Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I am thoroughly tired of carrot soup (and it's good soup), so for dinner tonight, we ordered takeout from the nearby Chinese restaurant, Number One Taste on Trapelo Road.

We've ordered from them before, but I was pleasantly surprised by tonight's dinner.

The chicken wonton soup was more interesting, and tastier, than I expected: it had broth, wontons, a few pieces of chicken, and a variety of barely cooked vegetables, including snow peas. Right now, I was hoping for a higher broth:stuff ratio, but I will order this again. The wontons were cooked just enough to be suitable for my still-recovering throat; the steamed dumplings weren't, but that just meant cattitude ate all the dumplings, and I had soup and tofu.)

This is a hole-in-the-wall takeout place. We called in the order, and they said "twenty minutes." Having prepared the rest of the order, the chef put the tofu in the wok when Cattitude walked in and said he was there to pick it up.

cattitude and I have developed the custom of going out together to celebrate when one of us gets a new job: either a new-and-better job when already employed, or a job after being unemployed.

This time, we waited almost a month after my first day in this job. (A nominal three-month temp assignment feels enough like a real job to celebrate.)

Dinner was at a place called Le Jardin Bistro, on Cleveland Place [1,2]. I'd noticed it while walking up from lunch in Chinatown to get cheesecake at Eileen's Special Cheesecake, before heading back to work. The menu seemed plausible, they had a Zagat thing in the window, and the one review I found online was old but good (Eric Asimov, from the mid-1990s). I was in the mood for either French food or sushi, and wound up with a very traditional French meal: escargots (in garlic butter, of course) and cassoulet.

Both were very good, and I managed not to burn my mouth on the escargots.

The cassoulet had a fine duck leg confit, some very nice tender lamb, a slice of mild, tasty summer sausage, and some excellent pork. The pork was good enough that I made cattitude have quite a bit of it, since he's fonder of pork than I and would appreciate it more). There was also an indifferent garlic sausage, which Cattitude suggested would have benefitted from simmering with everything else, but that would have over-garlicked the rest of the cassoulet, so probably best not. The beans were rich and tasty; it was an excellent dish for a winter night, or even an early spring one such as we had Tuesday. I was too full to finish the cassoulet, and explained to the nice waiter that no, I didn't want dessert, if I had room I'd have eaten more beans. (He tried to persuade me to have sorbet, or mint tea to settle my stomach, but I declined both.)

Cattitude's starter was smoked herring, served warm over potatoes, with bits of lightly pickled onion. We both liked it, and the serving was quite generous (my escargots were the traditional half-dozen.) He had been going to order cassoulet as well, but the waiter told us about the specials, and the venison with currant sauce tempted him. Just as well: not only was the venison good, but two big servings of the cassoulet really would have been excessive. As was, there was plenty to share tastes--I had a few bites of venison, he had bites of all the different meats in the cassoulet and of course the beans.

It was a bit of a splurge, but I suspect we may go back sometime, and try having two starters, sharing an order of cassoulet, and see if that leaves room for dessert.

[1] one of the many obscure Manhattan streets, it's what Centre Street turns into before ending by merging into Lafayette. [Heading for the subway afterwards, I took us a short block out of the way, purely to walk a street I'd never been on: one block of Jersey Street, which is two blocks long.]

[2] 25 Cleveland Place; 212-343-9599

I spent Labor Day weekend in Arlington with adrian_turtle. Saturday I was feeling bright and cheerful, having actually gotten eight hours' uninterrupted sleep. We spent the afternoon at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, which Adrian had told me about on a previous visit. I particularly enjoyed the outdoor sculpture, and the chance to walk around on the lawns. It's a good place for children; we saw several families, and children who liked the sculptures and were dashing from one to another, which you can't do in a conventional museum without the guards getting annoyed. Adrian pointed out one of her favorites, Jim Dine's "Two Big Hearts": the two hearts are in dark gray metal, with all sorts of stuff on them, tools and shoes and hands and a coffeepot, a lifetime of memory. The two hearts are similar, but with noticeable differences. elisem, you should see this if you get the opportunity. What caught my eye indoors (which has some sculpture, plus paintings and photos) was a selection of very realistic-looking birds, Audubon style, in ways they would never be seen in nature. [I thought I remembered the artist's name as "Walden Ford," but Google is finding nothing. Adrian?] One is called "Last Words," and is a group of Carolina parakeets standing around one dead parakeet; the curator noted that this was modeled on "The Death of General Woolf," I think Benjamin West's painting. Then we came home and cooked misia's recipe for red-simmered protein (chicken in our case), which went nicely with salad and sourdough bread.

Sunday was rainy and gray, and I'd not slept so well. We stayed in most of the day, and I even took an afternoon nap. Eventually we baked brownies, then went out to dinner at Za, which does weird and tasty pizzas. I mentioned the brownies to cattitude, who expressed enthusiasm, so I brought some home with me. We stayed up later than we'd meant to Sunday night: having gone to bed at a more or less sensible hour (more sensible for someone who hadn't been behind on sleep, I suspect), we talked for at least an hour before Adrian finally said "bedtime." This would have been okay if I'd slept straight through, but at least this time I got back to sleep quickly after Adrian snuggled over to me to get warm, and after holding her for a few minutes I got up, turned the fan off, and made sure she had covers over her.

Monday we had lunch at Bengal Cafe, a hole-in-the-wall Bangladeshi restaurant which Adrian had noticed smelled good when walking by a few times. I looked at the menu in the window, said "they have things I've never heard of," and reached for the door as Adrian cheerfully said "New Yorker." We declined the waitress/cook's offer of the lunch buffet, because we'd spotted things we liked on the menu. We had Chat Putty, a delightful mix of white bean and potato, served at room temperature; a nice but unspectacular goat and lentil curry; and Shorshe Hilcha. Hilcha is a freshwater fish that she compared to shad; it's delicate but has lots of bones. This preparation was a mustard and onion sauce, also excellent. (Note: the bits of orange in the sauce are not carrots, don't bite into them. It took quite a bit of plain rice to get that much hot pepper off my tongue.) I was disappointed by my masala tea: she uses more black pepper, and less of the cardamom/ginger/cinnamon cluster of sweet spices, than I prefer, but the third and fourth sips were better than the first, and I did finish it. The menu is a mix of things I'd not seen before, and what looked like standard Indian-restaurant fare, including kurmas, curry, paratha, pakoras, and lassi; we deliberately ordered things we can't get in lots of other places we eat. There were plenty of fish choices, unsurprising in the cuisine of a country that sits on a river delta. Bengal Cafe, 2263 Mass Ave, in Cambridge. 617-492-1944, and it says here that they deliver in North Cambridge. Lunch everyday, 11:30-3; Dinner 5-9 Monday-Thursday, 5-10 Friday-Sunday.

Note to self: Adrian's current arrangement of chair, desk, and laptop was okay for me to use for short periods, but not to settle in at and get work done while she's asleep. This may be a temporary thing, because I hadn't noticed it before and my back had been bothering me before I got there, let alone sat down to use her computer.

The bus trip was uneventful and quick in both directions. No peafowl this time, but I got a nice look at the underside of an egret in flight, making a turn as our bus passed it.