we’re away

Ah, the last din­ner party before half-term hol­i­day begins tomor­row… the green beans steamed and then bathed in a gar­licky, lemony but­ter, the pota­toes, quar­tered, steamed and tossed in a very large saucepan con­tain­ing melted but­ter and hot olive oil, and loads of paprika. Yes, it’s more “Lick the Bowl Pota­toes” for Avery. All this accom­pa­nied by the Main Chance: chicken breasts with a pocket cut in, stuffed with moz­zarella wrapped in pro­sciutto and spinach, grilled expertly by John. Then, as you can see, a silly cheese­board to round out the night. A rocket salad with a fab­u­lous dress­ing of the oil from a jar of arti­choke hearts (renew, reuse, recy­cle!), mixed with mus­tard, bal­samic vine­gar, Fox Point Sea­son­ing and fro­mage frais… and some store­bought cookies.

How we all laughed: Keith and Annie, Emily and Geor­gia and Jonathan… dis­cussing hol­i­days upcom­ing and past shared, Keith advis­ing John in the grilling of the chicken, all the chil­dren troop­ing out into the dark, barely illu­mi­nated gar­den to “help” the tim­ing, as Annie and I tossed beans, stirred pota­toes, dressed the salad, watched the cats mean­der­ing in and about look­ing for fallen scraps. “There aren’t enough beans!” I wailed. “Just because I don’t like green beans, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t pro­vide enough for other peo­ple…” “Why did you make them, then?” John asks in all fair rea­son. “Because every­one else likes them.”

Annie and Keith jumped in. “I’d say ‘FHB,’ but we’re all fam­ily here so that won’t work,” said Annie. “FHB?” I asked. “Fam­ily Hold Back,” Keith elab­o­rates. Such is our “fam­ily” that then NO ONE took enough beans and there were enough for seconds!

We sat on in the can­dle­light, drink­ing wine and lis­ten­ing to dis­cus­sions of exams, Avery’s wild dreams of piglets in school wear­ing brown and blue woollen coats (don’t ask), and finally, “Gross Things My Chil­dren Have Eaten.” The win­ner? Jonathan’s foray as a tod­dler into what he glee­fully described to his mother as “mov­ing raisins.” WOODLICE. There’s child­hood in a Con­necti­cut farm­house for you! Mov­ing raisins.

We’ve had the last of our early autumn school rit­u­als: the last drop of the girls at “Drake”, watch­ing them run hell bent with their satchels fly­ing, kick­ing aside the fallen leaves, paus­ing at the zebra cross­ing to watch the oncom­ing boys, then dis­ap­pear­ing out of sight into the grounds of the boys’ school. I’m sure I looked like a stalker, sus­pended on the pave­ment, gaz­ing after them, watch­ing lit­tle girl­hood run away from me and around a cor­ner. Hard not to see it as a metaphor.

Then I’ve seen Avery and Jamie to their last reg­u­lar Fri­day skat­ing out­ing till after the “Drake” fes­tiv­i­ties… “please take my glasses, Mommy, and here’s my skate bag, and could I have ice cream?”, plus the scream­ing ban­ter of count­less teenage cou­ples, and birth­day par­ties filled with shout­ing chil­dren descend­ing on the adja­cent bowl­ing alley… but look­ing through the muddy glass at Avery mak­ing spec­ta­cles shapes around her eyes: “watch us!” So I did watch, a new jump, a new spin.

And yes­ter­day drop­ping her at act­ing class, watch­ing her do the “flick,” as her high mis­tress has named the ges­ture of hair over shoul­der. How many more days will we be wel­come, drop­ping her off any­where? That prospect should shut up my whinge­ing about the skat­ing rink, but of course I enjoy the whinge­ing as much as I do the drop­ping off.

At least I enjoy SOME­THING. How many hours of the past two days have I devoted to the follow-up novel to Julie/Julia? Too many. And as far as I can tell, the author enjoyed pre­cisely NOTH­ING of what she describes. The book tells the tale of the dis­so­lu­tion of her mar­riage due to her infi­delity, and con­cur­rently her train­ing as a butcher. Actu­ally she did pos­si­bly enjoy her fel­low butch­ers, but in describ­ing her work, she cured me of any desire what­so­ever to become a butcher, and I had had a bit of a desire, I admit. Right now I’m suf­fer­ing from two burns on my hands from touch­ing the oven ele­ments in a care­less moment, but I can tell you that that’s NOTH­ING com­pared to the cuts, blood– and fat-filled scrapes that attend butcher­dom. And the COLD.

In any case, I did get all the way through Cleav­ing, and I can report, as a very old per­son, that it reads much like a revis­ited novel by… Erica Jong! Isn’t that a name from the past! Do you sup­pose Julie Pow­ell has ever even heard of Erica Jong, much less read “Fear of Fly­ing,” pretty much the inven­tion of bor­der­line over-personal pornog­ra­phy? And Erica accom­plished this in 1973, when women’s lib­er­a­tion in every way, espe­cially sex­ual, was a brand-new topic, and as such sort of a high to read about, at the time.

I think there’s room in per­haps every three gen­er­a­tions or so for a novel full of self-indulgent for­ays into a given person’s sex­ual adven­tures, merely for the sake of telling the reader about them. And between D.H Lawrence and Erica Jong, we’re cov­ered for the time being. I wanted to care about Julie Powell’s exploits, but I didn’t. I felt that both in how she lived and how she wrote about liv­ing, she was giv­ing me self-indulgence for its own sake, and some­thing in my Mid­west­ern good-girl upbring­ing led me to say to myself, “If she spent just one minute think­ing about any­one but her­self, she’d be in a bet­ter place.”

If I thought she’d enjoyed any­thing very much: her mar­riage, her blog, her affair, her COOK­ING, if she’d rev­elled in the excess and the out­law­ness, I’d have enjoyed the book. But I don’t think she did. Don’t mis­un­der­stand me: I can get my mind around tales of unhap­pi­ness, infi­delity, soul-searching, tor­ment. But I want to think the teller cared even more than I did about grow­ing from her expe­ri­ences, and I don’t think she did. I wish I did under­stand her moti­va­tion in telling the story. And I feel sorry for both her hus­band and her lover.

And I STILL can’t under­stand how to bone a duck.

Off we go, then, tomor­row after­noon, for our autumn break in the Eng­lish coun­try­side. We’ll have our tiny car packed to the gills with the usual: Welling­ton boots, books on tape, soup blender, tealight can­dles, books galore, Scotch, hot water bot­tles. I’ll see you next Monday!

Spinach, Moz­zarella and Prosciutto-Stuffed Chicken Fil­lets
(serves 8)

8 bone­less chicken fil­lets, well-trimmed
about 10 spinach leaves per fil­let
3 pro­sciutto slices per fil­let
1 thick slice buf­falo moz­zarella per fil­let (3 whole balls of cheese)
24 tooth­picks (called “cock­tail sticks” in Eng­land if you’re shopping)

With the fil­let lying on its side on a cut­ting board, care­fully cut a pocket length­wise along, tak­ing care not to cut all the way through to the back (but it’s not a dis­as­ter if you do).

Lay two pro­sciutto slices on the cut­ting board and pile on spinach leaves, then lay on the moz­zarella slice and roll it up tightly. Wrap the third slice of pro­sciutto around the lit­tle pack­age to cover the ends. Tuck the whole pack­age inside the chicken fil­let and close up the gap as tightly as you can, with the toothpicks.

Grill over a medium heat for about 8 min­utes per side, or until the chicken is cooked through.