Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Today we have photos of New Zealand by Kiwi reader Keith Cook. Keith’s notes and captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
First is a home shot (Auckland) to get started and the rest are from a winter holiday (South. Is) New Zealand.
Sunrise. this is a shot of the sun rising at its most southern point (taken from home) or is that the southern hemisphere’s most northern point by the tilt of Earth? Anyway, this is the height of summer for us.
Misty river. This was taken like the following from the TranzAlpine heading towards Greymouth from Christchurch. A rail trip from the east to the west coast through the Southern Alps and we chose to come back on the same day. Being a lover of railways I enjoyed every moment of it. I took this shot from an open observation carriage. This shot is the north facing side of the carriage, the rail line and Wiamakariki river are flanked by a gorge.
South Island Bush. Taken facing south after dropping down to sea level from Arthur’s Pass I believe the forest here to be, Dept. of Conservation (DOC): “Dacrycarpus dacrydioides, commonly known as kahikatea and white pine, is a coniferous tree endemic to New Zealand. A podocarp, it is New Zealand’s tallest tree, gaining heights of 60 m over a life span of 600 years.” I wouldn’t be surprised if Kauri, Agathis australis were in the shot but I can’t tell for sure.
Hillside Moon, Snow covered hills, Hillside snow cap. These are taken from the highway leading up to the Lindis Pass. A lovely scenic tour through central Otago heading north.
A restored Chinese miners hut. DOC: “In 1866 fewer than 200 Chinese miners lived in Otago, but Census figures for 1874 show that there were 3564 Chinese in Otago, and most were working on the goldfields. Often victims of harassment and discrimination, they lived on the fringes of European settlements in isolated gullies close to their mining claims.”
Arrowtown, Otago a quaint little town and tourist spot.It wasn’t all about the scenery but I wouldn’t have minded either way, the South Island was empty of all international tourist and to some extent, locals. No buses, no campervans, minimal traffic. We were the tourist! It is winter as you can see and we had just come out of 4 weeks of Covid 19 lock down. My wife and I were supposed to be in the UK visiting our daughter but this was a pretty good alternative…
Arotaki Mt Cook. Our highest peak, and it was just a beautiful day and to finally see this mountain up close and ‘live’ was a real treat.
Hillside Moon, Snow covered hills, Hillside snow cap. These are taken from the highway leading up to the Lindis Pass. A lovely scenic tour through central Otago heading north.
JAC: Here are two maps of the South Island; I’ve noted spots mentioned. “Otago” is a region of the South Island, extending from Queenstown to Dunedin:
Today’s photos come from evolutionist Jody Hey from Temple University. His narrative and captions are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.
The coast of Maine offers a lot of beautiful scenery and some great wildlife watching. My visits there are usually in mid-summer, which if you are inland is not the best time of year for watching birds. However, the seaside has lots of visible action year round. On or near the coast, many of the birds are large, and the sightlines have few obstructions, so getting passable photographs can be relatively easy. Below are some pictures taken at Marshall Point, the location of a much photographed lighthouse near Port Clyde, and the island of Monhegan, home to a small community of lobstering folk and artists, and just a 12 mile ferry ride from Port Clyde.
One day I had just finished my picnic lunch and was walking on the beach facing the harbor of Port Clyde, and saw this Great Black-backed gull (Larus marinus) enjoying its own lunch, an Atlantic rock crab (Cancer irroratus).
The tidal range is quite large in coastal Maine, especially further north and east, so the things to see vary widely throughout the day. Here is a Least sandpiper (Calidris minutilla) exploring the barnacles at low tide.
Marshall point is separated from ocean waters only by a few islands, unlike much of the jagged cost of Maine most of which is some distance from the open ocean. This means that Common Eiders (Somateria mollissima) can be seen there year round. In the summer their markings are fairly dull, but in the winter and spring, they are spectacular.
The ferry ride from Port Clyde to Monhegan offers some great opportunities to see marine mammals, including a couple varieties of seals and Harbor Porpoises (Phocoena phocoena):
Monhegan island itself is less than 5 square miles in area, however the majority of it is owned and maintained as wild land by a private non-profit land trust. Visitors are free to explore the beautiful woods and rocky cliffs that dominate the eastern side of the island, as well as eat and shop in the little village. The cliffs also offer great viewing of a variety of coastal and ocean-going birdlife.
Northern Gannets can often be seen from the cliffs (as well as from the ferry). Here is a somewhat blurry adult, and a more in-focus juvenile:
This Double-crested Cormorant (Nannopterum auritus) obligingly flew directly below me at the same time as the waves were crashing:
The cliffs are also a popular nesting site for Herring Gulls (Larus argentatus):
These Cedar waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) were also at the Monhegan clifftops one day, though the coastal location was fortuitous as they are a widespread and common species:
And closely things out for Monhegan, I go this lucky shot of a Common Raven (Corvus corax) one day, deep in the spruce woods:
Lastly, a lagniappe (as Jerry would say). Not far from Monhegan and Marshall Point is Eastern Egg Rock, home to the world’s first restored colony of Atlantic Puffins (Fratercula arctica). The story of that restoration is fascinating, and now it is apparently safe for the birds to be seen by tourists during the breeding season (from a boat, that is). I took the boat tour one day a couple years ago, just before the end of the season when there were only a few puffins to be seen, but at least I got a picture:
Tony Eales has returned from a safari trip to Botswana, and sends some gorgeous photos. (There will be more, too). Tony’s narrative is indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.
Just recently got back from safari in Botswana. Without a doubt one of the most amazing experiences of my life. The safari was 9 nights with relatively equal time first in the Okavango Delta, then Moremi Game Reserve, then Chobe National Park on the border with Namibia. Finally, we ended up at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe which very nearly overshadowed the whole safari. The Falls are almost incomprehensible in the beauty and awesome power. I took thousands of photographs of beasts and bugs and it’s way more than I could cover in a single email. Today I thought I’d show some of the highlights of the Okavango Delta.
This is dawn of our first day in the delta showing the palms and termite mounds that dominate the dry parts of the landscape:
The delta is one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa and a UNESCO World Heritage area. It is one of the few river deltas that does not have an outlet into a sea or large water body but instead spreads out and disappears into the Kalahari Basin. This is us heading to our campsite in the basin with the indigenous people of the delta:
We obviously didn’t have the safari car in the delta and instead we went on ‘walking safaris’ where everyone stayed in a single file line without breaks for safety and walked out into the plains and thickets. Our guide was a very knowledgeable and fun local called “Master”. Here he is showing us a zebra skull:
There was much to be said for the walking safaris but approaching the animals was harder than it proved to be in the cars. The animals were much more suspicious of people on foot. We heard lions roaring in the morning but on advice of another group we met, it seemed the lions had cubs and would be difficult and perhaps dangerous to approach. We nevertheless saw elephants, giraffes, zebra, buffalo, warthogs, and numerous antelope, in particular countless impala. Here’s an impala (Aepyceros melampus), a waterbuck (Kobus ellipsiprymnus) and some warthogs (Phacochoerus africanus) near our camp:
The star of our patch of the delta was a hippo (Hippopotamus amphibius) who hung out right where we docked the canoes in front of the camp and we could see peeping at us throughout the day:
. . . but the shot we all waited for was the occasional yawn:
Bush Elephants (Loxodonta africana) approached very close to the camp on several occasions. This one pausing for a dust bath:
The birds too were numerous, fascinating and beautiful. African Jacana (Actophilornis africanus):
But of course, my real love is arthropods and it was here in the delta that I found the most amazing bug of the trip. Genus Pephricus, one of the cryptic and bizarre Spike Wilter Bugs:
Also, in great variety and abundance were ants. These ones, known as Hotrod Ants (Ocymyrmex sp.) were collecting dead shells of termites.
After our time in the Delta, we moved to the Moreme Game Reserve which is in the northeast part of the delta and to traditional safari car game drives. But that’s for next time.
Today’s photos come from reader Teresa Vuoso, who sent a batch of pictures from Arizona. Teresa’s captions and narrative are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.
In late February, my father, brother, and I met in southeastern Arizona to visit the Chiricahua National Monument and Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area. The weather was unusually cold, and a light snow actually closed the road the road to the top of Chiricahuan. Still, beauty was in abundance. My brother, Mark McMillen, took some of these pictures and they are included with his consent. I have no background in photography, biology or any other “ology”. I am just a fan of Dr. Coyne since hearing him speak about Darwin on a cruise to Antarctica and who wants to help keep the readers’ wildlife photos coming.
JAC: Yes, please follow Teresa’s lead and send in those photos!
Big Balanced Rock at Chiricahua National Monument. It is 22′ in diameter, 25′ tall, and weighs about 1,000 tons. Mark and I hiked almost 8 miles roundtrip with an elevation gain of 1396′. We got to Big Balanced Rock just in time to watch a storm roll in complete with sleet, wind, and rain. Got drenched walking back down, but would do it again:
Our first sighting of Big BalancedRock:
We hiked a trail along huge rock formations such as these:
A portion of the trail:
On the way to Faraway Ranch (a dude ranch established in 1917), we saw these cute raccoon-like critters, Coatimundi/Coati (Nasua narica). They are native to South America, Mexico, and the southwest US.
Curious Coati trotted along with their bushy tails held high and then would stop to assess us:
Coatimundi:
We visited Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area on two occasions. The first was terribly cold and windy. While there we saw thousands of Sandhill Cranes, Snow Geese, American Coots, and Mallards.
Whitewater Draw is a very scenic, marshy area surrounded by mountains.
Whitewater Draw is the winter home of thousands of birds including flocks of Sandhill Cranes (Antigone canadensis) . They form flocks of more than 10,000 as they fly down from northern Canada every year at altitudes averaging 6,000-7,000 feet (Photo by Mark McMillen):
Here you can see the red skin on the crown of adults (Photo credit Mark McMillen):
We were fortunate enough to watch several flocks descend, circling from very high altitudes before landing. (Photo by Mark McMillen):
These birds fly out in the morning to forage in other fields and marshes before returning in the afternoon. (Photo credit Mark McMillen):
It’s a small world. Two groups of birdwatchers from Jamaica Bay, NYC (a favorite spot of mine) happened upon each other by sheer coincidence. I mentioned I was from New York also, whereupon I heard someone, whom I presume was not a New Yorker, say, “You can’t swing a dead bird without hitting a New Yorker.” 🙂:
I’m including this because I found it unique. A couple traveling from Switzerland brought their own camper.
This will be a quickie, as I must scribble this post and then pack, for I’m leaving early tomorrow for home.
Our lunch destination was the Café des Ministères in the spiffy Seventh Arrondissement, where there are lots of fancy apartments and government buildings (ergo the name of the café). One of Winnie’s friends recommended it for its large portions of good food (always a draw), and it also has famous chou farci (stuffed cabbage), for which it won the “best of” prize in France last year. How could I not try that dish?
It’s a short walk from the Invalides Métro stop to the restaurant, and you pass the National Assembly (France’s legislative body) on the way. Note the “Woman, Life, Freedom” slogan in several languages on the left. That’s the cry of the new Iranian revolutionaries, and I wonder if this was to deliberately show solidarity with Iran. On the right it says “Freedom for everyone, everywhere,” with the figure of Marianne, the woman who symbolizes the French Republic and the freedom of its citizens.
A statue of Marianne:
The café, which isn’t very large. Although there were a few open tables at lunch, the proprietress (who was not very friendly) turned people away if they didn’t have reservations. But there may be a reason for that, like not having enough chou farci on hand for those without reservations.
Nicole, Winnie’s friend, was to join us again as she greatly enjoyed our meal of lamb at Sébillon. While waiting for them, I luxuriated in a park across the street, surrounded by bits of old Paris like this streetlight:
The inside of the restaurant (there’s a smaller back room) with a display of digestifs:
The menu, front and back:
Nicole’s entrée: Leeks vinaigrette with a sauce that included minced egg and sausage. I tried some; very nice!
Winnie had the octopus starter with Spanish sausage (chorizo-like) and chickpeas. She liked it, but to save room she ate only the mollusc.
My starter: the house terrine with pork, chicken liver, and pickled veggies on the side. It was at least twice as thick as the terrine you usually get in a restaurant, and I knew if I ate it all, I wouldn’t be able to handle my cabbage. Sadly, I left about a third of it. That’s sad, because it was excellent.
The pickled vegetables below replaced the usual small pickles (cornichons) served with paté. These were lovely. I hate cauliflower, but crunched greedily on this version and on the carrots. I’ve never had pickled vegetables so tasty. Of course I downed my terrine with plenty of the local bread.
Winnie’s plat: the classic coquilles St. Jacques (scallops, nine total) served in scallop shells and resting on a bed of garlicky mushroom duxelles. ringed with baked mashed potatoes that were crunchy on top and soft inside. She pronounced it excellent. (The French say “miam miam” instead of “yum yum”, but they sound the same.)
Scallop season in France goes from October 1 to May 15, and catching them smaller than 11 cm is not allowed.
Nicole and I had the famous stuffed cabbage. Here’s the award for Best Stuffed Cabbage in France that they display proudly:
IT WAS A WHOLE DAMN CABBAGE, not just a few stuffed leaves. I’m not sure what was in the stuffing, but certainly pork, and then, in the middle, a hunk of salted ham. It was terrific!
Partly dissected:
Partly dissected showing the coeur de jambon. Many people ordered this but none finished it. I ate about 60%, and they even offered to let us take the rest home (if I lived here I would have!)
Desserts. Last night Winnie said that she and Nicole had decided to have three desserts between the two of them (I was going to pass on dessert and have a Mont Blanc pastry at Angelinas across the Seine.) I didn’t think they could do it, but they did!
First, profiteroles (creampuffs) with ice cream and warm chocolate sauce:
Second, rhubarb Pavlova with strawberries and frozen yogurt:
And a delicious Parisian flan with vanilla. It had the consistency of cheesecake rather than flan, and was redolent with vanilla bean (you can see the seeds in the cake). I had some and it was incroyable.
Nicole (photographing me) and Winnie during dessert. Afterwards, Nicole pronounced that she’d eaten way too much. But she has the makings of a foodie in her!
We strolled across the river to the famous Place de la Concorde, which was hardly harmonious during the French Revolution, for this is where the guillotine was set up to lop off the heads of royalty and commoners alike. In its center is one of the two Egyptian Luxor Obelisks, constructed around 1250 BC and given to France by Egypt in 1830. Moving it must have been quite a job! It was towed on its own ship by another sailing ship.
The gold-leaf cover was added in 1998, and the height of the obelisk and newer pedestal is about 33 m (109 feet).
It still has the original hieroglyphics, whose translation is here:
Two famous structures in the same frame, built more than a millennium apart:
We made a quick stop in the fancy shop of the Japanese designer Issey Miyake, as Winnie likes his clothes (he died not long ago). Her “anemone pants” are by Miyake. Here’s one outfit on display.
I looked at some price tags of the clothes, and very small blouses were over 1000€. I have to admit that a lot of his stuff is nice, though I’m not keen on the outfit below.
Then a stiff walk down the Rue Rivoli to Angelina’s. Instead of going inside, I decided to buy one of their famous Mont Blancs and take it back to my hotel. In fact, I just polished it off before I wrote this paragraph: it’s pure cream filling covered with ribbons of rich, chestnut-purée frosting, all resting on a thin cookie. It is outstanding.
Angelina’s. We skipped the line to sit down with pastries and hot chocolate, as I didn’t think my stomach could handle both.
Of course, to get at the goods, you have to open the fiendishly devised pastry box that they put the Mont Blanc in, and that’s after after you remove the box from the requisite fancy bag:
Et voila! A Mont Blanc in all its glory!:
Partly eaten. Oy, was it good!
And that was my last meal in Paris, the world’s most beautiful and romantic city (I haven’t seen them all, but this is still on top). My next meal will be whatever glop Air France decides to give me on the way home tomorrow. I will miss this town. All told, I’ve probably spent about a year in Paris (I did six months hear during my first sabbatical in 1989, when I met Matthew in the fly lab at the CNRS an hour out of town. (I decided to live in Paris, and had a garret apartment in the Sixth.)
We will temporarily skip the post abut yesterday’s meal—but only for a short time—because that will involve a longer post since I also went to the Musée de l’Homme (and watched a Catholic mass and baptism before lunch) and took some photos that would make this post too time-consuming to write today. I’ll post about Sunday’s all-you-can-eat lamb leg lunch either tomorrow or Wednesday.
But enjoy an account of our gargantuan lunch from today. We returned to a place where we had a spectacular meal several years ago, and then a not-so-great one last week. We decided to give it one more try, as it might have been having an off day last Wednesday. And I’m glad we did.
We returned in fact to the Restaurant Cartet, having specified in advance that we wanted to try the navarin: French lamb and turnip stew. Dominique, the owner, cook, manager, and server (he’s the only guy who works there) requested in turn that Winnie wear her spiky, stretchy pants, as (being a gardener) he said they reminded him of anemone flowers moving in the breeze. (Remember, this is France.).
So, Winnie donned her trousers and we met at Le Cartet, worried that the meal would be so-so like the one we had last week. But then, as Dominique unlocked the door to let us in (and then relocked it), we spotted four big bowls of desserts on one table to the right, and three big entrees on the other, and we knew we were in for another belly buster. First, the trousers in question:
What we saw upon entering: the desserts: riz au lait (rice pudding), the cream for Îles flottantes (floating islands), into which you put big globs of stiff meringue at the last moment, a gigantic tureen of crème caramel, and bugnes (small crispy pastries dusted with sugar, not visible in photo below). We did not know that a tureen of fantastic chocolate mousse, the best I’ve ever had, was also lurking in the kitchen. The huge array of desserts and entrées let us know that Cartet was back on form.
These are not ramekins; they are BIG BOWLS and TUREENS.
The entrées: beef muzzle with mustard sauce (not my favorite, but still pretty good), fresh artichokes with fresh pecorino cheese, and my favorite of all Dominiques starters, endives with walnuts, also with mustard sauce. There was a also a plate of beautiful tomatoes, which he displayed because some of them had gone into the navarin.
Starters: the endives. Yum! This is a world-class entrée.
At this point we were discussing Calvados (a meal at Cartet, if you befriend Dominique, is half eating and have chatting with le chef), and Dominique displayed this bottle of Didier Lemorton Reserve Calvados from Normandy, which he said was made from 70% apple and 30% pear. He brought it out because the wine we were drinking was redolent of pear. (I am now regretting not having a small taste of the Calvados after lunch, as I see it’s highly rated on the Internet.)
The plat (main course) was navarin: spring lamb and turnip stew with tomatoes, peas, carrots, and mushrooms. We ate almost the whole bowl, sopping up the juices with crusty baguette. I didn’t hold out much hope for lamb and turnip stew, but this is a traditional seasonal dish in France, called navarin printanier when made with fresh Spring veggies. And Ceiling Cat help me if it wasn’t delicious!
We also had the same luscious white wine we had last time
Desserts: The crème caramel, which was about four inches thick with a crispy crust, luscious creamy/gelatinous interior, and a layer of caramel sauce at the bottom. Délicieux! This is a big crock that could feed five, but we ate nearly half of it. (There is no hope of finishing most dishes at Cartet, and the chef knows it.) But Winnie and I are nearly equal to the task, for we are feeders.
Below: rice pudding, some of the finest I’ve ever had, rivaling that of L’Ami Jean before that bistro went steeply downhill due to an influx of diners driven there by Adam Gopnik’s favorable review in TheNew Yorker. I’ll never forgive Adam for writing about the place! We took a pass on the isle flottante as we didn’t want to waste the meringue and we were getting pretty full.
Again, this is enough for four or five people even as a single dessert. It’s very rich. Perhaps it’s in my Jewish genes, but I love rice pudding.
On the side we got a bonus plate of bugnes lyonnais craquantes, a crispy accompaniment to wet desserts. They’re basically made of donut ingredients and deep fried, then dusted with powdered sugar.
Just as we could barely eat any more dessert (or a molecule of any food), Dominique appeared at the kitchen door with a big bowl of chocolate mousse, and put a huge spoonful of it on each of our plates. Yes, it was the best chocolate mousse I’ve ever had: cakelike on the top, more moussemo-ish a bit further down, and with small bits of solid chocolate floating throughout. The taste and texture were incomparable.
Dominique doesn’t like to be photographed, but he obliged me by posing with the bowl of mousse over his face.
While we were eating, he was cleaning a bunch of chinaberries (Melia azedarach) to make a necklace and bracelets from the seeds for the children who were coming this evening.
This is a TON of work: you have to boil the berries to loosen the skin, peel it off, scrub the berries with a nylon sponge-thingie so they’re clean, and then let them dry. Chinaberries are popular in some places to make jewelry as the dried seeds are crenulated like a peeled orange and have a natural hole in them, perfect for stringing. They are also used to make rosaries. The fruits and skins are toxic to humans, but are consumed by birds.
One seed. You can’t see the natural hole through it, but, when dried, these can be easily strung on a thread.
Dominique did all this work simply to bring joy to the children dining there tonight. He works because he loves to work, and he doesn’t care about money, which is why he usually serves only one table at lunch and/or dinner.
For more on chinaberry jewelry, go here. I think the trees are easily found in the US.
Here’s our reservation in the book; note that it just says “Winnie” and “2 couverts” (two “covers”, or customers). Again, there were only two of us at lunch, but there would be four for dinner. Although the restaurant opens at noon, Winnie asked to dine at 11:30 so we’d have at least 2.5 hours for lunch (not a long lunch at Cartet)—she had a later engagement. Note that “Navarin” is listed by her name, as we requested it this time.
Finally, Dominique does all the produce shopping for the restaurant, sometimes getting up at 2 a.m. for the hour-long schlep to the Rungis wholesale market, where Les Halles moved when in 1973 it evacuated its centuries-long location in the middle of the city. The market is only open very early in the morning, and only chefs and the like are allowed to shop there. It’s the second largest wholesale food market in the world (second only to Mexico City), and is larger than Monaco!
Winnie took this picture of me after lunch. If you enlarge it, I suspect you’ll see that my tummy is enlarged:
For readers, I still recommend this restaurant highly: two of the three meals we had there were nothing short of spectacular, and will be remembered fondly. It’s an absolutely unique place, and you’ll have to call for reservations.
Again, you might hit it on an off day, but if you order the boeuf ficelle, you can’t go wrong (specify when reserving, or ask what is on offer). It ain’t cheap: lunch for two was 300 euros, but in my view we got our money’s worth. (There is no menu with prices; you are simply presented with a bill at the end that gives the total price, sometimes separated by food and wine.)
Now I am in my hotel, typing on my laptop but keeping it off of my stomach, which is still painfully distended with lunch
As I said, I didn’t sleep a wink last night, and though I was a total wreck in the morning, some Parisian air, a Métro ride, and a hefty lunch bucked me up. So much so, in fact, that we did some sightseeing afterwards.
First, my favorite sign on the Métro, and I am going to use my own translation, which is mine, and one I like:
ATTENTION! Do not put your hands in the doors, by doing so you risk getting them pinched VERY HARD.
Silly rabbit. . .
On to the restaurant; Winnie knew I liked duck and had searched out a duck restaurant, La Grange Aux Canards, which turned out to be near my old stomping grounds in the Sixth. It was in fact a Southwestern French restaurant, but every item save one on the main menu and few entées, cheeses, and desserts, was made with duck (there was one steak; see below). The menu is here.
I had stopped eating duck because I love them and take care of the mallards of Botany Pond (don’t mention my hypocrisy; I already know it), but I slipped up this one time because French duck breast, cooked rare, is to die for. I will go to hell, I know.
Of course the restaurant was full of duck-related items. This was under the main counter:
And three ducks on the wall. Winnie’s translation:
We, the southwest of France…
…if we can…
…we avoid it!
Clearly you don’t want to be a duck in southwest France! I’m not sure who the artist was.
Winnie had 12 ESCARGOTS, Beurre d’échalote au vin blanc, persillade et Bayonne. (Caps are from the manu.) That is snails with all the trimmings.
I had the COU DE CANARD FARCI AU PORC ET CANARD (duck neck stuffed with pork and duck, served with small potatoes and dressed lettuce. It was a very good starter:
For mains, Winnie had LES AIGUILLETTES DE CANARD, Sauce au miel et sésame torréfié, Poêlée de légumes ou pommes gersoises. That is, thick filets of duck with all the trimmings:
My dish, a French classic whose consumption will damn me: LE MAGRET DE CANARD ENTIER DU SUD-OUEST, Sauce au miel et sésame torréfié, pommes gersoises. It was superb, cooked pretty rare, which is the right way to do it. Duck cooked this way takes on a somewhat beefy flavor. Besides honey, the sauce had a bit of orange in it, but didn’t overwhelm the heavenly flavor of the magret:
See how rare it is?
On the menu: they won’t serve you their one beef dish unless it’s cooked either “bleu” or “saignant” (both are “vary rare”). The French know how to cook and eat beef, and they won’t let tourists get away with “medium rare” or even worse degrees of cooking. There’s an English translation:
After dinner they gave us complementary shots of Armagnac with a booze-steeped prune. It was excellent: just the right finish:
The restaurant’s card:
Today was market day across the street at the Maubert-Mutualité Metró station. We both love markets and I took photos while Winnie bought more food for her later dinner (as I said, she can eat!), including fresh shrimp, strawberries, and a roasted guinea fowl.
Here’s a “typical” Frenchman, toting an accordion on his back. I saw two of these guys within an hour. But where were the mimes? Send in the mimes!
Stuff on sale at the market. First a nearby bakery sells the croissants that won the “best butter croissant in Paris” prize a few years ago. The line is out the door and they’re only a bit more than one Euro. I had one the last time I was here; they’re served warm from the oven and oozing with butter.
Some green stuff (cabbage?):
Some more green stuff (fennel?)
A stall that sold many kinds of honey. Even the very dark stuff is honey:
These tiny melons (from Morocco, not France), not much bigger than a softball, are fantastic when ripe, and have an indescribable perfume. They were 35 or 45 euros each, though!
Tiny squid:
A flounder. Note how the eye, which used to be on the other side when the fish was young, has migrated over the top the head so it can lie flat on the seabed and still see. This is one of the great feats of developmental evolution. Baby flouders start off swimming upright and look like normal fish, but then, when they start resting on the bottom, the whole morphology changes and the eye migrates to the “up” side of the body.
Beautiful oysters:
And scallops:
Veins of mold in a Roquefort cheese:
I skipped dessert at the duck place because Winnie reminded me that just a block away was the fancy pastry shop Aux Merveilleux de Fred, and last time I was here I was blown away by their individual chocolate merveilleux. So I got one, a fistful of napkins (it’s messy eating it on the street), and scarfed it while walking. In the store:
Display and consumption (photos by Winnie):
The guts: chocolate, real cream filling, meringue, and cake at the bottom:
Two views of the church Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, finished in 1626. Inside rest the remains of Blaise Pascal and Jean Racine. The remains of the revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat, murdered in his bath, are in the church cemetery.
The famous Panthéon is right nearby. It was designed to be a.church, but when it was finished in 1790 they decided to make it into a memorial for famous Frenchmen (and now some French women). This page tells you who’s in there; they include Louie Braille, Pierre and Marie Curie, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, and Voltaire.
The library of the Sorbonne, right next to the Panthéon; only students and professors are allowed in. Since it’s so lovely and cozy inside, there’s always a line awaiting entry:
A panorama of the historic and scenic area:
Close by was our goal, the Musée Curie, the place where Marie Curie and her husband Pierre (formally, Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie) discovered radium and polonium, for which they won the Nobel Prize. Marie won it another time, too, and so did her daughter and son-in-law Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie. That makes five Nobels in two generations of one family: a record!
The museum is open Wednesday through Saturday afternoons, is free, and is well worth seeing. It was renovated in 2012 by Marie’s and Pierre’s youngest daughter Ève.and has a lot of the original material used by the Curies and a great display of the early days of radioactivity studies.
A photo of Marie, working in her lab, on the outside gate:
The entrance to the building. This is where the Atomic Age really began:
And a commemorative plaque. I’m sure you can puzzle out the French:
Marie’s office, with many original furnishings. The door to the left leads to her chemistry lab where radium was isolated.
The lab, with much of the apparatus apparently original:
Some of the instruments constructed to isolate and test radioactive material. A lot of the apparatus was specially designed by the Curies and made by master craftsmen. Don’t ask me what these things are.
For a while radium was a fad, considered good to drink and good for cosmetics. Only tiny amounts were used in these products, though, so nobody was hurt. It was a different story, however, with the American women—the “Radium Girls”—who had to paint glow-in-the-dark watch hands with radioactive paint, licking the brushes between applications. You can imagine the results. I recommend the fascinating but disturbing account of this: The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women.
Marie Curie’s calling card:
Despite my lack of sleep, it was another great day in Paris: food, science, and history. You can’t beat that with a stick!
I don’t know what the magic ingredient is in Paris that’s making me sleep more: distance from Chicago, lack of responsibilities, large quantities of good food, or all of the above. But for some reason my insomnia has largely disappeared: I slept over 10 hours last night. Perhaps I should move here!
Getting up late means a lack of morning activities, so I have nothing cultural or touristic to report today: only food. There is, however, an exhibition of felines at the Natural History Museum and, as a reader mentioned, an exhibition of prehistoric art at the Musée de l’Home (“the Museum of Man”, a name that would already have been changed in America).
Today, after sleeping late, doing my morning ablutions, and writing a Hili post, it was already time for lunch. Today we went back to an old favorite that I first discovered when I did my sabbatical here in 1989, and it’s been consistently very good: L’Auberge Pyrénées Cévennes It’s very close to Republique and also to Cartet. But it’s not well known to tourists, and we saw none today. I’m surprised at this. given the restaurant’s quality, but it is a bit out of the way and hard to spot. As you see below, only the tiny sign tells you where it sits on a deserted back street.
Here’s the restaurant with Winnie for scale (she’s about 5′ 5″).
Interior. Not my photo, but one from from The Fork.
We dined with two of Winnie’s local friends: Irina and Konstantin (originally from Russia, but are gravitating here (they bought a flat) after they retired from jobs in the Bay Area of California). It was a delightful lunch with good food, good company, and good ambience.
I have never had a meal here that was less than very good, and the price is right (39 Euros for a big three-course lunch, without wine). They’re famous for their cassoulet, which is both delicious and comes in HUGE portions that no single person (save “The Whale” in the movie I saw on the flight over) could finish. See below for other dishes (the menu is here).
Everything here is from a meal for four.
First, the SALADE FRISÉE AUX LARDONS, CROÛTONS À L’AIL CONFIT, OEUF BIO POCHÉ (description in caps taken from the menu). This is the best salade frisée I’ve ever have, with delicious fresh greens, a hot poached egg on top, and, best of all, plenty of thick-cut bacon along with the croutons. As you see, there are more lardons than croutons. For many people this salad would be a meal. Winnie and I each had one:
Irina and Konstantin, being Russian and hence brought up on herring, ordered it as an entrée: RAMEQUIN DE HARENGS POMMES À L’HUILE:
Wines are served in 50 cl. “pots”. We had one of Brouilly and one of Pouilly-Fuissé:
I decided to skip the cassoulet (for the first time) and try a steak: the ENTRECÔTE (400 GR ENV) DE BOEUF FRANÇAIS, CRÈME AU POIVRE DE MADAGASCAR, GRATIN DAUPHINOIS. I slathered the sucker with pepper sauce and dug in (it was cooked “saignant” or “bloody”). The steak was good (not as good as the onglet at Chez Denise), and the potatoes were spectacular:
Irina and Winnia had a risotto for the plat: RISOTTO “CARNAROLI” AUX ASPERGES VERTES DE PROVENCE DU DOMAINE SAINT-VINCENT. It’s asparagus season here, and it’s on many menus.
The house speciality: CASSOULET DE L’AUBERGE. This is about half of what was in the copper pot (see below) but most of the meat. Nobody ever finishes a single portion. Konstantin pronounced it excellent. It is!
And the Remains of the Dish, which Konstantin didn’t finish:
Desserts: Winnie’s MILLE FEUILLE À LA VANILLE DE MADAGASCAR ET CARAMEL AU BEURRE SALÉ (a bit out of focus; I used ambient light in all photos):
Irina’s BABA AU RHUM, ANANAS INFUSÉ À LA VANILLE DE MADAGASCAR:
And my TARTE TATIN, CRÈME FRAÎCHE D’ISIGNY, before and after application of the crème fraîche. There are few finer French desserts than a tarte Tatin (an apple tart) served warm with crème fraîche. Ice cream would be too much, and whipped cream too light and sweet. The tart and heavy crème is just what it needs.
And now I am full once more, and hoping to sleep well again tonight.
Today our “wildlife” constitutes art: fascinating aboriginal rock art from Australia, in photos sent by reader Rodney Graetz. His notes are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:
Australian Aboriginal Rock art
A rainbow revealed. A creek has exposed a layered rock face of bright colours, from yellow orange to deep purple. These rocks all contain iron compounds which, on exposure to the atmosphere, have been differently weathered to produce many coloured ochres:
Converting weathered rock to pigment requires first grinding it into a powder, then suspending it in water, blood, fat, or plant gums to make a thick (adhesive?) liquid for painting bodies, weapons, or other rocks:
Globally, ochre was evidently a valued pigment by humans, and our antecedents, with recorded use back 300 thousand years. Nationally, two strands of evidence demonstrate Aboriginal Australians also placed a high value on ochre. The first evidence is that wherever an exposure of high quality and colour ochre was found, quarrying, and even large scale mining, was done to extract it. This is an open-face, multicolour ochre quarry located near Alice Springs, in the centre of the continent. The digging would have been by hands and simple wooden tools. Aboriginal Australians had no metal technology:
The second evidence is the effort and astonishing distances over which the extracted ochre was carried (on foot) and traded. The carriers and traders would have been as this (colourised) man in carrying only a spear or two, to feed and defend himself. Here is a historical description (1874) of the extraction and transport by a group of men from a highly regarded ochre site (Pukardu/Bookartoo) in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia to far away Western Queensland – about 400 km (250 mi) – and beyond.
“the party travels about twenty miles a day, and on arrival at the mine each member of it digs out his own ochre, mixes it with water, making it into loaves of about 20 lbs weight, which are dried. Each man carries an average of 70 lbs of ochre, invariably on his head, and has to procure his own food; the party seldom resting a day while on the journey, which lasts usually from six to eight weeks.”:
What are the properties of ochre that made it so valuable to people? I think the fundamental property is its principal colour – red. Our 3-colour visual system enhances our ability to detect red objects. Note how your eyesight is first attracted to, and then returned to, the tomatoes, and not the three different green objects. The importance of the colour red is captured in many languages; most of which have a word for the colour red, with some languages having only two colour words – red and not-red.
The next most important ochre property is that, based on its red colour, imagination can easily make it represent, or symbolise, blood, and thereby relate to important emotional events of our lives, such as life and death. This excavated skeleton is ‘Mungo Man’ (aka LM3), ritually buried 40,000 years ago, and sprinkled with more than 1 kilogram of ochre, the source of which was 200 km away. So, ochre transport and trading is at least 40,000 years old. What was the purpose of adding an appreciable amount of valuable ochre? Did it signify status, or was it for an afterlife? Why, today, do people throw flowers into graves?
The final and most important ochre property is the one that has driven fundamental changes in human culture. In pre-literate cultures, ochre-based painting made non-verbal, self-expression possible and memorable for individuals, groups, and cultures. Contemplate the message this artist wanted to say. The large Wandjina figures are relatively modern, but in the lower left corner there is a small, partly overpainted Bradshaw figure with a possible age of 20,000 years. It is very likely that this large light-coloured rock face has been a busy noticeboard for painters over thousands of years.
This style of ochre painting (Bradshaw or Gwion Gwion) is generally agreed to be the oldest, and in my opinion, the most finely executed. I find them fascinating. The ‘brushes’ were likely chewed sticks or grass stems. Debate about the Who and When of the Gwion Gwion artists continues:
This style of painting is typical of rock overhangs and caves by being big and coarse, with finger-painted ochre figures. Another similar site illustrates the simplicity of their production and information content:
A gallery of ‘I was here’ graffiti stencils. Ochre must have been plentiful and painting skill not considered important. Simply, the artist had a mouthful of ochre suspended in water that he sprayed over his hand or weapon. Only the net structures appear to have been painted by finger or thick brush:
As traditional aboriginal life dissipated, so followed their painting, no longer important, no longer renewed. This happened fastest in southern Australia, and slowest in tropical northern Australia, where the culture persisted, with paintings still being renewed into the 1960s. To describe the painting quality and quantity shown here as vibrant is an understatement. The blue paintings in this crowded site used a store-bought laundry powder (‘Reckitt’s Blue’):
Another example of extraordinary artistic skill. The pigments are still ochres, the brushes were chewed sticks, and the fine detail very impressive. Done on boulder, it is no longer renewed, but non-Aboriginal technology – a small silicone-bead boundary – preserve it by diverting rainwater:
Today’s reality is that ochre-based rock art is dead, as this example shows. It is now unwanted, unrenewed, and becoming lifeless:
This is what has replaced the ochre-only painting. Vibrant in colour and design, it was catalysed in 1971 by an Art teacher, who introduced synthetic paints and colours to an Aboriginal community with wildfire success. It is a remarkable story. The ‘dot’ style is to hide secret mythological (‘Dreaming’) components of a story. We purchased this painting – by a female painter – and it never fails to lift our mood.
Female Western Desert artists at work out in the ‘bush’, inspired by the harsh, arid landscapes they were born into (and still love), and by their ‘Dreaming’ (Tjukurpa). Back in ochre-only times, women were forbidden to paint, or even see the men-only galleries. In some desert groups, the punishment was death. Now, with acrylic paints, they have both creative and financial independence. Their clothing reflects their sense of utility, style, and freedom. My understanding is that now, women painters are more artistically interesting, skilled, and thereby, more financially successful, than are the men – a very welcome change! I borrowed four (black-edged) photos to complete this story.
Today’s photos come from Rodney Graetz in Australia. His captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.
A Wetlands story.
Australia is the driest of all occupied continents; the central latitude of Australia is the same as that of the Sahara Desert. Accordingly, the majority of Australians live close to permanent water, choosing either the ocean, or the inland rivers and wetlands. Because we are an urbanised nation, and seven of our eight capital cities are coastal, oceans and their beaches are our first choice.
A beach environment is always vibrant, but the repetition of waves and tides does not easily generate any long-lasting appreciation. Because it is daily renewed, a memory of yesterday can be as fleeting as your footprints.
In contrast, my preference is the tranquillity of freshwater bodies, the rivers, and lakes – the wetlands. Here the most important cycle is the slow and noiseless day-night cycle, and much of the surroundings suggest timelessness, such as these centuries-old trees.
And, even with an approaching death, it can be interesting and informative.
With tranquillity, beauty comes easily. Such as the visual delight of the mirroring by water, as here on a small scale.
And likewise, on a larger scale:
Calm waters can soften the visual impact of a gathering of dead trees.
And duplicate the sky colours as Earth rotates away from the Sun.
In southern Australia, the boundary between land and water is usually sharp, static, and hugged by trees (Eucalyptus species) whose dense wood makes for long-lived, bleached remains.
In northern Australia, in the many extensive tropical wetlands, the land-water boundary is neither sharp nor static, and the bordering trees are varied and mostly short-lived. One of their compelling attractions is the (edible) aquatic plants, the ‘water lilies’, which decorate their surfaces (Nymphaea species?).
All wetlands are nutrient-rich islands of fertility, and thus productivity, typified by this gathering of waterbirds – mostly (sleeping) Plumed Whistling Ducks .
Regrettably, people have initiated serious, lasting problems for wetlands, particularly in northern Australia. The churned, dried mud these Burdekin Ducks are resting on was pushed up by feral pigs rooting for plant or animal material. Non-aboriginal Australians introduced domestic pigs which have now joined a lengthy list of serious invasive pests.
The yellow light of a setting sun contrasts the dark clouds of a coming storm. A beautiful, unspoiled floodplain? No. The little palm tree-like plants in the foreground, and patchily across the floodplain, are an introduced plant (Mimosa pigra) that is now a very serious weed invading large areas of floodplains and wetlands. How to eradicate it is not yet determined but one of its spreading agents can be minimized.
This is the principal weed spreading agent, the Asian Water Buffalo (Bubalis bubalis). Deliberately introduced into tropical Australia for tropical meat and milk production, which with abandonment in the 1850s, have quickly grown into huge feral populations. Scroll down for their Australian history in this link here.
The buffalo’s preferred habitat is the floodplains and wetlands. Strongly social animals, their collective wallowing – to avoid the high midday temperatures and mosquitos – generate swimming pool sized eroded pits.
The combined effects of buffalo grazing and wallowing is deeply destructive of both wetland vegetation and soils. The totality of their destruction is shown by this fence line contrast between no buffalo (LHS) and buffalo (RHS).
The current estimated feral buffalo population in northern Australia is 200,000 animals. Mustering for sale (back to Asia) and culling by shooting (from helicopters) continues to be the only large scale management options. On the much smaller scale is trophy hunting with clients from Europe, and the USA. I use this borrowed image to illustrate just how massive the buffalos can become, and why they can be lethal animals. From the hunter’s hats and suntans, can you pick which of the two men is an American?
Finally, a personal note. About 35 years ago, I was surveying buffalo damage (on foot) in northern Australian wetlands where buffalos were thick on the ground. To survive a buffalo charge I was ordered to carry a weapon at all times, so my colleagues provided this massive 44 calibre handgun. Their user advice was simple: (1) wait until the charging buffalo is about 3 metres (10 feet) away, then try a double-handed, head shot; (2) if unsuccessful, then drop the handgun and quickly climb a tree. Workplace conditions were really interesting back then. I borrowed 3 (black-edged) photos to complete this story.
