I’m OFF!

No, not with an emp­ty pot: I’ll tell you about that in a moment. I want­ed to let you know that I’ll be away until Mon­day evening, on an adven­ture! Remem­ber my Devon retreat in Octo­ber, clos­et­ed away in the fields of Sheep­dip or Sheepshead, was it Sheep­wash? Yes. Tucked away with 15 oth­er aspir­ing food writ­ers, writ­ing and cook­ing our hearts out. And mak­ing last­ing friends, as it turns out, because this week­end will see us all in sun­ny (we hope) Shrop­shire, at a reunion! All the best and bright­est will gath­er, ingre­di­ents and chap­ters in hand, to cook, gos­sip, be lazy, read each oth­er’s pieces, maybe even write, should the inspi­ra­tion take us. There will be young and bril­liant Sam, effer­ves­cent Foxi Rosie, mys­te­ri­ous Roger, ambi­tious Adam, tal­ent­ed Louise, and many oth­ers, ready to recre­ate the mag­ic of Octo­ber. It seems a life­time ago, so much has hap­pened since.

In the run-up there­to, I have been enslav­ing myself at the stove, part­ly to fill the refrig­er­a­tor for my beloved fam­i­ly left behind (chick­en soup, mac­a­roni and cheese, egg sal­ad with water­cress, all the com­fort­ing favorites), and con­coct­ing treats to take with me: Richard Cor­ri­g­an’s peer­less crab and goat’s cheese tart, my own warm can­nelli­ni bean sal­ad with rose­mary and parme­san. I will trav­el down to Bath with my cool-bag full of lus­cious bits and pieces, includ­ing Welsh Drag­on sausages from the Gig­gly Pig at the farmer’s mar­ket, and the lat­est copy of Wait­rose Food Illus­trat­ed in my hand­bag. I’m ready for an adven­ture, and also for a break from my desk, my stove. All it will take is three days away and I will be more than ready to take it all up again, but a lit­tle change of scene does sound appeal­ing. If the break is any­thing like Octo­ber, there will be no cell phone cov­er­age and no inter­net access, so I’ll see you on Tuesday.

Now, to explain the soup pot. Last night we had din­ner guests whose pres­ence in our lives goes back near­ly 20 years, to our first sojourn in Lon­don as new­ly­weds, believe it or not. Tom and Judith, the names just make me sink back into the past and those long-ago days at… their soup kitchen for home­less men on the Embank­ment. Every sin­gle morn­ing, rain or shine (espe­cial­ly in rain, prob­a­bly), there they were, out­side the tube sta­tion, pro­vid­ing tea, cof­fee, rolls, Band-aids, socks, gloves and any oth­er cloth­ing they could lay their hands on, and, nat­u­ral­ly, soup. John popped up out of the tube sta­tion on his way to work one day and saw the gath­er­ing of men, of all ages, sizes, states of health, being served in an atmos­phere of calm and car­ing, and imme­di­ate­ly offered us and our postage-stamp-sized kitchen to help. And that was the begin­ning of a long and hap­py friend­ship with Tom and Judith, and some very intrigu­ing rela­tion­ships with the men, who were referred to as our “cus­tomers,” and treat­ed with the utmost respect.

Talk about an adven­ture! Try mak­ing soup for 60, and I am not kid­ding that my kitchen was oppres­sive­ly tiny. It reminds me of Lau­rie Col­win’s obser­va­tion about her own kitchen: “It was a good thing I was not friends with Wilt Cham­ber­lain, because he could not have held his arms out in my kitchen.” And the myr­i­ad prob­lems were not just with space. What would the men like, what would sit well overnight (since the soup had to be deliv­ered the day before to Judith’s house where she heat­ed it up at dawn to take down to the men), what would cool safe­ly with­out con­t­a­m­i­na­tion? Many was the night I lay awake try­ing to think up good and var­ied recipes. Once a week or so, John and I would turn up at the soup kitchen itself and help serve, and my good­ness, the char­ac­ters. Some were silent, some were near­ly threat­en­ing, some were mere­ly very ordi­nary men who found them­selves on the street. And then there was Dig­ger. Dig­ger was a Welsh­man, a tiny, wiz­ened old man who resem­bled noth­ing so much as a Christ­mas elf, with­out the pointy shoes. He had a boom­ing voice six times the size of him­self, a wealth of pret­ty much unbe­liev­able but enter­tain­ing sto­ries. And he was quite the food crit­ic. Vichys­soise? “If you told me, lady, that I’d be eat­ing cold pota­to soup out of a cof­fee cup at 7 in the morn­ing, I’d have said you were crazy! But it works, lady!” He did not like meat, so I nev­er brought chick­en soup on my days. But his favorite, and the favorite of all the oth­er men, was from a Hel­lo! mag­a­zine recipe: toma­to and fen­nel soup with cheesy crou­tons. I will test that recipe, tucked back in the recess­es of my 1990s brain, and pass it along to you. It was always a winner.

Judith and I nev­er lost touch, by let­ter (and recent­ly she was dragged, kick­ing and scream­ing, into the world of email, by her grand­chil­dren). But some­how it’s been three years since we’ve been back and she and I just met up for lunch a month or so ago, and it took until last night to get her very busy hus­band (a solic­i­tor who was meant to have retired LONG ago but won’t give up the ghost) to din­ner with us.

I had for­got­ten Tom’s pin-striped suits and impec­ca­ble striped shirts, his habit of ris­ing up on his toes with irre­press­ible ener­gy when mak­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong point about the Labour gov­ern­ment, or Nazi his­to­ry, or even my chick­en dish. “This is a most, most, how shall I put it, delight­ful and unusu­al way in which to eat chick­en, my dear,” he said, rock­ing back and forth. And Judith: to see her com­muning with Avery in their first con­ver­sa­tion (which of them is the more intense, the more intel­li­gent, the more seri­ous, I would not want to have to say) made me very, very hap­py. Judith is full to the brim with grand­sons, but I thought a nice proxy grand­daugh­ter might be nice. Avery was vol­u­ble on the sub­ject of rid­ing in Hyde Park, which got Tom going. “You don’t mean to say, dear girl, that you are in charge of these beasts, who are quite capa­ble of decid­ing they do not like you, in the park, in a posi­tion of some author­i­ty?” She loved that.

We ate and ate, and talked over each oth­er, admir­ing the new-sea­son British aspara­gus which I had tak­en the time to shave (what a fid­dly and annoy­ing job! but worth it), and Avery’s con­tri­bu­tion of Eton Mess, a love­ly con­coc­tion of straw­ber­ries, bro­ken meringues and whipped cream. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Avery and her friend Emi­ly had made the pud­ding in a state of some anx­i­ety over school affairs and had decid­ed that pul­ver­iz­ing the meringues to a pow­dery dust would be “good ther­a­py.” Per­haps, but not good Eton Mess. The meringues sim­ply dis­solved in the straw­ber­ry juice! Com­plete­ly disappeared.

We stayed up very, very late indeed. The first of many such evenings togeth­er, I hope. There is some­thing irre­place­able about old, old friends, peo­ple who knew you as very young peo­ple and are hap­py to play the part of extra par­ents, admir­ing our exploits, our child, our house. When one’s own par­ents are far away, one needs as many stand-ins as possible.

Well, I am afraid I must run. Because this is my life, I am expect­ing more din­ner guests tonight, but not real­ly. It’s Emi­ly’s fam­i­ly, who are in real­i­ty our fam­i­ly, and Annie and I are indulging in a spot of that rare sport: Com­pet­i­tive Tart Bak­ing. I made an extra crab tart, and Annie’s bring­ing two: aubergine with feta, and smoked bacon with Gruyere. After which we will fall down in a pile of cho­les­terol, fat, and friend­ship. Not a bad state to be in.