Love­ly Ladies Who Lunch and oth­er adventures

A thought occurred to me in the mid­dle of the night: some­times I feel snow­balled, as in, run­ning in the trail of down­hill snow­ball, by events that come around only every few weeks or months, and then sud­den­ly, whoosh, they’re all there at once.

These things all hap­pened last week. Writ­ing class, with excel­lent advice giv­en to me on piece now sub­mit­ted to the next issue of Vin­tage mag­a­zine. Bless the edi­tor’s heart, to be inter­est­ed in, of all things, a piece that was Cam­panol­o­gy born on my blog a year or so ago, on the art of bell-ring­ing. Some god­dess of edi­to­r­i­al match-mak­ing must have been look­ing out for me, as this same love­ly edi­tor want­ed my “Recipe File” for the mag­a­zine last year. I know that there are writ­ers who com­plain about dead­lines, but so far, not me: a dead­line means some­one wants my work!

Com­ing home from writ­ing class I sat across from two men on the Tube: over­coats and shak­ing out news­pa­pers, decry­ing the state of mod­ern cul­ture and the fail­ure of “civ­il servants.”

“I say, old thing, most of them not the LEAST bit civ­il and most cer­tain­ly with no idea of how to be a servant!”

“Well, old boy, Churchill said some­thing very wit­ty you know, about two peo­ples being sep­a­rat­ed by a com­mon lan­guage, he had an Amer­i­can moth­er, you know, a Van­der­bilt or some such.”

“What we need, what this coun­try needs, is few­er small men mak­ing small mis­takes, and more GREAT men mak­ing GREAT mistakes.”

Com­ing from writ­ing class, all about char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, I felt I had been thrown into a Tube car thir­ty years ago with­out warn­ing, with men who might have served in the War, came home to rationing and too few ser­vants to look after one…

Then, you know, if it’s Jan­u­ary, it’s time for Avery’s sort of quar­ter­ly hair­cut, only this time it seems to sit atop a per­son who is chang­ing right before our eyes: vin­tage Fer­reg­amo pumps from an antique shop in Con­necti­cut, sil­ver Gap tutu, blue-spot­ted tights, pink mohair sweater, Her­mes scarf pur­loined from me on her head, a gen­er­al look of eccen­tric self­hood com­ing over her fea­tures. She’s always had an eye for fash­ion, even as a tod­dler crawl­ing around in a com­bi­na­tion of cor­duroy, silk and den­im, pulling open the door to the dish­wash­er so she could sit on it, sur­vey­ing her world with skep­ti­cism and inter­est from that slight height. Then she would tod­dle over to the full-length mir­ror and look her­self up and down, maybe to return to her room and change her socks.

We got a very fun­ny email from one of Avery’s teach­ers who hap­pened to come upon her singing Tom Lehrer’s “Chem­i­cal Ele­ments” for her chem­istry teacher… that com­bined with a very unusu­al fash­ion sense means we’re NEV­ER BORED.

Of course, every few months along comes the Lost Prop­er­ty lun­cheon, which means that I, plus 30 of the best vol­un­teers that Avery’s school has to offer, dust off our hands, fold up the moldy swim tow­els, dirty lacrosse sticks, smelly ten­nis train­ers, and gath­er togeth­er, in a pour­ing rain­storm, in my kitchen, to share gor­geous dish­es of food. Ladies brought veg­etable lasagna (chock-ful of but­ter­nut squash, car­rots, egg­plant and mush­rooms), a sal­ad of roast chick­en, orzo, pine nuts, romaine let­tuce and parme­san shav­ings. My dear­est friend Annie brought her tiny meat­balls stuffed with moz­zarel­la, swim­ming in a sea of toma­to sauce under a blan­ket of home­made bread­crumbs and cheese.

“Do you mind just get­ting this warmed up and grati­need, Kris­ten?” Annie men­tions, so I push the casse­role gen­tly into the oven and move onto var­i­ous oth­er tasks, like gos­sip­ing. Final­ly I peek into the oven and it seems so SLOW, and noth­ing real­ly bub­bling. Why not put it under the grill for a moment?

Sud­den­ly every­one seems to be cough­ing. “Open the gar­den door!” I shout, as my heart sinks and I open the oven door. Bread­crumbs black­ened. The smoke alarm goes off.

“Is this just browned and tasty, or… car­cino­genic?” Annie asks, scrap­ing it off, the best of all pos­si­ble sports.

Ah well, the after­noon was love­ly any­way. Some­one brought quite sim­ply the best cheese EVER, some­thing called Wig­more from Jer­oboam’s in Hol­land Park Avenue. Slight­ly smelly, creamy, melt­ing­ly rich. And a rhubarb tart, and a trea­cle tart with fresh whipped cream, a plate of Lebanese treats of hon­ey and pis­ta­chios and pastry.

We all pitch in to tidy up a bit so Annie can give me a lift to school — I’m car­ry­ing a plate of left­over tart for Jamie and Avery to snack on! — , and then I pick them up at the gate, car­ry their clob­ber over to Jamie’s moth­er’s car where we pile in to head to the skat­ing rink, every­one shar­ing the tart.

“I’ll car­ry it in to the skat­ing rink,” Avery offers, “hid­den like this beneath my sweater.”

“Stick it in my skate bag!” Jamie shrieks, but Avery insists.

“No, between my two files it will be fine,” and we sneak in, with our for­bid­den out­side snack included.

Sat­ur­day we suc­cumb to that oth­er sort of quar­ter­ly impulse: Cam­den Mar­ket. Nor­mal­ly, of course, noth­ing could drag John to a place that man­ages to be both cold and stuffy, windy and full of cig­a­rette smoke, and con­tain­ing near­ly all the peo­ple in Lon­don between the ages of 17–28. All in search of a dress from the 1960s and a pair of go-go boots, for an upcom­ing par­ty giv­en by one of Avery’s friends. I say “nor­mal­ly,” because in fact John will do a lot of things he won’t nor­mal­ly do, in order to help Avery out.

Poly­ester dress­es by the YARD, stink­ing of the ages, all the shops play­ing the Bee-Gees but not quite synched up, so you end up hear­ing bits of “Stayin’ Alive” six­teen shops in a row. All the shop girls con­vinc­ing Avery that each dress is the one she needs, and also that she real­ly CAN walk in knee-high (some­one’s knee, some­one John’s height) boots with plat­form, or stilet­to heels. Final­ly we ran a dress to earth: pur­ple, green, orange and blue ray­on, with white col­lar, tie and cuffs, knee-high, and plas­tic jew­el­ry to match. But no go-go boots. Not yet.

From the Mar­ket in a rush across town and across Pic­cadil­ly to the the­atre dis­trict where we were to see a play and have sushi before, but it became clear with traf­fic that we would­n’t make it to sushi. That sort of semi-silent treat­ment between mar­ried peo­ple ensued. No one want­ed either to blame the oth­er or com­plete­ly sup­port the oth­er, so we sim­ply fumed slight­ly and then arrived at the the­atre, picked up the tick­ets and real­ized we had an hour. Not quite sushi time, but time for something.

“What are you in the mood for, Avery?” Pre­dictably, Ital­ian. But huge queues.

“Would you rather run for sushi, or try this Kore­an place?”

“You guys aren’t lik­ing each oth­er too much right now, so I’m not get­ting involved!” she wise­ly decides, so Jin­dalle Kore­an Grill it was, and actu­al­ly, very good it was, although we were rushed. The place was vir­tu­al­ly next-door to the the­atre, so we could relax and enjoy grilled beef, duck, pork and chick­en, while I wished for some sort of carb and we looked at our watches.

Final­ly, one of those clas­sic things I seem to sched­ule for us to do once every few weeks and then suf­fer ago­nies of pres­sure as to whether or not every­one will enjoy it: the­atre tick­ets. Last night it was “The Mis­an­thrope” with Dami­an Lewis and Keira Knight­ley, and it was a total joy. Amaz­ing rhyming schemes, ener­getic per­for­mances, very point­ed social com­men­tary set in con­tem­po­rary life, but with recur­ring hilar­i­ous ref­er­ences to 17th cen­tu­ry France. And some very fun­ny lines… one from a celebri­ty play­wright to a failed writer… “What do you mean, you’re going to MAKE a scene? You can’t even WRITE one!”

Home chat­ter­ing about the dia­logue (how much did Avery mind a lot of curs­ing? not much: “I hear a lot worse at school, from TEACH­ERS!”), the cos­tumes at the par­ty in the last scene of the play, how well Keira pulled off an Amer­i­can accent (pret­ty well). Tired on a Sat­ur­day night, from the bits of adven­ture that seems to keep us busy.

As for cook­ing, I can tell you that one of the favorite dish­es at the Lost Prop­er­ty lun­cheon was my own:

Crunchy Col­or­ful Slaw
(serves at last 8 as a side dish)

1/2 head each shred­ded: red cab­bage, white cab­bage, Savoy cabbage
3 large car­rots, julienned

dress­ing: equal parts lemon juice, bal­sam­ic vine­gar, Dijon mus­tard, fro­mage frais or yogurt
1 tbsp mayonnaise
1/2 tsp dried oregano
sea salt to taste

Sim­ply shake up the dress­ing in a jar, then toss every­thing together.

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This slaw went beau­ti­ful­ly with all the lasagne and meat­balls, and my roast­ed salmon.

But prob­a­bly the most pop­u­lar side dish was this invent­ed by my friend Elizabeth:

Orzo Chick­en Salad
(serves at least 8 as a side dish)

4 chick­en breasts with skin on
Orzo – half a pack
Cos (but­ter or Boston, in Amer­i­ca) let­tuce – chopped into small pieces
Oth­er mixed leaves includ­ing rocket
Aspara­gus tips
Pack of pine nuts (about 1 cup)
Block of parmesan
Flat leaf pars­ley — bunch

Vinai­grette
4 table­spoons olive oil
2 table­spoons white wine vinegar
2 tea­spoons dry mustard
Mal­don salt to taste

Roast the chick­en breasts, cool, remove skin, and slice thin­ly. Set aside.
Mean­while, boil water for the orzo and cook for 15 min­utes and drain. Cool but make sure that you add olive oil so that the pas­ta does not stick.

Roast the pine nuts briefly – make sure they do not burn. Set aside.

Boil salt­ed water for aspara­gus and cook for 5 min­utes. Drain and cool.

Put the orzo in a large sal­ad bowl and stir in the let­tuce and rock­et. Add the chick­en and mix in. Mix in the vinai­grette and add the aspara­gus and pine nuts, cov­er­ing all the ingre­di­ents with vinaigrette.

Sprin­kle shav­ings of parme­san and chopped pars­ley on top, add Mal­don salt to taste, stir again, and serve.

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This week? Qui­et. Peace­ful. Unevent­ful. At least that’s the plan, but then… it’s only Sun­day night. Watch this space.