the drea­rs, part two

It’s tak­ing longer than I thought.

The whole “don’t be depressed, things aren’t as drea­ry as they seem” cam­paign, I mean. How can it stay so grey?! Yes­ter­day the sun came out briefly while I walked to the Lebanese food shop. By the time I came back out… grey.

And it’s extend­ing its nasty ten­drils right into my house. And school. Even read­ing with the gulls this morn­ing was a bit lack­lus­tre. Lit­tle Elodie allowed as how she had a cold, which neces­si­tat­ed much swip­ing of sleeve over nose. Tis­sue? Why? Mad­die was read­ing “Char­lot­te’s Web” and as she rivals Avery in the dra­ma-queen stakes, I felt in duty bound to tell her that the sto­ry ends in tears. “I already know, Mrs Cur­ran. My sis­ter’s read it twice and she cried both times.” I sort of slumped toward home and in the mid­dle of the high street remem­bered some sap­py adage from “Lit­tle House on the Prairie,” or some Shirley Tem­ple movie: if you want to feel bet­ter, think of some­one else. So I stopped in the flower shop and ordered some pot­ted plants for the school stair­case, which makes three grace­ful turns from the top floor to the bot­tom, and in each curve is a pot. Emp­ty now with­out the hol­i­day poin­set­tias. So by the time I go to read again on Thurs­day, there will at least be some­thing alive to look at on the long way up, and the much short­er way down.

Well, I’m sor­ry to say that my flo­ral trib­ute did noth­ing what­so­ev­er to leav­en my mood. Once home, I cleared off my desk by putting things to post to Amer­i­ca into envelopes. The upside is that my desk is clear, but I hate to think how much it will set me back in postage! Still, Janie’s birth­day approach­es and now there is a nice fat pack­age head­ed her way. Vir­tu­ous­ly, I fold­ed some ran­dom laun­dry, but when I went to put Avery’s clothes away, ful­ly six sweaters leapt from her cup­board and fell at my feet. I decid­ed it could­n’t wait anoth­er minute, so I dragged every last gar­ment she owns out onto the floor and am now pay­ing for it. So much out­grown! So much shab­by. So a big bag for Oxfam and a lit­tle pile for Jane, and now kind John has gone out and bought stor­age draw­ers for me to put in the clos­ets and start organ­is­ing. What a bore.

How­ev­er. Remem­ber the per­snick­ety guy’s house we saw last week? Well, he might have been a neat­ness psy­chopath, but his WIFE had orig­i­nal copies of “Mil­ly-Mol­ly-Mandy,” and I want­ed them. Avery’s copies are not only reprints, and so rather not so excit­ing, but they belong to Jane now, so when I got home from the wacky house, I tracked down orig­i­nal copies of two of the ear­li­est books. If you have a lit­tle girl or boy, or need a present for a lit­tle girl or boy, you sim­ply can­not do bet­ter than these books. She’s a lit­tle Eng­lish girl from prob­a­bly the 1920s, with an extend­ed fam­i­ly of quite unpar­al­leled sweet­ness, sev­er­al friends to play with, and most mem­o­rably, a rather addic­tive cadence of nar­ra­tive. Her lit­tle friend Susan, for exam­ple, is referred to always as “lit­tle-friend-Susan,” which is of course the way chil­dren hear things. The copies arrived yes­ter­day, and Avery is thrilled to have them, plus they include some sto­ries the Amer­i­can reprint did not. OK, things are look­ing up.

And why should­n’t our trou­ble-free cat, Hermione, get a lit­tle atten­tion? Of course Wim­sey and Keechie fre­quent the pages of the blog because they are insane. But poor Hermione and Tacy, the orig­i­nal unsqueaky wheels, are neglect­ed. Of course Tacy told me exact­ly what she thought of my atten­tions by refus­ing to pose for a pic­ture. So there. But how down can any spoiled rot­ten per­son like myself be, when a tab­by of this sort will sit on my lap.

It seems fit­ting to close with one of the few recipes for ugly food that I have to offer. This is a very healthy, very tasty and inex­pen­sive side dish of my own design, invent­ed last night to take advan­tage of the love­ly lentils I had bought at Green Val­ley. It has a strange­ly sat­is­fy­ing heft, a spoon­ful of this dish does. Life as a veg­e­tar­i­an might not be so lame as it always sounds to me, with this dish avail­able. The lentils are nice and firm, al dente in fact. I adore the old Mario Batali quote, “Don’t let me hear you pro­nounce it ‘al Dante.’ He’s dead and he does­n’t care about your pasta.”

But this dish is warm, it’s hearty, it’s full of big fla­vors, it cooks itself, and the house smells divine while it’s on the stove. And won­der­ful cold left­overs, tucked in a pita. But… it is ugly. So enjoy.

Ugly Cur­ried Lentils
(serves four)

1 1/2 cups split lentils (green or yel­low, or I mixed in both)
4 cups chick­en stock
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 medi­um onion, minced
1‑inch knob fresh gin­ger, peeled and minced
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp hot cur­ry pow­der (or rogan josh)
1/2 tsp chili powder
salt to taste
3 tbsps butter

Go over the lentils and dis­card any lit­tle hard bits. Place in a saucepan and cov­er with water, swish around, dis­card water and repeat three times. Pour in 3 cups chick­en stock and sim­mer for one hour, stir­ring and adding more stock if lentils dry out. When al dente (hee hee), add the gar­lic, onion, gin­ger and sea­son­ings and the rest of the stock and sim­mer, cov­ered, for at least an hour, but indef­i­nite­ly if you like. Right before serv­ing, add the but­ter and give it a good stir, adding more stock if nec­es­sary. Deli­cious. With it we had an inex­pen­sive cut of steak sliced in strips and sauteed in peanut oil with Japan­ese mirin, soy sauce and oys­ter sauce, which we devoured wrapped in let­tuce leaves, with sliced fresh mush­rooms, sliced pears, fresh corian­der leaves and chili sauce. Messy, cheap, crunchy and glo­ri­ous. Oooh, I’m cheer­ing myself up…

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