P I C N I C

So I’m in Paris for a week with my sister and cousin. I flew out from Brooklyn on an overnight Air France flight. The meal was pretty good for a plane, they had Tillamook cheddar and I got a 1/4 bottle of Vielle Ferme, an excellent wine made by the same guy who does Vieux Telegraphe. I had the chicken with tarragon cream sauce.

I went to Le Grande Epicene at Bon Marche, which is down the street from where we’re staying, to stock up on some essentials. I love how they butcher their fowl. For dinner on Saturday some of my cousins friends are coming over and I want to roast a Bresse chicken.

My sister texted me mid morning, ‘we have something special for you!!’ Turns out it was a foie gras sandwich.

For dinner we all went out to Allard, a classic french bistro. On the wall were various certificates the chef had been presented with, including a ‘knighthood’ from the Chevaliers du Taste Vin and one from ‘The society of philosophical gourmands’. To begin with we got boletes sauteed in butter, green beans with a cream and horseradish sauce topped with a slice of coppa or prosciutto, and oysters. The women split a dish of delicious, medium rare scallops with a very crisp beurre blanc sauce, (I might almost say soup). I got the cote de beuf with a morel sauce, steamed spinach, beets sauteed in butter, and a very, very rich potato tart with cream and gruyere. The potato tart was exactly as my mother makes it, except that even though she adds nothing but cream, this one was even richer! Perhaps this one had triple cream?

Dessert was ‘orange soup with oranges and preserved oranges’, as the menu said. The slices of orange are preserved like a marmalade, and they sit in a pool of fresh orange juice.

The stump was finally removed! 18 months of digging, I thought it would never end. Now the question is simply what to do with it. A neighbor of mine asked if I was going to cut it up for firewood. My goodness, no! One idea was to mount it on top of the food cart, such as integrating it into an awning. Or making a bench out of it with the stump on end, so that it becomes the backrest. Or failing every other idea, to simply hang it on the wall in the basement. Any other ideas?

Kate, Riley and I drove up onto the Forest Park ridge looking for Oregon White Truffles. This was only my second successful foray. Along the trail I spotted a small stand of young Doug Fir. There was a thin, even layer of duff which prevented any vegetation from growing. Finding the truffles was as easy as scraping back the duff. In the dim light the white truffles glowed like gold.

Some of you may remember this project from last year. This has nothing to do with the food cart other then illustrating the many extraneous projects I get involved in. The big stump was taking up space in the garden. Once I started digging and getting excited about all the roots, I thought their must be some use for a big stump. Chandelier? Side table? Or maybe I can just hang it on the wall, like an elk head?

The original plan was to pull it out with a winch, keeping all the roots. In my first post I said ‘I’ve been digging for 3 days. It will probably take another 2 weeks.’ But after about 18 months of on and off digging, I finally decided to do what my neighbors had been suggesting and just saw the thing up. Things have moved (relatively) quickly since then.