The itchy and scratchy show (plus more friends)

How odd to think that a month from today we’ll be tool­ing down an unknown road from Lon­don to Corn­wall, to stay with our love­ly Annie and her fam­i­ly? A dif­fer­ent uni­verse, quite apart from its being a dif­fer­ent con­ti­nent and time zone… sim­ply impos­si­ble to believe the two worlds belong to the same lives. But they do, and they will. In the meantime…

Say: did you know that your local phar­ma­cy may have a Nurse Prac­ti­tion­er to con­sult should your trip there to buy tooth­paste end up in being diag­nosed with a mas­sive case of Poi­son Ivy? Well, now we know. John’s been suf­fer­ing for sev­er­al days from itch­ing scratch­es on his fore­arms, swollen, hot and mis­er­able. I’ve had the very same, mys­te­ri­ous­ly, on my abdomen, which I did­n’t want to tell any­body. Then, sad­ly, the rash moved to my face, so it was unavoid­able. How we itch! How hot it is, how mis­er­able when sweat­ing from play­ing ten­nis in the sun­shine. So tonight we were looked at by a love­ly Ital­ian girl sport­ing an impres­sive dia­mond engage­ment ring (“I’m get­ting mar­ried next July!”) who con­firmed poi­son ivy. So in short, the gor­geous­ly revealed stone wall that Rose­mary and John slaved away on over the week­end (and I, unfor­tu­nate­ly, pitched in to help just long enough to get infect­ed), was not worth the trou­ble. I’d rather have a wall cov­ered with ivy and not have touched any of it with my face.

So that was our evening tonight. Plus, would you believe that we had decid­ed to go out for piz­za, to give me a break (not real­ly need­ed) from cook­ing, but the piz­za place was, quixot­i­cal­ly, closed on Mon­days (per­haps they’re owned by the same peo­ple who own the bak­ery that’s closed on Mon­days). So we end­ed up des­per­ate­ly at Den­mo’s, for fried food. Which would have been fine, except all the fried food end­ed up closed up in the car while our brief phar­ma­cy trip turned into a full-blown Vis­it To The Doc­tor. Let me tell you, you haven’t lived till you’ve opened up a car in 90-degree weath­er that’s been filled with fried clams and shrimps for half an hour. Arrgh! And there is noth­ing, repeat, NOTH­ING to rec­om­mend fried food that’s been closed up and turned to approx­i­mate­ly the tex­ture of damp paper tow­els. Tomor­row night’s bar­be­cued pork ten­der­loin and warm sal­ad of can­nelli­ni beans with rose­mary and gar­lic is sound­ing bet­ter and better.

Any­way, we came home to down all the pills the lady gave us, and to eat our awful din­ner and to wait, now I’m watch­ing the clock, for the med­i­cine to work. Heat makes it worse, I find, and it’s HOT. I hate to think back to our ten­nis game this morn­ing, sweat­ing like crazy in the blaz­ing sun. No ten­nis tomor­row unless I feel a LOT bet­ter than I do right now.

Could I whine any more? I do apol­o­gize for my mood. It will pass. But our AC is bro­ken! Anoth­er project for tomor­row. Once I make the moral deci­sion to turn on the air con­di­tion­ing, I hate being stymied.

I think I’ll feel bet­ter if I think back to last Thurs­day when I got to intro­duce two of my favorite friends: Becky and Shel­ley. And very excit­ing: Shel­ley brought along the feline friend we gave her last sum­mer, and who Avery has nev­er for­got­ten: Cap­tain Hast­ings. He has­n’t changed a bit, except for hav­ing grown even more than Avery has (she comes in at four inch­es and untold pounds, in a year). But I’m get­ting ahead of myself.

The day itself dawned as look­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly sat­is­fy­ing: the prospect of cook­ing all after­noon, after a good sweaty ten­nis game, watch­ing the skies as the storms gath­ered: my recipe for hap­pi­ness. The menu: a corn chow­der with cream and fresh chives, then a grilled chick­en satay dish on a bed of rocket/arugula.

The soup is sim­plic­i­ty itself:

Corn Chow­der
(serves 8 with left­overs, and it’s BET­TER cold!)

3 tbsps butter
12 ears corn, cut off raw
6 cloves gar­lic, rough­ly chopped
4 shal­lots, rough­ly choppped
6 cups chick­en broth or stock
1 cup heavy cream
white pep­per to taste
hand­ful chives, rough­ly chopped

Sim­ply melt the but­ter and throw in the corn, gar­lic and shal­lots and sweat till translu­cent and the corn is warmed through. Add the stock and bring to a high sim­mer for 15 min­utes, then blend with a hand blender till as much of the corn as pos­si­ble is pureed. Pass into anoth­er stock­pot through a large-hole sieve, then in a Cuisi­nart blend what’s left behind in the sieve with some milk to get as much as pos­si­ble fine enough to go through the sieve. Reduce the soup slight­ly by cook­ing over a low heat for a half hour or so. Add cream and pep­per and take off the heat. Just before serv­ing, heat again, and top each bowl with a sprin­kle of chives.

**************

Just as I fin­ished this, and Rose­mary put togeth­er the satay sauce (but I won’t report on my recipe because it was­n’t com­plete­ly suc­cess­ful, anoth­er ver­sion will fol­low), sev­er­al things hap­pened all at once: John real­ized it was time to take Avery to rid­ing, the rain began to fall, and… the pow­er went out. “Well, din­ner’s cooked!” Rose­mary laughed, and since it was true, I waved them off to Avery’s les­son and drift­ed idly through the house in the gath­er­ing rainy dusk, light­ing can­dles, set­ting the table, stir­ring the soup, and indulging in a qui­et hour of think­ing about my fam­i­ly, my friends, scat­tered to the four winds, but soon to be gath­ered around my table, to be fed, to meet each oth­er, laugh and feel cher­ished, I hoped. I sat for a moment in the front door­way with a book and a cock­tail, being light­ly sprin­kled with rain, gaz­ing out past Avery’s tree swing (marked with her name, but hard­ly read­able any­more), to the mead­ow where turkeys and deer stroll, to the trees beyond which become so incan­des­cent­ly col­or­ful in the fall. The breeze blew rain­drops onto my book and I closed my eyes to feel it on my face, and was happy.

First came Becky, laden with shop­ping bags in the rain. Figs for Rose­mary! A fruit tart and choco­late tart for us, tiny pains au choco­lat and short­breads for Avery, a book for me, a sweater Avery had left behind. In short, her usu­al boun­ty, and offered all with her inim­itable Becky smile of total gen­eros­i­ty, fun-lov­ing and wait­ing for the next adven­ture. And it did­n’t take long: the rain was real­ly pelt­ing down in a gray cur­tain of wind and fury when Erik and Shel­ley arrived with… Hastings!

Our dear fos­ter kit­ten from last sum­mer, the tini­est lit­tle fel­low you can imag­ine: now he’s long, and sleek and impres­sive! But with the same tiny scream­ing wail he emit­ted as a lit­tle boy. Shel­ley smiled on us gen­tly as she always does, with her qui­et air of enjoy­ment, tinged this time with her antic­i­pa­tion of miss­ing the lit­tle guy when she left him behind. Erik as always stands behind her, if not lit­er­al­ly, metaphor­i­cal­ly, pro­tect­ing and shield­ing her, seem­ing to sur­round her with sup­port and love. What a joy to see them again. And then in an instant, I saw our car pull up in the dri­ve­way and there, through the dri­ving rain, in flew Rose­mary, John, cry­ing, “We’re soaked and smelling of hors­es! Beware!” and then Avery, rac­ing to change her clothes (yes, the horsey ones stayed on her bed­room rug till I found them lat­er, her ONLY flaw!) and to take charge of her boy. The reunion between girl and cat was quite wonderful.

The dra­ma! The windy rain, the dark gray skies, the warm light with­in (the pow­er had come back on!), the soup bub­bling and the cat dash­ing here and there… Becky and Shel­ley took to each oth­er as I knew they would: two gen­tle, gen­er­ous souls with nev­er­the­less a slight­ly skewed sense of humor or else they would­n’t have any time for me! How I have come up so lucky with my friends, and lord knows with my moth­er-in-law, I can­not begin to say. But I take not a moment for granted.

We gath­ered around the table for din­ner, trad­ing crazy sto­ries about trav­els, our chil­dren, our pets, favorite foods, fam­i­ly tri­als and tribu­la­tions. The old brass church can­dle stand giv­en to us years ago by my friend Livia flick­ered over us all, as moths kamikazied into them… Final­ly it was time for Becky to run away, to meet her daugh­ter home from Guatemala, for Shel­ley and Erik to brave the high­way, for Hast­ings to set­tle in to his week away from home, heav­en for Avery. How dear of them to share him with us, how we appre­ci­ate it. A gor­geous evening.

How heart-wrench­ing to say good­bye to Becky, for who knows how long. But we have always over­come these sep­a­ra­tions in the past, and the same will hold for the future, with a cou­ple of extra added plane flights to be sure. We hugged an extra cou­ple of times, each hug encom­pass­ing for me so much his­to­ry and love.

Well, I’ll close tonight (and just con­cen­trate on itch­ing) with my rec­om­men­da­tion of a new blog: it’s Avery’s blog, and it’s ded­i­cat­ed to desserts! Well-writ­ten, eru­dite, a spe­cial blend of friend­ship and sweet things: give it a try and con­tribute your desserts to her effort! Lord knows with her sweet-tooth-chal­lenged moth­er, she needs all the help she can get! You go, Avery. Well done.