mov­ing looms…

So here it is! Unas­sum­ing, you say? Yes, but I think it will be cosy when it’s all kit­ted out with our gatril­lions of box­es of books, and box­es of cats, and art and such. Isn’t the kitchen appeal­ing? But look, there to the right of the glass doors: a cat hole! For a cat a third the size of mine, but still, it’s there.

I must say, for all the angst of mov­ing, there are some good points: name­ly, the prospect forces you to get rid of all your junk, because you know every piece of junk has a dol­lar sign (or pound sign, as it hap­pens) attached to it: “pic­ture me wrapped in brown paper and care­ful­ly placed in a card­board box that you then will pay to see car­ried out to a truck and pay again to see car­ried in your new house and then unpack and find a place to store.” It makes you ruthless!

So last week saw me dis­pos­ing of half-eat­en pack­ets of dried blue­ber­ries, bags of cous­cous (I don’t even like cous­cous), pas­ta in every shape you can imag­ine with best-by dates that revealed they had been brought with us from New York. In fact, I decid­ed that any­thing with a price tag in dol­lars should prob­a­bly… go. Then it was Avery’s room, where the most cur­so­ry of search­es led us to… home­work from kinder­garten? “PONY” mag­a­zines from 2006? Plus my per­son­al favorite, can­dy wrap­pers in her desk draw­ers. What makes a child think she should keep such things? It’s the same impulse that makes her, after eat­ing a banana at the skat­ing rink, for exam­ple, reach out to hand me the peel. With a rub­bish bin at her elbow.

Then there were the t‑shirts far too tiny, some nice enough to keep for my niece and some not, the end­less draw­ings of skat­ing cos­tumes Avery dreams of design­ing one day, an unbe­liev­able num­ber of note­books, sketch­pads and jour­nals each filled with half-writ­ten sto­ries, all of them far too sweet to throw away. Still, we end­ed up with four garbage bags full of stuff from around the house, plus a box to go to Oxfam. There’s still the front hall clos­et to go, and con­sid­er­ing that I haven’t seen the flat sur­face of its floor since we moved in…

And I am hot on the trail of a Cat­tery in Kent to take our felines for the dura­tion of the hos­til­i­ties, I mean the move. It’s felic­i­tous, actu­al­ly: I can drop the cats off at our local vet, in their lit­tle plas­tic pris­ons, and the Cat­tery in Kent comes to col­lect them, then drops them back at the vet’s on the date of our choos­ing. Now all I have to do is coax our porter into let­ting me into the stor­age space under the house that con­tains the four kit­ty pris­ons, pray that I kept all the hard­ware in a plas­tic bag close to hand, and re-assem­ble them. Then set them up in the liv­ing room with some cat­nip­py toys in them to make them appeal­ing, or at least not ter­ri­fy­ing. Then the kids will run in and out of them for the ensu­ing days and it will be much eas­i­er to stuff them inside when the day of trav­el arrives. I say, with confidence.

To enliv­en this rather dis­mal list of chores, I must tell you that we were enter­tain­ing this week! No, not enter­tain­ing per se, but host­ing. Avery’s beloved babysit­ter Amy, from New York, came through on her way home from two months in India work­ing in orphan­ages and child-care homes. What a delight. If there are Amys in the upcom­ing gen­er­a­tion, the world has a chance. She is an absolute bub­ble of gen­eros­i­ty and ener­gy, paus­ing at near­ly every pho­to­graph she showed us of the chil­dren to say, “Oh, now HE was adorable…” How do peo­ple raise chil­dren to turn out like Amy? I remem­ber her babysit­ting days with Avery, once a week while I stayed late at my gallery, and I’d come home to the two of them flat on their stom­achs on the floor, sur­round­ed by draw­ings. “I like your col­lar on that one, Amy,” Avery would be say­ing, “but look at how my fab­ric flows.” “Oh, cool, Avery, I think I’ll copy that for my next dress if you don’t mind…” She is a veg­e­tar­i­an, so for din­ner we had an old favorite of Avery’s that for some rea­son has fall­en off my radar screen. But it’s worth telling you about. It requires a fair bit of prep, but it’s col­or­ful and good for you.

Far­falle with Spinach and Roast­ed Red Peppers
(serves 4 with left­overs for lunch)

1 lb far­falle pasta
3 red bell pep­pers, roast­ed and peeled
2 tbsps olive oil
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 red onion, minced
2 tbsps Ital­ian seasoning
sprin­kle hot red pep­per flakes
1 can plum toma­toes, crushed by hand
4 hand­fuls spinach, chiffonaded
1 hand­ful flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped fine
1 cup grat­ed pecori­no or parme­san cheese

Now, do you know how to roast red pep­pers? Of course you may buy them in a jar, ready-roast­ed. But they’re usu­al­ly sus­pend­ed in either vine­gar or oil, and let me tell you that means… slimey. Why not cut them in half, remove the seeds and put them under your oven broil­er? Or if you have a gas stove, turn on a burn­er and hold them over the flame with tongs, turn­ing them until they’re black­ened all over? Then put them in a brown paper bag you’ve been sav­ing from Star­bucks for that pur­pose, and let them sweat for a few min­utes, then peel. Slice small, in bite-size pieces.

And chif­fon­ad­ed spinach? It’s fid­dly. Lay the leaves on top of one anoth­er with the stems stick­ing out to one side, and slice thin.

So do all these things as the pas­ta water comes to a boil. Then heat the olive oil in a skil­let, saute the gar­lic and onion till soft, throw in the Ital­ian sea­son­ing and pep­per flakes and add the red pep­per bites. Ask your house­guest to grate the cheese, then boil the pas­ta. Add the toma­toes to the sauce in the skil­let: just squeeze each one sep­a­rate­ly, because did you ever think what nasty bits and pieces a toma­to com­pa­ny would save for a can of “chopped toma­toes”? Buy whole and squeeze.

Toss the spinach and pars­ley in at the last minute and stir till warm, then throw in the pas­ta and toss all togeth­er. Serve with the cheese on top. Lovely!

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In addi­tion to dear Amy, we had Avery’s best friend Anna all late last week while her par­ents house hunt­ed in Amer­i­ca, poor things. What a joy to have Anna. The girls spent all three after­noons after school writ­ing a play, and then Fri­day night they act­ed it out. Most­ly it was cos­tume changes, but there was a sort of pre-teen ani­mal-obsessed theme as well: girls meet bun­nies, girls get bun­nies, girls lose bun­nies. Oh no! They find them in the end, don’t wor­ry. It was very heart­warm­ing and innocent.

This all came on the heels of Avery’s act­ing agency send­ing us a script for a play for her to audi­tion for: play­ing a lit­tle Amer­i­can girl who becomes obsessed with her town’s local ordi­nance that orders sex offend­ers (yes!) to stay 2000 feet away from schools and play­grounds. It was but the lying-awake of a night to come to the con­clu­sion that we real­ly did­n’t want Avery com­ing any­where near that script. I just could­n’t pic­ture her utter­ing the words, much less hav­ing to explain the con­tent to her. Let the agency drop her if they must, but no. Too much. Much nicer to have her put on a play about… bun­nies. Anna is the per­fect influ­ence in that direction.

What’s my cur­rent wor­ry? There always has to be one. This week it’s the upcom­ing school trip to Nor­mandy, leav­ing a week from today, on a coach that departs from school at 4:45 a.m. I can’t decide what to wor­ry about first: the string of school trip coach acci­dents that have been mak­ing the news in Europe late­ly, or… no, that’s it pret­ty much. How can the dri­ver be prop­er­ly awake at 4:45 a.m.? Who on earth thought that was a good idea? And you know the speed lim­it will not be adhered to. I am real­ly a bit con­cerned, but what can I do? The girls them­selves are far too obsessed with the audi­tions for the school play “Alice in Won­der­land” on Thurs­day even to think about what might hap­pen a week from today. Should I speak to the school and just say, “How are you going to keep that dri­ver awake?” But I’ll look like a lunatic. Plus what if they decid­ed to the solu­tion was to pump him full of amphet­a­mines and then he put his foot to the floor and passed every oth­er vehi­cle on the road?

Oh, what to do. I should just relax and make the cheese­cake our friend Peter made over the week­end: it’s the best you’ll ever have.

Peter’s Birth­day Par­ty Cheese­cake with Lime Juice
(serves at least a dozen)

1/2 pack plain diges­tive biscuits
1/2‑cup (ish) melt­ed butter
500 grams mas­car­pone cheese
500 grams ricot­ta cheese
1/2 cup Greek yoghurt
cast­er sug­ar to taste
juice of 2 limes
4 sheets gelatin

Crush diges­tive bis­cuits and mix with enough melt­ed but­ter for it to go moist but not so much that it is a heavy mix. Put that in a large flan dish (I think his was about 15 inch­es across and quite shal­low), spread out even­ly and press it down fair­ly firm­ly. Put that in the fridge for 30 mins to cool and set.

Mix the cheeses and yoghurt till smooth, then add sug­ar to taste (I like a quite un-sweet cheese­cake, but it’s up to you) and lime juice.

Mean­while pre­pare the gelatin accord­ing to the instruc­tions, and when melt­ed, add 2 large spoons­ful of cheese mix­ture and mix well with the gelatin. Then add all the gelatin to the cheese mix­ture and mix well. Pour the mix onto the bis­cuit base, lev­el and then cool for a cou­ple of hours. Done.

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Peter adds that he’s exper­i­ment­ed with a few vari­a­tions to this basic recipe: adding dou­ble cream to the mix­ture to soft­en it down and make it less sharp, adding some lime zest in to the mix­ture as well for some added colour and flavour and final­ly can­dy­ing some strings of lime zest and putting them on top.

I’m going to inter­rupt my blog­ging and laun­dry to go have cof­fee with Dalia. A lit­tle girl talk is in the air, I feel. Then can I just say how nice­ly my crush is pro­gress­ing? We have been slog­ging through the ear­ly part of Sea­son One of “Robin Hood,” and all I can say is, Richard Armitage’s evil sneer is far, far sex­i­er than a smile or even a leer on a less­er man. The ear­ly part of the series is campy, bad­ly writ­ten and very sil­ly, but stick it out: toward mid-sea­son every­thing gets bet­ter and by then, for what­ev­er crazy rea­son, you’ll care about Guy of Gis­bourne and his leather cos­tume and greasy hair and cru­el twist­ed atti­tude. Trust me! He can act every­one else off the screen, and with­out much in the way of a script to get trou­bled about. He is sim­ply irre­sistible, and it’s put a lit­tle spring in my step. He could be any­where! Read­ing a script in Grosvenor Square as I saunter along to meet Dalia, pick­ing up a friend’s daugh­ter at what will just hap­pen to be my daugh­ter’s act­ing class, hav­ing cof­fee at the deli around the cor­ner from my new house… one nev­er knows! I’m glad I washed my hair.