Week 45

 I'm not sure how it took me 38 years to realize that our national anthem ended with a question mark.

"O! say does that star spangled banner yet wave
o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"

While I feel an overwhelming sense of relief right now, I don't feel like using this space to write about the election. But. This is one of the best things I read all week. 

It doesn't come as a surprise to me that I did next to nothing outside of work this week. I had grand plans for Tuesday night: eat an early dinner, take a bath, read my book. Instead, we ate less-than-satisfying takeout burritos, tuned in to PBS all night, and I knit my boring sweater and drank chamomile tea, hoping these things would ease my blood pressure. 

At least I kept up my afternoon walks, even in the rain. The earth smelled sweet and one afternoon I watched a hawk circle above me. As an added treat, I came in and put the kettle on for tea and had a bite of apple cake before returning to work. I'm finding my cold weather routine.

I also made a few cold weather related purchases: a humidifier for my office, resistance bands for my workouts and a new bathroom scale. If I gain or lose weight this winter, I can now know it to the nearest tenth of a pound. Our old scale made me believe I was five pounds lighter. I'm still keeping it nearby.

But my brain has been all over the place. We learned on Wednesday that my brother has COVID, and we were waiting to hear the test results for the rest of the family who were all experiencing symptoms. On Thursday, my city's public health official got ousted. Cases are rising everywhere and it feels like we've lost ground. 

I didn't feel much like knitting, I didn't have a huge appetite, and I didn't care to watch much TV after a day full of screens. 

But I did find a daily escape at The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth. 

Each evening, I lost myself in the seasonal menus that Mademoiselle Vivette and Mademoiselle Ray prepared at their valley inn in the Chartreuse Mountains in southeast France, and in Roy Adries de Groot's descriptions of how it tasted when he stayed there in the 1970s. He lists all the seasonal menus for lunch and dinner, starting with the aperitif and ending with the eau de vie and/or coffee and dessert, with several different wines between each course.

He describes going to market with Mademoiselle Vivette, the early morning trip itself a scenic feast, and the different farmers and vendors they visit with as Vivette selects the freshest frog legs, eggs, leeks, herbs and mountain cheeses. And how, in the fall, they roast birds who have recently eaten blueberries or juniper berries, on a spit over a wood fire. 

In my research about de Groot, who wrote this book after discovering this inn by accident while traveling the area to learn more about his beloved Chartreuse liqueur, I found out that he was blind -- the result of injuries during World War II. He had been a writer with the BBC then, and as his blindness progressed to completely eliminate his sight, he focused on food writing for the remainder of his life as his sense of taste heightened.

The second half of the book contains the recipes. The inn still stands today, and while I know the food will be nothing like these glory days, I am dreaming of post pandemic trips to the area, maybe even stopping at the inn for lunch. 

My own cooking this week was comfort-food focused - a curried butternut squash soup, apple snack cake, and an easy stirfry. 

On Saturday, the clouds parted, and after spending the morning in the yard, we ventured out of our neighborhood for drive-thru coffee and a curbside pickup to restock our winter bar. I made zaletti, a Venetian cornmeal cookie with boozy currants and orange zest. We ended the day - and the very long week - by the fire, watching our president elect. I felt my shoulders relax and my heart fill with hope.