how idyl­lic is this?

Well, it took awhile: your odd pow­er out­age, fence destruc­tion, under­foot deceased rodent… but today is what I think of when I imag­ine Red Gate Farm: bright blue, unmarked skies (unless you count a cou­ple of air­plane trails), green, green grass and trees, red barns, sparkling bird bath (I can­not say it is clean, because there’s a whole lay­er of algae or moss or some­thing, liv­ing under the sur­face, but the water is clean), bird­song to go with it. And a per­fect vis­it to the hors­es up the road, as you see: what sort of peo­ple res­cue aban­doned hors­es and give them homes? Our dear neigh­bors Mike, Con­nie and Tay­lor, it turns out. We can’t wait till they’re liv­ing out in our back mead­ow (the hors­es, I mean), just an elec­tri­cal fence or two from now.

I still have some lurk­ing home­own­er issues (of course no one has been back to see my long-suf­fer­ing fence since last week, but I’m not feel­ing very con­fronta­tion­al today so I have declined to har­rass or chivvy my “Acci­dent Sur­vey Report Con­sul­tant Man­ag­er” or what­ev­er her title is). Name­ly, this morn­ing as I walked past my stove I had to admit what I’ve sus­pect­ed for sev­er­al days: a gas leak. It was but the work of a moment to call the num­ber on my gas tank only to be told that it’s no longer in use. The very same with the num­ber I got from 411. Hmmm. A lit­tle assid­u­ous googling, how­ev­er, and the guy is on his way. I refuse to be dis­tract­ed from my extreme­ly good humor, how­ev­er, and plan to see his prompt response as a good thing, not the first sal­vo in a long gas-relat­ed episode.

Con­tin­u­ing on the propane theme, I have run out of the pre­cious gas for my grill, so in true fem­i­nist style I man­aged to fol­low my broth­er in law’s pre­cise instruc­tions (I love hav­ing some­one to turn to who is not only as pre­cise as I am, but under­stands igno­rance and does not make fun of it!), and removed the tank from the grill, pock­et­ed all the bits and pieces that attached it, and bob’s your uncle. Well, I haven’t actu­al­ly replaced it yet, which will require a trip to the hard­ware store and ask­ing for some­thing I don’t real­ly know how to iden­ti­fy, and hop­ing I get what I need, not to men­tion am able to re-attach it and cook din­ner with­out explod­ing us all to king­dom come.

Luck­i­ly (or not) “us all” is only Avery and me. We have decid­ed that we can’t invite Anne, David and Katie to din­ner EVERY night. But it’s been a cou­ple, so per­haps we can lure them for home­made piz­za tonight, and grilled veg­eta­bles? I long to take a hun­dred pic­tures of Katie, just to remem­ber how tiny she is this sum­mer, and to put her with Avery, if only to high­light the con­trast between new­born and near­ly-teen. Avery has crossed some invis­i­ble line this sum­mer from lit­tle-girl­dom to bud­ding inde­pen­dent per­son. She is real­ly enjoy­ing being sent to the Star­bucks order desk by her­self, or sent to get red pep­pers when I’m already in line at the gro­cery. We are toy­ing with the notion of hav­ing her go to Block­buster Video while I go to the Gap a few doors down. I’ve ascer­tained at the library that she can­not be dropped off there until age 12 (next sum­mer, then), but she is hap­py to go upstairs to the chil­dren’s sec­tion on her own, check out her own books and pack them up, while I hang around the ground floor doing my upright ab crunch­es (don’t ask, I’ve become com­plete­ly obsessed with how many I can do in a day while still not seem­ing to exercise).

Avery is also inter­est­ed this sum­mer in… shop­ping. On a rainy day this week we found our­selves at some name­less mall in Water­bury, Con­necti­cut, shop­ping at a fair­ly hideous but harm­less store called Lim­it­ed Too. I remem­ber a store called The Lim­it­ed from my own teen days, and I also remem­ber car­ing about clothes and shop­ping, although it seems to be from a very long, long dis­tance of about 30 years and about 20 pounds. Could any­one have been as thin as I was as a teenag­er? How on earth did I find any clothes to fit? But now it’s fun to see Avery try things on. “Are these sparkles an affront, or are they kind of cute?” “Well, if it was ONLY sparkles, or lace, or sequins, I can see the point. But all three?” Luck­i­ly we agree on most things. The arrange­ment is that we don’t either of us buy any­thing that the oth­er absolute­ly HATES.

How relax­ing is a day when the tasks involve noth­ing more stren­u­ous than wash­ing all the kitchen rugs and hang­ing them in the sun to dry, walk­ing in a leisure­ly way across the sun-dap­pled road to see what the mail­man has brought (every sum­mer John is aghast at the num­ber of val­ue­less used books that Avery and I man­age to order, for a dol­lar apiece, from book­sellers all over the coun­try, all to end up in our rusty old white mail­box that still bears the name of our for­mer homeowner).

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I spoke too soon. No, it is even more pathet­ic than that. I TYPED too soon. It was not only a gas leak, but a gas leak in… my stove. The nice gas guys came out to look at the tank, and after a bit of mas­cu­line work­ing about and explain­ing to me nice­ly about pipes and con­nec­tions and what­not, and spray­ing some mys­te­ri­ous liq­uid onto rub­ber bits and look­ing for bub­bles which would mean some­thing very, VERY awful, they implied that we will all die of asphyx­i­a­tion on a Wednes­day at 1:30 p.m.… The long and short of it is, I am now wait­ing for a stove repair­man to come… Tues­day. As John’s mom says, I’m the only per­son who would see this not as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to leave the dish­wash­er emp­ty for four days, but as a hor­ri­ble prison sen­tence in which I’ll have to eat… OUT.

Any­way. I refused to let it spoil the gor­geous­ness of the day. I refused to be dis­tract­ed or made surly by the fact that the guys from the gas com­pa­ny had dropped my sand­wich bag full of sug­ar onto the kitchen floor, or that when they pulled the old, OLD Indi­ana pine bench out from the ter­race wall to look at the gas con­nec­tion they pulled the arm off the bench, or that I was look­ing at one sleep­over with a three and a half year old tomor­row, and anoth­er on Mon­day with two girls, and pos­si­bly two fur­ther sets of lunch guests… with no stove.

Accord­ing­ly, we decid­ed to rise above it ALL. I thought about din­ner. No stove, no oven. No boiled water for corn, mashed pota­toes, no steamed rice, no baked chick­en or meat­loaf, no pas­ta, no risot­to, no soup, no casseroles… hmm. Final­ly I remem­bered about Joel’s instruc­tions on the grill propane tank. And would you believe I was capa­ble of detach­ing it, stor­ing it in the car, and trans­port­ing it all the way to the hard­ware store where I exchanged it for a full tank. Bril­liant! Some­thing I nev­er dreamed of in lit­tle sleepy South­bury: I had to dri­ve it around to the back of the shop to have it filled up: appar­ent­ly, hav­ing an emp­ty tank of propane that one sim­ply walks into the shop is tan­ta­mount to a bomb threat. Who knew.

Any­way, off Avery and I went to the pool for an hour or so of sim­ple, brain­less hap­pi­ness under blue skies and sur­round­ed by shouts of the eter­nal, inevitable “Mar­co… Polo,” miss­ing our friend Bar­bara, the all-know­ing, all-see­ing for­mer school­teacher who always knows where to get the fresh­est salmon or the nicest dried flow­ers or newest book­store or a new rid­ing hel­met (that did­n’t work out so well, as Avery’s hel­met’s been on order for two weeks and count­ing…) who has head­ed to Alas­ka on a cruise. The pool was so much qui­eter with­out her! I spent some time swim­ming UP UP UP to the sur­face to see that ONE per­fect green tree I love against the blue blue sky. Some­how it always makes me think of Maine: the seren­i­ty, con­trast of col­ors, fresh crispness…

Well, it turns out, on our return home, that one can pro­duce a per­fect­ly DELI­CIOUS din­ner with­out a stove or oven. I promise you, and here it is. Of course, I don’t know if it will taste even half as good with­out your hav­ing Avery’s tram­polin­ing songs in the back­ground… but you can try.

Spatch-cocked Grilled Chicken
(serves 4‑ish)

1 large organ­ic chicken
2 tbsps soft­ened butter
1 tbsp Fox Point Sea­son­ing from Pen­zeys (again!)
4 tbsps goat cheese
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp sea salt

Put the chick­en on a cut­ting board upside down (breast-side down). With a VERY sharp knife, split the chick­en down the mid­dle. Choose one side or oth­er of the back­bone and sim­ply CUT it down the mid­dle. Once it is cut through, flat­ten the chick­en out and cut out the back­bone if you like (not necessary).

Place the chick­en breast side up on a plat­ter. Loosen the skin over the breast and squish half the goat cheese under the skin of each breast. Mix the but­ter and her­by mix. Then spread the her­by but­ter over the top of the chicken.

Heat the grill to about 400 degrees and place the chick­en, flat­tened out, breast side down. Close grill and cook for 20 min­utes. Turn the chick­en and cook anoth­er 20 min­utes. Turn over again and cook skin-side down while you fin­ish up side dishes.

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Jack Cur­ran’s Grilled Potatoes
(serves 4)

1 large Yukon Gold pota­to per per­son, plus 1, peeled and sliced thin
1 white onion, sliced thin
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
1/2 stick butter
sea salt and pepper

Place 2 long pieces of alu­minum foil in a sort of t‑shape, and pile pota­toes, onions, and gar­lic onto the cen­ter. Dot with but­ter and sprin­kle with salt and pep­per. Fold up foil pack­age so it’s air­tight. Cook at same time and tem­per­a­ture as chick­en: in oth­er words 40 min­utes, at 400 degrees, turn­ing twice.

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Grilled Veg­eta­bles
(serves 4)

2 pep­pers of any color
1 bunch asparagus
hand­ful mush­rooms, sliced THICK
2 tbsps olive oil
sea salt and pepper
gar­lic salt

Cut veg­eta­bles into nice serv­ing pieces and arrange on a plate. Pour over olive oil and sprin­kle with sea­son­ings. Let mar­i­nate while every­thing else cooks, then grill for about 15 minutes.

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Microwaved Sweet­corn (seri­ous­ly!)
(1 ear per per­son, at least)

Shuck corn and place on a plate that allows itself to rotate in the microwave. Allow 3 min­utes per ear, high power.

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Well, this is a deli­cious din­ner and NO one at your table will ask why the stove and oven are chilly and dark. I’m not sure how this grill-only method will serve me for three a meals a day times four day times one tod­dler times one 7‑year-old times two 11-year-olds… but I’ll let you know! In the mean­time, it’s that blue sky we’re con­cen­trat­ing on, isn’t it?