chaos

Well, let’s see, there’s an unwont­ed (and dare I say it, an unwant­ed) amount of chaos going on in our house this week­end. I know I’ve already plagued you beyond the nat­ur­al capac­i­ty of any blog read­ers with my ridicu­lous lev­el of anx­i­ety regard­ing my impend­ing depar­ture. But I’m freaked! No doubt this very fact is an indi­ca­tion of the neces­si­ty of the adven­ture. I should not be so freaked at the thought of just leav­ing my house­hold for a week. After all, my hus­band is an extreme­ly com­pe­tent per­son and until July an at-home father. And… until today, an in-Lon­don father. No more. Emer­gency trip to the Mid­dle East this after­noon. So, Plan B for Avery and all should be well. Every­one involved in “Project How to Keep Avery From Falling Through the Cracks” seems per­fect­ly com­pe­tent and aware of the sem­i­nal nature of his or her role in this pro­ce­dure, so I should not worry.

But I do.

The good news is, I had a very good and far-reach­ing response from my writ­ing class on Fri­day (heav­ens above, was that YES­TER­DAY?) to my lat­est chap­ter, with many sug­ges­tions on the for­mat for future chap­ters, ideas on struc­ture. So I am well-placed for my food­ie week next week. And of course what should a nerve-wracked moth­er do when fac­ing a week away and shoo­ing a hus­band out the door for an unex­pect­ed trip? Have peo­ple to lunch, of course. My good friend Dora called to say that her lit­tle daugh­ter Emi­ly was hav­ing the tour of Avery’s new school, and could we pos­si­bly feed her some­thing between the tour and her music audi­tion? But of course.

So this morn­ing found me roast­ing a chick­en, slic­ing toma­toes and moz­zarel­la, sprin­kling them with basil, lemon juice and bal­sam­ic vine­gar, toss­ing rock­et with a nice spicy dress­ing, arrang­ing a mel­low goats cheese, a for­mi­da­ble blue and a run­ny Brie on a plate with baguette slices… add a bowl of tossed rasp­ber­ries, blue­ber­ries and straw­ber­ries with a sprin­kle of raw sug­ar and a splash of Amaret­to and you’re good to go. The child and her father arrived, look­ing as if they’d been put through Sat­ur­day Night Live’s “Chin­chilla Ranch” (you remem­ber, where they put in a live chin­chilla and out the var­i­ous spouts come the meat, the fur and the juice?). Need­less to say, they fell upon their lunch like per­sons starved. I added some slices of brasao­la to the chick­en plat­ter, the cured dried beef being one of Avery’s absolute favorite things, and there you go. The father grate­ful­ly accept­ed a glass of white wine, the girl averred that her favorite thing about the school was the din­ing room (this is why we do not let the lit­tle sprouts dri­ve or vote), and all was bliss.

Then we RUSHED off to Avery’s act­ing class, being deprived of the adult mem­ber of our house­hold who finds dri­ving with­out a valid license to be all in a day’s work, as opposed to me, who… takes the bus. And a tube. And anoth­er tube. And final­ly a taxi, whose love­ly cen­tral-cast­ing dri­ver said, “I know, the the­atre school, right, love? Just sit back.”

Just sit back.

That sounds like good advice. Instead, I have invit­ed Avery’s new friend Bet­sy and her moth­er to din­ner tomor­row night, because Avery said she and the child want­ed to work on a dra­ma pro­duc­tion for school togeth­er and the dead­line was com­ing and I was leav­ing, and… so here we have it. It’s best, any­way, to have guests to cheer us up after John has gone away and before I have gone away. So let me tell you about a love­ly recipe that will impress your friends and gain influ­ence and… well, most­ly it will be deli­cious. And not as dif­fi­cult as it sounds.

Chick­en Breasts With Pro­sciut­to, Moz­zarel­la and Toma­to, in a Mush­room Sauce
(serves four)

2 tbsps butter
1 tsp Fox Point sea­son­ing (from Pen­zeys spice company)
4 bone­less chick­en breast fillets
2 balls moz­zarel­la sliced thick
4 slices prosciutto
12 cher­ry toma­toes, halved
12 toothpicks
1/2 cup white wine
2 cloves gar­lic, minced
4 por­to­bel­lo mushrooms
1/2 cup dou­ble cream
salt and pep­per to taste

Place the but­ter and the Fox Point sea­son­ing in a large heavy skil­let. Slice a pock­et into each chick­en fil­let, tak­ing as much care as you can not to pen­e­trate to the out­side of the fil­let. Lay a pro­sciut­to slice flat and place two moz­zarel­la slices and three toma­toes (halved) on the pro­sciut­to and roll it up. Stuff it into the chick­en fil­let as best you can and secure the chick­en with tooth­picks. Don’t fret: if bits are show­ing, it does­n’t matter.

Now, heat the but­ter and sea­son­ing and when hot, place the tooth­picked breasts in the but­ter. Cook SLOW­LY, turn­ing over and over, for at least 20 min­utes, check­ing the tex­ture (it should even­tu­al­ly be stiff to the touch), till cooked THROUGH. When the chick­en parcels are cooked, remove to a plat­ter and pour the white wine in the hot skil­let. Then sim­mer the gar­lic and mush­rooms, not let­ting the gar­lic burn. As soon as the gar­lic and mush­rooms are slight­ly soft, add the cream and salt and pep­per to taste. Cook down nice­ly. Add the chick­en parcels just before serv­ing to warm. Lovely!

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So that will be tomor­row night, with scal­loped pota­toes and sauteed “every green veg”: aspara­gus, broc­col­i­ni, sug­ar snap peas.

The last few days have been over­whelm­ing­ly impres­sive, stim­u­lat­ing, cool. Maybe I need a week in Devon just to cool out from the cool­ness. Thurs­day, for exam­ple, was the 500th birth­day (yes, 500th) of the founder of Avery’s school. At a cathe­dral of stun­ning impor­tance. Your heart could stop at the grandeur. Thou­sands of peo­ple, par­ents, sib­lings, old stu­dents from the schools, dig­ni­taries. The Bish­op of Lon­don, (yes, THE Bish­op of Lon­don) gave the ser­mon. My favorite bit? “We are here to cel­e­brate the birth of a man who had the knowl­edge and wis­dom to found your school, 500 years ago. But we are also here to note the rela­tion­ship between those two ideas: knowl­edge and wis­dom. How can we be sure that the knowl­edge you will all assured­ly gain dur­ing your years in these schools will trans­late, will grow, into wisdom?”

Sim­ply beau­ti­ful. When the choir sang, and rose into those high boy-voice parts, I felt very emo­tion­al ad oth­er-world­ly: how were we ordi­nary mor­tals, and Amer­i­cans besides, to be giv­en a place at this gath­er­ing, and what was our quite ordi­nary child doing being addressed by the Bish­op of Lon­don about her con­tri­bu­tions to the future of the world (“whuld,” actu­al­ly)? Nev­er­the­less, there we all were. When we final­ly caught up with our child out­side, I said, “Aren’t you quite over­whelmed by the superla­tive nature of all this? We are so proud of you,” she said, “But it’s not like that, I’m just a speck of dust among 700 oth­er specks of dust!” But she could­n’t hide her feel­ings of fun and pride. It was magnificent.

From there I turned to Fri­day’s writ­ing class, and exhaust­ing as the 4‑hour thing is, it is well worth the effort. I have to hope I’m ready for this com­ing week. Home quick­ly to make sure Avery’s skat­ing bag and overnight bag were packed and ready, and off again to pick her up at school… skat­ing and then to see Harold Pin­ter’s “No Man’s Land” at the Duke of York… and can I say? Impen­e­tra­ble… cryp­tic… I was with three of the smartest peo­ple I know and we were all com­plete­ly flum­moxed. And yet we’d revved up our brains with sushi RIGHT in our the­atre seats in the des­per­ate fif­teen min­utes before the play began, from a cute place called Wasabi near St Mar­tin in the Field.

All right, bed­time beck­ons because tomor­row brings pack­ing, get­ting Avery to rid­ing, shop­ping and cook­ing for our lit­tle sup­per par­ty, and the Last Evening at Home. How much more dra­mat­ic can I get? Well, we’ll see, after a lit­tle pro­fes­sion­al advice.