Lon­don September

Octo­ber has set in, with that sub­tle but cer­tain feel­ing that sum­mer is well and tru­ly over.  We’re ready to say good­bye to Avery on Wednes­day as she heads for her FINAL year at Oxford — what? — and we spend one more week here in Lon­don before head­ing back to the States to see the fall “foilage,” as my friend Alyssa’s moth­er in law puts it.  It is hard to believe we’ve spent 12 years of autumns here (the Eng­lish don’t say “fall,” I have always thought because Eng­lish leaves don’t make much of a fuss about doing it).  See­ing Red Gate Farm in the fall once more will be magical.

Lon­don life, though, is peren­ni­al­ly full, some­times too much so!  I’ve tak­en up all the reins of my myr­i­ad work here — back to Fri­day play­group, where I WISH I could take pho­tographs so you could appre­ci­ate the ram­pant cute­ness.  Get this — last week I pro­posed to a three-year-old girl (ridicu­lous cute­ness), “Hey, would you like to do Play-Dough with me?”  She put her hands on her lit­tle hips and said, “Yes!  Let’s DO this thing!”

I have a new Home-Start fam­i­ly.  A new trio of chil­dren to love, a new mum to lis­ten to and sup­port.  Again, I wish I could show you pic­tures, or even tell you anec­dotes.  Con­fi­den­tial­i­ty blows, some­times.  There are so many great sto­ries!  And Thurs­day Cook­ing Club after school.  I get spon­ta­neous hugs now when I arrive.  The kids are get­ting into the cook­ing groove, now, not quite so impos­si­ble to han­dle, not quite so much ram­bunc­tious behav­ior (it helps that I realised I should not bring knives, and not turn on the stove if I can help it).  Oat­meal cook­ies, it turns out, are MUCH more pop­u­lar than, say, peas and mint on baguette slices.

Last week saw the old Lost Prop­er­ty gang in the thick of our Queen Moth­er’s Cloth­ing Guild pack­ing week, at St James’s Palace.  Again with the “no pho­tographs” thing!  What a drag.  Such fun to see the ladies again, although while we’re at work we call our­selves “the girls.”

Of course there has been ring­ing.  A Quar­ter Peal on an impos­si­bly windy day at the tow­er of All Saints Ful­ham, and a drink at the local pub after.  I guess this pub was named before the tow­er got their 9th and 10th bells!

Fos­ter Lane is as beau­ti­ful as ever, on a Sun­day morn­ing, when I arrive to ring before services.

The jour­ney to and from ring­ing prac­tice on Mon­day evenings is an event, every sin­gle time.  The view nev­er gets old, the adven­ture nev­er lessens.  The bridge and St Paul’s present a dif­fer­ent beau­ti­ful face, every sin­gle time.

Com­ing home late at night, filled with the sat­is­fac­tion of a good prac­tice and even bet­ter friends, is a joy.  Every sin­gle time.

It was fun­ny to bring togeth­er two of my favorite things — ring­ing at Fos­ter Lane, and Vis­i­ble Mending.

Which brings me to one of the nicest parts of these late sum­mer weeks: spend lots of time with Avery.  Sure, she’s had her nights out, her guests from Oxford, her cof­fees with old friends.  But we’ve also spent hours and hours just hang­ing out on the sofa, shak­ing our heads over cur­rent affairs, cap­tur­ing cats to cud­dle, and Vis­i­bly Mend­ing.  (Well, she knits.)  I’ll give you a close­up of the scarf above.

It’s all part of my lat­est obses­sion, which began in the spring.  Vis­i­ble Mend­ing.  It is a thing.

I love it.  I mean, it’s a THING.

So I gath­er my gar­ments cov­ered in holes, and Avery gath­ers her knit­ting, and maybe we have the news or an old episode of “Out­lander” on the tel­ly in the back­ground.  The point is, we hang out togeth­er.  OK, some­times I knit.  Very slow­ly and very poor­ly, but I’m not giv­ing up.  Keechie can be an imped­i­ment (but a match­ing one).

One fine Fri­day after­noon, I lured Eliz­a­beth and my ring­ing friend Kather­ine to join us.  Avery and Kather­ine got on just fine.

Oh, Kather­ine’s art­work!  She is a pure genius.  She invit­ed us to her MA show and we were off like a shot, to the Chelsea Col­lege of Art.  What an instal­la­tion.  Just stunning.

Thread, fab­ric, paper, sesame seeds.  Yes, sesame seeds.  She SEWS with them.

As Avery and I had so much fun with our New York exhi­bi­tion, we’ve been giv­ing some thought to putting togeth­er a show here.  Kather­ine’s col­leagues in the Tex­tile and Design por­tion of the Chelsea MA pro­gramme are giv­ing us seri­ous food for thought.  (See what I did there?  Sesame seeds = food for thought.)  Take, for exam­ple, this incred­i­ble artist, Shiv­ani Dholepatil, who works in woven stain­less steel thread.

Along with Kather­ine and this fab­u­lous tex­tile artist, Richard McVetis… (I gave this to my moth­er for her birthday)…

I think we have the mak­ings of a very inter­est­ing show, if we can find a space.  (Watch this one, for news.)

So send me your moth-holes, your torn jeans, your shred­ded fab­rics yearn­ing to be mend­ed…  I mean, it was even at the Venice Bien­nale.  Vis­i­ble Mend­ing rocks.

In oth­er news, we’ve had guests!  Boy, have we had guests.  My singing teacher Lin­da, from my long-ago and mis­spent youth, came with her hus­band and they accom­pa­nied me to ringing!

Of course they came to din­ner after, slow-braised chick­en thighs.  And Eliz­a­beth’s been round, reunit­ed with me after our sum­mer apart.  (Pulled ham-hock tart, just so you know.)

One evening, my friend Casey, who had until that very evening been “only” a Face­book friend, turned up with her hus­band, all the way from Cal­i­for­nia.  Such fun to cook for peo­ple who were ear­ly and enthu­si­as­tic sup­port­ers of our cook­book’s Kick­starter cam­paign.  We ate our­selves sil­ly.  Crab tart, so deli­cious.  We racked our brains but could not for the life of us remem­ber how we “met,” who on Face­book brought us togeth­er.  It did­n’t mat­ter one bit.

And once they got back home, look what arrived for me.  What a doll Casey is.

Speak­ing of cook­ing, I’ve been mak­ing some unex­pect­ed sweet things.  Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, my moti­va­tion for this activ­i­ty is to bring a treat to ring­ing prac­tice.  It’s hun­gry work, ring­ing.  The lat­est?  Choco­late and tof­fee oat­meal cook­ies, adapt­ed from the recipe I used for my Cook­ing Club in Mile End.

Choco­late and Tof­fee Oat­meal Cookies

(makes about 30 large cookies)

220g soft butter

2 eggs

200g dark, soft brown sugar

100g cast­er or gran­u­lat­ed sugar

1 vanil­la bean, scraped of its seeds, or 1 tsp vanil­la essence

2 bak­ing-sized bars tof­fee and sea salt choco­late (or 3 Amer­i­can Heath Bars), or you can make your own

200 grams plain flour

1 tsp bicar­bon­ate of soda

pinch Mal­don or oth­er sea salt

250g por­ridge oats

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

In one large bowl, cream togeth­er the but­ter, eggs, 2 sug­ars and vanilla.

In a food proces­sor, whizz the choco­late until the size of small chips.  Add to the but­ter mixture.

In anoth­er large bowl, com­bine all the remain­ing ingre­di­ents, then add the dry mix­ture to the wet mix­ture.  It will be very heavy and dry and will require quite a lot of mix­ing to incor­po­rate all the dry ingre­di­ents.  Drop them in large spoons­ful on a bak­ing sheet, leav­ing room for them to spread.  Bake at 180C/350F for about 12 min­utes or until slight­ly browned around the edges.  Cool on a rack and then store (ha!) in an air­tight box.

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These are superb.  Crunchy, oaty, good for you, beloved by ringers and small chil­dren.  Equal­ly you could use raisins instead of or in addi­tion to the choco­late, and you could use dark choco­late or plain milk choco­late instead of the salty tof­fee vari­ety.  My after-school kids drew the line at adding dried blue­ber­ries, however.

Less straight­for­ward, but inter­est­ing­ly exot­ic, and quite deli­cious, is hal­vah, that Mid­dle East­ern treat of sesame seeds and sug­ar, basically.

I used this recipe from the New York Times, and I have had unpre­dictable results.  The first time, I added crushed pis­ta­chios and that was a nice touch.  It turned out a bit grainy, a bit crumbly.  But delicious.

Avery thought a touch of dried rose­buds would be nice, too, very Israeli.

The sec­ond time I made it, I used agave syrup as a sub­sti­tute for part of the sug­ar, hop­ing to even­tu­al­ly cut out the sug­ar alto­geth­er so peo­ple who don’t eat sug­ar could enjoy the hal­vah.  It turned out incred­i­bly sticky.  I’d packed adorable box­es of it to give away as presents, and by next morn­ing the lit­tle squares had sim­ply merged into one big, sticky block.  Still deli­cious, but noth­ing you’d take a pic­ture of or give to any­one you had any respect for.

So yes­ter­day I decid­ed to per­sist with the orig­i­nal recipe, and guess what?  I turned my back for one SEC­OND and the sug­ar syrup boiled over.  Onto my ceram­ic stove­top.  DIS­AS­TER!  (Avery thought it smelled deli­cious, burn­ing itself out).  It sim­ply adhered to the stove­top.   I mean, you could put air­planes togeth­er with that stuff.  John quick­ly googled and we found that soak­ing a tea tow­el in boiled water and swirling it over the crusty crys­tallised sug­ar water worked.  Whew.

As a result, I came to realise that I had some mys­te­ri­ous quan­ti­ty LESS of the sug­ar syrup than I need­ed.  But how much?  Who knew?  I just had to wing it.  This third batch turned up with a lay­er of fine sesame oil all over it.  Why?  We’ll nev­er know, but after assid­u­ous blot­ting with paper tow­els, the hal­vah is perfect.

You must store it with a sheet of bak­ing parch­ment between lay­ers.  But it is now gift-worthy.

Which is good, because I need to send a ship­ment of it off to our won­der­ful Japan­ese archi­tect in Paris, who host­ed us there last week for an incred­i­ble 29 hours.

29 hours in Paris.  What lux­u­ry.  Two years ago we gave our­selves anoth­er cou­ple of hours, but THIS year we gave our­selves the com­pa­ny of Avery!  Sub­lime.  The view from our flat…

We dropped off our stuff (includ­ing my knit­ting project; I made mas­sive progress on the Eurostar to dis­tract myself from being under­wa­ter in a train tun­nel; night­mare) and head­ed across the street to one of those ubiq­ui­tous, com­plete aver­age and there­fore extra­or­di­nary Paris cafes for steak tartare, oh my good­ness.  And then off to walk, walk and walk.  Our goal?  The Musee d’Or­say, naturally.

Because Rodin.  I know there are oth­er objects to see at the d’Or­say, but… Rodin.

Oh, my art his­tor­i­cal past.  I love being such a nerd that I’ve for­got­ten more about some­thing than most peo­ple ever knew. Rodin.

And there were cats.  There was this cat.

And these cats.

Pierre Bon­nard is much more fun to look at with Avery than on my own.

Dazed by beau­ty, we made our way back across the river.

To join our old friend Annabelle for dinner!

We ful­filled a long-held dream of return­ing to Cafe Max, a restau­rant we had fre­quent­ed when I was a PhD stu­dent in Paris in 1991.  Ever since, our vis­its have found it closed for one rea­son or anoth­er, but this time we hit pay dirt.  And while it was love­ly to be back, I had a very odd din­ner indeed.  I did­n’t know there was a sausage I would­n’t like on this earth, but I found it.  Andouil­lette.  Yep, they’re made of colons.  And not this kind:  Nev­er mind.  Always such a treat to catch up with the new­ly-adult chil­dren of Avery’s child­hood and find that they are won­der­ful, delight­ful peo­ple.  A din­ner filled with memories.

The view from our flat was so, so love­ly at night.

Up in the morn­ing and down the love­ly, icon­ic staircase.

And off to the archi­tects’ office!

Where we were shown the new mod­el for our even­tu­al house here in Lon­don.  It’s a secret!  Some­day soon, though.

From there we were tak­en by our archi­tects to a tru­ly unique lunch at Nodai­wa, a spe­cial­ist restau­rant whose menu remains a mys­tery to us because our archi­tect ordered for us, very briefly, with no fan­fare, and it was all eels.  I read now online that this is not all there is to be had at Nodai­wa, but it is all we had.  Sim­ply fas­ci­nat­ing.  Sweet and sour eels, eels in aspic, eel liv­er soup, grilled eel with rice.  What an expe­ri­ence.  Great con­ver­sa­tion (secret!) about the house plans.   John was very, very happy.

Say­ing good­bye, we strolled over to the Tui­leries to bask in the sun­shine like one of Bon­nard’s cats.  John took a nap.  Avery and I relaxed, she in the new, awe­some coat she’d cho­sen the day before at APC.  They know coats.

We were all very happy.

There was time for a cof­fee and a treat, back in our neighborhood.

Oh, Paris.

Once home again, John and I made our way to the house site, where the Muse­um of Lon­don Archae­ol­o­gists were hard at work dig­ging away.

I don’t think we have shared goals: they seemed to be look­ing for some­thing inter­est­ing, where­as we had fin­gers crossed that absolute­ly NOTH­ING of inter­est to ANY­ONE would turn up in what will even­tu­al­ly be our basement.

Now Octo­ber has come.  The last school year for Avery, the year we will begin work on our house, the year I make progress on “Tonight at 7.30, Vol­ume Two.”  Vol­ume One has had a tremen­dous resur­gence of sales because my dar­ling friend Orlan­do, a famous food writer, includ­ed one of my recipes in an arti­cle in the Sep­tem­ber issue of BBC Good Food mag­a­zine!

What fun.  If only I’d had the gump­tion to mar­ket it prop­er­ly myself, I prob­a­bly would­n’t have any copies left!

I bid you farewell for now, with this gor­geous shot of St Paul’s Cathe­dral, our dear neigh­bor, on the last “Late Night” event that allowed vis­i­tors to take pic­tures (nor­mal­ly for­bid­den).  Don’t you think it’s time for a trip to London?