Category Archives: Food & Beverage

Texas Winter ’19

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My recent trip to wintertime Texas took me to Dallas and Fort Worth, San Antonio, and a few other burgs. February is winter in Texas, but it’s a pale moon of a winter compared with where I live. During the trip, temps varied but didn’t drop below freezing, and we experienced rain but no ice or snow.

I spent the weekdays working, but I also visited my brothers, one nephew and his family, one nephew by himself and a friend I’ve known for 45 years now.

I made it to a few new places and a few familiar old places. No matter how often you go somewhere, there are always new places, and no matter how familiar an old place is, there are always new aspects.

One new place was the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, which I’ve had a mind to see since we went to Wrightwood 659 in December. Tadao Ando designed both Wrightwood and the Modern, which is easy to visit from Dallas, as Jay and I did: just pop on over on I-30.

While gadding around in greater DFW, we also saw the Cao Dai Tay Ninh Temple and the Cambodian Buddhist Temple of Dallas, whose neighbors in the southwest of the city are the likes of Mission Foods, Standard Meat, Cartamundi USA and Old Dominion Freight Line.

In San Antonio, we had the benefit of a free evening admission to the McNay Art Museum — an example of a familiar place offering some new things to see. Later, while on the road between San Antonio and Dallas, we stopped by the Hays County Courthouse in San Marcos and the San Marcos City Cemetery, whose burials go back to the 1870s.

Had some good meals along the way too. In San Antonio, a dinner at one of the Paesanos locations, a local Italian restaurant with roots in the 1968 world’s fair. Good pork shank and gnocchi. In Waco, a lunch at a joint that goes even further back: the curiously named Health Camp, in business, as the exterior says, since 1949. Good burger and shake.

In Dallas, on the day I flew in, I enjoyed sausage and homemade sauerkraut and Texas beer and other good things at my nephew Sam’s house, on the occasion of his 36th birthday. Naturally there was birthday cake too.

Reminded me of the morning, late in my college career, when Jay called me to tell me that Sam had been born. Been an uncle ever since.

Ann at 16

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After the deep freeze at the end of January, we had some warmer days — above freezing, quite a relief — and more recently just ordinary winter cold. The sort of persistent chill that makes February both the shortest and the longest month.

On Saturday, Ann had friends over for her 16th birthday.

She requested a birthday pie. Chocolate and peanut butter, made by a local grocery store that does fine pies.

Which reminds me of the question — something I’ve wondered about occasionally — why cake? Why not birthday pie? I suppose since cakes don’t need refrigeration, they trumped pies in pre-refrigeration days.

But why cakes at all? Know who I suspect of inventing the custom? Victorians, of course.

I’m not sure how reliable this source is, but it implies that while birthday cake had antecedents in German lands before the 19th century, the Victorian middle class made it the popular custom we know today. Like the Christmas tree.

In fact, birthday celebrations themselves, especially children’s birthdays, became popular in their modern form during the mid-19th century. Can’t say I’m surprised.

Cow Ride at the Mall

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Australia Day has come and gone. Oz is reportedly suffering a viciously hot summer this year. Adelaide, a pleasant place in my recollection, seems to be getting hit especially hard.

Meanwhile, here in North America, or at least my part of it, after being a slacker for most of December and part of January, winter is hitting hard. Dead ahead, according to the NWS on Sunday evening:

WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 9 PM THIS EVENING TO 6 PM CST MONDAY… Heavy snow and blowing snow tonight with freezing drizzle and blowing snow likely at times Monday. Snow rates overnight into early morning are likely to reach up to an inch per hour at times. This will result in very low visibilities and rapid snow accumulations into the early morning commute. Total snow accumulations of 3 to 7 inches and ice accumulations of a light glaze expected.

This after subzero temps on Friday, and ahead of temps as low as minus 20 by Tuesday (Fahrenheit, the only scale that’s made for humans). Still, on Saturday things had warmed up to low double-digits, so we were out for a while. The three of us and a friend of Ann’s, on the occasion, not quite precisely, of Ann’s birthday. Nice to get out of the house.

We ate at Gabuttø Burger at Ann’s request. Since I discovered the place at the Mitsuwa food court, the Japanese burgerie has moved into a small strip center on a busy street in Rolling Meadows and seems to be doing well there. We visit a few times a year.

Then to a northwest suburban mall. Not the biggest one, the 2.1 million-square-foot Woodfield, but a smaller one. The one we visited isn’t a dying mall, but it has lost an anchor or two, along with some of its inline stores.

Still, the mall is doing what it can. It now sports a number of places to take children and entertain them, for instance. Not playplaces in the middle of the mall, but small entertainment venues that used to be more conventional retail.

Including a place where you can rent animal-ride scooters for a few minutes. She’s not in the main demographic, but according to Ann, it was a birthday thing to do, so she and her friend spent 10 minutes tooling around the mall.

She picked a cow. Looked like she had a jolly time of it.

First Thursday Debris of 2019

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I was glad to hear about the successful flyby of Ultima Thule at the beginning of the year. And to see the public domain photos. Who wouldn’t be?
Not long ago I also read that actual interstellar probes — or what this article terms “precursor” interstellar probes — are under serious consideration by the people who plan robotic space probes.

Space.com: “The APL study — which focuses on a mission that could launch before 2030 and reach 1,000 AU in 50 years — is based on the next extension of what we know we can do, propulsion physicist Marc Millis, founder of the Tau Zero Foundation, said.

” ‘It is a reasonable candidate for the next deep-space mission,’ Millis told Space.com. ‘It is not, however, a true interstellar mission. It is better referred to as an “interstellar precursor” mission.’ ”

After that I had to look up the Tau Zero Foundation. An organization promoting interstellar space flight. There’s a long-term goal we can all get behind.

A shot of floor tiles at the Chicago Cultural Center.

Some variation of that pattern can be a symbol for the interstellar ambitions of humanity.

I haven’t given much thought to Brussels sprouts over the years, since I’m not especially fond of them. So I looked down in surprise recently at a grocery store at Brussels sprouts still on the stalk.
There’s something a little otherworldly about the stalks when still in the ground.

Not the best of images, but I thought I’d take some before the 2018-19 tree gets the heave-ho.
Its last lighting might be tomorrow.

The Last Days of the Heartland Cafe

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At the intersection of W. Lunt Ave. and N. Glenwood Ave., tucked in a corner of Chicago’s far north Rogers Park neighborhood, is the Heartland Cafe. A neighborhood institution.
Word is that the Heartland is closing on December 31. That was a surprise, since it’s been around a long time — opening during the last year of the Ford administration.

I first went there in 1987 with a friend of mine, Becky, who liked the Heartland because of its vegan options. She was a vegan and told me that suitable items on Chicago restaurant menus were hard to find. After that introduction, I went periodically in the ’80s and ’90s, not because of vegan or even non-meat offerings — widely available now — but because the place makes good food at reasonable prices.

When I learned of its closing, I knew I wanted to go one more time. So we went on Sunday. The drive to Rogers Park from Humboldt Park, where Yuriko takes her cake class, is a slog. Driving through the city is usually a slog. But I’m glad we went.

For lunch I had a very non-vegan Reuben sandwich, a good choice. Yuriko had a breakfast burrito, also good.

Google Maps, which has incorrect information sometimes, is wrong about the Heartland. Its thumbnail description for the place is “vegetarian eatery with a hippie vibe.” Meat is all over the regular menu, so no. And a hippie vibe? What does that even mean? Besides, hippies were passe even by 1976.

As restaurants go, the Heartland has more of a diner vibe. Simplicity.

The Hope poster shows more than mere political sympathies, though it does do that. Rather, the Heartland is one of the places that Barack Obama appeared during his run for the U.S. Senate in those seeming long-ago days of 2004.

Murals adorn the Glenwood embankment across from the restaurant.

They weren’t there the last time I went to the Heartland, whenever that was (ca. 2000 would be a good guess). They’re part of a Rogers Park-specific initiative, Mile of Murals, and were painted in 2010 by a variety of artists.

Among many other things, the Heartland makes an appearance on the wall.

Guess the image will be there longer than the restaurant itself.

November Leftovers

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The amount of Thanksgiving leftovers, a week after the holiday, is down to a single container, a mix of stuffing and mashed potatoes. It has taken some eating to get to this point.

A week ago, our plates were full like so:

The protein this year, tilapia. On this plate, stuffing transitions to potatoes and that transitions to macaroni and cheese, something like the snow-ice-rain progression on recent weather maps.

Зайо Байо Maize Flips

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Before the snow fell on Sunday, I picked up an empty bag in my yard. Random trash in the wind, but I was intrigued enough to take a look at it.

At first I thought it was a Russian snack food bag, but closer inspection revealed that it was imported from Bulgaria, where they use Cyrillic too. Зайо Байо (Zayo Bayo) is a “maize flip” product of Sani-Kons Todorovi of Pernik, Bulgaria.

Judging by the illustration, since the bag was empty, a “maize flip” seems to be a corn puff, in this case flavored with dill. Business.bg tells me that Sani-Kons Todorovi was founded in 1990 — among the first wave of private businesses, presumably — and has made snack food since then. No doubt snack foods were a neglected consumer item in the previous People’s Republic of Bulgaria.

Zayo Bayo is translated as “Hunny Bunny.” My idea is that he’s one of Bugs Bunny’s great-grandsons. Unable to find cartoon work in the United States, he’s trying to make a go of things in Bulgaria as a commercial mascot. He’s probably finding his roots as well. At least one line of Bugs’ ancestry, before the family moved to Brooklyn in the late 19th century, seems to trace from that part of Europe (citation needed).

Lilly at 21

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Good Thanksgiving to all. Back to posting on Sunday the 25th, probably.

Lilly has turned 21. To mark the occasion, recently we went to the same restaurant as last year at her request, and by chance sat at the very same table.

No pics of the food this year. A similar array of sushi. The place, called Sushi Para, does wonderful sushi. One difference this year was that Lilly ordered hot sake to go with the meal, expressing surprise that there was such a thing. Heated in winter, chilled in summer, I told her.

At home we had a cake made by Yuriko. A big chocolate torte actually. Rich chocolate with a dash of edible gold leaf and chestnuts.

Lilly had a good time with it.

At one point, before she blew the candles out, the 2 fell over still lit, releasing rivulets of wax onto the chocolate. Ann sneezed at about the same time.

Once the wax had hardened, however, it was easy to remove.

Big Lou’s Really Big Pizza

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The evening after the funeral all of the family members in town got together for dinner at a place in east San Antonio, way down on W. W. White Road, Big Lou’s Pizza. My nephew Sam had heard about it and took care of the logistics.

The logistics involved ordering a 42-inch pizza ahead of time. Here is everyone at the table posing with a 42-inch pizza.

I’d never seen a pizza that large with my own eyes. I’m certain that went for everyone else at the table. According to one source anyway, it’s the second-largest restaurant pizza in Texas: bested only by a larger one that Big Lou’s makes.

I’m glad to report that it was a good New York-style thin pie. For my part, I ate about a piece and a half. I don’t think anyone else at the table ate any more than that, so there was pizza enough for two boxes of leftovers.

Thursday Detritus

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The rains have cleared away, leaving cold air in their wake. This pattern will keep repeating in the coming months, getting successively colder until snow replaces rain and mere cold air is a polar vortex or some such. Bah. At least the trees are coloring up nicely.

An open question for YouTube: how, in the age of digital spying on consumers — so I hear — can YouTube offer me such wildly off-the-mark ads? Lately I’ve been getting a lot of anti-vapping ads, for instance. Aimed at teenagers. Not, I have to add, ahead of much content that that demographic might watch on YouTube. The chances of me taking up vapping are pretty close to zero, YouTube.

Some time ago I picked up a copy of The Shipping News by Annie Proulx (1993) for $1 at Half Price Books. Now I’m reading it. It’s a good read and there are some good lines in it. Here’s one that helps introduce a character:

For the devil had long ago taken a shine to Tert Card, filled him like a cream horn with itch and irritation.

One of the author’s idiosyncrasies is constructions like that, with “filled” instead of “filling.” But you get used to it, and it works. That’s a wonderful sentence that pretty much sets the tone for Tert Card. We’ve all met people like that.

From a press release over the transom the other day, a subject I have no professional interest in. I’m more interested in how the thing was written. I suspect the writer is a fairly fluent but nevertheless non-native speaker of English (all sic):

Businessmen hailing from UAE have an interest in making some investments in Armenia. The trade turnover in between the two countries has risen 10-folks from twenty-five million to about 250 million USD in the last five years as told by Zaki Nusseibeh, the Minister of the State after the sidelines of the ministerial conference of 17th Francophonie summit…

After Ruddigore on Saturday, Ann wanted ice cream. At about 10 in the evening in Evanston, Andy’s Frozen Custard seemed the only place still open serving something close to ice cream. She agreed that was close enough, so we went.
That image doesn’t have many people in it, but not long after we got there, the place was packed. Seems that selling frozen custard late on Saturday evenings near a major university is a pretty good business.

I’d never been to Andy’s before. Turns out there are about 60 of them, mostly scattered around the central U.S., though as far north as metro Chicago and as far south as central Florida. Andy’s makes a good frozen treat. Too good, in fact. I should have gotten a small triple chocolate instead of a medium.

Who did the score for Doctor Zhivago? I found myself wondering that yesterday. Maybe that’s something I should know, but I looked it up: Maurice Jarre.

That came to mind because I’d turned on the TV and DZ was playing. In fact, the very scene in which Yuri and Lara reunited. The Lara’s theme leitmotif was part of the action. I watched about 15 minutes of it.

“What’s this movie about?” Ann asked. I had to think. It’s been how long since I’ve seen it? In the summer of ’81 at the Texas Union Theatre, or in Japan in the early ’90s, when I saw so many movies on VHS? Either way, over 25 years ago.

“Well, let’s see. Doctor Zhivago, that’s him there, Omar Sharif. He’s a doctor of course, and he has a wife. He likes her well enough, but he really loves this other woman, who’s on screen now. I don’t remember who played her. Anyway, there’s a love triangle and they all get caught up in the Russian Revolution and are often in danger. Bolsheviks show up. Zhivago’s also a poet and sensitive fellow. He spends a lot of time looking off in the distance. And there’s a lot of scenery. Wide shots of the steppes of Russia. It’s an epic of a movie. Did I mention that it’s over three hours long? It’s an epic of epic proportions.”

Despite my flip description, I remember liking the movie whenever I saw it. Odd how details of most movies you see or books you read or music you hear or places you go tend to evaporate over the years, leaving a residue like the one I told to Ann.

Never have read Pasternak, so I don’t even have a residue of the book. Maybe I should, but life is short and Russian novels are long. The most recent one I read, a few years ago, was August 1914. Pretty soon into it, I gave up trying to keep track of all of the many characters.

Maurice Jarre, I learned, is the father of Jean-Michel Jarre, known to me for Oxygène. Back when people had record collections, there was always one kid on each floor of each dorm at your college who had unusual records, things no one else had ever heard of. I can’t remember the lad’s name, but he was on my hall freshman year, and that was one of the records he had.