to an Amer­i­can.  Tea, singing?  But it merely means that we par­ents of chil­dren who take singing lessons are invited, once a term, to have tea after school and lis­ten to them all sing the songs they will per­form for their exams on Sat­ur­day.  How Avery dreads the exams, with their nerve-wracking sight-singing, and the fact that they always occur pre­cisely four days after she has come down with a cold.  But it was lovely to sit back, fold our hands, and lis­ten to the incred­i­ble vari­ety of songs cho­sen.  Songs in Ser­bian, Russ­ian, and Latin, not to men­tion the usual French and Ital­ian and Ger­man.  Avery sang, “The Water is Wide,” which ALWAYS makes me cry, but I was good and kept con­trol over myself.  “But your eyes were very watery,” Avery pointed out after­ward.  That’s very good, for me.

The biggest excite­ment of our week has been Avery’s audi­tion for the wildly admired British sit­com “Out­num­bered,” and then her call­back to meet the writ­ers and per­form improv with them!  And then yes­ter­day came an extremely enthu­si­as­tic email from her cast­ing agent!  Avery is in the final two girls being con­sid­ered for the role, which is really excit­ing and a fine reward for the end­less Sat­ur­days she has spent in act­ing class.  “The part is for a morose Amer­i­can teenager!” Avery announces in delight.  “I hope that one of those qual­i­ties will require ACT­ING,” I rejoined.  We can only hope!  But the final two girls: that’s won­der­ful.  Good on you, Avery.

The the­atre beck­ons tonight, so I must dash.  Don’t you find that on the nights when you have the­atre tick­ets, you really really are not in the mood to go?  We feel that way every sin­gle time.  Some­how, on those after­noons when you antic­i­pate going out, noth­ing sounds more appeal­ing than to stay cozily at home doing absolutely noth­ing.  But it means din­ner out, and Avery has a date with the microwave, and a bowl of spinach soup.

There is no deny­ing two impor­tant facts: Spring has sprung in Lon­don for one thing, as you see, and there­fore, as night fol­lows the day, the miserable/exciting/hilarious/backbreaking process of mov­ing has begun.  If only we knew where we were mov­ing TO, and WHEN.  Details, details.

Remem­ber The Doll­house, Option Num­ber One?  We went back, with Avery, and noticed that our entire dis­cus­sion cen­tered on what would not fit, what we could not bring, what we’d have to get rid of or put in stor­age, feel­ing as the great nov­el­ist Lau­rie Col­win said, that every­thing around us had been scaled down to fit a box tur­tle.  Not a good idea.

But The Barn, Option Num­ber Two, is still in play.  We went to see it for a third time yes­ter­day, and the door was opened by a delight­ful woman and her adorable Irish hus­band, beck­on­ing us in and insist­ing we sit down for a cup of tea.  “We just found out where our daugh­ter got into school, and we’re thrilled!  So it’s a celebration!”

(“How’s that whole ‘never make friends with land­lords because it’s a mis­take to mix busi­ness with friend­ship’ plan work­ing out for us?” I asked John later.)

One of the fun­ni­est moments of this search?  I opened the oven at The Barn to see if my excel­lent All-Clad roaster would fit (it wouldn’t), and in the slightly warmed oven was a hunk of rosemary-encrusted bread!  All my life I’ve read about peo­ple sell­ing their houses who bake bread before buy­ers come to see it, but it’s never actu­ally hap­pened to me before.  Delight.

Add to this excite­ment the pos­si­bil­ity of Option Num­ber Three, a sort of Mod­i­fied Doll­house, where some of our things would fit, but not all.  The famous wall of books would morph into four rather unim­pres­sive and sep­a­rated columns of books, in two dif­fer­ent rooms.  Avery could not bring her child­hood bed because the four-poster would not fit under the slightly dollhousey-dormer roof of her planned bed­room.  Okay, we can buy another bed.  But no base­ment?  Where do the Christ­mas orna­ments go, and those dozen Russ­ian con­somme cups, and all Avery’s out­grown clothes wait­ing for my nieces to decide it’s not “girly” to wear dresses?  Not to men­tion four lit­ter­boxes?  STRESS!

The final Xanax-inducing point of drama is that none of the con­trac­tors work­ing on any of these pos­si­ble houses can be fin­ished until — at best — JUST the cru­cial moment when our lease expires.  Which means that we and the pre­vi­ous own­ers will be pass­ing each other through the cor­ri­dors on the Day of Reck­on­ing, bring­ing boxes in while they’re bring­ing boxes out, and just HOPE that we end up with the right chil­dren and pets.  And Christ­mas orna­ments.  All because of the mas­sive inflex­i­bil­ity of all the pow­ers that be. All the house own­ers on each side who have to put their hands on their hips and say, “That one par­tic­u­lar day is the Magic Day!  Live with it!”

Ugh.  I can’t wait until John’s dream house is even­tu­ally built and we never have to utter another nego­ti­at­ing word as long as we live.  Until then, we live a bit on tenterhooks.

It’s all a les­son in learn­ing to live hap­pily with­out the con­di­tion that you’re in con­trol of any part of your life.  Which is healthy, because any illu­sion that we are in con­trol is just that, an illu­sion.  Bet­ter, in some ways, to have your total lack of con­trol thrust in your face, and then you’re forced to find ways to be happy even under those circumstances.

And you know what?  I’m tak­ing a com­pletely healthy fam­ily — if neu­rotic cats can be con­sid­ered healthy — to some house, some­day, and we’ll be there together, cook­ing din­ner, hav­ing friends over, super­vis­ing home­work, lis­ten­ing to singing lessons being prac­ticed, maybe even smelling bread in the oven!  And that, in the end, is the only impor­tant thing.  Doing it all together, in good health.

In the mean­time, we’re deter­mined not to pack up and take a SIN­GLE object we don’t LOVE, which means lots of clear­ing out.  And clean­ing out the squalid base­ment has its moments.

“Does mouth­wash have an expi­ra­tion date?  Here’s some we brought from New York in 2005.”

“Do we want this tin of yacht var­nish?  Why do we HAVE a tin of yacht varnish?”

“Who gave us this set of salt and pep­per shak­ers in the shape of Chinamen?”

“Do we know any­body who would take all these out­grown ice skates?”

“Why do we have three potato ricers?”

“Oh, look, it’s the other half dozen of those golden and red Russ­ian con­somme cups Binky gave us for Christ­mas in 1990.  When did we ever know twelve peo­ple who all wanted to drink con­somme at the same time?  Maybe that’s why we never unwrapped this half dozen.”

And such sweet happy mem­o­ries flood­ing back too, like the Christ­mas that my daugh­ter, now top­ping me by at least an inch, was small enough to fit into this sleep­ing bag, a gift from my dear mum.

There were absolute trea­sures in a slightly mildewy card­board box full of fam­ily mem­o­ries.  How about this for the moment before my wed­ding?  Don’t I look excited and dewy, and ready for a life­time of mar­ried bliss and con­stant moves?

And me with my dar­ling older brother, Andy, from 1970, I think.

I like to think I’ve aged slightly bet­ter than my stuffed squir­rel, who also emerged from a card­board box down in that base­ment.  Sorry, Squandy, I loved you a lit­tle TOO much.

And the invi­ta­tion to Avery’s first birth­day party here in Lon­don, nearly 5 years ago now.  Back when I actu­ally did things like com­pose poems, type them up on col­ored paper and tear the text out, to be glued onto a home­made card.  Now I reserve that sort of atten­tion for slic­ing pota­toes paperthin and com­par­ing the salt con­tent of six dif­fer­ent types of butter.

Hap­pily for our san­ity, in the mid­dle of all this non­sense the gray Lon­don skies sud­denly scud­ded away over the Chan­nel and we were given five straight days of blue skies, or at least par­tial blue skies, and clear, dry air.  Which meant dry ten­nis courts, which meant our return to the land of the exer­cis­ing!  John and I have long decided we’ll never be gym peo­ple, but give us a decent day and 45 min­utes and we’ll hap­pily bat the ball back and forth.

It felt so good, five days in a row feel­ing our hearts first start in sur­prise at being used for any­thing more than liv­ing, and leg mus­cles first say, “Hey, what the heck is THAT you want me to do?” and then start enjoy­ing them­selves.  A relief.

Of course it rained last night.  But we had a good week.

There was, as well, the Musi­cal Evening at Avery’s school, where the girls are enjoined to turn up wear­ing all black, “No plung­ing neck­lines, please,” and there onstage, across the sea of black clothes and variously-hued faces, was our daughter’s bright-red-lipsticked smile.  The ONLY point of color!  And the music: Avery’s group sang, to her anti-pop cha­grin, a cou­ple of num­bers by “Take That”, just a gen­er­a­tion off really, and Car­ole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend,” which they all found impos­si­bly cheesy.

Thank good­ness for good food.  On the night of the school musi­cal evening, Avery was allowed to stay at school until the per­for­mance at 7, so John and I took the oppor­tu­nity to eat some­thing she doesn’t like: a cat­e­gory which includes, sadly, all shell­fish.  But this was DIVINE.

King Prawns with Saf­fron, Gar­lic and Champagne

(serves 4)

2 dozen king prawns, raw with shells on

4 cloves gar­lic, minced

juice and zest of 1 lemon

2 tbsps olive oil

pinch saf­fron, dis­solved in 1 tsp hot water

pinch Mal­don sea salt

plenty of fresh black pepper

splash old champagne

2 tbsps COLD butter

hand­ful chives, minced

Remove the heads of the prawns and cut up the back of each with scis­sors.  Lay on a flat dish.

Sprin­kle the prawns with all the ingre­di­ents up to the cham­pagne, smoosh around with your fin­gers till the prawns are coated and set aside for about an hour.

Get a fry­ing pan really hot and tip all the prawns in at once.  Stand back!  Now turn them in suc­ces­sion once the under­sides have turned from gray to pink, and when each prawn is thor­oughly pink but NO LONGER than that, they are cooked through.  Add the splash of cham­pagne and siz­zle for a cou­ple of sec­onds, then the cold but­ter.  Toss thor­oughly and sprin­kle on chives.  Let cool so you can peel them, then go for it.

Sim­ple deli­cious, and SO sim­ple.  And if you weren’t going low-carb, as we still try to do occa­sion­ally, they would be great with some lin­guini, and a bit more olive oil, cham­pagne and butter.

Then there was the evening of the school dance per­for­mance to which we went to sup­port Avery’s bril­liant friend Lille.  I con­fess that I don’t under­stand danc­ing, period, and I keep wait­ing for some­one onstage to start talk­ing and explain the plot.  But it was lovely just to sit back in the dark, put all thoughts of land­lords present and future out of my mind, and just watch the beau­ti­ful girls spin about.

After­ward of course I found I had four new emails, from John who had been com­pos­ing them dur­ing the performance.

And while we watched the danc­ing, din­ner was cook­ing all by itself in the oven at home, one of my favorite ways to feed the fam­ily.  In that oven, at 140C/280F was a lit­tle gam­mon (ham to my Amer­i­can friends) glazed with honey, a but­ter­nut squash halved length­wise, dot­ted with but­ter and sprin­kled with chopped fresh sage, and then MORE sage in this creamy indul­gent, carb-y delight of a side dish:

Pota­toes Gratin with Fresh Sage

(serves 4)

6 medium potatoes

1 cup whip­ping cream

1/2 cup ched­dar cheese, grated

onion pow­der

gar­lic powder

sea salt

sin­gle cream nearly to cover pota­toes (per­haps 1/2 cup)

1 dozen sage leaves

Peel the pota­toes and slice them super thin, either on a man­do­line or by hand.  This is a sooth­ing exer­cise for the tired and con­fused mind, because it turns out per­fectly, every slice. Put a layer in a glass or pot­tery casse­role, about 9x9 inches square or oval in a sim­i­lar size.  Pour over a bit of whip­ping cream just to cover.  Sprin­kle with some grated cheese and then sprin­kle over a dust­ing of onion pow­der and a dust­ing of gar­lic pow­der.  Repeat this process until you run out of pota­toes, then fin­ish by pour­ing enough sin­gle cream over them nearly to cover them, and arrange the sage leaves on top.

Now, an hour and a half before you want to eat, put EVERY­THING in the oven at once.  Leave.  Come back and take the gam­mon out to rest for about 15 min­utes, cov­ered with foil.  Take out the pota­toes as well and cover to keep warm.  Turn the oven up to 220C/425F and get the squash bub­bling.  Then slice the gam­mon super thin and dig in.

At the end of this over­whelm­ing week, all we could do on Fri­day — after Avery’s excit­ing act­ing audi­tion! more on that when we know — was to come home from our var­i­ous activ­i­ties, order a pizza with every veg­etable in the world on it, then after din­ner retreat under a duvet with a hot water bot­tle, the new biog­ra­phy of J.D. Salinger (which is won­der­fully dense and sat­is­fy­ing), a cou­ple of cats, my hus­band by my side to appre­ci­ate, my daugh­ter there to hug good­night, and PEACE.

And a Sat­ur­day visit from my beloved friend Esme from Amer­ica, although this time via Ams­ter­dam.  She came bear­ing salami — “I really wanted to buy this and I knew you were the only one who would appre­ci­ate it!” — and I of course rec­i­p­ro­cated with a jar of goose fat, as one does.

Then we set­tled down to enjoy each other’s com­pany, such a rare treat, and talked for 8 straight hours.  John and Avery drifted in and out to con­tribute, I cooked slow-roasted shoul­der of lamb, but­ter beans in the jus, and steamed arti­chokes with a mus­tardy vinai­grette.  We cov­ered many impor­tant top­ics such as the bril­liance of our chil­dren — I first met Esme via email when we were both art his­to­ri­ans and both preg­nant! — the com­pli­ca­tions of breed­ing New­found­lands, the annoy­ance of mov­ing, and the wis­dom or not of color-coding one’s book collection.

Have you ever heard of such a thing?  Esme actu­ally arranged her books, a huge col­lec­tion, by the COLOR of the spine.  I know that there are peo­ple who are irri­tated by the sight of my enor­mous wall of books all dif­fer­ent sizes and col­ors, but they’re alpha­bet­ized!  I can find them!  Esme, on the other hand, lives with a per­fect rain­bow, a palette if you will, of her books, but she can never reread any­thing unless she can remem­ber the color of its spine.  We had to laugh.  “Don’t even think about it,” John warned.  “But it would be the per­fect time, when we’re mov­ing!” I said.  “I do not want to live with you, your face con­stantly pressed against the book­shelf, try­ing to find an Agatha Christie only you can’t remem­ber if it’s red or blue,” he said flatly. “That is just dumb.  Sorry, Esme.”  “No,” she said, “I know what you mean.  But it’s beautiful.”

This morn­ing saw Esme off sadly early, and us to our moldy base­ment.  But the fun of her visit, the warmth of friend­ship with some­one who accepts me just as I am and has seen me through all of my daughter’s life, both good times and bad… those feel­ings stay with me.  And I am energized.

Which is just as well, don’t you think?

Life has taken on a pecu­liarly fre­netic qual­ity lately, encom­pass­ing a week’s trip back to the States to visit my beloved fam­ily, which involved more home decor dis­cus­sions and shop­ping than I could ever have imag­ined.  As you can see from her gor­geous plant room above, my mother has a genius for cozy com­fort and she is sim­ply over­flow­ing with ideas to freshen up my child­hood house.  There was time for a night out with old friends, the best of times.

Then back home to Lon­don to pick up the threads of real life, includ­ing an after­noon spent cel­e­brat­ing John’s birth­day by hav­ing tiny Turk­ish fish nib­ble on our feet — I’m not mak­ing that up!  I also have spent the last week try­ing madly to recover from a mas­sive cough I was gra­ciously given on the plane over to the States.   Every win­ter seems to include one of those, doesn’t it, where you throw your back out from hack­ing away and then can’t stand up straight for a week or two.  March.  A month to get through.

And World Book Night!  Sev­eral pub­lish­ers here in the UK got together with the inten­tion of pub­lish­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing 1 MIL­LION copies of some of the most pop­u­lar con­tem­po­rary books.  Then they put out a call online to the pub­lic to vol­un­teer to give them away!  I applied, went through the whole process of select­ing a book and being selected as a giver, and yes­ter­day acquired my own tem­po­rary pile of “Toast,” by Nigel Slater.

Ten copies have found their homes so far — some to friends, some to strangers like our gro­cery cashier yes­ter­day, and a guy hang­ing around the Maryle­bone High Street with a cute puppy — and another 28 will make their way to my Lost Prop­erty vol­un­teers via a stack in our room at school.  The remain­ing copies?  Not sure.  John wanted in the worst way for one to go to a proper Lon­don bobby yes­ter­day, but there was none to be seen.

And of course house-hunting, which is try­ing under the best of cir­cum­stances and even more so when it’s not our idea to move.  I think it’s the first time in all our 14+ moves that we have been at the behest of other peo­ple.  Being sim­ply turfed out because our land­lords want to sell, no mat­ter how incon­ve­nient the tim­ing for us, is frus­trat­ing to say the least.  And it is dou­bly annoy­ing liv­ing through both ends of the process — “host­ing” end­less groups of peo­ple who say, “I hate to invade your home,” and also invad­ing end­less fam­i­lies while WE say, “We hate to invade your home.”

We are torn right now between a tiny, per­fect doll­house of a house and a ram­bling, encom­pass­ing barn of a house.  Each in a lovely neigh­bor­hood, each offer­ing its own delights and bur­dens.  John, Avery and I each have our lists of respon­si­bil­i­ties to make our move more palat­able: mine includes going through all my spices and herbs and throw­ing out the stale ones, recy­cling their glass jars, mak­ing lists of what to replace.  I have taken a huge pile of moth­e­aten sweaters to a repair lady in Chiswick to have their holes darned.  John has put all our mis­match­ing drink­ing glasses: chips and bro­ken han­dles and all, into a card­board box to be taken to Oxfam and we are start­ing over with per­fectly bor­ing, inex­pen­sive but MATCH­ING new glasses.  Avery is going through her Amer­i­can Girl dolls and all their belong­ings, to give away to a young friend.

And she has cut off all her hair!  While I was in Amer­ica, I received this photo in my email box.  Hair all gone!

How did she become so grownup suddenly?

I think the most relax­ing thing to do would be to relive the sec­ond half of our Som­er­set adven­tures, which now seem so long ago, but I don’t want to for­get such good times.  It is impor­tant to hold their mem­ory in reserve, to assure us that the crazy days we are liv­ing through now will not last, and we’ll be cozy and set­tled some­where new soon.  And the peace­ful times in the coun­try are always there to be enjoyed, just a Land­mark Trust book­ing away.

Remem­ber our bril­liant bell­ring­ing friends?  They kindly told us of the glo­ri­ous farmer’s mar­ket to be vis­ited in nearby Wells, on every Wednes­day.  And so we went.  Gor­geous scal­lops, arti­san cheeses, a glo­ri­ous bunch of curly pars­ley, bacon, a deli­cious cup of cof­fee and sausages in a bap.  Lovely, all in the shadow of Wells Cathedral.

And cheesy feet!  The ulti­mate cock­tail snack.

Puff pas­try, in the shape of a per­fect toddler’s foot.  Mmm.

From the mar­ket we wan­dered around the Cathe­dral Close and came upon pos­si­bly the most beau­ti­ful street in the world.  Vicar’s Close, now the home of many of the music stu­dents and teach­ers of Wells Cathe­dral School.  We read later that the street was designed to nar­row at the top, so as to encour­age the illu­sion of its being longer and taller than it really is.  Sim­ply ethe­re­ally beautiful.

And home to pos­si­bly the cra­zi­est dog on earth, who for some rea­son insisted on leap­ing up against his house, as if to enter through the window.

We aban­doned Crazy Dog finally and walked slowly back to the Cathe­dral, admir­ing all the school­boys rush­ing past with their floppy hair and musi­cal instru­ments slung about their shoul­ders, shout­ing to each other and look­ing quite accept­able as boyfriend mate­r­ial for Avery, even­tu­ally.  Some­how they seemed undaunted by the grandeur of their surroundings.

We waited for the lit­tle clock ring­ing fel­lows to do their job.

We took our tour of the cathe­dral itself, admir­ing in par­tic­u­lar the tomb of one bishop who seemed to have attracted the most tal­ented of the medieval graf­fiti artists.

And the Cathe­dral kitty, a stal­wart young man who led us to his bas­ket in the Shop and promptly went to sleep.

We finally took our leave of Wells, dri­ving home in the coun­try twilight.

We set­tled in for a lux­u­ri­ous sup­per of scal­lop salad, its ingre­di­ents cour­tesy of the Wells market.

Warm Scal­lop Salad with Beets, Bacon and Goats Cheese

(serves 2)

12 large scallops

2 tsps butter

4 medium beets, roasted

200 grams goats cheese

hand­ful rocket leaves

200 grams bacon, cut into small lardons

dress­ing:

good glug olive oil

2 tbsps mayonnaise

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

juice of 1 lemon

sea salt and black pep­per to taste

Heat but­ter in a heavy fry­ing pan and cook scal­lops JUST until done, about 1 minute on each side, maybe more if they are very large.  Set aside.  Cut beets into bite-size pieces, set aside.

Line a large serv­ing plat­ter with rocket and scat­ter goats cheese over.  Fry bacon until it is crisp and has given up its fat.  Drain.  Place all ingre­di­ents on the rocket and mix dress­ing ingre­di­ents until thor­oughly mixed.  Pour dress­ing over, and ENJOY.

Our last day in Som­er­set we spent first wan­der­ing around our grave­yard (where I spent evenings shiv­er­ing on the phone to my mother, since it was the only place where I could get a proper sig­nal!).  There was, of course, a kitty.

And we ven­tured into the church to admire those BELL ROPES.  I swear, I will learn.  After mov­ing, per­haps?  Does Chiswick con­tain a ring of bells?  I shall find out.

Finally for our last adven­ture: a climb up to Glas­ton­bury Tor, a medieval remains of a church, perched as high up on top of a steep hill as can be imag­ined, pro­vid­ing the most glo­ri­ous views of three counties.

What a scary walk up!  Def­i­nite “oops, I lost my wife” opportunities.

And there was our Som­er­set adven­ture.  Home we came, to pick Avery up at Euston Sta­tion, “fresh” (or rather, very much not) from her Cum­brian jolly time, climb­ing hills much higher than ours, writ­ing and act­ing in orig­i­nal plays, jug­gling the social needs of four girls aged 8–14.

And these peace­ful times will come again.  We have come to real­ize that the process of mov­ing involves sev­eral weeks of choos­ing a house — dif­fi­cult and stress­ful — a week of PURE HELL which is liv­ing out of boxes, about three weeks of medium hell which is unpack­ing boxes and get­ting rid of boxes.  Then life set­tles down to its pre­dictable round of chauf­fer­ing Avery to the skat­ing rink, act­ing class, the stable.

I promise I’ll be back.