a qui­et month

It’s been a peace­ful few weeks here in post-hol­i­day Lon­don. Lots and lots of mud­dy, squelchy walks along the near­by bike trail, caus­ing me to break out one of John’s birth­day presents ear­ly: a boot­jack!  Such fun to walk along the riv­er, not­ing the tidal changes, enjoy­ing the peace.

Well, actu­al­ly it has­n’t been peace­ful here if you ask Avery, who braved her way through the many, many “mock” exams in prepa­ra­tion for the real thing in April and May.  It was a gru­elling 8 or 9 days with con­stant exams through­out every day.  A 15-minute break between French and Russ­ian, out­ra­geous!  She worked incred­i­bly hard, and to great results.

We par­ents agreed, when­ev­er two or more of us gath­ered, that we’d rather be tak­ing the exams our­selves than watch­ing help­less­ly!  All I could do was feed her up, with all her favorite foods.  Among them was the always-deli­cious stuffed chick­en breast…

Chick­en Breasts Stuffed with Moz­zarel­la, Pesto and Spinach

(serves four)

four chick­en breast fillets

four hand­fuls spinach

4 tbsps pesto

1 ball buf­fa­lo mozzarella

16 strips streaky (Amer­i­can) bacon

16 tooth­picks

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp butter

This is mere­ly an assem­bly job.  In order to main­tain per­fect kitchen hygiene, the most impor­tant thing to do is to make sure you have removed your por­tion of spinach from the bag before you begin, and that you’ve count­ed out your bacon strips.  The last thing you want to do is con­t­a­m­i­nate the rest of the spinach and bacon with raw chick­en juice.  As well, you should have your 4 tbsps of pesto in a small dish of their own, rather than dip­ping a chick­e­ny spoon into the gen­er­al pesto pot, and have count­ed out your tooth­picks and set them aside.  Make sense?

Now, gath­er your ingre­di­ents in easy reach and get a sharp knife.  Lay each chick­en breast on a cut­ting board and care­ful­ly cut a slice hor­i­zon­tal­ly through the breast, not going all the way through to the back.  Essen­tial­ly you are mak­ing a pock­et, an enve­lope, in the chick­en breast.

Now spread a spoon­ful of pesto in the pock­et, and tuck the spinach leaves and a quar­ter of the moz­zarel­la ball into each pock­et.  As best as pos­si­ble, close up the pock­et and wrap each breast in four strips of bacon, secur­ing the bacon through the chick­en with the toothpicks.

Heat the oil and but­ter in a large, heavy skil­let and place the chick­en breasts in it.  Cook, turn­ing fre­quent­ly, for about 20–25 min­utes, pok­ing at the breasts exper­i­men­tal­ly to feel them stiff­en and become thor­ough­ly cooked inside.  Final­ly you may feel you want to cut on breast in half to ascer­tain that they are ful­ly cooked.

Serve hot.

These lit­tle guys are incred­i­bly savoury in so many ways: the gar­licky good­ness of the pesto, the salti­ness of the bacon, the iron rich­ness of the spinach, the creamy melt­ed cheese, all sur­round­ed by ten­der, juicy chick­en.  They’re worth the effort!

I’ve had bell­ring­ing tri­umphs this dank and drea­ry month.  Once I was able to go back to the Tow­er after my month-long chesty cold, I was giv­en the chance to “con­duct call changes” for the first time!  Let me explain.  When we ring for ser­vices, we begin by ring­ing what are called “rounds,” which means the per­son ring­ing the small­est bell, which makes the high­est sound, rings first.  She’s called the “tre­ble” bell.  Then in “rounds,” we sim­ply go “round” the cir­cle.  The next larg­er bell rings next, in sec­onds place, the next larg­er rings next, in thirds place, and so on until we get to the last bell, the 8, called the “tenor” and mak­ing the low­est sound.  The musi­cians among you will rec­og­nize this as an “octave.”  Eight bells, ring­ing high­est to low­est, over and over and over.

Well, this would be enough for me!  But some 500 years ago, clev­er­er bell­ringers than I got bored.  Very quick­ly.  So they began an activ­i­ty called “call changes,” which means that a con­duc­tor calls out an instruc­tion like “six to sev­en,” in a very loud and author­i­ta­tive voice.  This is the sig­nal for the 7 bell in the cir­cle to ring after the 5, instead of after the 6.  The octave is changed by two bells.  Then the con­duc­tor con­tin­ues and changes oth­er bells.  The rule is that bells can move only one place at a time.  But you can imag­ine that very quick­ly, bells are all over the place and able to change all sorts of ways, and the tune changes every time.

So two weeks ago I was mer­ri­ly ring­ing rounds on a Sun­day morn­ing, when my teacher sud­den­ly shout­ed, “Kris­ten, call some changes.”  WHAT?  Me, who had nev­er held a rope 18 months ago?  But I did!  I called three sets of changes, heart pound­ing, and then I called them “back,” putting them back into “rounds.”  Oh, the power!

Very excit­ing.  I went from that achieve­ment, as dot­ty as it sounds, to a full day’s out­ing last Sat­ur­day, ring­ing at 6 dif­fer­ent tow­ers in 9 hours!  Here is an account of our day, if you’re inter­est­ed, on the bell­ring­ing blog that I keep for our church.  A cold and sun­ny day in the Eng­lish coun­try­side.  So lovely.

Do you find your­self rather depressed in Jan­u­ary?  I do, and every Jan­u­ary I wor­ry that I’m descend­ing into some Scan­di­na­vian per­ma­nent state of despair.  Then every Jan­u­ary, some­where around the 20th, John reminds me that this is an annu­al and short-lived feel­ing.  But in the mean­time, the cliche pre­vails that the best path to hap­pi­ness is by think­ing of some­one else rather than myself.  Here my vol­un­teer social-work gig comes in very handy.

Of course I can­not tell you any details about my new fam­i­ly, but I can tell you that I had com­plete­ly for­got­ten how sat­is­fy­ing it is to rock a sob­bing lit­tle tod­dler on your lap and com­fort her tears.  I’d for­got­ten how intense­ly repet­i­tive lit­tle chil­dren are, how pre­tend­ing to bite a hand emerg­ing from a coat gets a laugh every SIN­GLE time, how a pre­tend hic­cup whilst drink­ing imag­i­nary milk gets a laugh every SIN­GLE time.  This fam­i­ly speaks a for­eign lan­guage, luck­i­ly one I know a bit of, so we all speak in a com­bi­na­tion of our two tongues, to much mer­ri­ment.  A love­ly two-hour inter­lude in every week.

And it SNOWED!  That cheered me up for at least two days, while it last­ed.  The bike path!

And even our home gar­den was transformed!

All around us, the world was trans­formed by the white blan­ket, cov­er­ing rub­bish, flaws, incon­sis­ten­cies in the land­scape and mak­ing every­thing seem new and immemorial.

How hap­py it made every­one!  School closed two hours ear­ly on the last day of exams, hur­rah!  I cel­e­brat­ed, nat­u­ral­ly, by mak­ing one of my absolute favorite dish­es, duck ril­lettes.  What?  You haven’t ever eat­en ril­lettes?  They’re quite sim­ply a dish of shred­ded meat — duck, rab­bit, veni­son — after the meat has been cooked very slow­ly in oil and wine.  You need to do this.

Duck Ril­lettes

(serves as many as you like, as an appe­tiz­er, with what­ev­er duck you leave behind avail­able for anoth­er meal)

8 duck legs

sea salt

black pep­per

8 bay leaves

2 cups olive oil

2 cups white wine

You must start this dish a day before you want to eat it.  In a large oven­proof dish, place four of the duck legs skin side down, sprin­kle with salt and pep­per and lay a bay lef on top.  Now place the oth­er four duck legs onto the ones already in the dish, this time skin side up.  Sprin­kle on more salt and pep­per and add a bay leaf to each leg.  Cov­er in plas­tic wrap and refrig­er­ate overnight.

In the ear­ly morn­ing, shake the salt and pep­per off the duck legs and replace them in the dish in one crowd­ed lay­er.  Place the bay leaves back in top and pour on the oil and wine.  Place in a very low oven, 120C/200F and cook for 12 hours.

For the ril­lettes, sim­ply shred the meat of as many of the legs as you like, using it all if you like, or leav­ing some of the legs to be eat­en as is.  The meat will fall off the bone.  Pour over a bit of the oil-wine mix­ture, salt to taste and add fresh black pep­per.  Serve with crusty French bread and a dol­lop of creme fraiche, if you like.

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Very pop­u­lar!  John nor­mal­ly turns up his nose at ril­lettes, even the gor­geous ver­sion I brought home from Paris last spring, but he LOVED my home­made ril­lettes.  Tri­umph!

Of course, Jan­u­ary brings the termly Lost Prop­er­ty lun­cheon and its atten­dant joys and anx­i­eties.  The joys involve see­ing all the won­der­ful vol­un­teers and chat­ting about lacrosse boots, exams, our won­der­ful and remark­able chil­dren, the snow.  The anx­i­eties involve num­bers of chairs and forks, whether or not the stuffed bone­less chick­en I roast­ed will feed enough peo­ple (answer: no!  I had count­ed on left­overs for sup­per but there weren’t any!), whether the ladies meant to bring dessert and cheese will remem­ber.  High on our list of top­ics to dis­cuss was the recent Inau­gu­ra­tion, for which we’d been invit­ed to a spec­tac­u­lar party.

I am always shamed by the depth of knowl­edge and analy­sis of our British friends, on the sub­ject of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics.  If I did­n’t live here in Lon­don, could I name any of the British cab­i­net sec­re­taries?  No.  And yet the British are able to dis­cuss the Elec­toral Col­lege and the rel­a­tive mer­its of  pro­posed new Sec­re­taries of State.  It’s a real priv­i­lege to hear their views.  “What you have to remem­ber, Kris­ten,” one friend at the par­ty said, “is that we HAVE to pay atten­tion to your coun­try because you get us in so many scrapes!”  Their admi­ra­tion for Amer­i­ca is always heartwarming.

My fun with Hand­Picked Nation con­tin­ues!  My lat­est obses­sion:  Grind­ing, or “minc­ing” my own meat.  Why, you ask?  Because the nation’s largest super­mar­ket chain was dis­cov­ered last week to have undis­closed HORSE meat includ­ed in its frozen “beef” burg­ers!  Now, I have no objec­tion in prin­ci­ple to eat­ing horse meat, if it’s humane­ly sup­plied and it’s what I thought I bought!  But hid­ing in my beef, no.  The only way to be sure is to grind your own.  So, so much better.

How nice to know exact­ly what you are feed­ing your fam­i­ly.  I admit it’s more expen­sive to grind your own, but it’s a tiny thing to eat less meat, and make sure all of it is perfect.

Well, the sky is blue right now.  A rare enough occur­rence to get us into our Wellies and off to the bike path.  And when I see you next, this grey, tir­ing, let­down­ish (but deli­cious) month of Jan­u­ary will be history.