FIRE! wait, no…

Fire? In fact, no, despite hav­ing been awak­ened “rude­ly” not even begin­ning to describe our cha­grin, at 4:45 A.M. this morn­ing to the dul­cet tones of the build­ing fire alarm. I have been, all day, as a result, CRANKY. How did I ever get through the months, even years, of inter­rupt­ed sleep with Baby Avery? I have no idea. At any rate, my atti­tude toward wake­up, always verg­ing on hos­tile, today reached epic pro­por­tions. All cats under Avery’s bed in ter­ror, so I spent the hours from 5 till 8 crouched down, lying down, turn­ing on my side so I could see them all, con­vinc­ing them it was safe to come out. Tacy was, not sur­pris­ing­ly, the bravest, but sur­pris­ing­ly Hermione was next out, then Keechie, the ulti­mate scaredy-cat, and com­ing in a dis­tant last, the giant Wim­sey. In fact, he stayed under­neath the entire time, his big white hands stretched out in front of him and every white whisker and eye­brow an excla­ma­tion point of dis­may. Poor boy.

Final­ly the porter (Gio­van­ni, replac­ing the aris­to­crat­ic Lau­rie while he’s on a well-deserved hol­i­day) came and shut the *&^% thing off. By then it was school time, so bleary-eyed Avery made her way to the car. “Call me imme­di­ate­ly if you need to come home,” I said, but she seemed intre­pid. School day fin­ished, she was up for a round of horse­back riding.

I can’t tell you how busy we’ve been. Of course, the ful­crum is Avery and her sched­ule, so John and I spend most of our time tak­ing her places, wait­ing and watch­ing while she does things, then tak­ing her some­place else. And look­ing at hous­es, and I tak­ing my writ­ing class, and look­ing at more hous­es, and then there was last week­end, which includ­ed Sun­day in the park with… Swans! Yes, you can rent a pad­dle­boat and pur­sue them, offer them dried apri­cots, and have friends for life.

Then my life being a day­time rather than night­time one, I have been hav­ing lunch with friends. My chum 6point7 and I met up for lunch at the Roy­al Court The­atre Cafe, which I would high­ly rec­om­mend for excel­lent soups (6 had “green” soup, which proved to be water­cress, spinach and broc­coli, while I went for the spicy toma­to), and an unex­pect­ed gluten-free foc­cac­cia that made 6 hap­py. We hap­pi­ly dished about our shared favorite actors (Matthew Mac­fadyen and James McAvoy), and com­pared Eng­lish Eng­lish to Amer­i­can Eng­lish. There aren’t a lot of Eng­lish peo­ple who are flu­ent in both, but she is near­ly there. A quar­ter to twelve, or a quar­ter of? Dif­fer­ent to, or dif­fer­ent from? Does “rub­bish” mean “not true,” or “worth­less?” In Amer­i­ca, of course, it means “garbage,” and a bin has become a can. Lots of fun.

Speak­ing of which, each Sat­ur­day from 12 to 1 has been an hour most mys­te­ri­ous­ly spent for Avery, or at least for us hav­ing tak­en her to act­ing class and picked her up an hour lat­er. “What did you do today?” elic­its noth­ing more forth­com­ing, nor­mal­ly, than, “I don’t remem­ber,” which is odd con­sid­er­ing she’s usu­al­ly a very good sto­ry­teller. Maybe it was an activ­i­ty too amor­phous to describe? But last week we got this gem: “Today we did accents.” We jumped on this. “You mean, Ital­ian or French or some­thing?” “No, Amer­i­can. I had just made up my mind to con­fess that I’m Amer­i­can, since I’ve been Eng­lish in class so far. Then the teacher asked, ‘Who here thinks he or she can do a good Amer­i­can accent?’ so I raised my hand. And mine was real­ly good!” “Well, yes, Avery, see­ing as how you’re Amer­i­can, “I object­ed. “But so then I con­fessed, and he said that my Eng­lish accent was just as good!” she chor­tled. That’s some sort of odd mile­stone. She can be either.

Well, I must leave you right now with a cou­ple of food­ie bits. One is sim­ple: SPROUTS. Did you know that sprouts are a liv­ing food? That left to their own devices, they would con­tin­ue to grow? And boy are they alka­line, which I have now, late­ly, decid­ed, is a bit of a key to good diges­tion. Since observ­ing some (I do every­thing halfway as far as diets go, can’t take too many restric­tions!) of the rules of more alka­line than acid, I have total­ly got rid of indi­ges­tion. I’d rec­om­mend a bit of atten­tion to the rules, total­ly. Any­way, no one can do any harm by eat­ing some radish sprouts, which are glo­ri­ous­ly crunchy and spicy, and some bean sprouts which take me back to old Indi­anapo­lis Chi­nese food days of my child­hood. Chick pea sprouts I decid­ed I don’t like, pre­fer­ring chick peas them­selves, which are elder­ly and dead and lack the emo­tion­al wrench of eat­ing a liv­ing food (or “embry­on­ic food,” as 6point7 point­ed out, ICK). Make your­self a real­ly packed-with-flavour dress­ing, and even add a can of fan­cy tuna, and it won’t mat­ter what’s underneath:

Crazy Flavour Dressing
(make as much as you want)

olive oil (I am favour­ing chili infused lately)
bal­sam­ic vinegar
lemon juice
soy sauce
Dijon mustard
chopped chillis
chopped rosemary
dried oregano
tiny minced garlic
sea salt
fresh­ly ground pepper

The key here is three parts olive oil to one part oth­er liq­uids (so mix up your vine­gar, lemon juice and soy, and then use three times that much oil). Then sea­son it as you like with the rest.

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Then you can’t beat a nice fruit crum­ble in the sum­mer. I will go on record and say that, along with a nice hard-boiled or scram­bled egg and a glass of apple juice, it’s the per­fect break­fast for a lit­tle kid try­ing to get through a day with­out lunch. Now in Eng­land, rhubarb appears from late May until a sec­ond har­vest in late August, so we’re eat­ing it now.

Rhubarb and Straw­ber­ry Crumble
(serves one lit­tle girl for four break­fasts, ish)

2 pints straw­ber­ries, hulled
2 stalks rhubarb, peeled light­ly and chopped rather small
1 cup all-pur­pose flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 dark brown sugar
1 tsp each: cin­na­mon, ground cloves, nut­meg, allspice
1/2 cup cold but­ter, cut in large cubes, plus a lit­tle extra for dotting
juice of 1 lemon

Non­stick-spray an oven proof con­tain­er, and lay in the straw­ber­ries, left whole. Top with the rhubarb. Then in your Cuisi­nart or Mag­im­ix, whizz togeth­er the flour, sug­ars and spices with the but­ter, until it is com­plete­ly mixed and starts to lose its pow­dery tex­ture and begins to look like it might stick as a dough. Don’t let it become a dough, but stop it when it starts to stick. Sprin­kle the lemon juice over the fruit and scat­ter the flour mix­ture on top. Dot the top of the crum­ble with some bits of but­ter and bake at 350 degrees for 40 min­utes or until the fruit bub­bles and top browns a bit.

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Last­ly, for now, I have two scal­lop recipes for you. I adore scal­lops and I don’t know why I stopped cook­ing with them. Yes, I do, because Avery said she did­n’t like the tex­ture. Well, here’s the solu­tion. I got some beau­ti­ful scal­lops for a crazy-rea­son­able price (six pounds for a dozen!) at Marks and Spencer. Then, too, I had left­over bre­sao­la and moz­zarel­la from the school Sports Day pic­nic that after­noon. Who knew Avery would decide that dried cured aged beef was GOOD? Well, bre­sao­la it was, in my fridge. So I stopped for some flat-leaf pars­ley, ground up the left­over baguette from the night before in my Mag­im­ix and was in business.

Two Pas­ta Dish­es in One Evening:
Scal­lops with Fresh Herbs and Olive Oil AND
Lin­guine with Bre­sao­la and Mozzarella

(serves two adults and one anti-scal­lop child)

3/4 pound linguine

DISH ONE:
1/2 cup olive oil
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
sprin­kle red chillis
12 scal­lops, mus­cle and roe removed (don’t like roe, sorry)
large hand­ful pars­ley, chopped
1/2 cup fresh bread­crumbs, toast­ed in the oven till crispy

DISH TWO:
4 slices bre­sao­la, sliced in slivers
1 ball moz­zarel­la, cubed very small or shredded
parme­san cheese to grate over

So, boil your pas­ta water and put in the lin­guine. Now, you have 11 min­utes to work with. Warm the olive oil in a medi­um saucepan and add gar­lic and chill­is and siz­zle until gar­lic cooks gen­tly. Turn up heat and add scal­lops turn­ing con­stant­ly and cov­er­ing with hot oil until cooked, about 3 min­utes. Take off the heat and stir your pas­ta. When the pas­ta is done, put the scal­lops back on the heat and add the pars­ley, drain the pas­ta, and have two hot bowls ready: put most of the lin­guine in a big one for the scal­lops, and the rest in a small one for the bre­sao­la. Imme­di­ate­ly throw the scal­lops and oil on the big bowl, and add the bread­crumbs. Throw the bre­sao­la and moz­zarel­la on the small­er dish of pas­ta. Toss both thoroughly.

Voila. Every­one’s happy.

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Now, I must to bed. I still haven’t told you about my writ­ing class! Or Avery’s Sum­mer Con­cert (teary-mak­ing, I’m ashamed to say). And tomor­row’s a pic­nic in the park, so writ­ing may have to wait. Enjoy this beau­ti­ful Lon­don weather…