a whirl­wind of activ­i­ty (and a great new recipe)

Before I tell you about all our adven­tures late­ly, I must report that my crush on Richard Armitage pro­ceeds along quite a healthy path: aid­ed and abet­ted by the love­ly peo­ple at Richard Armitage Online, who pro­vid­ed this gor­geous pho­to­graph. I am well on my way to watch­ing every sin­gle thing he’s ever been record­ed doing, and I’m not even close to tired of him yet. Nice Avery and John to put up with watch­ing the entire series 1 and 2 of “Robin Hood” with me: good fun! What makes a great crush actor, you ask? Well, for me, it’s out­stand­ing smoul­der­ing good dark looks, an abil­i­ty to pay a lot of dif­fer­ent roles with con­vinc­ing emo­tion, and most impor­tant, a dan­ger­ous edge. A sense that just around the cor­ner, in this char­ac­ter’s life, total lack of con­trol could result. Richard ful­fills all in spades, always a sort of “I know I’m bad, but with your love I could redeem myself.” Hav­ing had a com­plete­ly unevent­ful boyfriend life myself, begin­ning and end­ing with a prac­ti­cal­ly per­fect hus­band, it’s nat­ur­al I should go down these cum­ber­some emo­tion­al roads in fic­tion. “North and South” is sim­ply beau­ti­ful, and I do think you’d thank me if you went out and rent­ed the DVD. Save it for a rainy day!

How­ev­er, real life does tend to make demands upon one’s time, and I have found myself actu­al­ly liv­ing, in addi­tion to fan­ta­sis­ing, so I sup­pose it’s a good bal­ance. On Wednes­day we go to the final inven­to­ry of the house! They make a note of the state that every inch of the place is in before we get there, the bet­ter to charge us against our secu­ri­ty deposit when we even­tu­al­ly move out, leav­ing holes in the wall, etc. We in turn get to make sure that the very nice land­la­dy has done all the small things she promised: paint­ing all the walls white, get­ting the place cleaned, check­ing on the via­bil­i­ty of the var­i­ous Vic­to­ri­an fire­places: does the gas work, is the flue clear? She was also plan­ning to wash down the gar­den paving stones thor­ough­ly and I for­get what all else. So as of Wednes­day we’ll have a real­ly good sense of the future in this house. Which is good because we’ve been doing some desul­to­ry but excit­ing imag­i­nary fur­ni­ture shop­ping. Not imag­i­nary fur­ni­ture, you under­stand, but fur­ni­ture that we’ve bought in only an imag­i­nary way so far, not want­i­ng to jinx the han­dover of the keys. But more on fur­ni­ture shop­ping later.

After sev­er­al days last week of absolute­ly noth­ing inter­est­ing hap­pen­ing, more inter­est­ing, that is, than clean­ing clos­ets, sud­den­ly on Thurs­day every­thing hot­ted up. My new writ­ing course began! I was a bit on pins and nee­dles, because I had roped two of my good friends into tak­ing it with me, and sud­den­ly pan­icked: what if they hat­ed it and blamed me? Or were (high­ly unlike­ly) unsup­port­ive class­mates and my old class­mates and tutor blamed me? Plen­ty of blame to go around, as you see. Thank­ful­ly, none of these sce­nar­ios came to pass. The class was fab­u­lous: read­ings by the two most tal­ent­ed (I think) mem­bers, lots of ener­gy, the tutor seemed moti­vat­ed and hap­py. Good all the way round!

Lis­ten, the title of this post is very mis­lead­ing: I real­ly will tell you about all the stuff we’ve been doing, tomor­row, I hope (a fes­ti­val, a play, a fair! and a great recipe to go with this one below). I just want­ed to check in and let you know all is well. But for now, I sim­ply must go help Avery fin­ish pack­ing for her week-long trip to Nor­mandy tomor­row. We must have her at school at 4:30 a.m.! I am in a fever of anx­i­ety that the coach not crash on the way, the fer­ry not sink, and that I not expire from miss­ing her too much. Let me leave you with the per­fect com­fort dish, should you need one. You must have a cast-iron casse­role with a heavy lid. And after­ward, sim­ply remove the rest of the meat, throw the whole lot, car­cass, extra veg, juice, every­thing, into a saucepan, cov­er with water and sim­mer for a cou­ple of hours, then strain, throw the chick­en bits in, and you’ve got the BEST chick­en soup you will ever, ever eat. It can cure any­thing. Even, MAYBE, miss­ing your lit­tle girl.

Slow-Braised Whole Chick­en With Root Vegetables
(serves four for din­ner, then the rest for soup)

1 medi­um whole chicken
4 parsnips, sliced in 2‑inch bits
4 car­rots, sliced the same
2 onions, cut in eighths
6 stalks cel­ery, cut in 2‑inch bits
2 hands­ful but­ton mush­rooms, cut in half
6 cloves garlic
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup chick­en stock
2 tbsps butter
3 stems fresh thyme
sprin­kle sea salt and fresh black pepper

Lay the chick­en in the pot and arrange the veg­eta­bles all around, then sprin­kle the gar­lic over them. Pour the wine and stock over the chick­en, and smear the but­ter over the chick­en, and lay the thyme on top of the veg­eta­bles. Sprin­kle with salt and pep­per and cover.

Cook in a medi­um oven (350 fahren­heit, 180-ish cel­sius) for at least 2 1/2 hours. Your entire HOUSE will fill with the scent and com­fort of this dish. Enjoy, and say a quick prayer for Avery’s safe­ty tomorrow!