I’m landing soon in the Holding Pattern Series

Holding Pattern

So a few months ago my co-worker and friend Bryce Hudson, a contemporary artist in Louisville, photographed me for his latest project, the Holding Pattern Series. He worked on the series during a residency in Beijing last fall, letting me know in the middle of his night and the middle of my day when my piece of the series was complete.

The series will open in Louisville February 6 at the Green Building Gallery. Drop by and have a look!

The Marrakesh Express

Photo by vtveen.

I like to have a song that goes with an upcoming trip. Istanbul was an easy one — Magic Carpet Ride.  An October trip a few years ago was “Wake Me Up When September Ends.”

I have my song for my very-hoped-for next trip.

Wouldn’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express
Wouldn’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express
They’re taking me to Marrakesh
All aboard the train, all aboard the train

I’ve been saving all my money just to take you there

(the incomparable Crosby, Stills & Nash)

I will be playing this a lot in the coming months, alternating between excitement at “All aboard the train” and determination at “I’ve been saving all my money just to take you there.” I read a quote today that is no more than common sense, but struck a chord.

Discipline is remembering what you really want. (David Campbell)

I really want to go to Morocco. I really want to get on board the train. (Never mind that we’d be flying from Barcelona.)

Do I want it more than I want to eat sushi every week? Easy to say yes now. Remembering that I want some intangible experience months away when I’m tempted to pull out the debit card for some salmon sashimi will be hard. It’s the over and over remembering what I want that will make it possible. Do I remember I want it when I sigh that we “need” a new dishwasher? When I think about upgrading our camera?

Airfare is astronomical these days. We haven’t enough miles to get there so we’ll be paying real money for the fare. But I know we can do this. We didn’t use miles or free hotel points on our first trip of 25 days in 2001. And Brian was a waiter then, and I was at my first job out of college. I remember our savings chart, a hokey little printout of the Eiffel Tower with our savings goal at the top. For 14 months I charted our progress. It helped me remember what I wanted. Now I do the same thing with a Google docs spreadsheet.

Maybe it’s time to go retro and hang something on my refrigerator to help me remember what I really want.

What we did on our Thanksgiving vacation

Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Bon Secours, Montreal

I didn’t blog too much while we were in Quebec, or since we’ve been back, other than the cheater’s way out with photos. I needed to save my material — I’m in the middle of a ten-story series for Jaunted.com. Ten stories didn’t sound bad until I started. Four are live, two are submitted and I’ve got four left to write.

So if you’d like to see what we did in Quebec (spoiler: we ate a lot) visit the Eating Quebec stories on Jaunted.

• The Best Quick Lunch In Montreal
• Presenting Poutine
• A Crepe Break In Quebec
• Could These Be Canada’s Best Escargots?

The rest will show up here: www.jaunted.com/tag/Eating%20Quebec

I wrote a little for FoodConnect too, about the trip:

• Step Back in Time – and Try Your French – at Beauty’s
• Sugar and Ice and Everything Nice

Some of the meals also inspired us to try dishes once we were home:

• Swap the Yule Log for a Chevre Log
• The Tapas Dish for Your Party to End All Tapas Dishes

So that’s about all you’ll get here, on my so-called travel blog. It’s time to start thinking and planning for the next trip. I think there will not be snow there.

See Quebec

We’ve taken some photos in Montreal, but I’m just not as interested in, or very good at, urban photography. I really enjoyed photographing Quebec though, and used a brand new tool in Picassa to make a short video of some of our favorite photos.

Where do I have time on vacation to do things like this, you ask? I can’t stand the cold for more than a few hours and my feet get tired of walking all day so we spend a lot of time later afternoon and evening before dinner in our room. Tonight’s our last night in the city — we fly back tomorrow afternoon. Our museum/metro pass ends today so we’ll spend the day at free sites on foot tomorrow.

Those d@mn beets are still haunting me

Farm share beets

I talked with a food writer for the Washington Post a few weeks ago. She was writing a wrap-up piece on her CSA experience and wanted input from others who had participated in a farm share. We talked for a good 20 minutes, all about my experience with Misty Meadows Farm. I described how it had changed my cooking style, helped me get more into rhythm with what nature is providing, made me more creative in menu planning. I talked about how much I loved the week I got tons of basil for pesto, how the sweet potatoes tasted unlike anything I’d ever bought from a store. I said receiving my share each week was like a cross between trick-or-treating and Christmas. And when she asked about the drawbacks, I made a joke about hating beets.

Never make a joke to a journalist.

Out of our entire conversation, she quoted me on hating beets, but eating them out of guilt (which seemed a lot funnier when I blogged about it this summer). She also used me as the poster child for waste. She had asked if I ever had to throw anything away, commiserating that it was hard to go through so much food in a week. I reluctantly admitted that some weeks I didn’t get to use everything, and felt really bad when I did — after all, when you know the people who grow your food it makes you look at waste differently. We try never to waste, I told her, but especially with our farm share. We went to great lengths to use things up, even cooking the beet greens. None of that made it into the article. From now on, I’m “Dana McMahan, a CSA member in Louisville who said ‘the guilt factor was pretty big.’ “(She was loose in her transcribing of my quote.)

I understand she needed to let readers know there are many factors to consider in committing to a CSA. I just wish that my 95% positive review of the experience hadn’t come through as a negative one. She also asked if I’d do it again next year. Since she didn’t quote me on that, I’ll quote myself.

Absolutely. I already miss my weekly share.

Bonjour from Quebec/altFrance

There’s a Seinfeld episode where Elaine has an alternate Jerry, Kramer and George. I keep thinking of that because Quebec is like an alternate France. It can be a bit disorienting to walk along cobblestone streets by 300-year old buildings housing boulangeries and creperies, hearing French spoken around me, and remember I’m in North America. It’s French language and foods, but not demeanor. While I am *not* saying the French in France aren’t polite, and in fact are often friendly, especially in the country, the French here have been very helpful, friendly, smiling, even seeming happy to see us. Add to that the novel idea that we *subtract* 20% from the listed price instead of *adding* 30, 40, 50 or 60% (depending on when we were in France) and it’s like a little Alt France.

Quebec is a beautiful city. Here are some of my favorite scenes so far.

Thinking about cold

Waiting for the bus in Edinburgh

Of the two types of people in the world, the “I’d rather be hot” and “I’d rather be cold,” I’d definitely rather be cold. You can always bundle up, add more layers and scarves and gloves, but once you’re as bare as you’re comfortable going in public, that’s it in the heat.

I didn’t even used to get particularly cold. Probably because living in Kentucky, we just don’t have frigid weather often. As I’m looking at the weather forecast for Quebec (it’s 23 there now with a windchill of 11) I remember my introduction to Really Cold Weather.

Brian and I went to Scotland for the Hogmanay (New Year’s) celebration in December of 2003. We’d been to Scotland before, and I knew that even in June I’d needed a sweater, and had been able to see my breath one afternoon it was so cold. But I never knew what serious cold felt like until Edinburgh in the winter. Our B&B was heated just enough to keep ice from forming on a glass of water, the shower provided lukewarm water at best, and no matter how many blankets I piled on I couldn’t stop shivering in bed. And that was inside!

Outdoors my nose ran non-stop,  I kept my gloved hands jammed in my pockets, and developed a semi-permanent hunch to my shoulders from trying to keep warm.  When my bare flesh met the ice posing as a toilet seat on a moving train in the non-heated bathroom compartment, I learned what real cold was. I didn’t feel warm down to my bones for months afterwards, literally.

But did this ruin the trip? No way. We made frequent breaks for tea or coffee, drank hot mulled wine, and shivered together in the snow as we watched the kilted bagpipers march. Compare this to being hot and cranky in Capri on a sweltering day and I’ll take cold anytime.

That’s easy to say now as I sit in my warm house, but I’m off to buy cable-knit tights to wear under my trousers, and earmuffs. And there’s always hot coco.

Up next? Up north

Night and Snow in Quebec. Photo by etolane

We leave two weeks from today for our next trip. Brian has been at his job for a bit over a year now and has received his ten-day allotment of days off. He hasn’t been on “vacation” (though we call our travels trips, not vacation) since our Great Ten Year Anniversary Trip in June of 2007. I’ve since been to Paris and on the motorcycle trip with my dad, not to mention work trips to California, Oregon, Las Vegas and NYC. I’m sure Brian is ready to get away.

We chose Canada when we finally accepted that the euro was at a buck sixty to stay, making Europe too cost-prohibitive. (Of course over the past few weeks we’ve watched it slide back down below $1.30 and are plotting to go back next year.) We both like cold, snowy weather, and they do speak French in Quebec, so it seems like a good choice.

I haven’t had a fraction of the excitement about visiting our friend to the north though, that I have about our past trips. I look forward to it, but I don’t lie awake at night, giddy about it. I feel like I’m not giving it a fair chance. It’s not France, and I shouldn’t treat it in my mind like a consolation prize … “You won’t be going to Europe this winter, but you’re not going home empty-handed — you’re going to Canada!”

But I know it will be fun — the food will be good, hopefully we’ll have snow, and I have some fun blogging assignments. I’m writing a series for Jaunted on “Eating your way through Quebec,” which will also include a video. We’re staying free with points in Montreal so we splurged a bit in Quebec City on a boutique hotel — Hotel Dominion 1912. I may not be giddy with excitement, but I am dreaming of hot chocolate in front of a fireplace on a snowy night.

I’ve wondered what dogs do when they’re home alone

I came home from work yesterday to find that a tornado had hit my living room — a 40-lb canine tornado.

We keep a blanket tucked into the couch cushions to protect the leather from puppy claws. Even though Alba’s not allowed on the couch we have no illusions that she follows those silly rules when we’re not home. So much for the blanket. It was 90% off the couch. My Scottish wool throw blanket that goes on the back of the couch was on the floor with a hole in it. No pillows remained on the couch. And most perplexing, the area rug was folded back, and the ottoman was actually on top of the folded part. I can’t even imagine the activities that led to that. I’m surprised Truffle was still standing.

I take it she’s recovered from her visit to the snip clinic last week. I think it’s safe to start walking her again.

Look, there’s a butterfly

We are so ADD when it comes to planning a trip. We haven’t even gone to Canada yet and we’re deep into negotiations about where to go next year.

We first thought South America — it’s somewhere new to us, there’s no time zone change, our dollar does well there. We thought this for a while. Then I heard about the great Gathering in Scotland next year and started dreaming about that. But it’s in July. Brian won’t have the vacation time, nor would we have time to save up the funds. Airfare hasn’t fallen yet like gas prices at the pump have. We’ve yet to break the $1,000 mark for airfare and I really don’t want to. (Though, granted we’ve been lucky in the past to have had miles to fly with free.)

So back south. Machu Picchu beckoned. I read up on lots of options for the Inca Trail and had pretty well settled on that. Then the dollar rebounded against the euro. And for whatever reason, the day after Obama was  elected, Brian said he wanted to go to Europe. So we started thinking about that again. I still want to go somewhere new. We haven’t been very far in Eastern Europe, nor have we been to Spain or Portugal.

After a delicious dinner last night at Mojitos Tapa’s, I’m leaning towards Spain. Of course that could change by breakfast.