set­tling in

Isn’t it hard to believe that two weeks ago we were still in the old house?  We are now free of the final brown card­board box — hip, hip, hooray! — every sin­gle object is in its new spot, and we have breathed a sigh of relief.  This is the view at night, from the gar­den into the kitchen, com­plete with the crouch­ing kit­ty at the end of the rug.  All is peaceful.

It’s been a long, hard slog.  The cats have done their best to set­tle in, in the quirky, dra­mat­ic way cats have of deal­ing with any new sit­u­a­tion.  Keechie, the crazy cal­i­co, dis­ap­peared for sev­er­al hours the day the art installer came (with his noisy drills and clouds of dust).  John and I were sit­ting in our study, try­ing to get some work done while the pic­tures went up, when our eyes swiv­elled toward the fire­place on the far wall.  “What is that scratch­ing sound?” I asked, just in time to see a patchy orange and black face appear from the chim­ney, shades of the last time we moved.  Keechie seems to find the inside of a chim­ney the safest spot to repair to dur­ing moments of stress, for­get­ting each time that she will then be cov­ered with soot which has to be licked up.

“Catch her, catch her, don’t let her get to the beige car­pet upstairs, OR our bed!” John whis­pered loud­ly, but there was no catch­ing her.  She hud­dled behind the sofa for the dura­tion, emerg­ing only for sips of water from the bowls safe­ly behind box­es of books.  Poor dear.  She’s white again now, where’s she’s sup­posed to be white.

On the bright side, we’ve dis­cov­ered piles and piles of pho­tos of Baby Avery which have found places to live in the new house.

And because just mov­ing in would­n’t be dra­ma enough, John turned up with a low-grade fever, as he said feel­ing ill enough to feel ill, but not enough to stop unpack­ing boxes.

And Lord Peter Wim­sey, the big white tab­by, came home from the ken­nel with reports of teeth that need­ed urgent­ly to be pulled, so we fit­ted in emer­gency vis­its to the vet to arrange for the unbe­liev­ably expen­sive and wor­ry­ing pro­ce­dure, poor lit­tle guy.  But he’s recov­ered too, from his trau­mas.  Here he is, con­fronting the new Vis­i­tor Kit­ty in the garden.

And in fact, decid­ing the Vis­i­tor Kit­ty was­n’t wel­come, and dri­ving him away!  But he comes back every evening.

In my spare time, I have had my first Aga-stove dis­as­ter.  It turns out that the oven doors are so tight­ly insu­lat­ed that no cook­ing smells at ALL emerge unless you open the doors.  So that “some­thing’s cook­ing” aro­ma that serves to remind my addled brain that “some­thing’s in the oven” did­n’t hap­pen.  It turns out that a blue­ber­ry crum­ble left in even a rather low oven for three hours will be… well, not edible.

But I made up for it with a tru­ly won­der­ful chick­en dish.

Braised Chick­en with Rose­mary and Yogurt

(serves 4 with leftovers)

1 whole chick­en, cut into quarters

2 tbsps butter

4 cloves gar­lic, minced

2 stems fresh rose­mary, leaves only, minced

1 cup fat-free yogurt

1/2 cup chick­en stock

1 cup dried porci­ni mush­rooms, rehy­drat­ed in 1/2 cup boil­ing water

juice of 1/2 lemon

Remove the skin from the chick­en parts.

In a heavy oven-proof casse­role dish with a close-fit­ting lid, melt the but­ter and brown the chick­en on all sides.  Remove to a dish and set aside.  In the same casse­role, saute the gar­lic and rose­mary, then place chick­en back in dish.  In a medi­um bowl, whisk togeth­er the yogurt and stock.  Drain the rehy­drat­ing liq­uid from the mush­rooms and whisk the liq­uid togeth­er with the yogurt and stock.  Pour mix­ture over the chick­en, add the mush­rooms and place the lid on top.  Cook in the medi­um oven of the Aga, or at 325F/170C for at least 1 1/2 hours.  Serve with steamed bas­mati rice.

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Avery was in heav­en.  “Can I just drink this sauce?  Do you have a straw?”  It’s but­tery, savoury, fra­grant and com­fort­ing.  But as with so much of my food, not pret­ty, so no pho­to.  That’s my big chal­lenge of the cook­ing future: how to make savoury, love­ly food PRET­TI­ER.  Or I could just sur­vive on “good Eng­lish grass,” steamed and tossed with melt­ed but­ter.  No tweak­ing nec­es­sary to make that plate look like a dream.

But the real sto­ry of the past week has been the books.  All 57 brown card­board box­es of them.  In its own strange way, the job of unpack­ing and re-alpha­bet­iz­ing that col­lec­tion of books is a heart­warm­ing task.  Like gong to a school reunion where you encounter all your old friends, remem­ber­ing when you first met them, why you made friends to begin with, some­times shak­ing your head, ask­ing, “What on earth are you doing here, and why did I ever care?”  But more often, cher­ish­ing the Agatha Christies, the Dorothy L. Say­ers, the Salingers and Poes and Dickens.

There’s noth­ing as tan­ta­liz­ing as a eom­plete­ly emp­ty wall.  Unless it’s a wall full — an hour lat­er — of emp­ty shelves.

And then, after the book­shelf man has depart­ed, the real work begins.  Even though the books were packed in alpha­bet­ized order and num­bered, some­times we had to unpack three or four box­es to get all of one let­ter, and pile them up on the table in order to get them shelved prop­er­ly.  Exhaust­ing!  And HOT, and dusty.  The after­noon wore on and on, the sun shift­ing overhead.

Final­ly, six hours lat­er, we had done it.

We con­grat­u­lat­ed our­selves weak­ly, and poor fever­ish John col­lapsed with a bowl of chick­en soup, while I put­tered about, wait­ing for Avery to come home from the the­atre… which she did, in the wee small hours, full of “Franken­stein” and emp­ty of food.  So I made a grilled cheese sand­wich for her, sat with her while she ate, in the Room of Books, then took her up to her own study to pack up for the next school day.

A cozy home.  Final­ly set­tled.  Onto the next adventure.