Category: General

i have lots to post but no time to post it, so i will just share the random workings of my brain. Today i seem to be fixating on this one food I have been really liking lately: prunes.
A much maligned food, the butt (!) of jokes, but so fruity and sweet and delicious — I just love them. Nummy.

On day 2 of the FoodNerd Family run amok in Chicago, we had a hearty breakfast of all the loot from the Polish markets: kraut, beets, chicken loaf, smoked pork, and creamy cakes. Then *gasp* we did a little sightseeing. It was rainy so we drove around downtown gawking at landmarks — Marina City, Wrigley Building, Harold Washington library with its awesome gargoyle-laden crown, Marshall Fields (RIP). And then we drove up Lake Shore Drive so my dad could see Lake Michigan.
Which of course brought us directly to Devon Street. *grin*
We pulled right into a sweet parking spot at the eastern end of the Indo-Pak stretch, and not a moment too soon either, since moments later cops barricaded the block, since there was a fire in a building up the street. Firetrucks and firemen all over the place, spectators rubbernecking, the works. We discreetly eyeballed the carnage from inside the Farm City Meat & Food Market, which caught my eye as we passed. It seems to be a Balkan-focused Muslim market, to judge by the number of Yugoslavian products on the shelves. They have some really pretty jars of honey and nuts, with the nuts arranged carefully in rows like a sand-painting, which would make excellent holiday or hostess gifts.
In the new sari shop right across the street, Mom tried on about 5 different beaded outfits — not saris, but the pant-and-tunic sets that I cannot remember the proper word for. Nothing fit properly, much to the disappointment of the enthusiastic and persistent saleswoman — maybe next time (Mommy loves bright colors and beading, and some of these outfits were really gorgeous, much nicer than a lot of the ones I saw with littlelee & spleen on my last trip to Devon St).

A little further down the street we ran into another police barricade, this one stopping traffic for the Assyrian New Year’s parade running up Western Ave. There’s plenty of Assyrian pride here in Chicago — there were floats, and ranks of Assyrian-American cops in formation, and private cars leaning on their horn and flying flags. This was especially cool because Dad does a lot of reading about Middle Eastern cultures both present and ancient, and filled us in on the specifics.

We stopped at World Fresh Market and got some curry leaves, a lita squash, a handful of flat guvar beans, which turned out to be a bit bitter and quite stringy in texture; i think you are supposed to simmer them a long time, so i re-cooked them in coconut milk and curry paste, and fresh almonds in their furry little jackets, which turned out not to contain fully-formed nuts inside, but rather just soft little proto-nuts. I googled but couldn’t find any info about immature almonds or what to do with them — suggestions welcome.

By then we were pretty hungry, because somehow we got through several hours on Devon Street without having any snacks, so we drove way out west to Superdawg. Which is beyond adorable with its antic anthropomorphized sausages on the roof and all of its retro graphics and carhops and general aesthetic fabulousness, but the dogs are pretty substandard.

First of all, the relish: I know that neon green relish is big here, but it still just freaks me out. And there was way too much relish and mustard on the dogs, and no celery salt or fresh tomato at all, though the green tomato pickle is a nice touch. The fries are pretty lame, and you don’t get the option to not order them, and Dad was endlessly irritated by the fact that the dogs are jammed into a tiny box with the pile of fries, so you have to excavate out all the fries to even lay a finger on your dog in the first place. And their lemonade sucks. The quest for the best Chicago dog continues unabated.

Then on the way down south to the Garfield Park Conservatory, I was unable to resist a quick side trip to the Chicago Food Corp to show off the massive availability of Korean goods in these parts. We found a truly astonishing sheet of beautiful, delicate dried-fish lace, and I acquired a bit of lotus root for kinpira and a new batch of pucks. Yum.
Dinner was at Lou Malnati’s so we could try real Chicago style pizza, which continues to underwhelm. The dough is just too thick and doughy, though Malnati’s is much crunchier than Giordano’s. Daddy disapproves of the sauce, which was pretty much just cooked tomato chunks rather than rich savory sauce, and i tend to agree with him, though the lightness of flavor was admittedly pretty nice in contrast to the heaviness of dough and cheese.
And so concluded our whirlwind exploration of Chicago eating, at least until next time, when I want to take them for southside soul and bbq, and to Goose Island Shrimp House, and to a korean bbq, and Siam Rice & Noodle House, and…

My parents came to visit this weekend. The night they arrived, I dragged them out into the monsoon winds to try out a Friday night fish fry. I made the error of trying to go to the Duke of Perth, which was full of yuppies drinking beer and had a 90 minute wait, so I fell back onto the known winner and found the nearest JJ Fish instead, for the true urban fish experience. JJ Fish fries some DAMN good fish, in a cornmeal crust that isn’t greasy *at all*, and the fish is fresh, and it comes with tangy hot sauce, and sits on top of squishy white bread. So it wasn’t an official fish fry as such, but who cares about technicalities when you’re stuffing your face full of crunchy whitefish and perch?

Over the weekend was my father’s birthday, and we spent the day doing NOTHING that was not related to food. It was awesome. We had breakfast at Perez — we got some machacado con huevos, my favorite shredded beef with scrambled eggs and onions and tomatoes, and dad had ham and eggs (and the entire bowl of pico de gallo, out of which he carefully picked all the bits of jalapeno and devoured before breakfast even arrived — daddy likes his salady vegetables). Mom tends to eat sweets for brekkies, so she got a little bitty chile relleno taco just for form’s sake, plus a plate of sopaipillas and a big glass of orchata. The sopaipillas seemed to be a flour tortilla deep-fried (cheating a bit, but we didn’t really care) dusted with cinnamon sugar and drizzled with honey, served with a bowl of cinnamon-drenched sour cream. Which we licked clean.
Then we checked out the food wholesalers on Randolph between Halsted & Racine — you can get locanico at Columbus Meat Market, Nicholas Meat Market has some tasty looking stuff, and there are cheap thermometers and various gizmos to be had if you aren’t intimidated by the wholesale ambiance. And then we went down the street a bit and checked out Peoria Packing Company: a porkstravaganza without equal. This place was a mob scene. The parking lot was full. The shop was packed to the rafters with folks packing their carts with large amounts of fresh meat, cut to order ribs, smoked hocks or turkey legs, fresh hams with skin still on, dark red rib eyes (for absurdly low prices). You need ribs for a party, you go to Peoria Packing.
By this time of course it was time for lunch, so we went to Al’s #1 Italian Beef, which was a big hit. Even beyond the savory meaty goodness, which any sane person would love, Al’s puts big slabs of cooked green pepper on their sandwiches, which puts my father into nirvana.

Then we drove out to Humboldt Park to check out some real estate, and then we went out to Avondale to the Polish markets. We went to Kurowski’s which I’d been to before, a full-featured market with meat, fresh veg, prepared foods, and canned or jarred wares of all kinds. And this trip, also some pysanky eggs for easter, yay! (I used to make these when I was a kid; I still have the wax stylus somewhere or other.) On the recommendation of A Cook’s Guide to Chicago, we tried Endy’s Deli, aka Andy’s, which assaults you upon entry with the glorious smell of sausages. Dear lord, it smells good in there. And they have a smorgasbord of delicious, dirt-cheap salads, kraut, beets, herring, and so forth, plus a hot case, plus a meat case full of smoked pork loin, fresh meats, sausages of all sorts, and unidentifiable things so tasty-looking I went ahead and bought ’em before I asked what they were. Turns out it’s chicken meatloaf, and turns out it is fucking FANTASTIC.

We ate all this stuff for breakfast the next day. Along with the four kinds of cream-laden cake we got at Pasieka bakery across the street. When you step into a bakery and you can’t see any of the product because of the line of polish-speaking grandmas in front of the glass cases, you know it’s gonna be good. We had a poppy seed cake with chocolate frosting and raisins, a chocolate-rose cake with red jello topping, a pineapple-coconut cream cake, and a poppy seed/coconut/mocha cream fantasia that was my absolute favorite.

And then on the way home we stopped at one of the big Mexican supermarkets also on Milwaukee around Logan Square (Tianguis Supermercado) to eyeball all the goodies there, me yammering all the while about all the stuff I’ve learned to love while I’ve been living here.
By this time it was getting dark and we were tired, so we went home, collapsed onto the couch for an hour or so, and made reservations at Tre Kronor up north on Foster, to get my daddy some smoked herring (mmm, hewwing…) and whatever other scando-treats might be available here in the heart of the midwest. This is a tiny little place, homier than I was expecting, and boy does it have good food. The herrings are lovely, a pickled version and a mustard-sauce version, with hardboiled egg and salady bits to go with it. The Toast Skagen trumped even the hewwings, though, being a lavish mound of sweet chopped arctic shrimp in a dill mayo, accompanied by fresh tomato (decent even in winter) and a few slices of archetypal scandinavian cucumber salad, quick-pickled in vinegar and sugar. Mom wasn’t terribly hungry (jeez, after a massive mexican breakfast and an italian beef and fries, I just don’t see why) so she had a cup of onion soup and the crab cakes, both very tasty. I had swedish meatballs that were soft and tender and delicious in a light gravy with a pile of mashed potatoes and a ramekin of lingonberry sauce, and a whole DISHful of more cucumbers, be still my heart. Daddy had some of the best duck breast I’ve ever had, very simple but perfectly cooked and tender, with a lingonberry sauce.
And then we went home, gave daddy his birthday presents, and fell over into a dead sleep. Only to wake up and have at it again the next day, but I’ll save that for the next post.

I went to an offsite company meeting last week in California with my whole company. This was for the most part a very satisfactory experience (except for the whole food poisoning situation, which has been proven to be completely unrelated to the trip), but on our first night there, we all had dinner at a vegetarian restaurant that had been billed to us as just completely fabulous, really great, fantastic food, eat there all the time. (We have a California office, and this place was down the street from it.)
I was trying to keep an open mind, even though I’d checked the internet and figured out it was a chinese-style place specializing in fake meat, which to me is a VERY BAD SIGN since there is a place like that in Boston that is just horrid. Bear in mind though that there is also a chinese-style vegan place in Boston (Allston actually) that is unexpectedly terrific, if a bit low in protein — we have dined there happily with vegetarian friends, on dishes that treat vegetables well and make them the stars. So I am not anti-vegetarian, I am anti-bad-food. And that’s what we got for dinner out in San Mateo: Really Bad Food.

The spring roll was the one exception — it was full of nice fresh cabbage and was quite tasty and well fried. Everything else ranged from mediocre to truly nasty. The actual vegetables themselves were pretty good, cooked crisp-tender, but the sauces were pretty lame, and the faux meat was generally icky. The mushroom-based not-beef was the best of the lot, tasting fairly okay if you were expecting mushroom taste rather than meat taste. And the potstickers were just a travesty: thick bready dough filled with nasty things claiming to be vegetables. Just wrong.
Compounding an already bad situation was the fact that there were four of us at the table, all women, all carnivorous, all ravenous from a long flight from Chicago, and all by this time very very cranky. By the time the entrees had arrived we’d already resolved to take matters into our own hands and go out later to the In-N-Out Burger we’d seen next to the freeway on our way from the airport. And so we did, and at last all was right with the world.

Turns out it wasn’t salmonella that I’ve been suffering from — it’s campylobacter.
C read my post and immediately called to ask how I knew it was salmonella, at which point of course I told him I didn’t, I actually had no idea, and that was when the last part of the puzzle fell into place. Turns out he’s been just as sick for just as long, and his doctor did the tests and figured out he had a campylobacter infection. We both got sick Thursday night/Friday morning, and have had identical symptoms — his big victory today was eating some toast and marmalade.
Which, unfortunately, means that we got food poisoning when we were eating together — which was the absolutely delightful meal we had at HB last week. God damn. We really liked our food and the atmosphere there, and had every intention of going back, but at this point i’d have to say there’s no fucking way. Individual cases of campylobacter infection are caused primarily by uncooked poultry, and since well-fried chicken livers are as close as we got to poultry in that meal, that means the culprit is bad kitchen habits: cross-contamination. Bummer.
We are sad. For so many reasons.

picture of the wines C brought
the pinot noir was delightful

This is fairly grody, but it’s so hilarious it had to be shared. I never wondered, but now I know: drinking large amounts of purple gatorade makes your poo BRIGHT GREEN. Like leaves on plants green. I laughed so hard I cried when I saw the green there in the bowl.
Apparently it’s the vast amount of Blue #1 dye they use to make it purple — passes right through your system and combines with the yellow tones in poo to make green.

Photos from O’Hare Airport: Exhibits A & B proving that our culture is criminally, tragically fucked up.

I had the kickass jumbo dog at the United Center, and that got me thinking: I’ve not had any other proper Chicago-style dog since I moved. So i started looking around for some. And taking tallasiandude to get some. And we found mostly sad, small weiners only vaguely in the same vicinity as the full salad+celery salt condiment array that is required.
So we did what any sane dog-seeker would do: We asked the homeless guy who asked us for money. He directed us to Tony’s Place at Chicago and State. Which is open nice and late, and has a decent dog, but I am still searching. Maybe what I want is really a polish? I am imagining that a polish is a kielbasa, which is stronger flavored and thicker than I have in mind, but perhaps I am just mistaken about that.

I’ve heard Gold Coast Dogs is good, and i want to go try Superdawg because those dog-statues on the roof crack me up. And my coworker says to try the Weiner’s Circle but only late at night when drunk. Anyone with a good lead on a serious Chicago dog, with good beefy dog flavor underneath a piquant salad of dill pickle, mustard, hot sport peppers, onions, fresh tomato and celery salt, let me know. Thanks!

i saved up all the beer bottles from the deep-fry party so i could return them and get the deposits back. So this morning I looked on line to find out where to take them, and couldn’t find anything. I looked up Whole Foods, figuring they’re all crunchy-granola and will undoubtedly take them, and nothing. So I called them up, and they acted all confused, and put me on hold to go find an eco-focused dude in the beer department — at which point the lightbulb went on and I went to check the labels on the bottles, and lo, ILLINOIS DOESN’T HAVE A BOTTLE BILL.
DUH.
It never occurred to me that a place wouldn’t have a bottle bill, even though for 35 years I’ve been reading the list on bottle labels of the tiny handful of states that DO have them. Oy — you can take the girl out of the east coast, but you can’t take the east coast out of the girl, at least not so easily. Dang. Now I have to put them all in the trash, bah.

Back from a 2-day bidness trip to Toledo, and though it went just fine, spending that much time in on-mode pretty well knocked me on my ass. Feeling sniffly and vaguely queasy from the flight, I staggered into the house and made instant tom yum ramen spiked with extra carrots, cabbage, zucchini, fish cake & thai meatballs. And then I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation, flipping channels to What Not To Wear during the commercials. Which helped, but I still felt el-crapola. And I have no herbal tea in the house. And no lemons with which to make a hot toddy. What I did have, though, is some Rose’s Lime Juice, some fancy German honey, some Gosling’s Spiced Rum, and a kettleful of hot water. The half-assed homemaker’s last-minute toddy – yum yum.