Hal­loween mayhem

Oh my. It was the sort of day before and day of that try moth­ers’ souls! Mon­day was an ordi­nary enough morn­ing, but some­how the after­noon and evening spi­raled into com­plete chaos. I got Avery at school and it was as if she had been inject­ed with some Super Ener­gy Girl sub­stance; she sim­ply could not stop talk­ing! Hal­loween plans, home­work plans, what hap­pened at swim­ming, what still remained to be done for her birth­day. And this was all BEFORE the sug­ar rush of after-school snack. We end­ed up at the gateau counter of Patis­serie Valerie, choos­ing both a cake for the school break-time birth­day moment, and a cake for the par­ty on Fri­day (which is assum­ing mon­u­men­tal and intim­i­dat­ing pro­por­tions: 21 chil­dren at my house?). After much debate and con­sid­er­a­tion we set­tled on a white-choco­late iced vanil­la sponge with choco­late cream for day, and a lemon-cream choco­late sponge for night. At which point they will all go into shock, I suppose.

Home to set­tle her down to home­work, but even that was infused with a sense of sound and fury. “We have to make up a sort of brochure that would guide aliens to Plan­et Earth and through all our cus­toms, and food and cloth­ing and places to vis­it,” she explained, bran­dish­ing her sheet of paper, pen and Ink Erad­i­ca­tor, an amaz­ing lit­tle tool that takes ink off every­thing, includ­ing girls. So while I was answer­ing var­i­ous ques­tions about aliens and Google Earth and hand­writ­ing that slopes down­hill, I was involved in a tru­ly dis­gust­ing task: bon­ing and skin­ning chick­en thighs. Nev­er again! I had decid­ed for rea­sons of thrift and also tex­ture that it would be nice to replace the chick­en breasts I nor­mal­ly use for my Chick­en With Pojars­ki Sauce with thighs. Ick, dou­ble eeew, a much too inti­mate rela­tion­ship with what was to become my evening meal. After strug­gling through two, I let out such a wail that John stepped over Avery doing her home­work and came into the kitchen, took one look and gave me papal dis­pen­sa­tion to shuck the whole lot into a stock­pot, throw in some gar­lic cloves and salt, cov­er the mess with water and make soup. Where­upon he pro­duced as if by leg­er-de-main a suit­able quan­ti­ty of chick­en breasts and I was able to pro­ceed with my task. This is a cozy and sim­ple dish for an autumn evening:

Chick­en With Pojars­ki Sauce (adapt­ed from a ter­ri­bly com­plex recipe from a 1949 New York Times)
(serves four)

4 tbsps butter
3 tbsps flour
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 medi­um onion, minced
1 tbsp sweet Hun­gar­i­an paprika
2 tsps dried thyme leaves (or 1 tsp fresh thyme)
1/2 cup brandy
4 bone­less, skin­less chick­en breasts
2 cups chick­en stock
1 cup sour cream
salt to taste

Melt but­ter in heavy saucepan and add flour. Stir and cook until frothy but not brown. Add gar­lic and onion and cook over low heat until soft. Add papri­ka and thyme and brandy and stir until thick. Add chick­en breasts and stir until chick­en is coat­ed thor­ough­ly. Pour in chick­en stock and sour cream, whisk thor­ough­ly and sim­mer for 25 min­utes. Serve with rice, mashed pota­toes or noo­dles, and a nice col­or­ful veg­etable (broc­coli, beets or red pep­pers) because it is a pale dish on its own.

OK.

That seemed easy enough to con­trol, except that at the same time I had decid­ed to make an apple crum­ble for sea­son’s sake, since the whole autumnal/Halloween atmos­phere was sad­ly lack­ing in this town, to my mind. Not enough leaves to kick up, only a smat­ter­ing of cos­tumes and can­dy, just not very fes­tive. So the smell of cook­ing apples and cin­na­mon would help. So easy: just slice the apples and lay in a shal­low dish, then sprin­kle with a mix­ture of flour, but­ter, cin­na­mon and cloves. Which is easy, except that then I noticed the can of left­over chick peas from lunch and thought I ought to make hum­mous and not let them go to waste. Mag­im­ix whirring, I said “Won’t it be nice to have din­ner on our new kitchen table tonight?” where­upon John shrieked, “I com­plete­ly for­got to get cash for the table guy!” and rushed out, near­ly squash­ing Avery who was deeply engrossed in Alien Land. The phone rang and it was my dad, ask­ing if Avery might open her birth­day present from him ear­ly, which was a sound sug­ges­tion giv­en the chaos that will reign on her actu­al birth­day. So I turned down the chick­en soup that had boiled over, gave the Pojars­ki sauce a stir, and got the scis­sors. And in the pack­age was the most touch­ing gift: his 1949 child’s stamp col­lect­ing album! She plopped down imme­di­ate­ly in the hall­way and leafed through it, then John came in and we all plopped down, fas­ci­nat­ed by the glimpse of a 1949 world order.

I real­ized then that if we did­n’t carve the pump­kins right then, we would­n’t have anoth­er chance, as Hal­loween was the next day. And Avery said, “Oh my gosh, Angel­i­ca’s par­ty! What am I going to go as?” She dart­ed away to look for her red cape, with which she could be Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood, if I could find her East­er bas­ket. I could. Oh, no, apple crum­ble near­ly burned! Chick­en sauce sim­mer­ing too high. We put news­pa­per all over the kitchen floor and got the pump­kins prepped. The door­bell rang. “Table guy!” John shout­ed, and I rushed to pick up the stamp album from the hall­way floor, scoop up Avery’s home­work before Tacy ate it. Avery came up from her room dressed up as Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood, tying bows on her braids. “How do I look?” Table guy and John come strug­gling in with the table, to take into the kitchen, whose floor is… cov­ered with pump­kin detri­tus! Quick­ly gath­er it all up and pitch it in the trash, put the jack o’lanterns on the win­dow sill. Slice the pep­pers for din­ner, fin­ish the hum­mous, decide that the salt­ed water for mashed pota­toes can be for rice instead, as it’s quicker.

We sit down to din­ner in a rush. I dis­cov­er some­thing impor­tant: the amount of salt you put in pota­to water gets poured off, large­ly. But if you use it to steam rice, you eat ALL THAT SALT. We sim­ply died of thirst. I nev­er knew there could be such a thing as too much salt, but I was enlightened.

Final­ly we col­lapsed in front of “It’s the Great Pump­kin, Char­lie Brown,” with jack o’lanterns glow­ing in the win­dow, can­dles burn­ing on our new kitchen table, Dad’s pre­cious stamp album care­ful­ly stowed in the back­pack to take to school, home­work safe­ly in its fold­er, kitchen clean and smelling of bak­ing apples. Whew.

Hal­loween after­noon saw us at the school door hand­ing over all the cos­tume bits to Avery, com­plete with her East­er bas­ket with a linen nap­kin, an apple and a baguette for Grand­ma­ma. Off they went to Angel­i­ca’s house for a Hal­loween par­ty and to go trick-or-treat­ing in Prim­rose Hill, home of stars such as Kate Moss, Sien­na Miller, Jude Law, Eliz­a­beth Hur­ley, Hugh Grant and such. Who knows who they vis­it­ed. When we drove up in Emmy to pick her up, the girls were just arriv­ing and Mylo, who had chap­er­oned them, looked hard­ly the worse for wear, bless his heart. We drove Paula home, pass­ing lit­tle gag­gles of chil­dren (prob­a­bly Amer­i­cans) in their Hal­loween garb, chew­ing ener­get­i­cal­ly and squeal­ing mad­ly. Home to home­made chick­en soup, glow­ing jack o’lanterns, and a sense of melan­choly at miss­ing the tra­di­tion­al Tribeca hol­i­day mad­ness, the streets massed with kids run­ning in and out of Nobu, Bouley, Duane Park Patis­serie, all the shops offer­ing treats, every­one shout­ing greet­ings to the hun­dreds of friends spilling past, the street­lights glow­ing onto all the famil­iar hous­es of peo­ple Avery has known since she was born. But how lucky to have a friend here to invite her to a par­ty, and to start new traditions.

Onward to the birth­day par­ty on Fri­day! I’ll keep you posted.