"Through the soft evening air unwinding all,
Rocks, woods, fort, cannon, pacing sentries, endless wilds,
In dulcet streams, in flutes' and cornets' notes,
Electric, pensive, turbulent, artificial..."

– Whitman, from Italian Music in Dakota





Neshonoc


Wild, moon-light like water
we can never forget
that your pools are not stationary
yet hold our history in place as color.
Out of your edges are our mists of understanding this place.
Clouds sojourn in aimless lace.
What ships!
What a pattern did the Winnebago know just like this
and mention to themselves the careless wind,
how to set out on the birchbark down rapids,
knees down on the soft pulp of white wood
howling at the abundance.
We no longer know the sun-world.
How sharp foil of blue shines is Neshonoc,
a day's invitation,
or why to cast a line down to depths.
Listen as the maple leaf falls.
How it forms its dry cradle to tick
up against the shoreline,
autumn's floating golden treasure
if your hand is out.

Nature Journal

17 October

Getting a bit chilly to paddle, mid-October, and breezes carrying some teeth. But the sun is a temptress and rains down on golden colors surrounding Lake Neshonoc. Takes 12 minutes to land the kayak from home.  Down at the landing evidence of only one other brave boat who we can see off in the distance doing rounds on an otherwise bare lake.  At the far end of Neshonoc, the great marsh.  Here the Winnebago thrived in the early years.  Trapped, hunted, and must have seen the surrounding bluffs and valleys much the same as we do today –  a large cradle for farming, hunting, protection and spiritual wonder.

Along the edges of the lake the La Crosse River Dam; highway 16 above too noisy for the quiet of the setting.  To get to the marsh, another 10-20 minutes, slow progress, and the sun is being hoarded by clouds so we cross instead to a point where stairs slope down into the water.  It is a mere half foot deep here, a great place to come back and wade in warmer weather.  Up above, at the top of the stairs, a small park and gazebo, a little trail to follow.  On this side the traffic from highway is gone.  

It dawns on us that the hour it took to hook up the kayak rack, set them up on top of the car, tie them down, and get here has been well worth it, even if on the water for nothing more than a hour.  The houses that command this side of the lake use much stone for steps and retaining.  Long decks have been pulled in for the winter, except for one, its poles made of solid concrete and permanent.  The sun ducks behind the line of trees surrounding the immediate shore line but leaves the birch trees backlit.

Madison Snapshots

More to come on Monona Terrace (above), but this is one of the great open spaces in the city of Madison, almost otherworldly in how large to scale its roof top is in proportion to the frosting white

Monona Terrace, exterior design by Frank Lloyd Wright himself,
who never saw it , not built until 1992

Capitol just a few blocks up Martin Luther King Way.  We had just visited the Great Dane Brew Pub a couple of blocks away, at the far end of Doty street, and were blowing off some steam until the wind started to whip fountain water on us, which we mistook for rain, and so scrammed back to the Hyatt pronto.

German heritage at the Essen Haus

I'm glad we're older now, use Google maps, and can find the famous German Essen House without walking around the Capitol area aimlessly hoping to stumble across it as we did back in college. The host told us Essen has been in biz at the same location for 33 years, and it hasn't changed much since

we used to do 'boots' (pass a boot around the table...don't let it set down!) to lederhosened polka music down on the floor level seating.  This time around, it was an initiation for the kids, who may or may not have appreciated the liver meatball in gravy or the sauerbraten bathed in pickled red cabbage.

One block up West Washington from the Loraine Bldg. 123 West Washington

The Queen of the Capitol liked the toy and chocolate shops scattered around the beautiful Square.  Over on the other side, at the head of Hamilton Street, one of the great Childrens' Museums you could

ever find, a rooftop garden stocked with real chickens and sunflowers, a middle level with really big

kids hogging all the toys, and a lower level Little House on the Prairie, full of pioneer tools and a few

ancient furs which didn't look quite so cute to some of the visitors once they got them in their hands.

The Vilas Zoo was in full array still in early October.  As we walked into the entrance, we heard the roar of the lion to ensure us that the animals were all out in mid afternoon display.

 The Polar and Grizzly bears must have been in a demonstrative mood on this particular monday....the Polars had found a spot in the shade up against the display window, and so we could just about pet them.  As we approached the Grizzlys, the two were standing off in the distance and climbing around some rocks, but for whatever reason they decided to mosey on down the worn path toward the window and moved right up on the window,

stopped at one point, looked at us square in the eyes, and licked the window, putting us 1/8 inch away from the jaws of one of the most powerful creatures on earth.

Weeknight Cooking: Chicken Spaghetti

In the Pioneer Woman's cute introduction to this recipe, Ree Drummond claims that this is the only casserole that her husband (referred to as Marlboro Man -- a real cowboy) and family will really eat.  Because, as she goes on, it is a bit complicated and shows signs of both diced red and green, the family calls it "Mexican Chicken," although that's not really what it is at all.  "There's a lot of 'stuff' in this

casserole, but the way I ensure widespread acceptance and bliss by those I serve it to is to keep everything diced very small and to season it adequately."  What she is referring to is the 4 oz jar of

diced pimientos, onion, Lawry's seasoning, green peppers, and cayenne in addition to the main ingredients.

While I was looking at all these ingredients, I too thought the same thing – I was on a time budget and I realized there was way more in this recipe than needed to be.  I slowly visualized reducing the recipe down to its bare, but best, essentials: good chicken, thin spaghetti, two cans of mushroom soup, some cheese, put it together, ensuring a good pre-bake consistency, and simply let it bake for a bit.  So I pan fried a batch of chicken thighs seasoned with a garlic pepper grill salt to give the dish its 'hits' of potent flavor.  From there I boiled the noodles in chicken stock to add to the casserole essence; also adding

some stock to two cans of cream of mushroom sauce in a bowl.  I tossed in some salt, the chicken, – now cut up into good bite size pieces – the pasta (al dente) and enough cheese to create a meshing sauce.  20 minutes in the oven and these very simple ingredients come out hearty but not rich or spicy.  I think Ree Drummond was right on track with a good family friendly casserole, but once the kids see little red squares of red and green, watch out!  Simplify further and its like gravy, chicken, and pasta.  Add a veggie on the side, and its a repeater.

Tipsy Cow 

The lights of the night glowed out from each capital pub front in warming neon.  It was unusual, he thought, to be walking in among these streets that all fed into the center at the capital as if

Tipsy Cow located in old Suhr Building

blowing it up with air somehow, the white building gaining energy and more light until the spot of the dome beamed up into the sky like a ballooned cathedral. He had worked down in this very quarter for many years as a manager at the celebrated Fess Hotel...before the city had become quite so gleaming and polished.  Stories still hung in the alley ways of previous owners of the old Suhr Building, institutions such Cleveland's, the Cardinal

Suhr Building now the Tipsy Cow Bar and Eatery

Hotel, St. Julien's and the changing of the guard, over and over again.  Walking along the sidewalk where Wilson Street forks into King Street, he looked up to the old Fess Hotel, a mainstay for over a century, and could remember the story of Goerge E. Fess himself, originally a shoemaker from Gloucester, England, who came to Madison in 1842 after some years as a steward on a Lake Michigan steamer.  So many immigrants, he thought, had spent time in transit from the upper reaches of the Great Lakes and steamed down into the lower midwest to find settlement in a land that looked and felt something like home.  This was the area of the first settlement in Madison; before that the city was what was called a "paper

King Street, the first paved road in the city

city," that is a city whose property had been bought, platted out on a map, and put up for sale by speculators before anybody had moved in. As the Wisconsin capital was being built so too was the first eating establishment on

Map of Madison, before built

record, as Eben and Rosaline Peck opened Peck's Tavern Stand right there at center of the isthmus, a sort of boardinghouse for construction workers way back in 1837.  As the day crowd had evacuated downtown, the old buildings told their stories in window sills and bricks.


The Fess was long gone now, replaced by the Great Dane Brewpub.  He stepped into the Tipsy Cow as he passed to see how the space had changed.  As he sat at a stool a young mother and two of her small children sat at the bar giggling. It was before the night crowd and they seemed well in place, a baseball game playing above and behind them.  Beer selections had changed so much over the years he could hardly keep track of all the designed taps.  The bartender, young, maybe 24, described the Oberon as something new out of Michigan.  At the end of the first sip, the flavors came over him as if one by one,

first as citrus, then depth of malt, and then, as it ran down the throat, like an afterthought, a sharp twist of hot pepper floated over his tongue like golden mist.

Weeknight Cooking

Shepherd's Pie seems to be just a little bit different at every bar or restaurant you try it, especially

when it comes to how the meat inside is prepared.  Many American versions simply use ground and seasoned hamburger so that when the spoon sinks in it finds thick piles of meat.  The recipe I tried actually called for a 2 lb. lamb shoulder but I had in mind, for whatever reason, a soupier version – more like mashed potatoes and chunky vegetable gravy – so chose a pound and a half's worth of pre-

cooked pot roast chunks. These came in fairly small packages, drizzled with a layer of au jus sauce, which eventually worked very well as a potent supplement to the called-for 3 cups of beef stock.  The recipe idea is to put together a well-simmered meat selection, vegetables and a sauce to form a liquid paste that is then covered by rich mashed potatoes.

You go about this by simmering the roast and au jus in one pan while softening carrots, onions, celery, peas, garlic in another, all the while boiling the potatoes.  Add 1/3 cup of flour to the veggies as a thickening agent, some touches of rosemary, three full cups of beef stock (in this case adding the pre-

cooked au jus waiting warm in the other pan) and, what I came to think the most secret ingredient, 2/3 cup of a good white wine.  As a large simmering pan of vegetable and beef eventually cooks together, it is the sweetness of the wine that adds a layer of depth to an otherwise beefy concoction.  At this point, because the meat selection was purposefully thin, the stew needed considerable reducing in order to get the point of a pre-paste, remembering that the pie will thicken by baking for 20 minutes, then setting for 5 minutes.  For the potatoes, after boiling, some butter and nearly a cup of heavy cream, to mash to the point that is firm enough to shape and hold over the pie mixture.  Bake until golden brown, let sit and what comes out is a fast-track version of shepherd's pie that exceeds most other mass produced versions in eateries.  One of the reasons the homemade version ends up better, is that all the while you are cooking, you can tamper with textures, consistencies and richness depending on taste and audience.  The sweet yet beefy sauce hits a variety of comforting notes underneath a deep crust of creamed potatoes.  

Quivey's Grove

The distance from farm to table became a whole lot shorter as the concept of the famous Middleton restaurant Quivey's Grove became a reality.  Farm to table generally implies that a restaurant has

decided it would like to produce its dishes with the choicest local crops and meats and actively seeks out and buy from local farmers. Places like the famous Blackberry Farm in Tennessee, and the decades-before-its-time Quivey's Grove in Madison represent farms that transformed into fully functioning restaurant 'systems'. Quivey's, created as far back as the late 70's, might look like nothing more than a well-maintained farm from the approach, but each of its structures, the Authentic Stone House,

the Rustic Stable, and the Expansive Paddock, either serve or host premium farm-table food and beverage.  "Enthusiasm for history minus any stuffiness was a hallmark of the Garton's approach (family owners

from 1979).  The name Quivey's Grove is a nod to Fitchburg's first inn, William Quivey's nineteenth-century roadhouse...The restaurant's five dining rooms are decorated simply with period quilts,

lithographs and wall stencils.  The Gartons also excavated a tunnel between the restaurant and the stable-turned taproom to let people go from one to the other without the hassle of gearing up for Wisconsin winter."

With so much authentic raw material to work from, Quiveys became an ideal place for private and public events.  Beginning as far back as its first year in 1980, the first annual "all you can eat, drink and dance" hoedown with live music was initiated.  At the very cusp of virtually all culinary trends, the farm also introduced its first Beer Fest in 1995 and "paired menu items with Boston Beer Co. beverages; the first was so successful that three more dinners were held that summer."

Reading through the creation and evolution of Quiveys is a bit like reading about the creation of the Farmer's Market in San Francisco, which first put together both the mechanics and the language of what must have seemed something like a common sense connection between buyers and sellers: farmers and restaurants.  To pull together under one roof the historical and vegetable roots of a particular area and to celebrate that heritage might seem unusual to call a trend – for it's just 'farm living' – but today culture is as a whole taking full hold of an idea that was put into place by a few American pioneers, Quiveys included.