"Chez Michel is the village bar of Cabrieres and the headquarters of the boules club, and not sufficiently upholstered or pompous to attract too much attention from the Guide Michelin inspectors. Old men play cards in the front; clients of the restaurant eat very well in the back." Peter Mayle, A Year in Provence








An orchestrated birthday visit by the five of us to Porta Bella Restaurant just off State Street Madison wasn't just a trip down memory lane but something more akin to bottling 30 years then taking a slow and easy sip. Porta Bella is one of those places that holds dream-like qualities; one of the first restaurants we had ever frequented going as far back as early undergraduate years when Jan

waitressed here and I had the great privilege of picking her up after shifts breathing in the deeply shaded and eclectic scenes that were the small pockets of barely lit seating carved into a restaurant.  So many years later -- and after having sporadically visiting over the years – we were able to celebrate Jan's 46th not by coordinating a massive travel plan but via a few texts in order to find the right hour when Julia had finished playing tennis in the Badgers big ten tennis venue, Abby out from under her most recent Theta meeting and Carly and I away from Monroe Street Days where chocolate

shop merged with bluesy street music and Art Gecko hanging lamps.  To have the five of us in one spot on a moment's notice was, in a sort of nutshell, the result of our hopes made real.  At a glance, to look around the table and to see that Abby is the same age as when Jan worked at the restaurant and Julia soon on the way is what they call in parenting time as a time warp, to say the least.  The restaurant was dark and quiet just as we always remembered it, with more Madisonians trickling in as the night got older.  Small homemade pizzas, pumpkin ravioli and chicken Caesar sandwiches rounded out the order, the old recipes and famous hand chopped Italian salad bringing us back to some of those flavors of old.  And just like parents, we couldn't help but bring up the prospect of filling Abby's dorm room with groceries; she accepted and we walked down to Fresh Market on

University Avenue and shopped the five of us for the first time in years, making sure there was fresh fruit, yogurt, maybe even a veggy or two to slip inside the mini fridge which serves as countertop for the kitchenette next to the bed.  

The Dotty's Test

"More often than not people who see me on trains and in ships, or in restaurants, feel a kind of resentment of me since I taught myself to enjoy being alone.  Women are puzzled, which they hate to be, and jealous of the way I am served, with such agreeable courtesy, and of what I am eating and drinking, which is almost never the sort of thing they order themselves.  And men are puzzled too, in a more personal way. I anger them as males.  I am sorry. I do not like to do that, or puzzle the women either.  But if I must be alone, I refuse to be alone as if it were something weak and distasteful, like convalescence." – M.F.K. Fisher, from "The Lemming to the Sea"

Few if any other food writer since M.F.K. Fisher has taken their self-designated position as food observer more seriously or with such ferocity as Fisher; most food writing now is little more than avid description so as to self-advertise the whereabouts of the next trendy seating; or maybe it is the

silly snippet of weak criticism found on a twitter tag.  For a writer to take a position on things and express it is virtually unheard of.  Fisher was no doubt a pioneer on many platforms: food connoisseur, traveler, and most importantly a creative writer writing food criticism that was both lyrical and biting, but for those very reasons trustworthy.  All of these components left a daring chip on the shoulder of her prose; if she did not like something, there would be little holding back; political correctness was not yet the chief mode of communication  in the 1930's – maybe there was not

enough time for this in the midst of a Great Depressions and World Wars to endure.  More than once she took very clear sides on her chosen position as sometimes eater alone.  For her very first entry 'A' in Alphabet for Gourmets, she chose "A is for dining Alone" where the following first sentence of the entry continues..."and so am I, if a choice must be made between most people I know and myself." It sounds somewhat crude, especially for a woman who would ascend to fame as a result of her very readership, but it might all depend upon what it is that the food writer is writing about, exactly – is she conversing with friends around the table, or is she conversing with the locale itself, the waiter, the menu, the ambience, the match between expectations and reality of the food...the final digestion? The

diner alone to this very day, male or female, will still gain as many looks as Fisher might have motivated way back when.  To walk (or drive) through the line of some fast food dispenser is one thing, but to fully engage the dining process alone might be something considered far too exclusive or shameful and yet, once done, is as full an experience as the mob scene fish fry or the planned family style dining venue where the surrounding distractions far outnumber the insights.  As I walked into Dotty's Dumpling Dowry by myself at 12:30 on a thursday all of this came freshly back to mind. What courage it takes to walk into a fully packed house where even the bar stools are occupied by the early day willing beer drinkers.  You may have to wait in the foyer and bide your time ofcourse skipping through baseball scores until your name is called for a seat somewhere unknown.  Or, you may be

Carbon 4 Fantasy Factory IPA, made in Madison

immediately seated at the furthest back corner booth, tiny, cozy, directly underneath a television showing black and white classic sitcomes.  The music may be settling; the waiter extraordinarily helpful. The solo diner, he might realize, will be a relatively easy serve, for there are not cooking times to harmonize and the answers come fast and direct.  The wonderful back pub atmosphere of Dotty's will begin to take on a personality of itself.  Posters and menu books scoured by the eye.  The waiter knows his local beers! The lamb burger is discussed as the staff favorite because it is so tender and well seasoned from the inside out that it doesn't taste quite like a burger but more like a marinated dessert.  Plans, by the end of the lunch, begin to come alive with ideas to return in order to share the spot either with others or on the written page, maybe both.  This feels nothing like convalescence.

Snapshots from D-Day

There must come a moment when all past plans come to an end, and the end that was once in sight has settled, surrounds you, and you now have landed directly inside it. With our raccoon live trap now poised to catch the wily critter from under our back courtyard deck, a cast iron bathtub set and glued in place inside a fully gutted bathroom, kids in school, it's time to take an easy seat on Jan's new recumbent bicycle and watch the sunset at Tenney Park as

Jan's new Catrike three-wheel recumbent bike, poised for the flat trails of Madison,
and grocery basket firmly secured over the back wheel

Carly and Julia push their bikes (pic above) out onto the man made peninsula jutting into Lake Mendota.  That was the day's end; what came before was the intricate process of moving Abby into her dorm room at Tripp Hall, overlooking a further western shore of Lake Mendota.  Three floors up, and air conditionless, we found that the rigor of moving a new person into the rooms was sweaty work.

3rd floor Tripp Hall, overlooking the cafe courtyard

Multiple trips to Target later, for small corner chairs, sheets and even shampoo later, Abby finally had a five hour meeting to go to on campus for a leadership club which gave mom four more hours of dorm room dawdling.  The new college student was very thankful for all the help and we now have an eldest child living on her own... a few miles away from home anyway. Luckily, in Madison, you are never far from the offered relief of a watering hole, so we selected Pasqual's, the nearest one to Hilldale Target Store,

the very mecca of back to school to school in the city.

Carly starts full days of school at Edgewood and fifth grade volleyball begins today.  Julia is a quarter way through tennis season and guitar and debate club.  Abby is a "Class Act" participant and approximately twenty feet from the great city jogging trail, waiting to get her chance to volunteer at the Lake Mendota Sailing Club.  The moment could come when Abby sails past the Tenney Park peninsula as her sisters wave from bikes watching the sunset, dad behind taking in the pic.

A Year On Monona

In a year of transition there is always room for anything from racoons to Harry Potter rituals.  The school scene has changed since Northwestern, and now we have swapped the shores of Lake Michigan for the smaller shores of  Lake Wingra on the westside of Madison at Edgewood HS.  School starts early here, the schedule is on a day by day cycle, and a dress code doesn't allow for offhand remarks on shirts, but the setting is something right out of Hogwarts and the education as good as it gets.

For an induction ceremony for freshman and new transfer students, the faculty dress up in their grad regalia and offer up speeches of wisdom so to help convey the core values of a Dominican school. Truth, Compassion, Justice, Community and Partnership are to be put to true use over the course of the term here and each student must log somewhere nearing a hundred hours of service work in the community or at school to graduate.  The induction ceremony finished with students lining up through the halls cheered by faculty and then being received by parents at the front of the building.  Fortunately, there were no shifting school walls or eyes peeking out of paintings.  The next day, the first full day of classes, oddly there was an away tennis match scheduled in Neenah – Julia played three doubles matches, won all three, and won their division for the tournament. The next day... full of classes, new syllabi and hopefully accurate locker combinations.

Back at home, after two weeks of a cast iron bathtub becoming a furniture fixture in our living room, it was hauled upstairs and ready to be built into the room that has been carved out for us for a couple of months now.

Once fully re-done, the bathroom that sits right around the corner from our master bedroom, will allow us not to have to squeak past Carly's room in the night stealing a turn in her bathroom.  The pace of finishing this bathroom is taking cues from all the slapstick move-in and remodel books every written, with sometimes non-communicating contractors that make progress in such random fits that you really wonder if there is the "other house" that is being worked on.

Finally what would life be like in the inner city, across from a river and stretch of woods, without a racoon who has decided that our stone courtyard flooring provides a great roof for a den.  It has been spotted by the neighbor and our carpenters and the reports are coming back that this is a big one, and one who, for whatever reason, enjoys a bite of courtyard wiring here and there and has decided that those leading to our fireplace must be especially enjoyable.  So we are seeking ways to live trap the critter and let him loose in some other unsuspecting neighborhood far away from this one.

A Year On Monona

Northwestern University is two and half hours away from Madison through the thicket of highways, freeways and tollways that is the Milwaukee to Chicago route, but two and half hours closer than from the La Crosse area, and for that we are very appreciative.  To have a kid in college while only a sophomore in high school takes some getting used to, but then again, as you enter Evanston, a beautiful and well manicured college campus town just far enough away from Chicago to forget some of the more gritty parts of the big city, you can see the appeal not just for a good high school student, but a

prospective collegiate and parents as well.  Julias program is a three week rigorous dive into what surprisingly has become the state of inter nation migration, a very important and trendy subject in modern society.  Reading is late, the writing is challenging, and the subject, even though important, is no doubt a lot to take in and confront for anybody let alone a sophomore.  Luckily at this program Julia is allowed more chosen free time, so that she doesn't have to try to fit in every field trip then get to the homework.  It rained torrentially the day and night before I was able to visit her on sunday for a short allotted hand full of hours, but cleared by morning, ninety by 11.  Playing tennis was a bit like standing

in the shower but the water was invisible, it just appeared as sweat.  A brief drive and walk around downtown Evanston, to Einstein bagels, then to Barnes and Noble to pre-order the release of the new Harry Potter book this weekend to be sent….to Madison.  We hope the book fits through our mail slot in the front of the door!  Back into the cool dorm for a slow day, hoping to put to use the guitar books that her new guitar instructor Chris Allen has fired her up to get started on so that one day she can study guitar in college, he hopes.

A Year On Monona

One of the easiest things to verify living on the east side of Madison is that two bike wheels are faster than two walking feet...and sometimes four car wheels.  You might check the weather in the morning and gather enough information to fill your day's calendar of hopeful events -- tennis is easier to get to by following the path along the Yahara north for a quarter of a mile to Tenney Park, which comes to

look out over Lake Mendota where, on breezy days, the sailboarders zip across the chop so fast that they, if it were possible, could probably traverse the city quicker than the bike wheels themselves.

The need for groceries and a late lunch might float up to the top of the mind after tennis.  Festival, a mile away, will gladly pack your bike bags, no paper, no plastic, just make sure to avoid a gallon of ice cream for ride home.

What is that across the street?  A nice looking place, Sujeo, what is called a Pan-Asian restaurant open by 4 and ready to serve a wonderful concoction called Japchae, made of sweet potato noodles,

marinated steak, bacon, a batch of spinach, all tossed in a sweet soy sauce.  Riding across East Washington by bike is no paradise, but a block past, heading east, and parallel to Williamson street is the great city bike path which happens to pass the four day French-tilting music festival called La Fete de Marquette.

Hundreds of bikes line the entry ways and you know by this point, passing another fifty bikers, that you may not have been the only two to think of the circular route from exercise to food and back through a cloud of Creole music that you can still hear from the house courtyard.

A Year on Monona

The UW-Madison campus is a fairly magical place to walk around in the summertime -- summer school is in session, and a few students can be seen sitting on courtyard cafe chairs typing away at laptops with sunglasses on, but for the most part it all quiet historical buildings and much open green space for the time being.  We happen to get Abby's dorm room assignment for upcoming fall semester while in Madison for the weekend, so we gathered our stuff and scooted across town (around 13 minutes from our house), to check out Tripp Hall down along the lakeshore on campus.

Tripp Hall is something out of 16th century England, courtyards and steel Romeo and Juliet balconies overhanging.  When we entered into the main meeting room two copies of Midsummer Night's Dream sat on a counter anticipating any newcomers observations of the architecture.

On one side of Tripp is a main and popular cafeteria and a la carte cafe; to other side, one small plot of open grass and then the great Lake Mendota walking / biking / jogging path, which we are pretty sure she will be able to see from her third floor room.

Food to the left, classes up the hill, the lake and path to the within eye sight...and alone by room assignment, Abby has figured out that we have gotten very lucky in the dorm assignment...plus laundry done by a mom and a dinner done by a dad only a few minutes away.  We celebrated by heading to an old reliable classic of Madison afterward, Dotty's Dumpling Dowry, a funky restaurant name borrowed from an old Sherlock Holmes story, and serving, now, the greatest burgers on earth, and a place that Abby will no doubt track on maps a few times until she realizes she could walk in ten minutes if ever in a pinch for a great burger or a malt fix.