happy birthday to you

I am a law student. Pregnant with a second child, married to an academic, holding the hand of a little girl. The three of us walk up the steps of l’Etoile. We haven’t the money to eat there really, but we are celebrating, big time. My then-husband has just just been voted tenure.

Creaky steps, warm space within. Our two-year-old orders something without sauce. The waiters smile.

Seventeen years later I am in the l’Etoile kitchen, plating appetizers and desserts, popping Vesuvius molten cakes into the oven, tossing wild mushrooms over mixed greens.

Two years more and I am rolling croissants and mixing up gougers for their Saturday market.

And a year after, I am the market buyer -- picking out produce and lugging it up the steps, to the small kitchen of l’Etoile.


Tomorrow l’Etoile celebrates its thirtieth year on the Square. There will be a party is for the farmers who supply the kitchens of this wonderful little place.

Last night I went back to eat there. And so you could see this entire week-end as being sort of a l’Etoile moment: from dinner on Friday, to making the Saturday rounds with farmers whom I know from my buyer days, to the official celebration tomorrow.

A colleague posted a question on the law faculty list this past week: what restaurant would you recommend to someone coming in from New York – someone who is used to the best of the best and doesn’t mind paying for it?

We are an opinionated lot and so suggestions appeared instantly. Fresco, Sardine, Nadia’s, Magnus, Harvest. Fine, fine, I’m sure good meals are to be had at all of them. But l’Etoile is special. It isn’t just a restaurant. It is the last link in that chain of events that begins out there with creating good soil. From field to table.

I can get quite emotional about the place. People don’t typically get emotional about restaurants. Do they?

Congrats, Chef Tory.

Melon soup with stravecchio cheese stick and prosciutto:





Jim’s muskmelons



Black Earth Valley Red Bell Peppers


Jim’s Muskmelon Carpaccio with Dungeness Crab Salas, Shooting Star Farm Torpedo Onions, Black Earth Valley Red Bell Peppers, Fried Capers and Garlic Toast:







Snug Haven tomatoes


Roasted Wild Alaskan King Salmon with smoky Shooting Star Farm Cranberry Bean Puree, Stenruds Haricorts Verts, marinated Snug Haven Sungold Tomatoes and Riesling-Bacon Broth:






Ruth Lefeber’s blueberries and kids



Bee Charmer Corn


Ruth Lefeber Blueberry Crisp with Cornmeal-Oat Struesek Topping and Bee Charmer Sweet Corn Ice Cream:






L'Etoile, inside and out

crash

It was a stormy day. Anyone living in this town would tell you that the flashes and rumblings the past two days have been out of control. I, too, felt that much of my warm feelings toward a mellowy Madison August had to be put by the wayside for now.

If you can imagine, most every time I looked out the window while at the computer I would see some variation of this:




In the evening, however, I had a change of attitude. What caused the shift? Come back tomorrow. I’m wiped for now.

the ride

They gather every Wednesday, after work hours. One hundred, maybe two, parking their cars, each week in a different place, a short drive out of Madison.

Go on the Wednesday Night Bike Ride with me this week! Ed says.
I knew it. Get a fast bike and the pressure is on to push yourself. Today a Wednesday Ride, tomorrow le Tour de France.
But I’m not ready for it! Twenty miles of hills and vales – these people are fit! They wear spandex pants and biking jerseys.
Don’t forget, I’m one of the regulars.
You have a point… Still, you like these killing challenges. I would want to take photos along the way, I’d slow you down…
Come anyway. There is a potluck at a vineyard afterwards.

Ed knows how to twist that wrist.

Dave Mitchell is one of the riders. Dave, owner of Wine and Hop – the store that sells equipment for wine and beer making enthusiasts – grows grapes just south of Madison. You want to make your own wine? Help with the Mitchell harvest this fall, press your own grapes, get the right stuff to ferment the juice and voila! You’re in business.

Dave tells me -- what I like about the Wednesday Night Ride is that it draws people from all jobs, backgrounds, ages. They have only two things in common – they’re into keeping fit and they like to bike.

This week, the ride starts in the town of Oregon. Ed and I arrive late. He has a flat tire to deal with. I'm feeling jittery.

It’s going to storm. What if it storms when we are riding?
Ed shrugs his shoulders. You get wet.

I made a map for you. Clip it to the bike. I picked a short cut if you don’t want to do the full ride. You can go at your speed and I’ll zip ahead and we’ll meet at the end.

What if I have a flat tire? I don’t know how to change a flat tire.
Someone will help you.

I watch the last of the riders set out. Me, among these?





Oh! This one’s reassuring. He can't be in it for the speed.





We set out. Ed is patient initially, but within minutes my shoelace gets tangled with the chain. I pause to fix things, he circles around, waiting.

I pause again, this time to take a photo.





Again he circles, backpedals.

Please go on. You are making me so nervous! Send for me if I fail to reach the finish line.
Are you sure? I barely catch this. He’s already pushing ahead over the next hill.

On my own, I lose myself in my surroundings. The sun is low, the colors are warm. All the bikers have long passed me. I am alone with the sunflowers and the red barns.









I am so taken with the light, with the quiet, that I neglect to pay attention to my clipped map.This is the way it looked when it was clipped on.





Sometime during a particularly brushy side trip into the tall grasses (for a photo) I managed to lose the damn thing.

Still, a loop is a loop. If you turn left a lot, you’re either going to wind up in a dead end circle or back where you started from.

I relax. I pause again to watch men work in a tobacco field.





I am not paying attention to time. My pedaling alternates between devilishly fast and carelessly mellow.

The sun is a low, red beach ball. Wait, I feel my cargo pants vibrating against my thigh. The phone! I have my cell with me.

Nina, this is Mark, a friend of Ed’s. Where the hell are you??
I’m watching guys hacking away at tobacco leaves...

My pokiness means that we reach the vineyards for the potluck just as the sun touches the horizon. The light is beautiful, though quickly fading. I manage a few photos, then give it up for the night.





Dave tells me something I already know from my spring ramblings.
There is nothing as spiritual as looking over a vineyard. To watch the vines reach into the air, stretching, as if they knew there is something up there waiting for them -- it's humbling. You can throw down a blanket in an apple orchard or a peach orchard, sit down and look around you and it will be lovely, bucolic even, but sitting at the foot of a vineyard – that’s altogether different. Nothing compares.

I study the tall rows. The soil isn’t the rocky orange of the Languedoc. The grape varieties aren’t the same either. The stubs are young, the winemakers are children, playing with grape juice. I am a child too, taken in by the magic of the vines.

I’ll be back for the September harvest. I'll probably bike over.

stalling

A full day, a late night. I'll explain tomorrow.

In the meantime, a teaser, yet again. Last time I did this on Ocean, it was too easy. This time I'll give a clue: it's not the south of France. That's not until four weeks from now. So, this evening, where am I and what am I doing? You can't guess, I don't think. Tomorrow -- I'll tell you tomorrow.

the tail end

We need to talk business – I say this in my most serious voice. I am working on a project with Ed – machine stuff, if you can believe it, and it is time that we had a discussion about forging ahead or scaling back.

Okay, let me pick you up in the late afternoon. Bring your helmet.

'Bring your helmet' means that Ed intends to reach great heights in our discussion – preferably while speeding forward on his motorcycle.

I have 90 minutes. That’s it. I have to get back by 6.
That will be tough…
There are a dozen cafés within a stone’s throw of here! We need to talk for an hour at most!
Café? On a day like this?

Ed guns the engine and we are off. Past Campus Drive, past Borders, past Middleton…

Ed, we are currently surrounded by pastures and farmland! We have left the land of cafés far behind!
Yeah… I want to show you part of the Ice Age trail just beyond Cross Plains (to the geographically stumped reader: Cross Plains is a satellite village far west of Madison; total travel time between the loft and “beyond Cross Plains:” 40 minutes).

We turn into a dirt road, get off the bike, I toss off the tight helmet. The sun is less strong now, in the last days of August. Before me, a path leads up a hill, past old oaks and tall grasses.




I have always thought of this part of the country as having oak groves and prairie fields, possibly because of my readings (to daughters) of Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Oaks and prairie grasses figured prominently in the series.

It’s quiet there, on top of the hill. Butterflies and snakes move around me – the former almost touches me in a hasty flight toward a liatris stalk, the latter moves too quickly for my camera.




The end of summer in Wisconsin is perhaps the kindest of seasons. While other states are still sweltering and steaming ahead until Labor Day and beyond, we start easing into Fall.

Ed and I did not talk business. The climb up, then down, the ride there and back took time. Everyone should have the luxury of taking time like this – to stroll through grasses among old oak groves before they give up their hold on summer and move on.


Back at the loft, I sit at my computer table and look out only to see yet another ritual sign that Madison is nearing the end of a summer season.

summer gold

I have lived in Madison for twenty-seven years now – more than half my life – and I have never, until this year, experienced a corn festival.

Hey, Sun Prairie (a satellite village to the east of Madison) is hosting the Annual Corn Fest this week-end!
You want me to travel all that distance to eat corn? I can eat corn freshly yanked from the fields every Saturday market day – mere minutes from the loft.

Still, I’m tempted. All that corn.

I’m not the only one. Thousands, nay millions, no, maybe not millions, but lots show up on this most pleasant Sunday afternoon.

And you gotta know Sun Prairie to understand how smoothly it all functions.

There are the rides, of the traveling amusement park type (when did these fascinating roaming fairs come into being? Were they around when I was a kid? Maybe they just never made it to Manhattan where I hung out in my grade school years). Ferris wheels and tilt-a-whirls…




But really, it’s mostly about corn. Many, many people come here for the corn eating thing. The steaming husks are loaded onto a conveyor belt...





…for $5 you load up all the ears you can fit into a cardboard box, you shuck the damn hot ears, deft hands and awkward hands…








…you hand over the whole batch to women whose practiced hands rub in the butter…





…then, shake on the salt…





…and find a spot to eat.











Afterwards, you take your little kids to the booths and show off how good you are with the darts. You win ‘em a couple of prizes…



thanks, Mom


… and you go home, full of kernels and butter, with a feeling of having lived a real Wisconsin kind of summer afternoon.

I can't believe I ate the whole thing...

If you let me off until tomorrow, I promise to post pictures and stories on butter, husks, salt, liberally covering many ears of corn at the all-American summer fest celebrating this, well, vegetable.

I know you’re willing to wait another day. I know it. Here, I have a teaser:


where am I and what am I doing??

neighborhood notes

So what’s it like living downtown?

Take the last twenty-four hours in this place. What did they bring me? Sure, a good dinner, just a short walk up from the loft. A bit over-priced, but very good nonetheless (see post below). Preceded by a drink called la Vie en Rosé.



What else?

A loud train passing just outside my windows. A very loud train, tooting with the full force of a heavy hand sitting on the claxon.

A walk on nearby State Street, where construction has been ongoing. For years.




…and where all sorts of musicians find a warm spot on the sidewalk.





A market with the colors of late summer.





A deranged human being standing outside my apartment building at 4 am, shouting expletives for twenty minutes straight… before moving on to another building further down.

A musician playing all instruments all at the same time





Flowers at my local flowershop, going for 50 cents a stem. I’m known there by now. If they put out a street sign announcing a sale on stems, they know I’ll come in on the way home from work. Here, I took these off their hands. They’re resting at a café table. I’m known at the café as well. It's Jo's. Yes, the same: medium skim latte, extra hot.

the reluctant food critic returns (to places of yore)

I read with interest the Isthmus snippet about the changing Madison restaurant scene. Like any vibrant town, Madison has its share of closures and openings.

And yes, I am looking forward to the South-American-Asian-influence in the kitchen of the about-to-be-opened The Local at the tip of King Street (remember when that used to be Café Europa maybe some half dozen eateries ago?).

Perhaps even more so, I am eagerly awaiting the new Italian place on Sherman. The chef hails originally from Marsala, Sicily – one of my favorite destinations from this past summer. He can’t be bad. Everyone in Marsala Sicily knows food (unless he was thrown out of town for his wimpy approach to cooking… let’s hope not).

But I wonder if the new is going to be taking us away from that, which is already there. Mind you, there are some Madison favorites that I never could wrap myself around with the enthusiasm of everyone else. I don’t mean to knock down some of the State Street standbys, but come on – let’s not argue good food. Comfort food, maybe, but when the need for comfort passes so does the need to return to any of them.

Still, there are the fairly new spots that have too many empty tables for comfort. I do not like to eat at a place that has empty tables. It makes me feel that the entire waitstaff is participating in my conversation.

Take Crave off of State Street. Now, you may have issues with Crave. I may have issues with Crave. But I remember how it provided the one cheerful moment of an otherwise bleak November 2nd 2004. I sat in a daze, munching meat loaf, drinking red wine, hearing the quiet voices of those around me. I survived that day in part thanks to that meat loaf.

Last week, I went back to Crave. I go there with daughters sometimes when they are in town. It seems a “girls’ night out” type of place. Besides, it was Monday and Sardine and Cocoliquot were closed.

Empty. Two, maybe three other tables occupied. Oh oh. Have we shifted our fickle hearts and pointed them elsewhere?

In the meantime, it is Friday and I cannot get a reservation for Sardine. I call just as the office opens and am given options normally reserved for a New York day-of-eating conversation. “No, sorry, nothing then. Would you like to come in at 5? (no!) Maybe I can fit you in at 9:15…" (maybe not)

I have better luck at Cocoliquot. I get a 7:15 table. Is this a good thing? Well, I remember being treated to a dinner there several weeks ago on a Wednesday. The place was only half full. Half full also means half empty.

On this night it is buzzing and so I buzz with it. Come on, it’s a perfectly fine place! They have improved the menu considerably since their opening moments a year or two back.




The snails in pistou are fantastic. The sea bass is perfectly prepared and the fries (unlike at the otherwise fine Sardine) are not brittle from overfrying.





I would do something about one section of their wine list – it cannot be that you only have a Long Island rosé left for the summer! But that’s just me. A summer menu without a nice Mediterranean rosé is like a concert without the music.

There aren’t many places in Madison where four people can eat well, drink wine and walk away without spending most of that month’s paycheck. Cocoliquot, thanks for having us. We wont forget you. We’ll be back. Right after we do another run over to Sardine.



Cocoliquot: eating at the bar is also an option

not tonight dear, I have a headache

It’s not true, really. I’m not a headache type. I get headaches when I neglect to ingest a latte in the afternoon. Never for no reason. Yes, of course, the biggest came with my brain explosion some ten years back. Nonetheless, if I ever use the headache excuse, there’s reason to doubt the sincerity and veracity of my words.

And I have to say, today was filled with interesting moments. Bloggable moments. Ones that point to the absurdity of life and even more so – the absurdity of my own thought processes.

Still, I am not up to the challenge. Tonight I will put my feet up, open a box of Raisinets and read Ruth Reichl’s “Garlic and Sapphires.” It’s Saturday, give me a break.

notes on a thursday

…politics on the radio. I listen to the discussion of the case decided today (concerning warantless tapping) and I look out the window. Separation of powers… Like this?




… shopping for food. At this time of the year everything is photogenic. I hear on the radio that in Russia, restaurants have great difficulty getting quality ingredients. Not so in Wisconsin.




…the rain came down today. I took Mr. B to work. Mustn’t get my new Mr.G wet and bothered. There must have been great anger and hostility within my yellow-fendered friend because he let me down. The two lattes that I balanced on his back…





…spilled. And when they did, he chose that moment to drop the chain. Therefore, in the evening, I stuck my tongue out at him and borrowed a car. It did rain, after all.

on competition

Walking home, I pass several trucks in close proximity to each other. I am mulling this one over: how limited is the marketplace? If there wasn’t a Pepsi, would Coke double its sales?







If the UPS hadn’t offered guaranteed overnight, would Fed Ex grow and grow until it became the mad fat cat of overnight delivery?





I was an econometrics major in college, some thirty-five years ago and still I don’t get competition. If you come up with a quality Cola, wont it only improve the crap that Coke pours into its bottles?

If someone else jumped in and delivered packages with greater time specificity, then wouldn’t UPS improve its delivery as well? Sure they would. And I would never again have to chase across town to pick up that which should have been delivered when I was home. Because they would tell me, precisely, when I should be home.

If someone puts out a blog that is quality, no, sorry, QUALITY, then I want to read it. I want you to read it and tell me about it. Reading quality produces quality. Eric, your blog makes me work harder on Ocean. Wow. Janelle and sixty-five, thanks for the tip. Eric, thanks for commenting.

Next to this stuff, Ocean is kid’s play.

on exuberance

I am sitting at an outside table at Borders, inhaling, exhaling. Breath in, breath out. Ahhhh…Only one more class to teach this summer, the sky is brighter than Mr.B’s fenders, no recall problem with my recently acquired Dell battery, no dinner to cook, no weeds to pull – life is good.

In fact, I am tempted to post this photo, taken a few hours back (it is of an outdoor sculpture), just to show how one might depict the exuberance that I feel at this moment.





Exuberance is an under-used word. It is undervalued and its power is underestimated. People talk of being happy, but even that is more of an embarrassment. God, she’s happy. What’s with her, doesn’t she get the pain of others? That’s okay, her time will come. [If this sounds remarkably like something my mother would say, that’s because it is.]

I’ve heard the phrase ‘youthful exuberance’ in various contexts. Such youthful exuberance! (What, before arthritis sets in?) Youthful idealism, youthful exuberance, mature depression, mature macular degeneration.

I happen to have been somewhat of a worrier in the course of my youthful parenting. (I was, by today’s standards, a young mom). I felt exuberant when a daughter smiled up at me, but I worried that she might trip on her own exuberant run and do permanent damage to her sweet, young little body.

With time, I got used to the idea that certainty was elusive and knees get scraped. Yesterday, for example, I felt exuberant on the bike even though the day before I fell off and gashed my knee. [Those damn toe-clips!]

Exuberance can be aspired to, nay, attained even, in spite of gashed knees.

LATER: of course, exuberance, almost by definition, lasts about the time it takes to drink a latte. It’s evening, Tex Tubb’s Tacos have settled in, exuberance trickled out, tiredness replaced it.