Diego A. Perez

Connecticut Lawn Painting www.ctlawnpainting.com Cell 914 843-4401

According to a study conducted in Road Island deer tick population has increase due to recent cold and wet weather we have experienced in the area, causing an increase in known cases of the debilitating illness know as Lyme Disease.

Symptoms of Lyme Disease

Not all individuals with Lyme disease will have all symptoms, and many of the symptoms can occur with other diseases as well. It is important that you consult your health care provider for proper diagnosis.

Circular rash, this is the first sign of infection. 70-80% of infected persons will have this rash after 3-30 days of tick bite. Rash will expand for several day reaching up to 12 inch diameter, Center of rash may become clear as it enlarges, causing a bulls- eye appearance. It may be warm but usually is not painful

Some people may develop additional rashes in other areas of their body after several days

Infected individuals also expertise symptoms of fatigue, chills, fever, headache, and muscle and joint aches and swollen lymph nodes. In some cases these may be the only symptoms of the infection

Untreated, the infection may spread to other parts of the body within a short time to include symptoms of loss of muscle tone on one or both sides of the face, severe headaches and neck stiffness due to meningitis, shooting pains that may interfere with sleep, heart palpitations and dizziness due to changes in heartbeat

After several months untreated about 60% of people infected will begin to have intermittent bouts of arthritis, with severe joint pain and swelling, especially of the knees

5% of untreated individuals may develop chronic neurological complaints for months or years after infection, including shooting pains, numbness or tingling of the hands or feet and problems concentrating and short memory

Tips to help prevent Lyme disease

Avoid areas where ticks are found.

Ticks live in environments of wooden areas with high grass and dead leafs.

If you do enter these areas, try to stay at the center of the trail as to avoid contact with overgrown grass, brush and leaf litter

Take extra precautions during May, June, July; these are the months when ticks that transmit Lyme disease are most active

Keep ticks off your skin

Use insect repellent with 20% - 30% DEET on exposed skin and clothing to prevent bites

Wear long pants, long sleeves and long socks to keep ticks off your skin. Light colored clothing will help spot ticks easier

Tuck pant legs into socks or boots and tuck shirts into pants to help keep ticks on the outside of clothing

Check daily for ticks on clothes and skin

Chances of getting Lyme disease are reduced greatly if a tick is attached to your skin for less than 24hrs so finding ticks on your body or clothing as soon as possible is of the outmost importance

Perform daily tick checks after being outdoors. Inspect all parts of your body carefully including your armpits, scalp, and groin. If a tick is found remove immediately using tweezers.

To kill ticks that you may have missed on your clothing, wash your cloths in hot water and dry using high heat for at least an hour.

Connecticut Lawn Painting www.ctlawnpainting.com Cell 914 843-4401

By Frank Cohen at www.restaurantsct.com

The Vision

If you were designing a restaurant, what would you want it to be? It's no accident that restaurateur Ignacio Blanco's vision of the ideal restaurant is inseparable from mine. The restaurant would have to offer exceptional food-that's a given. And in the case of Spanish food, the cuisine which many culinary experts feel has usurped France's place in offering the world's top food, it would have to show reverence toward traditional dishes as well as the culinary ability to dazzle with elements of the modern. The Spanish enjoy a closer relationship to their food sources than most Americans do.

But the restaurant would have to be reasonably priced, so that you could afford to come often, not just on special occasions. The restaurant would have to be organized in such a way that you could try a lot of different dishes-and therein lies the brilliance of the Spanish tapas concept.

Tapas are small, intensely flavored treats that originally were designed to rest atop a glass so a person standing and talking could manage both his or her food and drink. And the restaurant would have to showcase a diverse enough menu so that you could never tire of the selection.

The restaurant would have to be almost as encouraging of drink exploration as it is was of food. It would have to feature a broad selection of offerings. Mojitos, caipirinhas and sangría would be nice. Most important, it would have to serve drinks-especially wine-at manageable prices. In Spain, you can often find a decent glass of wine for just a couple of Euros. If you look at American prices, it's not hard to see why we became a nation of beer-drinkers. While American restaurateurs depend more upon drink profits than their Spanish counterparts to help balance out their costs, many carry it to excess, charging more for a single glass of wine than they paid for the bottle.

No man in Connecticut is better equipped than Blanco to carry forward the cuisine of Spain, or arguably, to offer exceptional food and wine at reasonable prices. The peripatetic Blanco visits his homeland frequently, visiting innumerable traditional and cutting-edge Spanish restaurants.

Blanco's other remaining eatery, Ibiza Restaurant in New Haven, scored a 28 out of 30 and is listed as having the second best food in Connecticut in the 2009-10 edition of the Zagat Survey that just came out.

What dining establishment apparently edged Ibiza Restaurant by fractions of a point? Perennial French favorite Thomas Henkelmann of Greenwich, keeping alive the Franco-Spanish debate locally. What three restaurants followed Ibiza Restaurant, rounding out Connecticut's top five? Frenchies Le Petit Café of Branford, Cavey's of Manchester and Jean-Louis of Greenwich.

Only a close friend or careful follower of Blanco would know all of the restaurants upon which he has put his imprint. Blanco recently sold Ibiza Restaurant sibling Meigas in Norwalk so he could pursue other ventures. Meigas had earlier been named Mesón Galicia, just as Ibiza Restaurant had been named Pika Tapas, but Blanco updated the restaurants' names to indicate that he was pursuing contemporary Spanish food of the highest level. He briefly opened an Ibiza Restaurant in White Plains, New York last year, which was received with great enthusiasm before a problem arose with its lease.

Blanco was also involved in the opening of casual Soho Pizza in Danbury, a popular venue for New York-style pies and Spanish-influenced panini sandwiches that continues to thrive in the hands of Alvaro do Nascimento, who also owns the adjacent Double Twister ice cream shop. For years, he owned Mediterranean Grill in Wilton, serving Spanish food to a happy crowd, some of whom mistakenly surmised they were eating especially good Italian food. Perhaps Blanco's crowning glory was his original Meigas in lower Manhattan, a restaurant that was widely acclaimed by all of the major New York publications before it became a casualty of 9/11.

So how has the eminently capable Blanco implemented this ideal vision? He never lost his passion for tapas, believing it the best affordable way to present a variety of high-quality items to food lovers. At newly opened Ibiza Tapas & Wine Bar in Hamden, the tapas are categorized as traditional and modern on the menu, and further subcategorized as cold and hot. These are terms of art, of course. "Cold" could include items served room temperature but never cooked, just as "hot" could include a dish best served warm rather than scalding. There is also a section of larger tapas called "raciones." No item exceeds $9.75, and some are as cheap as $4.00.

Blanco's projection is that a normal appetite should fill up on three tapas, possibly four, depending on what's ordered. Most tapas are meant to be shared (it's difficult to share a martini glass of gazpacho), so a typical table of four might divvy up twelve to sixteen tapas, which means a great deal of experimentation and fun. The menu includes roughly 45 tapas large and small, but Blanco has in reserve perhaps another 100 planned tapas, ensuring seemingly infinite variety. For instance, he has other types of gazpachos, meaning he could rotate other gazpachos in and out of the lineup, or even create a tapa of gazpacho tastings.

Paralleling the affordability of his food, Blanco's drink prices are no higher than those found at the many chain restaurants up the street, and in some cases are actually less expensive. Most appealing, he will be offering at least 30 bottles of wine for $30 or less, and some vintages will be much cheaper than that. The majority of the wines will be Iberian with a few produced in the Americas.

Ibiza Tapas & Wine Bar won't accept reservations. At the prices Blanco's charging, he can't afford to hold onto a table for someone who may or may not show, a common dilemma in the restaurant business. He also can't afford to have customers hang onto a table for the entire evening soaking up ambiance unless they also continue to soak up food and drink-not at least if others are awaiting a table . Unlike with fine dining restaurants where courses may be carefully timed, tapas are traditionally served in no particular sequence as soon as they become ready. In Spain, patrons often drift from one tapas restaurant to another, eating and drinking as they go, but good luck finding another tapas bar of the same quality and authenticity in these parts.

Perhaps the most intriguing possibility Blanco is contemplating, however, would place Ibiza Tapas & Wine Bar in rare company, indeed. Mindful of El Bulli in Roses, Spain, whose chef Ferran Adrià is considered by many to be the world's best and whose fans come from all around the world for 30-course tastings, Blanco is planning to take reservations once weekly for a table of six who would receive as many as 30 courses, tasting their way through much of the menu. While the food would be simpler fare than what the world's leading molecular gastronomer serves, Blanco would charge a mere $65 per person (drinks excepted). The only other Nutmeg restaurant I can think of where one can arrange a tasting of double-digit courses is Hartford's PolytechnicON20 (a restaurant which I also recommend to anyone who will listen).

The Reality

On Monday, June 16th, Ibiza Tapas & Wine Bar held its Grand Opening. Roughly 300 invitations for free tapas and wine had been handed out around town, and perhaps another 300 email invitations had been sent out. Anyone who got indirect word of the event or just happened to stop by was welcome. The opening was held from noon to midnight to try to prevent everyone from congregating at the same time. That strategy worked-somewhat. The restaurant was busy during the afternoon hours but mobbed during the evening hours, with estimates of more than 2,000 total people having attended, equivalent to roughly one-thirtieth of the town's population.

The ever-hospitable Blanco mingled all day with his guests.

Good live music was featured.

The event was so successful that the Hamden fire department had to caution that revelers needed to keep their drinks inside the restaurant and stay within the approved capacity of the restaurant.

Ten tapas particularly suitable for finger food were circulated. Partiers enjoyed tortilla Española, tuna or meat-and-vegetable micro-empanadas, Requesón cheese croquettes, shrimp and scallop ceviche, chicken and chorizo brochettes with cumin aïoli, goat cheese toasts with fig walnut and truffle oil, smoked salmon toasts, sesame-seeded marinated pork loin over toast with romescu sauce, garlic chicken and gazpacho. The food was so well-received that at times it seemed to evaporate even as it left the kitchen. The wines featured included some beautiful Spanish vintages, like an Ondarre Reserva Rioja, an intense Tempranillo-Garnacha-Mazuelo blend. Opening guests went through a staggering amount of food and wine, but Blanco was just happy to get the good word out.

After the Grand Opening, the restaurant closed for three more days of training and fine-tuning before opening for real on Friday, June 19th. The final training event was a double-dinner held on Thursday, June 18th. The entire bar and wait staff was treated to most of the menu so that they could give informed ordering advice to customers.

Blanco wants to encourage patrons to try unusual dishes. If someone doesn't like something, he's prepared to replace it. Not that it's likely he'll often be taken up on that offer.

Even more interesting, three restaurant critics (including yours truly) were invited along with friends and family to experience most of the menu, an indication of both Blanco's confidence and willingness to accept outside input. We critics had the chance to put in our two cents, but we didn't find a great deal to criticize.

On that first Friday, the restaurant did vigorous business, turning most tables two or more times. Not bad, considering the restaurant was still missing a couple of rather basic items it hoped to have in the near future-a liquor permit, a patio, a restaurant sign on the street pole, even stools for the bar. All in due time.

Although still a work in progress, Ibiza Tapas & Wine Bar has plenty going for it. For one thing, it has a modern European ambiance unlike any found in Connecticut.

For another thing, it seems to be drawing not just a sophisticated older crowd but also a young demographic lured by its style, flexibility and affordability.

For another, it has a warm and caring team of restaurant professionals.

And finally, it has its ace in the hole in the form of talented chef Juan García, who served with Blanco both at Ibiza Restaurant and at Meigas.

Since the opening, I have returned to try a few of the delicious tapas, which you can see pictured below.

Ibiza Tapas & Wine Bar, 1832 Dixwell Avenue, Hamden, 203-909-6512

Connecticut Lawn Painting www.ctlawnpainting.com Cell 914 843-4401

I love reading, but I find that I do not have the time to read as much as I want to. So what I do is I buy the audio version of the book I want to read; usually I will look for book titles at Amazon, and then if I feel that it would be a title I want to purchase in the audio version I will be transferred to Audible.com The download process is simple enough and in less than 5 minutes I can be enjoying my audio book in my IPod. To me it makes a big difference to listen to something positive in my car as I drive to my appointments instead of listening to music or the news all the time.

What I find though, is that sometimes a book is so good that I also want to own the paper copy; this happened to me yesterday, I was listening to Wayne Dyer's "Change your thoughts change your life" www.waynedyer.com and when I got to a portion of the book where he spoke about leadership I was blown away and immediately wanted to put down the audio and read and internalize that portion of the book. So yes, I am also ordering the paper copy :)

What's your preference?

PS. I have not tried the Kindle, Amazon's wireless reading devise yet, if anyone has any experience with it, I would love to hear what you think about it.

Thanks for stopping by.

Diego

Connecticut Lawn Painting www.ctlawnpainting.com Cell 914 843-4401

Connecticut Lawn Painting www.ctlawnpainting.com Cell 914 843-4401