A Mass of Odds and Ends

One of the advantages of Skype is that I can use it when I’m away to apply maternal cross examining techniques, watching the teenagers turn away when I ask the question they don’t want to answer. There are therefore few surprises for me when I get back (I tutted disapprovingly to find the washing that I hung out a week ago still languishing on the line but I can’t pretend I was surprised to find it there) so it is fun to find the small intense world of our pets still functioning in its timeless way, Night still longing for Smokey to leave her alone in her dog bed, so that she can really spread herself out.

Studying my shopping list you might think me lightly deranged: Maldon sea salt, Colman’s mustard powder, Lapsang Souchong tea, secondhand books, blank index cards - just as well I brought another suitcase. Whilst being reminded of all the things I left behind when I moved to Italy I realise how much of my new life I already take for granted. I’m now too accustomed to silence to cope with the radio, despite my twenty years as a Radio 4 addict and I’ve greeted a couple of startled shop keepers with a cheery “Buon Giorno”. I struggle to sum up what is good about life in Italy for interested friends and acquaintances, trying to put my finger on what it is that makes it work for us all. Meanwhile, back in Mogliano, it’s market day.

I’m not there - I’m in England this week, leaving an entirely masculine household, Aldo, the boys, and my brother. I’m not sure what they’re all up to, (this is a nostalgic photograph of Christmas) but I gather that it includes a lot of eating, drinking, and mad journeys on icy roads. I call in occasionally asking teenagers to be sensible (”you’ve said sensible at least five times now”, one of them told me) and wondering if the adults could try as well…

This is a recipe that Sam found and loves to prepare. He takes over the kitchen, and between shouting endless queries to me “where’s the vegetable stock” and “Can’t find the lemon zester” casually informs Jasper that once he has finished the war torn cooking zone will be his to repair. Irritating though it is, the end product rewards us all.

• two shallots
• two sticks celery
• 60gr butter
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 350gr arborio rice
• 1,25 - 2 litres vegetable stock
• juice of half a lemon
• zest of whole lemon
• 5 fresh sage leaves
• leaves from small sprig of fresh rosemary
• 4 Tbsp cream
• 4 Tbsp grated parmesan
• salt and pepper to taste

Bring the stock to a gentle simmer, and in another pot soften the finely chopped shallot and celery in 30gr of the butter and the oil. Add the rice and stir until it is well coated and partly translucent. Add a ladleful of the stock and stir over a low flame until it is absorbed, then continue adding a ladle at a time for about five minutes. Then add the rest of the stock and cover over the lowest flame possible, leaving it whilst you zest the lemon and chop the herbs, and add to the rice, stirring again. Put the lid back on and mix the lemon juice with the parmesan, cream, salt and pepper. Check to see if the rice is al dente, once it is mix in the creamy lemony mixture and the remaining butter, leave it for two minutes or so, then serve.

Many years ago I used to paint regularly, now I just do it on holiday. I found this little folding sketchbook in Venice a few years ago and have slowly filled it up with sketches, mostly drawn whilst waiting for yet another delicious platter of seafood to be placed in front of me. It is very nearly full, so I decided to try my hand at making my own. Its only flaw (to get a technical for a moment) is that the paper is just slightly too thin for my taste, so I bought a heavier gauge watercolour paper, and cut the entire sheet into rectangles, each one the size of two pages. Then I glued them together, interleaved, and sewed heavy canvas onto the front and the back.

It would work as a photograph album as well, with a photograph on each page. The finished product is bulkier than the original, but still small enough to fit in a pocket.

Night the dog and I go walking at the Abbey early in the morning. In January and February she is as excited as ever when getting into the car, but it is a different story when I open the door at the Abbey. Her look is easily interpreted “You want me to get out of this nice warm car … to walk on THAT?” This morning matters were not improved by a misadventure on the steep road between Mogliano and the Abbey.

If you look carefully at this misty picture taken this morning you can see Mogliano outlined on the skyline, the road winding through the hills lined by pines. As I swooped around one of these curves a bag filled with the sweepings of my sewing room tipped slowly onto Night’s head. When she finally emerged from the car she was barely recognisable through the coating of tiny bits of colourful cashmere.

It is so hard not to become a mother bore. One of the greatest joys when Sam started nursery school (apart from the fact that my tiny world opened a fraction and I thought Goodness, I could compose a symphony, write a novel, take over a small country - with THREE FREE HOURS a day!) was the much awaited Parent-Teacher evening. At last, I thought, I can talk about my FAVOURITE subject - at length. And no doubt I did (the years between have mercifully obscured the memory) until the penny dropped - that there were another twenty four other children in the class, and the teacher was possibly less than fascinated by my recounting his extraordinary insights into life, his precocious skills, his every tiny habit and way. And now he’s eighteen, and the desire to go on for hours and hours is still there, but luckily for everyone around me I’ve learnt to do it quietly, in my head.

Sometimes we stay in town - just five minutes from the beach. One Sunday a month this square is filled with a fascinating flea market, today just a few teenagers pretending to be tourists.

I hesitate to give you this recipe. Introducing it to teenagers can be dangerous, Sam has to know that there is a loaf in the house or he starts to hyperventilate, fearful that starvation and famine lie just around the corner. He eats two slices for breakfast, another after lunch, and a final slice after supper, all lightly toasted on the grill and with thin slivers of butter. If you let people eat it straight out of the oven there is no stopping them…

• 115gr butter
• 140gr sugar
• 2 beaten eggs
• 3 mashed ripe bananas
• 250gr self raising flour
• 100gr dark chocolate
• pinch of salt and teaspoon of all spice

Beat the butter, add the sugar, then add the beaten eggs. When it is well mixed add the mashed banana, the flour and salt, then the chocolate and all spice.  Spoon into a loaf tin and bake at 180° for approximately 40 minutes - ovens vary, it can take longer.

Three times a week I and other beautiful lissom young things exercise in a (mirror-free) gym run by a stoic German woman called Sabina who has survived many hardships in the last few months, a long dramatic story involving a doomed house (site of a brutal double murder four years ago - oh yes, everything happens here), rival gym instructors and the carabinieri. Another time, perhaps. Recently we noticed that the ages on our identity documents were beginning to intrude on our general flexibility and we needed some yoga. Twilight, intrigued in an offhand feline way by the idea of a species that can’t lick its navel with a leg thrown casually behind its ear, gave yoga a brief thought before shuddering with disgust at our clumsiness.