if it didn’t move…

today, I ate it… I can hardly move tonight. It sort of snuck up on me: I just kept choos­ing things at Taste of Lon­don, and eat­ing them, and it was all glo­ri­ous and made me very happy, and all the bits jig­gled up and down hap­pily together in my stom­ach as I walked along (choos­ing more bits). Then I took a brief break to watch Avery’s skat­ing les­son, and then it was onto… din­ner. At noth­ing less than my favorite all-time Chi­nese restau­rant in Queensway, so I could cer­tainly not skimp on any of my favorites. And I didn’t even think much of it, until… we got home and I sat down and now I feel that all the food­stuffs in the greater Lon­don met­ro­pol­i­tan area are try­ing to be digested all at once. Still, I don’t regret a sin­gle bite­ful, and while I’d sep­a­rate them by a day or two, I would rec­om­mend my two foodie activ­i­ties today to anyone.

I think as a mat­ter of pub­lic record I must list all the things eaten today. Per­haps it will serve as a cau­tion­ary tale, if in fact I am unable to get up from my desk chair in an hour or two. In fact, I may pour myself a diges­tif before I’m ren­dered sta­tic, and see if a spot of brandy does the trick.

But what trick? All that is required is the pas­sage of hours and the inges­tion of noth­ing more tomor­row than a let­tuce leaf, and bob’s your uncle. First I must tell you that I did not sus­pend myself from a tall pole and take this pho­to­graph — Chan­nel 4 did, and it must have been last year, because the weather here has been very odd lately and cer­tainly would not encour­age peo­ple to sit upon the ground in shorts. How­ever, the fact remains that I wanted the fes­ti­val to look appeal­ing because it’s on for two more days, and you’d love it.

So what hap­pens is you buy lit­tle tick­ets called “crowns” and each is worth 50 pence, and all the lit­tle tid­bits cost a cer­tain num­ber of crowns, usu­ally 6 or 8, but a cou­ple of fancy lob­stery things cost 10 crowns. I bought a ticket that included 40 lit­tle crowns, and that was just about right, except that I was going out for din­ner the same night. But I did think ahead, and in my long gos­sipy cof­fee with my dear friend Gigi this morn­ing I restrained myself from hav­ing break­fast and stuck to iced cof­fee. Then I mean­dered off to Taste and here is what I did.

First of all, I got lost. Then I made a num­ber of the happy mis­takes that I spe­cial­ize in. I thought I had fig­ured out the tiny lit­tle map and reached Tom’s Kitchen, where I reck­oned the sin­gle most delicious-sounding dish of the day was being served: seven-hour braised lamb shoul­der with bal­samic onions and potato mash. Totally divine. Tiny lit­tle por­tion, about three bites of each thing. Only then I real­ized that all the time I was eat­ing I thought it was by chef Tom Kitchin, when it was in fact the famous restau­rant called “Tom’s Kitchen.” Tom Kitchin was nowhere to be seen. Do you sup­pose other peo­ple con­fuse them, or only me?

Then it was onto Le Gavroche, where I was plan­ning to have lob­ster bisque with brandy cream. It came cold, and bright green, and even dim I twigged to the pos­si­bil­ity that I had made an error. As I ate it, quite hap­pily, I real­ized I had mis­read the booth num­ber and ended up with Benares’ chilled pea soup, redo­lent of cumin pow­der and crowned with edi­ble flow­ers. Not sorry about that! It’s the first time I’ve eaten at the hands of Atul Kochhar whose recipe for chick­pea and broc­col­ini salad I gave you the recipe for and which I’ve enjoyed sev­eral times since.

I decided I owed it to Le Gavroche, though, so I wan­dered back and there was the win­ning chef of our beloved telly pro­gramme “Mas­terchef”! James some­thing or other. Typ­i­cal me, again, I went up and ordered the smoked chicken and foie gras ter­rine and told him how much we had enjoyed his work on “Great British Menu.” Wrong pro­gramme, Kris­ten! What on earth. Being accus­tomed to deal­ing with the fool­ish pub­lic, he merely smiled and said, “Thank you, enjoy,” and I did. Unusual ter­rine: stud­ded with lentils! And accom­pa­nied by a very sub­tle truf­fle mayo-ish sauce. Lovely.

Finally I stag­gered over to Sumosan and had the largest scal­lop I have ever seen, mar­i­nated in teriyaki sauce and served over a shi­taake mush­room and topped with fried leeks. Deli­cious, lovely.

Mind you, my jour­nal to date does not take into account the num­ber­less things I sam­pled: bal­samic vine­gar on straw­ber­ries, pesto on foc­ca­cia, lamb sausages, Welsh beef burg­ers, Isle of Man pep­per cheese, some ran­dom Indian jal­frezi sauce on a lit­tle cracker (I always think I’ll like bot­tled sauces but I never do, some­how). And I people-watched, but I didn’t see any­one but our BBC chef. So finally it was time to pick Avery up at school and I could not eat another bite, but had four crowns left, which I hap­pily spent on two bot­tles of the new Fire­fly vit­a­min water, and took them home. I did not regret the long walk through Regent’s Park to get to school, I can tell you that! Per­haps with­out it my heart sim­ply would have stopped beat­ing, with over­work sup­port­ing my belly.

Then din­ner: two soft­shell crabs, with­out which life would be much less tasty, my favorite chilli and gin­ger dry-fried chicken, steamed pak choy, bar­be­cued pork to keep Avery and her skat­ing chum Jamie happy, good­ness. Those two girls are so much fun to have around that I’m always pleased to get them together. They dished about their class­mates, their exam results this week, rank­ing their teach­ers in order of com­pe­tence and sense of humor, the works. Then we put the top down on the car and took Julia home, and I must say I am now recov­er­ing. Whew. Tomor­row I shall be spend­ing all day doing guess what… cook­ing for the horse show pic­nic on Sun­day. But eat I shall not. Def­i­nitely not.

Instead I shall devote myself to work­ing on my next home­work assign­ment for the increas­ingly suc­cess­ful writ­ing class! Peo­ple are so funny. This week Angela said, “If I might speak?” and Keith imme­di­ately said, “As if we could stop you?” I have found my niche, I think. So far I’ve writ­ten and pre­sented and had cri­tiqued two pieces: one a col­lec­tion of mem­o­ries of mac­a­roni and cheese, and then the recipe, in a chap­ter called “Com­fort Food.” Sec­ond, a sim­i­lar sort of mem­oir and ode to Moroc­can meat­balls and our trip to Marakkesh and the friend who took us there, and the recipe, in a chap­ter called “Exotic Comes Home.” I have got the most help­ful com­ments about themes, and tone, and voice, and detail, so that I feel ready to write lots more of them and finally have some­thing to show an agent.

Next week I must write some­thing that’s been rolling around in my head for nearly 20 years: mem­o­ries of the year (on and off) that my hus­band and I spent in Moscow, and the recipe that I brought home, for very sim­ple oven-roasted chicken wings. I’m going to call it “Golden Domes and Chicken Swings,” which is how our Moscow host­ess pro­nounced the chicken part, and I have felt in all the inter­ven­ing years that those two ele­ments (one so lux­u­ri­ous and one so spare) encap­su­lated what it was like to live in that place in that time. When you could hop in an ordi­nary citizen’s car, give him a dol­lar, and be taken any­where in the city. And not be kid­napped and mur­dered for your pains.

Then I think I’ll write up a lot of my blog bits, like tak­ing Avery and Anna apple and black­berry pick­ing and then bring­ing them home and help­ing them cre­ate a pud­ding from their efforts, and call it “Pick Your Plea­sures.” And I have in mind a chap­ter called “The Chicken That Kept On Giv­ing,” about when you’re embroiled in some dread­ful ongo­ing event like mov­ing, or children’s exams, or a work cri­sis, and you need food that cooks itself in sev­eral dif­fer­ent ways: all-day braised on Day One, chicken salad on Day Two, and chicken noo­dle soup on Day Three. I’m get­ting all excited! I wish I could print out the blog but I think that would be directly con­tra­ven­ing all envi­ron­men­tally sound stric­tures against strip­ping the world of our tree supply.

Well, I’m recov­er­ing. I think it’s time to do a spot of laun­dry and kick back, but NOT with a snack, for sure! Ah well, tomor­row is another day, and no doubt… another meal. To quell my appetite, I must con­cen­trate on these lat­est pic­tures of Crush Actor Richard Armitage: he would not, most def­i­nitely NOT, go for a girl who wasn’t fit. Be still my heart!