The Madrigal Feast

I have often complained that I miss the Moveable Feast-style of life I lived with my friends up in the Napa Valley.   That afternoon phone call that said "who's hosting dinner tonight and what are we drinking?"  Where we'd let the babies tumble on the floor while the moms whipped up fresh salads from the garden, tossed some pasta, and hauled out a couple of bottles that had been stuffed in someone's closet, sometimes unlabeled, because they'd just been pulled from a barrel somewhere. 

Well, the babies are half-grown, and I now live in the big, bad metropolis of El-Lay, but sometimes, when I'm lucky, I find that the moveable feast has followed me.  Sometimes to the back deck of my house, sometimes to my friend Linda's kitchen, and, sometimes, like last night, to a porch on the Westside, where we staged our own Moveable Madrigal Feast, only without Christmas and the Renaissance costumes.

The feast arrived this time with a phone call, and a friend who was more than willing to share his Leon Chopped Salad from La Scala Presto.  Believe me, friends like that are precious and rare.   Arrival at Casa Waldo produced some commotion in the armoire and the tops of kitchen cabinets, a hunt for the right bottle of wine.  (What, you don't keep your wine in the armoire?  Thought everyone did that.)  The first part of the Madrigal came in the form of that bottle of wine, 2004 Madrigal Zinfandel, from a small, half-remembered winery on the St. Helena Highway. (Apparently, I've stuffed my memories of Napa into an armoire, as well.  I'm presently excavating them, one transparent bottle at a time.)  We settled into chairs on the porch, and the second part of the madrigal arrived, wafting through the windows, a modern pastiche of voices as varied as Robert Plant , Neil Finn, and Frank Sinatra.  We added our own voices to the mix, marveling at the cynical choices of politicians, the magic of good writing, the mysteries of family behavior, the decibel level at Cut.  The Madrigal (the wine) was flavored with spice, and smoke, and hints of chocolate, and the taste of the north valley terroir, making that Leon Chopped Salad almost as satisfying as the company and the conversation.  Dessert was tiny delicious truffles from the freezer, dusted with dark chocolate, in a cellophane bag that seduced us into inhaling its sweet, heady fragrance before devouring the goodness within. 

I drove home in the late hours, clutching a book for reading and a moody Graham Lindsey CD for listening, gifts from my feast-mate.   And I marveled, once again, at how life hands us its own jewel-like gifts:  musical, magical rewards that come just from answering a phone call from a friend.