coda to our evening back home

I for­got how nice it is to have a lit­tle girl spend the night with Avery!  The sound of lit­tle voic­es say­ing, “now let’s pre­tend…” and a com­plete­ly torn-apart bed­room because secret­ly they’ve arranged their sleep­ing quar­ters on the floor of the guest room, and the com­plex arrange­ments of spe­cial bears, blan­kets, being bul­lied to brush their teeth.  Now they’ve been tucked in and sung to and kissed good­night and we can still hear them chat­ter­ing away.  John says that as he passed their room he heard, “Shh, my dad­dy’s com­ing.”  Who knows.

And I for­got to say that when I put my chick­en in the oven, I sur­round­ed it with lit­tle cher­ry toma­toes and wedges of fen­nel.  Because then, all you have to do after you eat your lus­cious roast chick­en is to throw the entire con­tents (which means all the parts of the chick­en you did­n’t carve for din­ner, plus the juices and toma­toes, and every­thing) of the foil-lined dish into a stock­pot, cov­er it with water, and sim­mer high for a good two hours.  Again, you do noth­ing!  Just wait.  If you pass by and the lit­tle bones are stick­ing up out of the water, add water.  I have always loved the Lau­rie Col­win (my favorite writer of all time) sto­ry of a boyfriend who, while cook­ing togeth­er, asked her what to do with the soup next. When she told him to ‘add water to cov­er,’ he asked, “What cov­er?”  Just goes to show, one per­son­’s basic bit of knowl­edge is anoth­er per­son­’s cod­ed mes­sage.  So I just put the stock­pot out the door of our lit­tle gar­den entrance, smelling like absolute ambrosia.  Tomor­row morn­ing I can skim the fat off, heat it again, pour it through a sieve into anoth­er pot, add rice, and have dinner.

OK, the girls are slow­ing down and so am I.  Good night.