the most fun you can have

With the sim­plest ingre­di­ents: your prac­ti­cal­ly best friend (who hap­pens to be your moth­er in law), your sis­ter who you hard­ly ever get to see and her com­plete­ly charm­ing fam­i­ly, your 19th wed­ding anniver­sary with a per­fect­ly good hus­band you’re more than hap­py to keep for anoth­er 19 years, a charm­ing child who can write poems for your Christ­mas present AND con­trol the iPod that you your­self can­not under­stand, so pro­vid­ing Christ­mas music for the duration…

We have had, in short, the loveli­est pos­si­ble hol­i­day. The only dark spot has been this lung-crush­ing cough that I can­not seem to shake: the very one I caught just as we left Lon­don, the sen­ti­ment ring­ing in my ears from SO many sources, “This thing hung on for WEEKS.” It’s offi­cial­ly three weeks tomor­row, and I’m thor­ough­ly sick of los­ing a lung every oth­er hour, I can tell you. But no fever, and I feel fine, so I just sort of persevere.

Right now I am ensconced in bed, typ­ing away, watch­ing the very occa­sion­al car pass slow­ly down our road, through the old, wav­ery glass of our bed­room win­dows, won­der­ing who is pass­ing by so late at night, won­der­ing what they make of our can­dles lit in the win­dow sills (our night­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Anne and David and Kate across the road), our Christ­mas tree twin­kling in the win­dow of the front hall. I love sit­ting up here in any sea­son, look­ing up as the infre­quent head­lights make their way down our bumpy, untend­ed road, pass­ing through sum­mer and win­ter mists, rain and snow.

Part of the delight of the hol­i­day has been the suc­cess in giv­ing the right gift to the right per­son. Our big gift to Avery was an orig­i­nal illus­tra­tion from her favorite book ever, “The Mys­te­ri­ous Bene­dict Soci­ety.” After much labo­ri­ous and (I must say) annoy­ing cor­re­spon­dence with the illus­tra­tor’s agent in Seat­tle, we man­aged to arrange for what I thought would be her favorite illus­tra­tion, to be sent to my sis­ter in Con­necti­cut, and here it was. And although most of our friends thought we had lost our tiny minds to give such a gift (“why would she care?” being the most fre­quent response), she was in HEAV­EN. Just in awe. The hand of the artist! And a hand-writ­ten thank-you note to go with it. Heaven.

And Jane, can I tell you how much she adored her felt? Well, you can tell. Her Uncle John explained help­ful­ly that felt is made to be thrown in the air (so sor­ry, I must say, to her par­ents) and so we have been find­ing felt for days. But the point is, that lit­tle girl was awful­ly hap­py for that bit, throw­ing her felt in the air.

And then we went vis­it­ing: to see the adopt­ed fam­i­ly of our love­ly Hast­ings, kit­ten of the sum­mer… Thank you, Shel­ley, Erik, Cas­san­dra and Rebec­ca for the per­fect evening, a glo­ri­ous coq au vin, and for the sweet assur­ance that our love­ly kit­ten is hap­py and quite, quite cosseted.

Then we received a vis­it from my dear friend Sarah, with whom I used to speak at least sev­en­teen times a day when we were writ­ing our book, rais­ing our babies, feed­ing our hus­bands. I fed her roast chick­en sal­ad with pine nuts, sweet­corn, chives and lemon zest, and stuffed mush­rooms. Those alone were worth the price of admission.

Stuffed Mush­rooms
(serves four)

12 medi­um white, but­ton or baby bel­la mush­rooms, stems removed to make a lit­tle cap
1 tbsp butter
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
3 slices Cana­di­an bacon, out­er skin removed and diced very small
3 tbsps goats cheese
2–3 fresh breadcrumbs
squeeze of fresh lemon juice

In a small skil­let, melt but­ter and saute gar­lic till soft. Add bacon and goats cheese and stir till cheese is melt­ed. Remove from heat and stir in bread­crumbs till you achieve a thick con­sis­ten­cy, suit­able for spoon­ing. Add lemon juice and mix well. Sea­son with salt and pep­per to taste. Spoon into mush­room caps and bake at 350 till bub­bly and begin­ning to brown, per­haps 10–12 min­utes. Stand back and watch them be devoured.

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With these love­ly dish­es we had com­plete­ly un-sea­son­al but very refresh­ing­ly tasty tow­ers of toma­to and moz­zarel­la, sprin­kled with pine nuts and lemon zest, bal­sam­ic and olive oil, driz­zled with home­made pesto. We feast­ed. And gos­siped, and caught up. The tricky part of see­ing Sarah is that I remem­ber how much my life was enhanced by see­ing her, or talk­ing to her, all the time; I sim­ply have to stamp down my feel­ings of regret at the sad infre­quen­cy of our fun together.

Then we found our­selves cruis­ing the cozy hol­i­day streets of West Hart­ford on our way to din­ner with my sis­ter and her fam­i­ly. Can I tell you how many ways there are to make bolog­nese sauce? At least two: mine, and my broth­er in law Joel’s ver­sion, made with GOR­GEOUS huge chunks of fen­nel­ly Ital­ian sausage and big toma­to bites. Baguette bites, steamed broc­coli, it could­n’t have been a bet­ter set of fla­vors. Jane is rev­el­ling in her var­i­ous roles: big sis­ter to tiny Mol­ly, hap­py recip­i­ent of every­one’s Christ­mas largesse, adored niece and cousin to us. Does it get any more excit­ing than col­ored bath water and a bevy of rel­a­tives to admire it? I don’t think so, not for Jane. Their house is a haven of com­fort: warm, hap­py, ele­gant, teem­ing with hol­i­day spir­it and the most per­fect food. A mem­o­ry to com­fort us in the long, chilly grey Lon­don win­ter ahead.

And then… then we made pas­ta. You know how scared I was, in Lon­don, before I had my les­son. And I did­n’t fol­low the car­di­nal rule of things you’re scared of: do it RIGHT AWAY AGAIN once you’ve done it once. I just left it aside. Until yes­ter­day. We spent the day, sun­ny and cold, get­ting to and shop­ping in Litch­field, one of our favorite fam­i­ly out­ings, rev­el­ling in the all-white hous­es, the per­fect­ly restrained Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions, the supreme­ly friend­ly all-Amer­i­can atti­tude of every­one we meet. And on the way, in the oth­er­wise for­get­table ham­let of New Mil­ford, we ran into the Maine seafood truck that comes to Wood­bury on Thurs­days in sum­mer, and acquired two lob­ster tails and a quan­ti­ty of shucked oys­ters. And came home, in an impos­si­bly orange sun­set, to… COOK our hearts out.

In a wel­ter of flour, gar­lic, boil­ing lob­ster, claw crab­meat, cel­ery salt from Wales and the last throes of Christ­mas music, we made fresh ravi­o­li: one batch of lob­ster and crab flecked with lemon zest and sea salt, and one of spinach, ricot­ta, Cana­di­an bacon dice and nut­meg. With a sauce of browned but­ter and fried whole sage leaves, two and a half hours lat­er we sat down to a huge plat­ter of ravi­o­li and pro­ceed­ed to devour it ALL with­in fif­teen min­utes. Slight­ly out of pro­por­tion to the effort it took, the meal was hilar­i­ous and hap­py and short, and we were in heav­en. Alto­geth­er one of the hap­pi­est, most fran­tic, laugh­ing and cre­ative evenings ever, spent the way I like it: with my best cook­ing com­pan­ion in Rose­mary and a mad spir­it of ener­gy per­vad­ing over all. At the very end John got in on the action, mak­ing tagli­atelle of the left­over dough and laugh­ing with child­hood mem­o­ries of pas­ta extrav­a­gan­zas… a com­plete­ly hap­py night.

In between chores for din­ner, we man­aged to put togeth­er a sec­ond hol­i­day sea­son oys­ter stew which played its part as lunch today, dur­ing the fluffy snow­storm that last­ed all after­noon. I made a banana and apple cake, took a nap, watched my soap operas, gen­er­al­ly took advan­tage of the last lux­u­ri­ous­ly lazy day of the hol­i­day. Tomor­row brings my dear, dear friend Alyssa and her fam­i­ly from the city, Jill and her fam­i­ly, for a New Year’s Day cel­e­bra­tion. I’ve instruct­ed every­one to bring extra cloth­ing so the kids can get good and cold, good and wet, sled­ding and such, and then come in for home­made piz­za and hot choco­late. The grownups will be tuck­ing into brisket which sim­mered all evening today. The watch­words for my hol­i­day? Fam­i­ly, friends, long car rides get­ting to each, food and snow. If 2009 is the same, I count myself lucky.