Life has been a whirl­wind here in Lon­don, with all the excite­ment that usu­ally fills Octo­ber (Hal­loween!) and early Novem­ber (Avery’s birth­day!).  But this year of course, there have been a cou­ple of tiny lit­tle events — oh, noth­ing really to speak of — that have added to the fre­netic nature of the last few weeks.

Let me explain.

As many of you know, Avery’s school puts on a Christ­mas Fair as a fundraiser to con­tribute to schol­ar­ships and char­ity, once every two years.  I used to won­der why it wasn’t every year, as it’s so much fun!  Gor­geous dec­o­ra­tions, fes­tive food and drink, tons of stalls full of tempt­ing gifts, Christ­mas car­ols around every cor­ner.  How cel­e­bra­tory!  What fun!

Yes, well, that was in the hal­cyon days before John took over as Chair­man of the Fair.  Now our entire fam­ily fully under­stands why per­haps the Fair ought to be just once in a decade!  John in par­tic­u­lar and to some extent Avery and I too have been con­sumed by the Fair busi­ness for months.  It will take place a week from tomor­row and if we all sur­vive the day, you may look to your win­dow to see if a porker is air­borne.  It is SO much work!

Now, four years ago in advance of the day, I fell down the steps and sprained my ankle.  So I was given the stul­ti­fy­ing job of man­ning the used books and DVDs stall.  For FOUR HOURS.  Chil­dren slept nearby on piles of coats, some­one brought me a sand­wich.  But I never saw the Fair: the hilar­i­ous staff pan­tomime, the girls busk­ing for change with their vio­lin con­certs in hall­ways, the gor­geous dec­o­ra­tions. Then two years ago, I was put in charge of the entry desk. For four hours I stood in the freez­ing wind com­ing in the enor­mous front doors, cajol­ing and chivvy­ing cheap peo­ple to part with £3 in order to get in.  I never saw the Fair, just shiv­ered in the autum­nal afternoon.

This year I along with another mother am in charge of — guess what — the food!  Smoked salmon sand­wiches, Pros­ecco, cup­cakes and brown­ies, pizza, sausages, shepherd’s pie, mulled wine!  I am gath­er­ing up piles of tacky Christ­mas gar­lands, lights in the shape of cran­ber­ries, bunting and can­dles.  In eight days it will all be over, for another two years.  Rest assured I shall report all the glo­ri­ous details to you!

In the mean­time, of course, Hal­loween has come and gone.

She looks bloom­ing here, but poor Avery was still recov­er­ing from her school trip to Sicily, which cul­mi­nated in a return-travel day of food poi­son­ing! Every­one was felled, teach­ers included, on a day of coach jour­ney, air­plane jour­ney, more coach jour­ney, finally to arrive at school in the wee hours of the morn­ing, to picked up by me: DRI­VING!  Aren’t you glad you were blame­lessly asleep and not out there on the road, with me.  But she had had a won­der­ful time on the trip, until then.

And of course we carved pump­kins, or at least Avery designed pump­kins and John and I carved them!

And then before we could say boo, it was Avery’s 16th birth­day.  I was like peas on a hot shovel, wait­ing to give Avery her present: a dozen cup­cakes, made by a local baker with per­fect, pre­cise, beau­ti­ful icing rep­re­sent­ing twelve of Avery’s favorite books.

John and I arranged every­thing at a lovely neigh­bor­hood hotel, and waited for Avery and sev­eral of her friends to walk over from school in the blus­tery autum­nal air.  It was so hard to wait!  “Are you com­ing?” I text.  “On our way!” she replies.

Would she like them?  Did we choose the right books?  Was it enough of a cel­e­bra­tion for a mile­stone birth­day?  We needn’t have wor­ried.  She LOVED them.  They all did.  Such won­der­ful girls.  I think we’ll be able to pre­serve the tops of the cup­cakes some­how.  I hope so.

And then the fol­low­ing night it was her real present: an evening at “Twelfth Night,” an all-male cast star­ring Mark Rylance and the heav­enly, divine Stephen Fry!  You must go if you can get a ticket.

“Yel­low stock­ings!”  What a won­der­ful com­edy.  To think I played Viola in col­lege.  I couldn’t remem­ber a sin­gle line!

And that was Avery’s birth­day.  How proud we are of the kind, intel­li­gent, quirky, sophis­ti­cated, and truly lovely per­son she has grown into.  Happy Birthday!

Elec­tion Day came.  We stayed up all night!  Till the final result came in!  We sim­ply could not, how­ever, stay awake for the con­ces­sion and vic­tory speeches, which had to wait until poor Avery had slogged through her school day and I had lum­bered around like a dead thing star­ing into space here at home.  But the result was worth the wait and we have the Pres­i­dent we love, back for Four More Years.  Here’s hop­ing that Amer­ica can keep him safe and sound for him to do his job.

The whole event, the end­less sum­mer polit­i­cal argu­ments back home, the close mon­i­tor­ing of the atmos­phere there once we returned to Lon­don, the puz­zle­ment of our British friends as to the lunacy of the entire process: exhaust­ing!  I can­not imag­ine actu­ally sur­viv­ing being a can­di­date, let along try­ing to be a can­di­date whilst also try­ing to run the United States of Amer­ica.  Thank good­ness it’s all over, but the three of us crept around for sev­eral days after our all-nighter, feel­ing like dead things!

And as if all that hasn’t been enough excite­ment, I have had a mas­sive bell­ring­ing adven­ture!  As you may know from my many blither­ings about bell ring­ing, the com­mu­nity of ringers in the south­west of Lon­don is close-knit and mutu­ally sup­port­ive.  We race from Ful­ham to Barnes to Chiswick to Rich­mond, prac­tic­ing together when we can, ring­ing for each other’s ser­vices, wed­dings, funer­als and Quar­ter Peals.  As Hillary Clin­ton has said, “It takes a vil­lage!”  We all depend upon each other.

So it was par­tic­u­larly pleas­ing to have an adven­ture together, an out­ing to cel­e­brate our com­mu­nity of ringers.  Such was our Octo­ber expe­ri­ence at St James Gar­lick­hythe, in the heart of the City of Lon­don, to ring the famed Jubilee Bells!

These eight gor­geous new bells were cast at Whitechapel Foundry in the months approach­ing Her Majesty the Queen’s Golden Jubilee this sum­mer.  They then made their way to a purpose-built tower in a ware­house in Kent, at Eden­bridge, Fir­croft, where they were installed and tested.  From there they were trans­ferred to the barge “Ursula Kather­ine” to be part of the Queen’s Jubilee Flotilla in June, where a Quar­ter Peal was rung on the River Thames.

The eight beau­ties were then taken by water to the church of St James Gar­lick­hythe where they hang now, replac­ing the old 17th cen­tury bells.

Our merry band of ringers from Ful­ham, St Mary’s Rich­mond, and Barnes — some of us (myself) quite silent in intim­i­da­tion and fear of ring­ing such ven­er­a­ble bells! — climbed the three dozen or so steps into the new ring­ing cham­ber on the evening of Octo­ber 23, hosted by Eddie Hart­ley, Tower Cap­tain at All Saints Ful­ham, who has also been instru­men­tal in teach­ing many of us at St Mary’s Barnes to ring.

We were wel­comed by Dickon Love, Cap­tain of the Royal Jubilee Bell­ringers and Tower Cap­tain at St Mag­nus the Mar­tyr, as well as being respon­si­ble for the ring­ing of all the bells in the City of London.

He spoke to us through an inge­nious trap door in the floor of the new ring­ing cham­ber (there is an old ring­ing floor 4 feet below the cur­rent floor, Dickon explains), encour­ag­ing us to enjoy our­selves and the bells, before shut­ting the door and leav­ing us to our adventures.

I can­not say that I cov­ered myself in glory!  The nerves were sim­ply incred­i­ble, to have the priv­i­lege of ring­ing those beau­ti­ful bells.  I was scared to death!  A lovely ringer from Ful­ham took me under his wing, stand­ing behind me to help me keep my place.

For some odd rea­son, the more dif­fi­cult the chal­lenge, the bet­ter I did.  “Plain Hunt On Seven” is my lat­est hur­dle, and thank good­ness it went beau­ti­fully, because the sound had nowhere to hide, in those ancient walls, float­ing out over those ancient streets.  What a beau­ti­ful experience.

With all this drama, of course I have also been in the kitchen.  My beloved Hand­Picked Nation web­site con­tin­ues to keep me busy, report­ing from my beloved adopted coun­try what­ever foodie ideas might be enter­tain­ing.  The lat­est?  Water­cress!

Did you know it has more cal­cium than milk, more Vit­a­min C than oranges?  And it tastes so good!

After an entire week of buy­ing, cook­ing, eat­ing and hav­ing Avery pho­to­graph more water­cress than I could have imag­ined existed, the arti­cle has gone off.  The stand­out recipes after all this exper­i­ment­ing?  Well, there’s Water­cress Salad with Beet­root, Ham and Stil­ton (deli­cious com­bi­na­tion), and Water­cress and Hazel­nut Pesto.  Pep­pery, intensely green, it’s my new favorite leaf.  Move over, rocket!  But the best dish?  Visit your fish­mon­ger, break out the deep-fryer, and give this a whirl.

Nobu-Inspired Shrimp Tem­pura with Creamy Spicy Sauce on Watercress

(serves four)

1 1/2 pounds raw shrimp, cut into bite-sized piece, or rock shrimp

about 1/2 cup tem­pura bat­ter mix

enough ice-cold water to make thick batter

oil for deep-frying

sev­eral hand­fuls fresh water­cress, washed and spun dry

for sauce:

1 egg yolk

½ tea­spoons sea salt

cou­ple grinds of fresh white or black pepper

1 tea­spoon rice vinegar

100 ml grape­seed oil (or other very mildly fla­vored oil)

2 tbsps chili gar­lic sauce

sev­eral shakes Tabasco, to taste

juice of 1/2 lemon

fresh minced chives

First, make the sauce:

This sauce is basi­cally a fla­vored home­made may­on­naise, so sim­ply fol­low the pro­ce­dure for mayo and add fla­vors to taste.  Nobu’s recipe does not include Tabasco or lemon juice, but to me, shrimp with­out lemon is… strange!  Whisk together the egg yolk, mirin, salt and pep­per.  Now very grad­u­ally whisk in the oil until fully emul­si­fied.  Then add the fla­vor­ings to your taste, mak­ing it as spicy as you like.  Set aside at room temperature.

Heat the oil until ready to fry, then dip the shrimp in the tem­pura bat­ter and fry for about a minute or until golden brown.  Toss the fried shrimp in the creamy spicy sauce and serve in indi­vid­ual bowls, on beds of water­cress, and top with chives.

******

This dish is sim­ply heav­enly: if you eat it straight away, the shrimp are quite a mag­i­cal com­bi­na­tion of slightly crisp and yet bathed in the spicy sauce.  Of course it isn’t quite the celes­tial expe­ri­ence of pay­ing gazil­lions of dol­lars or pounds to get it at Nobu, but there was some­thing won­der­ful about being able to recre­ate the com­plex fla­vors, at home.

Home.  It’s hav­ing to pro­vide a haven these days with such busy times.  Watch this space for reports of… the Fair!  If we sur­vive.  Ho, ho, ho!

How often do you acknowl­edge that you’ve made a mis­take, and how much time do you spend beat­ing your­self up, imag­in­ing how you might have done it dif­fer­ently, feel­ing inad­e­quate, feel­ing bad, regretful?

On the other hand, how often do you take the time, lit­er­ally stop doing any­thing else and take the time, to admit that you’ve done some­thing well, that you’ve set your­self a chal­lenge and come out on the other side, that some­thing you’ve set your mind to has been a success?

If you’re any­thing like me, the pro­por­tion of the first to the sec­ond is painfully high.  Why is it so much eas­ier to take blame than to take credit?  Even “take credit” isn’t quite right.  “Take plea­sure” in a job well done, an accom­plish­ment to feel good about?

Last week I was “grad­u­ated” from my first social work fam­ily with the divine organ­i­sa­tion Home-Start.  Since it’s an entirely con­fi­den­tial ser­vice for sup­port­ing fam­i­lies at risk, I can’t tell you any­thing about “my” fam­ily, nor can I show you any pho­tos of them.  So I’m going to inter­sperse my happy account with some lovely autum­nal scenes from our vil­lage life, and leave you to imagine.

You might remem­ber that last Jan­u­ary, I began my train­ing with Home-Start, a part-charitable organ­i­sa­tion, part privately-funded, designed really to CATCH fam­i­lies with small chil­dren — at least one under five years of age — at risk of falling into despair.  Of course despair can come in many guises: post-partum depres­sion, mul­ti­ple births with­out enough sup­port, divorce, job loss, bereave­ment while try­ing to raise a family.

In this won­der­ful coun­try, the gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor have long recog­nised that CATCH­ING prob­lems when they are man­age­able, keep­ing them from descend­ing into a spi­ral of chaos and hope­less­ness, saves san­ity, saves fam­i­lies, saves money.  Amaz­ing peo­ple called “health vis­i­tors” turn up after par­ents with new babies leave hos­pi­tal.  They visit homes to assess how those new par­ents are cop­ing, and they report back to GPs when they flag a problem.

And then the GPs know that the Home-Start organ­i­sa­tion is there to help, for FREE.  Home-Start’s trained vol­un­teers kick into gear.  So after my 12-week train­ing (really gru­elling and upset­ting at times, with vis­its from pro­fes­sion­als from the most har­row­ing walks of life: parole offi­cers, spousal abuse police task forces, child abuse coun­sel­lors) I was intro­duced to “my fam­ily.”  All I can tell you about them is that an ill­ness had changed their lives.  Every mem­ber of the house­hold was tee­ter­ing on the brink of real life-changing depres­sion.  The whole house­hold lacked breath­ing space, were too upset to lis­ten to each other, too tired to offer any sort of sup­port to each other.

Over the course of the next five months, I vis­ited once a week.  Just once a week.  For two or three hours.  At first I won­dered why I was there, why a friend or a babysit­ter wouldn’t pro­vide the exact same func­tion of two hours’ com­pany and a lis­ten­ing ear.

As the weeks went by and the dark, short days of win­ter blos­somed into the warm, cheer­ful days of spring and then sum­mer, I watched “my fam­ily” blos­som too.  The hard­est thing to learn was how not to cry when some­one you care about is sob­bing.  It was des­per­ately hard the first time.  It was also hard to see fam­ily con­flicts push­ing and tear­ing peo­ple apart, and merely sit and lis­ten.  It was dif­fi­cult to leave at the end of each visit when I sensed — for what­ever rea­son — that it had been help­ful for me to be there and it would be won­der­ful if I could just stay.

But grad­u­ally I realised that no one was cry­ing any­more.  There was a sub­tle shift from com­ing into a house of sad­ness to a house of recov­ery.  Peo­ple laughed!  Every­one got involved in the games and play I sug­gested, instead of just one or two.  As the days got longer, there was a pal­pa­ble sense of nor­mal­ity and cheer return­ing to the fam­ily.  There were can­celled appoint­ments — won­der­ful! — because of new bal­let lessons, new play­dates.  Real life was com­ing back.

Of course the result of this beau­ti­fully sat­is­fy­ing devel­op­ment was, for me, good­bye.  I could feel it com­ing.  My super­vi­sor explained, “We will make this work with the fam­ily.  Every­one knew you were com­ing in tem­porar­ily to help them through a cri­sis, and the cri­sis is over.  It’s like giv­ing a child a pet know­ing that some­day it will die, and that that’s part of life, say­ing good­bye.  You did your job, and now you need to do it for another family.”

Good­byes were said.  Cards and lit­tle gifts and flow­ers changed hands, many, many hugs were given and received.  Most won­der­ful of all were long talks about the jour­ney from the dark days (“life will never be that hard again”) to the nor­mal life the fam­ily lives now.

And what on earth did I do?  I just WENT, and lis­tened, and played.  Impor­tantly, the fam­ily felt I didn’t JUDGE.  Home-Start vol­un­teers appar­ently have a cer­tain qual­ity of serv­ing as some­thing dif­fer­ent from a friend, more approach­ing a fam­ily mem­ber before whom the peo­ple in need don’t have to PRE­TEND or apol­o­gise or do any­thing that’s just beyond them at the time.

As soon as I cycled away into the sun­set — lit­er­ally! — I had to make a con­scious deci­sion not to start pulling back from feel­ing GOOD, from say­ing to myself, “How impor­tant could that have been, any­way?  Don’t take your­self so seri­ously.”  It WAS impor­tant.  Why is it so much eas­ier to blame one­self for mis­takes than to feel good about suc­cess?  Why should we let the blame last so much longer, wake our­selves up in the night with doubts, when the good feel­ings that suc­cess bring are as fleet­ing as a dis­play of autumn leaves, just blow­ing away before we have a chance to appre­ci­ate them?

I am absolutely deter­mined to reverse that ten­dency.  My new school-year res­o­lu­tion is to take the time to feel good when I deserve it, and, I hope, to pass along that life skill to my daugh­ter who already shows signs of inher­it­ing my ten­dency to set aside tak­ing sat­is­fac­tion in favor of tak­ing blame.  She’s young enough to change.  It’s really not about tak­ing “credit” but more tak­ing the oppor­tu­nity to feel good when you HAVE done good.  It’s an enor­mous priv­i­lege to be able to help any­one, and tak­ing a moment to savour that should be part of our emo­tional menu, I think.

Speak­ing of change, of course, there is also change-ringing to make me happy!  The bells have been par­tic­u­larly giv­ing lately, all of us hav­ing fun ring­ing at a wed­ding over the week­end, enjoy­ing the sight of the glo­ri­ous chapel, dat­ing from 1215, dec­o­rated for the festivities.

We’ve all been learn­ing “Plain Hunt on Seven,” which means fol­low­ing a (to me!) com­pli­cated pat­tern of bells chang­ing posi­tion, speed­ing up, slow­ing down, pro­duc­ing the unearthly math­e­mat­i­cal music of bell­ring­ing.  That bellcham­ber is one of my favorite places on earth, scene of so many scary fail­ures, but then again so many moments of fun and achievement.

Change, too, has been in the air with our diets.  I’ve been pretty much wheat-free for about two months now, turn­ing my back on bread and pasta in favor of lit­tle rice crack­ers, rice itself, wrap­ping things in let­tuce!  Do you have left­over ham you’d like to cel­e­brate?  Try my fab­u­lous ham salad.  Now, keep in mind that here in the UK, if you ask for ham salad you’ll get just that: ham, and salad.  If you want the slightly creamy, savoury mix­ture we Amer­i­cans hap­pily grew up with, but in a much lighter, less gloppy ver­sion, ask for “ham may­on­naise.”  More hap­pily, make your own.

What I’ve been chal­leng­ing myself to do is take dishes tra­di­tion­ally call­ing for wheat and think out­side the grain box.  Take Nigella Lawson’s recent mouth-watering sug­ges­tion for a pasta dish, spaghetti with olives and anchovies.  Why not use the sauce as a salad dress­ing?  I con­cocted a slightly dif­fer­ent ver­sion of her sauce and my dears, with some crunchy Red Gem let­tuce, rocket and tiny water­cress, it was ADDICTIVE.

Olive and Anchovy Dressing

(makes LOTS)

1 cup green pit­ted olives

4 anchovy fil­lets in olive oil

1/4 cup pine nuts

1 tbsp capers, rinsed if stored in salt

zest and juice of 1 lemon

1–2 cloves gar­lic (depend­ing on how much you love it!)

2 large hand­fuls flat-leaf parsley

2 tbsps mayonnaise

enough olive oil to achieve the con­sis­tency you like: per­haps 1/2 cup

Put every­thing in a food proces­sor and blend steadily until emulsified.

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This past week has been happy for me as well because believe it or not, the school autumn hol­i­day has arrived!  As always, look­ing up in the mid­dle of the after­noon and see­ing Avery’s shin­ing head across the room is a won­der­ful thing.  It’s lovely to have her home to make lunch for, to lis­ten to her var­i­ous enthu­si­asms (the evils of trickle-down eco­nom­ics, the beauty of learn­ing Russ­ian!), to get her late-night requests for “pop­corn, if it’s not too much trou­ble!” and to make a choco­late cake for her.  She’s not wheat-free by any means!  This last-minute inven­tion got rave reviews.  Try it warmed slightly with a slather­ing of but­ter, for break­fast.  Avery says it’s just fine.

White and Milk Choco­late Chip Cake

(serves 8)

2 cups all-purpose (plain) flour

3/4 cup sugar (caster)

1 tbsp bak­ing powder

pinch of fresh-grated nutmeg

pinch salt

1 egg

3/4 cup heavy cream

3/4 cup milk

5 tbsps but­ter, melted

hand­ful white choco­late chips or buttons

hand­ful milk choco­late chips or buttons

Heat oven to 400F/200C.   But­ter and flour a loaf tin.

In a large bowl, stir together with a fork the flour, sugar, bak­ing pow­der, nut­meg and salt, com­bin­ing thor­oughly.  In a small bowl, beat the egg.  Stir in the cream, milk and but­ter and blend well.  Stir the wet mix­ture into the dry, stir­ring only until they are com­bined, not overmixing.

Pour the bat­ter into the loaf tin and sprin­kle on the choco­lates.  Of course, you could sub­sti­tute semi-sweet choco­late, or but­ter­scotch chips.  I made this cake with what I had in my pantry!  Bake for about 40 min­utes, check­ing then to see if the cen­ter has cooked.  Bake until a knife inserted into the cen­ter of the cake comes out clean.

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She’s off now, though, on her own to Sicily with her fel­low Greek and Latin stu­dents, for a week.  She reports a wasp-infested hotel room and swel­ter­ing tem­per­a­tures, and sounds com­pletely happy with both so far.  And, “It doesn’t look like Italy!”  We’ll get her back in the mid­dle of the night on Sat­ur­day, full, one expects, of stories.

In the mean­time we’re enjoy­ing the foggy days of late Octo­ber, com­plete with scary spiders…

Would you believe you can walk a block from our Lon­don home and enjoy this beau­ti­ful, haunt­ing reser­voir?  I know that all too soon, in the next week or so, all the leaves will be stripped from the trees, but for now I am enjoy­ing the vista.

I sim­ply love the quiet evenings when Avery and John have gone to sleep, sit­ting up with a cup of lemon and cin­na­mon tea, a cosy mys­tery, an alpaca cardi­gan to but­ton up around my neck in the chilly bed­time breeze.  Feel­ing good.

I am hard put to explain what on earth has been occu­py­ing me for the last month!  Here it is, Octo­ber already, with Avery’s two-week half-term break com­ing along on Fri­day, when in some ways it feels we just stepped off the plane from our Amer­i­can sum­mer.  We have not been idle.

Of course I have been ring­ing!  I would never have dreamed a year ago that I would be capa­ble of ring­ing at a wed­ding, but that’s where I found myself on Sat­ur­day after­noon.  As you see, it was a beau­ti­ful, sunny autumn day with blue skies and a fresh breeze in the ancient yew trees in the church­yard.  The bride was Sikh, the groom Eng­lish, the cer­e­mony tra­di­tional with “I Vow to Thee My Coun­try” and “Jerusalem” being sung with gusto.  We rang the bride in, scut­tled away to have cups of tea and gos­sip behind closed doors, then emerged again to ring her and her new hus­band out.  It was a heav­enly expe­ri­ence, full of excite­ment, team spirit and pride.  We’ve been prac­tic­ing like crazy, with real aca­d­e­mic lessons com­plete with coloured pen­cils and markers.

Eleanor Roo­sevelt famously said, “Do at least one thing every day that scares you.”  I have no prob­lem accom­plish­ing that!  Every time I hold the rope and hear the tre­ble ringer say, “Look to: treble’s going, she’s gone,” I am filled with a com­bi­na­tion of fear and exul­ta­tion.  It cer­tainly keeps one on one’s toes!

The best thing to do to calm down after the extreme chal­lenge, the deep sense of accom­plish­ment, was to take a bike ride around the peace­ful vil­lage, breath­ing deeply of the beau­ti­ful autum­nal air.  How I love our lit­tle pond.

Every evening that we can, we three gather at home from our var­i­ous activ­i­ties — social work, the school Christ­mas Fair, Lost Prop­erty — and share a savoury din­ner, exchang­ing sto­ries of our day.  A new favorite is this elaborate-looking dish, actu­ally quite sim­ple, and purely delicious.

Pan-Fried Chicken Stuffed with Pro­sciutto, Moz­zarella and Spinach

(serves four)

4 big chicken breast fillets

4 hand­fuls baby spinach

1 large ball buf­falo mozzarella

8 slices prosciutto

1 dozen toothpicks

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp olive oil

sea salt and fresh black pepper

Slice each chicken breast hor­i­zon­tally, leav­ing one side intact.  Stuff with spinach, moz­zarella and pro­sciutto, then fold the chicken breast back together and secure with three tooth­picks each.  In a heavy fry­ing pan, melt the but­ter with the olive oil until it fin­ishes sput­ter­ing, then place the chicken in care­fully, sprin­kling with salt and pep­per.  Cook with­out dis­turb­ing on one side for about 4 min­utes, then turn over and cook for another 4 min­utes, bast­ing with the hot but­ter and oil mix­ture.  Con­tinue to cook until you can see that the chicken is no longer pink inside, and feels stiff to the touch, about 10 min­utes in total.

This dish is super-savoury, rich and pretty.  It’s per­fect served with steamed but­tered bas­mati rice, or mashed pota­toes.  Com­fort­ing and yet sophisticated.

Of course, we can’t be at home together every night.  We’ve been a theatre-going with a vengeance.  Avery is tak­ing a drama exam in June, one of the eleven great Eng­lish tra­di­tional “GCSE” exams after which stu­dents are legally allowed to leave school, with “qual­i­fi­ca­tions.”  The upshot of a drama GCSE is lots of evenings out see­ing plays in this city of ours which is burst­ing with such oppor­tu­ni­ties.  She has seen “Spring Awak­en­ing,” and “Hedda Gabler,” and we as a fam­ily have seen “I Am A Cam­era,” the fizzy play by Christo­pher Ish­er­wood that led to the novel “Good­bye To Berlin” and finally the musi­cal “Cabaret.”  Avery adores any­thing to do with Berlin dur­ing WWII and the play was a delight, full of over-the-top performances.

Part of the fun of see­ing “I Am A Cam­era” was going to the South­wark Play­house, in the shadow of the new Shard Build­ing, around the cor­ner from Bor­ough Mar­ket and of course, just down the street from our new, crazy prop­erty.  So of course a visit to the Play­house means drop­ping in on our patch of net­tly dirt.  As we approached with our friends Mil­lie and Elspeth, we heard shat­ter­ing screams.  “That sounds like it’s com­ing from our prop­erty,” I said, and Avery turned to Mil­lie.  “Wel­come to my neigh­bor­hood.”  We approached with trep­i­da­tion, hop­ing we wouldn’t find a mur­der being com­mit­ted behind the hoardings.

And this is what we found, in our front yard.

Yes, there were bungee jumpers, fling­ing them­selves from cages at the tops of two enor­mous cranes, with Lon­don Bridge in the background.

We were trans­fixed.  Jumper after jumper, screams fill­ing the air, we watched with amaze­ment and disbelief!

Well, that’s some­thing that doesn’t hap­pen in South­bury, Con­necti­cut!  We ambled away, exchang­ing views on how much we would have to be paid in order to bungee jump.  There isn’t enough money in the world for me!  That expe­ri­ence would take “do some­thing every day that scares you” to an unac­cept­able level.

We’ve been to see the incom­pa­ra­ble “Timon of Athens,” really my favorite Shake­speare play (I won­der why it is so rarely staged).  Star­ring one of my favorite actors to see onstage, Simon Rus­sell Beale, it was a real tour de force, the most top­i­cal, con­tem­po­rary, happening-right-now play you can imag­ine.  A rich phil­an­thropist, much feted by his syco­phan­tic friends, abruptly aban­doned when his invest­ments go south, leav­ing him along, home­less, bit­ter.  Go if you can!  Although the poor man broke his fin­ger recently dur­ing the sec­ond act!  But he’s back now.  As we drove away from the the­atre after the mati­nee per­for­mance, we saw him traips­ing along the pave­ment, look­ing exhausted but sat­is­fied.  We honked our horn, to Avery’s undis­guised embar­rass­ment, and waved through the con­vert­ible roof at him.  “Thank you, we loved it!” we screeched.  “Let’s go back and get his auto­graph,” I sug­gested breath­lessly.  “Absolutely not!” Avery and her friend Sophie cho­rused.  Ah, youth, so eas­ily humiliated.

Autumn has come to our lit­tle back gar­den, although it’s noth­ing to write home about com­pared to the splen­dor that is doubt­less our Con­necti­cut home, across the pond.  One of the few com­pen­sa­tions for Avery’s even­tu­ally going off to uni­ver­sity will be the flex­i­bil­ity we have to go “home” for the fall foliage, some­thing I really miss here in Lon­don.  The trees here are muted glory, but one can find lovely ivy if one tries.  Here is the house adja­cent to St Nicholas, where I ring in Chiswick.

Are you a fan of David Sedaris?  I will try not to judge you harshly if you say no, but truly he is one of those writ­ers I would walk over hot coals for, just to hear him read aloud.  Of course, in real­ity, all one must do is buy a ticket.  At the lovely Cado­gan Hall in Chelsea, we set­tled into our second-row seats for a heav­enly 90 min­utes or so of laugh­ing out loud, watch­ing his wry, shy smile when we applauded.  He is a genius.

“I pre­ferred my vil­lains to be evil and stay that way, to act like Drac­ula rather than Frankenstein’s mon­ster, who ruined every­thing by hand­ing that peas­ant girl a flower. He sort of made up for it by drown­ing her a few min­utes later, but, stil, you couldn’t look at him the same way again.” (When You Are Engulfed in Flames”)

How won­der­ful it would be to have his tal­ent for pok­ing fun at him­self, for send­ing up his insane fam­ily mem­bers, his painful child­hood, his mis­ad­ven­tures in love.  How won­der­ful to see the world through his eyes, with every mis­er­able or embar­rass­ing expe­ri­ence only fod­der for another fab­u­lous book.  “When I moved to Paris, I couldn’t fig­ure out the gen­ders of any of the nouns.  I was so afraid I’d call the pork ten­der­loin a ‘he’ when it was a ‘she’ that I took to buy­ing every­thing in mul­ti­ples, because the plural is so much eas­ier.  I brought home my pair of pork ten­der­loins and placed them in the refrig­er­a­tor, next to the shelf on which resided my two DVD play­ers and my two irons.”

You just haven’t lived until you’ve heard David read aloud about the taxi­der­mied owl he bought for his boyfriend for Valentine’s Day.  If you ever get a chance to hear him, go.

Of course, life wouldn’t be com­plete these days with­out our quo­ti­dien allot­ment of fight­ing over the upcom­ing elec­tion.  It turns out that three peo­ple who actu­ally agree on almost every­thing polit­i­cal can still find some­thing to argue about, vir­tu­ally every evening at din­ner.  It’s get­ting tir­ing.  But we’ve voted.  The absen­tee bal­lot was tremen­dously impres­sive and exciting.

What will the upcom­ing month bring then, the next busy four weeks?  Well, tomor­row I will say good­bye to my lit­tle social-work fam­ily for the last time.  I am in com­plete denial about how this will feel.  I know it was the goal of my work — to help them, to accom­pany them on their jour­ney from insta­bil­ity to sta­bil­ity, from tears to hap­pi­ness.  It is totally nor­mal to say good­bye.  But I don’t want to.

Then there will be Hal­loween, and Avery’s 16th birth­day.  Watch this space for more of our world, banal and thrilling in turns.

Sep­tem­ber in Lon­don.  Life has resumed that fran­tic “Who’s com­ing to din­ner tonight?”, “When did I say we were going to that play?” and “Did I men­tion I won’t be home until 5 tomor­row because of drama?” and “Can you help me carry the ban­quet table to the kitchen for 30 vol­un­teer ladies to come to lunch tomor­row?” qual­ity.  Every morn­ing my email inbox is filled with sug­ges­tions of meet­ing times for Lost Prop­erty, for the school Christ­mas Fair, the church Christ­mas Fair, for vis­its to my Home-Start social work fam­ily, for spe­cial bell­ring­ing prac­tices and ring­ing for extra ser­vices, for weddings.

Some­times we have to put away the com­put­ers, set aside the home­work, switch the phones to “silent” and gather around the table for a bowl of restora­tive com­fort.  I promise you will never make or eat any­thing  more sus­tain­ing, more inspir­ing, more savoury, than this soup, the recipe for which has made its way to my lovely food­writ­ing site, Hand­Picked Nation.  Chicken meat­balls in a mag­i­cal herby broth!

Every­thing inter­est­ing and busy in our lives pales, how­ever, in com­par­i­son with our big news: we are the proud own­ers of a… plot of dirt.  Well, a plot of net­tles.  A plot of dirty net­tles in a place where Shake­speare walked from home to his office at the Globe The­atre.  A plot of land 300 yards from the Thames where in 43 AD the Romans landed and built a port city.  I am not mak­ing this up.

After three years’ work look­ing for a place to ren­o­vate, John has suc­ceeded in going one step far­ther.  We’re start­ing lit­er­ally on the ground.  With an ancient wall and ancient grave­stones to respect, as we build our house.

Of course the road will be long.  Believe it or not, we’ve bought this dirty plot with absolutely no per­mis­sion to build any­thing on it.  That will be the first hur­dle.  There will be many, many peo­ple breath­ing down our necks to say “No way!  We want to keep this piece of dirt empty!”  And then if and when we get per­mis­sion to build some­thing, there will be a lot of intru­sive inter­est in WHAT we build.  Should it fit into the land­scape, or stand out?  Actu­ally that’s an odd ques­tion because Lon­don is the kind of city where you can find one of just about every­thing just by look­ing around you.  Within shout­ing dis­tance of our new pos­ses­sion are a huge glass office build­ing, a Vic­to­rian school, a mar­vel of 1960s munic­i­pal archi­tec­ture and a giant hole in the ground about to be filled with an enor­mous apart­ment building.

And, because it’s fuzzy, enrivon­men­tally sen­si­tive Lon­don, our back­yard will be a huge, eter­nally pro­tected herb garden.

Isn’t it thrilling?

Avery is incensed, in a com­pletely sweet way, because she’s being forced to live out her teenage years in our West Lon­don bucolic vil­lage.  Boo!  “How is it that JUST when I get ready to go to uni­ver­sity, you guys will be mov­ing into this totally cool East Lon­don heaven?” is her refrain.  Oh, well, she can visit.

Nico, the secu­rity guard whose job for the last 23 years (he was hired the year we were mar­ried!) has been to go over to the plot with his flash­light at dawn and dusk, is over the moon.  “May I ask what you plan to… DO with it?” he asked del­i­cately.  “Live in it!”  He’s very excited for us.

We brought home the key to our pad­lock, feel­ing like chil­dren who’ve been given a tree­house.  John is beside him­self with joy, over­flow­ing with ideas about mate­ri­als, light, mak­ing sure we have enough blank walls for the art instal­la­tions we had to leave in stor­age in New Jer­sey when we moved here.  All I want is a porce­lain sink!  And room for my books.

So John’s life now has gone from obsess­ing over find­ing a place, obsess­ing over the strat­egy nec­es­sary to buy the place, into over­drive on what the place will even­tu­ally BE.  To this excit­ing end, he is meet­ing all the time with archi­tects to explain his vision for our even­tual house.  Mean­while we’ll be apply­ing for per­mits, beg­ging the indul­gence of var­i­ous pub­lic offi­cials, get­ting to know the neigh­bor­hood.  I have already staked out the beau­ti­ful mar­ket nearby, and the enor­mous church with TWELVE BELLS where I will be ring­ing, even­tu­ally.  We antic­i­pate mov­ing date in 2016.

Because I am at heart a dark Scan­di­na­vian just wait­ing for the sky to fall, I really don’t believe any of it.  I imag­ine the city will make us give it back, or never let us put down a brick.  Or I’ll be hit by a bus before we get to move in.  But luck­ily my bet­ter half is happy Ital­ian and Irish, and he might just pull me along, as a part­ner on an amaz­ing journey.

Watch this space!  Literally.

Sigh.

I’m sit­ting here on my sofa con­tem­plat­ing the pass­ing of sum­mer — school starts tomor­row — and the atten­dant ratcheting-up of all the cares of ordi­nary life that come with the end of the hol­i­days.  Since the chief result of con­tem­plat­ing all these things is a wretched stomach-ache, I have armed myself with a cup of gin­ger tea and a cat, and the stack of Hello! mag­a­zines that awaited me upon my return.  As did… the rain.

I can­not com­plain, because I have a clean­ing lady who left every­thing totally per­fect (OK, the t-shirts folded like the Gap and arranged by color are slightly creepy), and a hus­band who was more than happy to make chicken soup with my spe­cial ten­der almost-dumpling meat­balls, for my recov­ery.  Sofa-bound as I am today, I’ve fin­ished all my Lost Prop­erty tasks — rotas, name tags, labels for the boxes — and will go in tomor­row to make sure things are ready for the inevitable onslaught of girls with Lost Stuff.

We have left Red Gate Farm (and all the joys and ten­sions that exist there!) behind.  The gate is closed until Christmas.

I often think of how much I enjoy the cir­cle of friends and fam­ily who make up our com­mu­nity at Red Gate Farm and how much MORE I would enjoy it all if I didn’t feel I was in a con­stant per­ilous state of hav­ing to say good­bye to them all again.  It’s not nor­mal for rela­tion­ships to be so fraught with impend­ing sep­a­ra­tion.  We see our pre­cious neigh­bors across the road only when they man­age to get up from the city for a fran­tic week­end away from their real lives.  There is never enough time to say every­thing we want to say.

Our dar­ling farmer boy Rol­lie man­aged only one after­noon with us.  I found it incred­i­bly touch­ing to con­tem­plate this third Rol­lie in our lives, and mourned the fact that we never got a chance to see him with his dad and his grand­fa­ther.  “At Christ­mas,” we say, as we always do, hop­ing that some­how every­thing will be com­plete then.  Of course, at Christ­mas, we’ll say, “Oh, it’ll get done in the summertime.”

Wouldn’t it be won­der­ful, in a per­verse way, to spend so much time with my nieces that I got sick of them, as so many of my friends get tired of fam­ily?  That will never hap­pen in this life­time.  Jane will have changed so much by the time I see her in four months.  We had one last din­ner party under a quar­ter moon, and I got to hear her con­fi­dences.  I will never for­get our fun­ni­est con­ver­sa­tion this summer.

Jane: “What’s for din­ner, Aunt Kristen?”

Me: “Spaghetti and meat­balls, gar­lic bread and asparagus.”

Jane: “That menu sounds rather promising.”

We man­aged to get one lunch at our pre­cious Lau­rel Diner with Big Rol­lie and Judy, chat­ter­ing over all the things that will hap­pen on our prop­erty while we are away, know­ing that their expe­ri­enced, benev­o­lent, care­tak­ing eyes will watch it all and keep us posted.  We’re hav­ing the stone wall repaired!

We swal­lowed hard at the bill, but it’s been years in the mak­ing, dam­age from snow and rain.  We owe it to the house. How excit­ing it will be come back at Christ­mas to find it all beau­ti­fully restored.  “A life­time war­ranty,” the Ser­bian stone­ma­son Tony assured me.  “Whose life­time, yours or mine?” I joked, but he replied seri­ously, “Way after both of us, honey.“
Even the wildlife has to be aban­doned!  John’s finches will be very sad when the food runs out.

And the chip­munks prob­a­bly can’t even move in their houses, stuffed as they must be with sun­flower seeds car­ried care­fully, all sum­mer, from dish to nest.

Gary the Ground­hog made his appear­ances few and far between.  It turns out he will accept ONLY melon.

Jes­samy the cat has gone back to Man­hat­tan, after a suc­cess­ful few weeks at camp.  I’m sur­prised there is any screen LEFT in the door after all her con­certed efforts to join us on the ter­race!  How won­der­ful she is and how unbe­liev­able that any per­son could sim­ply have thrown her away, as a kit­ten, to turn up at a shel­ter and be res­cued by Avery.

Per­haps my most last­ing mem­ory of the sum­mer is an unex­pected one: the fun I have had get­ting to know Avery again.  The pres­sures of the Lon­don school year are not kind to a mother and daughter’s attempts to share any­thing but din­ner.  She works so hard, spends so much time phys­i­cally away from home and men­tally in some other sphere, that I had for­got­ten the com­plete and total lux­ury of hav­ing her around all the time, to enjoy.

I know it isn’t real­is­tic to expect to have her all to myself as I used to when she was lit­tle.  So much of the growing-up process is bit neg­a­tive, I find: chil­dren seem to go from being rather bur­den­some crea­tures con­stantly want­ing to be washed and fed and taken places (places I never wanted to go, like horse rings and skat­ing rinks) to being inde­pen­dent peo­ple you never get to see enough of, and it seems to hap­pen overnight!  How unfair, I some­times think, that the more inter­est­ing she gets, the less I get of her. Alas.

But this sum­mer, I dis­cov­ered that there is another side to the coin.  Some­where along the line, a result of her con­stant read­ing and dis­cussing and the­o­riz­ing (and a wealth of inher­ited fam­ily lore, it has to be said!), she has become the best con­ver­sa­tional com­pan­ion I can imag­ine.  How extra­or­di­nary when your child turns out to know so much more than you do on so many, many sub­jects!  As loath­some as I have found the sum­mer obses­sion with pol­i­tics to be, watch­ing her hold more than her own in every con­ver­sa­tion gives me a great deal of plea­sure, and dare I say it… pride.  She has become an remark­able young woman — overnight, it would seem.  And an amaz­ing pho­tog­ra­pher, to pro­duce a photo of me that I actu­ally like.

She does even more impres­sive things with a spi­der, to be honest.

I am hop­ing to be able to hold that wis­dom with me, dur­ing this upcom­ing school year that will end in June with 11 — eleven! — wretched exams.  Avery is still in there, more so than ever, and I hope we’ll be able to find each other now and then.

The end of the hol­i­day had come.  With one last look at the hydrangea, now in full August blos­som, it was time to say goodbye.

Four months.  We have four months in Lon­don to accom­plish a great deal.  I have my social-work fam­ily to meet up with again, and plenty of lacrosse boots to reunite with their hap­less own­ers.  John has the school Christ­mas Fair to run (single-handedly, it some­times sounds).  Avery and I have made a good start on “The Cook­book,” with my recipes and sto­ries and her pho­tographs, but we have to cook, pho­to­graph and eat our way through about 40 more dishes before we’re ready to approach a pub­lisher.  We’ll all be the size of houses!

And then we’ll be back at Red Gate Farm at Christ­mas for another sea­son, another set of adven­tures.  And me with a thicker skin, I like to think, not quite so inclined to think it’s the end of the world to say goodbye.

It’s Tues­day of our last week in Amer­ica, and all is quiet at Red Gate Farm.  The aviary that is John’s bird­feeder camp is sim­ply fly­ing with finches, car­di­nals, and other winged things I’m too much of a city girl to be able to name.  The chip­munks run to and fro, fill­ing their cheeks with sun­flower seeds and peanuts (but turn­ing up their lit­tle black noses at the unripe peach I first offered to Avery).  Squir­rels rus­tle around in the maple branches over­head, rac­ing from their enor­mous nest to leap into the adjoin­ing tree, dan­gle pre­car­i­ously from its branches, and finally leap to the wood­shed roof.

Actu­ally, amidst all this bucolic charm is the inter­mit­tent whine and chok­ing of John’s weed-whacker, and a slow, cum­ber­some trac­tor dri­ven by Rol­lie up the dusty road.  I can hear Young Rol­lie up in the meadow, hay­ing busily.  Coun­try noises, really.

It’s the begin­ning of the end.  The tem­per­a­ture has dropped a bit so you want a sweater in the morn­ings.  I’m start­ing to think about what I buy at the gro­cery so I use up all the bits and pieces in the fridge before we fly away on Sun­day.  But I’ve got the pantry well-stocked, just in case there’s a last minute hur­ri­cane.  (But that would be crazy, wouldn’t it?)

As much as I adore all our busy social but­ter­fly life every sum­mer, I am con­tent right now to be fac­ing five days of just the three of us.  There will be time for some lazy pool after­noons, another trip to the library, devo­tion to “Days of Our Lives,” even a cou­ple of naps.  The ten­nis court beckons.

Every­one can fend for him­self or her­self for lunch: a big pot of vichys­soise, a three-cheese panini, a bowl of red cab­bage slaw.  It will be quiet, and even per­haps a lit­tle bor­ing.  Just the ticket to get us in the mood for Lon­don life once more.

Last night saw us in New York for din­ner with Avery’s old­est friend, Cici, and her fam­ily.  These two girls met as babes in arms and were insep­a­ra­ble until we moved to Lon­don when they were nine.  They still have a mar­vel­lous time together, now grown up.

We met at their work-in-progress loft, which is always a bit­ter­sweet expe­ri­ence for me, as it is where we spent Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, watch­ing events unfold.  We stood in the bloomy evening last night, on the roof where we watched it all hap­pen.  The mem­o­ries never quite go away, but it is excit­ing to see the future unfold­ing, way downtown.

We tucked into deep-fried cala­mari with a spicy mayo at Estancia 460, a cute lit­tle Argen­tin­ian bistro in dear old Tribeca.  Such fun to catch up on real estate projects, art ambi­tions, new schools, to rem­i­nisce about gallery days and little-girl days.

But of course the most recent excite­ment was my mother’s birth­day week­end!  She opted to keep it quiet and sim­ple this year, just the fam­ily, and while we have always loved the big bashes of past sum­mers, it was vastly relax­ing to know I would have just the tribe around.  Great tim­ing, because I’d been bell­ring­ing at the Kent School in the morn­ing (tak­ing dear Judy with me as a curi­ous vis­i­tor!), which was as always — with ten bells! — hugely intim­i­dat­ing and yet wonderful.

Drop­ping Judy off at their farm after­ward, I could not help but admire the corn crop, espe­cially given the dev­as­ta­tion and sad waste of the mid­west­ern efforts this droughty summer.

It was a relief to mosey slowly up our road know­ing there were not 30–40 peo­ple to be fed that evening!  Just the fam­ily.  There was time to tie yel­low bal­loons every­where in the late-afternoon light.

This must have been the time of day when bees gather pollen, because as I tied, I real­ized the hydrangea was sim­ply ALIVE with bees.  Sev­eral stings!  No matter.

I know I can be tire­some on the sub­ject of “the blue of the sky, the red of the barns, the green of the grass…” but there really was some­thing mag­i­cal about the col­ors, the still­ness of the after­noon, the antic­i­pa­tion of a family-filled day.

Even the tram­po­line, old and dusty, got into the act.

And the tram­po­line got a work­out!  Molly arrived ready for her usual craziness.

And what a feast!  All Mom’s favorite foods: dev­illed eggs, of course, of which I can never seem to make enough!

I had not remem­bered how much Jill’s girls love them!  Noth­ing says “Happy Birth­day” like an eggy moustache.

We had home­made chicken ten­ders (the hit of the sum­mer, I think, so ten­der and juicy).

Home-Fried Chicken Tenders

(serves 6)

6 chicken breast fillets

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup Old Bay Sea­son­ing (or any spice blend you like)

2 eggs

1/4 cup light cream

2 cups fresh bread­crumbs, sea­soned if you like (I like Fox Point)

enough oil/lard to fill your deep fat fryer

Trim the chicken com­pletely of any fat or mem­branes.  Cut against the grain in three long slices.  Shake up the chicken in the mix­ture of flour and Old Bay.  At this point you can leave the ten­ders in the fridge while you pre­pare other dishes.

When you are ready to cook, heat up your oil and at the last minute, shake the ten­ders one more time to coat thor­oughly, then beat the egg and cream in a shal­low bowl and dip the ten­ders in it.  Quickly trans­fer the ten­ders to the bread­crumbs (also in a shal­low bowl) and coat them.  Fry for about three minutes.

*********

I served these with a mix­ture of may­on­naise, Key Lime juice and chilli sauce.  Even the kids ate it all!

Of course, it wouldn’t be Mom’s birth­day with­out scal­lops in bacon.

Angels on Horseback

(serves 6)

2 tbsps olive oil

juice of 1/2 lemon

18 large sea scallops

9 pieces streaky (Amer­i­can) bacon, cut in half

36 tooth­picks

Cook the bacon at 350F/180C until some fat has been ren­dered but bacon is still pli­able.  Drain on paper towel.

Mix olive oil and lemon juice and toss the scal­lops in it.  Shake dry, then wrap each scal­lop in 1/2 piece of bacon and secure with two tooth­picks.  Grill over medium heat for four min­utes, then turn over and grill for four fur­ther minutes.

*********

There were baked mush­rooms stuffed with a mix­ture of white crab­meat and Boursin (oo0h, crisp and savoury), and another dish I can never make enough of: tomato and moz­zarella salad with fresh pesto.

No party for my mother would be com­plete with the tra­di­tional cake brought by Jill and Joel.  “Happy Birth­day, Mona.”  A beau­ti­ful evening.

How we all missed Dad dur­ing the fes­tiv­i­ties, this sec­ond year when he could not be with us.  It takes a spe­cial brand of courage for my mother to carry on hav­ing fun, look­ing for­ward to her party, trav­el­ling all the way to Con­necti­cut to be with us all, laugh­ing with her grand­daugh­ters, blow­ing out her can­dles.  She came with a stack of pho­tos she had found of lit­tle Dad, cher­ished by his par­ents, now long dead.  It was a com­fort to think of the cycle of life.

Don’t you love Grandma’s shoes!  And Grandpa’s hat.

I know noth­ing in the world would please our father more than know­ing that in his absence, his three chil­dren are look­ing out for Mom.  There was never any­one who could make life feel safer than my father could, much as John’s father could.  How lucky we all were to have their pro­tec­tive arms around us for as long as we did.

And that was our party.  Quiet, peace­ful (well, there WAS Molly’s car­toon voice float­ing on the breeze).

All together, one of those deli­cious days you wish could go on for­ever.  All over for another year.  We love you, Mom.

Here I sit on my sunny ter­race, feast­ing my eyes on this gor­geous crop of toma­toes, a gift from old friends with a fab­u­lous gar­den, and des­tined for tomato moz­zarella salad tomor­row.  The lawn is shim­mer­ing in the mid-August heat, green from just enough rain, which falls con­ve­niently at night, leav­ing us with day after day of warm calm.

Calm!  That makes me laugh, because the only thing calm about our sum­mer IS the weather.  It’s the usual revolv­ing door here, wel­com­ing guests who find Red Gate Farm’s par­tic­u­lar brand of peace an anti­dote to the rig­ors of daily life.

John’s sis­ter Cathy and niece Ellen were our lat­est vis­i­tors this week, come to bask in the sun, chat, share our table, visit our library, carry a book out to the ter­race to read.  But as Ellen said, “I bring my book out here, but then I just want to BE here, and look around, and feel the pas­sage of time.”  Cathy was happy to do just that.

Avery and Ellen braved the heat to jump on the tram­po­line, then to col­lapse and dis­cuss the state of the world, under the spread­ing branches of the enor­mous, elderly maple tree.

They were happy to take a break from all the bounc­ing to set the table for a cel­e­bra­tory din­ner with Rol­lie and Judy, and to res­cue a Jes­samy who has once again dis­cov­ered how to slip out the back screen door.

We were so busy pass­ing trays of home-fried chicken ten­ders, sweet corn and cheesy egg­plant stew, and laugh­ing over the crazy Christ­mas tree stand sto­ries that Rol­lie and Judy always tell, that I for­got to take any pic­tures of our party!  Avery caught one of the egg­plant, though, gar­licky and savoury with fresh thyme and mozzarella.

We took a trip up the hill to visit Young Rollie’s bee­hives, where Ellen was promptly stung, but she was enchanted with them anyway.

How Ellen adores her Uncle John, who really treats her like the lit­tle sis­ter he never had.

When Cathy went into the city for a busi­ness trip, the rest of us suited up for an after­noon at Quassy, the local amuse­ment and water park, with whom I have a love-hate rela­tion­ship.  I love the old-fashioned atmos­phere, the hot dogs, the view over the lake, glis­ten­ing under a blink­ing blue and gray sky, the ancient carousel.

What I do not love is the deaf­en­ing noise of the music at the bumper cars…

but I’m the only one…

I also do not love the scary rides every­one always makes me go on!  But hot dogs, onion rings and watch­ing the girls have fun make it all worthwhile.

We came home sick to our stom­achs, sun­burned, sticky and tired.  The only thing to do was put out the min­now trap and catch some tiny fish in the pond.

And John, obsessed as always with his pre­cious birds, acquired one more feeder, this one just for goldfinches.  How do they know?  But they do.  There are often six of them cling­ing to it at a time.

Through it all, we watched the clos­ing cer­e­monies of the Olympics — the high­light being Eric Idle and “Always Look on The Bright Side of Life”!  And we went for ice cream in Quincy the Land Rover, who has had an over­haul and now (sort of) always starts when we want him to.  We argued pol­i­tics with the crazy ladies stand­ing out­side the library on Pri­mary Day, piled every veg­etable in the world on home­made piz­zas, read aloud from our var­i­ous favorite books, and breathed in the heavy sum­mer air.

We went to the pool and swam under­wa­ter races with Ellen, cham­pion com­peti­tor for her high school team.  John and I went to the hard­ware store to get the grill’s propane tank filled up.  In a totally typ­i­cal Con­necti­cut nego­ti­a­tion, John asked the clerk if he thought it was a good idea to have an “extra propane tank.”

“Ayuh, always good to have an extra tank.  Never know when you’re gonna run out.”

“Well, great.  We’ll take one.”

“That’ll be $40.”

“Includ­ing propane?”

“Oh, no, propane will be another $15.  You wanted propane, too, did you?”

No, what we REALLY wanted was an EMPTY extra propane tank.  Because it’s always good to have an EXTRA empty propane tank.

Finally Cathy and Ellen had to go home, and because it is against our reli­gion to sit still for more than sev­en­teen min­utes at a time, we hopped in the car and headed up to New York State to visit our old friends Chris and Marla, and their beau­ti­ful kids Aidan and Helena, at their big white farmhouse.

How Avery laughed over old photo albums of us with 90s hair and clothes, each of us about 20 pounds lighter and with no gray hair!  “You guys were so COOL!  Big par­ties with peo­ple in black tie and bath­tubs full of bot­tles of cham­pagne…” her voice trails off, clearly reluc­tant to con­front the dull old peo­ple we are now!

We exchanged news about what we’re all up to, eat­ing all the pick­led veg­eta­bles Marla has been putting up — kohlrabi!  bril­liant — while the kids bounced around, Helena look­ing exactly like a tiny Marla.

From there we headed even far­ther upstate to eat lunch with our great pals Olimpia and Tony, at their log cabin nes­tled in the woods at the end of a dri­ve­way 3/4 mile long!

Olimpia is one of the most bril­liant cooks I know — helped by being Ital­ian through and through, and she gave us falling-apart beef ribs in a rich gravy, with a side dish of a really intrigu­ing pasta, which we cooked together.  The noo­dles are cooked in wine and stock, like risotto rice.

Olimpia’s Green Veg­etable Cam­pan­elle

(serves about 6–8)

3 tbsps olive oil

4 leeks

4 cloves garlic

1 large bunch aspara­gus, cut in 2-inch pieces

3/4 cup baby peas

pinch chopped mint (optional)

1 cup dry white wine

veg­etable or chicken stock (about 4 cups, enough to fully cook the noodles)

1 pound cam­pan­elle noo­dles (bell-shaped!)

1 cup grated Parmesan

Heat the oil until shim­mer­ing.  Wash the white and light green parts of the leeks and cut them in 1/2 inch slices.  Add to the oil and cook until very soft and browned.  Add gar­lic and aspara­gus and peas, plus mint if using, and stir well.  Remove to a bowl.

In the remain­ing oil, stir the dry pasta until coated.  Add the wine all at once, and cook until wine is absorbed by noo­dles.  Add the stock one cup at a time, stir­ring in between until the noo­dles are com­pletely cooked.  Add the cheese and stir well, then add the veg­eta­bles and stir well..  Serve hot.

So lovely!  It tastes creamy although there is no cream, from the noo­dles cook­ing in the stock and wine.  Light, sum­mery, delicious.

We took Olimpia’s fresh panna cotta out to the ter­race sur­rounded by dense woods and chat­ted, catch­ing up on all our news since we last saw them at my mother’s birth­day party, a year ago.  We remem­bered all the other times we had cooked and eaten together, in our New York apart­ment, in our Lon­don houses.  Since Tony has 3/4 of a mile of stone walls, on each side of his dri­ve­way, we sought his opin­ion about our poor old wall by the meadow, des­per­ately need­ing repair.  I think we’ll end up get­ting the stone­ma­son out here in the fall to do it while we’re away.  “Don’t look at me!” Tony said, even though he has all the coolest trac­tors, back­hoes, chain­saws that a man could want.

We had a lovely afternoon.

Today, we are recov­er­ing, spend­ing a quiet day just the three of us, watch­ing the chip­munks cavort in their never-ending quest for peanuts.  They have got­ten com­pletely insa­tiable, and if the glass is not kept full, they take on a sin­is­ter, preda­tory appear­ance, and I real­ize we are totally, WAY out­num­bered.  One actu­ally jumped up on my lap, at which point I real­ized that until now, I had always thought it would be kind of cute to have a chip­munk on my lap.

Jes­samy sits inside, her hands propped up on the spring of the screen door, watch­ing in mute, feline frustration.

Two weeks from today, Avery will be back at school.  I will be slav­ing away at Lost Prop­erty, John will be hard at work on the school Christ­mas Fair.  For now we’ll take a deep breath and enjoy these last days of August peace.

Life – at least, MY life – is made up of a cast of char­ac­ters.  Some walk onto the stage to pro­vide drama, to advance the plot.  Some are inserted to give the main char­ac­ter (me) a prob­lem to solve, a cri­sis to han­dle.  Some just want to have a seat at the din­ner table and con­tribute to the con­ver­sa­tion. Some wan­der onstage to pro­vide the nui­sance quo­tient, like the chip­munks at Red Gate Farm, after you’ve fed them innu­mer­able peanuts.  They eat a hole through your shed door in search of more.

But my favorites among the cast are the drama­tis per­sonae who make you want to watch the play, for the play to last longer, maybe even to see it a sec­ond time.  They are the life enhancers, and hap­pily in the past week my life has been full of them.

Last Sat­ur­day, we drove up our quiet coun­try road after din­ner with my sister’s fam­ily to find about three hun­dred cars parked along the shoul­der.  “Somebody’s hav­ing a party,” John remarked and it wasn’t hard to see who it was: the fam­ily with all the teenagers, whose dri­ve­way con­tained about another six hun­dred cars.  I felt the knell of doom.

Just as John had gone to sleep that night and his mother and Avery and I were put­ter­ing around in the desul­tory way of peo­ple who know it’s bed­time but don’t want to give up the fight.  There was a knock on the door.  I thought I was hear­ing things and did noth­ing.  Then I heard it again, and think­ing it was some­one from across the road with a toddler-related emer­gency, I opened the door, to find a very hand­some teenage boy on the step.

“I’m really sorry, but I just reversed into your dri­ve­way and took out part of your fence,” he said sheep­ishly.  “I didn’t want to just drive away.  I’m really sorry.”  John’s mom assessed the sit­u­a­tion and decided that a man was required, so poor John stum­bled down­stairs to han­dle things.  “Why don’t you give us your details on this card, and we’ll deal with it in the morning?”

While the boy wrote down his name, address and phone num­bers, I tried to judge whether or not he had been drink­ing, and decided I couldn’t.  He wasn’t lurch­ing around or belch­ing or weav­ing, and seemed per­fectly able to wield a pen.  “You are really a respon­si­ble per­son to take the deci­sion to tell us what hap­pened,” I said sin­cerely.  “It would have been so easy just to drive away.”

“Oh, there wasn’t any ques­tion of that,” he said, and I let him out the front door.

In the morn­ing it was clear we weren’t going to be able to throw a cou­ple of nails at it and solve the problem.

Before we could even begin to worry, the dad called and came over to assess the dam­age.  “I’m a shop teacher,” he said, “so this is no prob­lem to fix.  Some­thing Tyler and I can do together.  Help him take it seri­ously.  We’ll be over in the morn­ing.”  And they were.

Within two hours, the sec­tion of the fence he’d dri­ven into looked far health­ier than the rest of the dilap­i­dated structure.

“Gee, I wish you’d run over a MUCH larger sec­tion!” I said.  “That’s a really mature, respon­si­ble way to han­dle the sit­u­a­tion, and you should be proud of Tyler, and what a great job you’ve done as a par­ent.”  The dad took this in stride.  “Well, he’s off to col­lege next month and it’s a nice feel­ing to know he can step up to an unpleas­ant sit­u­a­tion, and do the right thing.”

The state of the world might not be as grim as it some­times looks, with peo­ple like Tyler and his dad out there.

Of course, an evening with my nieces Jane and Molly con­vinces you of that.

Who needs a fork?  Din­ner at the Japan­ese Steak­house requires only chop­sticks for intre­pid Molly, who alter­nately screamed and laughed through the fiery presentation.

Then, there’s our neigh­bor friend Mark, who pas­tures his horses in the meadow that stretches behind our house.  Out of the good­ness of his heart, he rode over on his big bush-whacking trac­tor one impos­si­bly hot and humid after­noon, to try to res­cue our stone wall from mau­raud­ing climb­ing weeds.  Here’s before.

I took him an icy bot­tle of water and we chat­ted about the fierce desire of all green plants to take over the uni­verse.  The next day, John put on every long gar­ment he could find to fine-tune the job, try­ing des­per­ately to avoid the plen­ti­ful poi­son ivy.

What a dif­fer­ence those two men made in the landscape!

And the next day our Land Trust friends brought over an even more seri­ous machine for John to play with.

Over the next few days, he became obsessed with clear­ing every scrap of brush and tree that even LOOKED like it was in the wrong place.

Mean­while, neigh­bor Kate and I did cart­wheels together, in the Olympic spirit.

And Kate dis­cov­ered, as only some­one very small can, a trea­sure in the ancient steps up to our house.  How have we lived here for eight years and never noticed a kitty print?

How glo­ri­ous the meadow looked that day, steam­ing gen­tly under the blaz­ing August sun.

Heavy rains came, and the air cooled, just in time for us to head to New York City for the day.  I for­get how much I adore New York, until I get there and absorb its unique energy.

Lunch with Alyssa!  It’s one of my favorite scenes in my life play, each sum­mer.  She makes me feel cooler, more inter­est­ing and infi­nitely more opti­mistic, just by being with her.  And to add to the fun, she brought Ivy into the mix of our friend­ship.  Ivy, who hired me to write for her beau­ti­ful, peer­less mag­a­zine, “Vin­tage.”

We met at a totally funky Russ­ian restau­rant, Mari Vanna, where all the sal­ads came in cut-glass par­fait dishes and the bath­room was papered with back issues of “Pravda,” over­laid with graf­fiti.  We ate dumplings stuffed with every­thing under the sun – pota­toes, mush­rooms, sour cher­ries! -  and paper-thin slices of egg­plant stuffed with we have no idea what.  “I didn’t want to ask,” Alyssa said.  “If you don’t know, you just eat it.”  We drank beetroot-infused vodka and luke­warm cof­fee and solved all the prob­lems of the cul­tural world.

There is noth­ing in the world like an old friend – some­one who knew you when your child was a baby, who lived right along­side you dur­ing the after­math of Sep­tem­ber 11, who brought her new baby to visit your fledg­ling art gallery, whose daugh­ter was the stal­wart main­stay of your child’s birth­day party guests.

And Ivy… she is a true cul­tural vision­ary, a per­son who looks around her with intensely cre­ative eyes, span­ning the worlds of food, design, lit­er­a­ture, travel, and sees how they can all be brought together under one cover.  The next issue of “Vin­tage” is just around the corner!

Together they helped me sur­vive my slight anx­i­ety over hav­ing sim­ply LEFT my only child on a New York City side­walk with a vague set of instruc­tions on how to find the sub­way and get down­town on it!  We have to let Avery do these things, after all.

On the way back up to Red Gate Farm, we stopped off on the Upper West Side to pick up Jes­samy, kit­ten of the world from two sum­mers ago, now hap­pily the pet­ted daugh­ter of our friends Alice and Con­nie.  It didn’t take Jes­samy very long to remem­ber Avery.

Anne mean­dered over with Kate to visit Jes­samy, but the kitty was hid­ing some­where so instead kate and I made “secret ingre­di­ent lemon­ade” with the end­less sup­ply of mint down by the pond.

What a beau­ti­ful child she is.

Finally, it was time for a trip down mem­ory lane, for me… in my long-ago, mis­spent early mid­dle age, I was a gallery owner in New York City.  Now, as any gallery per­son will tell you, the best AND worst things about the work are the artists!  My dears, the egos!  The nec­es­sary hand-holding, the need to stay com­pletely sober while lis­ten­ing to a lady tell you about her paint­ings whose medium is a mix­ture of human ashes and her own breast milk.

I am not mak­ing this up.

But every once in awhile, my space was graced by peo­ple of humor, per­spec­tive and gen­uine bril­liance and spirit.  And among these were Staci and Craig, hus­band and wife, paint­ing team and among the most gen­er­ous peo­ple I will ever meet.  How my heart broke when I moved to Lon­don and had to leave them behind…

And here, seven years later, they have re-invented them­selves as the brains behind my beloved food-writing gig, Hand­Picked Nation!  On Thurs­day, they arrived with Tomiko, the best edi­tor I’ve ever worked with.  (And Lulu the dog.)

The table looked lovely, though I say it myself.  Avery and I set it together.

Vichys­soise served in my new plummy cab­bage bowls!

Piles of pork ribs with my secret rub…

Three bean and pep­per salad, tomato and moz­zarella salad with pine nuts, lemon zest and red onion.  It turns out that bean salad is much pret­tier to pho­to­graph before you dress it, so Avery went to work.  These guys have been incred­i­bly appre­cia­tive of her efforts and she gets credit on the web­site – thank you!

I was so busy laugh­ing at Craig’s dry humor that I for­got to write down any­thing he said, and so busy eat­ing that I never got a decent photo of us all.  But in bits and pieces, yes!

In the thick, hot, sticky air, Craig filmed me being inter­viewed by Staci.  How daft I sounded I will not know until the clip is aired on Hand­Picked, but I’ll be brave and give you the link when it happens.

Staci remem­bered when she first met Avery.   “There she was, five years old, at the gallery.  She intro­duced her­self and then said, ‘Would you like to see the base­ment?  The space is quite usable.’”  Poor Avery, her child­hood blighted by an art gallery.  Avery and Tomiko bonded on the sub­ject of Doc­tor Who, and Avery and Craig on the sub­ject of the Leica cam­era, which is inch­ing away from being John’s as the days go by, and toward being Avery’s.

Their ambi­tions for the web­site are so excit­ing!  I love being given the chance to put a frame, a set of words, around my cook­ing expe­ri­ences and pop them up on the web for pos­ter­ity.  They, like Ivy and Vin­tage, have vision.  I can only sit back and admire.

What fun we had.

Red Gate Farm siz­zles in the August heat as I size up my sum­mer play, full to the brim with my favorite characters.

Whew, it’s hot!  Our ten­nis games are sweaty affairs where we quit when we’ve run out of cold water to drink.  The Grumpy Old Men at the ten­nis court outdo them­selves with queru­lous com­plaint.  “Ira, what in the world is wrong with you?  That shot was so LAWNG.”  “Shel­don, when I say SERVE, I mean over the g*****d net!  Are you blind?”  “That was cer­tainly not 30 15, that was 30 30.”  Cen­tral cast­ing.  But hey: they’re out there, argu­ing their way through yet another match.

The air hangs heavy over Red Gate Farm, coax­ing the blos­soms from the hydrangea tree, finally.  Every July we wring our hands, say­ing, “It’s never THIS late before they bloom!  What’s wrong?” and then in August, right on cue, they bloom.

Shots ring out across the back meadow as Tri­cia pur­sues the coy­otes (she plans on a coat when she gets nine of them, and I just hope she suc­ceeds before they eat up any more of the bun­nies run­ning around.  She’s more wor­ried about her baby son in his back­yard pool).  Not to men­tion these lit­tle guys who peo­ple our ter­race.  We feed them shame­lessly, watch­ing them carry their booty to their secret homes.

All the usual sus­pects are accounted for this sum­mer, in our lit­tle com­mu­nity, with the beloved addi­tion of Mike and Lauren’s new baby, Abi­gail.  She can, as the late, great nov­el­ist Lau­rie Col­win said, be judged by adult stan­dards of beauty.

I was allowed to hold her.  How tiny they start out!  Avery con­ducted a bril­liant photo ses­sion as a gift to Abigail’s parents.

These are the sort of peo­ple who, two months before the birth of their first child, travel out of state to adopt a res­cue dog to shower love on.  Noel seems to real­ize that she has fallen into the pot of jam, with her new family.

Mike will always hold a spe­cial place in our hearts because he fell in love with and adopted Avery’s fos­ter kit­ten Jes­sica, sev­eral sum­mers ago.  He is, pre­dictably, an amaz­ing dad.

It was heart­warm­ing to visit them at home sev­eral days later, and to see Jes­sica reunited with her res­cuer, both of them quite grown up now.

Of course we’ve been tool­ing around in Quincy, the 1967 Land Rover who is John’s pride and joy.  He takes us to the ice cream stand down our coun­try road, the most Amer­i­can place you can ever imagine.

I always go along for the ride, even though I don’t “do” ice cream.  I’d rather save all that but­ter­fat for just plain BUT­TER.  But it wouldn’t be sum­mer with­out Rich’s Ice Cream, and the flag.

Quincy is show­ing his age, how­ever.  One sul­try after­noon, John and I dropped Avery and Rose­mary off at our beloved local library, say­ing we’d be “right back.”  We stopped at the car repair place to sched­ule a checkup for Quincy and went to the gro­cery store for lob­sters, emerg­ing to find that Quincy had had enough and would not start.  HOW I wish I had had my cam­era that after­noon, because two rather alarm­ingly tatooed and slightly dicey look­ing men emerged from a car with Mass­a­chu­setts plates and approached us.  “Hey, what a cool ride.  Havin’ trou­ble, are ya?”

Where­upon they put their backs into the awe­some job of push­ing Quincy across the park­ing lot try­ing to sur­prise him into start­ing.  They pro­duced jumper cables.  No luck.  “No way this baby’s staaatin’,” averred one guy (with skulls all up and down his arms and a heart sur­round­ing the words “Marissa” and “Kon­ny­lynn”).  “Starter’s toast.”  We shook hands.  “Our good deed for the day, any­way,” they smiled and drove away.  I can’t believe we didn’t think to give them a twenty.  It took AAA to start the car.

I thought to myself, “That is what Amer­ica is all about.  Two guys, total strangers, try­ing their best to help us out of the good­ness of their hearts.”

July wouldn’t be com­plete with­out a visit from our local Great Blue Heron, who flies across from Anne’s pond across the road to land on our barn roof.

From the roof, after sur­vey­ing all his domain, he sails into our pond, to eat as many of our min­nows as he can.

Jill and her fam­ily have been to visit, one mem­o­rably thun­dery after­noon (Jane does not do thun­der, so we had to offer lots of Olympic cov­er­age to dis­tract her).  Luck­ily we made it to the swim­ming pool before the heav­ens opened, and then came home to con­gre­gate in the kitchen (as every­one seems to do no mat­ter what house I’m in), set­ting up Avery’s child­hood doll­house for Jane and Molly to redis­cover.  We mea­sured every­one, as usual.  Molly is far too small for her name to appear any­where near Avery’s, this summer!

And Jane’s requested spaghetti and meat­balls for din­ner!  I don’t know what story I was telling here, but it must have had a great punchline.

This week saw us on our twice-yearly trip up to Wash­ing­ton, Con­necti­cut, to pop into our favorite book­store.  We detoured to our friend Judy’s brother’s farm­stand, high on the hill­top over­look­ing the val­ley, where we were lucky enough to find Judy her­self and have a visit, plus stock up on beets, peaches, corn and lettuce.

Onward to the Hick­ory Stick, one of those mag­i­cal book­shops where you find books you would never have dreamed of, and feel good about buy­ing them.  Take that, Amazon!

We went on to Litch­field for our tra­di­tional trip to my favorite wool­lens shop, R. Der­win, where I fully intended to give myself and Avery new cash­mere sweaters, as we do every sum­mer.  But my GOOD­NESS!  What has hap­pened to the prices?  Reces­sion, what reces­sion?  All we could afford were sweaters on the “dam­aged” rack, with lit­tle moth-holes pep­pered about.  Those will fit right into my wardrobe in Lon­don where every­thing has a hole!

This sum­mer has also, of course, been taken over by the Olympics.  John streams cov­er­age live from the BBC until they close up for the day, then we turn to NBC for the evenings.  Oh, the Open­ing Ceremony: daft!  so British!  the Queen arriv­ing in a heli­copter, dozens of Mary Pop­pins float­ing in with black umbrel­las, and Ken­neth Branagh in mut­ton chop side­burns quot­ing from Cal­a­ban?  Only in Eng­land!  Dur­ing the Parade of Nations, Avery mused, “St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines?  Sounds like a rock band.”

Avery’s sense of humor has brought many a shout of laugh­ter from us all this sum­mer.  High on my list was her reply to my moan­ing about the demise of the Amer­i­can Soap Opera indus­try (I was raised on “Days of Our Lives.”).  “It’s just a shame when ANY indus­try goes under,” I soap­boxed.  “All those jobs lost, all the pas­sion for it dis­solved.  No indus­try should suf­fer that fate.”  Pause.  Avery: “Well, there IS human trafficking.”

She is the best.

One impos­si­bly steamy after­noon, we acquired a gen­er­a­tor.  After last summer’s deba­cle with Hur­ri­cane Irene and six days with no elec­tric­ity or water (well water), we deter­mined never to live through that again.  So our very roman­tic wed­ding anniver­sary and Christ­mas gift to each other was this baby.

As John and the elec­tri­cian agreed, the power will now NEVER go off again.

Through­out it all, Rose­mary and I have been cook­ing, cook­ing, cook­ing.  What a joy it is to have com­pany in the kitchen!  She and I have been at this, our favorite activ­ity, for going on 30 years now, and we have the rou­tine down pat.  She chops the gar­lic, the shal­lots, the mint, the basil — what­ever requires pre­ci­sion and ded­i­ca­tion!  I try to keep track of get­ting every­thing to the table on time.  Fried had­dock, BBQ chicken wings, END­LESS bean sal­ads, slaws and roasted veg­eta­bles, chicken burg­ers, roasted salmon, BLTs, you name it.  Corn on the cob nearly every night!

And the spe­cial treat with­out which no sum­mer would be com­plete: Maine lobster.

Avery was a reluc­tant pho­tog­ra­pher on this occa­sion, not rel­ish­ing being quite so close to the food chain.  As Kim Kar­dashian said, “Lob­sters are the only food we kill before we eat them.”  Hmmm… what­ever, they were deli­cious, steamed and served with a spicy aioli.

Buy a cou­ple of extra lob­sters, because then the next day, with­out hav­ing to kill any­thing afresh, you can have…

Lob­ster Rolls

(one lob­ster per two people)

lob­sters (steamed and chilled)

minced cel­ery

minced white onion

may­on­naise, chili sauce and lemon juice to taste

top-split hot dog rolls

chopped chives

Sim­ply take your lob­ster apart: tail and claws.  I know there is meat in the rest of it, but I don’t ever know how to find it (except suck­ing on the legs!).  Wash the tail thor­oughly to remove any green goo.  Chop the meat into the size bites you like and mix with the cel­ery, onion and dress­ing ingre­di­ents.  Pile gen­er­ously into the rolls and sprin­kle with chives.

Yes­ter­day found us at the town pool (for­ever to be known as the Town Poo, when the “L” fell off the sign last sum­mer), on a truly per­fect, Amer­i­can pool day.  There was a camp there, so shouts of “Marco… Polo…” drifted across the water, as they have for cen­turies in pools just like this one.  “Don’t run!” the super­model life­guards screech.”  “Don’t hang on the ladder!”

And so we stroll lazily into the rest of our hot, hot sum­mer.  The bird feed­ers are full, hawks float over­head look­ing for an unwary bunny.  The mint flour­ishes.  It’s August at Red Gate Farm.