A bit afield upstate New York

Kingston was New York State's first capital, back in 1777. It was also burned by the British after the Battle of Saratoga, back when those blokes did not considered us their cousins. Actually, it goes further back in history, to 1614, when the Dutch set up a factorij (trading post) at Ponckhockie in what would become Kingston. Across the years it has persisted, and today it is a vibrant little city. It is also the seat of Ulster County. Accordingly, there are governmental functions therein, and, as is wont to happen, there are quite a few lawyers, as well. Too, there are numerous retail stores, and, of course, various eating establishments.

I have gone to Le Canard Enchaine for many years. It is a traditional French restaurant, not fusion, but nouvelle cuisine; inside it is traditional, bad French music (there must be another kind, no?), posters of things French and of men and women in poses which one has to doubt would pass muster with people who might not very likely go inside, but might well be aghast if they did; there are also books, lots of dark wood, actual tablecloths with white paper on top, real silverware; it is an anachronism in a good sense of the term.

I fondly recall more than once having a prix fixe menu in summertime, including an exquisite cauliflower soup unlike any other I have ever had.

An aside here: I like vegetables, tomatoes (though they are actually fruits), avocado, string beans and peas, broccoli and carrots, chard, kale, the whole bunch (except for turnip and brussels sprouts), but I have never gotten cauliflower: its white color is unique, its shape unusual, and its overall look simply weird, in a good sense of the term, but it has no flavor.

Yet the cauliflower soup at the Chained Duck, as I affectionately call it, was sublime. Not quite a madeleine, but the recollection of having it lingers in my memory. I remember going there alone, and with my wife, too, and recall we both adored that cauliflower soup. I imagine butter has something to do with matters here.

eight petit slices of crusty bread

Today I ordered the plat du jour, chicken paillarde with lemon, garlic and herbs, and a glass of Cabernet (I do not, as a rule, drink wine with lunch, but rules are made to be broken, now and then, and so I did). My waiter, that is, mon serveur, poured me a tall glass of water and served me a bread basket with a two pats of butter in a small plate — alas, beurre froid, cold butter, one of my pet peeves (high up on the scale, quite close to the term experience). Yet it was quite a generous bread serving, indeed.

I had a couple, and, Mon Dieu, the bread was warm enough to melt the butter. And it was French bread as one expects; the French know how to do bread, even in Kingston, New York. Yum. Still, as is the wont of French restaurants, especially with one waiter on the shift, even for a small crowd (though slow should most definitely be a French word, all the more when it comes to dining, even in early afternoon), I was left to my own devices for an extended period. So, I ate more bread, which, étonnamment (surprisingly), there seemed to be an endless supply thereof; by now the beurre froid had become beurre chaud. Close thereto.

And my plat du jour was served. Two chicken cutlets, thin and charred, sat on a bed of mashed potatoes, surrounded by a tangy, spicy and sweet something, the way things are done in modern cuisine, sort of an apricot essence with a definite yet not overwhelming spice. The chicken was charred, as if cooked on a barbecue grill; it was delicious. The potatoes were rather good, too. The green herbs I ignored, but for the rosemary: I adore rosemary, and had a taste of it: just magnificent. I lingered over my meal, for I was in no hurry, and to linger over a meal is indeed a great pleasure.

Then it came to be time to go, to pay for my meal and move onto my next errands. Oh mon Dieu. The plat du jour cost $16.95, as advertised; the glass of Cabernet cost $12 — twelve bucks. It was good wine, mais oui, by for that price perhaps Mademoiselle Edith Piaf would replace that awful music, and Monsieur Macron might sit with me and discuss geopolitics, a topic of great current interest to us both. I paid, left a nice tip, and went on my way.

I went to Kingston to buy a battery charger for my car. I had absentmindedly drained its battery on Friday evening, gotten a battery jump from a friend and neighbor, but had neglected to let it run the requisite time to be fully recharged, so when I went to start my car on Sunday it would not start.

A foot of snow fell upstate, beginning with light flakes after four on Saturday afternoon, developing into a steady snowfall by midnight; when I awoke Sunday morning there was a lot of snow on the ground (and elsewhere, in fact).

At midnight, a few inches of snow on our picnic table.













Quite a bit more at 11.30 on Sunday morning.









That's a foot of snow, mate. It weren't easy to get to the table to measure, but I had bird feeders to fill.




I had much snow to clear before I could go anywhere.




















I haven't seen piles of snow this high in ages; it is a bittersweet sight to see one: nice, but it is a lot of snow.

After lunch I walked back to my car. The Chained Duck is on Fair Street; further up the street, on the corner with Main Street, stands The Old Dutch Church, which dates back to 1660 (it was a part of the Dutch Colonial village of Wiltwyck which was a trading outpost in the colony of New Netherland). For the US, that's pretty old. On a side of the main entrance I found this plaque (and I wiped away some snow probably put there by a snow blower; after all, we'd just gotten a foot of snow).



The plaque reads that George Washington himself visited the church on the 16th of November 1782 (when there still was not a nation called the United States, not formally). The tablet was sponsored by the people of Kingston on the 16th of November 1932, 150 years after GW visited, when the governor of the State of New York was one Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Pretty neat.

I did some more shopping after, and went home happy.