from Lost Prop­erty to Chinatown

Is your gar­den full of these lit­tle guys? For that mat­ter, is your house? Mine are. Yes­ter­day Tacy leapt, from an appar­ently dead sleep, to cap­ture a spi­der on the wall of the din­ing room and wolf it down. Yuck. But bet­ter than just see­ing them crawl about. My friend Toni assures me it is the sea­son, and they’ll stop mul­ti­ply­ing very soon. I seem to walk through the house and gar­den sev­er­ing webs every­where I go, and then have to won­der sick­en­ingly if I’m car­ry­ing the web’s cre­ator in my hair. Tacy!

Well, I am com­ing to the real­iza­tion that my very quiet and soli­tary house is my present, and my future. All those lovely months of hav­ing John at home, all the happy sum­mer weeks of hav­ing at least Avery at home, then both of them at home, have given way to my cur­rent atmos­phere of “now what?” And I have not been remiss in answer­ing the ques­tion! I shook off my dol­drums and joined… The Lost Prop­erty Ladies!

Now, I am going to tell you about this with the assur­ance that I have no inten­tion of men­tion­ing the name of Avery’s school on this jour­nal. At first I thought about just never men­tion­ing any­thing that hap­pens there, for fear of invad­ing someone’s pri­vacy. But now I think that would make me crazy: the gaps in the story, the long­ing to share with some­one how mar­vel­lous the place is. So I came up with the solu­tion that as long as I don’t divulge here what or where the school is, I can still express the won­der­ful details that are mak­ing us wan­der around lately think­ing, “too good to be true, this Shangri-la…” Because it is. Too good to be true.

Last spring when I was feel­ing the upcom­ing sad­ness at leav­ing Avery’s old school there was a meet­ing of new par­ents at her NEW school, invit­ing us all to vol­un­teer for some­thing, just to help out. And I was intro­duced to the head of “Lost Prop­erty,” who I will call Mary. There was some­thing warm and friendly about the way she held out her plate of wal­nut bread, and inquired eagerly about how excited my daugh­ter was to start her new school, that made me ask, “Do Lost Prop­erty need any help?” To be clutched by the hand and told, “My dear, of course! And I will tell you some­thing you don’t know: Lost Prop­erty have a superb lun­cheon to kick off every term, and you can come. In September.”

I nearly cried with grat­i­tude! Some­where to go! Peo­ple to meet, and an occa­sional excuse to visit school and see what’s what.

Well, the first lun­cheon could not have come at a more oppor­tune time: just as my dear house­guests left me on a grey Fri­day morn­ing, I real­ized I had not much time to get myself way down south to Put­ney where the lun­cheon was hap­pen­ing. And of course it rained, all the way there, and of course it turned out I had WAY under­es­ti­mated the dis­tance between the tube sta­tion and the home where the lunch was to be. With John’s advice “Just take a cab” ring­ing in my ears, I slouched toward my des­ti­na­tion, buy­ing flow­ers for the host­ess along the way, feel­ing sorry for myself. But not for long: the wel­come of the other vol­un­teers and the house itself made the whole day worth­while. You could hardly get up the walk for the lux­u­ri­ous, over­tow­er­ing trees, flow­er­ing shrubs and plants at your feet: they all bent under the rain and made you feel as if you were in a fairy story. Then I was greeted and given the task of set­ting one of the tables, and encoun­tered in the din­ing room an enor­mous, fuzzy and wet Maine Coon cat! Per­fect. I car­ried it around, look­ing into var­i­ous rooms filled with ladies arrang­ing a tray of lasagne, glasses of cham­pagne, and, out in a mag­i­cal con­ser­va­tory pos­i­tively drip­ping with grapes on their vines, I encoun­tered a very friendly mother toss­ing a salad of her own design. I had dis­cov­ered as I came in that the food con­tri­bu­tions are on a rota, so I didn’t have to feel guilty for bring­ing flow­ers instead.

This lady fin­ished her task and we chat­ted about our chil­dren, and it was the first of many con­ver­sa­tions I have had that go some­thing like this: “Is your daugh­ter enjoy­ing school?” “Oh, she is absolutely BLOS­SOM­ING! Thriv­ing. How about yours?” “Just loves it.” I know there will, some­day, be some­thing that is not won­der­ful about this school, but for right now I breathe a sigh every day of “thank good­ness this all worked out.” It feels like just the right place, and just the right group of peo­ple. I loved hear­ing the high flutey tones of lots of Eng­lish ladies talk­ing to each other, and the food? Gor­geous lasagne with spinach noo­dles, a Moroc­can chicken dish with olives and pre­served lemons, a lovely salad with mung beans, and very rich cheeses at the end. I had to tell my dear mother in law about the enor­mous tart, the size of a Wall Street Jour­nal opened up, cov­ered with… figs, under a shiny glaze.

So as the rain fell and the day got ever darker, we all exchanged ideas about the school, our own jobs, the schools we had come from, sto­ries about sib­lings and the sum­mer hol­i­days. In short, what one writer I know has called “the com­fort­ing com­pany of women.” Quite so. Then we got down to busi­ness and lis­tened to the joys of man­ag­ing Lost Prop­erty: the girls who typ­i­cally lose every­thing they bring to school every sin­gle day, the girls who come into the Lost Prop­erty office just to… shop! The girls who explain that they think they might have left a black sweater in the the­atre block last March, is this it? We all signed up for our vol­un­teer days. And would you believe who was there? Avery’s new friend Izzy’s mother, from up the street, and our neigh­bor a cou­ple of doors down! “Kris­ten! Do you want a ride home?” Bliss.

Today in my email box I received one of the many mes­sages I still get from Avery’s old school in New York, announc­ing the cel­e­bra­tion of the school building’s 20th birth­day! And you know what? I felt only a tinge of sad­ness, because already I feel quite wel­come at the lat­est school, and that things will only get nicer.

It’s nice liv­ing near to school for sev­eral rea­sons: while I am no longer allowed to walk her to school, I can still res­cue her when things go pear-shaped, as the morn­ing I found, in my phone voice­mail, a mes­sage from her piano teacher from the evening before, announc­ing a meet­ing THAT DAY. And as I lis­tened to it, my eyes alighted on Avery’s locker keys, besides her empty break­fast plate. It was but the work of a moment to stuff the keys in my pocket, write a note to Avery about the piano teacher, and walk to school, where I braved the extremely intim­i­dat­ing lady in recep­tion (although her eyes did twin­kle as I chat­tered through my con­fus­ing mes­sage to Avery). She divested me of the enve­lope full of keys, note and pocket money, and said, “I imag­ine we’ll be able to res­cue the sit­u­a­tion.” I stam­mered, “Well, these first few weeks can be hard to man­age, can’t they?” For me if not for you, I real­ized as she merely smiled me out of the room.

And then too there’s the fun of pick­ing her up at the end of the day, which thank­fully she still likes for me to do! We nearly always walk along with her friend Molly who lives just around the cor­ner, and I get to hear about the mag­nif­i­cence of the lunch, the unfair­ness of some sched­ul­ing con­flict, get a report on the crush­wor­thy sci­ence teacher! “Like an atten­tu­ated James MacAvoy!” Avery diag­nosed. I hope I get to meet this hunky paragon at some point. And then there was a funny morn­ing when just as the front door closed behind Avery and her walk-along friend, I heard a taxi pull up and dis­gorge John and his lug­gage. “Run and catch her up to say hi, she just left!” I said, fol­low­ing him out. He ran and caught them up, and I waited on the cor­ner for him to come back and let me in. And I waited. And waited. For heaven’s sake, had he reg­is­tered him­self at school? Had a heart attack? Stopped for a full Eng­lish break­fast? Our neigh­bors came by one by one and asked, “Just hang­ing out here on the cor­ner, Kris­ten?” I laughed and said, “If I’m still here by the time you come home from work, maybe you’ll let me in.” Finally back John came, hav­ing stopped to catch up with a mother at school. Cozy.

And I have not been idle at my com­puter, although I’ve been rub­bish at blog­ging. No, last week I was a good girl and went back over the blog, writ­ing down every sin­gle recipe since I began writ­ing in Jan­u­ary 2006. And you know what: I have 220 recipes. Lots of them, of course, not par­tic­u­larly note­wor­thy, and some a bit repet­i­tive, like how many vari­a­tions of salmon in cream can there be? Or bean salad? But still, that strikes me as enough recipes to thor­oughly dis­pose of any excuses for post­pon­ing REALLY writ­ing this cook­book that’s in my head. And we had the first meet­ing of our new writ­ing class last week and ironed out our plans for struc­ture, and lis­tened to everyone’s expla­na­tions of projects to be worked on. And our hostess’s house­keeper fed us quite the most deli­cious cake I have ever, ever had. And you know how I am about sweets. She has kindly given me the recipe!

Fely’s Banana and Apple Cake
(serves about 8 for tea)

1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp bak­ing soda
1 tsp bak­ing pow­der
1 tsp ground cin­na­mon
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup but­ter
1 cup sugar
1 cup mashed bananas
1 cup chopped apples
1 tbsp confectioner’s sugar

Com­bine all dry ingre­di­ents. Cream but­ter and sugar, eggs and vanilla. Mix together dry and wet ingre­di­ents and add mashed banana and chopped apple. Bake at 180 c (350 f) for 45 min­utes. Cool slightly and dust with sugar. Serve warm.

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I imag­ine that given my child’s delight in any­thing sweet and fruity, this cake would make the most wel­come warm break­fast food. I think I’ll try it this weekend.

So far, as far as the cook­book goes and my writ­ing class, I’ve had just two chap­ters to con­tribute: mac­a­roni and cheese, and Moroc­can meat­balls. So this week I worked on “Birth­day Soup.” It’s all about vichys­soise, and boy I wish I had some right now. What I do have is a pot of chicken soup with gar­lic and lit­tle star noo­dles, in which I will poach some tiny lit­tle chicken meat­balls later this after­noon. For some bizarre rea­son I woke up dream­ing of such a soup, and then real­ized I had some ran­dom chicken parts in the freezer, plenty of car­rots and cel­ery, so why not?

We had our rit­ual Sep­tem­ber 11 anniver­sary din­ner last week, which although a tra­di­tion, is chang­ing. For instance, I don’t think any­one men­tioned Sep­tem­ber 11 all evening. We all knew that was why we were together, but… and new friends to add to the guest list! Dear Toni, the neigh­bor with sev­eral cats who threw her­self heart and soul into the “Episode of the Miss­ing Tacy” last spring, came along and brought another friend from our street, Alice, who also… has five cats. So there was an unusual air of appre­ci­a­tion for Tacy and Wim­sey, the two who nor­mally join us on social occa­sions. For a cat lover, I have a strangely high pro­por­tion of friends (and hus­bands, if it comes to that) who are either aller­gic (they say) or down­right unin­ter­ested in cats. So it was a plea­sure to talk cats! And for what­ever rea­son, the chicken curry went down an absolute treat, so I shall give you the super sim­ple recipe now. It is inex­pen­sive and takes no time and very lit­tle effort, which makes the inevitable praise and sec­ond help­ings all the more satisfying.

Per­fect Party Chicken Curry
(serves 10 and then some)

3 tbsps veg­etable oil
1 tbsp each: curry pow­der, ras el hanout, turmeric ground cumin, ground corian­der
8 cloves gar­lic, minced
4 onions, minced
10 chicken breast fil­lets, cut in bite-size pieces
6 col­ored pep­pers: I mixed red, yel­low and orange, cut in bite-size pieces
2 soup-size cans coconut milk
salt and pep­per to taste

In a very large skil­let or paella pan, heat the oil. Add the spices and cook until bub­bling well. This step is very impor­tant. Do not think you can add the spices at any old time, although an adjust­ment of a bit more as you taste is all right. These spices release their fla­vors and at the same time cook off their bit­ter­ness but only if you cook them in the oil first.

Add the gar­lic, onions and chicken and cook, stir­ring well, until the chicken is nearly cooked. Add the pep­pers and stir until well-coated. Pour over the coconut milk, tak­ing care to shake the unopened cans first to blend. Now, turn down the heat and bub­ble very low until the chicken is thor­oughly cooked, about 10 min­utes. Obvi­ously, do not taste the sauce until this point! But now taste away and begin adding salt. It will require quite a bit. Add pep­per to taste. Serve with steamed bas­mati rice. LOVELY.

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The fra­grance of this curry cook­ing as every­one opens the front door will make instant con­verts of any­one who says meekly, “I don’t really like Indian cook­ing.” And of course you can make it spicy if you are feed­ing peo­ple who like spicy: just as much chilli pep­per flakes or pow­der as you like.

Well, Sat­ur­day found us drop­ping off Avery at her first act­ing class, and then Sun­day to the sta­ble to greet the horses after their sum­mer loung­ing in Sur­rey on the farm. Sadly, old, old Bunny went to his reward over the sum­mer. I think it is extremely healthy that the instruc­tors and barn owner are open with the girls about ponies’ dying, being put down by the vet when their time comes, and that it’s not a tragedy or some­thing they can’t talk about. Very good. John and I had planned to have lunch at Angelus, the superb French place by the sta­ble, but all the lovely out­door tables were taken, and we sim­ply could not sit inside on one of the rare fine Lon­don days, so we ended up at Chez Kristoff, on our cor­ner, shiv­er­ing because the sun was behind the build­ing! Why was it imper­a­tive that we have lunch on that par­tic­u­lar day? Because it was the 25th anniver­sary of our first date, that’s why. There you go. And we had divine steak tartare and quite the best mus­sels mariniere AND the best frites! We will be back.

Mon­day I had a total adven­ture! Has it ever hap­pened to you: that you had a per­fectly good oppor­tu­nity to have a friend, who hap­pened to live next door to you, but you didn’t take advan­tage of the chance until, say, the per­son decided to move to LA? That’s what hap­pened to me with my friend Janet. There she was, next door, host­ing Tacy on reg­u­lar vis­its through the liv­ing room win­dows, but did I ever do any­thing to make friends with her? No, not until she and her hus­band stopped by to tell us they were mov­ing. Then for some rea­son we went out to lunch together, and over sev­eral dishes of unbear­ably spicy Thai food in Uxbridge Road, pro­ceeded to make fast friends. Then she moved away. So when she emailed to say she was com­ing for a visit (appar­ently the car-yoga-sunshine cul­ture of LA is mak­ing her crazy and in need of some traf­fic, grey skies and pes­simism, as only Lon­don can offer), we imme­di­ately made a plan. To go to Chi­na­town! Where I had never been.

And you must. Go, that is. You would sim­ply not believe you were in the West­ern world at all, at all. We met in Leices­ter Square, and then roamed all around Ger­rard Street, Mac­cles­field Street, the quaintly named Horse and Dol­phin Yard. Janet is an old habituee of the area and knew where the best place to get my sprouts would be, the finest sesame oil, the most exotic spicy bean sauces. My bags were so heavy! Think­ing that her hotel would not appre­ci­ate her arriv­ing with an entire deep-fried duck­ling, she let me do the hon­ors on that one. “At least it’s not oily at all,” she laughed as the paper bag imme­di­ately soaked through, to be put into a plas­tic one. Still, even when I tied the top, it was quite a fra­grant com­pan­ion in the bus on the way home!

I bought gar­lic shoots, aged soy sauce the qual­ity of bal­samic vine­gar, bags of rice and bean sprouts. Black bean sauce and chilli oil. We ended up starv­ing at a fan­tas­tic restau­rant called Haozhan, at 8 Ger­rard Street, and I had my first tofu. And, I’m sorry to say, my last, although I think it was as good as tofu gets. Lightly fried, topped with a seared scal­lop and spinach paste and red caviar… I think if I was going to like tofu, that would have been the dish. Unfor­tu­nately the qual­i­ties I didn’t like were the things that make it tofu. As in, slimy. Gooey. But I could see the point of the dish. More to the point for me was the light-as-a-feather soft­shell crabs, in a crunch cream-cracker bat­ter. Oh, if I could pro­duce THAT at home! But I never will, I know. And another scal­lop dish that I really could pro­duce at home: a silky and light oys­ter sauce with sauteed scal­lops, aspara­gus tips and green onions. Go, you’ll be glad to have a des­ti­na­tion when you’ve shopped till you drop.

Her hus­band joined us for tea, and then we made one last pil­grim­age to the Japan Cen­tre in Pic­cadilly, where I bought the cutest thing: empty tea bags! For bou­quet garni, in my Indian biryani. I have, I am ashamed to say, sac­ri­ficed sev­eral lit­tle tea hand­ker­chiefs in the mak­ing of this dish, because the cloves stain the linen and I can never get it out. Now I have lit­tle dis­pos­able fil­l­able tea bags. Happy! I also bought two dif­fer­ent kinds of very thin-sliced beef, one called “shabushabu beef” and one called “sukiyai beef,” although they look iden­ti­cal. I do not really know the dif­fer­ence, but my plan is, tomor­row evening, to mar­i­nate them in soy, sesame, gar­lic and gin­ger and then wrap them around aspara­gus tips, put them on skew­ers and grill them. Doesn’t that sound nice?

Today I am forced to keep myself out of trou­ble and accom­plish­ing things for even longer than usual: Thurs­days are the cov­eted “Gym­nas­tics and Tram­po­line After-School Club” days, and can you imag­ine any­one more deserv­ing of a spot on an offi­cial tram­po­line club than Avery? Does every­one else spend all sum­mer prac­tic­ing? I’ll be glad to get the report. Every day after school brings me a slightly more grownup, more artic­u­late, more ener­getic per­son home with me: I’m aston­ished at the words she chooses to tell me things! Of course right now I can’t think of any, that’s what I get for fail­ing to blog for so long. But I will try to remem­ber and write some down, for “prosperity’s sake,” as my col­lege room­mate used to say.