The magic of technology brings America's game to an English garden

When the English ask me what I miss most about America, the answer is easy: Baseball.

You learn to live without closet space, customer service and huge tumble dryers. You realise that massive helpings, drive-thru everything and abundant parking is actually bad for your health. American food brands are getting ever more common, allowing me to buy both Oreos and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese within a few miles of my house, should I ever need to go on a real comfort food binge.

But baseball? There's no substitute, and up until recently, no satisfying way to follow it from overseas. I tried to switch to cricket, and while I've gained a bit of understanding and a great appreciation for the game, it's not my game. Setting the VCR to tape Channel 5's overnight coverage of its weekly baseball broadcast was some consolation, but wasn't my team often enough. And was the American League far too often. Going on line to check box scores and read game reports is OK, but lacks that lovely bouquet of sound (the hum of the crowd, the distinctive cadence of a baseball broadcaster, the muted yells of the fielders, the crack of the bat) that so typifies American summer.

To put this longing into context, let me remind you that I come from St. Louis, a town where baseball is on par with religion. Sure, we have other sports teams, but the majority of the population see them as a bit of distraction between the opening pitch and, hopefully, post season play on that beautiful, green diamond. Our passion is fuelled by a remarkable history: the oldest professional sports franchise West of the Mississippi (playing since 1882); the most successful team in the National League with 10 world championships, second only to the Yankees (with a probably un-catchable 26); linked indelibly to that other civic icon, the Busch brewery, through past ownership and the present ballpark name. The Cardinals, quite simply, have been woven through my life since before my earliest memories.

In recent years, that bond has become a distant one. But no longer. With a functioning wireless network, a powerful new Macintosh laptop and a $108 season subscription to MLB.com, baseball is now at my fingertips, on demand. The web site is an impressive one, offering me a full archive of both television and radio broadcasts of all the games in the league, and live coverage should I want to stay up until crazy hours.

And thus it was that I found myself in my garden all weekend, enjoying the spring sunshine and painting my new storage shed while listening to the broadcast of the Redbirds' visit to Wrigley Field. It's hard to imagine anything more calming than the smooth, repetitive stroke of the brush, matched with the soothing voices of the announcers. On quiet, working-from-home weekdays, I'm firing up the laptop at lunchtime, starting the game and letting it run on low volume in the background.

Everything else in the world can be angst-ridden and gloomy, but I can now feed on a regular diet of Albert Pujols home runs and give thanks that I may be living to see one of the greatest players of all time. And on my team, too. The counterpoints of wins and losses, home runs and strike outs, brilliant catches and errors provide escapism from the less thrilling ups and downs of the real world. In one lovely burst of Internet brilliance, I am as connected to my home team as if I still lived 30 minutes from the ballpark and was attending frequently. I haven't followed the boys this closely since I was a miserable rookie in my first, horrifically awful full time job. Come to think of it, the markets had collapsed and everyone was pretty miserable then, too. At least with about 150 games left to play before the post season, my emotional escapism will be well amortised before we reach the post season.

Sometimes, technology really is a wonderful thing.

Easter, more bad weather trigger the first extravagant dinner party of the year

I've found that the state of the kitchen the morning after a dinner party and the bottle count in the recycle bin is generally a pretty good indication of the evening's success.

This morning I stumbled into a disaster of a kitchen, piled high with china, crystal, serving pieces and cooking pots. My bleary eyes checked out the bin and discovered that five people had consumed one bottle of champagne, four of white wine, two and a half of red and one entire bottle of port. Happy Easter. And thank God the bank holiday Monday could be spent in recovery.

When my guest count went from two to four at the last minute it was a great excuse to get out the crystal, lay the table properly and indulge in a little proper multi-course entertainment. But first, in order to work up an appetite and combat a few anticipated calories, a walk. Everyone met up at my place at 1 before heading up to Cliveden for a four-mile ramble around the grounds. The weather was still grey, but the rain had let up, so set a good pace through the formal gardens, down along the Thames and back through the woodlands.

Back home, stiff joints collapsed and received a libation of kir royale while I got together the nibbles. I started with an array we could pick at to sate our initial hunger: parma ham, anchovy stuffed olives, home-made roasted red pepper hummus and roasted tomato bruschetta. The luxury of the long weekend gave me the chance to try three new recipes, the first in this course. Stuffed eggs, maremma style, were like devilled eggs but stuffed with a paste made from the egg yolks and spicy sausage. The team verdict on this recipe: average, could make a decent first course on its own, but probably not something to bring into the standard rota of dinner party favourites.

This sounds like quite a lot, but everyone (being alumni of past Ferrara dining) had skipped lunch, and the proper first course was still an hour away.

That was another first-time production: peanut soup. This came with the great advantage of giving me an excuse to use my impressive soup tureen, which hasn't been removed from its lofty shelf for years. Unlike the eggs, this recipe was a universal hit. Quickly dubbed "sate in a bowl", it was indeed suffused with subtle Asian flavours. The richness of the peanut butter is blended with chicken stock and a variety of spices, then cut with lime juice, giving a pleasant balance. Hillary contributed one of the fine Chablis she had purchased on the Northwestern Girls' trip to Burgundy last October, particularly appropriate as other guests included Iain and Charlotte, at whose house we had stayed for that holiday.

The main course was yet another new dish, this time Cajun stuffed ham. That was a ham, cut in half, then filled with a stuffing of sweet potatoes, pears, raisins, fig jam and spices. The stuffed ham then received a coat of skewered pears and a glaze of maple syrup, mustard and spices before being slow-baked for hours. This was one of the ugliest things I've ever cooked, looking more like a creature from an upcoming Doctor Who episode (invasion of the hedgehog people) than anything likely to grace the pages of Martha Stewart Living. Definitely something to be carved and plated up behind the scenes. Because it certainly deserved to be on a plate. The recipe was an absolute triumph and will make another appearance on my table soon. I did sides of cornbread, roasted fennel and broccoli, not realising in advance that the stuffing would actually form its own side dish. While most everyone cleared their plates, I think the bread and the second vegetable were unnecessary; just the fennel would have been perfect.

Next, bring out the lamb cake. No, not real lamb. A traditional cake (this year, lemon poppyseed) baked in a mould, passed down from my great Aunt, shaped like the recumbent pascal lamb. The cake was delicious, but I have yet to master the skill of getting the damned thing out of that mould in two neat pieces that stick together smoothly. Thankfully the lemon butter cream icing is thick enough to serve as pastry mortar, sticking together the bits that have fallen off and covering the holes. Slices from the middle, served with a daub of lemon sorbet, were good enough to have been worth all the effort.

And then, because we really needed something to go with that bottle of port Guy had shown up with ... the cheese course. Stilton, brie, pecorino, cheddar and mild goat's cheese had been coming slowly up to room temperature all day atop the marble cheese board I hauled back from my visit to the quarries at Carrara.

All this, and great conversation too. I do love the holidays. True to form, the sun finally came out at about 3:30 this afternoon and it's due to be lovely for the rest of the week. So whilst I didn't have much great weather for the long weekend, I shall be looking at blue skies from my desk all week.

C'est la vie. Had the weather been better, I might have just thrown some chicken on the BBQ. It just wouldn't have been the same...

Glories of Van Dyck and the Baroque offer respite from dire holiday weather

Someone missed a great opportunity when naming Crayola colours. There should be one called "Bank Holiday Grey" which, for anyone who's lived in the UK, will bring to mind precisely the leaden, dull and featureless shade that the skies seem to turn on most holiday weekends.

Sure enough, after a mostly mild and sunny week, the Good Friday holiday dawned with low, featureless skies weeping a steady drizzle that made any prolonged time outdoors a bad idea. So much for my idea to drive to the Cotswolds to see a garden ablaze with tulips. Instead, it was in to London to check out a few new special exhibitions that seem to have been designed with me in mind.

"Baroque 1620-1800: Style in the Age of Magnificence" is running at the Victoria and Albert until 19 July, while a couple of miles away at the Tate Britain you can wallow in eight galleries devoted to Van Dyck until 17 May. While most people may think doing both in one day is a bit much, it is actually quite a logical pairing. Van Dyck was the most significant painter of the early English Baroque, and the people portrayed in his remarkable portraits would have been living through and shaping the early years of the movement so gloriously profiled at the V&A.

I started with Van Dyck, familiar territory for any fan of English country houses or royal palaces. Though he died in his early 40s, Van Dyck's output was staggering, and now graces the walls of most of these places. He seems to have painted absolutely everyone who was anyone in Charles I's court. With good reason: Rarely has a painter combined so beautifully the ability to capture the personality of the sitter with a flattering skill at making them look fantastic. If we are to take Van Dyck seriously, the aristocracy of England in the 1630s and '40s were a magnificently good looking bunch, men swaggering with confidence, women oozing sexuality, both dressed in lavish costumes that shimmer off the canvas. Of course, reality was quite different.

Van Dyck was, quite simply, a fabulous PR man. He started with a core of truth and then improved it, breathing glamour into everything he touched. Neither Charles I or his queen, Henrietta Maria, made much impact in person. He was short and delicate, she was plain with buck teeth. Yet Van Dyck turned them into elegant, courtly superstars. If there's one painter I could bring back from history to capture me on canvas, this would be the man. Sadly, the spin he put on the royal family, the dashing cavaliers and their ladies ultimately didn't do much good. This silken world of privilege collapsed in the civil wars, and a great many of the people depicted went on to die in battle or lose the wealth and position they were so confidently showing off.

The audio guide does a great job of telling the stories of all the sitters, explaining Van Dyck's stellar career and putting it all in context. Particularly effective, I thought, was the last two rooms of the exhibit, which showed how Van Dyck influenced all the portraitists who came after him. This is a real delight of a show, offering both lavish and fascinating stuff to look at AND a story that puts it all together.

Baroque at the V&A is even better. It's often claimed that this was the first truly global art movement, starting in Rome as art and architecture to add appeal to the counter-reformation but quickly spreading around the world. The show aims to prove this point, bringing together items from Europe, the Americas and even Asia. The exhibit shows how paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, architecture, religion, music, theatre and gardens all complemented each other to create a single style. It's lavish, bombastic, emotionally wrought and ornate. You'll need a lie-down in a quiet, white room by the time you emerge. It all is, as the artists intended, a bit overwhelming.

Highlights come thick and fast. There's a pietra dura cabinet with garlands of fruit so detailed that the shining seeds of a pomegranate are visible inside the split fruit skin. One gallery re-creates a nobleman's cabinet of curiousities, stuffed full of small objects d'art rich with detail. There's a gaudy, gold-encrusted altar shipped all the way from Mexico, and a remarkably ornate set of goblets, candlesticks and other religious paraphernalia from Brazil. A state bed with pristine original hangings stands next to extraordinary solid silver furniture and accessories. There are fascinating opera and masque costumes, architectural models, a lady's sled and a children's garden carriage. It is, quite literally, a treasure trove that goes on and on.

All this is beautifully augmented by films and music. That child's carriage sits beneath a large screen that sweeps you through the baroque gardens of Versailles. The architecture section features a wall with rolling images of the best of Roman baroque exteriors. Music is present throughout the exhibit (and can be downloaded from the show's excellent web site), changing from secular to religious and back to match the displays. Particularly fascinating is the opera section, which shows off stage sets, exquisitely-wrought musical instruments and costumes while a video shows an authentic production of a 17th century performance.

This is precisely the well-rounded exploration I was hoping for earlier in the year when I was disappointed in the Byzantium exhibit. It's an approach at which the V&A excels, and they've really outdone themselves here. I suspect I may need to see the show again before it closes. As any Baroque artist could have told you, once is not enough.

London Eye impresses even after multiple visits

The monumental, Thames-side Ferris wheel known as the London Eye has become such an established part of London, it's hard to remember a time when it didn't dominate the skyline. It's not even a decade old, however, built at the millennium as a particularly savvy piece of corporate sponsorship by British Airways, and intended to be temporary. It became such an instant hit that nobody ever seriously considered taking it down.

Today the Eye is as much a feature on every tourist's Top 10 list as Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's. Its private "flights", in which you can book an entire capsule for your party, have also become a dependable option for special events. Thus between showing around visiting Americans and attending corporate dos I have been lifted on that slow circle over London at least five times. My most recent go round Tuesday night was still a thrill.

We were on a team night out; another thanks and celebration of the financial year passing, this time with Caseworks and Telecom TV, two companies who've stretched my budget in clever ways while producing marketing materials. They started the evening with a "champagne flight": a private capsule, booked just for us, accompanied by a waiter with a portable bar full of fizz.

The Eye takes half an hour to make a rotation, moving so slowly that if you don't look at the changing horizon you actually have no sense of movement. You're riding in a large glass capsule with a bench down the middle and plenty of walking space around the sides. All has been designed to give you the feeling you're in a building looking out, rather than on a ride, so that the more faint of heart can also enjoy the experience. The Eye sits on the south bank of the Thames, just east of Westminster Palace, and thus offers views of the essential tourist London. The river, government buildings, Green and Hyde Parks and the facade of Buckingham Palace all unfold before you. To your right spreads the steeples and skyscrapers of the City, dominated by the dome of St. Paul's. On a clear day you can see hills to the far south and north, and gain a proper appreciation that this is, in fact, the flood plain of a very wide river valley. By the apex of your ride you have roughly the same perspective you may remember from your childhood viewings of Peter Pan, when Peter, Wendy and the gang flew down the Thames towards Never Never Land.

Sadly, what goes up must come down. Rather than flying off over the river we took taxis south along it, adjourning to the Bulter's Wharf Chop House for a celebratory dinner.

This was actually quite a clever pairing of venues, as both are essentially British and would delight any tourist. While the Eye gives you a look at all the places the rich and famous of British history have haunted, the Chop House presents you a menu of what they might have eaten. This is the place to take someone who doesn't believe that English food is any good. The menu is stubbornly traditional, from its starters of potted shrimps to roast lamb through to its stodgy, classic puddings.

Sadly the Chop House is so traditional that if you live here, it pales in comparison to many other London restaurants. My food, and what I saw coming to the table for others, was good quality, well prepared but not exceptional or wildly memorable. In fact, I've been wracking my brain for days now and can't remember what I had as a starter. The grilled sea bass that followed managed to impress itself on a few more brain cells. This is a safe choice and an excellent one for a foreign visitor, especially given the views of Tower Bridge out the windows. But in my ideal world, this is the menu I'd have at my local pub, dished up with good cheer and a pint for more reasonable prices. (Sadly, even though local pubs should be able to handle this kind of traditional menu, few do, which is perhaps why the Chop House has thrived.)

The most memorable part of the meal was actually the desserts, many of which were so old fashioned you rarely see them on menus. Thus I finally got to try Sussex Pond pudding, which is a suet pastry encasing a whole lemon, butter and sugar, steamed for several hours so that the lemon becomes soft and candy-like at the centre. According to the Wikipedia entry: "this rich and heavy dessert has gone out of fashion over the years due to health and diet consciousness." Indeed.

That, plus the creeping effects of Boisdale (see previous entry) and all the alcohol at both meals, added a pound and a half to the scales at Weight Watchers this morning. There will be no restaurant entries for a while, dear reader. It's time to get back on the straight and narrow.

Still, I'm glad I indulged. I've lived here for 14 years and never seen Sussex Pond Pudding anywhere but on TV cooking shows. Thanks to the Butler's Wharf Chop House, I can tick off yet another quintessentially English experience.