Restaurant Review: Star Diner, An Unexpected Gem

Today, Kimberly and I traveled up to Sharon, CT, in the northwest corner of the state, to pick Ian up from summer camp. I've been driving to Sharon for years, first from the New Haven area when I was volunteering as a dean at Silver Lake, leading a conference on clowning, and then just as a camper's dad, driving from New Jersey, but this is the first year that I've made the trip up Rt. 22 from Norwalk. It is a pleasant drive, about two hours each way, past plenty of beautiful scenery.

Going to Silver Lake is always a chance to catch up with friends. When we took Ian up this past Sunday, I found out that Chris Hale, one of my confirmands from when I was at the Naugauck church back in the late '90s is now the "Camp Family Dad," or the manager of the camp's summer staff, while Jillian Dufresne, who was too young to be in that confirmation class, is now one of the deans of Ian's conference. Today, I spent a bit of time with Eric Anderson, who is up as one of the high ropes course facilitators, as well as touching base with the camp's directors, Anne and Tim Hughes, who also happen to be members of my church in Norwalk.

On our way home from Silver Lake, Kimberly, Ian and I stopped at the Sharon Craft Fair, and wandered around for a bit (buying a new turtle for Ian's collection, of course) before continuing to Paley's Farm Market in Amenia, NY. Paley's has become a regular stop on our Sharon trips and we sometimes buy local produce (often fresh peaches) when we're there. Another of our favorite buys is sheep's-milk yogurt from the Old Chatham Sheepherding Company in Chatham, NY. (Kimberly likes the maple flavor and I'm partial to the ginger.) Having purchased our yogurt and some herb and cheese focaccia, we were back on the road toward home.

As luck would have it, we were driving down Route 22 through beautiful "downtown" Wingdale, NY just as we were all starting to think serious thoughts about food. We drove past the Star 22 Diner and made a quick U-turn to come back to the delightful little glass and chrome restaurant that looked like it came straight out of the 1950s.

The Star 22 Diner's menu wasn't nearly as extensive as many of the "big" diners that try to serve every kind of food imaginable (and so rarely do any of it well), but we all found something that appealed to us. Kimberly opted for breakfast -- blueberry pancakes and sausage links -- while Ian went for the chicken fingers and french fries. I ordered the open-faced hot turkey sandwich, with mashed potatoes and veg, which turned out to be carrots. The turkey was actual sliced turkey breast and not a processed turkey roll. The carrots were fresh-cooked and the mashed potatoes had little bits of unmashed potato in them. Some folks might derisively call them "lumps," but I believe that, in moderation, potato bits are just fine and they're also definite proof that the potatoes didn't come from a box. The food was good, of very good quality, was fairly priced and we all left full and happy.

Scotch Flyer

For the last couple weeks, I've been spending my Wednesday evenings doing what I love: sailing.

One of my parishioners, Bob McGregor (pictured at the helm), knew of my addiction to boats and invited me to join his racing crew, so I've been going out with him and a collection of his friends each week and we've been racing his 34-foot C&C yacht, Scotch Flyer, out of Norwalk's Shore and Country Club.

I'm having a lot of fun sailing with Bob and am enjoying being out with his friends, as well, even though they're really power-boaters who are just helping out a friend instead of being true sailors.

I find that sailing on Bob's boat is an interesting learning experience for me, particularly given my other sailing experiences. While the principles of sailing are the same regardless of the size of boat, I've only really sailed on Amistad (129') and my own micro-yacht, Boojum (12'), who takes her name from Lewis Carroll's poem The Hunting of the Snark.

I'm finding that the hardware involved is a bit different from either of the boats I know, as one is too small to need things like winches and travelers and the other is an historical recreation, so doesn't have any such modern frippery.

Scotch Flyer is a somewhat venerable vessel and has the added charm of having well-loved (read "kind of old and bagged-out") sails, which puts her at something of a disadvantage against some of the other boats in her class, which are outfitted in brand-new, really expensive kevlar sails. Bob still does remarkably well and, while we haven't come in first, we've always finished in the first half of our division. Tomorrow night (July 29), though, we've got an added challenge: with the exception of Bob and me, the rest of the crew are unavailable, so we'll be racing with novice sailors. At the moment, we've only got my Deacon Chair, Joseph DeRuvo lined up, and we still need another hand or two, so let me know if you'd like to sail with us. Really. Call me at church at 203-847-9551. We'll be leaving the dock at about 5:45pm.

"Time flies like the wind.
Fruit flies like a banana."
At least, that's what they say.

Looking back, it is hard to believe that I've actually slacked off on writing a blog post for two entire months. In my defense, though, it has been an incredibly busy two months, especially the part where my laptop computer was stolen and I had to replace it

We've been settling into our new home, getting things arranged the way we like them. Kimberly has been planning on gardening for the fall and is looking forward to bringing a bunch of day lilies up from her parents' home in Virginia, where she had moved them before we left New Jersey. Ian finished up the school year here in Norwalk and was able to be in both the school band and the school orchestra. Kimberly and I attended the orchestra's spring concert and were also tickled that Ian marched in the Memorial Day parade.

On June 7, I was installed as Senior Pastor at the First Congregational Church, UCC, on the green in Norwalk, CT. The service was fantastic, with my friends, David Bocock and Eric Anderson preaching. The Chancel Choir and the Gospel Choir from FCC both sang and there were two pieces of music written especially for the occasion. Several members of the Norwalk Clergy Association, as well as a good contingent of the Interdenominational Ministers' Fellowship turned out to celebrate with our congregation's members and representatives from the Fairfield West Association of the UCC. (More of Joseph DeRuvo's photos here.)

Kimberly and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary on June 11, we celebrated by going to the Mystic Sea Music Festival from June 11-13, with our son, Ian, in tow, of course. Since we took Ian out of school for a day to attend the festival, we decided that we needed to provide some educational value, so we all attended the symposium at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy that preceded the concerts. Of particular interest (at least to me) was a paper on the evolution of Inuit music, from the age of European and American whalers who introduced their musical forms and instruments, through the present, where these "traditional" Inuit music has incorporated country/western musical influences, with the exception of the Inuit who are reclaiming their pre-1800s vocal and drumming. On Friday and Saturday, we had breakfast at one of my favorite little restaurants, Kitchen Little, at 135 Greenmanville Ave. in Mystic. I strongly recommend the Portuguese Fisherman's Breakfast. Yum! At the seaport, the music was fantastic, as always. One of the nonmusical highlights was seeing the Charles W. Morgan ashore, where she is undergoing a major restoration that is scheduled to last through 2011 and will likely return her to full sailing condition.

Over the 4th of July week, my family went to the Adirondacks to spend time with our friends Evelyn and John. It was unusually rainy, but Kimberly, Ian and I did manage to get out on Sunday, when we paddled out to Valcour Island in Lake Champlain and did some hiking. As luck would have it, we just happened to arrive at Valcour Lighthouse during the two-hour period that it was open for tours. The views from the top were spectacular. Another day, we took the ferry to Burlington, Vermont, where we spent a pleasant, though soggy afternoon poking around several shops and dodging thunderstorms. Leaving the Adirondacks, we went to Ithaca, where we visited with Evelyn's parents, Don and Edie. Don guided us around the town and gave us a windshield tour of Cornell, where he used to be an English Professor and the director of the library's rare books department.

After leaving Ithaca, we returned home on Saturday and I led worship on Sunday morning before loading everyone back in the car for a trip to Richmond for my Aunt Pam's funeral. While there, we visited with all of the various members of my extended family and, upon departure, left Ian with the Bryants, where he is spending this week. In Ian's absence, Kimberly and I took a day-trip to Fire Island, where we enjoyed the beach and toured the Fire Island Light, where we were able to climb the 167 feet to the top, but the weather was too foggy to see much more than the poison-ivy-covered dunes and a small herd of deer.

So, those are the high points of the last two months.

Cooking with Tripp

My high-school classmate, Tripp Hudgins, and I were chatting back and forth on Facebook some time ago, discussing the possibility of him providing a posting on my (now defunct) cooking blog "Food in the Balance."

In the run-up to Easter, life got very busy for Tripp (as a working pastor) and for me (as a temporarily "unencumbered" pastor who was working hard to get ready to pull up stakes and move to Connecticut). As luck would have it, Tripp managed to carve out a little time to shoot a video blog post for the food blog that no longer existed, but I failed to see it until just today, when I was sitting down to catch up with my various electronic responsibilities. Sorry about that, Tripp.

So, here is Tripp's posting on vegetarian and celiac friendly corn chowder, along with some of his commentary on the value of building community by eating together. Thanks, Tripp!

Two Weeks In

This Saturday marks the second week since my family moved to Norwalk, CT (and, yes, I'm only just now getting around to posting about it...).

After picking up our U-Haul truck in Paterson, we brought it home and started the process of loading it with our worldly goods, a process which was greatly eased by the advance-work of our friends Evelyn and John, who had brought a truck and trailer down twice in the previous week, to help pack and to move many of our books.

On the morning of the move, several friends from the River Edge church turned out to help load, along with a group of Ian's friends from school, along with Victor from the Modified Academy of Fencing and Hyo-Jung, a ministerial colleague from the Haworth United Church of Christ. With all of these folks helping out, we managed to get everything loaded up by just after lunch time.

When we arrived in Norwalk, there were more than 30 folks waiting for us. They had arrived hours earlier and spent the morning cleaning the house, getting it ready for our arrival. Once the back of the truck was open, it only took an hour and five minutes for the fantastic church folks to empty the truck and get all of our stuff in the right places in the house, fold up all of the moving blankets and have the truck swept and ready to return to U-Haul. It was simply amazing to see so many people working together as a team -- there's probably a sermon illustration in there, somewhere.

After a busy Sunday, I returned to New Jersey to meet the professional movers who were showing up at 8:00AM on Monday to pick up our piano, our massive sofas, and a few other items that we thought would be better to have big, strong people handle. I spent the rest of the day cleaning up the old house, getting ready for the some of the trustees from my old church to come by for what turned out to be a blessedly uneventful walk-through. By the time I made it back to Connecticut that night, I was bushed.

The last two weeks have been a journey, with Kimberly unpacking boxes and setting up rooms while I've been hard at work at church. She's amazing! Every day, she's made huge progress in getting the house put together. Though we don't have anything hung up on the walls, yet, the place is really feeling like home.

Connected: Carrying Amistad's Legacy

I just came across this video produced by Amistad America about the Atlantic Freedom Tour. It opens with footage of the Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race and has some great shots of the schooner's construction and launch, as well as the footage of Amistad's time in Sierra Leone that is the focus of the video.

Hitting the Ground Running

I began my new pastorate at the First Congregational Church, UCC, in Norwalk, CT on Palm Sunday, timing which is sort of the liturgical equivalent of taking a sip from a firehose. At the time, my big concern was that the excitement of my arrival would end up eclipsing the message of Palm Sunday, and I joked with several of the congregation's leaders that we needed to make sure that the church celebrated the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem, not the triumphal entry of Paul Bryant-Smith into Norwalk.

At any rate, Palm Sunday was a great celebration, with 188 folks in attendance at the 10:30 service. One of the traditions of the church is that the confirmation class carries a full-size, rough wood cross into the sanctuary and leans it up against the pulpit. When they carried it in this year, they weren't exactly sure how to place it and ended up placing it so that one of the arms stuck right up in the very center of the pulpit, so I had to keep moving around so that I could see around it.

The Holy week services were fairly well attended, with Maundy Thursday being a joint service between FCC and United Congregational Church in West Norwalk. Good Friday was a simple afternoon service, with scripture readings and prayers, done by members of the congregation, including one woman from the community who stops in to pray from time to time and didn't even know that we were getting ready for the service.

Easter was every bit as good as I could have hoped. The congregation had more than 250 people present and, when they sang, the sound was incredible. This is a congregation that sings!! After the service, several people commented that they had come to worship because of the article that the Norwalk newspaper The Hour had run about my arrival in town the previous week, but that they would definitely be back.

Over the last two weeks, I've been living back and forth between Norwalk and River Edge, spending a couple nights in the new parsonage and sleeping on an air mattress, then coming home for a couple nights. During the interim period, the church spent a good deal of time and money in renovating the parsonage, but they saved the kitchen for last, wanting to have the new pastor's input on how it would be redone. As a result, Greg DeTroy, the church's gospel choir director, who is also a contractor, has gutted the kitchen and is replacing all of the cabinetry, countertops, sink, and flooring, while an electrician installs lots of light fixtures, a process that has Kimberly and me drooling in anticipation of our new kitchen.

Since there's no functioning kitchen in the parsonage, church members have had me to their homes for dinner every night that I've been in Norwalk, often inviting several other church members over for the evening. I've really enjoyed having the opportunity to get to know so many folks in such a relaxed setting. Fortunately, I've also joined the YMCA, so I'm hoping to burn off all of the calories that my parishioners' wonderful hospitality has sent my way.