Three different towns in the south of France each produce slightly different versions of cassoulet, that hearty, beany casserole named after the cassole, the earthenware bowl in which it is traditionally cooked and served. Having visited Carcassonne and Toulouse prior to
our permanent move to the region, only Castelnaudary, which lays claim to actually having invented the dish, remained.
Le Tirou chef/owner Jean-Claude Visentin is a Maître Restaurateur, a prized title not taken lightly. It's a curious place with odd, slightly chintzy furnishings that
embellish otherwise standard restaurant table settings. And you can't
miss the petting zoo in the back yard on display to the entire dining
room. (Roosters and an alpaca (llama, maybe) and a statue of a cow and
more...) But, like 90% of the restaurants in Castelnaudary, whatever
else that it's about, it's about the cassoulet.
Brought to the table with some ceremony in
the appropriate cassoles, properly crusted, the maitre d'
spooned out a piece of homemade sausage, a piece of confit de porc, a
piece of confit de canard, and a serving of beans onto the plates of
each of the ladies. Not a fan of such beanful fare, I opted for cuisse de canard
confite - leg and thigh of duck confit. The cassoulet was a real treat for the
ladies, each component with a distinctive flavor, the portion slightly more than they could finish. My duck was done as I like it and as so few restaurants serve it, with the skin crispy instead of limp.
We found the service polite and attentive
without being intrusive and Visentin visited each
table as lunch concluded, even displaying a smattering of English in
our honor. This was the real deal even
if the setting had the flavor of a touristy joint. They care about the
cassoulet and it showed. Not the least expensive in town - the three
mains with a demi of wine, two desserts and two coffees just topped 100
Euros. But well worth it. Thumbs up.
Every concert review could begin with the words,"This type of music might not be to everyone's liking." Taste in music is highly personal. My wife Cathey considers anything composed after Bach to be jazz. On my desert island, I'll be listening to the fragile voices of Joni Mitchell and Neil Young as well as Grace Slick in her full-throated glory. But in this case, it must be said. An hour and a half of Gregorian chants might not be to everyone's liking.
Now that that's out of the way, the traditional Easter Sunday concert by the Choeur Grégorien de Paris (Gregorian Choir of Paris) demonstrated both the appeal of that particular form of worshipful music and the amazing acoustic properties of the Abbaye de Fontfroide.
Let's start with the Abbey itself. Set in the midst of wine country west of Narbonne, a visit to Fontfroide makes a great day trip. The grounds are immaculate, the buildings well preserved and with fascinating histories. Just a couple of pictures prove my point.
The main chapel is typical of the region and the period. And it seems to have been constructed for the express purpose of making the listening to sacred music a pleasurable experience. (Avery Fisher Hall, take note!) The Choir was constantly on the move, breaking into groups and reforming, singing in solo and duet and trio and quartet and you-name-it configurations from points throughout the chapel. And from every direction, regardless of the number of singers, the acoustics were crystal clear. Just a delight to the ear.
As for the music itself, it was presented with the controlled passion required. Restrained yet powerful.
Two highlights of 90 minutes of nonstop performance...
At one point, two groups of men and two of women took up station in four corners of the chapel. They started with a sort of call and response, one group starting only after the echoes of the previous group had faded. Slowly, the call and response became a sort of rondo, with one group chiming in just before the previous group had completed their phrase. The piece accelerated until the four parts were being sung simultaneously. Dramatic and exhilarating.
The finish was an Alleluia chorus as in the video above. The Chorus moved from the altar down the center aisle to the back of the chapel and the audience was invited to participate. Chilling.
This annual Easter event is well worth attending. And if once was enough for those of us for whom sacred music is not a sacred pleasure, once was necessary to appreciate the beauty of the genre. And beautiful it was.
TRYING TO RECREATE HISTORY
Have you seen/heardStairway to Heaven performed by Heart's Ann and Nancy Wilson at the Kennedy Center the night that Led Zeppelin was honored? If you haven't, take a few minutes and check this video out.
Powerful, huh? But now that The Rolling Stones have announced the dates for their tour of the US, I just have to say it. I cringe when I see Mick Jagger strutting on stage these days. I do. It's involuntary, like a gag reflex. Jagger has become a caricature of himself and it's sad.
Picturing Jagger strutting on a stadium stage to the signature strains of (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction forces me to give a pass to Robert Plant for his antipathy toward the idea of a Led Zeppelin reunion. Plant's just not that shirtless guy wearing low rider jeans any more, screaming into the mic, brushing his shoulder length, curly locks off his face with an almost effeminate flip of the wrist. He realizes that he can't be that guy again without becoming a cartoon. You just can't recreate history. You can honor history the way that the Wilson sisters did at the Kennedy Center that night and the way that Plant does when he performs semi-acoustic versions of Led Zep hits in duet with Allison Krause. But trying to recreate those great Led Zep onstage moments, night after night, note for note and solo for solo, 40 years later? No. So Plant gave up the stadiums and the big money and found ways to be the Robert Plant of today. Like this...
What does all of this have to do with Religious Freedom Restoration Acts? Well, it's about understanding and honoring history. And while those who say that RFRAs honor American history, a closer examination suggests that, like Jagger's strutting, their idea of American history is cringe worthy.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM MISCONCEPTION #1
If you are like most Americans, you think that the Pilgrims came to the New World to escape religious persecution. Senator Tom Cotton of Open Letter to Iran fame recently repeated that meme in discussing his state's passage of a RFRA. Like most Americans, and like Senator Cotton, you'd be wrong. Repeating poorly taught history does not make it so.
The Pilgrims did initially leave England after that country's break with Rome in order to practice their own version of non-Catholicism. Since they would not join the Church of England, they had to leave. But they didn't leave to go to the New World. They left to go to Holland. In Holland, they were free to practice their religion as they saw fit. The Pilgrims were not being persecuted when they decided to ship themselves across the Atlantic from Holland. They were, however, poor. Unskilled labor working at low-paying jobs. And their kids were enjoying the less restrictive social life that their host country had to offer. So their parents, for economic reasons and to keep control of their kids, left for the New World.
You can make the argument that the Pilgrims left England for reasons related to religious freedom, but you cannot make that argument for their eventual decision to sail to North America. At that point, the only religious component to their flight from Europe was their inability to convince their kids of the worth of their cloistered, austere lifestyle. There are echoes of such frustrations today, the belief of some religionists that they are losing control of the narrative, especially as regards their children. I get it. It's disheartening when your children reject teachings that you hold dear. But giving religionists license to discriminate based on an imperfect understanding of the Founders intent is not my idea of the American ideal. RELIGIOUS FREEDOM MISCONCEPTION #2
If you are as old as I am, you remember the civil rights struggles of 50 years ago.
(I do part with some of my liberal friends when I say that I consider the LGBT struggle today qualitatively different from that of black Americans back in the day. Yes, the LGBT community is discriminated against and that discrimination is is as wrong and as hateful as racial discrimination. But as a Jew, I can tell you that I have been discriminated against in my life primarily when I declare my Judaism. I can walk down the street anywhere in the world, I can even drop my pants and display my lack of a foreskin, and unless I declare my faith, I can pass. The same goes for the LGBT community. Unless they declare their orientation verbally or by their actions, they can pass. Black Americans don't have that option. The reason that they are discriminated against is literally written across their foreheads. Just sayin'...)
If you remember those struggles, you remember folks like Lester Maddox. Lester owned a restaurant in Atlanta. He swore that he would close it before he would allow it to be integrated. He stood in the doorway, waving an ax handle, to make his point. And he eventually did close the restaurant rather than comply with the law. States rights and private property were his mantras. The federal government had no business telling the Georgians what they could and could not do. And anyway, don't people have the right to associate with whom they choose on their own property?
Sound familiar?
1. States should be able to determine for themselves the definition of marriage.
2. And whether or not a state allows LGBT marriage, who a businessperson decides to serve is his or her own business.
By that reasoning, we're back to Maddox. And that just won't fly. The reason that federal laws can trump states' rights is to protect the rights of minorities, not ratify the will of a misguided majority. Never doubt that Georgians were in the majority sympathetic to Maddox. Two years after he closed his restaurant to avoid integration, he was elected governor of Georgia. And once you enter the public sector in business, civil rights trump religion. (Or used to. We'll see what happens once gay marriage hits the Supreme Court. If corporations are people and corporate money in politics is not a corrupting influence and corporations can have religious beliefs, anything is possible.)
One last note...
Misconception #3 is that traditional marriage is the union of one man and one woman. You can't cite the Bible while you are saying that. How many wives did David have? Seven? Did Solomon? 700? Indeed, the history of marriage is not as clear cut as you may think, even into the 19th Century. Look it up sometime.
Fannie brings seasonal veggies to the church square just a few steps from our house on Wednesday and Friday mornings, fresh and locally grown, still wet with dew. We buy our lettuce from Fannie along with whatever else looks good that day. She even sold us the fresh pumpkin for our Thanksgiving pie, slicing off just as much as we needed from a big bruiser.
The other day, Fannie displayed bunches of radishes. When I commented on how pretty they were, a friend of Fannie's standing nearby commented that she made soup from the greens. Yes, Fannie said. Very good. So I bought a bunch and brought them back to Cathey. She checked out several recipes and came up with her own.
Cathey sauteed an onion in butter, then added the cleaned and chopped radish greens, a cubed potato, and stock. When the potatoes were finished, she pureed the lot and heated it back up with a bit of cream and salt and pepper to taste. Served with thin slices of radish as a garnish, Cathey's comment was, "It's very green."
I don't know the words to LaMarseillaise. I don't wear a beret. And I don't eat snails. (Cathey says that she eats snails. I wouldn't know. I've been spared the sight.) But as of today, I'm about as close to being French as I'm ever going to get. On March 12th, our applications for our titres de sejour (our temporary cartes de sejour) were approved. Cathey and I are no longer 'traveling' in France on a long-stay visa. We are now officially resident visitors. If this was the US and we were foreign nationals, we'd say that we'd been granted our green cards.
I suppose that I should feel different somehow. After all, I no longer list an American address as my home address. I'm not considered a resident of any American state. I'll be turning in my American driver's license for a French one. But the fact is, since before we bought our house in Quarante, even while we still owned our holiday house in Cazouls some years ago, on those one or two times a year that we came to France I already felt as though I was coming home. Now it's official. I am home.
I'm still an American citizen and I will remain an American citizen. I have no interest in giving up that citizenship regardless of any tax advantages that I've been reading about lately that relinquishing citizenship might entail. No. I'm an American, born and bred. The only reason that I have the opportunity to live this life that I've chosen is because I was raised in a culture that allowed me to think that this life was possible, that gave me the ability to amass the resources necessary to make it happen, that put no significant barriers in my path during the planning that led me to this day. I am not going to detail what we were required to have done before our appointment with the office in the sous-prefecture in Beziers that deals with such matters as approving stays for foreigners and what we had to bring with us when we arrived. France is a sophisticated and ever-changing bureaucracy. A good bit of what I've read on the interweb in the past about the process no longer applies. What I experienced in March of 2015 may not apply when your time comes. That's not a coward's way out of giving advice. That's French reality. In truth, I'm about to give you the best advice that I can give. Hire a professional.
I know folks who have handled their immigration documentation themselves. I have read their stories on the interweb. In just about every case, if they had thought about it, they would have realized that the money that they saved by doing their paperwork themselves cost them hours upon hours of extra work. If you value your leisure time at just a couple of dollars an hour, by all means do the work yourself. We value our time more highly. So we went to Sarah Vedrenne, owner of the firm Advice France.
Sarah is an accountant and tax adviser who we first hired to do our French taxes when we began renting out our holiday house in Cazouls in 2006 or thereabouts. Since those early days of working by herself out of her living room, Sarah's business has expanded considerably, though still based in her home - or rather, an annex to her home built to house the work spaces of her and her several employees. Since Sarah is fluent in English, she numbers a good many Brits and a few Americans among her clientele. As a result, she is well known to the bureaucrats with whom an expat must deal.
We met with Sarah in her office. She made photocopies of several documents that she'd asked us to bring with us, gave us a list of documents that she wanted us to provide to her by email, and another list of items (like passport-style photos) that we needed to bring to the sous-prefecture when the time came. She made our appointment for us. She met us at the sous-prefecture. (By the way, a sous-prefecture is the administrative office of a French region that is not in the capitol of the region. The prefecture for our region is in Montpellier.) Sarah bantered lightly with the officer who handled our case and answered most of her questions. We were approved without a problem. Our titre de sejour will arrive in the mail shortly.
How much was all of that worth? Well, that was worth 180 Euros to Sarah. To us? Priceless.
As we left the office, Sarah assured us that once we received our titre, we would be able to buy into the French healthcare system. The cost would be a percentage of our income minus a small standard deduction. She would have the applications ready to go by the time that our cards arrived. More on that as the story unfolds.
C.A.C 34 (Collectif d'Artistes de Capestang)(Artists' Collective of Capestandg) continued its tradition of bringing artists of outstanding quality to the region with their presentation on 20 February, 2015 of the Daltin Trio.These guys were good: Grégory Daltin ; Accordion, Accordina, Bandonéon / Julien Duthu ; Upright Bass / Sébastien Gisbert ; Percussion. They treated a full house to melodic, rhythmic jazz within tight, dynamic compositions. Each member contributed, demonstrating mastery of their instruments and a flair for composition. Check them out on Youtube and, if like what you hear and you get the opportunity, see them in person. We're glad that we did.
RETURNED FEBRUARY, 2017. THIS INITIAL REVIEW FEBRUARY, 2015. SEE EDIT AT END.
I live in the little French town of Quarante. Quarante also happens to be the French word for the number 40. Is it any wonder that the local sports bar/cafe is called Bar Le 40?
Let's be honest. Bar Le 40 is a local joint with no ambiance whatsoever, inside or out. Sitting on a busy intersection with cars whizzing by all day, you are protected from even a minimal view of that traffic by cars parked at the curb, obstructing your view (such as it is) because the sidewalk is only a few feet wide. Except for a few posters, the interior hasn't been redecorated since the town was liberated...in 1918. But as the only place in town where you can sit down at a table and be served a meal, nothing really matters as long as the food is edible. On a recent Friday, lunching with a couple of my neighbors while Cathey was out of town, the food was edible. Not great, but not bad and worth the price.
The three of us each chose the menu of the day for 12 Euros, add a Euro for a liter of house wine. For starters, choice of salad with a wedge of a cheese tart or a simple plate of charcuterie. For the main, fish filet or biftek with a side of either frites or spinach. Several dessert choices including an apple tart and ice cream, but we all chose the caramelized flan. As I said, all edible. I think the beef was a better choice than the fish, but that's me. And the spinach looked a bit limp, but I chose the frites...also a bit limp. The flan was just fine. All in all, we filled up and didn't feel cheated.
They say that the house confit de canard is a good choice for dinner. I'll give it a try. Yes, I will be back. After all, it's the only place in town where you can sit down at a table and be served a meal.
EDIT, FEBRUARY 2017: There's been a change in ownership and in the kitchen. If I understand correctly, the new chef is the son of a previous one. There's been a dash of paint here and there and I'm told that the bathroom is now up to handicap standards. I generally do not frequent the restrooms in bars. I'm funny that way.
But wait. Another change in early 2018. Another new chef. Another new menu. And this time, success. An upgrade that really did the trick.
I would rate the new lunch menu as about 50% better than the previous. The starters continue to be simple - charcuterie and salad, but each above previous levels with an occasionally interesting salad combination. The major change is the main plate. The new formula is just that bit more adventurous. Oh, there's still that chewy beef that we've come to expect but at least the fries are cut from whole potatoes and not reconstituted. But the second choice has upped the game - one day parmentier of beef, one day duck hearts, one day grilled and marinated chicken. The desserts are more interesting, too. And better ice cream. So the possibility of a potentially interesting surprise exists.
Suddenly, our local bar has us checking Facebook daily to see what's up. Wow!
