we must save Ratty

It’s a first: fund-rais­ing on Kris­ten in Lon­don! But as I was munch­ing my lunch in front of the BBC mid­day news today, I saw a sto­ry that made me sit up and stop chew­ing. The Berk­shire, Buck­ing­hamshire and Oxford­shire Wildlife Trust are appeal­ing for dona­tions to help them buy 72 acres of land in Berk­shire, land and a riv­er that inspired Ken­neth Gra­hame to write the icon­ic Wind in the Wil­lows. Appar­ent­ly this area is home to all the Rat­tys, Toads (and pre­sum­ably their Toad Halls), Mole and all their friends. How I remem­ber the hours and hours spent read­ing that book aloud to Avery when she was tiny, and then watch­ing the hilar­i­ous films. It took the devot­ed atten­tion of both John and me singly to get through that long book the first time, and I imag­ine that expe­ri­ence is one that taught Avery the ben­e­fits of a long atten­tion span. Not for her the instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion of Archie comics! Oh, wait, that’s one of her favorites as well. I sup­pose it’s the eclec­tic life that pleas­es. Oh, and if you need a lit­tle-child present there is almost noth­ing nicer than the Jill Barklem set of sto­ries called “Bram­bly Hedge,” where you get not only your voles, but your basic set of oth­er hedge inhab­i­tants as well, most­ly mice as I recall. I bet you if I offered to read aloud from “Bram­bly Hedge” at bed­time, Avery would still be hap­py to listen.

Any­way, my point is this: hav­ing spent many hap­py hours with “Wind in the Wil­lows”, and almost as many hap­py hours lis­ten­ing to our Con­necti­cut friend Anne talk about her work with the South­bury Land Trust, I can tell you that sup­port­ing a land or wildlife pre­serve is a good thing to do. There are 80% few­er water voles (i.e Rat­ty) now than there were just 20 years ago, poor things. But help­ing to buy this tract of land will ensure that Rat­tys can come and go as they please and no McMan­sions will be built. Why, it was only this sum­mer that Avery was feed­ing Young Rol­lie’s goats on the farm for­mer­ly known as the Lov­dal Farm down the road from our house, recent­ly acquired by the South­bury Land Trust. What if 40 hous­es had been built on that land? Well, in any case it’s food for thought. There you go, now I’ll step off my soap­box and store it under my desk for the next cause that takes my fancy.

Oth­er than that bit of news, it’s a grey, rainy day here in May­fair, per­fect for pick­ing up my bedrag­gled child­hood copy of “Ammie, Come Home,” the won­der­ful George­town ghost sto­ry that I read every Novem­ber, for cozi­ness sake. The rain means also, how­ev­er, no top down on Emmy when I go pick up Avery and dri­ve her to the sta­ble. It’s always the first thing she says when she approach­es the car: “Top down, top down!” I read with my Form Three gulls this morn­ing and had the plea­sure of hear­ing about four pages of Har­ry Pot­ter with the amaz­ing Vic­to­ria. It’s so much fun just to watch these gulls’ lit­tle Eng­lish mouths form the words. Next week is the Book Fair, and at the gro­cery store yes­ter­day I was forced to pause in the cat food aisle and take an urgent mobile call from the Librar­i­an, Mrs Palmer, ask­ing for my assis­tance. Absolute­ly! This is actu­al­ly Book Fair week at PS 234 in New York, so it comes at the right time.

Yes­ter­day I spent most of the day order­ing tick­ets for us to see “A Christ­mas Car­ol” at the Shaw The­atre, and a tra­di­tion­al choral con­cert of Christ­mas songs at the dread­ed Bar­bi­can. I’d bet­ter bring my walk­ing stick with the com­pass in the head and a flask of brandy slung around my neck. Then a long ses­sion dis­cussing the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of home­work for Avery, over a bowl of (I’m ashamed to say) glo­ri­ous­ly crunchy and salty french fries at Patis­serie Valerie. I know I should be giv­ing her gra­nola bars or some­thing, but it’s hard to resist those fries. Plus she need­ed all the strength she could get to cope with Eng­lish revi­sions, sci­ence ques­tions, maths timesta­bles, French mem­o­riza­tion. As usu­al we cracked up over the word for “lawyer” and “avo­ca­do” being the same. “Je suis un avo­cat,” “I am an avo­ca­do.” Juve­nile bilin­gual humor always gets me. Luck­i­ly for both of us and our appetites, spaghet­ti and meat­balls were in store for our din­ner. Now, my meat­ball recipe is flex­i­ble in the extreme, unlike the quite, quite per­fect recipe made by John’s assis­tant Olimpia. I can­not com­pete. Her name ends in a vow­el, she was born in Italy, enough said. Maybe if I called mine Nor­we­gian meat­balls the bar would be low­er. But Avery likes mine well enough, and I sus­pect Olimpia of leav­ing out some cru­cial secret step, rub­bing her hands togeth­er and know­ing that I will nev­er ever be able to achieve her suc­cess. No, she’s too sweet for that. But any­way, mine are easy and you don’t have to wor­ry about their stick­ing togeth­er prop­er­ly and look­ing nice, because they end up their cook­ing being braised in the toma­to sauce. That way all flaws are hid­den, an impor­tant ingre­di­ent in my non-per­fec­tion­is­tic cook­ing style.

First you want to start your toma­to sauce so it can cook down while you play with the meat­balls. It’s the eas­i­est sauce in the world and smells heav­en­ly as it cooks.

Kris­ten’s Toma­to Sauce
(serves four)

3 tbsps olive oil
3 cloves gar­lic, fine­ly minced
1 medi­um onion, fine­ly chopped
3 soup-size cans whole peeled plum tomatoes
1 cup red wine
3 tbsps Ital­ian seasoning
salt and pep­per to taste

In a wide saucepan, saute gar­lic and onions in the olive oil, till soft. Then add all the oth­er ingre­di­ents and pre­pare to wait. And stir. And wait, and stir some more. You can also break up the whole toma­toes with the back of your spoon. I advise against start­ing with chopped toma­toes because they just cook down into a mush. This way, you end up with nice rec­og­niz­able and beau­ti­ful bites of toma­to and a rich sauce.

Spaghet­ti and Meatballs
(serves four, or two peo­ple two nights in a row, in my life)

good splash olive oil
1 medi­um red onion fine­ly chopped
3 cloves gar­lic, fine­ly chopped

1 lb ground beef, lamb, pork or my com­bo of all three
one hand­ful pars­ley, fine­ly chopped
3 tbsps Ital­ian seasoning
1 tsp dried basil
1/3 cup home­made bread crumbs
1/2 cup ricot­ta cheese
1/2 cup grat­ed parme­san cheese
1 egg, beaten

First, in a large skil­let saute the gar­lic and onions in the olive oil and let cool off the stove. Then mix all the oth­er ingre­di­ents togeth­er. When gar­lic and onions are cool enough to touch, add them and mix, using your hands (sor­ry to say) at the end. Form into balls that fit in the palm of your hand (you should get about six). Heat more olive oil in the skil­let you used for the gar­lic and onions and place the meat­balls in a sin­gle lay­er. Fry on one side for about three min­utes, then gen­tly turn them over and fry on the oth­er for three min­utes. Gen­tly remove the meat­balls one by one with a tongs, and place in your toma­to sauce. This can sim­mer indef­i­nite­ly, at a very low sim­mer, while you make your sal­ad and cor­rect your child’s geog­ra­phy home­work and boil your spaghet­ti. To serve, place a tongs-full of spaghet­ti on a plate, add two meat­balls, and ladle over sauce. Top with grat­ed parmesan.

It was so fun­ny last night, though: first, I dis­cov­ered I was out of but­ter, a com­plete cat­a­stro­phe in my fat-laden house­hold (I usu­al­ly add a pat to my toma­to sauce at the last minute, but it isn’t nec­es­sary). Then I found I was out of lemons for my Abso­lut Cit­ron cock­tail as well as to sprin­kle on the avo­ca­do I insist on eat­ing every night as I cook din­ner. Just sliced, with lemon juice and Mal­don salt that my moth­er in law and I are obsessed with (I have to add here that if you go on the Mal­don web­site, by click­ing the hot link, you can down­load a movie called, I am not mak­ing this up, “The Mag­ic of Salt.” So far even I do not have THAT much time on my hands). So then I dis­cov­ered I was out of salt! And I had no milk. Final­ly, I asked Avery in des­per­a­tion, “What is, in your opin­ion, the main ingre­di­ent in spaghet­ti and meat­balls?” “The meat­balls,” she answered prompt­ly. “Oh, thank good­ness,” I breathed in relief, “because we’re out of spaghetti.”

(Lin­gui­ni worked fine.)