Where’s my fork?

Before we married, my now-husband and I were having an intense discussion when he said to me, “You just want to have your cake and eat it, too.”

I know, y’all. I couldn’t believe it either.

“Well, yeah,” I answered. “Why else would I have cake?

He wouldn’t tell you this, but I think that was the moment I captured his heart and he knew he must marry me, a woman who knows her cake.

I mean, nobody gets a cake to just look at, unless it’s a fruitcake, in which case you put it in a closet and pass it forward next Christmas, which is law in some southern states.

I think the cake metaphor applies to life, because what’s it for but to live it? But I’m going to refine it even more and apply it to travel.

I know people who have never ventured 100 miles beyond our city limits. I call that the same cake day in and day out, and it’s a fruitcake to boot. Don’t do it. It’s important to know about and experience faraway cakes.

I love to travel and almost every city I go to is my new favorite place because it offers something I’ve never had before. I call it new cake and you can bet I’m there to eat it.

A couple weeks ago, I travelled to Madison, Wisconsin, home of all things cheese as well as my son, Tom, and his partner, Marybeth. They are way better than any cheese, or cake.

The week’s cake had me riding bicycles on purpose and for consecutive days along the dedicated bike paths throughout Madison. As a non-athletic person, I rented an electric bike that splits the work between itself and me, which was appreciated and made me forget that I am not, in fact, an elite athlete.

I ate lunch in a dive sports bar during a Packers football game deep in Packer territory and it was a blast. I got to see the progressive programs that are working well in Madison, such as community gardens, an investment in bike paths and lanes, and support of locally owned businesses and quality of life projects. They have a vibrant downtown, as well as local shopping and eating communities and according to a few things I’ve read, Madison is not only the most healthy city in the United States, it is also ranked the #1 place to live in the United States, according to a recent study.

There was also culture, and I rode my rented bike to much of it. In addition to the two lakes and isthmus, Madison is home to the beautiful 16-acre Olbrich Botanical Garden and it’s almost a hidden gem. Inside the Bolz Conservatory is filled with beautiful plants from far-away lands, and more than a few that look like they would rather eat you than accept water from you. There were also birds free flying, and it was the closest I’ll probably get to the Amazon.

Olbrich also has the only Thai Pavilion and Garden in the continental United States, and I would have moved in that day but the staff wasn’t having it.

A few of the myriad interesting things about this pavilion, aside from its beauty, is that it was gifted to the University of Wisconsin in honor of it having one of the largest Thai student populations of any U.S. college or university, and it is only one of four outside of Thailand. The others are in Germany, Norway and Hawaii. If you want to know more, go see it. You must go see it.

We went to dinner one night at a to-die-for Italian restaurant whose name I will happily drop - Cento. I ate food and drank liquor I had never heard of, and some I had heard of but thought it best we didn’t meet. Some of these include beef tartare, squid ink pasta, deep fried green olives, espresso, all the cheeses, a limoncello and a bunch of other flavors I didn’t know existed. And while the beef tartare had a great flavor, me and that texture can never reach an agreement. This time, it’s not me, it is the beef tartare.

Madison was like a multi-layered wedding cake with all different flavor layers that you didn’t know you’d love. But layer by layer, the flavors built on each other to be one of the best cakes I’ve ever eaten. Still, I had to go home.

The airport on Monday turned out to be the fruitcake I didn’t order, but had to eat anyway. It was a lot of fruitcake, but at least I had a solid 16 hours in airports and on airplanes to digest it (fun fact: that is three more hours than if I had driven my car to Madison).

Keep your fork handy, and look for your cake. Then eat it. There will most certainly be more, some you like and some not so much. But it’s not just to look at, it’s always to enjoy.