A Crispy Day

I had a great day. An unequivocal, smell the roses, totally without irony great day. (If you're not nauseous already, read on.)

The next book proposal is in, I have some instructions (thank you, nettap) on how to add widgets etc. to this site (coming soon), and Augustin’s thank you notes are ready to go into the mail, thus saving the honor of our family. There was nothing on my desk that couldn’t wait. It was such a perfect, mild, bright fall day. Crispy leaves kept falling into Augustin’s stroller.

I walked down to Goumanyat & Son Royaume, my favorite spice shop (see, I did take you). The picture up top is the sun shining through the jars of honey in their window (oh vomit, says Beanie). They are just setting up for Christmas, so I’ll wait on the saffron chocolates till December.

I did pick up a bottle of Tasmanian pepper syrup for cocktails. (Mayur, there's a bottle in my suitcase for the first guy to come up with a Thanksgiving aperitif recipe.) I also bought some stone ground polenta; I’m looking for a corn soufflé that’s equal to or better than the one on the back of the Jiffy corn muffin mix...

My big purchase was a bottle of poivre long, whole Java peppercorns, which look like miniature bunches of shriveled grapes. It has this musty medieval monkey smell - clearly meant to be stuffed into the cavity of a recently killed pheasant (I’ll let you know). It reminded me of a Chaucer class I took my sophomore year in college. The professor was British, a former opera singer with a big booming voice. He invited us to his house for a medieval feast, game in wine and honey etc – which we had to eat off of big flat circles of bread with just a knife. After dinner, we all sat around in a circle on the floor and read The Canterbury Tales aloud, late into the night. (I guess that probably doesn’t sound like fun to anyone but me.) He said we were less fun than his students in England, because we weren’t old enough to drink.

On the way home I made a decision. I decided that my own acid trip back to the 80s (fashion does seem to insist that I have one this year), should involve a nod to the Solid Gold Dancers. (Don’t deny it. If I remember, so do you.) So I went into this Brazilian fitness shop on the Boulevard Richard Lenoir and bought myself a pair of solid gold sneaks to go with Augustin’s new orange polyester play mat, which he adores. I hope this doesn’t say anything too long term about our taste as a family.

Then Augustin and I walked to the garden of the Hôpital Saint Louis. There’s not a lot of green space in our corner of Paris, and this really feels like a secret garden. It’s the interior courtyard of a 17th century hospital, built by Henri IV to control outbreaks of infectious disease. (In the early 17th century our neighborhood was still well outside the city limits.)

The hospital also houses one of my favorite museums – open by appointment only. In my days as an art critic, I took the liberty of getting myself in. There’s a huge wood-paneled lecture hall with a balcony – displaying hundreds of plaster models of skin diseases. (Again, that probably doesn’t sound like fun to anyone but me.) But hey, who can resist a museum with a sign that says Syphilis, right this way. (Thank you Adam of Invisible Paris, for the fab photo...)

I was having such a nice day, I decided to cancel the babysitter. G. was away on business, so Augustin and I have been together 24/7. When we got home, Augustin had his bottle and I had leftover daube (that’s French for very fine pot roast) for dinner with a handful of penne. Then I watched the last episode of Band of Brothers on YouTube (in honor of recent Veteran’s Day), and the baby went to sleep - and stayed asleep - till 8 the next morning. All in all, a marvelous day.