that film

How on earth has a week gone by with­out my check­ing in? Because, as so many blog­gers wish, I’ve been actu­ally LIV­ING, as opposed to try­ing des­per­ately to find some­thing to blog about because nothing’s been hap­pen­ing in my actual life.

The main thing, today, that’s been hap­pen­ing to me is mas­sive envy. I knew it would happen.

Today finally we saw “Julie and Julia”, after every­one I know said not only that I would love it, but that it IS me. Nat­u­rally, hear­ing this, I wanted noth­ing LESS than to see the film. Imag­ine my posi­tion: nobody food blog­ger sits alone in her home, cook­ing her heart out, car­ing for her hus­band and cat, typ­ing away about her exploits in the kitchen, wish­ing for self-fulfillment. And… along comes self-fulfillment, a book deal and a major motion pic­ture star­ring Meryl Streep.

And then there’s my life.

It’s like telling a min­i­mally tal­ented run­ner to get, say, “Char­i­ots of Fire” on Net­flix. Or a minor crim­i­nal to shake up some microwave pop­corn and rent “The Godfather.”

The film is a com­plete charmer. We’re sup­posed to buy “Julie” as a b**ch because the char­ac­ter tells us so, but I’m sorry, they should have cast some­one other than Amy Adams. Not for noth­ing did my child ask to see “Enchanted” four times… IN THE CIN­EMA. She’s adorable. Not believ­able as a nasty per­son. At ALL. She cooks like a fiend, fac­ing dis­as­ters and dis­ap­point­ments, while her hus­band tries to be sup­port­ive. Fair enough, I rec­og­nize that sce­nario. But hun­dreds of peo­ple read her blog with­out her mak­ing any effort what­so­ever, and they COM­MENT. I have my stal­wart com­menters, but hun­dreds? I could cry.

And then she’s cook­ing for the food critic for the New York Times and the next morn­ing, on the sub­way and at Star­bucks, everyone’s read­ing the arti­cle about her blog and that’s THAT.

In the hours after leav­ing the cin­ema today, John and I tried to ana­lyze rea­sons for the gap between “Julie” and me. One is, I was not unhappy to start with, when I began my blog, so I wasn’t search­ing for mas­sive mean­ing. But I WAS try­ing to doc­u­ment a process: the process just didn’t have a par­tic­u­lar goal. Liv­ing in Lon­don, rais­ing my daugh­ter, tak­ing care of my fam­ily, cook­ing. Not very Hol­ly­wood. Two is, about a thou­sand years ago, when my par­ents noticed that I was a very good gym­nast, they asked me a very impor­tant ques­tion. “Would you, lit­tle Kris­ten,” [they said] like to be the BEST at one thing, or pretty good at lots of things?” A very good way to phrase it. Did I want to give up voice lessons, or piano lessons, or my scout troop, or bak­ing choco­late chip cook­ies every Thurs­day night while we watched “Hill Street Blues”? Not really. Not even to be a truly great gym­nast. I’d rather do a lot of things fairly well.

This has trans­lated into adult life, I think. I take mea­sure: I’m a really good mother, I think. A ded­i­cated school vol­un­teer. A pretty good wife, a very good friend. A fair and steady cook, a decent writer, an enthu­si­as­tic host­ess. I can still play the piano and do a cart­wheel. But I’m not a star at any of them.

Would I trade hav­ing writ­ten the most influ­en­tial food blog ever, for hav­ing spent count­less hours walk­ing Avery home from school and lis­ten­ing to her fic­tion ideas while get­ting an admit­tedly pretty ordi­nary din­ner together? Of course not.

But I’d like to have BOTH.

Rant over. The film was lovely. It came on the heels of some­thing far more impor­tant: my friend Charlie’s visit to us. We are in mourn­ing at his depar­ture (he who in typ­i­cal fash­ion began his visit as “my” friend and inex­orably con­quered any­one who crossed his path, so now he’s “ours”, a sort of National Trea­sure, like Stephen Fry). His sis­ter appar­ently needed him in Hert­ford­shire, which I con­sider the height of self­ish­ness. He arrived on Thurs­day evening to great fan­fare — my tra­di­tional wait­ing on the brick wall with a book and the house­key, plus a mag­nif­i­cent wel­come din­ner. My read­ing mate­r­ial? Bird by Bird: Some Instruc­tions on Writ­ing and Life by Anne Lam­ott. One of my favorite bits upon a very short read­ing? “Writ­ing a novel is like dri­ving in the dark, with only your head­lights to light a very short dis­tance ahead. It’s scary, but you can do the whole thing that way.”

Char­lie arrived and we brought roughly half his earthly belong­ings into the house, intro­duced him to Avery (beside her­self with wel­come) and John (clos­eted in a very unpleas­ant tax phone call), then dragged his things up to the (I think) totally charm­ing guest room. A gen­tly slop­ing ceil­ing as befits our very crooked old house, a nice fake wal­nut wardrobe from eBay with its lit­tle shelves labelled “hats”, “col­lars” and such, a white four-poster bed that used to be Avery’s but wouldn’t fit up the final two flights of stairs! Two win­dows, one a tiny square one like in a prison cell, the other large and free-opening, over the green row of back gar­dens, over­look­ing everyone’s pic­nic tables and cats.

For that first din­ner? A starter of scal­lops sauteed in olive oil with gar­lic, red chillis and tons of pars­ley, tossed in toasted home­made bread­crumbs. Fan­tas­tic. Then grilled lamb chops mar­i­nated in rose­mary, gar­lic, olive oil and lemon juice. And for Avery’s delight, oven-roasted mush­rooms filled with sauteed chopped mush­rooms, bacon, gar­lic and goats cheese. Plus John’s favorite slaw, and then, a truly superb pud­ding. Served up by Avery.

Poached William Pears
(serves 4)

4 William pears, peeled and the bot­toms sliced off so they stand up
1 cup hard cider, or Perry
2 cin­na­mon sticks
1/2 cup dark brown sugar

clot­ted cream
short­bread cookies

Place the pears into the saucepan and pour in the cider, drop in the cin­na­mon sticks and scat­ter over the sugar. Put the lid on and bring to a boil, then sim­mer for 15 min­utes, turn­ing the pears over twice, on their sides in the liq­uid. Then remove them to a dish, turn up the heat and boil the liq­uid until it’s reduced to a syrup, per­haps 10 min­utes. You’ll have to remove the pan from the heat and let the bub­bles set­tle down to see what you have. If it’s dark­ish and thick, you’re good. Set aside until you’re ready to serve. At serv­ing time, driz­zle the syrup over the pears, and serve with a spoon­ful of clot­ted cream to each per­son, and a cou­ple of short­bread biscuits.

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

How we ate. And laughed. Char­lie is an old-fashioned gen­tle­man whose entire per­son­al­ity is geared to laugh­ter. Except when you tell him some­thing impor­tant and then his coun­te­nance turns to a sort of inno­cent lis­ten­ing, and you can FEEL him lis­ten­ing. He would do any­thing in his power to help me if I needed it, and give over his whole con­scious­ness to lis­ten while he was think­ing how he could help. But his great incli­na­tion is… laugh­ter. Avery adores him.

She described to him her lat­est maths home­work. Do you remem­ber pi? I hardly do. Unless it’s an apple one. This ver­sion is that vaguely famil­iar 3.14 chappy, the whole radius-of-a-circle-squared doo­dah. So it turns out, the cutting-off at 3.14 is totally silly. The dig­its go on INFI­NITELY. As in, mil­lions of dig­its. Scary peo­ple have devoted their lives, and more impor­tantly, web­sites, in the explo­ration of this phenomenon.

So Avery’s maths teacher, the dear Mr Smith who tap­dances in his spare time, assigned a poetry home­work. Poetry in maths? Yes. The girls were to extend the dig­its of Pi and write poetry using words of the num­ber of let­ters indi­cated by the dig­its. Seri­ously. As in, “Fun I have,” for 3.14. When Avery gives me per­mis­sion, I’ll pub­lish her efforts. She’s up to 82 digits.

Fri­day found me host­ing the cof­fee morn­ing for Avery’s class moth­ers. So beau­ti­fully dressed, such flut­ing voices, such rich offer­ings of mar­malade, crois­sants, fruit-stuffed muffins. Char­lie drifted in as we chat­tered (like birds on a wire) and I intro­duced him. “He wanted to be either my hus­band, for you all, or the but­ler. Take your pick.”

We accom­plished a sur­pris­ing amount of busi­ness in the way of pro­jected class events, fundrais­ers and bridge (?) lessons to be shared among Avery’s class and the boys’ class of one of her friend’s twin brother! We shall see about that.

Off to shop in Pic­cadilly (Fort­num and Mason, any­one?) and lunch with one of Charlie’s army offi­cer friends. More uncon­trolled laugh­ter, end­ing in a celebrity sight­ing: Janeane Garafolo, of SNL fame and more. Totally tatooed, very cool. I peeled off to take Avery and her friend Sylvie skat­ing (“That’s such an F. Scott Fitzger­ald phrase, Kris­ten: ‘I sim­ply must cut out by 3′”, Char­lie claimed). The usual mis­ery at the skat­ing rink, only this time under­scored by the pres­ence of a new mother, one hunched in a self-congratulatory way over a dog-eared copy of “The Opti­mum Nutri­tion Bible,” which she paused in read­ing to look askance at Avery’s pizza and Sylvie’s ice cream. Rats.

Sleep beck­ons. More on Charlie’s visit, more food, and a truly great fish recipe to to fol­low, the fish from, you guessed it… Julia Child. I can but try.