Home Again, Home Again

It's good to be home. We had a wonderful trip up to the Adirondacks with my siblings and their families. The cousins were immediately as thick as thieves, all ten of them. They spent many hours in the lake, playing in the sand, and commandeering the row boat, canoe, and sailboat. And we whiled away several hours reading and playing games of all sorts.

The place has not changed since we went as children, and each time I watch my children and my nieces and nephews there, it takes me back to those days. There is still square dancing, bingo, and swim races, including the pajama race, which requires swimming in a wet pajama top. For our family, it is a place where time stands still.

At times, this frustrates me. It would be nice to have a can opener from the second half of the last century, for example. And I do have the occasional fantasy about remodeling the cabin to make it less . . . well, less like a cabin and more like a house. But after a day or two, I slip into the rhythm of the place, time slows down, and hurrying seems like a distant memory. It is the very rustic nature of the cabin that is so appealing. There is nothing fancy there, nothing to worry about keeping polished or pristine. And there is something reassuring about spending time at a place where old things are fixed up and reused rather than thrown out and replaced, where my grandparents' rowboat and my uncle's sailboat are still vehicles for adventure.

Since we were so close to the Canadian border and wanted to leave my sister with a bit of time at the cabin with her family, we went to Montreal for a few days. One of the highlights of our visit this time was the Biosphere, which has an interactive museum devoted to environmental science. The children's favorite activity there was walking on water. They strapped enormous black styrofoam supports onto their feet and walked across an indoor pond. The climbing wall was a close second.

We also spent a great afternoon at TOHU, a center devoted to the circus arts. The children got lessons in juggling, tight rope walking, and baton throwing. And we all had a chance to practice our African drumming. I'm not quite sure how that fit in with the circus theme, but it was great fun anyway.

On the food front, there were lots of great cafes with delicious coffee, hot chocolate, and croissants. Oscar loved the "chocolatine," Montrealers' term for a chocolate croissant, and he thoroughly researched the offerings by sampling one at every cafe we entered.

My favorite cafe was Olive et Gourmando. Gabe and I had an excellent poached egg sandwich there, and I woke up the next morning still thinking about their Valrhona chocolate brioche. I will definitely need to work on recipes for some of those treats. And I loved this sign:

We also had fabulous ice cream at Bilboquet. When we arrived at 9:30 on a Monday night, there were probably 50 people in line in front of us, but it was worth the wait. The ice cream was super rich and creamy, and the scoops, called "raisonnable," were actually quite generous.

And now we're back home. We only had energy and provisions for breakfast-for-dinner on our first night back, but we did make it out to the farmers' market on Sunday, and I'm looking forward to getting back into the kitchen, especially if I can find some good company.