a lit­tle sole-searching

Have you ever gut­ted a lemon sole? It’s very off-putting and icky. How­ev­er, all the slav­ing did result in an incred­i­bly tasty dish that also marked a mile­stone in our domes­tic sphere: John ate fish! Next time, though, I will ask the fish­mon­ger to fil­let the lit­tle guys for me because I was real­ly out of my depth. The recipe came from Mitchell Tonks’s fab­u­lous cook­book “The Fish­mon­ger’s Cook­book,” so in all fair­ness I went to his fish shop (does­n’t he look incred­i­bly cheery?), “Fish­Works” in the Maryle­bone High Street where I had such a mem­o­rable lunch ear­ly on in our stay here, to get the fish. Unhap­pi­ly I left this task until after I picked Avery up from school, so she had to come along, and she was not hap­py at the fishy smell, nor at the sight of the many dif­fer­ent whole fish­es, a lit­tle too up close and per­son­al for her refined tastes.

So the recipe called for dredg­ing the fish in flour, shak­ing off the excess, and fry­ing it gen­tly in lots of but­ter, about 6 min­utes per side, then you take the fish out of the fry­ing pan, keep them warm, add more but­ter to the pan and some fresh pars­ley, and pour it over the fish. I chose lemon sole because it’s such a mild fla­vor that it could­n’t scare John too much. Absolute­ly drop-dead deli­cious, sim­ple, per­fect­ly fresh and light. The whole process was rather nerve-wrack­ing, though, so fil­lets from now on.

I have book­shelves! The peo­ple FINAL­LY came today, after many missed phone calls, lost emails, inflat­ed prices and oth­er mishaps. I read with my gulls this morn­ing and came home to find a nice team of three elves work­ing away, and with­in two hours I had a whole wall of love­ly, emp­ty shelves that are remov­able and able to be mixed and matched in any way I like, wher­ev­er we move next (heav­en for­fend). So now all I have to do (!) is move the 30-odd box­es of books from my study across the hall to the liv­ing room, and shelve them all, then break down the box­es for the recy­clers who con­ve­nient­ly come on Thurs­day evening. I have gone so far as to emp­ty two box­es and decid­ed to skip alpha­bet­iz­ing for now, just to get them on the shelves. So far I’ve sep­a­rat­ed non-fic­tion from fic­tion, and cook­books from every­thing else, and I think that will be the extent of my orga­ni­za­tion. You’ll
know I’ve gone over the edge when I dewey-dec­i­mal them all.

Yes­ter­day I col­lapsed after school dropoff and sim­ply took a nap, in the guest room, thank­ful­ly tak­ing the pre­cau­tion of pulling down the win­dow shades, because I was awak­ened by the sound of the porter’s voice seem­ing­ly in my ear, and he was just out­side the win­dow attend­ing to some busi­ness of rub­bish, so I got up, and my friend Becky called to invite me to lunch at a real­ly weird but strange­ly appeal­ing place in Maryle­bone Lane, Le Relais de Venise, where the only thing on the menu (so there real­ly isn’t a menu, just a terse announce­ment of what you’re about to eat) is steak frites. That’s it. In “a secret sauce,” which I diag­nosed as a not-so-secret mus­tard vinai­grette with, I think, a hint of cur­ry pow­der. And the same sauce as a sal­ad dress­ing. Huge, unman­age­able por­tions, admit­ted­ly gor­geous frites, and we had fun.

It is real­ly hard for me to believe that since then we have had Hal­loween in New York, a mam­moth last-gasp birth­day par­ty for 60, Thanks­giv­ing at Red Gate Farm, John’s last work din­ner for 50-some, sold our apart­ment, had movers to dis­man­tle our lives, Christ­mas in Con­necti­cut, the move here, and have near­ly com­plete­ly set­tled into entire­ly new lives. New house, new clean­ing lady, new babysit­ter, scores of friends, new doc­tor, school, office, book­shelves! What a whirl­wind it’s been. No won­der I need­ed a nap.

Well, box­es beck­on, so I’m off. After school I’ve been dis­patched by John to an unbe­liev­able estab­lish­ment called The But­ton Queen, to replace the sev­er­al hun­dred but­tons he’s miss­ing from var­i­ous suits. I’ll take my cam­era. Tomor­row night we have a date night, at the Savoy Grill where my Lifestyle Con­sul­tant has man­aged to book us a table. Oh, and her name turned out to be… Sarah Horn­buck­le. I am not mak­ing that up.