beat­ing the grey day blues

I’m a bit down, truth to tell.  Walk­ing home from drop­ping Avery off at school, with the first of the autumn leaves falling around me, I ana­lyzed this situation.

Recov­er­ing from a dire stom­ach bug that hit me on Sat­ur­day… that’s part of it.  Jet­lag and shiv­ery aches sort of elided, impos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish, and I spent all of Sun­day feel­ing firmly sorry for myself.  Avery stepped right up to the plate, run­ning around the cor­ner to the Every­thing Store to bring back all the fizzy bev­er­ages I felt would bring me back to the land of the liv­ing.  But the alarm clock waited for no sick per­son, so up we were for the school week on Monday.

Partly, it’s down to the weather.  I am ter­ri­bly spoiled by our sum­mer hol­i­day!  London’s grey, foggy skies are charm­ing in their own way, but the con­trast with Connecticut’s bril­liant blue skies, green grass, creamy hydrangea blos­soms is star­tling to say the least.  It will take me awhile to get used to it.

I also must admit shame­fully that I sim­ply hate to see Avery go off to school again.  I miss her!  She has become, over the sum­mer, an unques­tioned young lady, full of hilar­i­ous obser­va­tions about Doc­tor Who and its bril­liant sound­track, the vary­ing ben­e­fits and pit­falls of foun­da­tions, con­ceal­ers, shim­mer­ing bronz­ers and eye-popping mas­caras.  The house is so quiet with­out her; I find myself look­ing at my watch and say­ing piti­fully to the cats, “She’ll be home soon.”

And added to that, our lovely sum­mer con­ver­sa­tions about kit­tens, fash­ion, and such are replaced by rather intense back-and-forths about Russ­ian home­work, out­grown PE kit, painful ortho­don­tist appoint­ments.  Real life!  That’s what I’m moan­ing about.  Every day I look for­ward so much to see­ing her after school, but I have to steel myself for the bar­rage of con­tro­versy and wor­ri­some top­ics!  We try to salve these with a calm­ing snack at the deli: a slice of mil­lion­aire short­bread, per­haps, or a blue­berry muffin.

This is a funny age, I think (hers, of course, there is NOTH­ING funny about being 45).  Four­teen in Novem­ber!  New bits of inde­pen­dence seem to come at me from all sides.  On Sat­ur­day she and her friend Lille ran all around Kens­ing­ton with their own money, their own Tube cards, their phones, and their unshake­able self-confidence.  I perched on the sofa, sewing a name tape onto Avery’s new school hoodie, look­ing at my watch and try­ing not to panic.  And of course they turned up per­fectly well.  Sigh of relief.

But what about a ques­tion with her school­work?  Is that still my busi­ness?  The mater­nal instinct in me wants to inter­vene in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion, to sit down with the teacher myself, to take care of it all and let her be a child.  But you know what?  She isn’t any more.  If she wears lit­tle kit­ten heels, she tops me by a smidgen.  She teaches me how to add fea­tures to my blog!  She deals with friend­ships and respon­si­bil­i­ties with total aplomb.  I have to learn to step aside, stay out of the space between her and the rest of the world, let the space close up, absorb­ing her lit­tle girl­hood.  I’m not very good at it.

And we miss John!  He’s still in Amer­ica, hav­ing real estate adven­tures in Maine, send­ing us tan­ta­liz­ing pho­tographs of inim­itable pur­ple sun­sets, lob­ster boats drawn up to the dock, beloved friends that we miss so much.  He is headed today back to Red Gate Farm for the unen­vi­able task of emp­ty­ing the refrig­er­a­tor, plus mun­dane things like turn­ing off the water, going to the dump and bring­ing in the beau­ti­ful sign made by my father, which should not have to weather the win­ter winds and snow to come.  He will then finally get on a plane and come back to us!  Just in the nick of time, I think.

And Lost Prop­erty!  How I love it, the vol­un­teer ladies with a sparkle in their eyes, see­ing the girls in all their vari­ety (and vari­ety of lost items! I’m very curi­ous about where the pair of black mari­bou wings came from).  The famed Autumn Term lun­cheon is Fri­day, and to stave off my gloom today, I did a lux­u­ri­ous Marks and Spencer food shop, came home to my cozy kitchen, turned on the BBC News, and set­tled down to exper­i­ment with two new recipes.  Don’t you think these will please my Ladies Who Vol­un­teer (and Then Lunch)?

Por­to­bello Mush­rooms Stuffed with White Crab, Goats Cheese and Chives

(serves 4 as a light lunch)

200 grams/7 ounces white crabmeat

200 grams/7 ounces goats cheese

12 chives, finely chopped

4 green onions/scallions, white part only, finely chopped

3 tbsps panko (Japan­ese) breadcrumbs

1 tbsp dou­ble cream

squirt lemon juice

extra chives, chopped large, to garnish

Remove the stems from the mush­rooms and set aside for another recipe.  Brush each mush­room with olive oil and bake at 180C/350F for 8 minutes.

Mix all other ingre­di­ents well and spoon into each mush­room evenly, pil­ing high if nec­es­sary.  Bake in the heated oven for 10 min­utes.  Gar­nish with chives.  May be served hot, warm or at room tem­per­a­ture.  Serve with baguette chunks if you like, for a heartier meal.

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This dish is very pretty, very light, very lady­like.  The panko really serves merely to absorb the com­bined juices of the cook­ing mush­room and the crab­meat.  I thought about leav­ing out the cream, as the first ver­sion I made emit­ted a lit­tle pool of juice on the serv­ing plate.  But the lux­u­ri­ous tex­ture and taste of Eng­lish dou­ble cream is not to be despised, so the addi­tion of the bread­crumbs seemed to be a good idea.

For some­thing a bit heartier, a bit more of an autumn dish, try:

Por­to­bello Mush­rooms Stuffed with Chilli Sausage, Mush­rooms, and Pecorino

(serves 4 as a light lunch)

4 por­to­bello mushrooms

4 highly-flavored pork sausages, with chilli if you can find them (added chilli flakes if you cannot)

chopped stems of these mush­rooms, plus 2 more chest­nut mush­rooms, chopped rather fine

1 tbsp dou­ble cream

3 tbsps panko (Japan­ese) breadcrumbs)

2 tbsps Pecorino cheese

hand­ful chives, chopped large to garnish

Brush each mush­room with olive oil and bake at 180C/350F for 8 minutes.

Remove the sausages from their cas­ings and saute until fully cooked.  Add chopped mush­rooms and saute until soft.  Mix in a bowl with all the other ingre­di­ents besides chives.

Spoon mix­ture into each mush­room and bake in heated oven for 10 min­utes.  Gar­nish with chives and serve hot or warm.

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Deli­cious!  Rich!  I felt duty-bound to eat one of each, “just to make sure they’re OK,” as John always says, to pro­tect my guests, of course!  I don’t know which I pre­fer, so I think on Fri­day I will make 6 of each and let my ladies fight over them.

This lovely cook­ing project has cheered me up, I admit.  There is some­thing warm­ing and com­fort­ing about put­ter­ing around with ingre­di­ents, tast­ing and exper­i­ment­ing, fill­ing the kitchen with savory aro­mas.  The kit­ties milled around, sure there would be a scrap for them.

This evening I will deliver the extra mush­rooms from my exper­i­ment to my dear neigh­bors, Sara and Selva, and hope I can rope Selva who is even taller than John, into help­ing me move the HUGE buf­fet table up from the cel­lar, dusty and spi­dery as it is, and to move the unbe­liev­ably heavy slate-topped kitchen island off to one side.  The weather on Fri­day is — guess what — del­uges of rain, so any hopes I had of plant­ing half my guests into the gar­den must be scuppered.

Tonight Avery, with her too-tight braces, can have the most per­fect creamy mush­room soup, nice and soft…

This soup was made with the most per­fect stock from a roasted chicken… have you ever tucked beets in with your chicken?  Sim­ply peel one raw beet per per­son, cut them in half, and place them in the roast­ing dish with the chicken.  Sprin­kle with fresh thyme, whole gar­lic cloves, olive oil and sea salt, and roast the chicken at 180C/350F.  You will find the result­ing beets per­fectly cooked, densely rich, and SO good for you.

You know, I’ve cheered myself up!  Thank good­ness for my kitchen, peo­ple to feed, and for my blog, where I can moan at will.  A thin lit­tle sun­ray has decide to favor my gar­den!  And in a few hours… Avery will be home.