lots of cul­ture (and some cook­ing too)

Let’s see, what have I been up to this week? Well, first thing that comes to mind was last night’s first singing rehearsal for (we’ve got to find a name for our­selves) The Form VI Moth­ers Choir Ensem­ble! Yes, we real­ly did it; after get­ting all excit­ed at the school’s birth­day cel­e­bra­tion, singing togeth­er and real­ly enjoy­ing it, one of the moth­ers actu­al­ly booked us time with the school music mis­tress and five of us turned up last night to war­ble away. “Jesus Christ, the Apple Tree” (who knew he was one), “Ear­ly One Morn­ing,” “Scar­bor­ough Fair,” you name it. I was not too shy to say right out that I’m no sopra­no, so I was in my famil­iar alto ter­ri­to­ry, and it was such an unex­pect­ed joy to dis­cov­er that my (most­ly child­hood) musi­cal skills came back to me! There were sud­den sur­pris­ing moments of clar­i­ty like real­is­ing that I “remem­bered” how it felt to have my voice go up two notes, so that the visu­al sign from an “e” to a “g” was a per­fect­ly use­ful sig­nal to me. And I had­n’t for­got­ten how to read music, or to fol­low a part. And from some fog­gy mem­o­ry came the absolute cer­tain­ty that the key we were singing in would include an F sharp: and it did! The old­er I get the more I regret los­ing skills (although to be hop­ping around turn­ing back­flips at my age would be more than a lit­tle grue­some), so find­ing that all those years spent learn­ing musi­cal sys­tems and skills were not lost after all, just buried under lay­ers of pic­ture book plots, recipes and the fin­er points of school volunteering.

Here’s some­thing to think about: when was the last time you DID some­thing, just for your­self? And by “do” I don’t mean see a movie, which is just watch­ing some­one else do some­thing, or have din­ner out, which is just eat­ing, only more spe­cial than at home. No, I mean DO some­thing, to express your­self and get out of the every­day mind­set when you can mul­ti­task and walk and talk at the same time and look after oth­er peo­ple? Because when you’re not a very accom­plished singer, and you’re read­ing the music and lis­ten­ing to the oth­er voic­es and pay­ing atten­tion to the accom­pa­nist, you can’t do any­thing else at the same time. Or think of any­thing else. And to hear love­ly sounds come from all our sep­a­rate beings and make some­thing love­ly togeth­er: it was very sat­is­fy­ing. I think you should all find some­thing sim­i­lar to do, just one hour out of every cou­ple of weeks. Why not?

We had a great time, and the love­ly lit­tle teacher had a good time too. “This is my first time teach­ing an adult choir, and teach­ing peo­ple I can meet on eye lev­el. You learn much faster, as well!” A real joy. I keep threat­en­ing Avery that we’re going to buy enor­mous ver­sions of the school uni­form and per­form at the Har­vest Fes­ti­val, but that’s just a threat. Still, it could happen.

It was a very ful­fill­ing end to an already full day: lunch with Dalia at Sagar, a superb veg­e­tar­i­an restau­rant in Ham­mer­smith. It’s a def­i­nite keep­er, so go on, get your­self there and order some rasa vada, an amaz­ing dish of light-as-a-feath­er lentil dough­nuts, with a hole in the mid­dle and every­thing, swim­ming in a fra­grant, spicy bath of some­thing called rasam, a toma­toey broth with very com­plex pep­pery fla­vors. So exot­ic! So deli­cious. Then veg­etable kootu, a liq­uidy cur­ry with a strange but good sort of Indi­an mar­row, car­rots, beans and coconut. Divine! Next time I will def­i­nite­ly go for the gar­lic rice, which is described as being made with fresh gar­lic, cumin seeds and dried red chilli, served with raitha, that deli­cious and sim­ple cucum­ber-yogurt del­i­ca­cy. We had to roll our­selves to our writ­ing class, where­upon it tran­spired that the tutor was giv­ing us a miss. Just dumped us in favor of, appar­ent­ly, a plumb­ing dis­as­ter, but how she could not have know this until five min­utes after class was meant to begin, we could not fath­om. A major irri­tant, and one I remem­ber from this same tutor last spring.

We took a vote and five of us decid­ed to stay and read our pieces to each oth­er, I among them. Dalia took her­self off to accom­plish some­thing, and tru­ly it was a pain, to have arranged to get all the way to Ham­mer­smith and have the class can­celled. But in the end, the five of us decid­ed that it was much the nicest way to have a class! We all lis­tened in turn to each oth­er’s pieces, and then made the usu­al sorts of com­ments, some sup­port­ive, some crit­i­cal, some mere­ly curi­ous. Since we’re writ­ing auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal essays, every­one does want MORE at the end! Did you real­ly spend sum­mers in your grand­moth­er’s gar­den in Bagh­dad? No, you real­ly lived in Ger­many with a host fam­i­ly who spoke no Eng­lish? And Kei­th, seri­ous­ly, a real live stage man­ag­er at the Roy­al Bal­let in Covent Gar­den? Not to men­tion the lady who joined a bowls team after retire­ment and even bought the uni­form! It turns out that every­one, absolute­ly every­one, has some­thing inter­est­ing to write about. I felt rather bland with my sto­ry, but it turned out that pos­sess­ing the dress that your moth­er wore for her engage­ment pho­to in a small town in Indi­ana is very inter­est­ing to Eng­lish peo­ple, for its very for­eign­ness. It was a won­der­ful after­noon, no less so for miss­ing an alleged expert, because all of us seemed per­fect­ly ade­quate to the task of lis­ten­ing crit­i­cal­ly and responding.

Home in a rush to find my sheet music for singing, and then a quick dash with John to watch Avery ride. It was a superbly autum­nal after­noon, the trees begin­ning to turn and fall in the park. I must con­fess: why do tourists take pic­tures of our chil­dren on horse­back? Not that I mind, par­tic­u­lar­ly, but why? I know why I have hun­dreds of pic­tures of a small girl on horse­back, but some­one else’s child? No thanks. And we reached some­thing, lat­er in the evening, of a behavior/attitude mile­stone. Now, I’m the first to say that Avery has a hard few months ahead of her, prepar­ing for these exams, not get­ting the top mark in the class, not win­ning an elec­tion or two. And of course it’s frus­trat­ing if she does­n’t get to ride the exact pony she wants and gets put on scary Archie who flinch­es at a pass­ing tis­sue left on the ground.

But I final­ly put my foot down last night and said, “You can­not hold our entire fam­i­ly hostage to your neg­a­tiv­i­ty. Of course school is hard, and there are dis­ap­point­ments, but we all have them. Please take a moment to think and reflect on how incred­i­bly lucky you are to be where you are, and healthy, and with an awful lot to be hap­py about, and just… be pos­i­tive. Of course you’ll have neg­a­tive thoughts, but don’t let them over­whelm you.” For a moment I thought she was either going to cry, or hurl her pen­cil at me, but won­der of won­ders, the rest of the evening was MUCH nicer. Now I’ve prob­a­bly caused her years of expen­sive psy­chother­a­py, but you know what? By then she’ll be out of the house. Call me self­ish, but I just could­n’t take the moan­ing anoth­er minute.

And we had a fab­u­lous evening cook­ing togeth­er, for the first time! It has occurred to me many times that my prac­ti­cal­ly-per­fect moth­er’s Extreme Dis­like of Cook­ing has played no small part in my own love of it. Strict­ly speak­ing, my ear­ly expe­ri­ences with cook­ing would fall under the cat­e­go­ry of self-defense, because a per­son who hates cook­ing can­not pro­duce rou­tine­ly deli­cious food that makes you sit up and take notice. So I had to learn. But late­ly I’ve been wor­ry­ing that my lov­ing to cook, and always being in charge of the kitchen, could pro­duce a child who can­not open a box of cere­al. What I dis­cov­ered were sev­er­al things: a child loves to cook! And it’s MUCH slow­er to cook with her than to get on with it myself. But she fol­lowed direc­tions per­fect­ly, and was tremen­dous­ly proud of the result. And I learned not to call the salmon “him,” as in “make sure you cov­er him com­plete­ly with the sauce,” because in Avery’s world, then she begins think­ing of him swim­ming along with his friends and she does­n’t want to eat him. I mean It.

Avery’s Baked Salmon with Brandy and Creme Fraiche
(serves four)

1 pound salmon fillet
3 tbsps butter
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 shal­lots, minced
1/3 cup brandy
1/2 cup creme fraiche
1/2 cup light cream
squeeze of lemon juice
dried thyme (enough to fit in the hol­low of your palm if you cup your hand, is a good mea­sur­ing tool for a lit­tle girl)
sweet papri­ka, same amount
salt and pep­per to taste

In a heavy skil­let, melt the but­ter and saute gar­lic and shal­lots till soft. Now pour in the brandy, tak­ing time to explain “deglaz­ing” to your child. Then whisk in the creme fraiche, creme, lemon juice and herbs. Taste and season.

Place your salmon in a glass non­stick-sprayed dish and pour the sauce over him, I mean it. Bake at 425 for 25 min­utes. Glorious.

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And to fin­ish, a com­plete­ly sim­ple apple cake, from my Gladys Taber cook­book (so it counts as research for my edit­ing project). Per­fect­ly spicy and autum­nal, and I can almost guar­an­tee you you’ll have every­thing you need with­out shop­ping. I’m going to write out this recipe in Gladys’s own style, although I’ve made a few changes (more spice).

Spicy apple cake
(per­fect for after din­ner, and warmed up for breakfast)

Sift and then mea­sure 1 1/4 cups all-pur­pose flour, add 1 1/2 tea­spoons bak­ing pow­der and set aside.

Cream 1/4 cup but­ter, 1/2 cup sug­ar, 1 tsp vanil­la and 1 egg. Beat light and fluffy. Mea­sure 1/2 cup milk. Add alter­nate­ly to the creamed mix­ture with about 1/2 cup flour at a time. Stir smooth with each addi­tion. Stir in 3 apples, peeled and coarse­ly chopped. Pour into well greased shal­low pan [I used a spring­form and it was per­fect]. Arrange 2 more apples, nice­ly sliced, on the top of the bat­ter and sprin­kle with 1/2 cup brown sug­ar, a mix­ture of cin­na­mon, nut­meg and cloves [to your taste], and 3 tbsps melt­ed but­ter. Bake at 350 degrees for 25–30 min­utes and serve warm.

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Now the sug­ges­tion to have part of the apples in, and part of them on, was Avery’s and a very fine one it was. I think I have a bud­ding cook on my hands. Tomor­row is Moroc­can meat­balls, which should be nice and messy and fun.

Well, we’re about to run off and try a new restau­rant since Avery’s occu­pied at a sleep­over. Her skat­ing les­son today with her beloved friend Jamie was a non-event because guess what one of teenage Lon­don­ers’ favorites to do to cel­e­brate the end of Ramadan is? Yep, ice skat­ing. I’ve nev­er seen so many wacky boys and girls in my life, and they all had sharp blades attached to their extrem­i­ties, so it was but the deci­sion of a moment for Jamie’s moth­er and me to con­fer with the teacher and decide that we did­n’t want to add our chil­dren to the list of those who had already been tak­en away by ambu­lance. So the two girls have gone off for an evening of bliss­ful play. And so can we…