On Saturday December 4th,  I participated to the event “Poetry-Sound-Music Intersections” at A Gathering of the Tribes organized by Chicagoan poet/trumpet Dan Godston. The performers included:
1st set: Kristin Prevallet (poetry) and Edmund Mooney (electronics)
2nd set: Nicole Peyrafitte (vocals, poetry), David Boykin (reeds), Dan Godston (trumpet).

It was a very fun gig. David and Dan created great music, I enjoyed weaving my texts through their complex and adventurous sounds. You can have the proof of the cream (no pudding here!) & listen to the first segment uploaded by Dan Godston here. Thanks to audience member and dear friend Paige Mitchell, we have a video of the event and I invite you to watch the last piece of our set at the end of this message… really, don’t miss it!

Whats cooking next? Voilà zee program for next week:

7pm - Vocal Improv Session # 7
Nora McCarthy (voice), Andrea Wolper (voice), Nicole Peyrafitte (voice), Francois Grillot (Double Bass)
8pm – Jason Mears Group
Erika Dagnino (poetry), Steve Dalachinsky (words), Jason Mears (sax and clarinet), Ken Filliano (bass), Satoshi Takeishi (drums)
9pm – Grassroots
Darius Jones (alto sax), Alex Harding (bari sax), Sean Conly (bass), Chad Taylor (drums)
10pm – Steve Dalachinsky & Ken Filiano Duo
Steve Dalachinsky (poetry), Ken Filiano (bass)

January 1st 2011
We will wish you Happy New Year at:
37th ANNUAL NEW YEAR’S DAY MARATHON READING
This year Pierre Joris, Nicole Peyrafitte & Miles Joris-Peyrafitte will be performing as a trio. We are scheduled between 3 & 4PM.
Also, I have done for the past three years, I will be making crêpes in the back and this year I will also make a soup ! Why make it simple when it can be complicated, right!
The event starts at 2PM and goes until past midnight and below is the impressive list of poets & performers:

The Poetry Project
St. Mark’s Church
131 East 10th Street
New York, NY 10003

Poets and Performers for 2011 include: John Giorno, Patti Smith, Lenny Kaye, Philip Glass, Suzanne Vega, Taylor Mead, Eric Bogosian, Anne Waldman & Ambrose Bye, Vito Acconci,  Foamola, Anselm Berrigan, Ariana Reines, Peter Gizzi, Liz Willis, Ted Greenwald, Bruce Andrews & Sally Silvers, The Church of Betty, Thom Donovan, Tim Griffin, Todd Colby, Tom Savage, David Shapiro, Jonas Mekas, Josef Kaplan, Judith Malina, Albert Mobilio, Alex Abelson, Maria Mirabal, Bill Kushner, David Freeman, David Kirschenbaum, Diana Rickard, Don Yorty, Dorothea Lasky, Douglas Dunn, Alan Gilbert, Alan Licht w/ Angela Jaeger, Charles Bernstein, Christopher Stackhouse, Citizen Reno, Cliff Fyman, Corina Copp, Aaron Kiely, Adeena Karasick, Bill Zavatsky, Bob Holman, Robert Fitterman, Rodrigo Toscano, Brenda Iijima, Brendan Lorber, Brett Price, Corrine Fitzpatrick, Curtis Jensen, Dael Orlandersmith, David Vogen, Derek Kroessler, Diana Hamilton, ARTHUR’S LANDING, CAConrad, Akilah Oliver, Douglas Piccinnini, John S. Hall, Samita Sinha, Sara Wintz, Secret Orchestra with special guest Joanna Penn Cooper, Shonni Enelow, Bob Rosenthal, Brenda Coultas, John Yau, Julian T. Brolaski, Evelyn Reilly, Filip Marinovich, Douglas Rothschild, Drew Gardner, Eleni Stecopoulos, Elinor Nauen, Eve Packer, Jo Ann Wasserman, Joanna Fuhrman, Dustin Williamson, E. Tracy Grinnell, Ed Friedman, Edwin Torres, Eileen Myles, Elliott Sharp, Emily XYZ, Erica Hunt, Erica Kaufman, Evan Kennedy, Joe Elliot, Joel Lewis, Frank Sherlock, Gillian McCain, Greg Fuchs, Janet Hamill, Jeremy Hoevenaar, Jessica Fiorini, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Jim Behrle, Julianna Barwick, Julie Patton, Michael Lydon, Lisa Jarnot, Maggie Dubris, Marcella Durand, Marty Ehrlich, Merry Fortune, Michael Cirelli, Kristen Kosmas, Laura Elrick, Lauren Russell, Leopoldine Core, Nina Freeman, Paolo Javier, Patricia Spears Jones, Paul Mills (Poez), Michael Scharf, Mike Doughty, Karen Weiser, Lewis Warsh, Linda Russo, Penny Arcade, Peter Bushyeager, Rebecca Moore, Mónica de la Torre, Murat Nemet-Nejat, Nathaniel Siegel, Nick Hallett, Nicole  Peyrafitte, Pierre Joris & Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, Kathleen Miller, Katie Degentesh, Kelly Ginger, Ken Chen, Kim Lyons, Kim Rosenfield, India Radfar, Tonya Foster, Stephanie Gray, Susan Landers, Tony Towle, Tracie Morris, Valery Oisteanu, John Coletti, Rachel Levitsky, Edmund Berrigan, Jamie Townsend, Macgregor Card, Wayne Koestenbaum, Will Edmiston, Yoshiko Chuma, Nicole Wallace, Arlo Quint, Stacy Szymaszek and more T.B.A

General admission $20/Students & Seniors $15/Members $10.

And last, but not least, 4 large paintings and two framed collages are now at the Chancellerie of the French New York Consulate.  If you are French and  need to renew your passport or any other admin stuff you will  see them. I am very grateful to our consul, Mr Philippe Lalliot,  to have taken the initiative to have  contemporary art instead of posters! Merci to Mr. Le Consul and merci to his team for having my work displayed in their work space where 15 000 people come through each year. I have set up a webpage for information on the paintings here.

Voilà! And now Joyeux Noël and enjoy the whipping!

Those who have been following both my blog & facebook postings, might remember  the various references I make on Augustus Saint Gaudens.

Augustus Saint Gaudens was born in 1848 in Dublin, Ireland and died in 1907 in Cornish, New-Hampshire. The reason I got involved in this project is because Augustus’ father, Bernard, was born in Aspet in 1816. Aspet is a village 28 miles away from my home town. In 2005 I was approached by Françoise Sarradet, a Saint Gaudens’ aficionados from Aspet who was then president of the French Association “Les Amis d’Augustus Saint-Gaudens”, to create a performance to celebrated the 100th anniversary of  the sculptor’s death in 2007. The goal was to generate more awareness about the sculptor local origins and to preserve that memory. It is important to note here that Augustus Saint Gaudens was never well known in France. So, showing how famous he was in the United States and bridging the local connection was the goal of this first performance.

Bernard, August and Homer Saint Gaudens

Over the years several projects have developed, but I feel that the real meaning of  this quest revealed itself while I was working on developing a script for a documentary about his life. I realized that I was not only interested in showing the artist’s oeuvre and his incredibly successful interaction with the art world of the time, but more by “walking in their shoes”. I found out that Augustus’ father, was a serious radical hanging out at Pfaff’s Tavern with Whitman, Clemenceau, Mark Twain to name a few. I was also made aware that there was not one piece of public art in New York when the Saint Gaudens’ family arrived in the city in 1848! So by shadowing their life I re/discovered the country where I live today (NYC/USA) and the place where I come from (the Pyrenees). I found their past in my present , and my present in their past.  I am also an immigrant and generating a “dynamic” memory that can be inscribed in our becoming became essential and exciting.

List of projects:

2006— Itinerant residency visiting all the major sites hosting Saint Gaudens’ work in order to develop a performance to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the famous sculptor’s death in Aspet. Project commissioned by the Association les Amis d’Augustus Saint Gaudens & funded by the Conseil Regional de Midi Pyrenées. See photos  here

-The show “Augustus Saint Gaudens returns to His Fatherland” was performed in Aspet in 2007 & in Luchon in 2008. Both shows featured the incredible French baritone Jean Ribet & my son Miles Joris-Peyrafitte as the best stage manager. The Conseil Général de la Haute-Garonne funded partially this project along with several local sponsors. The two short videos below are live excerpts from the 2007 show. We had a lot of fun and I cooked a pretty unusual “saupiquet” that was fed to the audience at the end of the show. I will talk more about this recipe in the future.

Jean Ribet sings “Arrenoulat” (the swallow). Song  in Gascon written by André Bouery (1821 – 1879) a contemporary of Bernard Saint Gaudens. Arrenoulat is the —almost lost— anthem of the village of Aspet.

-In 2009 Yoan Rumeau asked me to write an extensive article in the scholarly history bi-annual La Revue de Comminges. I did and for this project I am in debt to my husband Pierre Joris for his editing.

-In April 2010 I presented an illustrated conference for the ACF (U.N French Cultural Association). Thank you to Françoise Bevy & Mme Françoise Cestac. Madame Cestac has a big fan of Augustus Saint Gaudens work for years.

-Then, last May, I completed the script for a documentary for now called: “Une En/quête- Collectages sur la Vie et l’Oeuvre Augustus Saint Gaudens”. This was certainly the most painful piece of work I have done so far on this project or at the matter fact on any other.  I never gotten so close to being fried & eaten live! As my therapist said in the thick of it: “Nicole, this is the graduate program!” I learned a lot about the movie business, script writing,  how to deal with undermining colleagues, and got the best  workout on self confidence. So with the support of my husband, my family & great friends I pulled through!  Needless to say that at this point I will pursue this project until it makes it on the screen weather I’ll get it done this life or next!

-The  latest component I am working on is a website gathering all the info regarding my projects on Augustus. For now it is in French,  an English version will be added sooner or later. So for now go brush up on your French @ :

WWW.AUGUSTUSSAINTGAUDENS.COM

There is a long list of people to thank and they know who they are. Though I want to mention a few institutions that trusted me enough to share their resources and passion for Augustus Saint Gaudens & without whom I couldn’t have even begin:

Henry Duffy, Gregory Schwartz & the staff at the Saint Gaudens National Historic Site
Thayer Tolles at the Metropolitan Museum
The librarians at The Rauner Special Libary at Dartmouth College
Marie-Laure Pellan at the  Musée de Saint Gaudens
Les Amis d’Augustus Saint-Gaudens —their past & present president & members.
I really need to mention my parents Jean & Renée Peyrafitte who are the first who shared their passion for Augustus Saint Gaudens.

To be continued!

I am not sure what is the final mileage the 21st century Odysseus,  A.K.A. Douglas Rothschild, ended up walking along small roads between Troy (N.Y) & Ithaca (N.Y) but it should be pretty close to 170 miles in 8 days! Congratulations to Douglas & to Anna Moschovakis & Matvei Yankelevitch (both active members of the Ugly Duckling Press Collective).  This is how it all began for Pierre Joris & I, but it had been in the brew for a quite a while when Anna Moschovakis sent out this email in June :

A few years back, Matvei Yankelevich and I had some idle idea that it would be fun to make a film of Douglas walking from Troy to Ithaca. It just seemed obviously like a good thing to do. This summer — soon, in fact — we’re going through with it.

We’re calling it an Experiment in Potential Documentary. But you could also call it a Constraint-Based Happening. In any case, the basics are simple:

– Douglas takes one week at the end of July to walk from Troy to Ithaca, on backroads determined primarily by the “walk” function on a GPS mapping software.
– Douglas wears a mic the whole time, so that all of his speech — including talking to himself, if there’s any of that — is recorded.
– Friends of Douglas’ join him for portions of the walk. He will know which people have been invited (though we will add some surprises too), but he won’t know which people to actually expect or when.
– People who can’t join in person can indulge instead in a desultory phone conversation with Dug as he walks.
– Much of the proceedings are filmed in HD video and with a variety of other means. Douglas, too, has a camera. Visitors, too, are handed a point-and-shoot video camera to employ as they wish while with Dug.
– The journey culminates at a Banquet and Poetry Reading in Ithaca, co-hosted by Catherine Taylor and Stephen Cope at an arts venue, to which the local community will be invited.
– Homeric overtones may be explicit, implicit, or cast aside altogether — though certain episodes dear to Douglas (e.g., the trip to the underworld) will be incorporated and we will ask each person who joins Douglas to bring a copy of the Odyssey (in any translation, or in the original) and to read a portion of it to the camera.

We hope YOU can participate in some way!

With many others Pierre Joris and I did. I will not tell you about the details of what happened because that is Anna & Matvei’s potential-in-the-making documentary project: they have 58 hours of audio and 11 hours of video recorded. Let’s hope they can gather all the necessary resources to play with it.  Meanwhile I just wanted to share the menu and pictures of the banquet — for the Chanterelles episode click here. The Banquet took place at the house of Wylie Schwartz, overlooking Cayuga lake and food was coordinated by Catherine Taylor, Stephen Cope, Anna, Trevor and myself, while many others helped with logistics and goodies.

At around 6:30pm —& after shooting his bow-oar through a dozen  axe head— Odysseus arrived at the banquet dressed in fine clothes, oar still in hand. A lovely band (sorry was busy cooking didn’t catch their name) greeted him and played throughout the banquet. As the sun went down Odysseus Rothschild (or Dugysseus, as Pierre called him) told us the tales of the journey. Hermes read beautiful messages from far away lands like Brooklyn, we also heard Homer’s writing in Greek, songs and passages of Charles Stein translation of  The Odyssey until deep into the night & after moving the party twice with our last being the harbor of Catherine & Stephen, until the wee hours, I don’t remember what time we left!

Menu:
Cheese platter: Syrian cheese, brie, local cows milk hard cheese, grapes, hummus & pita, lamb burgers, marinated olives, garden greens, feta salad, cucumbers, white & purple carrots, (from Anna & Trevor’s garden), artisans breads, baklava and plenty of ouzo, wine & other liquids to wash it down!

Eric Paul brought an amazing sausage from a local Ithaca’s charcuterie. We owe thanks to Lori & Tom who let us take over their kitchen to prepare the lamb burgers.

Epilogue:
The poets have decreed that Odysseus can now rest. He met enough people and told them all about oar & sea. A shrine has been built & sacrifice have been  performed. He is all done & can now return safely home, write more poetry and travel for pleasure as it pleases him!

Saturday July 3rd 2010 was the 11th  annual Tsatsawassa Poetry BBQ. Once again Bernadette Mayer & Phil Good opened their house to soulful poetry & food. Master of ceremony Dave Brinks flew from Nola with coolers filled with what might be the last delicacies from Louisiana for a while. This year’s festival mood was  blackened by the Deep Water Horizon oil gushing.

A lot of the poetry spoke to the disaster and every morsel of Dave’s magnificent Jambalaya was taken as communion. Pierre Joris and I collaborated in making sangria and lamb burgers. A proud moment for us: our son Miles Joris-Peyrafitte gave his first public poetry reading, and so did his good friend Tommy Panitz. Miles also accompanied my reading.

With Alyssa and Katie we had great fun later in the night  making  an improvised dessert in the Round Pudgy Pie Iron —a.k.a as a Hobo Pie Iron—Alyssa had brought.  We made two batters. Katie’s batter was a mix of left over corn meal cake mix, flour & oil. Mine was 2 biscuits crumbled, milk, egg & banana. We poured melted butter in the iron, warmed it up and then  poured the batter. We propped the iron on a rock to make sure it would stay flat. The cakes need to be flipped after a few minutes depending where the pie irons are in the fire. We flambeed the banana ones with brandy, and served the corn cakes with honey and goat yogurt on top. Yummy!

You can view all the pictures on the website below. There is over 100 pictures so make sure you see all of them!

http://nicolepeyrafitte.com/tsatsawassa2010/pix/index.html

http://nicolepeyrafitte.com/tsatsawassa2010/pix/index2.html

http://nicolepeyrafitte.com/tsatsawassa2010/pix/index3.html

There will be more pix and notes on Dan Wilcox blog in the next few days.

Graduation, birthdays, family visits, drawings, preparation for up-coming shows kept me away from the computer, but here is the schedule for the next few weeks. We hope to see you at these very exiting shows:

Sunday June 27th
Metropolitan Museum
1:00PM
“Picasso, Pablo Ruiz: Spanish Poet Who Dabbled in Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture””

A conference by Pierre Joris, co-editor and translator of Pablo Picasso’s poetry: Burial Of The Count Of Orgaz & Other Poems
I will be the reader for  the French & Spanish versions of Picasso’s texts.

TRIALOGUES @  The Vision Festival XV
Tuesday June 29th
9:15PM In the Downstairs Theater

Mike Bisio/Nicole Peyrafitte/Pierre Joris

Thursday July 1st
5:00pm -midnight (our time TBA)
at the Brooklyn Bridge Park
Pierre Joris & I will be among the many poets & performers of:
I Do Not Doubt I Am Limitless: Walt Whitman’s Brooklyn

The only way I can survive the 19th century immersion I have to go through, is by having a sketch pad next to me and doodle as needed…really an obsession replaced by another. I found it healthier than reaching for a beer or a cigarette, though the thought has crossed my mind a couples of time! As already announced on the last post I will be giving a talk (in frog tongue) on my dear Augustus and family Thursday in NYC:

Comité des loisirs du personnel de l’ONU
L’ASSOCIATION CULTURELLE FRANCOPHONE
est heureuse de vous inviter à la conférence de
Nicole Peyrafitte
Le Retour al Paìs d’Augustus Saint  Gaudens
Une En/Quête sur l’immigration, la vie et l’œuvre
du célèbre sculpteur Américain né en Irlande,
de père gascon et de mère irlandaise.
Le jeudi 29 avril à 18h15
Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie
801, 2ème avenue ( 43ème rue ), suite 605, New York, NY
more info on my work on Augutus Saint Gaudens here

NP 04/26/2010 —Ink & pastels on paper— 5×7  (hi-res here)

I am looking forward to a variety of exciting events this spring/early summer. All the details are listed below & do not miss “Trialogues” —Joris/Peyrafitte/Bisio— at the Vision Festival June29th!

Events coming up:

Thursday April 29th 6:15PM
I’m giving a talk -with slides & IN FRENCH & free- on Augustus Saint Gaudens:

Comité des loisirs du personnel de l’ONU
L’ASSOCIATION CULTURELLE FRANCOPHONE
est heureuse de vous inviter à la conférence de
Nicole Peyrafitte
Le Retour al Paìs d’Augustus Saint  Gaudens
Une En/Quête sur l’immigration, la vie et l’œuvre
du célèbre sculpteur Américain né en Irlande,
de père gascon et de mère irlandaise.
Le jeudi 29 avril à 18h15
Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie
801, 2ème avenue ( 43ème rue ), suite 605, New York, NY
more info on my work on Augutus Saint Gaudens here

Thrusday May 27th 7pm
MaelstrÖm Revolution Fiestival
Jerome Rothenberg/Pierre Joris/Nicole Peyrafitte
+ a group of Belgium Artist TBA
at The Invisible Dog
51 Bergen Street, Brooklyn

WALTZING IN QUICKSAND: POETS IN COLLAGE
Tribes Gallery
May 21-June 27, 2010
Steve Dalachinsky, Bob Heman, Yuko  Otomo, Valery Oisteanu, Bruce  Weber, Star Black, Aaron Howard, Nicole Peyrafitte and  Lewis Warsh.
Opening Reception
Sunday June 6th from 4-6
Tribes
285 East 3^rd St, 2^nd Floor
NYC 10009

Tuesday June 29th 
9:15PM
THE VISION FESTIVAL
Joris/Bisio/Peyrafitte
Trialogues
Abron’s Arts Center
466 Grand Street
New York, NY

And still on view:

Michel Calvet / Nicole Peyrafitte / Jean-Pierre Rives
The World Bar /The Trump Tower
845 United Nation Plaza
New York NY 10017

I don’t eat much pasta but before a gig I like to have an early dinner that will give enough energy to be able to sing three hours later and pasta & lox is perfect for me.
So on Monday before going to our gig at The Local 269 with Pierre Joris & Michael Bisio — snippet of concert here— I made us a salmon, scallion & fusili express dish. My friend Dawn Clements —who is opening another drawing extraordinaire at The Boiler today— had given me a delicious piece of lox from the Acme Smoked Fish store in Brooklyn. It took me 14 minutes to make the dish including cooking the pasta:
Cook  pasta al dente.
Cut pieces of lox.
In a pan bring one cup of heavy cream to  a boil and add scallions cut at a bias  for one minute.
Combine it all.
Add a little salt, a lot of fresh ground pepper & shavings of Parmesan cheese….
Voilà c’est tout!

Beside the drawing concert series there is another series in constant progress and below are 2 pieces  Also in serious progress the Augustus Saint Gaudens script with  new discoveries on Bernard Saint Gaudens his father, and a dead line coming up very soon for the script.

The bok choy in the fridge was calling for immediate attention. As it was Sunday and brunch time I felt like something a little more festive than bok choy and rice! Some sort of a soufflé came to mind. I preheated the oven to 375º. I sliced the bok choy vertically into 6 sections, then braised it in a mix of butter and olive oil with 2 cloves of minced garlic. While that was cooking, I separated 5 eggs — yokes in one bowl and whites in an other. Pierre grated 1 cup of various cheeses he found in the cheese box. I whipped the egg whites very firm. Mixed the cheese with the previously beaten egg yolks, and added salt, pepper and nutmeg. Now folded half of the egg whites in the egg yolk + cheese mixture, then folded in the second half of  egg whites. Poured the mixture over the braised bok choy and put it into the oven for ?…sorry I didn’t look at the time — at some point I just felt it was done and it was! But it cannot be more that 15/20 minutes. This doesn’t come out as a real high soufflé but again I call it oeufs soufflés — not “SOUFFLAY”! It is very  good simple and stress free, unlike soufflay can be!

Another thing I have been doing is to keep a better record of the drawings I make at events — especially at concerts. Below are a few of the “blind” concert series drawings. I draw (almost) without  looking a the page and let eye and rhythm guide the hand. I also do take some notes on the back for possible later poems.

The Bill Frisell Series
Concert at Blue Note on February 28th 2010: Bill Frisell with Paul Motian and Ron Carter. This is a summing up of the note I sent to my friend Steve Dalachinski after the  concert:

..loved the set they played
it was very bare and beautiful
very essential, not too many notes!
so delicate…
carter seems to have difficulty breathing,
motian was doing his thing very well while frisell was carefully and tactfully tying and lifting them up…
it works better for some songs than others but overall it really did and it filled my soul.
also it was my first time seeing them live and i just couldn’t get my
eyes off carter’s fingers… so loooong, so square… a giant’s hand! and
the way he uses them on the bass…..

The Matthew Shipp Series:
This concert was yesterday, Sunday March 14th, at Gathering of The Tribes, that is Steve Cannon’s magical place. We gathered at 5:00 PM and the concert started at 5:30PM with as an opening surprise a short snippet featuring the Nicholas’ brothers —see video below– from the 1943 movie Stormy Weather. Though it happens in a liminal time and space, the connections between  Matt Shipp and the Nicholas’ brothers reveal immanent evidences. Matt Shipp’s dexterity, agility and  feline playing has the same mesmerizing quality as the brothers’ dancing. I didn’t time the concert but my attention didn’t drop or drift for a single minute. Matt takes us onto a musical journey that deliberately references several genres played at once with a sheer emotional clarity that can make you laugh or cry and even laugh & cry at once. At some moments it felt like he was channeling Satie & Bach playing Fly me to the Moon together! One of my favorite Shipp recordings is on his latest CD 4D. It takes the old repetitive (stupid) French song Frère Jacques and manages to turn it into an obsessive frightening dramatic Hitchcockian episode.
Voilà! If you want to see the drawings at a better resolution just click on them.

MARCH—collage/drawing from N.P.  Calendar Series

Yeap! We are in March and I saw some crocuses “piercing” the ground on 71st street yesterday. It cheered me up. The general mood has been down with all the international and national events, catastrophes, health care mess… Even my hometown, Luchon, was seriously affected by a storm coming from the Southwest with winds at 200km/h. It killed one man, pulled out thousands of ancient trees, lifting roofs, and closing bars for one day! No one remembers seeing or hearing about such an event in a place that is so naturally sheltered from the wind. Who says there is no global warming? The same idiots who feel threatened by universal health care? The same idiots who worship a god that knows neither nature nor health. We need D.A Bennett  The Truth Seeker all over again, I just read that book and it is amazing how the problem of religion in politics has remained the same for two century ago and is far from being solved.

Anyhow, life must go on and I have been busy. The “d’Artagnan 25th Anniversary Art Show” at The World Bar is still on. Works by French painter Michel Calvet and 3 large collage/paintings of mine are on display.  The World Bar serves delicious cocktails and their $8 happy hour special is totally worth it. I had a “peace cocktail” concocted by the excellent (1/2 french) mixologist Jonathan, all fresh juices and premium liquors — a real treat! We will have another event there soon as the opening was affected by the storm. So don’t feel bad if you couldn’t make it; D’Artagan has agreed to provide us with more patés and saucisson for another event, so stay tune!

Below you will find my detailed calendar of events for March, four events still coming up, it is all exciting especially the Umami festival one, which is leading me into fascinating research about yeast and beer in Mesopotamian time. As a result of all this action the fridge as been consistently empty and home made Miso soup (see recipe here)and rice has become a staple.

I cook two cups of brown rice twice a week and eat it in different forms. The breakfast version is becoming a house favorite and even Pierre who is not a brown rice aficionado really likes this one:

-Warm up some rice milk in a bottom of sauce pan. Add 1/2 cup of cooked rice per person, one small apple cut into small pieces, 1/2 banana, raisins, cranberries, goji berries, maple syrup. Just warm it up. Before serving add chopped roasted almonds, pistachios, walnuts. That’s a tasty healthy breakfast!

When we finally made it to the coop a few days ago we got the making for a chicken soup. I had been craving it since Dawn Clements (now showing an amazing piece at the Whitney Biennial click here) served me the most delicious one at her studio in early February.  That recipe is also very easy:  throw it all in the pot and let it happen while the smell of the broth takes over the house. This is what I threw in the pot of cold water:
-1 organic chicken (with feet!)
-3 celery ribs
-3 carrots peeled and cut
-2 “fanned” leeks
-1 onion with 3 cloves planted in it
- 1 spice/herb bag with: fresh parsley, thyme, laurel leave, 1 cardamon pod, 6 blk pepper corn.
- Sea salt.
Then you can either delicately lift some of the meat and eat it separately or debone  the whole thing and return it in the pot. You will have to add some salt and pepper to taste and you can of course add some pasta or rice or potatoes. I just had a bowl and this is ever so restauring and satisfying.

Now the schedule and if I don’t see you there, please stay in touch!

Sunday March 7th
Sunday Best Reading Series
4PM $7
The Lounge, Hudson View Gardens
Pinehurst Avenue and 183rd Street
183rd & Pinehurst Avenue
New York City

Friday March 12th
UMAMI Festival
Featuring Sarah Klein, Murray’s Cheese, Tom Cat Bakery, Ithaca Beer Company
& NP w/ Rosie Hertlein ( violin)
6:30PM
click here for reservations
Astor Center for Food and Wine
399 Lafayette (at 4th Street)

Sunday March 21
NP & Pierre Joris, Nick Flynn, Major Jackson, Douglas Unger
6PM
Poets for Peace at Erika’s
85-101 N. 3rd St # 508
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(between wythe and berry
and it is the bedford stop on the L train)

Monday March 29th
NP w/ Pierre Joris & Michael Bisio (bass)
THE LOCAL 269
269 E Houston Street NYC

Ongoing until Agust 2010
D’Artagnan 25th Anniversary Art Show
Michel Calvet / Nicole Peyrafitte / Jean-Pierre Rives
The World Bar /The Trump Tower
845 United Nation Plaza
New York NY 10017