The South Seas

"On the whole it is clear that the financial attractions of privateering were greater than those of the queen's service. In the latter the men were paid ten shillings a month, whereas a single share in a successful privateering cruise would amount to four or five pounds, giving the ordinary seaman twelve or fifteen pounds for a few months' service, quite apart from what he might gather by way of pillage or embezzlement." – from Elizabethan Privateering

Upon the second dive down into such shallow water, the grandfather took an enormous breath.  His lungs were of course not what they used to be -- there had been a time when such a task, a mere six feet below the surface, would have hardly been felt, but there were slight catches in his breath, his sternum perhaps a bit softer now, but there was one thing that had not yet been taken from him, his determination.  He could still see clearly and what was his utter disbelief that now, after thirty three years of coming to the same place, of looking over virtually every inch, secretly, always secretly, of the island, that it would be an accidental dive off of the most obvious shoreline that may have found his privateering ship.  Yes, this was it, he was certain.  In the logs that he had read, it did mention that the English vessel The Jezebel, owned by one Rone Culper, had slipped into these shallow shores in among the hundreds of islands off of Fort Myers in waiting for the Spanish Hispaniola, which carried, if any of the legend could possibly believe, the only great load of gold ever taken from New America in Colorado.  The Spanish had claimed the inner states above Mexico and named it Sante Fe De Nuevo Mexico.  There the mountains were high, the winters unusually dangerous to Conquistadors not prepared for such climate.  They had interacted with Arapaho at modern Boulder enough to learn their trading routes and their stores of buffalo. They had also found, by accident, what was then called the cave of the Mother Lode, supposedly made of gold, which filtered down the Flatirons through its rushing creeks.  It was said, the grandfather knew well, that the Spanish did not have the patience for the mere flakes of gold and forced the Arapaho under harsh circumstance, to lead them up the mountain and to what appeared an "enclosed cave, the entrance no wider than a man's body." Two Spanish witnesses had written that what lay inside was beyond anything yet encountered in the Americas. "Entire walls of only the gem. Torchlight revealed a solid wall of gold." The same two men began an immediate excavation and had even melted many pounds into transportable blocks, only to then disappear after the shipment had arrived at the docks near Tampico, Mexico.  Two months later, it was recorded that the Hispaniola had skirted along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico to the shores near Cape Coral, hidden in among the many islands for repairs before its journey to the other shore and across the Atlantic.  It was here that Culper and his infamous Jezebel laid in waiting for the new Spanish traffic.

Blue Ribbon
Cookie of the Year Award

"These make great ice-cream sandwiches!" – Dorie Greenspan, from Dorie's Cookies













We've tried a hundred cookie recipes over the years, always seeking that one great masterpiece that has that elusive quality of being both tasty and perfectly textured at the same time.  I finally found a cookie that met these standards, but it wasn't our own.  We found the great chocolate chip in the most unlikely of places -- up on the top ski chalet at Lutsen. As we were going through the cafeteria line for a snack and a decaf coffee, I noticed that the cookie jar at the checkout counter was steamed and
the cookies inside barely visible. I reached in and found that these large chocolate chip cookies must have just come out of the oven and delivered here into the jar.  These were large and were the kind that held a crispy edge but inside still virtually gooey, the perfect cookie and the kind that tempts the hungry lunchtime eater to skip the lunch and order enough of these to tide them over until dinner time, which might have happened.  Two days ago we tried a recipe out of the great Dorie's Cookies cookbook, written by Dorie Greenspan, a famous American French food expert who wrote the James Beard award winning Around my French Table.  The Snowy-Topped Brownie Drops are, as she

plainly states in one of her great little introductions to her recipes, "At heart, they're a brownie. In fact, the recipe is a variation of my Classic Brownie, which I've been making forever." There is always a key to every great recipe, especially the ones that end up, luckily, just like you want them.  For this recipe, it starts with a perfectly melted and stirred combination of 8 ounces of blocked semi-sweet chocolate and 5 tbsp. of butter melted in a double boiler. If this overcooks, as we have all experienced, the two ingredients begin to separate and the mixture will become runny and the cookies eventually won't form well.  To this chocolate, add sugar, vanilla, sea salt and only 3/4 cup of flour, and finally 2 more oz. of chipped chocolate. The texture is still quite soft at this point, but a second secret is to harden the batter by cooling it in the refrigerator for up to 3 hours or, as I did, put it in the freezer for 30 minutes.  Pull out the hardened batter and, with the help of a handled cookie scoop, pull out a full portion and drop it and roll into a small bowl of powdered sugar, the second main secret to the success of these cookies.  As the cookie bakes, it is the powdered sugar that forms a sort of sweet crust on the cookie, protecting it somehow from overcooking within.  After cooling for only around five minutes, these cookies are quite crisp on the outside, but nearly unfinished brownie in the center, the chocolate pieces still holding some texture, gooey, sweet, hard but soft.  A great test of this kind of perfect texture is two days later.  Does it harden throughout as it dries, or is the cookie still soft and moist?  Two days later here, and only two survive.  They must have passed all the tests.

What's in Bayfield?

Standing at the second floor lookout from Bayfield Inn, winter or summer, it's the geography that has

so obviously shaped the history of this place.  An abundant and spiritual center for Native Americans, these protected bays by the Apostle Islands have served as great trade routes by the French and English, as well as for shipping. Along with these great movements in history comes the culture of maritime history, fur trading structures, and the many historical lighthouses that dot the craggy edges

of islands and cliffs around La Pointe County.  For this, Bayfield is an easy entry into the past, and about as rugged yet beautiful landscape as there is on any American shoreline, maybe not quite as

high or complex as the Northern Californian highway one route, but dotted by more islands and surrounded by an essential body of water.  Inland, low-lying mountains, such as Mt. Ashwabay, offer the great variety of sightseeing and recreation simultaneously, as you might downhill or cross country ski or, if prepared, fat tire back through seven miles of winter-long groomed trails.

Sailing in summer, ice-caving in winter, Apple Fest in Summer, dog-sledding in winter, Bayfield is as close a version of Colorado that the midwesterner is going to find within a fair-range drive.  Off in the distance, Stockton Island, one of the small Apostles, which makes the unusual claim to harbor more bears per square foot than any other place on earth.  That strange mystery to think that the paddler in summer might pass by the bobbing head of a brown bear swirls in among the same images as hovering over the seventy foot hull of a sunken schooner, so close you could learn over and touch a topmast pole.

What's in Bayfield?

To the onlooker from the beaches of Bayfield out onto the Apostle Islands, the scenery is striking for the scattering of land out in the protected waters.  Sailboats in the summer outnumber powerboats. Ferries take their designated line back and forth to Madeline Island carrying enthusiastic tourists. On the backside of Madeline, one of the great camping parks in the state offering wild beaches and ocean like streams flowing inward.  To watercraft, though, navigating this part of Lake Superior would have been a challenging but always dangerous prospect.  Thousands of shipwrecks line the bottom of Lake

Finn McCool

Superior, entombed in freezing water and often found no more than twenty feet from the surface.  Kayaking over one of these great wooden shipwrecks leaves the paddler full of an eery awe -- the shipwreck, by definition, means something bad happened.  Many sunk by fire, many sunk on purpose,  many pulled toward the shallow bottom by storm, and others just worn out, run down, and dead in the water.  The Finn McCool can still be seen only some feet off the shore of Bayfield in 10-20 feet of water.  The Lucerne, likely named after the city in Switzerland, launched in 1873, which hauled grain

The Lucerne

and later coal, made her last run with her mizzen boom broken from outside of Chicago, although at the time considered one of the sturdiest vessels in the lakes.  "In the midst of the storm the Captain of the steam barge Fred Kelley enroute for this place to load iron ore, discerned the ill fated schooner rolling and pitching about on the lake, evidently at the mercy of the wind and waves. She was seen soon afterward to turn about and head for this harbor, but was never seen again as far as known. The Steamer S.B. Barker...while passing the South Channel at Chequamic Point discovered the spars of a vessel just above the water, which proved to be the missing Lucerne. In the rigging were found three crews who were covered with ice from one to six inches. They were cut loose and taken to Bayfield." Today the hull of the ship is largely intact, lying in only 24 feet of water, much of the bottom settled into the sand bottom, but the top of the sternpost is at 15 feet and top of the centerboard is at 12.5 deep.  One wonders if these great wooden shadows might be visible below the ice.

The Pond

"Although he's already quite sturdy, he must be young. He's holding on tightly to the branch with his feet, not moving, as if flying exhausted him, and he's chirruping very gently." from "The Sparrow" by Jules Renard










The weather is poor enough and the trail still icy enough through its center, that I meet no one else at the Arboretum this morning.  When you pass the great Curtis Prairie in winter, it is not the abundance any longer that greets you, but the total lack of abundance.  The great restored prairie's abundance is its future potential, soon to come, of the spring migration of geese overhead, the rising of the Rattlesnake Master, the Purple Prairie Clover, the Big bluestem and the goldfinches that will trill at the approach of any feet.  You continue through scattering of marshland oak, silent as could be, more like sentries than trees. On toward the Lost Forest, the upper marsh turning to canopy, the trail, crisp by ice-molded footsteps, leads to another strangely silent space, Teal Pond abundant by ice and occurrence of virtually nothing.  As with the prairie, it is not what you do observe, but imagining what you don't -- the otter, the frogs, the snakes and every bird imaginable from the Wood Duck, the Black Tern, the Red-breasted nuthatch or occasional Blue Jay. I walk out to the end of the dock and, for better or worse, see the thick sheen of foot deep ice where the poles jut up from the bottom of the pond. The benches will soon be crowded again, the binoculars held tight to the eyes, watching for the red flash or the slow rotation of the head of the Great Horned Owl.  As I turn back toward shore, my weight shifts the wood of the dock just enough creek and moan, and the surface of the surrounding ice cracks and miniature shards slide for a couple of inches like tossed glass.

South Seas

"Santiago,' the boy said to him as they climbed the bank from where the skiff was hauled up. 'I could go with you again. We've made some money.' The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him. 'No,' the old man said. 'You're with a lucky boat. Stay with them.'"
                      –Old Man and the Sea


The grandfather had seen something six feet below the surface on the sand that the granddaughter had not seen.  Something stirred in him that he had not felt for many many years.  They both rose to the surface in unison.  Luckily the kayaks were still soft anchored and surrounding them. No other boaters would run over the top of them if they saw the kayaks.  One sailboat chipped up and down the line of the Costa some distance to the west and to the east the great South Seas resort stood, proud, gray, and the palm trees barely nudged against a smattering of wind.  The girl flipped her goggles up. "Did you see this?" She hauled up the mesh bag.  It was from one year ago, when they had made their secret trip across this very strait in the moonlight accompanied by two dolphins who seemed to chaperone them to the beach. "This is the bag of shells that I lost last time." Now the grandfather had not seen that. What a find! There was a bit of luck stirring he thought, and he examined the bag quickly, while continuing to dog paddle to stay buoyed in shallow water.  "Are you getting tired, Lily?" he asked. Her life jacket was in the kayak, and he could certainly get this for her.  "There was one other thing that I would like to dive for.  You go on up into your kayak and wait for me." He helped scoot her up and over the lip of the small kayak; it wavered side to side and nearly dipped into the water.  What a mess that would have been.  So easy to slip out of the kayak, so difficult to get back in from the water.  His heart stirred. The old man had read his books about privateering in these waters.  Privateering. Pirating. What was the difference was not much difference in action, but different in its backing. The privateer had his slip of paper from the crown, or ordinance from its launching merchant. The pirate did not have such a piece of paper.  How many privateers had become pirates without anybody knowing? What he saw at the bottom was something alright.  He pulled his goggles back up over this eyes and took an enormous breath.  He went straight down to the bottom like a thrown stick.  The sand had stirred up so he felt around the area that they had just reached.  At first, it was soft sand, so he circled around slowly so save his breath, but then there it was, something large, something wooden, this he knew and placed his hand around what he knew to be a part of the deck of a ship!

The South Seas

"The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of the scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishes desert." – Hemingway, Old Man and the Sea



It was not something that the grandmother would have appreciated, nor the mother.  The beach attendants might have yelled out, wondered, and dove in to help.  The grandfather knew that his granddaughter was of him, though, kindred spirits.  He knew this all the time, since Lily was born, as she looked into his eyes nearly as early as the mother's.  It is what you wish for, he thought then, to truly understand. She would be safe, of course, because she was as capable as any other and perhaps most importantly, she knew it.  They soft-anchored and dove over the side of their kayaks with masks on.  The light was like a chamber, fortunately for them.  The Captiva straight was nothing more that an false island of sand built up and channel running through.  Inside the chamber was an aqua as pure as the original seas, as blue as a paste, but clear, livable.  The old man showed her that he still had his breath held tight under water and smiled at Lily.  She smiled underwater and her hair churned with the minor movements.  She exaggerated, he knew, the size of her breath by puffing out her cheeks, but then dove down, like a loon might from the top surface of a lake, a few feet down to the bottom. This was a safe depth, he thought, and felt good about this afternoon dive of theirs.  The breath has a way of calling attention to itself, it is something like recurring alarm, saying, in essence, this is not your natural habitat, breath.  This happened to both of them because as they wiped their hands across the soft bottom they both saw the same thing and that very alarm that was supposed to force a surfacing was swallowed by the strength of mystery.  The old man saw immediate visions of the privateers through these waters, but for the girl, for Lilly, it was of the color, the beauty, the collection.  The grandfather pointed up to the surface for he knew it was time.  The heart began to beat harder, of course, as it does underwater.  The sun was itself a crystal at the surface of it. The world was silent.  The world, there, for that moment, was a lustrous blue.

Scenes from Evanston

When you live across from Lake Monona in winter, you assume most northern lakes are frozen.  The first morning in Evanston, taking a quick jog toward the Lake Michigan three blocks away from the Hyatt House on Chicago Street, what I saw was a wide open and wild blue ocean lined by white beaches, no snow! It was 50 degrees outside by that time and people were already sitting down on beach towels sunning, walking dogs and kids were boiling over in the string of parks that line Sheridan Avenue along the lake front. From these beach points you can see the silhouette of downtown Chicago to your right and Northwestern U. to the left.  Straight ahead, a long straight blue lined horizon.


 From NU campus moving south along the lake covers several miles, lined all by a walk and bike trail. During more standard spring months, the beach that sits closest to the campus is a boat, kayak and beach operation, which looks a little out of place empty underneath a sunny sky and open water.  It was at this little corner of the walkway that we saw a small girl, maybe three, toddling along the grass holding a dog on a leash each hand.  The dogs were small and well trained enough not to pull very hard.

The Hyatt House is brand new and beautiful with double black out shades, quiet, and full of kids playing games in the kitchen.  The real beauty of the Hyatt is that it is located within three blocks of the Lake Michigan ocean, and only blocks from fifty restaurants and shops, including a great find of a back alley bookstore, which we were just glad was still open.  Giordono's of the famous Chicago style pizzerias, is on the same block, and half a block away is Pete Miller's, an iconic steak and jazz club.

Or Lyfe Kitchen, a sort of random favorite of Julia's, with a few blocks.  This is a great and fresh new take on the cafeteria concept.  Order as you enter, find a seat, and then it is quickly served. Two water taps sit at stations for self-service.  Mahi soft shell tacos include a chayote slaw, avocado, chipotle aioli, salsa fresca and can be gluten free and vegan upon request.  Some menu items include what is called Gardein, a trademarked product that is Garden plus protein and is made from plant-based food textured like meat, that kind of place.  Unfortunately, although the tacos were great, one customer who ordered the grilled cheese wasn't quite as excited about the choice of healthy cheese.

Grosse Point Lighthouse is one of the wonderfully anachronistic landmarks of Evanston, an old city surrounded by old architecture but with about as modern an outlook as any city this side of San Francisco.  Built as far back as 1873, this was the lead lighthouse marking the approach of Chicago for ship traffic. This area was first chartered by two names familiar to the upper midwest and especially the Mississippi River Valley, Marquette and Joliet.  Today it is a crumbling tour but as the sunlight dims, as you look up into its hooded prism, the light still rotates for would-be night traffic.

The Welsh-Ryan basketball auditorium, a mile up city from the lighthouse, is a throwback stage for basketball.  Mostly bench seating, relatively small for a big-10 venue, and hot in the rafters, the place is a quaint reminder of a time in basketball when the game was more about the game than the place.  The mascot for Northwestern is the wildcat; at timeouts and before opposing team free throws, the young girls in the crowd screamed out growls.  NU beat Rutgers by only a couple of points and hold out fair hope for reaching the NCAA tournament, having reached 20 wins in the regular season so far.

When all else fails, when Giordono's is booked and the tapas joint just down the street is a 20-minute wait, duck into the Whiskey Thief, a brand new stylish restaurant that takes its name from a position that the whiskey taster in a distillery used to hold.  Here the Scottish salmon is cooked to perfection and the Sprites are served in double lip glasses shaped like old whiskey samplers.

Riverside Ovens
Test Kitchen

2. Mediterranean Bake


The Mediterranean Pistou breakfast eggs recipe has a sound of sophistication but its beauty is its simplicity and the ease of the process of an egg bake.  Even though poaching, frying and the omelette

can all take a level of fine art to achieve, the egg bake concept, similar to the frittata, has more to do with the placement of the ingredients and a willingness to hover over the baking process.  The Mediterranean plan begins with diced tomatoes heating in a pan with seasoning.  Add to this a handful or two of white beans, warming through and making sure that the tomatoes cook long
enough to break down and soften but not burn.  Crack and open four eggs into separate portions of the pan, let heat up through to set just a bit then go ahead and bake in a 325 degree oven until the eggs completely whiten and the glossy fluid over the top disappears.  Pull out the eggs -- kitchen glove on hand -- and drizzle pesto to personal liking over the top.  Cut into four portions and this

simple recipe is achieved without fail.  The great part of this style of egg cooking is that it opens up the possibility for adding virtually any ingredients underneath and over the top of the eggs.  Various peppers could be softened underneath, maybe even red potatoes, varying beans, or maybe asparagus.  Over the top could be cheese or a hollandaise sauce.  The important part is to know that the baking is simple and takes only time not necessarily art.

"The whole extent of the South Seas is a desert of ships; more especially that part where we now sail. No post runs in these lands; communication is by accident; where you may have designed to go one thing, where you shall be able to arrive another." – Robert Louis Stevenson, from In the South Seas



And so this was the thirty-third consecutive year that the old man had come to South Seas at Captiva Island, Florida.  Here, the water had maintained its aqua green coloration; its filmy green lining that seemed to hover above the horizon of the surface of the water in the distance; the sand, at spots, fluffy and near white; at others, as you walked down further toward where the water meets, all ripples of mixed shaped shells and one had to be somewhat watchful of each step.  He learned to wear tight fitting sandals many years ago as he experimented with wading in the water more and more often and those sandals came in more than a little handy, made him much less fearful of the cold and the common shards of shells that every tourist stumbles on as they bathe and frolic in the Gulf of Mexico.  This would not be his last trip, but it might be the very last that his granddaughter, Lily, might be along.  His oldest grandson, Thomas, had already grown up, lived now, temporarily, in the south of France as wine distributor.  How could he contend with such a place as Aix en Provence, of the Luberon?  Lily was not as old as that, but she had kayaked and sailed virtually every inch of these nearby islands of Cabbage Key, Useppa, Caya Costa.  The old man used to tell stories of pirates and privateers as they would make their heated dash from the main island at Captiva over to the Caya, drifting through the partial mangos, and past the lumbering manattees underwater.  There had been

much adventure then; he could easily remember the day that they stopped as they were paddling over what was then called fisherman's slough, set a simple anchor, and challenged one another to flip in the water directly over the hull of the kayak to snorkel.  There would have been no understandable way to predict what they found there a mere five feet down in the water, through the clutter of shell, and the hazy clouds of sand stirred up...

Riverside Ovens
Test Kitchen

1. Poached

Eggs are one of the most fickle food staples to cook.  Poach em, fry em, scramble em, frittata them, omelette them, there are as many ways to prepare the gooey gobs as there are tastes and time.  Maybe that's what makes them, also, one of the most common that cooks enjoy to challenge themselves.  This past week alone I have tried to poach, to pistou, and to scramble.  As for poaching, I have made

Mediterranean Pistou Eggs

many mistakes. The most common have been either to plop the eggs into too deep a basin of water, only to see the egg whites loosen and spread around the pan like lost galaxies. In this case,  you end up with a still in tact yolk, but the rest is soupy water.  The other mistake is to plop from too far away above the boiling water (hopefully some vinegar added). Here, again, the whites have a tendency to split and become nothing more than gooey water.  I finally recounted all of my past mistakes and found a technique that tends to offer, bubbling up to the surface, a whole poached egg, clean on the

surface, hot all the way through, but a yoke that isn't hardened but liquid.  The first key is to use a shallow pan, one that might offer sides at least 2-3 inches high, so not a sauté pan, but more of high rimmed sauce pan.  What is important is that the boiling doesn't dissipate once the eggs are plopped. The shallower the pan, the closer all the water stays to the heat source and the boiling stays continuous on the eggs, shaping them and keeping the whites in tact.  Many cooks have written that at least a tablespoon of vinegar should also be added to the water, expediting the boiling process.  A pinch of salt, in the case of poaching, will obviously add seasoning, so this can be adjusted according to taste.  Maybe the most important new technique, however, is something that helps before the

plopping even occurs -- go ahead and crack your eggs into a fine mesh colander in the sink before they head to the pan. Excess whites that might have separated anyway seeps through the colander and the egg that is left is firm and in tact.  Slip these eggs into a measuring glass with a handle and then use this to very gently pour into the pan of boiling water.  At this point, you finally have a technique that just about ensures success: shallow boiling water and an egg that is fairly tight.  From here, it's mostly about watching and plucking at the point that you want the egg to be done; the earlier the runnier; the later, the harder the yoke will become.  Placing these perfectly warmed orbs onto toast points is a very simple breakfast or lunch option. Most importantly, it no longer has to be an experiment every time.

 

Governor Nelson State Park

"Glistening sun to-day, with a slight haze, warm enough, and yet tart, as I sit here in the open air, down in my country retreat, under an old cedar." Whitman "February Days"











One open day of vast blue skies, at the park benches that line the shoreline of state park, and one envisions, easy enough, the tan hued families sitting atop of purple beach towels in June.  The blue and blue, of water and sky, occasionally the thin-hooked mast of a sail drifting by as lazily as a seagull's wings against a slight northeasterly breeze.  We carefully walk over the rip rap today, coated by the melt as it swells and drifts out into the vast white bubbling frozen lake.  A stiff wind has picked up and it bites through our caps.  It wakes up the eyes and stirs up a clambering raucous in the oak savannah that rise up just slightly as drummonds behind us.  Foot tracks reveal a great migration to open water across the slush.  Weasels, fox, otter tracks all.  The old scars of ski tracks line the trails where tufts of prairie grass now show, matted, bent to the will of the winter, but not seemingly for long. There across the lake the great city ice cap the Dome over looks the isthmus waters still and without a single blink.

Governor Nelson State Park
Lake Mendota

"The wind in the patch of pine woods off there – how sibilant." Whitman, "Distant Sounds"












Feb. 12

Wild the running of the swiveling streams through playground snow melt on a sunny February morning.  Puddles arranged at the foot of the iron play swings, the base of the sitting caterpillars, claws gnashing at the half-ice and old wood emerging. Slides slid down into miniature lakes bright as stars by the tipping of the crystal white sun.  Look at the old beach, carved out, placid, belly full of ice ramming into the coming of the flow of Lake Mendota ice plates! Seagulls land at their leisure on the jigsaw icebergs floating just barely below the surface, peck at the surface, then lift off to the next ice dune.  As does behind us the wind tumbling crisply down the rolling hillocks cracking like a whip  the leafless limbs of the oak trees, petering out at our feet.

On the Yahara A-Z

Y.

Ale Asylum has become the great Madison Brewery.  There are others: Wisconsin Brewery Fitchburg, Capitol Brewery Middleton, Next Door and One Barrel very close to our house but, when all said, Ale Asylum has grown in size, distribution strength and creativity.  Ale Asylum was originally born

in a small, nondescript industrial space across the street from the Dane County Airport.  Drive by it, back in those days, and unless you were a local die-hard you might just as soon driven right by thinking that it was nothing more than a novel retail shop.  A few years passed and Ale Asylum grew its following dramatically. Ale Asylum's signature beer, Hopalicious, could suddenly be found in

grocery stores around the state. The next step? One of the great brewing facilities that we have seen since the original Red Hook Brewery that we stumbled across many years ago in Woodville (Seattle) Washington.  A grand complex, built for heavy brewing and distributing and definitely for the sake of bringing as many people into the bar as beer going out the door in sales, its a great masterpiece of

restaurant and brewpub, open to the public, and open to any and all customers who like to sample snappy titles like Bamboozleator, Bedlam, Velveteen Habit and Demento, just to name a couple.  The good rides right along with the quality beers. A giant pulled pork sandwich is a great centerpiece; Perch tacos are spot on; and a Quinoa Burger hangs out at the end of the menu for the Vegan Opportunities.  At the end of it all, if you've planned well, why not take home with you a Growler of Hopaliciouc, the smooth sailing pale ale that most everybody likes.

Hey, Coach! ch. 19

"So at five after one we were ready to begin. We had an eater, a biter, and a crier. I also thought my mother was slightly crazy for dreaming up the party in the first place. 'Doesn't Fudge have any normal friends?' I whispered." – Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing








Little Brother's tactics weren't working very well with the disappeared basketball team.  Cookies sounded good and all but let's face it, cookies were on the way at home too, it would just be another hour, maybe a few minutes more, and each of the boys would get picked up and on their way home, where it was safe and quiet, where hamsters, video games and snacks awaited.  But then a pure vision came through the door of the 5th grade Spanish room.  It was an unlikely sight, but none of the disappeared basketball team would have mistaken the sight for anybody else in the world, not at that moment, because somewhere back in the mind it was the very sight they feared more than any other. "Hey, Coach!" Tyler smiled, his teeth blaring out white as a line of long icicles.  The other boys milled around the desks, set back a ways from the entrance, burying their noses in their class iPads.  Who knows, maybe she wouldn't notice.  Little Brother, on the other hand, took right to The Eighth Grade Girl something like a scout might his leader. He contemplated saluting but thought better of it. The Girl didn't look pleased.  She was bigger than everybody else in the room by a foot.  Today she was wearing a headband, her hair pulled back crisp and tight.  No frills, just high tops and strong basketball legs.  "Boys fifth grade basketball team," she yelled out, standing her ground right there at the entrance, scanning the room, a ball inside a locked right arm. "Let's go!" Will bounced up out of his seat as though his very own hamster had been set loose in his pants leg. Henry and Randall had stopped their teasing of Jess Sheindeinst's purple socks and snapped to, like good soldiers, and slinked up to the front of the room. Carl perked up, "well, we just thought that there wasn't practice today, because my mom said so. We don't have practice today, do we?  Only tuesdays and wednesdays.  "Every day," The Girls said, as she handed Carl the ball. "Hold that. The rest of you get your gear, and I'll meet you over in the Dome. Now." The boys didn't feel like this was the way things were usually done.  Nobody talked to them like this.  Not mom, not dad.  Maybe older brothers, maybe.  She meant business, this girl.

The boys were set up in four corners around the lane. They looked every which way around the gym but the right way. Matt asked if he was point guard; Trent wanted to be center, although he was by far the shortest boy on the team.  Henry and Randall started to drift away from their corners of the floor near the gym wall, Henry throwing a ball at the heels of Randall.  Before they could get another throw at one another, there she was, the coach, standing behind them, shaking her head in silence. "Nope. Not a chance." She handed both of them two basketballs.  Dribble both of these for the rest of the practice." "
"We can't even dribble one!" Randall contested.
"You will be able to by the end of practice," she contested back. "You will be." The rest of the boys tightened back to their corners, passed to the next player, then followed their shot to the next slot.  For this, Scotty would soon be considered team hero, or he might be team enemy number one.

On the Yahara A-Z

X.

X-marks the spot for authentic French food at La Kitchenette, Willy Street.  What an experience it is to travel no more than a mile and a half to a little French joint that cooks and speaks French. So much

so that the waitress, wonderfully, doesn't hardly speak a word of English. You point at the menu item and try as best you can form the proper syllables for the Croque Madame, for example, Bagnat or Forestiere.  Inside this very small one-room 12 table cafe is a back wall coated by chalkboard paint where the daily menu and hand drawn pictures of various provinces of France are written, so that if the menu is too small to point to, a simple finger in that direction will do.

Dangling lights above are made of rope and hold two old fashioned orange-line lights, bringing to each table a taste of the Mediterranean.  For lunch, a steaming hot bowl of French Onion soup makes for a perfectly warming introduction. As you scoop through the thick crust of cheese to get to the smooth onions, you can hear that the two tables surrounding you are speaking in French, or trying to, as this might be a place where the dabblers in the language might feel comfortable stretching their vocabulary for a captive audience.  The Croque Madame is a true French staple of a sandwich.  The sandwich, being born in Paris as a way for outside vendors to feed workers during shifts in Paris, is

another great foray into the culture without actually being there. The Madame, unlike the famous Monsieur, is ham, mustard, Béchamel sauce, swiss cheese and finally draped by a perfectly sunny side up egg, round and bright white.  This is a sandwich to eat with a knife and fork. Picking it up might mean tipping the egg or it might mean having to bite a three to four inch side wall hard to get

around.  Even though French bistro culture is often thought of as somewhat slow in service and sometimes to complicated by delicate sauces, these little lunches at La Kitchenette were prompt, hot, and simply perfect.

Riverside Ovens
Test Kitchen

"We arrived in the late afternoon, with the September sun tilting across the vines and bathing the chateau in a flattering way of pale gold; not the Pichon-Longueville needs any flattery. It was built in 1851, a period in architecture when turrets were all the rage, and Pichon (it's nice to be on first-name terms with a chateau) could be the model for a fairy-tale castle, suitable for princesses or damsels in distress." from Peter Mayle's French Lessons, "A Connoisseur's Marathon"








It's deep February, Wisconsin turns to an ice cube, sometimes a white ice cube, but sometimes dreary as a squirrel's fir, and so naturally the very season for taking the great imaginative leap away from this place and arrive, one hopes anyway, somewhere to the south of France where there are celebrations for frog legs, marathons built upon the premise of as many stops for wine tastes as the body and mind can muster, and long rounds of outdoor boules.  Here at the Riverside Ovens Test Kitchen, lights shining full tilt, fire place burning its fake logs, and the great sun stamped art out in the courtyard trying as hard as it might to sparkle, it might as well be the Chateau Mayle talks about in French Lessons.  The Chateau is not much unlike the great cozy French restaurant just a mile away from here, La Kitchenette, a little one-roomer, 12-tabler, where the back wall is a hand

sketched blackboard and the waitress, French as Aix en Provence, doesn't speak a word of English. Here is where the imaginative French edible garden flourishes in its well-tended bunches and a Pastis or two by siesta is no national crime but something more like a remedy shared by farmers themselves just now walking in from the coarse fields for the daytime meal that matters most.

Here at the Chateau, Cashew Chicken Stir-fry by Blue Apron is on the menu. Ingredients include

chicken tenders, jasmine rice, scallions, Napa cabbage, Tango mandarins, garlic chives, roasted cashews, sesame oil, ginger, soy glaze and cornstarch.  All of this had been recently collected at the

town market, fresh as morning, diced, sliced and peeled, leaving a small kitchen smelling of ginger and cabbage.  While cooking the jasmine rice, add minced ginger, celery and scallions to heated oil in a pan, add sliced cabbage and let cook at a medium temperature for five minutes, place on a plate, then re-oil the same pan and prepare for cornstarch coated chicken tenders, cooking 8-10 minutes. A

fairly simple dish in many ways, once the rice is boiled, the vegetables sautéed, and the chicken cooked, its time to assemble: add the vegetables to the pan of chicken, add soy glaze and 1/4 cup of water, let cook before finally adding sesame oil, raw garlic chives and segmented mandarins over the top, toss cashews over and...voila...a rich stir fry, crispy by the cabbage, rich by the soy glaze, and filling by the coated chicken.  The meal is completed within an hour, the creases in the doors of the Chateau release rich pungent aromas of cabbage and soy; the waiter, unfortunately, still working on his French.