eats

It’s rare that I am at the front of the queue, trying out a new eatery before a single review is even posted. I’m just not that together. I say a lot of “we should try that new place…” before I actually do try that new place.

But, I got a rather insistent call from a person who rarely insists on this sort of stuff. We’re eating out at the new Peruvian place on Park Street tonight.

We are? I’m set to eat a salad with a bagel on the side.

No, really. We are.

And so we do.

And now I can say this: I know (“know” is a relative term) Peruvian food. Heretofore, I knew South American food. In our usual myopic fashion we lump foods from “over there” into something we ascribe to tremendously vast regions. African food. Continental cuisine (that would be Europe; would you believe it? Europe as a style of cooking!). South American. Asian. And the thing is, we sort of kind of think we know what we mean by any of that.

But Peruvian food – now that’s a stumper.

Not anymore though. Not if you live in Madison. You can break out of your Machu Pichu ideas about this country and try something truly authentic. At Inka Heritage, on Park Street.



I, myself, started with the mushroom cerviche (adorned with HUGE kernels of corn and sweet potato, in a tangy sauce)…



… and then proceeded to the dish I always ask for insofar as it is on any menu – seafood stew, or soup, or casserole, or soup, or something brothy like that. Described variously, it is a dish that speaks to me: bits of seafood in a liquid that is seasonaed with the imagination of the cook.



Delicious!

Inka Heritage is a family run place. True, our waitperson was herself not Peruvian, but had I not asked, I would have guessed otherwise. Something about the way she pronounced the items on the menu… And yes, I know that not all Europeans speak Polish and not all South Americans speak Spanish. But to me, she sounded Peruvian Spanish. I am easily influenced by the circumstances.

Let me go back to the food: it is really quite good. Don’t be one of those who only goes in if the entrance is lavish and has valet parking. In case you've not been on Madison's Park Street lately, it's not Park Avenue-like. Go in anyway and focus on the menu. Have a glass of reasonably priced wine. Maybe another. Then discover the Peruvian in you.

And don’t forget to send me a thank you email, once you try the food.

it only takes a day

…to marry, to unmarry, to give birth (well, okay, maybe longer on that one), to get a job, lose a job, to get inspired, to crawl under the bed. To say love you, miss you, and miss you tons. To eat a good meal, to learn a new skill. To contribute to the well being of another.

To transform what looks like a ton of ice, along the shores of Lake Monona…


Sunday, March 25


…into water.


Monday, March 26


…good bye ice fishers. Hello boat fishermen and otters.


Monday, March 26


And within minutes, the willows show leaves…




No time at all. Most transformations take no time at all.
Others take a lifetime.

fine. no further convincing needed. madison is brilliantly beautiful in march

Wow. Am I going to have to pay a price for this gorgeous gift of a day, easily topping 76 degrees?

An errand at Farm & Fleet (yes, me. at Farm & Fleet. I get around.) put me close to the Edna Taylor Nature Conservancy. It’s an odd little place – several ponds, marshlands, a postage stamp forest – all behind perhaps one of the least attractive commercial areas of far-east Madison (and there’s a lot of competition there).

Warm sun. Pond noises – of ducks and frogs (those gargling sounds, they’re frogs, right?). A light breeze. I am, for the first time this year, too warm.

The Eda Taylor park touches on the Aldo Leopold Nature Center. Quite the little crowd there today. Families. Children, moving around from one spot to another. An egg hunt? No, it is the Annual Leopold Day or Fest or something – a demonstration of life in times gone-by.

And the kids, they get into it. The fun of doing laundry outside, on a scrubboard. Like my grandmother. Hanging it out to dry. Until the next kid pulls it down for another washing.




Or, the sampling of the dripping sap from maple trees and when watching the slow drip gets too boring, looking to the maple tree for other amusements.




But mostly, the children get a thrill out of this wild card of a day, the day in March when we can all throw down our wraps. The bold ones take to the earth and water without restraint…













…while the geese and turtles watch in amazement. Human antics. Who can understand why it is that we behave the way we do.

someday…

Someday, I am sure I will speak from the inside, rather than in a way that worries about the outside. Someday.

But not today.

Though here's a "from the soul" story: A day of work. Menial work. Good work that moves things forward. Happy work. Progress. And then I zip home.

Home. Quiet home. My occasional traveling companion, Ed, calls and asks if I would like to grab food at the Café Costa Rica. He reads me reviews. Sounds fine, let’s go.

Café Costa Rica. Sounds so wonderfully removed from the here and now. It’s a small place. Four tables and two of them are very very small. Mache parrots, suspended, lights, fake palms, a counter where you can pick up food. (A terribly positioned jar of disinfectant soap stands next to the tip jar.).

I had read about the plantains and the mango sauce. Yes, those, I want those.



And the curried chicken with the famed rice and beans in coconut milk!

Good staff here, at the little Café Costa Rica. There’s Roy, who moves between kitchen and tables effortlessly, with stories of Costa Rican relatives and, recounts of fresh fish, prepared straight from the markets.




Why didn’t you ever introduce me to Costa Rica? – I ask Ed, who is by now having a halting Spanish conversation where there are a lot of words such as mui biene thrown around. Halting Spanish conversations often have mui biene inserted somewhere in the text.

When I next go sailing there, we can meet up!

Spoken like a man, in a million ways.

Meantime, the owner of Café Costa Rica shows up. If Roy is warm, Thony, the owner (aka the Mango Man), is effervescent.




I want to believe that Madisonians will find this little place and make it their own. Go for it. It defines authentic (if you are after a Costa Rican buzz in a Madisonian climate). Then send me a thank you note.

I want to believe that I know what I’m doing.

where am I and what am I doing?

First, consider the fact that I have not spent a week-end in Madison since who knows when (I like Madison. Please, it’s circumstantial). So predictably, I am not in Madison.

So where am I? Here, the first thing that I came across as I alit in my non-Madison surroundings was this:






Later, I went to dinner at a Korean place just a couple of blocks down (exceptionally excellent).

So where am I?

(Hint: understanding fully how difficult it is to move into a condo, I am helping someone do just that. Not move in, exactly, but take the final steps of settling in. But where?)

well now, we have ourselves another…

…day of work. And me, just barely barely moving forward, still frozen from yesterday.

Hardy Polish peasant stock. Will recover by tomorrow I know it. Wait and see.

with apologies

…for being late and brief here, on Ocean.

It’s like this: we make a million small and big decisions each day. Sometimes with confidence, sometimes with trepidation. But we go on and mostly think nothing of it. Then, something arrests us. Maybe a word pops out of a friend’s mouth. Maybe, finally, there is a misfit of some sort, something feels out of shape – for whatever reason, we come to a halt. Now, suddenly, all is suspect. Whatever am I doing?

It takes a while to fall back into the blissful nonthinking state that allows us to tumble along, to continue forward.

And so today, one minute I was in a store with a building contractor, spending n dollars of the bank’s money on six major appliances and the next minute I am at the loft, stalled, frozen solid in a state of inaction. In between? Small events, a few words, the hands of a clock moving forward.

So, I’m looking for the right track again. In the meantime, from my eating table, a flower. Because when words fail, there are always flowers.

…last day of winter and what do I have to show for it?

Would you accept asparagus for dinner and an overhang of tulips? At the most basic level, that is indeed the entirety of my celebrating the end of the cold season.





But, give a broader meaning to the word spring and suddenly, so much more may be acknowledged as rightfully being spring-like, belonging to a day that shuts the door on the cold and frozen and looks forward to the warm and malleable.

Condo deal finalized. Today I got myself a deal. Yes, yes, I know. I cannot hope to sell it soon given Madison’s condo market. I am ahead of you here. I have it all figured out. I can’t afford to sell it ever. I run one step in front. I know myself, I know my world, I cannot afford to do any of the things that I do on a regular basis. I make my decisions based on other criteria.

And yes, I did once write, here on Ocean, that I do not intend to ever own anything ever again, ever. But the fact is that I do not own the condo, the bank does, 100%. So there. And if per chance the bank relinquishes ownership in some small amount every year for the next 30 or so, why, who am I to protest.

And another thing, oh you nay sayers. I am aware of Tracey Kidder’s book, House. I read it. I also have experience with construction crews. So I know what I am in for in taking on the project of designing and building the interior of a living space. Today’s conversations with the builder would have demonstrated this well:
I say: I thought I asked for additional insulation against potential neighbor noise.
Builder says: we have absolutely no complaints that there is transmission of noise between units.
I say: it is difficult to imagine how you could have reports of neighbor noise when the building is 75% unoccupied.
Builder says: Did you read the line about sound insulation?
I say: whatever you put in there for others is not enough for me. We made a deal. Whatever is standard, I want more of it. You gave everyone two inches? – I want four.
Builder thinks: I’ll write something fuzzy into the contract and she’ll be satisfied.
I think: he’ll write something fuzzy into the contract, but I’ll be satisfied.

Happy spring to all. Spring of flowers and asparagus and of leaping forward, in spite of it all.

changes

So quick. One minute you’re writing that the lakes will never freeze this year and the next day they freeze.

Two months later, I return from a series of trips and the air is, if not balmy, then at least easily above freezing. And so the lakes melt.

Late in the afternoon I went to check on the fishermen. I have watched them over the now almost two years that I have lived downtown. You would not think that they would be there, given that the ice has melted in significant portions of the lake, yet there they were, a small handful, seemingly isolated, but in control, pulling in a few of the little ones, for maybe the last time this year.

say it with food, from D.C.

Yesterday, I ate my way through the neighborhood.

No, really. There was hardly a pause. Take a look. (There is one photo that does not belong with the rest. Because there was one hour that did not have food written into it. In the interest of fair disclosure, I put it into the day’s line up.)



a few blocks up 14th a small place for brunch...


...starting the day with a mimosa



scrambled, over cheese grits



at U Street's Love Café



blooming magnolia at sunset



pear & elderberry martini



wood-fired scallops from Viking Village, Maine, over red wine braised lentils



a small, roasted lobster from Duxbury, Maine



key lime and white chocolate custard with huckleberry compote (an apple pie and a baked to order chocolate cake in the background)


The last four were at a remarkable place (the Blue Duck Tavern) where artisanal foods were on parade, with due recognition to the farms and fisheries that supplied them. A few notable places do this in Madison (l’Etoile began the tradition almost three decades ago). That you can do regional seasonal foods well comes as no surprise, of course. What is always a huge joy is to see it done well in one of the worst cooking months of the northern climate – March. And at prices substantially lower than our own l’Etoile. [Why is that? I’m guessing it’s a matter of volume. The Blue Duck was packed. If you can count on a full house in late winter, you can lower your prices. Of course, one way to boost diner-ship is to keep the prices down. It is so very disappointing to see our own eateries price themselves out of our pocketbooks. Ah well, there's always the kitchen stove and the grocery store. And a good latte around the corner.]

storms, gunpowder and scampi

I had forgotten what it was like to be stuck on the roads. I live in a north-Midwestern town where winters are long and so often miserable, yet they rarely affect my comings and goings. If I look outside and see snow, I think: warmer scarf needed, and I head out.

The goal yesterday was to drive early from D.C. to Wilmington, Delaware (some 110 miles), do some work at the Hagley library on the DuPont estate, see a little of the countryside up and down the Chesapeake Bay and head back to D.C. in time for a late dinner.

Oh, I read all about the heavy rains and snows that were to pound the east coast. Still, I am not typically deterred by weather. Some have remarked that I should have been a long haul truck driver – I am that calm and resolute when I hit the roads. (I could not be a long haul truck driver. America’s superhighways put me to sleep.)

But I95, linking DC with Baltimore, Wilmington (and then Philadelphia or New York) is something else. It must be the east coast version of L.A. highways. Cars move and at a rapid pace, but in a tight configuration of traffic. You jump in, stay in and hope that you find a spot to jump out at the right exit.

Still, we are on the road in good time, the rains are powerful, but the visibility is decent. We persevere.

A little dicy by the time we hit the DuPont estate, but still, we’re good, we’re calm. We even pause for a latte before settling in.


a quick stop at the Brew Ha Ha

The DuPonts. The early American industrialists who made their wealth in manufacturing gunpowder. Right here in Wilmington. I resisted the 3.5 hour tour of their estate, and so I cannot give you much in terms of photos, but it is a wonder: a real display of industrial growth, wealth and labor. I did sneak up on the DuPont mansion – the first of the many they were to build in the area. Here it is, splendidly peaking at you from amidst old trees:



By early afternoon, I was ready to leave the compound and poke around the Maryland area (sorry, Delaware, there’s not much to you and so the goal quickly became to drive down to the Maryland coast.)

Rainswept coast, fishing boats and towns, clam shacks, farmhouses and villages with diners and old barber shops. Those were the images I had going into it.

I saw a barber shop.



And then, lots and lots of slow moving traffic, trying desperately to stay on the road as sheets of ice and wet slush pound the east coast. Cars on the road, cars off the road, cars in places they should not be, cars trying to get places, slowly, very slowly.



Such slow going. A mile over an eternity. By the time I reach Elkton, at the northern tip of the bay, it is clear that I will not see much of the coast, of towns, of villages, of boats or water. Except the frozen stuff, pouring out of the skies.

On this day, the northern Maryland landscape looks like something straight out of… Wisconsin.




My cell phone is ringing. My daughter, stuck in the Hagley library is calling for a rescue. They’re closing early because of the weather. I’m miles away from the DuPonts, from Wilmington, stuck in crawling traffic. Crawling in the wrong direction.

I turn around and head back. Sometimes the pace on the I95 slows to a standstill. I got a ride to a coffee shop, but now that is closing as well. Hang in there, I should be back within… Hours. It took hours to navigate back to Wilmington. And then many more hours to turn around and drive back to D.C.

For all the hassle and headache of driving during possibly the only freak storm to hit the wider DC area this entire year, I have to say this: it was an adventure. And with a cake at the end of the Baltimore tunnel. Because driving in late into D.C., you have the reward of a great dinner ahead. D.C. has what Madison does not: a huge number of excellent, medium priced eating establishments. Oh, the lingering memory of the steaming dish of gnocchi with scampi, a glass (or two…) of chilled white wine and a plateful of hot ligurian cookies! With an espresso.



DC has another virtue over Madison, making it a supremely good place to visit now: freak March storms may ice up the roads one day, but the next morning it will all be gone. Spring will return. And stay there.

and so...

...how was the drive to Wilmington from D.C.,? Short, wasn't it?

No, it was not.

I had studied the weather charts. I knew I was in for some heavy storms. But navigating hours upon hours of this?



Allow me to recover first. Until tomorrow.

forecast

After I am done with today’s chores and obligations, I’m hopping on a plane and heading out east. It is certain that I will not get to my final destination until after midnight and so posting wont be possible until well into tomorrow.

And where will posting be from? Tomorrow I’m in Wilmington, Delaware. Saturday – back to D.C.. Sunday – back in Madison. Surely all three will get due recognition here, though periods of work and expected east coast episodes of snow and rain will make it seem like I am one foot in the Midwest all along.

Actually, over-nighting with daughters and eating up a storm while I’m there places this right smack in the realm of an extremely wonderful little trip. So, expect plenty of happy tunes here on Ocean the next few days, weather and work notwithstanding.

More tomorrow.

buying things

How you shop says mountains about your past, about your relationship to your parents, about your failures in life and the degree of faith you have in a better future.

I am a terrible shopper. I hate mulling over things that need to be acquired. If I find something suitable, I want it and that’s that. The idea of looking around for an alternative – something that perhaps is a better value or even functions better, holds no appeal to me. I found it and I never want to look again. Shopping done.

It has been pointed out to me that I am truly a product of postwar Poland. I lived in a country where acquiring things was not a part of each day. There was nothing to acquire. Store shelves were bare. A few old cans of herring, loaves of bread and even those disappeared in the course of the day so that you had to buy at a certain hour when you knew delivery would be made. You wait too long and you’ll have missed your chance at bread.

We hoarded back then. Toilet paper. Never enough toilet paper in the stores. Sometimes months would pass and toilet paper would not be there. I wondered what happened to stall the production of toilet paper so often. Mostly though, I did not wonder about any of it. I accepted shortages, just as I accept bad weather in March.

And so sit me down with a construction crew, where I am negotiating how to keep the price down on the interior of the condo that I am about to purchase and you got yourself a nightmare of a situation.

No, I don’t want to change the refrigerator. I like the one I picked. I don’t want to look for another. And I like the stove that is meant for professional cooks even though I rarely cook these days. Everything. I like everything as decided in one fleeting second a few days back. No, I do not want to consider alternatives. I found it , I like it, I want to spend no more time on this. Lower the price so that I can afford it and let’s move on.

It’s not a strategy that makes you rich in life, but a life spent on obsessing about acquisition, on finding the cheapest, the best, the most practical, most suitable thing out there seems like a terrible waste of time. Besides, the item you have settled on wont be there past four o’clock and who knows when the next shipment will come in, or when the factory will close down for good and so it’s best to buy it now while it’s there or else you’ll have neither bread nor toilet paper in your cupboard.

In transit, at the Paris airport: reflecting about croissants after a tall glass of free champagne

It really doesn’t matter if the quality of my croissant this morning was mediocre or sublime (it was the former). Ocean writing was never meant to be a progress report on the improved conditions of croissants as I eat my way through Europe or the States.

On the other hand, behind every croissant there is a story. About chance encounters, about work, pleasure, fulfillment. And so croissants can indeed matter in the same way that madeleines mattered for Proust.

This morning, in Geneva, I paused no more than two minutes over breakfast. A return trip is never any more about time off. My work comes out, to do lists materialize and they are long and they include things like “purchase condo” and “write two lectures” and “grade midterm exams” as well as the more trite details of daily life. All to be accomplished in the next two days. The coming week-end puts me in Wilmington, Delaware and then D.C. I say this as a warning that writing here will suffer (for a couple of days) as I move from one mode of being to another.

A cartoon in last week’s New Yorker depicted a guy standing on the corner, marketing his opinion about every boring thing that happened to him (he was labeled a blogger). And here, on Ocean, a commenter to the skiing post (below) aptly labeled skiers who crash into people on the slopes as having poor skiing skills at the same time that they are holding onto delusions of adequacy. I noted both these, especially when I have before me days when I will write, even though I can’t or shouldn’t. I’m holding tightly to the idea that behind every croissant there is a story, however briefly or inadequately presented here.

Though I have to say, this morning in Geneva, in the hotel across the street from the train station, the croissant was flavorless.


breakfast, with station view

At the end of this month I’ll be looking into the matter of improving on the croissant prospects. It will be spring break. I’ll again be closer the places where cows appear happier and butter is sweeter.

from Geneva, Switzerland: going home

There was a time, decades ago, when Swissair was my favorite Europe-bound airline (!) and Geneva was, therefore, a typical connecting city for me.

The remarkable thing about this is that I never much cared for Geneva as a place to visit. It’s a personal reaction, I admit. It seemed (and still seems now) a place of high etiquette and propriety. Everything is expensive and older women look very well kempt. Perhaps I sensed that I didn’t exactly blend well here.

For complicated work reasons, Geneva was a good stopping point now on my way back to Madison. I came early, took care of my assignments quickly and found myself with a long afternoon where I could call the shots and do as I pleased. I chose to walk.

For hours and hours, up through the old town and along the lake, I walked. A few photos, to show that I am happy to give Geneva another chance, even as I still feel that its warmth is more weather related than because it is inherently a welcoming place. Here’s evidence of its charm though. Because Geneva, on an early spring day can appear charming:










hot chocolate, naturally







drawing lessons














I ask the desk clerk for food recommendations and I am given a name of a place that is minutes from the train station, with a cuisine that aims to please: Swiss fondue and Chinese dishes as an extra bonus. No, that wont do.

At a beautiful old bookstore I ask for something on Geneva’s food scene. I am told that there is one great book on the new bistros here except the gentleman over in the corner is reading the last copy.

The gentleman over in the corner is willing to part with it but I ask if he could, instead, simply recommend a nice place to eat. Seafood, he tells me. I should try the Café Central for its fresh seafood.

I am in one of the few land-locked countries in Europe and so I hesitate. If at least Switzerland aligned itself with the European Union, so that Scottish salmon and Greenland pink shrimp were all really Union food… But no. Switzerland is in its own neutral world and so I say no to the seafood place and ask for another choice.

Brasserie Lipp. Go eat there – the food is quite good. Fresh and honest. (Alright, the honest is my addition.)

Now that’s just plain funny. Brasserie Lipp is a favorite for any number of Parisians and visitors to Paris. It is an institution there and I have never gone to it because Paris has enough other choices, so that I have not felt the need to seek out this solid, old world brasserie, with very traditional cuisine.

But here, in Geneva, I have no other ideas and so I do go there and I happily acquiesce to Greenland shrimp (because I actually think little pink shrimp make a lovely appetizer), but then go with the Swiss beef and the ever magnificent Swiss scalloped potatoes and Swiss wine and all in all, I am prepared to be satisfied.

Except that a gentleman at the table next to mine is an older Frenchman who travels to Geneva occasionally and eats at the Brasserie when he is here and he rolls his eyes at this Swiss rendition of the venerable old place, so that even here, I am told not to be completely won over.

It’s not nearly as good as the French version, he tells me. And, it is expensive for what it is.

Is it? I am here so briefly that I have not bothered to study conversion rates and so I have no idea what any of the prices around me stand for. I assume everything is expensive because it is Geneva after all, but the Brasserie Lipp in Paris is your middle of the road place so why should it be different here?

Why indeed. Ah well, you can’t go wrong with Greenland pink shrimp and Swiss beef. And really, there is not a restaurant in the world that cannot be criticized, just like there is no city in the world that hasn’t its failings. It’s all in the mindset. I am prepared this time around to find Geneva an acceptable stopping point and the Brasserie Lipp to be a fine old dining establishment and so it shall be thus.











I return late to my room, the one where someone has smoked and smoked all its living days, the one right next to the train station, so that I should not even bother to look out the window because the view cannot be anything at all. The one I will happily leave tomorrow to return back home.

Let’s hope for a good croissant in the morning. The Swiss bake ever so well. And who can beat an airport that is a six minute train ride from city center. There, you see? It’s all in the mindset.

Now let me drift back in my thoughts to the fresh, gusty mountain air, and to the view out my window this morning. Now that was something else…


Cervinia morning: view from the Hotel Hermitage