Pak­istani pol­i­tics and sprouts

So. We’re walk­ing home from the car yes­ter­day evening and there’s a huge crowd of Asian pho­tog­ra­phers with huge fur­ry micro­phones and all sorts of equip­ment, hang­ing about the door­way of the block of flats across the way. John approached one of the guys sit­ting on the stoop of our build­ing and said, “Hey, who’s com­ing out?” “The for­mer Prime Min­is­ter of Pak­istan,” the fel­low answered, and sure enough, like clock­work, up went a bunch of green flags with a man’s pic­ture print­ed on it, and the man him­self emerged from the build­ing. “Cool,” John said, and aside from watch­ing in my apron from the kitchen win­dow, I did­n’t give the mat­ter much fur­ther thought.

Until the Break­fast News this morning.

“For­mer Prime Min­is­ter of Pak­istan, Nawaz Sharif, left his posh red-vel­vet flat in Lon­don’s May­fair today for Heathrow Air­port, to fly to his native Pak­istan where the Supreme Court has over­turned his exile.” Then, lat­er in the day, he was deport­ed to Sau­di Ara­bia, pend­ing fur­ther Supreme Court machi­na­tions with Gen­er­al Mushar­raf. To think this was all hap­pen­ing in our very own neigh­bor­hood! One day last spring John said, “Run to the win­dow, there’s David Frost across the street!” He must have been going to inter­view this chap. Amazing!

Near­ly as inter­est­ing as these inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics on our doorstep is… a love­ly sprout dish I invent­ed tonight. It’s a vari­a­tion on the left­over flank steak recipe I made for lunch at Red Gate Farm this sum­mer. This requires no left­overs, and includes even more veg, for your health. Enjoy.

Stir-Fried Chick­en with Sprouts, Noo­dles and Red Pepper

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This was fan­tas­tic. So sim­ple, so inex­pen­sive, so easy. Col­or­ful and chil­dren will LOVE it. It had all Avery’s favorite things: chick­en, pep­pers, noo­dles and SALT.

Let’s see: tomor­row will be the unhap­py anniver­sary, which does not mean so much here so it was per­fect­ly nor­mal for the school to plan its 5th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion. So tomor­row after­noon will find us gath­er­ing at All Souls Church in Lang­ham Place to hear the sounds of lit­tle pip­ing voic­es. I myself still find it hard to buy milk or any­thing else whose sell-by date is stamped Sep­tem­ber 11. Such a dumb thing, but I feel that way. It’s just too evoca­tive, still. Ah, well, some peo­ple assert that after six years it is time to move on and stop observ­ing anniver­saries and reliv­ing and such. I’m not sure about that, so we will be get­ting togeth­er with our New York friends, the McBs and Vin­cent and Peter, but just to get togeth­er. And to cook and eat! I haven’t a clue about the menu yet, but I will let you know. Doubt­less, with that cast of char­ac­ters, the food will be note­wor­thy. Wher­ev­er tomor­row finds you, be safe and put an arm around some­one you love. Even maybe two, arms and a someone.