BREEZING ALONG

February 17 2013                    (For Kevin and Patty)As it turned out, we cooked the artichokes for dinner on Valentine’s Day. Joel’s cold had turned to a nasty, wheezing cough and the cartilage on the rim of my right ear was so sore it was keeping me awake at night. So, in the afternoon we walked into the village to Dr. L’s surgery.We’d been to him a year and half ago when I was suffering from a sinus infection, so we were well aware of what a great character he is. He trained in Boston at one point and so his English is superb, especially as it comes with an accent to rival Peter Seller’s Inspector Clouseau.He checked Joel first. A dab-hand with the stethoscope, he diagnosed mild bronchitis in the lower right lung and then began his typically nonchalant list of optional cures, advising against antibiotics unless Joel eventually found it difficult to breath – pronounced ‘breeze’ – and in Joel’s case, to breeze is to wheeze. Dr. L continued with his list: he could prescribe something to stop the cough at night but recommended lots of fluids to promote expectoration during the day, “Zee French,” he said, “Are great believers in zee spitting.”Then it was on to my ear, which, upon examination he exclaimed, “Zees eez very interesting,” as he squeezed the painful area between his fingers causing me to exclaim, “Zat hurts.”  “Have you zee gout?” he asked. To which I replied, “Pleeze, I don’t drink.” Turns out I have a ‘crystal’ under zee skin caused by an accumulation of uric acid. Cause unknown. He said the only way to get rid of it was to cut it out and course zair would be a lot of blood for two or zree minutes. And it would probably come back anyway. He asked if I believed in God, to which I somewhat indignantly replied, “Non,” and was rewarded with the gaelic shrug and his pronouncement that “in zat case zair is no ‘ope.”But back to the artichokes, literally; before we left for our doctor appointment the fire, rich with embers, was beginning to die down and rather than stoke it we decided to bury the artichokes in it and let them roast until our return.Several years ago we were in Tuscany during artichoke season and had been invited to an outdoor party in their honor. Out in the garden a fire pit some 20’ by 6’ had been made using olive wood and we watched as hundreds of artichokes were buried in the embers by two local men who, an hour later, donned asbestos gloves to remove them from the ashes. They were then disrobed – the artichokes, not the men – soaked in olive oil, garlic and salt for 30 minutes before being devoured, the sound of communal orgasm issuing from the mouths of some 50 guests.Ours proved just as climactic on Valentine’s Day; a day that started out with the serendipity of a heart appearing in my morning latte. It was such a Zen shock to see it as I had just been musing what fun it would be to make some hearts with which to decorate the table as our friends Sharon and Paul, great lovers themselves, would be joining us for dinner. I had just drawn my line for the day, a single line of red ink spelling ‘love’ (part of our ritual, started on Jan 1st of taking it in turns to draw an unbroken line starting where the previous one leaves off), and so it was that I married the heart to the line turning it into an a card.And here are 2 more creative cards we received from friends:Photo: Kate Kirkwood Photo: Jon SmithAnd when I went out for my walk I found thisPhoto: Maggie BarrettSo, when Sharon and Paul arrived we started our 5 - course meal with the artichokes, our exclamations far outdoing Meg Ryan’s fake orgasm in When Sally Met Harry. Then we moved on to one of Joel’s, by now, famous lamb Navarin’s, this one voted the best to-date. Sharon had made a marvelous salad with fresh local greens with which we pretended to cleanse our palettes before making fast work of 3 goat cheeses and baguette #2. By now our exclamations rivaled the soundtrack to a porn movie and we decided to heat things up a little more by eating dessert by the fire. And so we drooled our way through a mix of clementines and blood oranges which I had de-membraned and drizzled with a warm caramel sauce, all of it accompanied by fleur de sel dark chocolate. By now we were beyond control, conversation reduced to bestial moans and religious incantations, which no amount of fennel tea could dampen. In fact, by then we could barely breeze.