It is a hot morn­ing at Red Gate Farm, when all the road is siz­zling, steam­ing, the air thick with humid­ity.  Anne’s pond across the road beck­ons tempt­ingly.  “Help your­selves, dive in, because there’s going to be a real heat wave!” Anne invited, as they drove away for their week in the city.   The day we get Avery to dip her city-girl toes into a body of nat­ural water… well, let’s just say that day is a long way off.

The flow­ers that my friend Judy brought by on Sat­ur­day so far have held up in the shade of the ter­race.  “I know you and flow­er­ing plants, Kris­ten.  Just water these and keep them out of the direct sun, and you should be all right.  Enjoy,” Judy laughs.

Even when you’re made of cast iron, it’s a hot day to be a dog, or a chicken.

Life has set­tled down to its sum­mer rou­tine.  Kate has ambled across the road, hand firmly in Anne’s, pur­ple crocs proudly dis­played, in order to plop down on the kitchen floor to play with the old doll­house, and its thou­sands of myr­iad items.  What­ever this doll­house cost, some dozen years ago, it has paid us back ten thousand-fold, enter­tain­ing lit­tle Avery, her cousins Jane and Molly, and now Kate, for hours on end.

The first gro­cery trip has been made — my favorite, when I get to start from scratch and fill up all the draw­ers from empty!  The farmer’s mar­ket has been vis­ited, and my favorite peach guy greeted.  Tyson adopted Jamie the kit­ten last sum­mer, so I feel it incum­bent upon me to chat while.  Plus, he is super young and cute.

Avery reports that his apple cider dough­nuts are not to be despised.

Now before I for­get, I have had sev­eral requests for the recipe for the chicken salad I served to my mother and her best friend.  It really was lovely, so here goes.  Of course once you’ve made the chicken, you could just have that all by itself, but it was fes­tive with lots of other ingre­di­ents added.  The chicken itself appears in the recipe index as “Lil­lian Hell­man Chicken” as it’s made with Hellman’s mayo.

Hoosier Sum­mer Chicken Salad
(serves at least 4)

2 large chicken breast fillets

1/2 cup Hellman’s mayo

1/2 cup grated pecorino or parmesan

juice of 1/2 lemon

sprin­kle Fox Point Seasoning

1/2 cup bread­crumbs (I used a mix­ture of home­made and Panko)

3 hard-boiled eggs — dev­illed or plain, cut in half

hand­ful heir­loom tiny toma­toes, halved

6 lit­tle heir­loom pur­ple pota­toes, steamed and halved

1 head Bibb/Boston/butter/little gem let­tuce (name depends on where you are!), inner leaves only

minced chives and dill to garnish

sea salt and black pep­per to taste

dress­ing optional (you could just driz­zled olive oil over it): equal parts may­on­naise, olive oil, lemon juice, a dol­lop of mus­tard, a dash of white wine vinegar)

Trim the chicken breasts com­pletely.  Mix the mayo, cheese, lemon juice and sea­son­ing and squish the chicken breasts in the mix­ture, gen­er­ously coat­ing them on all sides.  Roll in bread­crumbs and bake at 425F/220C for 30 min­utes.  Let rest a few min­utes, then slice on the bias.

Sim­ply arrange the chicken and all the other ingre­di­ents on a pretty plat­ter, and pour over what­ever dress­ing you have cho­sen.  Enjoy!

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

Mostly I con­fess that our fam­ily has been eat­ing… CORN.  And CORN.  And more corn!  It’s what I dream of all year long in Lon­don, where what­ever passes for sweet­corn just isn’t.  Of course, I could be miss­ing mar­vel­lous corn because I am not there in July and August, but right now I’m just happy to have the Con­necti­cut real thing.

Of course, life in the sum­mer wouldn’t be com­plete with a visit from dar­ling Jes­samy, beloved feline child of our friends Alice and Con­nie, who kindly lend her to us for “Kit­ten Camp” twice a year.  Avery and Kate can­not get enough of her.

Our quiet exis­tence was enlivened con­sid­er­ably last week by Avery’s first dri­ving les­son!  John was incred­i­bly patient, amaz­ingly effec­tive in his tuition.  I sat ner­vously in the back seat, twist­ing my hands together at the ridicu­lous prospect of my BABY being behind the wheel of a car.  But there was no need for nerves.  She did beautifully.

It was quite the ecu­meni­cal adven­ture, look­ing for a place to prac­tice.  We started off at the local rid­ing sta­ble, but since the only place to drive was an aban­doned round­about, we moved on.  After all, Avery’s dri­ving skills would even­tu­ally have to include more than first gear, con­stantly turn­ing left.  So it was off to the Con­gre­ga­tional Church, which was fine for sev­eral spins, get­ting up to sec­ond gear, but then a nice lady drove up, rolled down her win­dow and announced that it was pri­vate prop­erty.  Sigh.

Off to the syn­a­gogue up the road and their lovely park­ing lot, grown over with weeds.  “I bet you’re the only one in your class to learn to drive on a bed of clover,” I observed.  Shortly after­ward we were shooed away by another nice lady.  Doesn’t God want Avery to learn to drive safely?

Finally we ended up in the park­ing lot of an Epis­co­palian church which hap­pens to be sit­u­ated at the junc­tion of sev­eral stop­lights, which means the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion uses it to cut through and avoid the lights.  There­fore, although it is tech­ni­cally pri­vate prop­erty (a nice lady drove up to tell us), “as long as you’re really care­ful, you can stay and prac­tice.  Good luck!”

Avery did beau­ti­fully.  The usual spate of beginner’s “killing the engine”, which will soon pass.  And home safely, to a restora­tive sup­per of bison burg­ers, and… corn.

And a new vari­a­tion on the clas­sic stuffed “cour­gettes,” or “zuc­chini” as we call them State­side: crab-stuffed!  So now you can have sausage-stuffed for your Con­gre­ga­tional friends, mushroom-stuffed for your Jew­ish friends, and crab for the Epis­co­palians.  Works for every­one.  And if you have a lit­tle extra stuff­ing, mush­rooms are a good con­tainer, too, as you see.

We’ve had plenty of moments when the power goes out, as usual.  Per­haps this sum­mer is the sum­mer we’ll upgrade the elec­tri­cal sys­tem.  What a lux­ury it would be to have the air con­di­tion­ing on WHILE run­ning the dish­washer or the dryer?  I can’t imagine!

The week­end brought my sis­ter Jill’s fam­ily for “every­thing on a let­tuce leaf” lunch, and all of us plus Anne, David and Kate for ice cream up the road.  Kate waved her cone back and forth across the fence, lead­ing David to sup­pose that she’s invented a new top­ping, “Fences Pieces.”

Molly woke up from her nap, and we all gath­ered for an after­noon of water bal­loons.  Here’s my lit­tle Molly…

And fear­less Jane.

One hun­dred water bal­loons filled at the kitchen sink, thrown at peo­ple, or the tram­po­line, or sim­ply dropped on the kitchen floor.  John and Joel chas­ing each other across the sun­lit lawn, Jill bar­ri­cad­ing her­self clev­erly behind a stack of books, a cam­era, her phone in her hand!  “You can’t throw any at me, I have a phone!”  Jane used lit­tle Kate as a human shield!  Finally we got all the girls to take a deep breath and pose.

The fes­tiv­i­ties ended when simul­ta­ne­ously John and Joel cracked Jane’s and Molly’s heads together and Kate’s bal­loon erupted into a foun­tain of water up her nose.  “It isn’t a party until everyone’s cry­ing,” Jill and John con­cluded, and then it turned out we had run out of bal­loons!  A beau­ti­ful after­noon.  Anne and I agreed, “We keep say­ing this is the most beau­ti­ful day of the sum­mer, but this REALLY is.”

Sun­day found me BELL-RINGING!  Yes, I could have taken the sum­mer off, but I really did not want to lose every­thing I have learned over the past few months (mea­sured in hours, as one does in bell-ringing, and I am up to hour 13).  So it was but the work of a moment to enter my zip­code into the web­site of the North Amer­i­can Guild of Change Ringers, and voila, there was a tower for me.  The Mel­rose School in Brew­ster, New York, with a purpose-built wooden and glass tower.

This tower con­tains eight lovely bells, vin­tage 1973, and is home to some of the friend­liest peo­ple I have ever met.  Namely Mike, my intre­pid teacher, tak­ing time off from his rehearsals for “Sweeney Todd” at the local com­mu­nity musi­cal theatre.

After intro­duc­ing me to the bells — each with a beau­ti­ful verse inscribed upon it, and named var­i­ously (I rang William and Angela, for exam­ple), we descended into the ring­ing cham­ber, with its eight ropes arranged in an unusual oval shape, suited to the shape of the tower itself which had to accom­mo­date to the plot of land assigned to it, in the grounds of the school.

This bell tower and its bells were pro­vided for by a bequest from the great Amer­i­can busi­ness­man and phil­an­thropist C.V. Starr, founder of AIG and great-uncle of Ken­neth Starr, for­mer US Inde­pen­dent Coun­sel.  The Mel­rose School itself is home to a con­vent, the Com­mu­nity of the Holy Spirit, who founded the school and named it for the Scot­tish saint Melrose.

For some rea­son — I will try to find out next week — Starr left money to the con­vent and the school specif­i­cally to pro­vide for the bells, and I’m so happy he did!  Because he was who he was, and the Sis­ters who they were, no less a per­son­age than the Arch­bishop of Can­ter­bury him­self came to ded­i­cate the bells, in 1974.  And so my tower was born.

How the ringers wel­comed me!  John, a white-haired gen­tle­man of my very favorite sort — dou­ble PhD in music and the­ol­ogy! — Dinah, an ex-nun, Mensa mem­ber and now pro­fes­sional fingernail-painter, Mike with his grisly musi­cal t-shirt and his three beau­ti­ful small chil­dren milling around the school.. they wel­comed me all.  And I rang proper changes for the first time!  I shall try to explain.

First, one sim­ply learns to han­dle the bell, silently.  This process takes about ten hours.  Then, as you’ve heard me bur­ble on about, one is allowed to make a sound.  Then, one take part in “rounds,” which is sim­ply the bells — six or eight or ten — ring­ing down­ward from the high­est tone to the low­est, in order.  THEN, just as I’ve rung rounds only TWICE and to only par­tial suc­cess, these Mel­rose ringers prod­ded me into “call changes,” which means that as I’m ring­ing my num­ber six bell in its num­ber six place, the con­duc­tor shouts, “six to five,” and I ring in FIFTH place instead!  Try to imag­ine!  “Six to four,” might come next, and I have to look to the num­ber THREE bell to ring after her, in fourth place.

MAD­DEN­ING, I can tell you!  Mad­den­ing.  It is the one activ­ity of my entire life where it is impos­si­ble to think of any­thing else while I’m doing it.  There is no recipe-musing, blog-planning, gro­cery list-making.  I can ONLY RING THE BELL.  No won­der where are prayers for us!

It was a thrilling, lovely expe­ri­ence.  I can’t say that I per­formed bril­liantly, as it took me much too long to respond to the call changes.  After all, only a few hours ago I was sim­ply “rope-pulling” silently!  But finally, toward the end, as I was sweat­ing freely and fran­ti­cally try­ing to keep up, the con­duc­tor called one last change and I got it straight­away.  “Go to the head of the class!” shouted my fel­low ringer John triumphantly!

“Mod­esty is a beguil­ing trait,” he said after­ward, as we made safe loops of our ropes, “but you need not be mod­est any longer.  You have made great progress.”

THRILLING!

Now it’s back to the mun­dane Red Gate Farm tasks of weed­ing, window-washing and pick­ing up hun­dreds of tiny scraps of water bal­loon from the dandelion-dotted grass…

Sigh of relief.  After nego­ti­at­ing five air­ports suc­cess­fully, I am at Red Gate Farm.  And after an intensely hot and sunny day spent unpack­ing and weed­ing the ter­race, the skies have opened and the rain is pat­ter­ing gen­tly down in the great upside-down bell of the side meadow, pool­ing in the gut­ters that want clear­ing out, and drip­ping from the roof of the big red barn.  I am home.

John and Avery picked me up last evening, one of those golden-blue Con­necti­cut evenings when there seem to be more orange lilies wav­ing in the breeze than you knew had grown on earth, when the hour’s jour­ney from the air­port sees the skies turn to pink and pur­ple, mak­ing every­thing look misty and per­fect.  Our own gar­den boasts one last per­fect lily.

This was an intel­li­gent strate­gic deci­sion on the part of our lit­tle farm­house: to appear first in a dim, dim light.  Because poor thing, it’s suf­fered over the long snowy win­ter.  We have arrived to dis­cover the ceil­ing of the laun­dry room falling down, mold in the rafters and pathet­i­cally stained walls in the liv­ing room.  Repairs are in order.

It’s a small price to pay for the lux­ury of hav­ing this lovely oasis to come to twice a year.  Poor thing, aban­doned all win­ter while we cavorted in Lon­don, all spring while we moved into our new house.  But now it’s Red Gate Farm’s turn for some ten­der lov­ing care.

First up on the agenda was to switch out the gor­geous win­ter glass doors for the clever screens made by our clever car­pen­ter.  “Avery, because you are a city child, this is your first expe­ri­ence liv­ing with a screened-door.  DO NOT, EVER, open or close them by the screens!” John warns.  It takes awhile.

Never mind, it will all come right in time.  Mean­while, we can turn our atten­tion to the impor­tant things in life: weed­ing the ter­race, rid­ding the wide lawns of a spring’s worth of fallen sticks and branches, vis­it­ing the super­mar­ket and the farm­stand and fill­ing the fridge with Amer­i­can food and drink: sweet­corn, Amer­i­can cheese, limeade, enor­mous kosher dill pick­les.  It’s impor­tant to take time to appre­ci­ate the July buds of the hydrangea tree, whose sea­sonal blos­som­ing marks the tran­si­tion from begin­ning of sum­mer, to time to say good­bye, every year.  Thank good­ness today it was “hello, hydrangea.”  We have a whole sum­mer to enjoy.

But I’m get­ting ahead of myself.  In between leav­ing Lon­don and arriv­ing at Red Gate Farm, I have been “home.”  How many places can one call home, any­way?  Well, three, if you’re me.  The third, but by no means least impor­tant, is my child­hood home in Indi­ana.  And that’s where I spent the last five days, with my mother and brother.

It breaks my heart not to include my adored father in this list of loved ones, because while I was able to visit him, he wasn’t at home.

In Feb­ru­ary, our fam­ily was forced to the con­clu­sion that my bril­liant dad, life­long sharpest brain — and tongue to match — in the Mid­west and beyond, must be moved to another stage of his life, in a home where he could be prop­erly cared for.  Alzheimer’s spares no one.  The dis­ease has taken my pre­cious father into another dimen­sion, a place where we can­not fol­low.  How sharply I felt his absence when I emerged from the walk­way from the plane, how keenly I missed his sharp gaze, his tight and encir­cling hug.  “Here’s the Kreeper, then, whad­dya know, safe and sound,” he would say, using my child­hood nick­name with no embar­rass­ment, effort­lessly shoul­der­ing my heav­i­est bag, “What the dick­ens do you have in here, rocks?”  In the old, dear days, how I loved his dash to grab lit­tle tod­dler Avery from rush­ing into the crowds, “Hey, you lit­tle monkey…”

My dad, who rel­ished the hot days of sum­mer that would bring me home for a visit, who adored dis­cov­er­ing the track­ing soft­ware that would help him fol­low my flight in the skies, who couldn’t wait to show me the tallest tomato plants in his gar­den, the plumpest spec­i­mens, bran­dish­ing with­out eco-obsessed shame his spray can of Miracle-Gro… who aban­doned any fam­ily dis­cus­sion when it was time for his evening roller-blading ses­sion, who single-handedly (my lit­tle self thought) kept all of Cen­tral Indi­ana in its right mind (“I’m out spread­ing men­tal health,” he’d say with irony as he went off to work)… he is another per­son now.

That dad has been replaced by another, qui­eter, more puz­zled man.  I approached him at his home, sur­rounded as he was by warm, lov­ing ladies hold­ing his arm, coax­ing him to eat.  They were not expect­ing me.

“Hey, here comes some­body who means some­thing to the Doc­tor!” one nurse said, watch­ing my dad stand up straighter, take his hands out of his pock­ets.  His eyes stared mag­net­i­cally into mine as I greeted him, press­ing a framed photo of Avery into his hands.  He clutched it tightly, I asked if I could hug him, and after a few sec­onds his arms came around me tightly, the framed photo in one hand.  We stood a bit apart, he star­ing intently at me.  Was he look­ing for some­thing, I won­dered, or was he try­ing to tell me some­thing, or both?  I could only look back, try­ing both to give and to receive, what­ever the impor­tant mes­sages might be.

“Want to take him for a spin around the porch?” a nurse asked.  “Hold tight, don’t let the Doc­tor wan­der, because he will,” she warned.  I took him around the shoul­ders and we descended in the ele­va­tor, work­able only with a code to be punched in, on his safe, safe floor.  We went out the front doors of the home, for my dad the first time in the fresh air since Feb­ru­ary.  He lifted his face to the sun.  “I know you love to be hot and sweaty,” I said, “so let’s take a lit­tle walk.”

We walked around the porch, greet­ing fel­low res­i­dents with the hes­i­tant smile he he has now — by no means shy, just reserved — and emerged into the park­ing lot, where he iden­ti­fied cars as Ger­man, and I reminded him of his Ger­man car when I was a lit­tle girl, ask­ing, “Do you remem­ber your license plate said ‘PSYCH”?  And Mom’s said “PSY­CHE.’  Because you were a bril­liant psychologist.”

“Was I really,” he mar­velled.  “Unbelievable.”

A lot of things are unbelievable.

We had our walk, and I held him around the shoul­ders, so dimin­ished now, so far removed from the broad, beefy swimmer’s shoul­ders that accom­plished the fastest but­ter­fly stroke in his Wis­con­sin high school, the shoul­ders that car­ried my suit­cases, planted toma­toes, cra­dled my daugh­ter.  “Do you remem­ber tar­ring the dri­ve­way together every sum­mer, Dad?”  “Did I do that this sum­mer?” he asked.  “Of course,” I lied stoutly.  “Every sum­mer, get­ting so hot.”  “Some­times too hot to work,” he remembered.

Some­times.

Sud­denly, as we walked, he leaned into my enclos­ing arm and said, “Bet­ter.  Bet­ter now Kreeper’s here.”

I felt that the world had started all over again, from the moment before.  “Bet­ter for me too,” I said.  “Bet­ter for Kreeper to be here.”

It seems to be the pro­found­est mys­tery of the world, where my father is now.

And home again, to cher­ish being with my mother.  Where on earth did her sense of design go since I seem to have inher­ited none of it; did it skip a gen­er­a­tion to emerge in Avery one day, when she has her own house?  My mother has spent the last six months throw­ing her­self into projects to enliven our child­hood house, her home of 45 years.  Every room is stamped with her inim­itable style: warm, cozy, personal.

Every room con­tains fur­ni­ture made by my father, dis­cov­ered and refin­ished by my mother, her hand­made sam­plers, her china col­lec­tion, her shadow boxes.  A home filled with the pos­ses­sions and love of a life­time of family.

She is brave beyond any­thing I could have imag­ined.  What fun we had.  She invited her best friend Janet to lunch, and I cooked for them a com­pli­cated, freshly sum­mery salad of chicken baked in a parme­san crust, on a bed of but­ter let­tuce with steamed heir­loom pur­ple pota­toes, tiny toma­toes, dev­illed eggs.  We rev­elled in each other’s com­pany, with a life­time of friend­ship to amuse us.

And we went out to lunch, to the gor­geous and mys­te­ri­ous (no sig­nage!) Black Mar­ket Bistro on Indianapolis’s Mass Ave.  Tongue salad with beets and cot­tage cheese!  Ice­berg let­tuce wedge with creamy dress­ing, roasted rain­bow trout on a bed of arugula with two kind of olives and pan­zanella — stale toasted bread, a sort of supe­rior crou­ton.  Heaven, with my old friend Amy.  A joy to see her.

An evening con­cert in an Indy “pocket park,” sur­rounded in the hot, steamy Indi­anapo­lis sum­mer air by old, cher­ished friends, here Shel­ley and Amy again!

Cozy times at home with my mother, my brother, going through child­hood mem­o­ries, some­times lit­er­ally in boxes.

Of course there was time to bond with Maisie, my mother’s boon com­pan­ion, furry con­so­la­tion in so many moments of the new life we are all learn­ing to accept, at home.

And one whole day spent cook­ing my mother’s — and my! — favorite foods, stop­ping to switch the sprin­kler in the gar­den, to try to draw breath in the awe­some Indi­ana humid­ity, and finally to wel­come old friends for a com­pletely heart­warm­ing sup­per party on the gor­geous back porch, built by my dad years ago.  Crab­cakes, Moroc­can meat­balls, fried huge shrimp, stuffed baked mush­rooms, col­or­ful three-cabbage slaw, steamed aspara­gus with shaved Asi­ago… and pals from the past.  What a joy to see Kevin and Todd…

My clos­est friend in the world from child­hood, Amy… turned up totally unex­pect­edly as my mother’s new land­scape gar­dener.  There IS such a thing as fate.

And happiest-making of all, Kevin’s and Amy’s gor­geous daugh­ters, first cousins and the clos­est of friends, Colleen and Jesi.  I believe that is the way we sur­vive the pains of adult­hood: we revel in watch­ing the next gen­er­a­tion leap whole­heart­edly into the joys of THEIR whirl­wind ride.  Long may it last.

That was my visit “home,” bit­ter­sweet, filled with child­hood and adult mem­o­ries, leav­ing me with grat­i­tude for the life I had as a lit­tle girl, with two lov­ing par­ents I cher­ish, a sis­ter and brother I love and don’t see nearly often enough, friends in abun­dance who still sur­round my mother with love.  A beau­ti­ful way to start my Amer­i­can summer.

John spent yes­ter­day on a tour of Bru­tal­ist archi­tec­ture at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity — and you thought BELL­RING­ING was an eso­teric pas­sion! — and came upon this build­ing, future aca­d­e­mic home of our daugh­ter, she hopes.  How else can she com­bine her sick imag­i­na­tion with her keen judge of char­ac­ter AND knowl­edge of Russ­ian?  All she has to do is get into Cambridge.

While he was absorb­ing the breeze­block and tiny pinched hor­i­zon­tal win­dows which are his delight, Avery was sleep­ing until 11, as befits a hard­work­ing future spy, and I, I was ring­ing my first rounds!  This means, for the unini­ti­ated, that I took my place for the first time among my fel­low five ringers, and upon a sig­nal from the first bell to ring, we all rang in downward-tune suc­ces­sion, each bell in its place, with proper tim­ing between the blows.  SCARY!  To hear the result of my ring­ing spread­ing out over the vil­lage, keep­ing my place as fourth in suc­ces­sion, over and over.  I wish I could tell you how it sounds.

And it went PER­FECTLY.  I stayed in my place, my teacher hav­ing told me before we began, “Just you fol­low what­ever Giles does.  When you see him begin to pull, YOU pull, because that’s just the space of time needed between bells.  Don’t obsess, don’t panic, just fol­low what­ever Giles does.”  “That sounds like a ter­ri­ble idea,” joked Giles in his turn!

It was beyond exhil­a­rat­ing to take my place, finally to serve the pur­pose that all these lessons have led to.  Ulti­mately, when I get a bit more prac­tice, I can ring the “call to ser­vice” with my fellows.

HEAVEN!  The only thing I couldn’t do was to stop on time!  In order to stop, you must get your bell right to the top of the bal­ance so it STAYS.  It’s harder than it sounds to do, and I’m afraid the vil­lage was treated to the sound of my bell ring­ing at least four times alone, after every­one else had com­pe­tently “stood down.”  It will come!  Details.  I can’t describe the sense of accom­plish­ment, and of cama­raderie, that I felt when my bell was finally set and every­one applauded!  How lucky I am to have found these peo­ple to guide me along the way.

“We couldn’t have you going off to Amer­ica with­out know­ing how to ring rounds,”  my tutor Edmund said stoutly.  “But they’re not expect­ing me to!“I said, laugh­ing.  “Well, now you’ll sur­prise them.”

This was the scene, last week, at the final social event for the lovely group of par­ents at Avery’s school who work together to keep lit­tle extras around the place going.  I rep­re­sent Lost Prop­erty, of course (in all I do, in fact, my heavy respon­si­bil­i­ties are never far from my mind), John has been in charge of all offi­cial mail­ings to par­ents about our activ­i­ties, and then there are the Ladies Who Arrange Flow­ers, the Ladies Who Arrange The­atre Out­ings To Raise Money, and so on.  We gather every sum­mer term to gos­sip, say good­bye to the out­go­ing head of our group, and to eat deli­cious food in someone’s beau­ti­ful con­ser­va­tory, as you see.

I took a salad of her­itage toma­toes, fresh arti­choke hearts and bur­rata, that creami­est of all pos­si­ble moz­zarel­las, with a sim­ple dress­ing of lemon juice and super-intense olive oil.  But that was the least of the offer­ings.  Elspeth, the host­ess, had made a salad of cold bas­mati rice and poached chicken, a tart of spinach and feta cheese with pinenuts, and espe­cially for me, cele­riac enthu­si­ast, a salad of the shred­ded cel­ery root with toma­toes, whole grain mus­tard and white wine vine­gar.  When I make it, I will share the recipe.

But a sug­ges­tion I can give you, for these hot sum­mer days, is a plat­ter of crunchy baguette slices, topped with any­thing and every­thing that takes your fancy.

These lit­tle delights were topped with moz­zarella and goats cheese for Avery, and that plus avo­cado slices, halved tiny toma­toes, fresh home­made pesto, and our savoury favorite: anchovies mashed with but­ter and sim­mered until liq­uid.  That mix­ture is sim­ply the ulti­mate in umami, that mys­te­ri­ous, savoury “fifth fla­vor” that is so much the rage these days.

This is the per­fect meal for a hot, HOT day when your Aga is still heat­ing up the kitchen because you can’t bear to turn it off.  All you have to do is toast the baguette slices, melt the but­ter and anchovies, and then BACK AWAY from the stove and assem­ble your lit­tle bites in cool com­fort, some­where far from the heat.

Thank good­ness the heat broke for my day with Bee, a vir­tual friend who, until Wednes­day, I had known only by her bril­liantly thought­ful and inspir­ing blog, “From the Desk of Bee Drunken.”  As you will see when you begin to read her insight­ful and mov­ing posts, I was very, very excited to meet her finally, in per­son.  We made a plan to find each other at La Fro­magerie, sim­ply the best of all pos­si­ble cheese­mon­gers, in Maryle­bone.  And from the moment we met, it was love at first sight!  Our “hello” quickly turned into a warm hug, which the mor­phed into a five-hour con­ver­sa­tion that did not begin to make a dent in what we had to say to each other.

We closed down the cof­fee ser­vice at La Fro­magerie, and mean­dered down the High Street to Le Relais de Venise, the best spot for steak frites in the world out­side Paris — Bee is a Texan, and she knows her steak — and pro­ceeded to close THEM down as well, talk­ing with fever­ish glee.  I had taken along my cam­era to get an image of her, but we were far too busy for me to remem­ber to do it!  We dis­cussed the joys of writ­ing, the joys of daugh­ters, our many moves around the world, our favorite books.  Would you believe we share two favorite authors, nei­ther of them well-known!  We both believe the nov­els of Lau­rie Col­win to be the apogee of fic­tion, and the mem­oirs of Anne  Mor­row Lind­bergh to be the high­est level of the genre to be found.  “When I find out some­one loves Lau­rie Col­win,” Bee said, “it’s not that I know I will LIKE the per­son, but I know we will meet on a very impor­tant level.”

But we DID like each other!  There is an irre­place­able joy in dis­cov­er­ing a new soulmate.

As impor­tant as shar­ing a happy after­noon filled with laugh­ter, though, is the knowl­edge that I have another ally in this per­plex­ing busi­ness of liv­ing.  When life throws me the occa­sional day of despair, of inex­plic­a­ble lone­li­ness, or unname­able dread, when even the com­pany of my beloved fam­ily can­not quite lift my gloom, I am so often saved by reach­ing to one of the girl­friends I cher­ish.  So often, their blend of humor, empa­thy, energy and love lifts me up.  I am so lucky that in Bee, I have one more friend in my arsenal.

This knowl­edge makes life a lit­tle more deli­cious, and mixed with a lit­tle fresh pesto, I am all set.

Fresh Pesto

(serves four as sauce for starter with pasta)

4 cups loosely packed whole fresh basil leaves
¾ cup extra vir­gin olive oil
juice ½ lemon
3 tbsps pine nuts
3 tbsps grated pecorino or Parme­san cheese
2 cloves gar­lic, roughly chopped
pinch sea salt to taste

Place all ingre­di­ents in food proces­sor and blend till smooth, tak­ing care to scrape the pesto away from the sides of the proces­sor to incor­po­rate all bits.

This pesto is equally good as a dress­ing for tomato salad with moz­zarella, or driz­zled over a white fish like cod, sea bream, sea bass or lemon sole. Try adding a spoon­ful to any vinai­grette. It is lovely treated like a salsa verde and served along­side grilled pork, beef or lamb. Stir some into mashed pota­toes for the side dish of your life.

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To think that a week from today I’ll be at my mother’s house in Indi­anapo­lis, far away from the exotic cheeses and bells and school events of Lon­don.  A few days after that, I will be hap­pily ensconced in my lit­tle dormered house in Con­necti­cut, look­ing out at the big red barn, mak­ing Amer­i­can plans, see­ing Amer­i­can friends and fam­ily, in a dif­fer­ent world, really.  I am ready for the break, actu­ally.  I will spend the sum­mer reflect­ing on all the joys of Lon­don life.  See you there.