Too Much of a Good Thing

I've neither time nor wit for heavy-duty rumination at the moment. I'm too busy gathering rosebuds -- both literally and figuratively.

Perhaps it's because of the flowering season; perhaps it's down to the rare and glorious sunshine; but May and June in England are cram-ful of buzzing activity.

Even though I do have a Garboesque side, at the moment I'm just a girl who can't say no.

In the last nine days: I've been to a 40th birthday party, a 50th birthday party, three children's birthday parties, a BBQ and a summer fete. I've had 15 fourteen year-olds dancing, laughing, screeching, and eating Mexican food in my house. I've had 15 rather more restrained old friends eating hamburgers in my garden. I've been to London with one set of Houston visitors, and Hampton Court with another set. I'm gearing up for another weekend of much the same -- with friends for July 4, two more birthday parties and the Race for Life.

Why am I living my life like it's a race?

On Saturday, I spent a chunk of the day at my youngest daughter's summer fete. In a moment of true madness, I volunteered to make 100 roll-out sugar cookies (in the shape of ice cream cones; very cute, actually) for a decorate-your-own-cookie booth. Although I have burbled on about my enthusiasm for cookies, quite recently in fact, I do think there is a limit -- and I may have reached it.

Mae West once suggested that "too much of a good thing can be wonderful . . . " but I'm fairly certain that she wasn't talking about cookies.

I might wear myself out for friends, but I draw the line at baked goods.

I know that one day it will be November, when the days fade by late afternoon, and everyone hunkers down. I will remember, wistfully perhaps, these long, frantic days. But at the moment, I feel like I could do with a quiet afternoon in a darkened room.

But never mind that! Tomorrow I'm off to Wimbledon.

Sports Day Report . . . and some more cookies

I spent approximately 7 1/2 hours at my youngest daughter's Sports Day today.


While I have been to versions of "sports day" (in other words, competitive races between school children requiring parental attendance) all over the world, Sports Day in England takes the biscuit. First of all, it takes place on a Saturday -- a day that many people mistakenly feel should be given over to the leisure activity of their choice. Second, it requires sartorial decision making that must span the challenges of both weather and fashion. Thirdly, it involves competitive picnicking, drinking and tent-building -- should you be so inclined. (For more on this, you might enjoy reading multitude -- who attends the same Sports Day that I do.) Fourth, it requires the endurance usually only needed for weddings that have lengthy outdoor receptions peopled by (mostly) strangers.


Poor Sigmund; he hates Sports Day.


Last year, my oldest daughter's birthday fell on Sports Day -- and, oh, what a shame . . . but I had already booked theatre tickets! While I was swanning around London, with several of my dearest friends in the world, poor Sigmund had to accompany little daughter to the dreaded event. To make a bad thing worse, it was drizzling. And cold. And he didn't know anyone -- as he had been living in Holland. He coped as best he could, but several people brought back tales that he had been discovered sleeping in the back seat of our car!


This year I gave Sigmund a pass -- and he just showed up for lunch, which was somewhat tolerable for him, if not wholly enjoyable. Even so, he did ask this (rhetorical, I believe) question: Does anyone really like Sports Day?


Well . . . actually, yes they do.

According to my close observation, the people who like Sports Day are (generally) the people whose kids are good at sports. Unsurprisingly, as athletic ability is bred in the blood and the bone and perhaps even the badgering attitude, the people whose kids are good at sports are usually rather sporty themselves. These sporty people understand what is going on -- not only that, but they find it intrinsically interesting and entertaining.


Needless to say, as fairly unsporty sorts, Sigmund and I spend a lot of time wandering around aimlessly between the various spread-out events and are usually chatting when anything exciting occurs. If I were to enter the Mother's race, (which I wouldn't, under any circumstance), I would probably be like the poor soul who (1) fell down, and (2) starting losing her skirt, which managed both to slip down and gape open, and (3) ahem, "popped out" of her blouse -- thus exposing herself on all fronts. Worst of all, perhaps, she came dead last. As for Sigmund, he left sporting humiliations in the graveyard of his childhood memories -- a place to which he does not plan on returning.


I can like Sports Day, but only under specific conditions. Specific weather conditions. If the weather is sunny, but not hot, breezy but not windy, I can enjoy even an epic outdoor activity. But mess with this balance, and I become what the English hate above all things: a moaner.

Earlier tonight I was reading an article which mentioned neurasthenia -- and I wondered if there was some similar mental/physical condition which explains an oversensitivity to weather. Unlike most of the English, who seem impervious to the weather, I am hugely sensitive to its vagaries. Until today, I had carried a dread of the "Sports Day" fixture on the annual school calendar. But until today, I had never experienced a sunny Sports Day.

In the sparkling sunshine, Sports Day seemed charming. The headmaster in his blue blazer looked dapper. The many dogs frolicking on the field were positively adorable. The long queue at the (free!) ice cream truck seemed like a good way to bide one's time. Hour after hour of clapping and shouting "Well Done!" was quite pleasant. In fact, the only bad thing that I can think of is that someone left out the chocolate chip cookies and they melted in the sun.

So with that brief segue, I move on to a recipe for Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies, as per Debski's request -- and with a bit of commentary, of course.



Cream together:
8 oz butter
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla.


Add two eggs, beating well after each addition.


Sift together:
2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt


Add flour mixture to butter mixture, beating until just combined.


Stir in 2 cups of chocolate chips and 1 cup of chopped pecans or walnuts -- but obviously, this last step can be modified to suit your tastes.


Drop by rounded tablespoons onto an ungreased baking sheet and bake for 9 -11 minutes at a 375F/190C oven.



This is the Tollhouse recipe -- taken directly from the back of the Nestle semi-sweet morsel wrapper. (An imported good which I try never to be without.) For those English people who do not have the opportunity to visit the U.S. and bring back chocolate chips and Crisco sticks, I offer some good news: Marks & Spencer has just started offering a "plain chocolate chip" which has proven to be darn close to the original. So far it is the best chocolate chip I've managed to encounter in the UK.


A few more words on chocolate chip cookies: When I was a child, we made these cookies with Crisco (vegetable shortening) instead of butter. People used to fall into two different camps when it came to baking, and to this day my mother knows which of her friends prefer a "butter" chocolate chip cookie and which swear by substituting Crisco. In my considered opinion, the BEST chocolate chip cookie is made with 4 oz of butter and 4 oz of Crisco. Butter for taste, and Crisco for texture.


I think that you would approve of this slight amendment to the original recipe, Debski, as I know that you are a person who appreciates a bit of this and a bit of that. I'm not sure how you feel about Sports Day, but I bet that I can make a pretty good guess.

I'm So Jammy*

*Jammy: Brit slang lucky: jammy so-and-sos!
Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition 2006


I've always believed that good things come to people who frequent bookstores.


A couple of weeks ago, I was at my local Border's and I noticed a flyer for a "Meet the Author" series at a local hotel. The author in question happened to be Jay Rayner, the Observer's restaurant critic, and a writer who I read on a weekly basis. Rayner has a new book out -- The Man Who Ate The World -- and I had just read a really entertaining excerpt from this very book in a recent edition of the paper. I remembered his description of dining alone in a restaurant for the first time (at 11) and ordering escargots, and also some anecdotes about the important role of food in his family life. His writing has a lot of humour and mockery in it (self-deprecating and otherwise), and these are qualities that I always appreciate! A funny foodie: who could be better company?


Rayner's mother is Claire Rayner -- a well-known journalist and "agony aunt" who has been a kind of "Jewish mother" to the English reading public for many years. In the first chapter of his book, titled "I Want Proper Dinner," he orients the reader to the family table.


"I always said that culturally I was only a Jew by food, and it's true that there was no room at the Rayner house for ritual or faith. The Jewish God was far too picky an eater to be given space at our table. Forego sausages and bacon? Reject shellfish and cheeseburgers, all in the name of mumbo-jumbo? Don't be ridiculous.


Yet there was, I think, something fundamentally Jewish about our way with food: the noisiness of the dinner table, the stomach-aching generosity, the deep comfort we sought from it. Food was what we did." (Rayner, p. 8)


The flyer made the special "evening" sound irresistible: key words included "champagne," "delicious three-course dinner" and the real clincher -- "a copy of The Man Who Ate the World to take away with you." I figured that even if the dinner and entertainment were a bust, I would still have the BOOK! Plus, I had vowed only recently to avail myself of the local cultural scene -- when and where I could find it. For insurance purposes, we invited two close friends who we rarely get to see because of distance and scheduling difficulties. Sometimes strangers at the table make good company . . . but sometimes they don't.

So here comes the jammy bit: out of a crowd of say, 100, we somehow lucked into being sat at the equivalent of the "head table." On my right was the manager of the hotel -- a charming, kind man whose presence ensured that our wine glasses were constantly being topped up. On the other side of him was Jay Rayner -- the man of the evening. On Rayner's right was an older woman -- all grandma on the top half, but with noticeably sexy parrot-green shoes. She turned out to be a food writer and editor with much wisdom and experience -- and lots of interesting things to say. Her husband had a delightfully sharp tongue, and I particularly remember him tut-tutting Rayner when he named The Fat Duck as his favorite UK restaurant. (Don't you know that restaurant critics always get this question?) Thus ensued a lively table debate on the merits of the Heston Blumenthal style of cooking. On Sigmund's left was a youngish man with distinctive curly hair. He looked strangely familiar, and halfway through the dinner we discovered that he was James Nathan, the 2008 winner of the Masterchef competition. As this is a wildly popular program in the UK, this charming man had the rather ego-denting honour of sitting next to practically the only person in the country who had NO IDEA who he was. Interestingly enough, Nathan had started out his professional life as a barrister (the English word for lawyer) and Sigmund ended up quizzing him on this topic before the rest of the table fell upon him with curiousity and delight.


Well, as Sigmund said, I was "in my element." Never shy about coming forward, my tongue was further loosened by the really excellent wines: a really ambrosial Riesling and something rich and spicy and red (my favorite!). Question for the wine buffs amongst us: what sort of red, of my description, might have been served with lamb? I particularly remember the moment in which I held forth at the table and described, in great detail, my newfound infatuation with cashew cookies. I was mostly speaking to Nathan, and in my memory at least, he was enthralled by this recipe -- which I could remember perfectly, as I have made it twice in the same number of days.

Funnily enough, for a foodie evening, the food was nice enough -- but hardly five-star memorable. No "menu" was provided, as is usually de rigueur at these occasions, so I am just going to have to wing it on the description. We started with a foie gras, that everyone else raved over, but that I didn't even finish because I was too busy talking to Rayner about Texas food. (He has a scene in one of his novels, The Apologist, in which the character has to quickly assemble a feast in Texas -- with the aid of several Apache helicopters with which to procure the ingredients. Rayner could only remember that one went to the Central Market in Houston, and another was dispatched to New Orleans to pick up the wine.) The main course was lamb, on a bed of vegetables (I know there were carrots and broad beans) and some mashed potatoes that have not stuck in my mind at all. At this point, it should be noted that I was fairly well-lubricated and therefore my palate was a bit numb. Dessert was a creamy molded thing that was probably a panna cotta. It came with an impressive chocolate garnish, rather like a marbled sail. I can't remember if I ate this, or just toyed with it. There were also petit fours, including some toothsome tiny strawberries dipped in dark chocolate.

In between courses, Rayner would stand up and read bits of various of his books to us. He also talked about the job of the restaurant critic -- the point of which, he claims, is chiefly to sell newspapers. Whilst a good meal is obviously nicer to eat, it is the "bad" dining experience which makes for better copy. Not only does the bad meal provide more scope for creative writing, but apparently it is also appreciated more by the readers. A negative review, it seems, is enjoyed by everyone but the restaurant owner.

Although Rayner claims that being a restaurant critic has pretty much no downside, (and didn't we foodies always suspect this?), his latest book came about because he thought that maybe he needed a bigger goal: a foodie "Everest" to climb. As the Michelin system expanded its reaches to take in New York City and other top food towns, Rayner considered that he was the proper person to "search for the perfect dinner" . . . which is the subtitle to The Man Who Ate the World. As Ella Fitzgerald sang, "Nice work if you can get it." So far I have only been able to skim the book, what with my Booker Challenge nagging at me, but as a "taster" I can tell you that Rayner eventually visited Las Vegas, Moscow, Dubai, Tokyo, New York, London and Paris -- all in the letter and spirit of gruelling research. He read (and talked) about some bits of eating that took place in Tokyo -- and it sounded like just the sort of fascinating stuff that makes me realize just how little I've really experienced in the gustatory world.

When Rayner inscribed my copy of his book with the exhortation to "Eat Well," it felt like an honor, a goal, and a challenge.

Sunny Day Slacker

Someday soon, (maybe when it starts raining again), I will come in out of the sun to write a "proper" post. But in the meantime, I feel that it is a crime against nature to be inside the house.

The English character has been formed by constant complaint, much of it against the reliably miserable weather, but on a sunny May day I would favorably compare England's beauties to anywhere on this earth. The wisteria and clematis are blooming, our shaggy green lawn has been strewn overnight with yellow daisies, and the air is like champagne.

It is the kind of weather that is celebrated in Romantic poetry. Indeed, a long-haired poet to read me sonnets and peel me grapes would be just the thing. But as the next-best (and certainly more achievable) thing, I think that I will haul out a chair and spend an hour or two catching up with The Blind Assassin. I will make a cup of tea; I will add a cashew cookie or two; it will be pretty close to blissful.

What with the tennis and the walking and the other whatnots (children, domestic duties), I'm struggling to make it through my Booker list. I keep seeing pictures of Mariella Frostrup (one of the Booker judges this year) at glamourous parties and wondering how in the world she is managing all of HER required reading -- what with her two small children, assorted journalistic jobs, and the swanning around with George Clooney. She must read a lot faster than I do, or else have the sleeping requirements of Margaret Thatcher.

So how is everyone "gettin' trew?" (Trini expression, phonetically spelled)

I am nearly halfway through "Assassin" now, and although I am the first to bang on about how I don't care about the plot and just read for detail and characterization, I am starting to want the "plot" to coalesce and pick up some momentum. Yes, Atwood is technically proficient and full of cleverness, but I feel as if I'm at an emotional remove.

Is it just that glorious sun which is distracting me?

Perfect Day in Texas

Recipe for a Perfect Day:
four cousins, ages 10 -13
a true blue, cloudless sky
eggs, bacon and biscuits for breakfast
long walks in the sparkling fresh air
bluebonnets
fishing down by the creek
badminton family tournament
making cookies -- sugar and snickerdoodle
lots of horsing around, tomfoolery, and juvenile jokes
a weenie roast
toasting marshmallows under the stars

I hadn't really planned on posting from Texas, but I felt moved to honor this perfectly splendid day . . . and since my family is pitiful when it comes to taking photographs, words will have to make do.

I do not worship any god, and every now and then I feel that lack -- especially when I feel overwhelmed with gratefulness and I want to give thanks.

After days of oppressive humidity, a cracking storm washed a swathe of Texas clean last night. When the day dawns so fresh and bright, a person just can't help but feel reborn.

Eating breakfast with my family -- parents, two daughters, and niece and nephew -- I had a moment of intense, palpable happiness. As I looked around the table, sunshine streaming through the windows, Nanci Griffith singing in the background, perfect tender biscuits being drizzled with honey and butter, I felt profoundly glad to be there.

Like winter moles emerging from hibernation, we've frolicked in the sun as if energy and youth were limitless.

My oldest daughter summed it up: "This has been one of my perfect days."