Announcement!

Just found out that a revised copy of "Plate Tectonic Theory" is going to be published in Willard & Maple literary magazine!

I'm going to be printed in something other than the internet and newsprint!

XOXO

Essays, Wrote The Wise Man

If I have nothing original to give you of my own, I will find you something interesting and of note to read.

This is the website of one of my professors, and his essay on the durian fruit is hilarious. If nothing else today, you need to read this, and laugh.

Like Tim Brookes, I thoroughly appreciate a good essay. Essays, essays, essays...I have a long and involved relationship with essays, (possibly my only long and involved relationship ever). When I was a freshmen in high school, my English teacher passed out a prompt and those iconoclastic blue booklets to our class so, like every other high school student in grades 9-12 in the state of Vermont, we could participate in the annual Vermont Honors Competition for Excellence in Writing. (Long title; 5 paragraph essay.)

To my utter surprise, my essay (I don't remember the prompt,) was selected as the best out of the 150 some-odd from my freshmen class. On to Round Two writing against the freshmen winners of the other schools in my county, and a new prompt, this one on what I would chose to do if I knew it was my last day alive. (My response: nothing different, except I'd sleep in and finally be daring enough to speak up to a few people I felt I couldn't be for the fear of having to live with the words I'd said. As still now, I have always had a problem with actually saying the words I feel and think.) Again, utter shock when I was announced the county winner.

This brought me onto State Finals at UVM. I brought my friends Wheaton and Carson along for moral support, and was (again, as always) 15 minutes late to the actual timed writing period. This was the prompt for the competing essay: "Our country prides itself on progress made in such fields as technology, medicine, education, etc. In a thoughtful, well-developed essay, discuss how progress, although highly valued in our society, could be viewed as being paradoxical." I wrote something about how although technology has made our lives "easier," one could argue that it has taken away the personal element to things such as communication, which undermines the definition of "progress." I think I even used the word "juxtaposition" somewhere in that essay. It would make sense. It's been my favorite word since my intimidating, inspiring, iconic 9th grade play-writing teacher used it one day in class.

The prompt for all grades was a bit less cerebral: "Henry Adams wrote, 'A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.' Reflect upon Adams’ words. Then, in a thoughtful, well-developed essay, discuss the impact a teacher (the individual does not have to be in the teaching profession) made on you." I thought about my teachers; my trainer; my parents; my more enlightened friends. And then I wrote about myself and my writer's voice, and though I may not know where it came from, or how, that voice, more than all the class assignments, bad teenage poetry, fan-fictions, and notes passed in class, is what encourages me to write, and to continue writing. I have tried scouring the internet and files to find the copy of the essay for you, but, alas, somewhere in the past (jeeezus) seven years, it has disappeared. Probably, a good thing. It was not my favorite essay ever written. But yet, when they announced my name as the statewide freshmen year winner and ushered me up to collect my $2,000 check, that was the essay they asked me to read. So, like anyone just given a large amount of money and then asked to do something, I complied, and was amazed when I watched stranger's mothers tear up. I was even more amazed when I was called to the school office a week later to conduct a phone interview with a reporter from the local paper.

"Have you always written?" the reporter asked me.

"Um...yeah, I guess so." (I was in such shock I am afraid I was not the eloquent. Then again, I've always been far more eloquent via written rather than spoken word.)

"What do you think you want to do with your writing? Any plans on making it a profession?"

"I want to be a journalist." The words were out of my mouth before I'd even thought about them. I was just as surprised as the reporter was. This was the first time I'd even considered making writing (something I loved,) into a career (something to feed myself and pay the bills). Before, I had every intention on attending veterinary school, nevermind the fact I am so severely needle-phobic I get strapped down to the chair at my doctor's. All it took was four five-paragraph essays that a few other people believed in enough to think they were "winners" to change the entire course of my life.

I have always loved shared knowledge-- if you find something you think I might enjoy or find novel, please, and by all means, leave it for me as a comment. I always love finding, discovering, or reading new things.

XOXO

"Abandon Truth; Settle For Good Fantasy."

It is not often I demand things from people.

But, I am demanding you to go here, explore, and form an opinion. As one author writes, "I came. I saw. I conceded."

These are the Sixers. I think they're revolutionary and liberating.

Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure

Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak

Shocked at what people can accomplish with limited space, time, and word count? Do you love or hate the concise format? Are you a minimalist who revels in the diminutive? If so, you'd love me.

XOXO

The Secret Lies Inbetween The Lines

I would not call myself a poet. Instead, I am she of the glib social commentary on men and women and the wry personal remarks on societal views. More "Cosmo" than "The New Yorker." Carrie Bradshaw to, say, Anais Nin. A gossip columnist; a shoe mongerer; an advice-giver. No great shakes to change the literary world. The level just ain't there yet, but I have time.

I am not discounting what I do well. Far from the case. I am living a dream that many never get the chance to even encounter: at a (relatively) young age, I have first found my niche, then found my voice, then found some way to get it out there. I am read, which is the most powerful thing that can happen for a writer, even more so then getting paid. There is validation in reader's comments; not in dollars and cents. As I am finding out, "what I do" pays far better, with more regularity, and has a much larger target audience who is actually interested in reading than what it is I do here on "Jux". However, this doesn't mean I should give up on "Jux," just days old. This doesn't mean I should quit my moonlighting job. This doesn't mean that what I do here has any less value than what I do on SATCG. If anything, if SATCG is my fun and my bread and butter, "Jux" is my release. "Jux" is where I get to showcase the human me: the me that struggles. The me sans bravado. The me who is still cautious of reading in public. The me who won't bare all. The me I am behind closed doors when I can shut my SATCG persona off. It's a me you may never see. Or maybe you do. One side isn't "better" than the other-- you must have two halves to make a whole, after all. Mine just happen to be deeply disparate.

But as is the case with anything you don't know much about or can't claim to be yourself, poetry fascinates me.

I love poetry because you'll never know what it's really about, even if you think you do. It's like looking at shadows and trying to guess form-- just a suggestion, buried and hidden under simile, metaphor, line breaks, and verse.

By all accounts, a secret, that only the writer knows.

Whitman and Yeats and Shakespeare and William Blake and Frost and Maya Angelou and Ntozake Shange and Ginsberg and Basho and Rumi. Rumi!

Rumi!
"The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
How blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded.
Someone sober will worry about things go badly.

Rule-keepers run on foot along the surface.
Lovers move like lightning and wind.
No contest."

Rumi who wrote,
"When the ocean comes to you as a lover,
Marry, at once, quickly,
For God's sake!

Don't postpone it!
Existence has no better gift.

No amount of searching
Will find this.

A perfect falcon, for no reason,
Has landed on your shoulder,
And become yours."

Rumi who said, "All the learning in books stays put, on the shelf. Poetry, the dear-- words and images of song, comes down over me like mountain water."

Now, there was a man who understood.

Who do you think understands it that way?

XOXO

Snapshots.

The User and the Used

"I’m glassy-eyed in the mirror; that same vacant, pretty, coping stare Legs used to have.

My mind stutters on these thoughts, catching rays of sunlight and dust particles glinting in the air. My fingers cramp and release, heavy like my eyelids as I type on the black and white, trying to get the words down, depressing ‘backspace’ more and more as I realize letters are missing…
Overhead, planes fly people to their heart’s location.

My heart thumps heavily in the cage of my chest, bone and skin. The air is thick and smells like funk. I puff, puff, drag, feet resting on my windowsill, blowing the smoke out the window with the aid of a fan. My lighter sparks and catches, sparks and catches, and I wonder if this was how Legs did it, if that’s how he found his escape, like I am doing now. I buy, and de-seed and stem, and pack, and roll, and light, and inhale, and let the smoke trickle from my open lips like smoke monsters in the dark air, and I miss him, terribly, heart-wrenchingly, despondently, all at once.

It’s late, and I know I should put the laptop down, stop allowing myself free access into the confused sore that is my heart and laying it, splat, across the page, but it’s a masochistic exercise in life-lessons: you fall in love and let that person walk out of your life, and this is what happens. So you cry about it. You rationalize it. You get angry about it. You work at it. You smoke to avoid it at first, and then you smoke to embrace it. You mold it into something you can work with. You apply it. You find something that you can live with. You get happy about this, at least, and then you smoke more to continue. It’s a circle of use, misuse, and being used.

...The words tumble from fingertips that are dry and unfeeling on the keyboard, and I don’t even try to stop them. I can’t even stop my mind. Blink, there’s another memory I haven’t remembered since it happened. Flash, and I’m sweaty and I have a dry mouth and can feel everything around me in minute detail. Click, and I’m all the way gone on the sweet side effects of a love that doesn’t know better and a habit that shouldn’t have been allowed to grow. Snap, I’m back to square one."

(In)Pulse
Roused from my sleep,
I clutch pen
& grit teeth.
I cannot help when the words come
Anymore than you can help your addictions,
Already deep-seeded,
Or the singer can control her song
Or the bird his flight.
It is an impulse,
My scratch of pen on paper,
The snort of powder up your nose,
Much
Harsher
&
Methodical
As you cut lines,


Prepare your straw, ---Close one nostril, ---And make that
---------strange ---------snuffling ---------noise


That makes me cringe,
Though my back is turned to you,
Like it always is when I see you start your ritual.
The rise and fall of notes, much sweeter than this candy.
The feeling of air under a bird’s wing, much more free.
You are not sweet,
& you are not free.
But neither am I, chasing this trail of papers,
Always hoping the next one will be better.
You and I,
We aren’t so much un-alike,
Both of us with our willingness to fall prey,
To the things that gnaw on the insides of us.
It is to say,
“Because I can,”
& to do so.
It is to say,
“Who I am,”
& not resist it.

I tell you to stop using.
You tell me to shut the light off,
& go to bed.

Cold

"I’m warmest in sunlight. Not at night when you’re lying next to me, radiating body heat and safety and comfort, but when I’m walking in the cold air and the sunlight touches my face with rays gentler than your gentlest brush of fingertips. I think I have a gold-and-cream complexion (my nice way of saying what some call “pale” in tones reminiscent of disease and social awkwardness,) because I’m a sun-baby—my hair reflects it and my skin soaks it in, becoming almost luminescent. (Again with the “pale.”) I was born in June for a reason.

Your heat doesn’t stay long, just like your body—come the next morning, we part to go our separate ways and I’m cold until the next time you nuzzle your body beside mine, nook into nook, limb over limb, some strange sort of human pick-up-stick pile of us. The sun only leaves me at night, leaving me in your care, your heat, your warmth, knowing that you can never really replace it, even though you will try, and you will like to think that you’re the true center of my personal universe. But I say everything still revolves around one sun, and you, with your thin wrists and your love for sarcasm, are far too human. You are human, and you are cold.

Winter wind still blows even though the sun is in full shine mode. I tilt my face up at it through the smudged windows of the bus and close my eyes, seeing a disco ball pattern on the insides of my eyelids that dance like the free-love generation did on LSD. I’ve forgotten my coat at home, lulled by the sunshine into thinking that it’s warmer than it actually is, and you offer me yours.

The ancient Greeks’ sun-god was named Helios. The Romans called him Apollo. I call him warmth-bringer, light-maker, shadow-chaser. You call me sun-worshipper, heat-seeker, desert-baby. I call you mine, but I lie through my teeth when I say it. You are not mine, and I am not yours, not any more than I can claim to own the sun.

In the age of solar panels, people harness sunlight and bend it to suit their needs—heat, energy, power. I am just as much to blame, yoking you to my proverbial harness to suit my basic needs—companionship, entertainment, and because it’s convenient. You, I suspect, have done the same to me. We do it because it’s easy; because it’s what people expect of us. When you need, you need. It’s human to need, too human, and I have never been good at denying myself, the byproduct of a spoiled childhood. Although I have a hard time telling people out-loud what it is we’re playing at, I find it equally hard to be utterly blasé about it and say, “I keep him around for the sex.” What I don’t have a hard time telling them is what it isn’t. It isn’t forever. It isn’t immortal. It isn’t stationary, or reliable, or even planned. Just like the sun rises from the East every morning, it is predictable and we take it for granted. Once, you called me a frigid bitch. I didn’t deny it. I, just like you, am cold. That’s why I believe more in sunlight than I do in love."

Christmas, Tough-Love Style

"What do you think? Does it look good?"

"It could do without some of the more tacky ones."

"Like which?"

"Like that one, to the left of the middle. The lumpy red and green one that looks like a wreath."

"That is a wreath. I made it for you in Advent Workshop years ago."

"Oh. What about that white Styrofoam one?"

"That one, too. It's supposed to be a snowflake."

"The clothespin reindeer."

"Basically, anything you consider tacky, I made for you and Mom as a child."

Wounding people is so easy, we stride right on afterwards without even a second thought. We all do it.

There will always be that awkward tension between parent and child in the constant search for parental approval. Tides change-- though I will never feel quite up-to-snuff for my father, my mother now looks to me for my approval. I am off-guard and awkward, and don't know when and how to give it. This softens the dynamic of my father a bit, however.

But, then again, who am I to judge?

Choosing Sides

"Wall or nightstand side?" he always asks, even though the answer always remains the same. It's just the kind of guy he is.

He's already tucked in next to the nightstand. Half of me wonders what would happen if I asked for that side. Half of me chastises the other half for trying to make trouble when everything is exactly how I want it to be in the first place. Half of me sighs. All of me crawls up the bed instead.

"Wall," I answer. "Of course. That's where I always end up, anyway." Always between cool wall and warm body. I modulate temperature like a flesh thermostat. Always on his right-hand side. Just like how he always pushes me back down in his sleep to his arm and shoulder in the place of a pillow.

Whoever needed cotton and filling when you have a hot-blooded male, anyway?

After the third night, I wised up. If Manhammoud won't let you go to the pillow-mountain, you bring the pillow to you.

Drip-Drop

Part One:

Writers: Black depressions, over-active imaginations, mental illnesses, and substance abuse. We are an under-whelmingly cheery lot.

Bathtub and beer. Bathtub and half-bottle of wine. Bathtub and a vodka concoction. It's all the same to me.

I think writers have an affinity for bathtubs because there's always the possibility of drowning oneself if the mood so strikes you. I'm sure some author must have tried holding their breath a minute too long after an unfavorable review. (Note to Self: Research this.)

I lounge in the convex shallows of the tub, one knee propped up under the facet, regulating water temperature by feel, my right kneecap bright red because I like it scalding hot. (Might as well live if you're going to be alive.) I'm reading Abbey's "The Fool's Progress" and feeling quite foolish myself, feeding this writer's malaise of mine so indulgently. Later, I will try sticking my toes in the jets, reverse whack-a-mole.

Part Two:

I turn the radio on, but leave the lights off. The moment I step into the shower and close the door behind me, my hair instantly and decidedly curls up in the trapped humidity. (Fact: I have naturally wavy hair. You will probably never see it.) The Presidents of the United States of America remind me in "Peaches" (Fact: Meant to give that CD back...) that the acoustics of the shower are the best I've ever found for singing (Fact,) but these glass walls won't hear my voice today. Soap in silence. Shampoo in solitude. Condition in consternation. (Fact: Alliteration is one of my many writer's vices. Along with verbosity and cliches.)

"Must stop playing hermit," I tell myself. "That's a direct order. Cheer the fuck up."

Circa Bankruptcy

Christmas night. The dog is napping in the backseat, taking up the entire bench, and it's nearly midnight; not Christmas any more. I'm driving and smoking at the same time, because that's one of the things I do know how to do in full multi-tasking glory. I've got the windows cracked because, silly to admit, I am scared of harming an innocent animal's lungs. Mine are already damned. So my nose is cold so his lungs can remain free from any more second-hand smoke. Silly. But the windows are still down.

It's nearly dead downtown. I'm tempted to make a silent joke about the graveyard shift, but it would be almost too easy. I don't know what called me here, but I needed to fill my eyes with it. The sight of a sheriff's cruiser lingering at a red light reminds me I still haven't replaced a front headlight that's out. I skulk past and hope Christmas spirit is enough to get me out of a ticket. I don't have the time, money, or desire to pay for either a new bulb or a ticket. I'd rather just take Plan A and flee the country. Har har.

The streetlights that rise up around me are festooned in white Christmas lights that wind around them and wreaths. The old, retro buildings, once freshly painted and proud, slouch into their foundations. Half of the storefronts are empty; "For Sale" and "For Rent" signs are the only things that occupy windows. The city of my childhood is gone. Instead, hardscrabble has taken hold.

At seven, I used to walk the four blocks down the hill from the public library to my dad's shop. At twenty, I lock my car doors as I come to a stop outside the building that used to be my father's. No lights. No gold glistening from overhead lighting in the display cases in the windows. Everything is quiet; not even the whisper of falling snow to make white-noise. I'm caught half-in and half-out of the past and the present, the crossroads of What Used To Be and The Cold, Hard Truth. Somewhere in the last twelve years, I missed this all changing. You come home, an almost-adult, and you suddenly see it all. It's alarming. It makes you wonder where it went wrong; if there was something you could do; what signs you missed and how. And if a city can change like this, unnoticed until it's over, what else can?

The dog lets out a snore. Suddenly tired, I take a last long draw and then stub my cigarette out on my side-view mirror, the plastic burned and crusted from doing it so many times in the same place before. I pull a U-ey and head for home as the clock ticks in a new day.

"And miles to go, before I sleep, and miles to go, before I sleep," I remember as I roll up the windows and rub the feeling back into my nose.

Implosion

"I'm done with being looked through. When you look at me, it's almost enough to make me believe I could catch fire. Spontaneously combust in being someone."

---

Excuse me for just thrusting you into that, but one of my professors, a very wise man who is pretty much the reason I came to Champlain, once said that there is a time and a place for disclaimers, and in front of your writing is neither the time, nor the place. So I guessed I was wise to heed him-- his advice hasn't done me wrong yet.

The one good thing about being home and broke is that it's giving me lots of time to write. And write. And write some more. The above are some pieces of writing I've been busy resurrecting and breathing new life and words into for awhile (the first piece was an excerpt from a longer work from Creative Non-Fiction; (In)Pulse and Cold are both pieces I read recently at a gathering that went over well, and since people asked for copies, decided to put them here so I don't have to individually email. Laziness is a vice I posses.), as well as some short snippets that have come to me recently, as always, in the most awkward of places. (Mostly, the shower. In the shower, hands sudsy, not a pen or piece of dry paper in sight, is where I get all my best ideas. I have learned to play them on repeat like a broken cassette tape between my brain and my lips to remember them until I get out and run, dripping, for a flat surface and something to write with.) Muses be damned. They always come at the worst times.

XOXO

The Kitchen Bitches & Flannel vs. Flannel Do Bobcat Cafe and Brewery

Bobcat Cafe and Brewery, Bristol, VT.

Alli: Bobcat Café and Brewery is nestled on Main Street in Bristol, Vermont. Bristol’s mission statement reads something like: “We aim to be the quaint, Rockwellian, New England town where all our residents know each other’s names, our town hall meetings are always full, and our picket fences are always freshly painted.” It’s a picture-perfect scene on a chilly October night in small town Vermont.

Carissa: As you’ve probably already read from Flannel vs. Flannel’s review of Bobcat Café and Brewery, this Bristol hot-spot in infamous for its homemade brews. But Alli and I decided to tag along for the ride with the boys after we got a tip that the food was equally exceptional. Seeing as I was raised “on Kobe beef and pâté—since the womb, trained to only recognize good food,” as the Arts and Entertainment editor of the Current noted, I had to get in. Plus, being with the boys of Flannel vs. Flannel and Friends, we got to witness Man Law in action—pint glasses are ok to share a sip out of, whereas drinking out of the same beer bottle would be a “no.”

Alli: All of Bristol’s fifty or so residents are either tucking kids into bed or congregating in the brewery. In our twenty minute wait for a table big enough for the six of us, we saw a whopping three cars drive by. The only sound in town is coming from inside, the glowing light spilling out onto the sidewalk in front of the big windows marking it as the warmest place on the street.

Carissa: The ambiance inside Bobcat was Vermont woodsman meets French Provencal bistro hostess. Rough-hewn table surfaces were polished to a high shine, and the lighting was dim but cozy.

Alli: This is my domain. Carissa gets her fancy-schmancy gastropubs and French fusion cuisine. Bobcat, the kind of place that plays Nickel Creek and serves down-home, New England country cooking, is mine. For God’s sake, our table is literally my childhood kitchen table. The whole café feels like home, and I suspect that it’s not just a product of the furniture. There’s a steady volume of chatter and laughter and a sense of amity floating through the peppery air. The wait staff laughs and jokes with the diners, and doesn’t say anything when the 21+ portion of our dinner party shares a sip of site-brewed beer (all in the name of a good review). If there’s one thing that Bobcat does exceptionally well, it’s good company (and great beer).

Carissa: The curry in the butternut squash soup I got as my appetizer was a kick to fall’s ass. It opens your nasal passages right up, and the great slightly sweet bread they offered, when dipped into the thick, bisque-y soup, tones both down nicely.

Alli: Carissa’s curried butternut squash bisque kicked a little, but it’s the kind of warm that you want on a brisk fall night, like holding your fingers almost too close to the flame after coming inside on a cold day.

Alli: I started with the Vermont apple and cheddar salad. I can legitimately call this a “cute” salad. A fan of perfectly sliced apples and an adorable little pile of toasted walnuts framed a hill of greens. I got soft-eyed when I knocked over the lettuce and saw the cubes of Vermont cheddar hiding in the corner. The greens were crisp and flavorful but not bitter or strong, and the ginger cider vinaigrette was phenomenal. The sides paired perfectly with the salad, adding a crunch or a bit of crisp sweetness or a hint of sharp creaminess layered throughout bites, adding the depth that I’m convinced every salad should have.

Carissa: As the queen of the “baby salad with extras,” I really enjoyed the apple and cheddar salad. Slightly warm and limp arugula in a ginger cider vinaigrette appeased me, but I am not a fan of warm nuts…roasted nuts, that is. The roasted walnuts that accompanied the salad were no exception. After having one, and then another for benefit of the doubt, I left the rest on the plate.
Carissa: The broth of the steamed littleneck clams we got to share as I took Alli’s clam virginity exploded in my mouth and knocked me outta this world. It was cheesy, and salty, like seawater from the same bay they got the clams from. The clams themselves were sweet and both soft and chewy, with pale pink flesh. However, the slices of garlic clove in the broth were not my favorite, though the chunks of bacon were a nice flavor additive.

Carissa: Henry, our Arts and Entertainment editor from Maine, dug into the bowl of clams with his fingers. “I don’t know what anyone ever taught you—you eat steamers with your fingers.”

Alli: As an entrée, I ordered the Misty Knoll Parmesan Chicken Lasagna. First rule: throw out everything you ever thought you knew about lasagna. Otherwise, you’ll be confused and potentially disappointed by what will be placed before you. It’s lemon parsley ricotta, roasted vegetables, roasted vegetables marinara, and misty knoll organic chicken between lasagna noodles, topped with a small pile of greens slightly wilted from the rising steam and grated parmigiano reggiano, with a balsamic demi-glaze circling the plate.

Alli: Now, let’s get this straight: this ain’t yo mama’s lasagna. This is Vermont harvest lasagna. The roasted veggies gave it a hint of wood smoke to contrast on your tongue with the zing of the demi-glaze. The marinara was heavy and meaty from veggies pureed with a thick red sauce. It was so good that I forgot about the chicken until I cut into it—right there, in the center of my lasagna, was a breast of fried chicken sprinkled with sea salt. Yeah, fried chicken. Like I said, forget everything you ever knew about lasagna, because the crispiness of fried chicken in between sheets of pasta smothered in smoky marinara with chunks of roasted vegetables is genius. Absolutely phenomenal, especially because it wasn’t heavy; all the crisp, none of the grease. And, even better, the portion is home-style, too.

Carissa: The braised duck I ordered for my entrée was so succulent. So moist. So pink. It was almost like a pulled pork, but it was duck, so, SO much better. The orange and cranberry preserves crowning it were almost as good as the jam at the Bluebird Tavern. The mushroom crepe under it was a new idea to me, and well done, the woodsy, earthy flavor complimenting the sweet and savory-ness of the duck.

Carissa: Since we went with the Flannel vs. Flannel crew and Company, we occasionally got sips of what they were reviewing. Though I found heaven on beer, or beer on heaven with the fizzy Heller Bock, my favorite was the Porter “Twan” got—it started out with a bite, smoothed out on my palate, and then came back for a second round of deep, almost chocolatey taste and gave me goosebumps with its goodness. Is it any surprise women want the sweet stuff?

Carissa: Speaking of which, Alli and I split a maple crème brulee for dessert. It was so maple, so Vermont, so lovely, from the torched sugar top to the custard that overtook the crust when broken into like an oozing lava flow of dessert. It was sinful. I would have sold my soul for more. The texture was so smooth and light, unlike some brulees that get grainy. The maple taste waited until after the crunchy sugar dissipated to tickle your taste-buds like a particularly teasing French maid. I myself was called a tease by Nick for only offering a small taste after raving and moaning about it.

Alli: The maple crème brulee is like the soft, slow stroke of a fingertip. The more you explore, the more you uncover. Thank God there’s a church next door, because it’s sinful and I’m going to need absolution.

Carissa: Final verdict? By the time Bobcat started closing down around us—yes, we shut the place down—and I threw in my napkin, I was blissed-out on comfort food. Comfort is what Bobcat provides, from the food, to the atmosphere, to the friendly and accommodating wait staff with a good sense of humor, to what the boys were feeling after a few pints. It is warmingly good, honest food—but we’re never going with the boys again because they’re far too distracting.

Alli: By the end of the night, I had dropped my silverware an extraordinary number of times, we were all stuffed, our sides aching from laughter, Flannel and Flannel & co. had enough to be a little buzzed, and us Kitchen Bitches were drunk on good company. That’s what you get at Bobcat. Great food, great beer, great atmosphere, and great company. It’s well worth the drive.

VISIT IT.

XOXO