The Best Burger

Doesn’t come with fries, but oh-so-tempting sour cream chips.

It comes lovingly grilled by a good friend, a glass of wine (or two),

all the sauces needed, tomatoes that actually taste like tomatoes, lettuce

which is fresh at this time of the year and caramelized onions.

It also came with the perfect weather and setting: a terrace under a tree,

A light breeze, good conversation and friends with whom to enjoy.

I am sure that the kite in a far tree envied me my lunch!

Fog, funeral and food

Woke up this morning to – astonishingly (and yes that was meant to be a very sarcastic remark!) -foggy weather still. 

Took the bus into town for a funeral and was amazed to find that they had sun.

Short service, nice to get a bit of closure.

 

Returning to the countryside and back into the fog, I made what we are want to call “an executive decision” and stopped at our favorite watering hole Le Café des Marronniers (http://cafedesmarronniers.ch/ ) for lunch. Weather and events made me long for comfort food so chose the hamburger.

Although it’s labeled the “M” burger, we’re not talking about your usual burger. In fast-food life I have a personal preference for the Whopper Jr., then we have a hamburger specialist near the international school that has always had above-average burgers, but this one is truly a gourmet experience. The bun is strong enough to not fall apart, although I usually eat it with a knife and fork; the burger cooked to ones specific taste just like a steak; lettuce, fresh tomato, pickles, cheese and a sauce that rivals their tartar sauce for fish. And one gets a small portion of extra sauce. Accompanied by their thin French fries, there is a reason I wax lyric when describing it!  It may be pricey, but it’s oh so totally worth the price. My hats off to the chef Fabien and the wait staff as well as they are always welcoming and friendly.

Comforted I wended my way home through the fog – on to cookie baking as we are celebrating Christmas as a family tomorrow and although they might not mention it, I am sure that my sons wouldn’t be too happy if I showed up without their favorites.

Black boxes and the 3 M’s

Yesterday I accrued yet another black box: you know how some women have several little black boxes with jewelry to go along with their LBDs, well that’s just not me.

In addition to the glass case and the hearing aid case, I am now the proud possessor of the “night guard” case.  Effectively having lost one molar due to clenching my teeth at night, which caused the old filling to finally crack the molar in two, I went to the dentist to discuss saving the other lower molar. If you grind your teeth at night, a special mouth guard-type of dental appliance -- called a nocturnal bite plate or bite splint -- may be created to prevent tooth damage Thus I added a black box to my life. Now, instead of having jewelry worth $1’000s, I wear at various times of the day what I am going to label “accessories for a better life” worth just as many thousands.

The three M’s: returning from the dentist I stopped at the doctor’s as I suspected a possible ITU, which was confirmed leaving me with a prescription for antibiotics needing to be filled.  By then it was nearing noon and ever since our return from the mountains, my housemate and I hadn’t really done much shopping, relying instead upon one or the other to propose a solution for lunch agreeable to both.  Thus it was that I came up with Marronniers (the restaurant of choice for most of our outings), McDonald’s (in case anyone felt like “sinning") and Maison, which in French simply means “home, dig something out of the freezer”, but I needed an M so couldn’t use house. Before arriving home I thought of the  Migros (the local grocery store, in a mini mall with a pharmacy) as well.  I asked my housemate which M she wanted to eat at, whereupon she replied Mikado? Manor?... thus quickly adding two more M’s. We now have a week’s worth of places to eat all starting with M, but for yesterday:

We decided that we both were craving hamburgers, so off we went to Les Marronniers (got you there didn’t I?) where we enjoyed the gourmet version of a classic. 

It was truly the best hamburger that I have ever eaten!