LA MAISON DE L'ECURIE, SALLELES D'AUDE: RESTAURANT REVIEW

 (If you prefer a video review, go to my YouTube channel HERE.)

Restaurants in peaceful, out of the way locations with scenic, picture postcard views often fall into one of two categories. They tend to be only as good as they have to be or to be more expensive than they should be. Situated right beside the Canal de Jonction where it intersects with the Canal du Midi, La Maison de l'Ecurie (The Stable House) is indeed in a peaceful, scenic location. But it defies convention by serving food that's better than it needs to be at reasonable prices. We thoroughly enjoyed our luncheon on a warmish fall day and shall return. But we'll have to hurry. La Maison de l'Eclurie closes in early November and won't reopen until the first of March.

You can't drive right up to La Maison de l'Ecurie. You turn off the main road from Mirepeisset to Salleles d'Aude onto the tow path, then park and walk for 150 meters or so to the restaurant. The terrace filled rapidly after we arrived for our luncheon at noon with a varied crew - several tables of French folk including couples and families, a party of five or six English boat people, and a party of five American boat people who immediately began rearranging tables and chairs before the proprietor had a chance to greet them, then left just as the proprietor arrived, then returned and spent their meal discussing their stock portfolios. When the Americans finally finished and returned to their boat, the entire population of the terrace sighed in relief. How such people found their way to a place like La Maison de l'Ecurie is a mystery. I'm just glad that, since we speak decent French, the French often assume that we are English rather than Americans. We tend not to disabuse them of that notion when in the company of Americans like those.

Rant over.

The menu, chalked onto slates, is extensive enough for any taste and included a number of entrees, four or five different pizzas, five or six mains, and an array of tempting desserts. Everything that we ordered and everything that passed us on the way to other tables were full portions, well presented, and often with interesting little quirks.

Cathey and I began by sharing a tapas plate, the bigger €10 size as opposed to the €6 individual plate, a good-looking and varied platter that might do as a meal for some by itself. Connie's start combined slices of country pate with a combination duck/pruune pate. Tasty. Cathey had a four-cheese pizza and commented on the crust. I had lamb shank confit. I'd never had that before and, as a lover of lamb, I'll look for it again. Juicy good. Connie had a sort of beef short rib with a bit of a Thai, sticky-rib taste to it.

One of Cathey's favorite desserts is a rum baba and friends had praised the baba at La Maison de l'Ecurie. The praise was well deserved. We all shared it and it was delightful, spongy and rummy.

The total, with a liter and a half of pink and a coffee or two, came to €83 and change. Well worth the price for a lengthy, unhurried lunch that was easy on the palate on a terrase with a view that was easy on the eyes. As is the case with many such casual restaurants these days, La Maison de l'Ecurie uses Facebook as its website. Check it out HERE. Read more of my restaurant reviews HERE.

KYCLOS, SAINT-GUILHEM-LE-DESERT: CONCERT REVIEW

The thirteenth season of the Festival Les Troubadours romanesque has come to a close. If you don't know about this fine series of concerts that takes place from May into October throughout Occitanie, mostly in churches and other ancient settings, take the time to find out about it. HERE'S a link to the website. You'll just have to wait until next year to plan your visits. And we do plan our visits. This year, 48 concerts were on the schedule in venues ranging from the Pyrenees to the other side of Montpellier. Artists came from all corners of the Med from Greece and Corsica, Occitanie and Catalonia, France and Spain. Their music can be classified as sacred and profane, polyphonic and simple, classical and folk, flamenco and world.

For this penultimate concert in the series, Kyclos performed in the Abbaye de Gellone in Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert, a UNESCO World Heritage village worth visiting in its own right. On a dark October night with heavy cloud cover, you miss much of the charm of the village but we'd come for the music. Ensemble Kyclos proposed the music of Greece, Crete, and the broader Mediterranean.

I did enjoy the concert. The ancient abbey provides a suitable backdrop for this type of music. (You certainly can't call the abbey welcoming. That adjective simple doesn't apply to these buildings.) But I have to admit that I never quite became one with the music. No, I am not the Buddhist who went up to the hot dog vendor and said,"Make me One with Everything." But I do expect to be transported. And while the voice of Laetitia Marcangel was perfectly suited to the acoustics of the venue, and while Matteo De Bellis (mandole, ney, oud), Timothée Tchang Tien Ling (rek, darbouka, tambours sur cadre), and  Artistic Director Fady Zakar (lyra, lyra à cordes sympathiques, lauto, oud) each demonstrated an admirable level of proficiency with their instruments, the Mediterranean-Arab tinge to the music just did not sit pleasingly on this Westerner's ears. But I can enjoy music intellectually as well as viscerally. (It's how I manage to sit through opera.) So, on that level, and because Kyclos' music was closer to my wheelhouse than Wagner, I enjoyed the concert..

Read more of my observations on life in France on my blog HERE and HERE.

MUSIC FROM AN AGING AMERICAN HIPPIE: IRA'S BLEND 138

EXAMINING HEALTHCARE: SEPTEMBER 2018 RANT (ONE DAY LATE)

In a discussion about healthcare, a friend said that the European system was not socialism. Europe was composed of welfare states, of countries whose people wanted something for nothing. So I decided to look at healthcare in both the USofA and Europe to decide which system worked best, both in terms of cost and in terms of outcomes.

I'm not a socialist or a communist. I'm not even a democratic socialist. I do believe that there are certain aspects of daily life that are rightly the domain of government to undertake or, at least, to heavily regulate. I believe that it is clear that for-profit companies generally care more about profit than about the environment, for instance. When air pollution turned the air of cities like Pittsburgh and Los Angeles noxious shades of brown, it took vigorous enforcement of emission standards, not voluntary action on the part of the emitters, to clear the air.

There can certainly be debates about the limits of regulation. I once spoke with a Libertarian candidate for the Pennsylvania State Legislature who posited that all environmental laws should be scrapped. If a business polluted, those affected by the pollution can and should sue, he asserted. For reasons that should be obvious to any thinking person, that position is absurd. Pollution travels. Individuals lack the resources to map sources. Unless we don't care about the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the food that we eat, we must collectively take responsibility in seeing to that which the Founders described as the General Welfare. In a modern state with hundreds of millions of lives in the balance, that collective responsibility cannot rely on civil litigation. That responsibility is housed in our government. And it is the responsibility of the electorate to empower the government to be both circumspect and scientific in promulgating rules and regulations.

Here's where it gets tricky. Legal scholars have apparently agreed that "...Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..." in our Declaration of Independence and "...promote the general Welfare..." in our Constitution are not actionable phrases. Certainly not in The Declaration, since that document has no bearing on modern jurisprudence at all. And also not in the preamble to The Constitution, though perhaps some relevance when the phrase is repeated in the body as regards taxation. Indeed, in modern times the Supreme Court leans toward a doctrine that prohibits the consideration of any words that are not actually written into the body of The Constitution. 

Absurd, I say.

Why absurd, you ask?

Because that same SCOTUS believes that corporations are people and that money is speech. Show me where the Founders promoted those ideas anywhere, much less in the body of The Constitution. And of course, there's that nasty little phrase in the Second Amendment about militias. 

So let's consider the Founders' words as regards the true purpose of government. (Bold lettering is mine.)

“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.” ~Thomas Jefferson

"We ought to consider what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form. Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all Divines and moral Philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow, that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best." ~John Adams

"The will of the people is the source and the happiness of the people the end of all legitimate government upon earth." ~John Quincy Adams

What can be more important to the happiness of people than their good health? Which form of government best promotes good health? We often hear American elected politicians proclaim that we, that Americans, have the best healthcare in the world. If good health is indeed a prerequisite for happiness, that claim is central to whether or not those same politicians are serving us well. Let's examine that claim.

Americans spend more on healthcare per capita than other developed countries. And the fact that Medicare has been prohibited by Congress from negotiating drug prices adds to the cost. That's right. The largest single purchaser of drugs in the USofA, the federal government, has been prohibited by the government itself from reducing healthcare costs. And so the absurdity begins

And America spends more as a percentage of GDP than other developed countries.

But life expectancy doesn't seem to correlate positively to that spending.

And maternal mortality doesn't seem to correspond positively to that spending.

And infant mortality is, quite frankly, a disgrace.

So is there any metric in which the US shows leadership? Yes. 5-year cancer survival rates.

But then I determined what I believe to be the reason why the US leads in that category. Spending, which of course, in the US relates to profit.

That's one heck of a difference.

There are those who might suggest that the lack of spending in other countries at end of life is due to rationing. But no one that I know in Europe has experienced a denial of service because of age. I have more than one friend older than 70, one older than 80, who received full treatment for cancers on the government dime with no questions asked. My take on it is that the difference is a quality of life issue. Europeans just think differently about how to live their lives than Americans do. It's why they insist on longer vacations and take full advantage of their vacation time. It's why they close businesses to vacation with their families even at the height of tourist season because that's when their kids are out of school. And I suspect it's why they don't demand invasive and costly procedures at the end of life.

So, call the countries of Europe and those with similar healthcare systems Welfare States. They don't care. They pay for that welfare through taxation and, on the whole, they are happy to do so. 

My nurse sister-in-law described a conversation about single-payer healthcare that she had with a colleague, a colleague with a Ph.D. "But I believe in capitalism," said the colleague. What does an economic system have to do with healthcare outcomes? Apparently, the impact is almost entirely negative.

Absurd.