2022 Best of the Year

Taste: 

Clearly the best meal I ate in 2022 was at Lerins Abbey on Ile Saint-Honorat Island off of Cannes, France in August. We walked the beach in Cannes and then, because I love islands, rode a ferry out to the monk-owned island. We were hungry, but had no expectation of finding vegan food. When we checked out the menu at the island's one restaurant and they had one vegan dish. 

Do you have a reservation? We did not. No problem though, because there was one seating available. 

Did we want it? We did! 

We ate at a lovely table in the sand by the beach. The dish was vegan paella and really, by description, it did not sound exciting. In fact, Sam did not even want paella and tried to order something else, but the paella was THE vegan dish.

As it turned out, it was the most amazing food. I felt alive as I ate it: the grilled tomatoes and onions, olive oil, the fresh squeezed lime. I drank a glass of monk-made wine. It was possible only to eat in in a slow and savoring way. 

There was no room for dessert. After eating it, I wanted nothing more. It was absolutely delicious every bite!

The waiter and the restaurant were charming a bit posh and snooty, but also, somehow, delightfully welcoming. 

What made that simple meal so delightful? So blissful? It is a mystery. 

Sight: Rome at night; the turquoise and lemon of Capri; the view from Mount Solero; the checkerboard tile along the sea in Livorno; umbrella pines; and beautiful Lake Michigan 

closer to home: tiny shocked-looking kittens

Touch: my feet dangling in the air from the chairlift up Mount Solero 

closer to home: Tish’s head on my chest; Lily's head on my neck

Sound: street violin; Francesca 

closer to home: splash, plash, and  gurgling brook

Smell: sweet violets (I am a little disappointed by the lack of standout pleasant scents this year. I think I was not attending to this sense much.)

Quotable: 

Painter Henri Matisse was inspired by a trip to Corsica, "Everything glistens, everything is colour, everything is light." He said his time in Ajaccio was a revelation, "I felt growing within me a passion for colour.” 

"Trust your anger. It is a demand for love." — Natalie Diaz, Isn't the Air Also a Body, Moving?, Postcolonial Love Poem 

"That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil—widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower...It is my life." — Dorothea Brooke, Middlemarch, George Eliot 

Extra: "...there was something so exquisite in thinking of her just as she was..."

A jolt of joy: many memorable joyful little moments...

the sunlit sanctuary; a play bow on the first day of spring; I will draw a heart with catnip and scatter rose petals and Gerbera daisies; the furry three; a quick response to "Leave it!" and her expectant look; Done!