end of a lively month

I adore fall. Or “autumn,” as we call it in Britain. Why not “fall”? Or equally, why “fall” in Amer­ica? I love it though: I always read the same books: Body in the Bel­fry by Kather­ine Hall Page, Witch of Black­bird Pond by Eliz­a­beth George Speare (what is it with me and double-barreled names?), The Affa­combe Affair by Eliz­a­beth Lemarchand…books that cel­e­brate the splen­dor, the com­plex­ity and the being-on-the-brink that is autumn. And I guess it all starts in Octo­ber, really, although I start stack­ing up those favorite books and peek­ing in, the last week in September.

Tonight Avery and I made it to a new adven­ture: the pool asso­ci­ated with her school! Now, my intensely sting­ing eyes noth­with­stand­ing, this place is an incred­i­ble boon. For the equiv­a­lent of $70 a year per entire fam­ily, we can swim on Tues­day and Thurs­day evenings, Sat­ur­day and Sun­day morn­ings, AND use the ten­nis courts. What a bar­gain, in a town that holds so few for the unwary resident.

So this after­noon I was look­ing up dis­con­so­lately at the stream­ing sky­light over my kitchen, absolutely splash­ing with rain, and think­ing, “No, thanks, no swim­ming today,” but then I pulled myself up by my wet boot­straps and said, “We can­not be defeated by the occa­sional del­uge. We must press for­ward into… more water.” So I picked Avery up at school, stopped for an absolutely nec­es­sary gin­ger­bread man, and came home so she could do her home­work and I could under­chef din­ner: the ulti­mate in prep so you can swim until the last POS­SI­BLE moment.

Quick Left­over Stir-Fry with Fried Rice
(serves 4)

2 left­over grilled pork shops (or steaks, or chicken breasts, or lamb chops)
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 thumb-sized knob gin­ger, peeled and minced
2 tbsps sesame oil
2 tbsps soy sauce
1 tbsp peanut (ground­nut) oil
1 pack­age broc­col­ini (ten­der­stem)
1 pack­age bean sprouts
1 pack­age ready-cooked (Amoy is the brand I use) fine noodles

rice:
1 cup jas­mine or bas­mati rice
1 1/2 cups water
3 eggs, beaten
1 tbsp soy sauce

So while your child does her home­work, slice the chops or what­ever left­over meat fairly thin. Put in a medium shal­low bowl and add the gar­lic, gin­ger, sesame oil and soy sauce. Mar­i­nate in the fridge while you swim.

Cook the rice and set aside. Leave the eggs, beaten, in the fridge.

When you come home, heat up a large skil­let and add the peanut oil. Fry the ten­der­stem broc­col­ini under nicely ten­der, and place in a large serv­ing bowl. Now throw the meat in its mari­nade in the same skil­let and fry until warm, then add the sprouts and noo­dles until well-mixed and hot. Take out with tongs and place in same large serv­ing bowl with broccolini.

Now heat the liq­uid in the skil­let and scram­ble the eggs in it. When fin­ished, throw in the rice and toss well to mix thor­oughly, adding the soy sauce.

Lovely, and it cost about 8 pounds alto­gether and didn’t take much effort (although the cleanup can be annoy­ing, given how easy it was to cook! but be brave and persevere).

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

Swim­ming. The whole expe­ri­ence under­scored how cozy and happy I find our new lives. We walked over in the gath­er­ing twi­light, pass­ing our local estate agents who demanded what we were hav­ing for din­ner and averred that they thought of us for a house to buy “every after­noon when we see you walk­ing by,” crossed the local green where we kicked up fallen leaves and dis­cussed the day’s lunch (steak and mush­room pie in puff pas­try for heaven’s sake), and the RE sub­ject (don’t know why, Saul sounds pretty inter­est­ing to me but I can’t con­vince Avery). We arrived at the pool and signed in, our glasses imme­di­ately steam­ing up, and through the haze I rec­og­nized Avery’s friend Emily, read­ing on a bench. “I’m only here because my mother has this intro­duc­tion thing! But now I can stay with you and swim.” And there was her mother, happy to do her gro­cery shop­ping with­out her beloved child, happy to rem­i­nisce over our din­ner party…

So in we went. Warm water, glass pan­els in the ceil­ing! Gor­geous to trail about on my back, look­ing up at leaves blow­ing, the sky grad­u­ally turn­ing dark. I did the three dives I plan to do every time I get a chance until I turn my toes up: the pike, the back dive and the inward. If I dis­cover I can­not do them I will turn in my card, some­day. We had a glo­ri­ous, lovely time, shar­ing the pool with just a hand­ful of leisurely lap-swimmers. “Mummy!” Emily called to me, and then cov­ered her mouth with hand in embar­rass­ment. “I mean…” “That’s OK, Avery’s friends usu­ally call me “Avery’s mom,” I said. She decided upon, “Mummy and a half” for the dura­tion of our swim. “Mummy and a half, watch my dive.”

Finally we dried off and emerged to cross the green again. “It’s all sparkly!” Avery said. “I’m never out and about when it’s dark and wet and sparkly like this!” We stopped at the local wine store for a bot­tle of Cal­va­dos on this dark and windswept night, and the pro­pri­etor let me speak French with him! “What do you do?” he asked in French, and I learned the phrase “livre de recettes,” for cook­ery book. Home for our stir­fry, feel­ing vir­tu­ous and happy, if hair-challenged. I can­not believe I car­ried on a con­ver­sa­tion with a French­man given the scary reflec­tion I caught in the hall mir­ror as I came home. Oh dear.

So Sep­tem­ber has been… let’s see… full! Rosh Hashanah to all our friends at home, espe­cially Alyssa, around whose table I might be sit­ting, enjoy­ing mat­zoh ball soup, were I still liv­ing in Tribeca… Sep­tem­ber has seen Avery accus­tom her­self to a new school, me try to learn the names of her friends and teach­ers through ellip­ti­cal but reveal­ing tales after school, we’ve solved Lord Peter Wimsey’s skin dis­or­der (tomor­row will find me back at the vet for a cor­ti­sone top-up). We’ve set­tled into our new house, firmly wel­comed our new neigh­bors as friends, got to know our local mer­chants to the degree that one order the Finan­cial Times just for John, our wait­ress at the cor­ner cafe didn’t mind not being tipped after brunch because we came straight back! Our gar­den seems to wel­come us this new sea­son, with bright-orange berries on one bush and bright-orange leaves on another.

And I’ve been giv­ing more thought, in this last month before the final deci­sion, to the elec­tion. I’m no polit­i­cal junkie, for sure. Much more likely to find myself think­ing of lentils then land­slides, pota­toes than polls! But I have come with a few gen­eral obser­va­tions that I think will suf­fice for me: I pre­fer diplo­matic dove to enemy-counting hawk, I pre­fer artic­u­late, can’t-find-a-soundbite to repet­i­tive mem­o­rable epi­thets, and I pre­fer what may turn out to be dig­ni­fied, gen­tle defeat to angry, finger-pointing vic­tory. I pre­fer open, vul­ner­a­ble curios­ity to closed, “I already know every­thing I need to know” secu­rity. I don’t like anger. And I don’t like peo­ple look­ing for a fight, or think­ing what fight might come ahead of what other fight. I like the idea of peo­ple being open to talk­ing to any­one, absolutely any­one, over the idea of mak­ing lists of who and what is open to being talked to or about. So I admit I don’t have much in the way of con­crete num­bers or facts, but like Abra­ham Lin­coln said, “it’s the kind of thing you like, if you like that kind of thing.” And I know it when I see it.

So let the last month before the elec­tion spin itself out… today I made my train reser­va­tions for my food writ­ing week! It’s inevitable now. Check your fridge for some left­overs, haul out those sprouts and… go swimming.