Gumbo, Fox Corner style

Readers who remember my attempts to make gumbo in New York may be interested to know that I recently made it again.

It was tricky enough buying the right ingredients in Manhattan  - with the sassafras being particularly difficult to find. Trying to source all the requirements in Gospel Oak, on a whim, during the Bank Holiday weekend, was a bit of a fool's errand.

On reflection it wasn't the best thought out meal. It came to mind because we had a tin of crab meat that needed eating. We're trying to use up food from the larder and the freezer, before the move next week. Translating a surplus tin of crab into an elaborate Cajun was a bit of a leap, I'll admit. To complete the recipe  I needed to buy some shell on king prawns, Andouille sausages, okra, and sassafras (and some other, less exotic stuff). The otherwise excellent Budgens of Belsize Park fell short, unsurprisingly.

So I made do with some Cumberland sausages, frozen king prawns (some of which I boiled in lieu of shells to make the stock), and frozen okra. A generous dash of cayenne made up for the lack of heat from the spicy Andouille sausages.

English gumbo ingredients

It may not have been entirely authentic but it was still jolly good.

Chuck enough okra in and it looks like the real thing

And now, instead of a tin of crab meat which needs eating, we have half a bag of frozen okra and another of frozen king prawns. Brilliant. Really helped clear those cupboards ready for the move.

Two truths and a white lie

These are three things I have told TLOML about Saltburn, the little surfer town in North Yorkshire that we are moving to this week:

1. Saltburn exists in a microclimate - something to do with being a distance east of the Pennines - which means the sky is always blue and it rarely rains.
2. People on the street will put money in a newborn pram. This tradition is dying out a bit but still persists among the elderly and the generous.
3. The tap water there is so deliciously soft we will never need to use our filter jug again, and our washing up liquid and showergel will lather up with abundance, and last for ages and ages.

One of them is not true. Can you guess which?

Gurning and smiling

According to all those baby books, Lady P is about to hit an important milestone. She should be able to smile any day now.

Actually 'What To Expect' tells me some babies can smile at just four weeks old.  Show offs. We won't judge her against arbitrary 'average child' milestones. Although we might note with some pride that she could hold her head up very early on, and has been bringing her hands to her mouth since birth like some sort of genius. Okay, so I am judging her against those milestones. I'm afraid it's irresistible.

To be honest the smiling thing is not just about my child hitting important developmental milestones. It's about a reward for me. Yup, that's right, pretty much entirely selfish. But I've been tending to her, feeding her, singing to her, comforting her, wiping her bottom, and more for almost six weeks - so far her main response has been to cry, puke on me, or fall asleep. A smile, a sign that she knows and likes me, would be a very nice reward.

In an attempt to coax that reward out of Lady P I am energetically smiling at her at all opportunities. She's definitely responding. Instead of the usual wail or sleepy face I'm getting some pretty impressive gurns in response.

For my American readers, allow me to explain gurning. It the name given to the pulling of a crazy squelchy face. There's a gurning competition every year at the Egremont Crab Fair. I know, it's weird. It's one of those uniquely British things that seem to have been made up for the purpose of demonstrating our quaint eccentricity in blogs like this one.

Here's a man competing in the gurning contest:

Copyright Ben Russell

Here are Lady P's latest attempts:

It's not quite the radiant smile I'm looking for, but I think it's a step in the right direction.

Northbound

It's been almost a year since we moved into Fox Corner. A year living in the same place. Madness. Plus we've got a newborn baby so we've got all this time on our hands, of course. So obviously we're going to move house again.

We're not just moving for kicks. We have good reasons. The many cockamamie features of Fox Corner are less charming than deeply irritating, and on a daily basis. Lady P takes up way more space than we had ever imagined. Her clothes need a bigger wardrobe than mine. And her sound - her wail, or her 'lovely singing' as I sometimes call it, in an effort to stay calm - fills the whole flat too, which makes it hard for TLOML to work from home. It's time to expand, and to upgrade.

But in our straitened circumstances (my 40% maternity leave pay cut) upgrading in posh NW3 seems a bit foolhardy. Instead we're moving to Saltburn, a lovely little surfer town in North Yorkshire. What's lovely about Saltburn is that a months' rent for a three bedroom house only costs a smidge more than we pay per week for our two bedroom shambles.

Saltburn: it's a lot like Malibu

Other lovely things about Saltburn include my favourite little sister and her family, a Victorian pier, and a couple of excellent chippies*. Plus my parents are five minutes drive away. It's a really nice low-key little town, the perfect place for us to explore family life and enjoy Lady P, far away from the distractions of London's bright lights. By which I mean, we figure she's going to trample all over our wining and dining social life anyway so we might as well leave London for a few months.

This will be our fourth house move together, and my fifth in 3.5 years. Since November 2009 I have moved from London to Beverly Hills to Malibu to Manhattan to London to Saltburn. So you know by now we've got it down. It's a doddle, since every time we move we clear out more stuff, and I get even better at establishing storage systems in new kitchens.

Apparently the most stressful events in a couple's life are moving house, getting married and having a baby. TLOML and I managed all three in the past year and we're still on pretty good terms, so I say bring it on: the Yorkshire life beckons.

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*For American readers: fish & chip shops, purveyors of chips, battered fish, battered sausages, mushy peas - and curry sauce or gravy depending on where in the country you are. Way more delightful than they sound.

Lady P gets the best of both worlds

Yesterday we registered Lady P as a US citizen born abroad. This required us to go to the US Embassy, a cool 50s building in Mayfair with a golden eagle the size of a Hummer on the roof - and a virtual moat of security measures on the outside. They could probably dispense with the Stars and Stripes and the 'US Embassy' sign, to be honest. There's no mistaking which Embassy it is.

After a couple of hours of shuffling from one queue to another, Lady P was confirmed as an acceptable American. Her passport and social security number will be with us in a week or two.

I'm pleased for her. Having dual citizenship means she''ll never need to go through the visa shenanigans that TLOML and I have, whether she chooses to live here or in the States. Having a British passport allows her to hop around Europe always joining the short queue at the borders. And she can visit Cuba, unlike other Americans. Having two passports means she could also visit Israel without it preventing her visiting the rest of the Middle East, should she wish. They could also be useful if she wants to pursue a career as an international criminal. Like most parents, we want to enable her to do whatever she wants in life, so I'm glad we've opened up a few options for her.

Best of all, she can get in the short queue at both ends of a Transatlantic flight. I'm just wondering whether, as her parent, I can skip the 'foreigners' queue too.