No, not this lovely salad. That’s the flank steak dish I told you about yes­ter­day, with shred­ded car­rots added to the sec­ond try. Avery says this: “The bean sprouts are already kind of sweet, and the beef is so savory, that I worry it over­pow­ers the beef to add car­rots, but it’s good.” I like them for the color, but you try it both ways and see. We’ve finally come to the end of the left­over flank steak. I love what Gladys Taber says about left­overs, “it’s a ter­ri­ble word. ‘Remain­ders’ is even worse.” But if you can use things in a nice way, it’s so sat­is­fy­ing and budget-conscious.

No, what I’m talk­ing about as far as diet-busting, uber-rich, super special-treat, is… Home­made Fried Chicken! Have you ever fried chicken? Nei­ther had I, until last night. For some rea­son it sounded so good, and so ambi­tious to do, that I thought about it all after­noon and read Lau­rie Colwin’s recipe in Home Cook­ing (here adapted by Sara Moul­ton for the Food Net­work, and Bobby Flay’s online ver­sion, and then adapted both sets of instruc­tions to my own approach. Mostly I needed help in depth of oil, tim­ing and what to do with it when it’s cooked. Turns out, the short answers are: 2 inches, 12 min­utes, lay it on paper tow­els. But here’s the real deal. The secret to my fla­vor­ing is a table­spoon of a new spice blend I found in the fab­u­lous Pen­zeys Spice Shop in Min­neapo­lis, led there by my tal­ented and ener­getic niece Sarah.

Home­made Fried Chicken
(serves 6)

1 chicken cut up (breast halves cut in half again)
1 cup milk
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tbsp each: Fox Point sea­son­ing, paprika, gar­lic salt, lemon pep­per
Wes­son Oil to fill 2 inches deep in large, deep-sided skil­let (with a lid)

Mix the spices in the flour by means of a leak-proof plas­tic bag (pos­si­bly the one you car­ried the chicken home in?).

Have a bowl ready for your milk, a big bowl for your sea­soned flour, a plat­ter for the floured pieces, and the skil­let ready full of oil. Since I am noto­ri­ously bad at keep­ing track of heat­ing skil­lets, I waited until I had fin­ished dip­ping the chicken pieces to heat the oil. Prob­a­bly you can pay atten­tion to each, and if so, more power to you.

Dip each chicken piece in milk and wet every bit. Then place in sea­soned flour and pack as much flour as you can on each piece, lay­ing each one on the plat­ter when you’ve fin­ished. When you’re fin­ished, dust a lit­tle more sea­soned flour on the wait­ing layer of chicken pieces.

DON AN APRON. I’m not kid­ding. And place either a dish­towel or some paper towel on the floor under the front of the stove. But don’t slide on it!

Heat the oil until a piece of bread on the end of a fork fries imme­di­ately when placed in the oil. Then places as many pieces as you can of the chicken in the bub­bling oil. You can crowd a bit, because the chicken pieces shrink as they cook. Cover imme­di­ately and cook for about 5 min­utes, then turn each piece care­fully. Con­tinue to cover and cook, turn and cover and cook, sev­eral times, but let­ting at least 10 min­utes elapse for the breast quar­ters and wings, and at least 14 min­utes for the thighs and drum­sticks. When they look brown and appeal­ing, they are ready. Remove to a clean plat­ter lined with paper tow­els and let rest for about 5 min­utes before eating.

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

Ambrosia! But RICH. If you’re like our fam­ily, you don’t eat much fried food. You’ll be sur­prised at how lit­tle it takes to sat­isfy you. Then quickly wrap up any left­overs, drive to your neigh­bor Farmer Rol­lie and his wife Judy, and donate them. They will be thrilled, and it’s a good excuse to sit and gos­sip for a bit.

We’re off to the pool. More later…

Be hon­est: how many times have you ordered a pizza and when it comes, and you’re eat­ing it, you think, “This tastes like noth­ing.” Then you start to think that you paid, what, 8 pounds for it, 15 or so pounds if you got two, and it tastes like… noth­ing. Plus you have to get rid of those boxes. The whole sce­nario is annoy­ing. And the only rea­son you did it was to save time because you got home late from the sta­ble or the skat­ing rink and it was all you could think of. Well, that can be his­tory. All you have to do is invest a lit­tle bit of time and a lit­tle bit of knead­ing, and a really fab­u­lous pizza is in your future. Trust me: if you hate to cook, have scram­bled eggs, but if you like to cook at ALL, don’t order another pizza, just do this:

Pizza at Home
(serves four today and four later in the week)

4 cups “strong flour”, like Hovis, plus more for dust­ing
2 cups-ish warm water
1 sachet pow­dered yeast (Hovis fast action is good)
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp dried thyme leaves
1 tbsp dried oregano
1 tsp sea salt
olive oil for brushing

Veg­gies: thin-sliced red pep­pers, red onions, toma­toes
Cheeses: shred­ded com­mer­cial moz­zarella, sliced fresh moz­zarella, goats cheese
Meats: pro­sciutto, parma ham, salami, sausage
Sauces: fresh pesto, tomato sauce, harissa

Don’t be shy. I was shy about get­ting my hands messy, but it was fine in the end. Of course, I was with my intre­pid cook­ing friend Vin­cent when I made my maiden dough voy­age, but you can do it too. Just pre­tend that some­one brave is stand­ing beside you to guide you through the uncharted waters. Take off all your rings, bracelets and watch, wash your hands thor­oughly, and go.

Pour the flour into a large bowl. With a whisk, mix the yeast and sugar into the warm water (the tem­per­a­ture should be like that of a baby’s bot­tle of milk). Let the water and yeast sit for a bit while you find your herbs and scat­ter them onto the flour. Now begin to mix the herbs into the flour, add the salt, and the water should be ready: a bit bub­bly on top. Pour your­self a lit­tle mound of extra flour on a VERY clean coun­ter­top (I don’t have a pas­try insert, but some lucky peo­ple do). Pour about half your water onto the flour and DIG IN. Mix it with your hands in a sort of scoop­ing, rolling motion. It will stick to your hands like crazy, but don’t fret. It will come off. Add more water and keep mix­ing until the dough is elastic-feeling and sticky, but not liq­uidy. If you add too much water, don’t worry: add more flour. As Vin­cent says, “It’s its own thing, you can’t hurt it.” Grad­u­ally the ball will pick up most of the bits inside the bowl and then you know you’re done mix­ing. Does that make sense? It’s eas­ier to do than to describe, I’m finding!

When the dough is a nice sticky ball in the bowl, cover it with a clean dish­towel and leave it for about an hour and a half. All you have to do to get your hands clean is to dust them with lots of flour and rub them together: the dough gets dry and falls off, very neatly.

The dough should just about dou­ble in bulk. Then give it a few nice whacks with your fist and turn it out onto your very clean, flour-covered coun­ter­top. You should have enough for two piz­zas, so cut the dough in half and wrap one of them in plas­tic wrap to save in the fridge for the next time (this dough will stay nice and fresh for at least three days). Knead the dough, dust­ing with flour all the time, turn­ing the edges under and turn­ing the ball around so you’re con­stantly turn­ing under a new edge. Knead for about 10 minutes.

With a flour-covered rolling pin, roll out the dough into the shape of your pizza pan (I used a nice perforated-bottomed round pizza pan, but you can use any­thing, even a cookie sheet). Remem­ber to keep flour­ing the coun­ter­top so the dough does not stick.
Spread the dough out onto the pan. With a pas­try brush, brush olive oil over the whole surface.

Now you can top your pizza. Start with the sauce, whichever you choose (or all!). Then layer the veg­eta­bles over the sauce. Avery intel­li­gently pointed out that the onions should be under every­thing else, so they don’t just friz­zle and get black, since they’re not very liq­uidy. Add what­ever meats you like (or all! or none), and fin­ish with cheese. Bake in a hot oven (400-ish) for about 25 min­utes, or until the cheeses are nice and bub­bly. Voila.

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

I guar­an­tee you that this pizza will be more savory, more fresh, and more nutri­tious than any­thing you could bring in. Plus cheaper, and your kitchen will smell cozy and invit­ing. And if I can do it, any­one can. I never bake, and I can tell you that I had to buy a new pas­try brush, and a rolling pin, just for the pur­pose of mak­ing this pizza. And I’m glad I did. Thank you, dear Vin­cent, for mak­ing it so easy and tempt­ing to do on my own. I have to say, a sil­i­cone pas­try brush is a dandy lit­tle item to have in your kitchen: it comes per­fectly, ele­gantly clean every time. I’m sure in no time I’ll be glaz­ing every flat sur­face in my home with egg white, but for now, olive oil on pizza crust is quite enough.

If you don’t want to go to the admit­ted bit of effort that a pizza takes, how about a nice shoul­der of pork? So inex­pen­sive and so deli­cious. And effort-free, nearly. And the cook­ing aro­mas will bring every­one in your house into the kitchen, ask­ing, “When do we eat?” Last night Avery was curled up in the chair in the kitchen, book in hand, and said, “Gosh, it’s cozy in here.”

Roast Shoul­der of Pork with Rose­mary and Gar­lic
(serves eight)

1 shoul­der of pork, rolled and tied

four stems fresh rose­mary, leaves removed and chopped
4 cloves gar­lic, chopped
juice of 1 lemon
1 tsp sea salt
sev­eral grinds of fresh black pep­per
1 tbsp olive oil

Mix all the mari­nade ingre­di­ents and smear (awful word) over the shoul­der of pork. Place in a bak­ing dish sprayed with non­stick spray. Roast at 350 degrees for at least two hours (if you turn the oven down lower it can roast even longer). Couldn’t be eas­ier, and the meat is sim­ply divine: ten­der, juicy, salty.

If you can get pea sprouts where you live, DO. I’m not 100% sure why they are called pea sprouts, when they look like noth­ing so much as lit­tle spinach leaves. But Marks and Spencer say they’re pea sprouts, and ever since I had them at E&O in Not­ting Hill, I have been devoted to them. You need a LOT to feed even three peo­ple, because like all green leaves, they cook down instantly into almost noth­ing. So count on a pack­age per per­son, at least. They are so good for you, too.

Asian Wilted Pea Sprouts
(serves four)

4 pack­ages pea sprouts (about 8 cups, loosely packed), washed and spun dry
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp mirin (Japan­ese rice wine)
juice of 1 lime
2 cloves gar­lic, finely minced

In a large skil­let, place all the sauce ingre­di­ents and sim­mer until gar­lic is nicely soft­ened. Pile all the greens into the skil­let and hold over low heat, lift­ing the greens with tongs until all have been coated with the sauce. The leaves will grad­u­ally wilt down to a frac­tion of their vol­ume. So sim­ple, so deli­cious. The stems have a lit­tle crunch and the leaves are silky and refreshing.

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

All right, we’re off to make a lit­tle tour of the neigh­bor­hood that encloses our lat­est house pos­si­bil­ity. It’s a for­mer vic­arage, so the estate agents say, just below Ham­mer­smith Road. Not a loca­tion to make you sit up and sing, per­haps, and the house is so ridicu­lously over-priced that it makes you won­der if any­thing the estate agents say can pos­si­bly true. Maybe it’s not a vic­arage at all; maybe it’s the for­mer head­quar­ters of MI6. We are get­ting seri­ously fatigued by the house hunt. Even John, who pre­vi­ous to this excur­sion could have, I would say, looked at houses infi­nitely, is tired of the search. We have just two weeks before we leave for the sum­mer in Con­necti­cut and some­thing deep within me would like to have a house before we go. Wish us luck…

Before you get all scared, this pho­to­graph is not a soup of any kind, it’s the mac­a­roni and cheese I made as an anti­dote to the soup, which was odd. Wasn’t it Abra­ham Lin­coln who said, “If you like that kind of thing, it’s the kind of thing you’ll like”? If not, then I said it, because this homily per­fectly expresses the way I feel about the soup I invented today (vaguely inspired by a recipe in Hello! mag­a­zine, maybe that’s the root of the prob­lem). I think it was good, if only I liked that kind of thing. But I don’t. And nei­ther does John. So I passed it along to Becky, who is the sort of friend who will try some­thing you pref­ace with, “I didn’t really like it, so why don’t you have a go?” The jury is still out with their fam­ily, as I fear she may make every­one try it. The more taste­buds the better.

But before I go any fur­ther with that, my mac­a­roni and cheese turned out com­pletely won­der­ful, and I’m ashamed to say that in the run-up to din­ner, when Avery is meant to be in her bath, I should be doing the salad, John’s pay­ing bills online, in real­ity we are all snatch­ing lit­tle bites from the per­fect bub­bly sur­face. So all was not lost in my culi­nary day.

And the mem­o­ries of last night’s din­ner in Lon­don Bridge at Vincent’s house should have been enough, alone, to pro­pel one through a Sun­day after­noon. For a ton of peo­ple, includ­ing lots of chil­dren, on a cold, spitty, rainy Sat­ur­day night in Lon­don, the enor­mous pot of ragu he served (with penne and shaved parme­san) was the per­fect dish. Now do not be intim­i­dated by the num­ber of ingre­di­ents. For one thing, all the veg­eta­bles can be chopped in your food proces­sor. And any­way, this is the type of recipe that you put­ter at, while lis­ten­ing to Edward Pether­bridge read­ing “A Pre­sump­tion of Death.” Have you heard about Jill Paton Walsh’s stew­ard­ship of the Lord Peter Wim­sey legacy? Dorothy L. Say­ers left behind notes for sev­eral Wim­sey books, after her death, and Walsh has done a remark­able job with this one, recre­at­ing the char­ac­ters of “Busman’s Hon­ey­moon” per­fectly, but not as a par­ody. Any­way, with a great audio­book at your ears, you can tie on your apron and get cooking.

Spicy Party Ragu
(serves 8 easily)

1 pound minced lamb
1/2 pound each: minced beef, veal, pork, smoked streaky bacon (Amer­i­can style)
2 large chorizo sausages
1 large onion, roughly chopped
1 pound mush­rooms, roughly chopped
1 each red, green, yel­low pep­pers, roughly chopped
1 medium aubergine (egg­plant), roughly chopped
4 fresh toma­toes, roughly chopped
2 soup-size tins peeled plum toma­toes
1/2 large bot­tle of tomato sauce
2 tbsp of tomato puree
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp each dried oregano, basil, thyme
chili flakes to taste (but don’t be a wimp!)
2 bay leaves
1 cup red wine
Hand­ful fresh oregano
Hand­ful fresh basil
Hand­ful fresh thyme
4 large cloves of gar­lic, minced

Optional:

3 cups frozen prawns
3 cups frozen oys­ters
3 cups chicken pieces cut into 1cm cubes

Put a large pot to the side of the stove. As you cook each batch of ingre­di­ents, place them in the large pot. In a large fry­ing pan, begin by cook­ing all the meat (In sep­a­rate batches, though you can com­bine veal and beef) until browned and sea­son with salt and pep­per to taste. Whizz the bacon in your food proces­sor till it is in 1 cm pieces. Cook until crispy, and be sure to add at least some of the ren­dered bacon fat
with the meat to the pot. Saute the chorizo last. When the sausages are done, set aside to cool. In a food proces­sor, pre­pare the vegetables.

With plenty of olive oil, start by saute­ing the onions in the same pan you cooked the meats in. When they are start­ing to brown, add the mush­rooms. When the mush­rooms have soft­ened a bit, add the aubergines and finally the pep­pers. When the veg­eta­bles are all done, add them to the pot with the meat. Whizz the cooled chorizo to the same size bits as the cooked ground meat you already have in the pot, and add to the pot. Add the fresh, tinned, pureed and pasted tomato to the pot along with the bay leaves and the red wine. Bring the mix to a roil­ing sim­mer and turn the heat down to a medium-low level. Add the rest of the dried herbs, chili and sugar. Cook for at least 2 hours (the longer the bet­ter), stir­ring from time to time. The sauce will ren­der quite a bit of liq­uid and look soupy for a while, and then as you con­tinue to sim­mer it, the liq­uid will boil away. Turn the heat down low and add the optional ingre­di­ents if you choose to use them. Just before serv­ing, add the chopped fresh herbs and the gar­lic. Taste for salt and pep­per, give it a good stir and leave it alone until you’re ready to serve. Serve over penne with shaved parmesan.

***********

This was sub­lime. Of course as well there was a beau­ti­ful salad with beet­root sprouts, a lux­u­ri­ous cheese­board and an enor­mous, mas­sive, lime-spiked cheese­cake for pud­ding. There with us were Vincent’s ele­gant French step­mother, two rather famous Eng­lish archi­tects and their beau­ti­ful blond chil­dren (I think we could fix up the lit­tle boy with Avery right now and save all that dat­ing non­sense later on), an Amer­i­can diplo­mat and his Ger­man wife, and a Niger­ian fash­ion designer. It was like eat­ing at the UN. And we stayed so late! I am so old now that I really feel it if I’ve been up late, plus I find I have to stay up for a cer­tain num­ber of hours after I get home, think­ing about what every­one said and did. So Sun­day found me rather lazily walk­ing around the Maryle­bone Farmer’s Mar­ket, try­ing to be inspired. Unfor­tu­nately what I was inspired to do was this soup, on which I wel­come com­ments, or bet­ter ver­sions. Was it too much orange?

But­ter­nut Squash Soup with Orange
(serves 6)

3 tbsps but­ter
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 but­ter­nut squash, seeded and peeled and cut in small cubes
juice and zest of 4 oranges
800 g chicken stock
2 tsps curry pow­der
1/2 tsp chili pow­der
salt to taste
1/2 cup creme fraiche
chives to garnish

In a medium saucepan, melt the but­ter and soften the gar­lic, then add squash and stir till coated with but­ter. Cover with stock, add juice and zest, and sim­mer until soft, then puree with a hand blender and run through a sieve if you like a finer tex­ture. Add spices and whisk in creme fraiche. Sim­mer until thick, and gar­nish with chopped chives.

***********

So what went wrong? I tasted it, John tasted it, we added more spices, more salt. It was tasty. But I didn’t like it, and nei­ther did he. So I packed it up and took it to Becky, who tasted it and at first she liked it, then she thought per­haps it had a bit­ter after­taste. Did I sim­mer it too long and the zest got nasty? Too much orange? I don’t know. I still think the con­cept is good, and it was cer­tainly very pretty and undoubt­edly nutritious.

But din­ner time saw us crouched hap­pily over our mac­a­roni and cheese, and bangers, and a huge salad of my favorite lamb’s let­tuce and rocket, with cucum­bers. Ah well, you exper­i­ment, some­times you suc­ceed, friends cook bril­liantly for you, and then you end up with the old favorites on a Sun­day evening. I’m sure there’s a moral in all that somewhere.

This will be rather an odd week, I think. Or at least toward the end. Avery’s school term ends on Thurs­day at noon, at which point she and her lit­tle friends will repair to Build-a-Bear in Covent Gar­den for beloved Anna’s birth­day party. Becky is a saint to host them there yet another time. Then a sleep­over, then Fri­day we drive Avery down to Sur­rey for three days and nights of… pony camp! At the coun­try out­post of Ross Nye Sta­bles, where she’ll sleep in some­thing called a yurt (?) and eat who knows what, and spend all the days muck­ing out stalls and rid­ing. She has never been away from home for more than a sin­gle night, and I don’t think she’s ever done any­thing that John and I have never done. Been some­where we’ve never been! What a mile­stone. I won­der what on earth John and I will find to do in her absence. Well, for one thing we’re going to spend the Fri­day night in a very sweet-sounding coun­try hotel, the Angel Post­ing House, near the camp. But then we’ll have the whole week­end on our own. I’m sure we can find some­thing to keep us out of trouble…

That’s one of Avery’s and my favorite lines from the Lau­rie Col­win book “Fam­ily Hap­pi­ness.” Two Euro­pean immi­grants are shar­ing child­hood songs, in Ger­man, and trans­lat­ing them for their fam­i­lies. After one par­tic­u­larly silly song, though, Klaro says, “There is no trans­la­tion for this song. It is merely some inco­her­ent rav­ings about food.”

So I have had a very foody few days, and have been work­ing hard on both my own cook­book and the edit­ing job I’m meant to be doing for Gladys Taber’s work, for her grand­daugh­ter Anne Colby in Con­necti­cut. I thought that in addi­tion to keep­ing you up to date on how rid­ing is going in Wim­ble­don, and how we spent our week­end, it might be nice to give you a cou­ple of excel­lent recipes that my friend Susan and I have been shar­ing and com­ment­ing on. That’s the beauty of food. Some­one invites you for lunch and you love what she serves, so you ask for the recipe. Then you get to nat­ter on in your email exchange about not just the recipe, but what’s hap­pen­ing in Form Four at King’s Col­lege, and what I might say at the Royal Acad­emy where Susan works, when I lec­ture on my sculp­tor. We also get to trade hus­band sto­ries and go off on tan­gents about odd peo­ple we know in com­mon. Then you invite her to din­ner and she likes what you made, and it all gets started again. It’s so much more than just eat­ing. And every time I make this curry dish, or she makes my fried rice, we will tell the peo­ple we’re feed­ing all about each other, and for the moment I’ll be in Susan’s kitchen with her, and she’ll be in mine. I love that about food.

I’m not going to lie to you: both of these recipes require that you like mess­ing about with food. They’re not short­cuts and they’re not labor-free. They also have two other things in com­mon: once you’ve made them, you’ll never want to have the takeaway/order-out ver­sions of either of them again. And they’re great for left­overs, which helps with the effort you’re putting in. These are recipes for a day when you have some time early on, per­haps, and then a chunk of time when you can’t be in the kitchen, and then some time right before you want to eat.

Susan’s Moroc­can Chicken Curry

2 tbsps olive oil
2 tbsps but­ter
2 onions, chopped
4 car­rots, chopped or grated
3 bone­less whole chicken breasts, well trimmed and cut into bite-size chunks
2 apples, coarsely chopped
4 oranges, squeezed and pulp included, but no seeds
1 large chunk of fresh gin­ger, peeled & grated
1 tsp gin­ger pow­der
4 tbsps sweet curry pow­der, not hot
2 cups chicken stock
1 cup white wine
2 cups sin­gle cream

In a large, deep saucepan, melt the but­ter with the olive oil. Add the onions, then the car­rots and let them cook/soften a bit (as for a risotto). Then add the chicken chunks, stir and brown a bit. Then add the apple, the orange juice, the gin­ger, the curry, the stock and the wine. Sim­mer for about 10 min­utes, then add the cream. In total, for this to be prop­erly cooked, it should gen­tly sim­mer for about 45 min­utes. You can then re-heat it before eat­ing, or once cooled, put it away in the fridge until the next day.

This is a very flex­i­ble recipe – you can vary how fine or coarse every­thing gets chopped, and you can vary the fla­vors accord­ing to taste (more orange, spicier curry, etc.) Some­times I have also used some plain yogurt in addi­tion to cream. Serve with Bas­mati Rice (always steamed in one and a half times the amount of water as rice).

Kristen’s Fes­tive Fried Rice

An Unde­ter­mined Amount of Peanut Oil
1 red onion, diced
three cloves gar­lic, diced
1 big chunk gin­ger, peeled and chopped
2 cups of left­over pork, chicken, beef or prawns, cut in bite-size pieces (more than one of these if you like)

1 cup each: chopped broc­coli, car­rots, red pep­pers, sugar snap peas, green beans (diced small)
1 bunch green or “salad” onions, sliced thin
1 hand­ful bean sprouts

three eggs, beaten thor­oughly
dash sesame oil
soy sauce to taste

2 cups bas­mati rice

First, put the rice to cook with three cups water and salt. Then, in a hot wok, cover the bot­tom with peanut oil and saute the gar­lic, gin­ger, onion and meat until hot through, and the gar­lic, etc. are nicely soft­ened, then remove with a slot­ted spoon to a really big bowl. Then saute the broc­coli, car­rots, pep­per, sugar snap peas and green beans until just cooked, and remove also with slot­ted spoon to join the meat. Add more peanut oil to the wok if needed, and a dash of sesame oil. Then saute the salad onions till soft, and just briefly toss in the bean sprouts, then remove all to the big bowl. Take this chance to check the rice, which will cook in about 20 min­utes. Fluff it up and keep the lid off to encour­age extra steam to escape and dry the rice up a bit.

Heat the oil again and throw in the eggs, scram­bling very quickly and keep­ing them mov­ing con­stantly until they are bro­ken up. Now, toss in every­thing from the big bowl, and the rice, and fluff all until hot through.

Serve with plenty of soy sauce.

So there you have it! Two really good things to eat. If you leave out the meat from the rice dish, it’s an absolutely guilt-free, nearly fat-free veg­e­tar­ian option, good for when you’re feel­ing guilty from… all that creamy chicken curry!

As you can see from the above photo, Avery did not ride the wacky Bis­cuit on Thurs­day; instead as a sort of vaca­tion she rode Cookie (yes, there’s an after-school-snack theme in the names, I agree). But that sim­ple sen­tence masks the sheer hell­ish annoy­ance that was get­ting to Wim­ble­don on a Thurs­day after­noon after school, when tem­per­a­tures in Lon­don had risen to an unholy 80 degrees with no warn­ing, and half the tube lines shut down because some­thing essen­tial was threat­en­ing to melt. I picked Avery up at school where she began what was to be a recur­ring lament about how tired she was. Not con­ducive to a pleas­ant trip to do some­thing I had absolutely no inter­est in to begin with, with sweat pour­ing down our faces as we strug­gled with half of the Lon­don com­muters in exis­tence. Why did every­one want to go to Wim­ble­don? And of course on the way back there was an equal num­ber of peo­ple strug­gling to get to Cen­tral Lon­don. I wanted to wave my magic wand and tell all the peo­ple on both ends of the mis­er­able jour­ney to stay where they were for heaven’s sake. One of those days when one’s inter­est in humanity’s con­tin­u­ing wanes.

We got there finally and she rode off across the Com­mon, alas with­out me since her usual instruc­tor who gives us a ride to the arena was not there and I didn’t have the energy to walk the three or so miles to fol­low her. Instead I wan­dered around Bay­ley and Sage spend­ing money on things like tape­nade, porcini-stuffed tortellini and other things you buy when you’re a) killing time and b) starv­ing. The out­door beer gar­den of the Dog and Fox pub adja­cent to the sta­ble filled with unap­peal­ing youngish white Eng­lish­men with pasty faces and badly-cut suits. Ick. The barn staff pre­pared for a “train­ing din­ner” that was to con­sist of any­thing and every­thing thrown on the bar­bie, so I was smoked out from the bench where I had been try­ing to read my tacky tabloid news­pa­per (learn­ing that a sin­gu­larly hideous Picasso had sold for $52 mil­lion at Sotheby’s. The sec­ond most pricey paint­ing by that Span­ish lout was “reputed” to have been bought by Las Vegas hote­lier Steve Wynn, and I was in the slightly cool posi­tion of know­ing that he had bought it, because in the hey­day of my gallery when I sold him an enor­mous Miriam Schapiro can­vas he indi­cated his ulti­mate goal of pos­sess­ing said Picasso paint­ing no mat­ter what the cost).

Finally Avery returned, and far from hav­ing had a lovely relax­ing ride on a not-insane pony, she had been forced to con­trol a rabid Cookie when she was attacked and bit­ten by an off-lead dog on the trail. Can it never be calm! We sweated our way home on one bus, one train, another bus. John came out of the house to meet us on the pave­ment and in answer to his cheery cocktail-in-hand greet­ing, “So how was it?” I merely handed Avery and all her clob­ber to him and said, “Don’t ask, here is your child.” Mean­ing the sweaty, exhausted, filthy, cranky one, as opposed to my child, who is always charming.

So much for the Thurs­day after­noon expe­ri­ence. Once a week, on the week­end, WITH her father, is quite enough barn, I opined.

I’ve gone shop­ping! I bought a tiny lit­tle pair of sort of full­ish shorts, that look like a skirt when they’re on. Dark gray blue, all the rage. And a lit­tle brown peas­anty top, and a pair of black “foot­less tights,” which sim­ply scream 1986 to me, but hey, they worked back then and they work now. They will be so cute under a longish tunic that I have been sav­ing for just such a devel­op­ment. I went to the French Con­nec­tion UK, whose acronym in adver­tise­ments always causes Avery to screw her eyes shut and say “bad word, bad word.” Avery spent Fri­day night at Anna’s house, in advance of the big birth­day party the next day, so John and I had quite the most divine Indian din­ner out EVER. A lovely, swelle­gant place around the cor­ner called Deya. A lit­tle com­pli­men­tary starter of a teacup-sized por­tion of lentil soup, with a tem­pura mush­room sus­pended over the top from a tooth­pick laid across! Very clever. Then onto a crab fried rice with sweet­corn (no! it was good!), black truf­fles and corian­der, then a chicken dish that was good but not crazy good, and creamed spinach and saf­fron pota­toes. I asked so many ques­tions of the waiter that finally he and his maitre d’ were hud­dled by the kitchen look­ing at me as if I were Gael Greene come to Lon­don, and after that we got star treat­ment! I must be a famous restau­rant critic in heavy dis­guise! What fun. And so nice to have a Date.

Sat­ur­day we bit the bul­let and assem­bled the sup­ple­men­tary book­shelves from John Lewis. My lack of both man­ual dex­ter­ity and spa­tial rela­tions stunned even my hus­band, who must be used to it by now. But tomor­row I plan to spend the day fill­ing the two in my study and thus emp­ty­ing the last of the hor­rid mov­ing boxes. Then I can hang pic­tures on my wall and be all fin­ished with the “I just arrived” look I’ve got so sick of. Every­thing has to be nice for the Fri­day Form Four cof­fee morn­ing here. I’m quite nervous!

So, don’t you think the answer to that ques­tion sim­ply defines peo­ple?  I always want the bad news first and then I can’t hear the good news by the time I get it, which tells you a lot about me.

Hmm, since I don’t know your answer I’ll go for my sys­tem: we have no heat or hot water!  No, your cur­sor didn’t acci­den­tally send you back to last week, or to last month.  Nope, it’s hap­pened again.  But let’s skip right from that and the fact that I am com­pletely sweaty and stinky from shelv­ing all my books, and Avery’s hands are beyond inky, but no one can take a bath.  Really, we’ll skip right from that to the good news which is… which is… see?  I can’t remem­ber.  No, now I do: my book­shelves are filled!  The flip side of that is the fact that there is still a box of my books to be shelved, plus four boxes of Avery’s books.  I think the only solu­tion is a quick trip to John Lewis over the week­end and see what we can just take home with us in the way of a piece of shelv­ing fur­ni­ture, if any­thing.  Lon­don fur­ni­ture stores delight in that dreaded phrase, “lead time.”  It could eas­ily be eight weeks, but let’s not think about that.

I found so many things I for­got I had!  Excel­lent mys­ter­ies, although I’m ashamed to say how many dupli­cate copies I have (“I really need to read ‘The 4:50 From Padding­ton’ and I can’t find my copy!  Quick one-click stop on Ama­zon”), a copy of my own dis­ser­ta­tion!  and other trea­sures. I cry every time I read “Under a Wing,” the Lind­bergh daugh­ter Reeve’s stun­ning mem­oir of her father), and then there were all my child­hood Nancy Drews.  Avery is right now run­ning up and down the stairs with piles of books she for­got she had, happy as a clam.

Lis­ten to what we’re hav­ing for din­ner and put it in your mem­ory for the night you can’t bear to go out to the gro­cery because it’s sleet­ing and you have no heat and hot water.  No, don’t put it under that nasty mem­ory.  It’s just totally easy.  Place a whole stick of but­ter in a heavy pot, throw in sev­eral sliced cloves of gar­lic and an onion that you’ve cut in half and sliced roughly.  Add two large cans (not the cans, I mean the con­tents) of peeled plum toma­toes, a splash of cheap red wine and a good two table­spoons of Ital­ian sea­son­ing.  Now put it on a sim­mer and go away.  Look at your filled book­shelves and gloat.  Come back every 15 min­utes or so to stir, and burst the toma­toes with your spoon.  After 45 min­utes it’s ready, but it can also sit there, for close to two hours, really low heat, if it needs to while your hus­band walks in and goes apoplec­tic over the non-existent boiler.  Grrr.  Boil some spaghetti dur­ing the last ten min­utes, make sure you’ve got some grated cheese, pecorino of parme­san, and you’re done. With this we’re hav­ing a vari­a­tion on the salad I talked about last, this one chunks of tomato and avo­cado, with a dress­ing I think is a pretty good imi­ta­tion of the weird steak­house one from yes­ter­day.  Three parts olive oil to one part any kind of vine­gar and one part dijon mus­tard, plus a quar­ter tea­spoon curry pow­der and a quar­ter tea­spoon ground cumin, plus some salt and pep­per.  And a blue­berry cof­fee cake of my own design, with a sunken gooey cen­ter that Avery loves.

I’m drop­ping with tiredness!