a busy Sunday

Let’s see: why does a house­hold with three chil­dren seem so much more…occupied than a house­hold with one child? This is not a trick ques­tion. It’s actu­al­ly hard to answer, giv­en that none of the chil­dren requires dia­per chang­ing, bot­tle feed­ing, or in fact much atten­tion at all. It’s just the neces­si­ty to keep track of and think about so many peo­ple all at once! Like a long din­ner par­ty, or a din­ner par­ty that turns into a sleep­over and then lunch. I think peo­ple with mul­ti­ple chil­dren are very patient and self­less peo­ple, and also have an amaz­ing eye for safe­ty and traf­fic haz­ards. I found myself absolute­ly con­vinced, all week­end, that cars would jump the pave­ment, vehi­cles with flash­ing lights and sirens appear at any moment to mow down my chil­dren, or that at the very least they’d mere­ly be chat­ting away in the inter­sec­tion as an unsus­pect­ing Aston Mar­tin took them out. Actu­al­ly Avery would find that quite an accept­able method for leav­ing the known universe.

Then there’s feed­ing time. Who likes what? Bev­er­age pref­er­ences and knife skills! They were all delight­ful and appre­cia­tive and help­ful: it’s just the num­ber of details that sur­prised me. Par­ents of only chil­dren have, grant­ed, more peace­ful din­ners, but none with so much ener­gy and gig­gling as a fam­i­ly of three girls would be. And I must say, it was very good for Avery to have as her solemn and sworn duty all week­end: keep Ellie safe and hap­py. She had her by the hand, mar­shalled her at the end of today’s very crowd­ed con­cert, shep­herd­ed her indoors when she fell on one of the jumps and wait­ed until we had Ellie safe­ly under a cash­mere throw with a hot water bot­tle, before return­ing to the jump­ing course in the garden.

Sad­ly, they have gone home. I only hope their min­ders for the week under­stand what trea­sures they have, and no one tries to get Ellie’s loose teeth out. If John can­not accom­plish this, no one can, with­out tears and blood. For the record, I’d like to have all three girls ALL the time.

Now then: Con­tro­ver­sy at the farmer’s mar­ket! Are some of our stall­hold­ers fid­dling the sys­tem? Are they sell­ing fruit and veg that they them­selves have pur­chased from a whole­saler’s stall that morn­ing at the crack of dawn? I con­fess I found this arti­cle hard to under­stand, or rather I could­n’t see, in some sit­u­a­tions, what the fuss was about. Take Isle of Wight Toma­toes, for exam­ple, admit­ted­ly very expen­sive, but with love­ly peo­ple work­ing the stall and the toma­toes always taste won­der­ful. Can it be true that they’re mere­ly BUY­ING their toma­toes from anoth­er Isle of Wight toma­to pur­vey­or and then bring­ing them to Maryle­bone to resell? And even more sig­nif­i­cant­ly, how much would I care if they were? As long as they are real organ­ic toma­toes from the Isle of Wight, do I care if there was a mid­dle­man? I sup­pose I do, a bit. I sup­pose part of the farmer’s mar­ket expe­ri­ence is feel­ing that you’ve just bought some­thing from the per­son who grew it, or raised it. I think that’s why I’m inclined to buy fruit and veg from a small stall rather than Sun­ny­fields, if I can. Sun­ny­fields feels that much clos­er to a super­mar­ket them­selves, because I know they sup­ply the out­ra­geous­ly expen­sive Nat­ur­al Kitchen up the High Street. But how point­less­ly quixot­ic is that: sure­ly sell­ing to a large shop is a mea­sure of their suc­cess? I’m real­ly not built to work all these issues out. Oh, it’s a conun­drum, and a lot of trou­ble, just to feed one’s family.

Well, I did get a mighty tasty new let­tuce from Wild Coun­try Organ­ics called “min­er’s leaf”, but I can’t seem to find out a thing about it. There’s some­thing called “leaf min­er” that is appar­ent­ly the most pesti­lent gar­den pest you can imag­ine, but min­er’s leaf? Don’t know. It looks like a cross between pea shoots and lam­b’s let­tuce, and has a very nice bite to it. But the star of the show after my mar­ket trip yes­ter­day was most def­i­nite­ly Vin­tage Lin­colnshire Poach­er, quite sim­ply the most deli­cious cheese you will ever have toast­ed between two pieces of whole­meal bread. Of course real cheese conois­seurs will have it on a cheese board with the prop­er sort of cheese knife, but when you’re feed­ing chil­dren, grilled cheese is the way to go. Nut­ty, strong, creamy and salty, it is an absolute winner.

And you can’t beat High­land Sug­ar­works Blue­ber­ry Pan­cake Mix for break­fast to make any child hap­py. At first when I make the bat­ter I am con­vinced there are no blue­ber­ries in it, but some­how they are dried so tiny that they hide in the flour (sev­er­al dif­fer­ent kinds of flour, actu­al­ly) and then when the milk and oil and eggs go in, up pop the blue­ber­ries. I nev­er obey the instruc­tions on these bags: milk is ALWAYS bet­ter than water in any sit­u­a­tion except swim­ming pools. Scram­bled eggs with water? Cream is more like it.

Well, I have very lit­tle news to pass along. Avery is, as we speak, at her penul­ti­mate inter­view, at Fran­cis Hol­land School in Sloane Square. It’s not so much an inter­view as a morn­ing spent in lessons at some­one else’s school. How tedious must that be? Then Wednes­day is South Hamp­stead High School, and that’s IT. Final­ly. I have a new game: think­ing up pseu­do­nyms for the school that we even­tu­al­ly choose. Because as I dis­cov­ered with our cur­rent school, if cer­tain types of par­ents find out about a cer­tain moth­er’s blog accu­rate­ly iden­ti­fy­ing the real school, those cer­tain par­ents can be pre­dict­ed to freak out. So while those of you who know will know, those of you who won’t won’t, if that makes any sense at all.

Speak­ing of things not mak­ing sense, I would be ever so grate­ful if some British per­son could explain the fol­low­ing to me: why is the word “Mag­dalen” pro­nounced as it’s spelled when it’s the Mary who was devot­ed to Jesus, but if it’s the col­lege at Oxford it’s pro­nounced “Maudlin”? For years I have assumed that the Oxford Col­lege was spelt the way it sounds. But then, watch­ing “Uni­ver­si­ty Chal­lenge” as I must say we do, I saw it spelt out prop­er­ly, and there is was, “Mag­dalen.” Why, one won­ders? Some­one please enlight­en me. I am so fond of these British ways, but I like to know the rea­son­ing if I can. If “rea­son­ing” it be…

Oh! But I do have news, I near­ly for­got. For my birth­day John’s giv­ing me a week-long writ­ing course in Devon! It does­n’t come to pass until Octo­ber, but it’s my birth­day present nonethe­less. It seemed expen­sive to me until John point­ed out that I’d spent more than that already on the var­i­ous writ­ing cours­es I’ve tak­en in Lon­don, the result of which has been mere­ly to learn what I’m NOT good at writ­ing. Well, this one is called “Food Writ­ing,” and it is run by the Arvon Foun­da­tion, a fas­ci­nat­ing organ­i­sa­tion led by two writ­ers who were friends of Ted Hugh­es. I just read the descrip­tion in the brochure: “cut off from the dis­trac­tions of dai­ly life: no friends, no fam­i­ly, no wifi, inter­net, vir­tu­al­ly no mobile sig­nals…” Eeek! Just writ­ing all day long, and in the evening lis­ten­ing to read­ings by the tutors. My tutors will be Tamasin Day-Lewis (sis­ter of Daniel, which descrip­tion must make her crazy some­times) and Orlan­do Mur­rin. Then there is a guest writer, Simon Parkes, whose func­tion I’m not com­plete­ly clear about. I’m sud­den­ly very ner­vous! Why?

Well, for one thing I nev­er leave home. And if I do, I am sen­si­ble enough to take my fam­i­ly with me. Sec­ond, I am addict­ed to email and to my blog. No com­put­er! Eeek. Third, how on earth will I be able to pack enough books to keep me com­pa­ny with no fam­i­ly and no friends for four nights? And how will the food be? Appar­ent­ly all of us on the course cook togeth­er every night, which should be good fun. What on earth is pos­sess­ing me to do such a thing? What if I am the only Amer­i­can? Doubt­less I will be. What if every­one else is a pub­lished food writer already, or restau­ra­teur, or cater­er, and I’m the only one whose sole con­tri­bu­tion to the world of food is cook­ing din­ner every night for a hus­band and one dis­cern­ing 11-year-old? Waah!

Ah, well, I’ve paid my deposit and so I must go. And I think I have the ten­ta­tive agree­ment of my dear moth­er in law to come and be cook and chief bot­tle wash­er here. Am I nuts? John leaves home, Avery leaves home, John and Avery both leave home, but I? Nev­er. I think the last time I was away was in 1998 when I went to Los Ange­les with my friend Sarah to inves­ti­gate find­ing pub­lish­ers for our book. It was for one night! Ten years ago. Well, per­haps it will be one of those oppor­tu­ni­ties peo­ple are always wit­ter­ing on about, how it shows them parts of their char­ac­ters they nev­er knew they had. I have the sneak­ing sus­pi­cion that what­ev­er is revealed to me belongs where it is now, hid­den and unmissed. But we shall see! The good thing is that I will final­ly be con­cen­trat­ing on exact­ly what I want to write about: not sit­coms or films or short sto­ries, but mem­oirs and food writing.

In the mean­time, we are off to col­lect Avery from her morn­ing spent being charm­ing and intel­li­gent, home for a belat­ed lunch of bolog­nese, and then to school for what­ev­er delights Mon­day after­noons offer. And I’m spend­ing the after­noon making:

Slow-Cooked Chick­en Wings with Blue Cheese Dressing
(serves four)

2 dozen chick­en wings
1/3 cup each: maple syrup, chilli sauce, toma­to juice, black treacle
2 tbsps sesame oil
juice of 1 lime
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
small knob gin­ger, peeled and minced

Mix all the mari­nade ingre­di­ents in a large ziplock bag and toss the wings in, mak­ing sure they are ade­quate­ly coat­ed. Set aside for as long as you like in the fridge. If you’re like me and have a very crowd­ed fridge, the bag method is best, rather than try­ing to find room for a large Pyrex bowl as I used to do with my sat­is­fy­ing­ly mas­sive Amer­i­can fridge (one of two in my kitchen, I weep to say). With a bag you can squish it around and make room.

Line a bak­ing dish with alu­minum foil and bake the wings in a slow-ish oven (325f, 160c, about) for at least an hour and a half. You can turn your oven even low­er and cook them longer. Turn at least once. Serve with:

Blue Cheese Dressing
(serves lots)

1/3 cup sour cream
3/4 cup home­made may­on­naise (recipe below)
1/2 tsp Worces­ter­shire sauce
dash gar­lic powder
dash salt
dash black pepper
3 ounces blue cheese, crumbled

Mix all ingre­di­ents well with a whisk, then fold in crum­bled blue cheese. Chill.

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

Home­made Mayonnaise
(makes one cup)

1 egg yolk
1/4 tsp salt
pinch cayenne
pinch white pepper
pinch dry mustard
juice of half lemon
1 cup olive oil

With a wire whisk, beat egg yolk with salt, cayenne, pep­per and mus­tard until thick and yel­low as a lemon. Then add half the lemon juice slow­ly and beat again. Now, one drop at a time for about a minute, add olive oil. Then after the first minute, a steady but TINY stream of oil will do, whisk­ing con­stant­ly until the oil is used up. Now whisk in remain­ing lemon juice slow­ly. Chill, and enjoy. And ask your­self: how do they get com­mer­cial mayo to be so… white? Does­n’t make sense. One of those life mysteries.

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

Well, I have to tell you Avery got back from her inter­view this morn­ing and it was a very reveal­ing lit­tle con­ver­sa­tion they had with her. Thumbs down on this school, I’d say. Avery says she went into the inter­view speak­ing Eng­lish as opposed to Amer­i­can as she’d been talk­ing with a gag­gle of Eng­lish girls before­hand, and that’s usu­al­ly what hap­pens. So the inter­view­ing crea­ture asked her if she had been a pupil at King’s Col­lege back when it was under anoth­er name, and she answered, “No, I moved from New York just two years ago.” “Oh. I did not realise you were an Amer­i­can.” Pause while Avery declines to elab­o­rate on the lady’s state­ment. So then she asked Avery, “Do you find that peo­ple tend to have… dif­fer­ent opin­ions about Amer­i­cans than they do about peo­ple from oth­er coun­tries?” “What on earth did you find to say about that?” I asked in amaze­ment. “Well,” Avery said, “I did­n’t want to say that British peo­ple think Amer­i­cans are fat and igno­rant, so I just said that it depend­ed upon the indi­vid­ual per­son one meets.” Well done! “But she did­n’t stop there, with what I thought was a very diplo­mat­ic answer!” she wailed. “The lady said, ‘Well, when peo­ple DO judge Amer­i­cans dif­fer­ent­ly, what do you think they think?’, so I said, “I sup­pose some peo­ple think Amer­i­cans are not as well informed as they might be,” and that was all I could think of!” Poor child.

I don’t think this is the school for us. What a ques­tion, or set of ques­tions, to ask! It cer­tain­ly gives an indi­ca­tion of the sort of social envi­ron­ment she’d be up against, does­n’t it? I think she did extra­or­di­nar­i­ly well, not defen­sive, not sil­ly, not pre­tend­ing she did­n’t under­stand the under­cur­rent. But yuck. I am not, as you know, one to flag-wave mind­less­ly about my erst­while home, but I will go out on a limb and say that the only peo­ple who should make snap judg­ments about Amer­i­cans are… Amer­i­cans themselves!