sal­ad

I feel like I need a vaca­tion from my week­end! Yes­ter­day we walked over four miles after drop­ping Avery off just past Hol­land Park, at her new friend Sophi­a’s gor­geous house (more on that lat­er), and then when I went to fetch her I decid­ed to get on the phone to my mama and walk all the way there. Today if I were not sur­round­ed by clean­ing lady and elec­tri­cian check­ing all our bits and pieces, I would be flat out on the sofa with a hot water bot­tle and a kit­ty. It could still hap­pen, when every­one aban­dons me.

And Avery’s been invit­ed to play at Jade’s house on Fri­day! How nice. Her glam­ourous mum approached me at dropoff this morn­ing, nev­er my favorite time of day to chat but oh well, and said, “How would Fri­day be? Right, good. Sort­ed. Love­ly. Bye!” and I felt like I’d been hit by a steam­roller. Unlike at PS 234, no one here has yet learned that I should nev­er be asked to make plans at 8:15 in the morn­ing because there’s such a sig­nif­i­cant chance that I will not remem­ber a thing I said I would do. But here, now I’ve a record of our plans. Don’t let me forget.

class=“mobile-post”>Made a sal­ad last night that I want you all to try (except my moth­er who thinks avo­ca­dos taste like mod­el­ing clay). Very sim­ple and pret­ty, in fact pret­ty enough to post a pic­ture of it fin­ished on my kitchen counter last evening, before John demol­ished most of it even before din­ner began. I just man­aged to sal­vage a few mouth­fuls for myself. You run your knife all around an avo­ca­do, length­wise, and then twist it so as to sep­a­rate the two halves (one will con­tain the pit). Then run your knife down the inside of the non-pit half of the avo­ca­do, again
length­wise, in thin slices, and turn the avo­ca­do half inside out, like you would a man­go if you’ve ever watched Her­cule Poirot pre­pare a man­go. If you haven’t, just trust me, that’s how you do it. Pull off the slices, even if some of them break, and fan them out on a plate. Then slice a ball of moz­zarel­la nice and thick and inter­sperse with the avo­ca­do. Then halve tiny cher­ry toma­toes, and scat­ter them across the sal­ad. Sprin­kle with bal­sam­ic vine­gar and dot with spoons­ful of pesto, sprin­kle with salt, and you’re done. Hide from hus­band if you want any for yourself.