To the Lighthouse

On Sundays mornings, I run from our house to Lighthouse Park, and on days like today, when I'm actually feeling like I can make it, I run into the park all the way to the beach. Running itself isn't fun to me like it is for some people, but it's such a pleasure to see the water while the beach is pretty empty, and then to come around the side of the carousel building to see the lighthouse itself. Like a nerd, I usually say "to the lighthouse!" to myself (as if anyone in Virginia Woolf's book would be caught dead jogging).

I like the lighthouse: I like that it's faceted and not round; I like seeing it silhouetted against a bright blue sky, as I've been lucky to see it most Sunday mornings; and I like sitting on one of the benches at its base and watching the people fishing and families moving into the park to claim the best spots for their picnics and family reunions. This morning I saw two men in a distant part of the shore who were using a net to fish in the shallows...for what, I couldn't tell, but they were tipping something into a bucket. It's peaceful and beautiful, and even the profile of New Haven across the harbor has some elegance to it from such a distance.

Once my heart rate is back to normal, I walk out of the park and then run from the entrance back home. My cardio stamina is fine for running these days; my feet and knees object before my heart and lungs ever do. I'll never train to run marathons like Carla, that much is clear. I'd much rather stick with 9Round in the hopes that one day I can actually transition to a real boxing gym. And, on Sundays when the gym is closed: to the lighthouse!

Le Petit Cafe At Last: A Religious Experience

Tucked away behind an unassuming storefront in the center of Branford is a French restaurant that often winds up on a list of best restaurants in the US. It's been there for 20 years, and its best-known quirk is the European-style dining on Fridays and Saturdays: 2 seatings at 5:30 and 8:30 for a three-course prix-fixe meal. Sean and I have been planning to go to Le Petit Cafe for years, quite literally! After we went to France in 2014 and experienced the wonders of their cuisine, we decided to try and recapture the gourmand glory in our own background--but then we wound up cancelling our reservation, for reasons I can't even remember. Skip over the two years abroad, and this past January we decided to try again for our anniversary. This time it was Mother Nature that intervened; there was such a huge storm that the restaurant closed in advance. This past Saturday, however, we finally made it, as a belated celebration of Sean's birthday. And oh, did it ever live up to the years of heightened expectations! The entire experience was perfection, start to finish. We both agreed that it was without a doubt one of the best meals we've ever eaten in the States and a strong contender for best meal anywhere.

To begin: the restaurant isn't pretentious in the slightest. Rather, it's small, cosy, and yellow-painted inside. The table was already prepared with pickled yellow beets, olives, and black truffle butter, and the waiter immediately rocked up with a small, warm loaf of crusty French bread that they make themselves. Of course they make it themselves, it was fucking delicious! Not something you're going to find in a bakery here. And the truffle butter was just out of this world. We were in seventh heaven before we'd even ordered anything. Our waiter was a young kid from the Ukraine, who was adorable in a Anton Yelchin (RIP) type way, but also had kind of a thick accent that we had trouble deciphering--he'd ask me for my plate and I'd hand him my fork. You know what? That only made it feel more like we were really eating in a French restaurant (aside from his general politeness, of course).

Then, the menu! I copied the descriptions off their website so that I can conjure up these flavors in the future. Appetizer: I had "Sautéed French escargot (Burgundy) served with blue cheese (premium French “St. Agur”) and cognac sauce on herb accented puff pastry." Now, I was being pretty bold here; I've only had escargot once before in Paris, and did indeed send one flying across the table as I dug it out of its little shell. However, I was pleasantly surprised that these were already de-shelled and in that incredibly rich sauce (combined with the lower lighting, you could easily be eating a bit of calamari or clam or anything else a bit chewy; I'm not sure if there's a particular flavor to escargot themselves) and laying in the nest of the puff pastry. Sean chose as his appetizer "Chef Roy’s country style pork pate layered with armagnac infused cherries & house-cured foie gras, and served with cornichons, spiced shallot chutney, and dijon mustard." I'm not a fan of pate or foie gras, but Sean loves both and was very pleased.

After the salad course--very simply dressed, the tomatoes bursting with flavor--it was time for the main event. Sean chose "Pan-roasted five spice duck breast served with organic black rice, port wine infused cranberries, toasted organic pine nuts, and orange sauce." His dish was, in his opinion, very good. I didn't try it, even though I like duck well enough. Why? Because the first bite of my dish,
"Roasted center-cut pork rib chop (Berkshire, all natural) wrapped with jambon de Bayonne, and served with sautéed organic spinach, roasted Russian banana fingerling potatoes, crispy pancetta, fresh grapes, and port wine sauce" was, indeed, a religious experience. Muffled moans of pleasure were to be heard from my side of the table. The sauce was exquisite--there's no other way to describe it, warm and rich and electric with flavor. I understood once more the saying about the secret ingredient of French cooking being time, because that dish had clearly taken plenty. Dear God. Sean agreed, and acknowledged that this was a rare case in which I had chosen the better entree sight unseen!

After we polished off our plates, the remaining bit of French bread, and our bottle of wine (Cote du Rhone, not my favorite, but then I could never really warm up to French wines), and it time for our final selection of the evening: dessert. I'm not really a dessert fan, particularly not in restaurants; I'll have a brownie or ice cream or something, but I don't go in for pie, pastries, etc. And yet, I ate every bit of this dessert. Sean called it a 'deconstructed' apple tart; a thin rectagular raft of pastry on which the sliced apple was lying, drizzled with a caramel sauce, and accompanied by fresh-made Chantilly cream and blueberries. I ate the cream. I didn't even want to eat Chantilly cream while we were in Chantilly a couple of years ago, but at Le Petit, I ate it, and it was delicious, as the blueberries--perfectly firm and ripe!--burst in your mouth alongside each bit of cream.

Not only was the food wonderful, it was the perfect opportunity to reminisce about our trip to France, still one of our favorite trips, especially the Avignon-Bordeaux part. We brought up the Tripadvisor page for the B&B we stayed at in Naujan-et-Postillac and were thrilled to see that the English couple is still running it (and that it has an exceptionally high rating, with only a dozen out of over 500 reviews ranking it merely "Very Good" as opposed to all the "Excellents"). We talked about our night at La Poudette, the little house-restaurant out in the middle of nowhere that is another contender for Best Meal Ever, where the geese who ran across the drive as you walked up from the road were the same ones destined for the foie gras later. Sts-Maries-sur-la-mer, where the sky stayed streaked with light until almost 10 o'clock at night as we drove back to Avignon. Chateauneuf-du-Pape, a hilltop ruin buffeted by some of the strongest winds I've ever felt. The plane trees in Arles. The peaceful abbey of Senanque. The distant view of Mont Sainte-Victoire, even though we couldn't get up there. The friendly British couple we met in a restaurant in Avignon. So much beauty, so lush and verdant. I want to go again! Le sigh.

To the Tune of Lana Del Rey and White Wine

An inveterate radio-channel-flipper I've never been able to say that I have terribly well-defined musical preferences. Other people's recommendations have led me to so much music I wouldn't necessarily have encountered elsewhere. I miss the age of being able to borrow a CD from a friend and then either buy or burn my own copy if I liked it enough! Kay Cosgrove lent me her Elliott Smith CD freshmen year of college, I used to steal Carla's Regina Spektor CD in senior year, Lakshmi gave me Lykke Li at the Academy. Since the dawning of the mp3 age, though, I've become really fickle with regards to music. I rarely buy an actual album outright, but rather settle for one or two songs I've heard. Of course I know that this means I'm missing out on great songs that are elsewhere on Lorde's albums or on Muse's. It's my own fault, but not one I've ever been in any rush to rectify, despite the availability of Spotify and other streaming services. I don't even own some of my favorite albums anymore. Tool's Aenima wore out before I got around to burning it, so when I feel the need to rock out, I just bring it up on Youtube.

There are a few exceptions. Ligabue, for one; I've got most of his recent albums, including the one I bought in a record store in Florence in 2006 and the one I burned off of Sylvie during my time at Middlebury in 2011. Lana del Rey is another; not only do I have all her albums as Lana del Rey, plus assorted soundtrack songs, I have her much less impressive previous work as Lana del Ray and Lizzie Grant. And I just bought Lust for Life, which is playing right now as I write. Sean likes to call this "slit your writs music," but I would call it perfect "look out the bus/train window and daydream" music. This most recent record is my least favorite so far, but it might grow on me. I have such warm nostalgic associations with the previous albums; I associate Ultraviolence, for example, with our month in Venice, August 2015 (and even more specifically, for reasons I can't quite explain, with walking from our apartment near S. Maria Formosa over a few bridges toward the grocery store early in the morning while there were few people out), while Honeymoon I associate with our second year at the Academy.

A year ago, we were in Paris, waiting out the month before our brief return to Rome and departure for home. It seems a lifetime and (half) a world ago, not least since at that point, I had no idea how I was going to fill in the missing 2/3 of my dissertation. Now I'm waiting again, this time to begin my job at the end of the month, and, along the way, start revising my dissertation into an actual book manuscript. In preparation for my forthcoming working life, I finally acquired my own car, this lovely 2008 Honda Civic, which is in beautiful condition.

It might not have the leather heated seats of Sean's car, but it has much better gas mileage. In fact, Sean called a short while ago to ask if we could just meet at his dad's, since he had students wanting to talk to him late about tomorrow's final exam for the summer class. What would have been impossible a week ago is now as simple as pie.