a food fes­ti­val, a play and a fur­ni­ture fair!

Well, Avery’s been put on her coach, at 4:30 this morn­ing (get­ting up in the dark in April is def­i­nite­ly too ear­ly), the incred­i­bly youth­ful-look­ing teach­ers who are chap­er­on­ing the trip have herd­ed them all togeth­er and pumped them up with words of girly encour­age­ment. It was real­ly a land­mark sort of moment, a “this is the last time” sort of feel­ing: nev­er again will we know every par­ent in her class, have hap­py mem­o­ries of birth­day par­ties, singing fes­ti­vals, Michael­mas Fairs and Christ­mas par­ties with all the girls, know them all by name. The last two years with this group of peo­ple have been so hap­py, so defin­ing. We all stood around on the pave­ment and com­mis­er­at­ed about miss­ing them, hop­ing they eat their lunch­es and don’t get car­sick, hop­ing they don’t need a loo until they get to the fer­ry… and I think we all felt some com­bi­na­tion of hap­py and melan­choly. How odd it will be to have no sched­ule this week: no dropoff, no rid­ing, no skat­ing, no pick­up. Ah well, soon it will be Fri­day and we’ll be back to normal.

As it is, we’ve been in absolute Cul­ture Mode, try­ing to take advan­tage of all the myr­i­ad oppor­tu­ni­ties there are in this love­ly town. I was dis­cussing this mat­ter with my love­ly moth­er in law over the week­end: she was very dis­tressed that I feel our lives here are quite… ordi­nary! “No! Don’t say that!” she wailed, and I do feel guilty that after being in Lon­don for two and a half years, it’s not as exot­ic as it used to feel. I think that the real­i­ty is, the place where you gro­cery shop, clean the lit­ter box, do laun­dry and pick your child up at school becomes… ordi­nary. But I must­n’t let it! And life is def­i­nite­ly enhanced by doing some­thing out of the ordinary.

In that vein, there­fore, Fri­day morn­ing found me at the Real Food Fes­ti­val at Ear­l’s Court. It’s some­thing for you to put on your map for next year (the fes­ti­val fin­ished at the week­end), and don’t be put off by the rather heavy-hand­ed spon­sor­ship of Whole Foods Mar­ket. At first when I went in and was con­front­ed by smil­ing Whole Foods peo­ple wear­ing aprons embla­zoned with… “Whole Foods,” pass­ing out eco-friend­ly jute bags with… guess what, “Whole Foods” print­ed on the side, I thought, “this is mere­ly an enor­mous adver­tise­ment for Whole Foods,” and giv­en the con­tro­ver­sy here over the huge­ness and extrav­a­gance of that place, I did­n’t real­ly want to be spoon-fed an entire fes­ti­val about how won­der­ful they are. But I per­se­vered and soon was immersed in a beau­ti­ful mael­strom of admit­ted­ly twee saw­dust-cov­ered floors, but also hun­dreds of unique food pur­vey­ors, offer­ing every sam­ple under the sun. I suc­cumbed to hon­ey made in Lon­don’s Roy­al Parks (it will make the per­fect addi­tion to my chick­en wings’ bar­be­cue sauce lat­er this week), kip­pers from the Isle of Man, deli­cious­ly salty and my first taste of that revered break­fast food! I am tempt­ed to sell John on kip­pers by mak­ing a tra­di­tion­al kedgeree: boiled rice, kip­pers, hard-boiled eggs, cur­ry pow­der. Does­n’t that sound good?

Then there was the lit­tle lemon cake for Avery’s jour­ney lunch, from Coun­try Fare in Cum­bria, and hot chilli olive oil from Chilli Pep­per Pete. Only DO NOT sam­ple their “drag­on’s blood” if you val­ue your life! I thought I would die. “Where are you from?” the cheery pep­per lady asked, and when I answered “Orig­i­nal­ly New York,” she beamed and said, “Oh, this drag­on’s blood sauce just won a com­pe­ti­tion there!” so I felt I must try it. OH NO! I cried. I gasped. I root­ed around in my bag for a bot­tle of water. “That does­n’t help,” she said.” You think? No, it does­n’t. I near­ly died. But the chilli oil is love­ly! Although John felt it quite over­pow­ered the crab­meat pas­ta dish I made that night, so I’ll have to adjust the recipe and get it prop­er­ly bal­anced before I blog it.

I sam­pled goat’s cheese, gar­lic and chive ched­dar cheese from Isle of Man Cream­eries, chori­zo from York­shire, who knows what else. And: celebri­ty alert, I saw Matthew Fort, one of the judges from “Great British Menu,” our favorite cook­ery pro­gramme on the BBC. I screwed up my courage and went over to tell him how much we enjoy the show, and he replied, “Oh, how love­ly of you to tell me, I’m very pleased indeed!” Then he turned away to greet Tom Park­er-Bowles, which was also cool, and they walked on togeth­er. My last pur­chase was not a sam­ple, but a group of three spice blends from The Spice Spe­cial­ist, where a love­ly atten­tu­at­ed young man assured me that their cel­ery salt is more cel­ery and less salt, which is what I’m look­ing for when I make my cheesy spinach casse­role. I’m find­ing that com­mer­cial cel­ery salt is sim­ply too salty, espe­cial­ly because I used a lot in order to get the cel­ery fla­vor just right, and com­bined with the salt of the Gruyere is slight­ly off-putting, so I’m hop­ing this is the solu­tion. Then, too, last time I made it I added chopped cel­ery leaves and that made a difference.

I rode home on the bus feel­ing so for­tu­nate to live in a coun­try full of so many com­mit­ted small pro­duc­ers, pro­duc­ing such extra­or­di­nary ingre­di­ents. I hope I’m wrong, but some­thing tells me that the US is lag­ging behind in such a pre­vail­ing inter­est in hon­est ingre­di­ents, prop­er­ly grown and reared. In time…

Sat­ur­day evening saw us head­ing off to Wind­sor to the The­atre Roy­al to see Agatha Christie’s “Mur­der on Air.” Well, I say that, but what actu­al­ly hap­pened is that I was at the front door, my tart for our pic­nic in my hands, ready to head off to Rich­mond to the the­atre there, where I thought the play was to be, when I noticed that the tick­et con­fir­ma­tion I was also hold­ing said quite plain­ly “The­atre Roy­al WIND­SOR.” Good grief, I could have got us all the way to Rich­mond only to realise we were at the wrong the­atre. John was briefly and silent­ly apoplec­tic at my incom­pe­tence, Avery was defend­ing me, and then we all calmed down and head­ed off to… Wind­sor. And in the end it did­n’t make any dif­fer­ence: we were in plen­ty of time to spread out our pic­nic by the swans float­ing down the river.

Goats Cheese Tart with Chi­aven­nasca and Spinach
(serves 6)

1 cup whole­meal flour
1/2 cup cold but­ter, cut in chunks
1/2 tsp dried thyme
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup soft goats cheese
2 tbsps creme fraiche
3 hands­ful spinach leaves
8 slices Chiavennasca
2 tsps butter
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1/2 medi­um white onion, minced
1/4 cup grat­ed pecori­no or parme­san cheese

Now what, you ask, is Chi­aven­nasca? Well, it’s an Ital­ian air-dried beef, mar­i­nat­ed in spices and pep­per­corns and white wine and aged, then sliced thin. It is sim­ply deli­cious, but if you can’t find it, you can always use Par­ma ham, or indeed, skip the meat and keep it a veg­e­tar­i­an dish.

Put the flour and but­ter and thyme in your Mag­im­ix and whizz until the but­ter is whol­ly incor­po­rat­ed and the mix­ture begins to stick togeth­er as a dough. Add more but­ter if need­ed. Press even­ly into a 12-inch tart pan.

In a medi­um bowl, mix the eggs, goats cheese and creme fraiche. Whizz the spinach leaves in the Mag­im­ix until fine­ly chopped, then mix in with the cream mix­ture. Saute the gar­lic and onion in the but­ter and mix into the cream mix­ture. Rough­ly chop the dried beef and mix in with the cream mix­ture, then pour all into the tart pan and sprin­kle with the grat­ed cheese. Bake at 375 degrees for 25 min­utes or until the grat­ed cheese is slight­ly browned and bub­bly. Deli­cious warm or cold!

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Along with the tart I packed up a light and refresh­ing crab­meat sal­ad, and the two were deli­cious together.

Crab­meat Sal­ad with Toma­toes and Lime
(serves 2)

1 cup lump white crab­meat, the best you can get
2 cups wild rocket
hand­ful San­ti­ni toma­toes, quartered
1 tbsp snipped chives

dress­ing:
2 tbsps olive oil
2 tsps bal­sam­ic vinegar
juice and zest of 1 lime
pinch sea salt

Sim­ply toss all the sal­ad ingre­di­ents togeth­er and pack it up in a plas­tic box with a tight-fit­ting lid, and shake the dress­ing ingre­di­ents up in a glass jar (also with a tight-fit­ting lid), and they can trav­el sep­a­rate­ly, to be tossed togeth­er when you’re ready to eat. Very springlike!

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The play itself, “Mur­der on Air,” was such a plea­sure! Avery and I are tremen­dous fans of the BBC full-cast drama­ti­sa­tions of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Say­ers mys­ter­ies that were orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast as seri­als on the radio, and are now avail­able on CD. I always felt envi­ous of the audi­ences who heard them around their fire­sides, and jumped at the chance to see this play. It’s actu­al­ly play­ing through May 3, so you could go see it your­self. The con­cept is won­der­ful: the set is an authen­tic repro­duc­tion of a 1930s radio sta­tion, com­plete with the prop man sit­ting behind his tables full of imple­ments to pro­duce all the prop­er atmos­pher­ic sounds like doors shut­ting, cof­fee cups and spoons tin­kling, glass break­ing, etc. Then the cast came in: actors dressed in peri­od 1930s cos­tumes and tak­ing their places at micro­phones to read the plays! Three 30-minute Agatha Christie orig­i­nal plays, being read by actors play­ing actors read­ing plays on the radio! Tremen­dous fun. And there was the added bonus of one of my all-time favorite actors, Hugh Fras­er, famous for play­ing Cap­tain Hast­ings to David Suchet’s Her­cule Poirot. There he was in the flesh, read­ing away. What fun.

Sun­day we dropped Avery at the sta­ble, all of us peer­ing anx­ious­ly at the dark skies, but what can you do: some­one has to pol­ish all those bri­dles and sad­dles, and she always wants to go, no mat­ter the weath­er. John and I head­ed to Bat­tersea for the Dec­o­ra­tive Antiques and Tex­tiles Fair, and while it’s over now, you must make plans to go to the sec­ond open­ing at the end of Sep­tem­ber. Superb vari­ety of dis­plays, lots and lots of shops from all over the UK show­ing their wares. But you know what, as much as any­thing the fair was fun because it got us out of our rut and over to the oth­er side of the riv­er (such a gor­geous dis­play of Chelsea hous­es to be seen from the Park), and into some­thing NEW. And Avery would have been bored stiff, so it all worked out per­fect­ly. We are in shocked awe at the prices, of course, of any of the things we want­ed, but I think we’ll be able to find some pieces we can live with. There was a won­der­ful ware­house rep­re­sent­ed called Retrou­vius, a lit­tle pun on their stat­ed pur­pose which is giv­ing new life to aban­doned objects. What caught our eye imme­di­ate­ly was an elab­o­rate Vic­to­ri­an shelv­ing sys­tem from the gut­ted Patent Offices years ago. I think if Avery’s bed­room ceil­ing is high enough, we’ll get some of the shelves for her clothes and toys. There were also fab­u­lous ceil­ing light fix­tures tak­en from the aban­doned Rover fac­to­ry out­side Lon­don, and a pair of old leather arm­chairs whose pre­vi­ous life was I know not where.

So we came away pret­ty excit­ed! As well, on Church Street on Sat­ur­day we found a 1930s green leather Chester­field sofa with what are called “drop ends,” or “drop arms,” so that it becomes a sort of set­tee you can stretch out on. So, once we get the keys on Wednes­day we can scout out where to put things, and then pre­tend we can afford them. Went by today to vis­it the house just from the out­side, and the vines over the door are begin­ning to flower, lit­tle pale pink flow­ers against dark-red vines, spilling over the blue door! It is real­ly going to be fun, if a lot of work to get out of here and into there. Some poten­tial renters have been com­ing through our flat, which is pow­er­ful­ly annoy­ing as every­thing must be neat and tidy at all times. Wim­sey seems to feel it’s his per­son­al duty to escort every vis­i­tor around the flat, whether they’re cat peo­ple or not. “How many cats do you HAVE?” the estate agent asked John. “I don’t have cats,” he mut­tered. She looked at him as if he were daft, and final­ly he said, “My wife and child have four cats. I don’t have any. Not a cat per­son.” No won­der Wim­sey and Keechie are insecure!

The house feels so emp­ty! But no news is… as they say, and look­ing at the clock I think Avery is in the land of crois­sants and berets even as we speak. Hope she’s hav­ing fun…