I walk over to peer through it from time to time. I can see a Hooded Merganser, a few Common Goldeneye, Ring-billed Gulls, Mallards and Common Mergansers from my vantage point. I decide to take the scope down to the marina for a more thorough survey after brunch.

The next time I look out, snow is falling so hard that I can’t see the building across the parking lot.

I decide to cook up a big pot of something for the week. Sylvain is nice enough to taxi me to the grocery store with his snow tires.

Any recipe with this instruction has to make you happy: Pour 1/4 cup olive oil in a large saucepan. Add the sage, rosemary and thyme and warm the oil over medium heat to infuse it with the flavor of the herbs, 3 to 4 minutes.

I look up from my cooking to see that the snow has stopped and the sun has come out. The wheeling gulls flash alabaster against the blue sky. The streets are framed by frosted tree-limb lace.

Since that time, this Bohemian oasis has become my default stop when I feel like sitting and reading the paper after work while nursing a masala chai latte or pot of Earl Grey. It’s the kind of place where people meet for food or a relaxed game of chess while others sit by themselves reading. On the weekends there is live music.

The menu is no less dazzling than the decor. When you first come in, you can choose the soup, stew and/or sandwich of the day from the little blackboards hanging by the wicket. In the dessert case you will find many gluten-free choices as well as some vegan fare. Opening up the menu, you’ll find their selection includes such things as:

• raw juices (beet, spinach, celery, ginger, apple)
• exotic smoothies, such as the Masala (date syrup, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, ginger) or the Figlioni (yogurt, milk, fig puree, pecans and pure vanilla extract)
• vegan salad dressings
• organic flavour syrups
• buckwheat crepes with mascarpone, basil pesto and/or savoury jelly

The owner has recently made the cafe wheelchair accessible; call ahead and staff will put the ramp out.

For Taloola Cafe’s hours, address and more info, visit their website: http://www.taloolacafe.com/

Cheers!

Whereas I was once diagnosed with O.C.D., rituals and compulsions that met several of the DSM IV criteria for this disorder have long since mellowed into mild eccentricities and useful quirks.

I do love to organize!

Closet rainbow

My spices are in alpha order and my clothes are sorted by type and colour, as is my sock drawer. I even like to compartmentalize the icons on my computer desktop by type and frequency of use. (I created the coloured boxes using the Paint applications.)

Desktop Icons Organized

Though it’s been shown that a messy environment helps some people be more creative, I benefit from the sorts of changes a Feng Shui master would make to a home: no baskets of magazines on the floor, nothing stored under the bed, air and energy that can freely flow around things. Zen simple surroundings give me energy and make me feel like I can breathe.

It was a page turner.

The author’s note preceding the first chapter reads: “The characters in this novel are entirely fictitious. But several of the events described are not, especially those that occurred in Occupied France during summer of 1942, and in particular the great Velodrome d’Hiver roundup, which took place on July 16, 1942, in the heart of Paris.”

The story was gripping and will stay with me long after I’ve passed it on to the next reader. What I wasn’t expecting was for a place name to jump out at me: Beaune-la-Rolande.

For three or four nights I was engrossed by the book, hardly able to put it down at bedtime and unable to resist squeezing in one more chapter before work each morning. In fact I would spring out of bed early just to make time for this.

The whole time I was captivated by the story of little Sarah, that name Beaune-la-Rolande kept teasing at the edges of my memory.

I knew where to look.

Five and a half years ago I was dating a man whose father is a survivor of the Holocaust. The father and I became email pals, and he shared with me many documents about his wartime experience. He also shared what he had been able to dig up about the fate of his brother, who had not survived.  The surname was German, and I hadn’t remembered anything about France, to be honest. I think the reason I didn’t remember that part is due to the way the human mind works. To remember something, it helps to put it into a context that makes sense to you. Somehow the complicity of the French government in sending thousands of Jews to their deaths had never made it into my conscious awareness. Yes, I had seen movies in which this part of history was briefly highlighted, but because it hadn’t made sense to me, it hadn’t stuck.

I used control-F to search for the word “Beaune” in the documents. Sure enough, there it was. My friend’s brother was on Convoy 15 which departed for Auschwitz on 5 August of 1942, assembly point Beaune-la-Rolande. That’s the same convoy and same date on which the family in the novel is transported out of France and to the death camps.

After re-reading the documents and emails that had gone back and forth between me and my then-boyfriend’s father, I felt compelled to do an Internet search on the brother.  There is now a Shoa Memorial in Paris on which his name is etched in stone.

Even though reading books like Sarah’s Key or seeing movies about the Shoa/Holocaust is disturbing and hard, I think it is important to remember that humans are capable of such monstrous acts. We especially need to remain aware of how easy it was for so many to turn a blind eye to what was happening right in front of them. This is a part of human nature of which we have to be ever vigilant.

I also think we owe it to the survivors and to the dead not to forget what happened, nor push it from our minds.

The entire hallway smells heavenly.

The only thing that can improve on spending an hour baking a buttermilk pie…

is sharing it.

BUTTERMILK PIE

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 x 1 1/4″ pie plate.

Mix all ingredients. Beat until smooth. Pour into pie plate. Bake until knife inserted in center comes out clean–approximately 30 minutes. Cool 5 minutes. This tastes great served with a variety of fruit such as kiwi, strawberries, blueberries, etc.

Buttermilk Pie

• 50/50 ✔
• The Tree of Life ✔
• Midnight in Paris ✔
• The Help
• Beginners ✔
• Drive ✔
• A Separation ✔
• The Ides of March ✔
• The Muppets ✔
• J. Edgar
• The Artist
• My Week with Marilyn
• The Descendants ✔
• Moneyball
• Hugo
• Young Adult ✔
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ✔
• The Iron Lady ✔
• The Adventures of Tintin ✔
• A Dangerous Method ✔
• We Need to Talk about Kevin
• Albert Nobbs

We have not seen War Horse but do not plan to. Our soft little hearts can’t handle it, even if the horse doesn’t die.

Normally he balks at the idea of my seeing one without him since this is something we do together each year, but in the face of my wanting to see three movies this weekend, he chose to let me go ahead to The Iron Lady without him last night. Today we will see The Adventures of Tin Tin followed by A Dangerous Method. That should be an interesting one for someone who has been in and out of therapy much of her life, including over three years with a Jungian analyst. Whee!

As I sit here watching the tiny snow flurries swirl past the window, it occurs to me that there is enough time for a foray to the marina to check for new waterfowl. There’s time to do my laundry. I could buy a newspaper across the street, too.  At some point this weekend, groceries must be bought.

But no.   I’m pretty happy just sitting here in the warmth of my living room inching my way forward in Absolutely Nasty Sudoku, Level 3 book, sipping a cup of the Oolong tea a student gave me and responding to blog posts and emails.

I’m hoping Olivia’s imperfEct approach to 2012 will rub off on me. It’s okay, I tell myself, to let go for one day of this compulsive need to stay on track, on schedule, perfectly on top of my TO DO list.