Food for the Soul (and the body, too)

As many of you near­est to me know, every May I steal away for a week­end with dear, dear chums from an Arvon Foun­da­tion writ­ing course I went on many years ago, now.  The course itself — food writ­ing for 16 aspir­ing scribes — last­ed for five of the most mag­i­cal days I have ever spent, and hap­pi­ly for me I wrote it all down (well, near­ly all of it).  Each spring about half of the orig­i­nal stu­dents get togeth­er — some­times with one of our tutors! — for a week­end of absolute glut­tony.

I don’t mean just lit­er­al food glut­tony.  There is that side to it, of course — the food shop­ping, the cook­ing, the eat­ing.  But we are glut­tons for each oth­er’s com­pa­ny too.  I can’t think of anoth­er group of peo­ple in my very peo­ple-lucky life who come togeth­er in quite this cohe­sive way.  For the length of time we’re togeth­er, we spend it in total hon­esty (a rar­i­ty in any walk of life), total sup­port, wicked humor, deep inter­est, and qui­et empathy.

The glue that binds us togeth­er is our dear Rosie, the Sil­ver Fox.  She’s not remote­ly old enough to be our moth­er, but some­how we feel her mater­nal arm around us, organ­is­ing us, telling tall tales, pour­ing drinks, offer­ing moral sup­port, mak­ing every­thing in life more deli­cious.  There is no one like Rosie.

After a sim­ply heav­en­ly peace­ful train ride to Here­ford from Lon­don, I was scooped up by Rosie and dear Susan — the most pro­lif­ic writer among us, cer­tain­ly! — and we head­ed to the first of many, many food shop­ping trips.  I am famous in my fam­i­ly for being a tedious per­son to shop with (except for my dar­ling moth­er in law who always accom­pa­nies me when we’re togeth­er).  I read all the labels, I buy much more than I went into the shop for, I come up with far too many cook­ing ideas as I amble along.  But with my Arvon friends, I’m per­fect­ly nor­mal!  “Let’s get both kinds of bacon.  That’s a famous brand.  Sausages too, def­i­nite­ly.  We will need much more but­ter than that.”  Heav­en for me, in short.

Packed to the absolute gills (me laden with three dozen chick­en thighs, yogurt, but­ter­milk, sea­soned flour, brought from home), Rosie drove us in a leisure­ly fash­ion through the stun­ning coun­try­side — now we’re in Wales, now we’re not — to the house where we would spend the weekend.

To my intense delight, the house was bor­dered on one side by a steeply curv­ing ancient road, and on the oth­er three by LAMBS!

Lambs with their moth­ers, to be sure, so I was not allowed to wor­ry them.  How they bleat­ed.  Day and night!

The three of us set­tled in, fill­ing the fridge, talk­ing non­stop, and then the house began to fill: dear young Sam arrived, hav­ing left his wor­ship­ful cook­ing stu­dents behind, his head near­ly bump­ing the low kitchen ceil­ing.  Then love­ly Pauline, saved from per­ma­nent res­i­dence in some deep Welsh val­ley only by Rosie’s reas­sur­ing direc­tions via mobile phone — “You’ll see a road sign, for a lit­tle lane, actu­al­ly, under some ivy on your left, say­ing ‘Mut­ton Din­gle.’  No, really…”

We sat around the big kitchen table, hear­ing Sam’s lat­est tales of exploits in Bath — a new cafe!  “Hey, this feels like an inter­view,” he complained.

Of course a great deal of con­fus­ing con­ver­sa­tion ensued when we tried to work out who would sleep where.  “Two peo­ple, two girls I guess, must share, and then two boys… or not?”  After much nat­ter­ing, we drew slips of paper.  “Same sex room, or just some sex room?”  I got lucky with the huge room at the top.

Then our great tutor, the incom­pa­ra­ble Orlan­do, turned up, to our delight.  You have to be smarter, cool­er, faster in con­ver­sa­tion when Orlan­do arrives.

And he brooks no bulls**t on the sub­ject of cook­ing.  There is no one to talk recipes with like Orlan­do.  Total pre­ci­sion, total inspi­ra­tion, and always per­fect reportage.  He real­ly WANTS you to get it right.

Orlan­do came bear­ing not only his bril­liant sense of fun, but… a gor­geous plate of the ulti­mate mac­a­roni and cheese.

This mac­a­roni and cheese, rich with chori­zo-style sausages tak­en from their skins and rolled into balls, with red pep­per, with Gruyere, and topped with toma­toes, sat very hap­pi­ly along­side my spiced-crust baked chick­en thighs, to which we all sat down at sup­per time that night.  And after we’d fin­ished, our group was made com­plete by Katie, one of the calmest per­son­al­i­ties I know, with her head to one side, lis­ten­ing with great warmth and deep sym­pa­thy to what’s being said, mak­ing each per­son feel just that lit­tle bit more fas­ci­nat­ing, and understood.

We sat up late around a cozy fire upstairs, know­ing that in the dark out­side we were sur­round­ed by an unbe­liev­able view of the val­ley, which we’d see in the morning.

Which start­ed off with Sam pro­duc­ing a mam­moth feast of bacon and sausages, and Rosie cut­ting up loaves of bread stud­ded with olives, Susan pro­duc­ing cup after cup of cof­fee for us all.

And then it was off to Hay-on-Wye!  “Aren’t we there yet?”  “Kris­ten, you said it was nine miles.”  “Well, maybe it was just nine miles to the sign that point­ed to Hay.”  Mec­ca of used book­shops, as every­one knows.  Home to a fab­u­lous book fes­ti­val in late May, but to be hon­est, brim­ming with more books than any­one could ever peruse on even an ordi­nary day.

I quick­ly realised after pur­chas­es 1 and 2 that I would have to go easy.  “I was so hap­py know­ing I’d go home with­out all those heavy chick­en thighs on the train,” I mourned.  “Now the cool­er will just be filled with books.”

I was in heav­en.  Heaven!

Avery emailed me a wish list.  Sam and I paired off, hunt­ing for all the obscure things she want­ed.  There could be no fin­er occu­pa­tion for a Sat­ur­day after­noon, to my mind.

Final­ly we wan­dered into our lunch des­ti­na­tion (the huge break­fast notwith­stand­ing), a book­shop called Richard Booths, pos­si­bly the most beau­ti­ful shop on earth.

It’s tidy where oth­er shops are chaot­ic, pol­ished mahogany where oth­er shops are rather scuffed gum, smelling of the award-win­ning cafe at the back instead of must and dust.  There is room for both sorts of expe­ri­ences, to my mind.

Sam and I found a love­ly shop assis­tant who was more than hap­py to track down Avery’s list.  I men­tioned a cou­ple of titles and he got very excit­ed, so I showed him the email on my phone.  “Who IS this per­son?  This is an awe­some list.”  Sam and I looked at each oth­er in tol­er­ant good humor (we would nev­er read ANY of those books Avery reads to relax).  As he found each trea­sure, the assis­tant became more vol­u­ble on the sub­ject of Avery’s appar­ent bril­liance.  “I was awful­ly thick in school,” he con­fid­ed, though we doubt­ed it.  He found near­ly every­thing she want­ed, and one book for me.  I bet you can tell which one that is.

In exhaus­tion, the num­bers wear­ing off on my Visa card, we repaired to the cafe.  Over Welsh rarebit, omelettes, steaks, my own roast­ed pigeon breast with a fried egg, and pots and pots of shared triple-cooked fries and onion rings, we dis­cussed where we should go for our tenth reunion.  “I say we rent a cas­tle in France and hop on the Eurostar,” Rosie sug­gest­ed, where I thought every­one should wait until July and then come to Red Gate Farm.

Our stom­achs full of lunch, we nev­er­the­less repaired to the near­est butch­er, green­gro­cer and super­mar­ket to buy food for din­ner.  That’s anoth­er thing I love about my Arvon chums: they share my obses­sion with where the next meal is com­ing from.  More than that: what it will be, and who will cook what.  On the menu: a giant leg of lamb to roast slow­ly with Rosie’s rub of anchovies and mint, ingre­di­ents for my own “Becky pota­toes,” rich with Ched­dar, shal­lots and gar­lic, bags of cau­li­flower, leeks.  And mys­te­ri­ous ingre­di­ents for a pud­ding Orlan­do promised would be more than the sum of its parts: “flum.”

Dri­ving home through the gor­geous val­leys to the house, Orlan­do decid­ed to amuse us by play­ing first “I spy,” and then when we had exhaust­ed our atten­tion span for that game, guess­ing all the States in the USA.  “Why isn’t there an East Vir­ginia?” and “Is there any point to Okla­homa?  Oh, yes, the musi­cal,” were pop­u­lar digres­sions.  Final­ly as Sam tot­ted up the states one more time, and even I could­n’t think what we were miss­ing, it turned out he had been under the impres­sion that there were 52 states.  Sigh.

We stopped to inves­ti­gate the dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly grand War Memo­r­i­al in New Radnor.

“I saw a shop back there in the vil­lage,” said Pauline, “labelled ‘Thomas.’  I bet it’s full of things for peo­ple called Thomas, and since I have a hus­band, a son and a father called Thomas, Christ­mas would be sort­ed.  I’ll be right back.”  But when she returned, it was with tales of a squalid, dark shop named after a per­son who once owned it in the war years, con­tain­ing lit­tle more than out­dat­ed mint sauce and stale cake slices cov­ered with cling film.  “I was a lit­tle afraid I’d nev­er come out,” she admitted.

Sam and I pur­sued the rather macabre sheep bones to be found in the fields just out­side the kitchen door.

Every­one else pre­ferred to inves­ti­gate the rather out-of-place but intrigu­ing hot tub in the back garden.

Since I do not own a bathing suit in this coun­try, and Orlan­do had neglect­ed to find one in Hay (he insists he was kid­ding and was not shop­ping for a mank­i­ni), the tak­ers were lim­it­ed, but they all seemed quite enthu­si­as­tic, in theory.

The aro­mas of roast­ing lamb drift­ed out after us.  “I swear,” Katie said, “those lambs and sheep out there knew we had lamb in the next car.  They’re not going to let us out of the house again.”  “Gertrude, we can smell you cook­ing, we miss you…”

Whilst I grat­ed pota­toes and cheese for my side dish and Rosie con­coct­ed a gor­geous plate of antipasti (includ­ing shred­ded bits of my left­over chick­en thighs to eat with cucum­ber and toma­toes), Sam read aloud to us from var­i­ous adverts for tel­ly pro­grammes in the paper.

“You call your­self a father.  Can you even spell father?”  “Far­ther.”

“I know you’re cheat­ing.  Can you stop blam­ing the dog?”

“Where was my boyfriend when he said he was behind the chick­en shop?”

As usu­al when we are togeth­er, because I am Amer­i­can and Orlan­do was born there, we dis­cussed Amer­i­can­isms — “What is a s’more?”  “Why do Amer­i­cans put ‘and’ in  mac­a­roni cheese?”  Susan lis­tened as always, with her qui­et humor shin­ing in wicked­ly sparkling eyes.

Perched incon­ve­nient­ly on the stairs, hap­pi­ly sip­ping a bison grass vod­ka, lis­ten­ing to and tak­ing notes of all the ban­ter, I was very, very happy.

Sam offered to make moji­tos.  Sam dis­cov­ered there were no limes.  Orlan­do was mock-scathing. “Sam, you need to think things through.  Don’t offer to be the bar­tender and make the world’s great­est moji­to before you find out there are no limes.”  Sam asked, “Is it too late for an Oca­do deliv­ery?”  “Sam, Sam, you city boy, you.”

Orlan­do’s Argen­tin­ian tan­go music played on the iPod dock while the aro­mas of din­ner began to make us insane­ly hun­gry, even after our posh book­shop lunch.  How we need­ed Avery to pho­to­graph every­thing!  The com­bi­na­tion of soft roast­ed lamb, creamy pota­toes, rich gravy and del­i­cate braised leeks was absolute­ly per­fect.  We ate, and ate, and ate.

After din­ner, and after the “flum” which proved to be an intense­ly sweet con­coc­tion of sliced choco­late muffins, red jel­ly, marsh­mal­lows and whipped cream — and which we decid­ed in hon­or of Wales should real­ly be spelled “fllum,” every­one cleared away in a har­mo­nious man­ner, and we set­tled into one of our mam­moth “Arvon talks,” sit­ting around the kitchen table, every­one con­tribut­ing sto­ries of per­son­al tri­umphs and griefs, rem­i­nis­cences about our orig­i­nal Arvon week, how lucky we feel to have each oth­er in our lives.  Very late that night, I retreat­ed to the “diva room,” wish­ing I had arranged to stay much longer.

In the morn­ing we devoured yet more poached eggs and dis­cussed what was in the Sun­day papers in a dis­joint­ed and very sil­ly way.

“You’d like that film, Kris­ten,” Sam said.  “Who’s that actress in it, Anna…Anna… ” Every­one chipped in help­ful­ly.  “Ana­gram.”  “Ano­dyne.” “Ana­phy­lac­tic shock.”

Then we piled into cars, Orlan­do and me packed to go home, and head­ed to Here­ford, to see the Cathedral.

Upon arrival and park­ing, we gazed about us in the sky for a bell tow­er.  Final­ly Orlan­do approached a woman and her small child.

“Do you know where the Cathe­dral is?”  “Yes!”  “No, madam, this is not a game show.  I would like to FIND the Cathedral.”

It was well worth finding.

A tru­ly awe-inspir­ing inte­ri­or, with ten bells pre­sid­ing some­where high over­head.  I could not begin to imag­ine the num­ber of steps into the bell-chamber.

Final­ly after a dis­tinct­ly unlove­ly lunch of M&S sal­ads in the sun­ny mar­ket square (“this is Here­ford’s local street food”), we part­ed at our cars with many hugs and assur­ances of stay­ing in touch, and I went home in qui­et train, feel­ing that I had been away longer than two days and yet how quick­ly it had all gone.  It’s impor­tant now and then, I think, in a life as qui­et­ly homey as my own, to get right away, out of the famil­iar, away from the fam­i­ly, and to recharge one’s bat­ter­ies.  Onward and upward to the next reunion!