that film

How on earth has a week gone by with­out my check­ing in? Because, as so many blog­gers wish, I’ve been actu­al­ly LIV­ING, as opposed to try­ing des­per­ate­ly to find some­thing to blog about because noth­ing’s been hap­pen­ing in my actu­al life.

The main thing, today, that’s been hap­pen­ing to me is mas­sive envy. I knew it would happen.

Today final­ly we saw “Julie and Julia”, after every­one I know said not only that I would love it, but that it IS me. Nat­u­ral­ly, hear­ing this, I want­ed noth­ing LESS than to see the film. Imag­ine my posi­tion: nobody food blog­ger sits alone in her home, cook­ing her heart out, car­ing for her hus­band and cat, typ­ing away about her exploits in the kitchen, wish­ing for self-ful­fill­ment. And… along comes self-ful­fill­ment, a book deal and a major motion pic­ture star­ring Meryl Streep.

And then there’s my life.

It’s like telling a min­i­mal­ly tal­ent­ed run­ner to get, say, “Char­i­ots of Fire” on Net­flix. Or a minor crim­i­nal to shake up some microwave pop­corn and rent “The Godfather.”

The film is a com­plete charmer. We’re sup­posed to buy “Julie” as a b**ch because the char­ac­ter tells us so, but I’m sor­ry, they should have cast some­one oth­er than Amy Adams. Not for noth­ing did my child ask to see “Enchant­ed” four times… IN THE CIN­E­MA. She’s adorable. Not believ­able as a nasty per­son. At ALL. She cooks like a fiend, fac­ing dis­as­ters and dis­ap­point­ments, while her hus­band tries to be sup­port­ive. Fair enough, I rec­og­nize that sce­nario. But hun­dreds of peo­ple read her blog with­out her mak­ing any effort what­so­ev­er, and they COM­MENT. I have my stal­wart com­menters, but hun­dreds? I could cry.

And then she’s cook­ing for the food crit­ic for the New York Times and the next morn­ing, on the sub­way and at Star­bucks, every­one’s read­ing the arti­cle about her blog and that’s THAT.

In the hours after leav­ing the cin­e­ma today, John and I tried to ana­lyze rea­sons for the gap between “Julie” and me. One is, I was not unhap­py to start with, when I began my blog, so I was­n’t search­ing for mas­sive mean­ing. But I WAS try­ing to doc­u­ment a process: the process just did­n’t have a par­tic­u­lar goal. Liv­ing in Lon­don, rais­ing my daugh­ter, tak­ing care of my fam­i­ly, cook­ing. Not very Hol­ly­wood. Two is, about a thou­sand years ago, when my par­ents noticed that I was a very good gym­nast, they asked me a very impor­tant ques­tion. “Would you, lit­tle Kris­ten,” [they said] like to be the BEST at one thing, or pret­ty good at lots of things?” A very good way to phrase it. Did I want to give up voice lessons, or piano lessons, or my scout troop, or bak­ing choco­late chip cook­ies every Thurs­day night while we watched “Hill Street Blues”? Not real­ly. Not even to be a tru­ly great gym­nast. I’d rather do a lot of things fair­ly well.

This has trans­lat­ed into adult life, I think. I take mea­sure: I’m a real­ly good moth­er, I think. A ded­i­cat­ed school vol­un­teer. A pret­ty good wife, a very good friend. A fair and steady cook, a decent writer, an enthu­si­as­tic host­ess. I can still play the piano and do a cart­wheel. But I’m not a star at any of them.

Would I trade hav­ing writ­ten the most influ­en­tial food blog ever, for hav­ing spent count­less hours walk­ing Avery home from school and lis­ten­ing to her fic­tion ideas while get­ting an admit­ted­ly pret­ty ordi­nary din­ner togeth­er? Of course not.

But I’d like to have BOTH.

Rant over. The film was love­ly. It came on the heels of some­thing far more impor­tant: my friend Char­lie’s vis­it to us. We are in mourn­ing at his depar­ture (he who in typ­i­cal fash­ion began his vis­it as “my” friend and inex­orably con­quered any­one who crossed his path, so now he’s “ours”, a sort of Nation­al Trea­sure, like Stephen Fry). His sis­ter appar­ent­ly need­ed him in Hert­ford­shire, which I con­sid­er the height of self­ish­ness. He arrived on Thurs­day evening to great fan­fare — my tra­di­tion­al wait­ing on the brick wall with a book and the house­key, plus a mag­nif­i­cent wel­come din­ner. My read­ing mate­r­i­al? Bird by Bird: Some Instruc­tions on Writ­ing and Life by Anne Lam­ott. One of my favorite bits upon a very short read­ing? “Writ­ing a nov­el is like dri­ving in the dark, with only your head­lights to light a very short dis­tance ahead. It’s scary, but you can do the whole thing that way.”

Char­lie arrived and we brought rough­ly half his earth­ly belong­ings into the house, intro­duced him to Avery (beside her­self with wel­come) and John (clos­et­ed in a very unpleas­ant tax phone call), then dragged his things up to the (I think) total­ly charm­ing guest room. A gen­tly slop­ing ceil­ing as befits our very crooked old house, a nice fake wal­nut wardrobe from eBay with its lit­tle shelves labelled “hats”, “col­lars” and such, a white four-poster bed that used to be Avery’s but would­n’t fit up the final two flights of stairs! Two win­dows, one a tiny square one like in a prison cell, the oth­er large and free-open­ing, over the green row of back gar­dens, over­look­ing every­one’s pic­nic tables and cats.

For that first din­ner? A starter of scal­lops sauteed in olive oil with gar­lic, red chill­is and tons of pars­ley, tossed in toast­ed home­made bread­crumbs. Fan­tas­tic. Then grilled lamb chops mar­i­nat­ed in rose­mary, gar­lic, olive oil and lemon juice. And for Avery’s delight, oven-roast­ed mush­rooms filled with sauteed chopped mush­rooms, bacon, gar­lic and goats cheese. Plus John’s favorite slaw, and then, a tru­ly superb pud­ding. Served up by Avery.

Poached William Pears
(serves 4)

4 William pears, peeled and the bot­toms sliced off so they stand up
1 cup hard cider, or Perry
2 cin­na­mon sticks
1/2 cup dark brown sugar

clot­ted cream
short­bread cookies

Place the pears into the saucepan and pour in the cider, drop in the cin­na­mon sticks and scat­ter over the sug­ar. Put the lid on and bring to a boil, then sim­mer for 15 min­utes, turn­ing the pears over twice, on their sides in the liq­uid. Then remove them to a dish, turn up the heat and boil the liq­uid until it’s reduced to a syrup, per­haps 10 min­utes. You’ll have to remove the pan from the heat and let the bub­bles set­tle down to see what you have. If it’s dark­ish and thick, you’re good. Set aside until you’re ready to serve. At serv­ing time, driz­zle the syrup over the pears, and serve with a spoon­ful of clot­ted cream to each per­son, and a cou­ple of short­bread biscuits.

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

How we ate. And laughed. Char­lie is an old-fash­ioned gen­tle­man whose entire per­son­al­i­ty is geared to laugh­ter. Except when you tell him some­thing impor­tant and then his coun­te­nance turns to a sort of inno­cent lis­ten­ing, and you can FEEL him lis­ten­ing. He would do any­thing in his pow­er to help me if I need­ed it, and give over his whole con­scious­ness to lis­ten while he was think­ing how he could help. But his great incli­na­tion is… laugh­ter. Avery adores him.

She described to him her lat­est maths home­work. Do you remem­ber pi? I hard­ly do. Unless it’s an apple one. This ver­sion is that vague­ly famil­iar 3.14 chap­py, the whole radius-of-a-cir­cle-squared doo­dah. So it turns out, the cut­ting-off at 3.14 is total­ly sil­ly. The dig­its go on INFI­NITE­LY. As in, mil­lions of dig­its. Scary peo­ple have devot­ed their lives, and more impor­tant­ly, web­sites, in the explo­ration of this phenomenon.

So Avery’s maths teacher, the dear Mr Smith who tap­dances in his spare time, assigned a poet­ry home­work. Poet­ry in maths? Yes. The girls were to extend the dig­its of Pi and write poet­ry using words of the num­ber of let­ters indi­cat­ed by the dig­its. Seri­ous­ly. As in, “Fun I have,” for 3.14. When Avery gives me per­mis­sion, I’ll pub­lish her efforts. She’s up to 82 digits.

Fri­day found me host­ing the cof­fee morn­ing for Avery’s class moth­ers. So beau­ti­ful­ly dressed, such flut­ing voic­es, such rich offer­ings of mar­malade, crois­sants, fruit-stuffed muffins. Char­lie drift­ed in as we chat­tered (like birds on a wire) and I intro­duced him. “He want­ed to be either my hus­band, for you all, or the but­ler. Take your pick.”

We accom­plished a sur­pris­ing amount of busi­ness in the way of pro­ject­ed class events, fundrais­ers and bridge (?) lessons to be shared among Avery’s class and the boys’ class of one of her friend’s twin broth­er! We shall see about that.

Off to shop in Pic­cadil­ly (Fort­num and Mason, any­one?) and lunch with one of Char­lie’s army offi­cer friends. More uncon­trolled laugh­ter, end­ing in a celebri­ty sight­ing: Janeane Garafo­lo, of SNL fame and more. Total­ly tatooed, very cool. I peeled off to take Avery and her friend Sylvie skat­ing (“That’s such an F. Scott Fitzger­ald phrase, Kris­ten: ‘I sim­ply must cut out by 3’ ”, Char­lie claimed). The usu­al mis­ery at the skat­ing rink, only this time under­scored by the pres­ence of a new moth­er, one hunched in a self-con­grat­u­la­to­ry way over a dog-eared copy of “The Opti­mum Nutri­tion Bible,” which she paused in read­ing to look askance at Avery’s piz­za and Sylvie’s ice cream. Rats.

Sleep beck­ons. More on Char­lie’s vis­it, more food, and a tru­ly great fish recipe to to fol­low, the fish from, you guessed it… Julia Child. I can but try.