On the Yahara A-Z

F.

French Hot Chocolate.  The east side Willy St. and Atwood neighborhoods would be difficult to live near without a sweet tooth.  We assumed the main and only sweet draw in the neighborhood was the

world famous Gail Ambrosius Chocolates, down along Atwood maybe a mile from our house.  But we are finding out, visit after visit, that Ambrosius is merely one link of a never ending chain of chocolate, confections, cakes, pastries and, yes, 'ugly cookies.'  No more than a .1 mile walk from the cozy, undersized Ambrosius is the outstretched French Bistro style Chocolaterian Cafe,

a shop that opened up as a collaboration in 2009 between a chocolatier and a convenience store founder who wanted to create a candy company specializing in a toffee recipe created by his mother many years ago.  The toffee itself became virtually world famous as it found its way chosen into Grammy grab bags some years ago and has since grown into a bronze winning chocolate making facility in Madison.  The shop is an old laundry and spans the width of a narrow block, offering entrances on two sides, one end as a register and display case, the other end as both seating and, most interestingly, an open window candy making kitchen, so that you can watch the process as you indulge.

As you read about the cafe, you find out that even though toffee is still the founding attraction, they have since also become a patisserie, making a quiche to die for, authentic French macaroons, 'ugly cookies' (flat, misshapen, but beloved), and the newest sweet draw, French style hot chocolate.

Variously described as 'heaven,' an 'addiction,' and the "only necessary meal of the day," the Parisian style concoction is really nothing more than melted chocolate and some heavy cream, just barely liquid enough to sip not eat.  On our trip in, after we breathed in the chocolate fog, we ordered two 'Monona Bars,' rice krispie chocolate bars but with a special secret ingredient: a thick layer of homemade caramel under the top chocolate coating... about the size as an iPhone.  As we finished, we looked out the back door and wondered momentarily if we should cross the block to see what Ambrosius was whipping up.

"The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees,
The liliput countless armies of the grass…." – Whitman, "Return of the Heroes"







Frautschi Point


Lakeshore path University Bay a rich cold blue –
one boat off the dock at Memorial Union testing divers
and the black coots scuttle off among the bunchgrass
swooping to the chug of the parading April shore.
All to come! All to see! The sail dinghy's stacked
collecting the cold monotony of winter no longer,
Sycamores lapping up the moist rocks tired no longer.
We pass by in the hundreds, walking legs, runners,
elbows pumping fast as the heart of the biker
circles and sags to the speed of wheel rubber
down the pass to Frautschi Point, past the Mendota
Garden where the gates and fences hold rising vines
from the waters of the sleeping Lake no longer.

"Or from the sea of Time, collecting casting all, I bring, A window-drift of weeds and shells." Whitman, from "Autumn Rivulets"







Pelican



Savannah time, old plains, meadow, rocky outcropping,
the oaks at the top chiseled and bled by time itself,
hill time carved out by the unseen labor of the glacier
that left the fields ripe for the seeds of lupine, spiderwort, columbine –
Circling above it all, above the hill and marshland,
above the back channels endlessly weaving in secret spindles
and worn back by the beaver's born industry,
the prehistoric pelicans shaking air by shorn wings.
What do they see? Do they know the old glacier receding,
the channel waters rising and falling below the oak trunk roots?
Does the eye of the mind know where to roost for two days
in among the yet colorless April fields unfolding?

Nature Journal

"An eagle soaring above a sheer cliff, where I suppose its nest is, makes another striking show of life, and helps to bring to mind the other people of the so called solitude...." Muir, from My First Summer in the Sierra



April 10


The vast backwaters of the Trempealeau Wildlife Refuge teem with waterfowl in spring.  There are so many pockets of back bays, so many made dikes splitting ponds, bunches of floating marsh grass and timber for beaver mound construction that you are seemingly never more than a short walk along a path away from some new flock of species.  We parked at the head of the Wildlife Drive

down below the Prairie Road.  The bike trail is fine gravel and easy to bike – a side channel waterway to the right and a vast naturally occurring savannah to the left.  By late spring bloom the prairie is an array of hundreds of splashed colors from spiderwort to lupine.  Underneath the unseeable portions of the marsh grasses a heavy croaking hum of spring frogs. At the beginning of the bike loop, besides the occasional solo mallard or black tern, the main species of bird that we saw was the utterly majestic American White Pelican.  Flying up over the tops of the sparse Savannah oaks, maybe 30 pelicans circled the hill lines, slowly flapping their wings, then diving down in unison with one another, their

wings peeled back for the sake of aerodynamics.  At various spots along the biking loop, we would encounter the pelicans again and again as they must have been determining their preferred landing zone in the backwaters.  Sometimes they would shake no more than a hundred feet above us.  What would strike us and leave us standing in amazement, was the sheer size of these birds, considered one

of the largest North American birds.  The overall sound of a bird that close becomes somewhat equal to its size.  As you sit below two geese leaving their own comfortable roost floating on the lake, you can hear their wings flap and the wind literally split in their wake; as for the pelican, they are virtually silent vocally, but their bodies carry the same kind of wind energy as a small craft as they fill sky directly above you.

Geese sat in their marsh reed roosts, honking as we approached.  White and Sandhill cranes flung up from the deep edges of bays. Across the surface, this visit anyway, were hundreds of black ducks with particularly astute radars.  Any motion from two hundred yards or inward and these black ducks quickly bunched together and rose up to find another spot along the water roadway a few more feet down and went on about their business.

Arundel's Eggz
Family Food Truck

"There was a loud oomph in the backseat. Rosalind glanced around to make sure violence hadn't broken out, but it was only Batty struggling with her car seat–she was trying to twist herself backward to see Hound." from The Penderwicks









We found out that Lacy enjoyed parking the food truck much more than driving it.  Our first 'gig,' as dad put it, was to park right up at the corner of Martin Luther King and the Capital, where there are designated hours allowable by city ordinances.  We were in a hurry, barely shoveled up Zach and Hannah, dad was in back steeping our biggest cast iron pot with chicken broth and saffron "to give it a little Spanish" he said.  Our eyes glassed over at that, I remember it well, as Lacy saddled up in a driver's seat that shaped something like a four foot stepping stool with a black cushion.  The stick shift ran up from the floor like a broom stick so when Lacy held her right hand down to the shift and left foot to the iron clutch, she was in such a position that resembled a bad episode of an early 80's breakdancer. The steering wheel was a big and round as ship's helm – we would not have been surprised one bit if it had come with those old wooden helm handles which she might have swung from right to left and let the dial spin for a left turn.  The truck wobbled at turns, heavier on the side with the Wolf stove and Sub-Zero refrigerator.  "How am I driving," Lacy might shout out at any random moment, chugging down East Washington, swinging the helm and jabbing her left heel at the clutch as if it were a moving insect to crush.  "Very good so far," dad would yell out from the back, both of his hands sealing the pot tight in a virtual bear hug.  Hannah was writing a chap book of poems, of course, trying to seek out the most appropriate image flitting about the streets to fit into a line of pentameter.  "Dad, why are we doing this again?"  Zach held up navigation on the family phone and mimicked the speech of the dull female direction giver.  "In a quarter of a mile, right on John Nolan."  Dad, saving the broth for the Arroz Con Pollo (with eggs!) realized they did not have any money for their make-shift cash register.  Options quickly dwindled to giving out their hard-earned grub for free or they all had to cough up last week's allowance for spare change.  If only the gas tank were empty, Lacy was thinking, if only....for goodness sake!

Weeknight Cooking:
Arroz Con Pollo

Traditionally conceived Paella (Spanish rice) dishes can be intimidating to consider for any weeknight cooking option.  Ingredients like rabbit, an option of snails, broad/fava beans and bomba rice all sound very enticing but hard to come by.  Fortunately there are many other options available; thought of broadly, the arroz con pollo recipe, for example, is really just a fine name for a chicken and rice dish

splashed with some colorful vegetables and laced with strands of saffron.  Spanish rice dishes fall into categories based on how much of the rice is intended to be soaked up, so that an 'arroz secos' is a dish that is cooked in a very shallow pan until quite dry; baked dishes are called 'arroz al horno' and maintain more of stew like quality.  Creamy rice, 'arroz en coldoso' is cooked in a deeper pan and comes out more as a sauce.  The key quality to the Arroz Con Pollo, I found, was to properly reduce the initial highly brothy texture to something closer to the Paella stew like form.  As long as the heat is a slight simmer at medium low, the broth cooks off without overcooking the chicken or drying the rice.

Based on the advice of the recipe, you can marinade chicken thighs first if you like, to add flavor in the cooking process, but I skipped the marinade and seasoned a package of boneless thighs with the only southwestern style seasoning that we had, a sort of Mexican combination that resembles somewhat the Spanish origin of these dishes.  Cook the thighs to close to done on both sides; meanwhile prepare four cups of chicken broth sprinkled with some threads of saffron for added depth.

Add to the chicken fat in the pan chopped red onion, chopped bell pepper, cook for a minute, then add four chopped plum tomatoes.  Sprinkle on some cumin, two bay leaves, two cups of chosen rice (I chose a

medley grain option for texture) until the rice soaks up the liquid in the pan; add to that the chicken broth and the mostly cooked chicken pieces, raise the heat to boil, then back down to simmer for around 20 minutes, or until most of the visible liquid in the pan has been soaked.  Add salt along the way to make sure that the broth and rice don't bring the dish down too dull.  Once you extract the bay leaves after 20 minutes, let the dish sit, what you have is not only a very visually appealing rice dish, but an entirely different and more vibrant take on the standard rice and chicken baked dishes (also usually quite good).  Other vegetables could easily be swapped out for the bell pepper, and I

considered for a moment even adding some finely diced portions of scrambled eggs, which I thought might compliment the rice nicely as it so often does in more Asian dishes.

On the Yahara

"The similitudes of the past and those of the future, The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river." – Whitman, "Crossing the Brooklyn Ferry"




Yahara Spring X – Final


What can only be seen of things from the middle of the lake!
Seen along the edges at once – around the bay at Paunack,
which itself drains down into the Waubesa; Tonyawatha
across from the Yahara, Schluter Park, Olbrich, Brittingham,
Law and the B.B. Clarke Beach, all seen from the hull of kayak.
How the wind drops down out of the violent early April sky
and lands like the invisible hoof prints of a thousand stomping
caribou as I hold up black blades of the paddles as masts
and turn like a compass dial to the direction of Horseshoe bar
where the ancient timber of the city has piled, lazing
over the shoreline, their limbs holding out for simple drinks.
Others might see the black headed ducks pop up and down out of waves,
others from the Rutledge Bridge the one sole blue kayak
bouncing aimlessly around to the forces of the wind,
the black cloud coming, the rain burning east.
Others, from up two streets, along sidewalks and bike trails,
may not know the wind, might not know the spin of raw water,
so cool to the touch it makes the air seem like fire.

On the Yahara A-Z

E.

Established 2015, Gibs Cocktail Lounge.  It's always an amazing thing to find restaurants, pubs, taverns and the like that seem to be works of the imagination itself.  For anyone who ever thought of the concept of turning a house into a restaurant or a bar, well, here on Willy Street, this has happened for real, in variety.  The idea behind many such places is to figure out a way to preserve the native city culture while creating something new at the same time.  I'm not sure I've seen this idea more in play than at Gibs Cocktail Lounge, next to Grampa's Pizza east end of Willy Street.

A newcomer to the area simply walking-by towards Grampa's Pizzeria (called Grampa's because the previous business in the building was called Grampas Gun Shop), you might not think a single thing about the house standing next door – before it was renovated for business, it looked about like an average residential rental at best.  But you notice the most unusual thing as you walk out the vestibule of Grampa's and look into the side window of that building next door: it is a fashionable two-story cocktail lounge!

First conceived as an overflow seating area for patrons at Grampas, the cocktail lounge has become, in its own right, a very interesting destination, serving homemade cocktails made by local ingredients which follow the seasons.

Farm to table has now evolved well beyond meat and produce and moved not only into the craft beer world, but into the world of mixology and the distilling of fine liquors...farm to bar.

On the Yahara

"Forth from its sunny nook of shelter'd grass – innocent, golden, calm as the dawn, The spring's first dandelion shows its trustful face." – Whitman, "The First Dandelion"






Yahara Spring IX


Nestled in among the cold piles of leaves rises up
     the thin green stems of tulip buds,
climb slowly upwards in thin new kingdoms,
hidden, hollow – innocence, which knows
by new eyes that the sun crosses the garden
between clouds in streaks for their sake.

On the Yahara

"Two boats with nets lying off the sea-beach,
quite still, Ten fishermen waiting–they discover a thick school of mossbonkers–they drop the join'd seine-ends in the water..." – Whitman, "A Paumanok Picture"





Yahara Spring VIII



Winnequah Point, where the Winnebago once slept
in tribes and villages along the shoreline
a fisherman now stands, himself alone, long pole
in hand and shoulders thrust forward from a cast.
His the same motions as the ancient ones,
the same March breeze stings off his knuckles,
he grips then reals-in steady with short hesitations.
And the woman behind holds just as tight to child,
as three fires dot a camp below Starkweather Creek.
Two men paddle their dugout to set nets
over a school of sunnies, dogfish, if lucky a long pike.
The same brother hawk shrieks as it glides
in long circles over the tips of the same trees.

On the Yahara

"Sounds of the winter too,
Sunshine upon the mountains–many a distant strain
From cheery railroad train..."
     – Whitman, from "Sounds of the Winter"








Yahara Spring VII


Some bridges down, at East Washington,
the last of the rail cars click over the tracks
and leave a soft sound in the river.
Lake Monona awash with the swish of crisp waves,
Seagulls dive at the pickings at the shoreline,
menacing crows carelessly bound
along the Riverside streets of Jenifer,
Rutledge and Winnebago where oak twigs crash
and skip off the curbs and sidewalks.
Bundled joggers pass in heated breaths.
Childrens' bright eyes close as sneezes
ring out from under stroller hoods –
the world calls out this is the time of Spring.

On the Yahara A-Z

D.


Dane is Great.  A sunny day in March means flip on the bike light and ride up over the Rutledge Bridge and onto the Capital via the bike loop, onto Williamson Street temporarily, to John Nolan Drive, then up to Pinckney at the very heart of the Capital District where one of the great brew pubs of the midwest stands, The Great Dane.

With bike lock mounts stationed all around the capital, park, lock up, then walk into one of the more dynamic, multi-level brew pubs imaginable, a front bar, back bar, basement bar, pool hall and revealed windowed brew vat production, it is something like a small adventure finding the best or series of best, seats in the house.

For my own best bet, I would take a nice seat at the front bar where you can see the handwritten signs advertising fresh taps, and the pool hall behind if that is the game.  I would order the Crop Circle Wheat beer and the Mojo Cubano sandwich, a nice play on the traditional pulled pork and pickled sandwich (Scotch Ale brined pickles), and then, to seal the deal, order two 'Crowlers' to go.  The crowler is an offshoot of the standard brew pub option of a glass-jarred growler – an aluminum can version that is sealed and capped at the bar itself, a handwritten description of the beer and a.b.v. % level on the side of the can.

The Great Dane has grown from one central location to two others around the city of madison, each of them with new and innovative modes of beer production and delivery.  At the Fitchburg location, the tables upstairs have two taps coming up through the center with digital readout re-fills available.  Most hours the Danes are family friendly and very communal by nature -- the old beer hall alive and well in the city.