Category Archives: Food & Beverage

The Telephone Pole Faces of E. 57th

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On Sunday, Lilly and I drove to Hyde Park, home to the University of Chicago and neighborhood eateries such as Salonica, a Greek diner on E. 57th St. at Blackstone Ave. Yuriko, Ann and I ate there last year during our visit to see the Robie House and other Hyde Park places.

This time, Lilly and I ate there. It was busy at about noon, but the line wasn’t out of the door. The patrons were a good mix of students and neighborhood residents. At least, I’m fairly sure that the grayhairs and young families were locals; and the young men and women — every jack one of the men with a beard — were students.

Salonica, Hyde ParkLilly had an omelet, I had pancakes. It’s the kind of place that serves tasty breakfasts all day, besides Greek items and sandwiches. In a place like this, breakfast is the thing for me. If I’ve already had breakfast that day, I have another. So it was this time.

A block and half west of Salonica are two telephone poles flanking the spot where the alley between Dorchester Ave. and the small Bixler Park meets E. 57th St. Each of the poles is painted with a green image at about eye level. Facelike, green with a yellow outline and blue and orange details. Maybe it’s not supposed to be a face. Whatever it is, it’s a lively work.

E 57th St ChicagoI remembered seeing them last year, so they’ve been around at least that long. If you go to Google Streetview, you can see them as green splotches.

Nothing like a little local detail. Hyperlocal detail, it is. Not even the most experiential-oriented, don’t-ever-admit-you’re-a-tourist-even-though-you-are guidebooks or web sites can cover that kind of thing.

Happy Turn Rice Crackers

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Yuriko bought some Happy Turn rice crackers (senbei) recently. They’re oval crackers with a light sweet-soy flavor. Happy Turn is the name — or rather, the English rendering of the katakana name, ハッピーターン. A product of Kameda Seika Confectionery.

Happy Turn rice snacksThey’re very popular in Japan with both adults and children, and they didn’t last long in our house. I prefer Bonchi rice snacks myself, which are shaped like small bowls and are a bit saltier, but I’m fond of these too. Been a while since we’d had any.

Moo & Oink

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All of the holiday-themed merchandise you’d actually want to buy is long gone by now, snapped up at discounts in the days after Christmas. That leaves the likes of the Ugly Christmas Sweater Cookie Set that I saw for sale today: a ridiculous item at a very steep markdown. Makes 6 to 8 ugly sweater cookies, the box said. It was illustrated with cookies shaped like brightly decorated sweaters.

When and how did the notion of ugly Christmas sweaters become popular? It happened while I wasn’t paying attention. I’ll continue to be apathetic about it, so I won’t bother to look into it. (But I will record here that Lilly went to a party with that theme this year.)

I didn’t buy the cookie set. I did need some barbecue sauce, and happened across an 18 oz. bottle Moo & Oink High 5 BBQ Sauce. That I bought.

Marketing verbiage on the bottle says: “Let’s face it, you take your BBQ seriously. So when it comes to what you put on your ‘Q,’ serious BBQ lovers are brushing on the thick & tasty blend of ingredients in HIGH 5™ BBQ Sauce.” The first ingredient is high fructose corn syrup.

Seems to be residuum of the Moo & Oink grocery stores that used to be on the South Side of Chicago, but which closed in 2011. I never went to any of their stores, but I did occasionally see the commercials.

The Sounds of the Solstice Breakfast

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Longest night, shortest day just passed up here in the Northern Hemisphere. Like most other days, I got up and made some breakfast.

Actually, not quite everything. Lilly made eggs and brewed coffee. This is what both of those sounded like together: frying egg and the drip-drip-drip from nearby Mr. Coffee.

Eggs and Coffee Dec 2014

The toaster oven tick-tick-ticks. I prefer that mechanical sound to the hum of something digital.

Toaster Oven Dec 2014

Here’s another breakfast sound that might be a little hard to guess.

Grits Dec 2014

Yes, it’s the bubbling of grits when the pot is nearly done. Big steam bubbles rise from the bottom and puff their way through the surface of the grits. Reminds me of the films you see of bubbling hot mud.

Ecuadorian Choco

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Those jokesters at Trader Joe’s, or at least their hired copywriters, are still coming up with too-clever-by-half product names. We were at one of the stores recently, and noticed Moral Fiber brand bran muffins. What’s the subtext of that? These muffins promote ethical digestion?

We didn’t buy any of the muffins, but we did buy Inner Peas – a bag of green pea-based snacks. Or, to quote the bag, “Trader Joe’s Contemplates Inner Peas.” Maybe they’ve been visualizing whorled peas, too.

It doesn’t have a twee name, but we also bought 65% Cacao Dark Chocolate-Single Origin-Ecuador. I don’t ever remembering trying any Ecuadorian chocolate, so that was just about enough to make me part with $2 for the opportunity. The verbiage on the box promises that it’s made only from “Arriba cocoa beans that are native to Ecuador. The bean are grown exclusively in the cocoa plantations located along the Guayas River…”

Turns out that Ecuadoran choco is making a comeback. According to the BBC: “Over the last decade, as the demand for more flavourful cocoa has risen, Ecuador has emerged as the pre-eminent exporter of fine beans.

“It is a favourite destination for globetrotting chocolatiers in search of the best, and cocoa production has also become a sustainable source of income for Ecuador’s farmers.”

The Globetrotting Chocolatiers. There’s a band name or a title of something in that somewhere. Anyway, we’ve tried the Ecuadorian chocolate, and it’s high-quality stuff.

Thanksgiving ’14

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The Thanksgiving meal, served at about 5 pm on Thursday, minus the rolls and olives.

Thanksgiving dinner 2014

Lilly insisted on making all the starches: from left to right, genuine mashed potatoes, boxed stuffing, and her own mac & cheese creation. The meat – between the potatoes and m&c – was tilapia, though roast beef was available as well. Non-alcoholic cider came in wine-style bottles: once again, Martinelli’s Gold Medal Sparkling Cider.

The meal was good, so was the time we spend preparing and consuming it. Even better, the holiday represented three whole days when I didn’t have to pay attention to my laptop or email or or clients’ web sites or Google News or any of it. Some of Wednesday and Sunday, too, so you could call it four.

Hi, How Are You

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Just before dark on November 8, Tom took us to the corner of Guadalupe and 21st. That’s the location of the “Hi, How Are You” mural, also known as “Jeremiah the Innocent.”

Austin, Nov 8, 2014It was the first I’d heard of it, but I haven’t spent that much time in Austin in the last 20 years. A record store that used to be on the site hired musician and artist Daniel Johnston, who has some renown in Austin, to paint the mural in 1993. Popular demand kept it intact when the location became a Baja Fresh in 2004, and now the restaurant on the other side of the wall is called Thai, How Are You?

Thai sounded just like the thing for dinner, especially since we hadn’t taken the time to have much lunch, so we went. I’m glad to report that the Thai, How Are You? serves good food.

Everywhere a Sign

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A question to ponder: How can Crème Caramel Chicago’s product be so good? Ingredients: milk, eggs, sugar, cream, caramel, vanilla. That’s it. Yet in the words of Shakespeare, it’s a wow.

It’s also a product of EU Foods, though it has nothing to do with that supranational entity, I think, since it was made in Bensenville, Illinois.

Another thing to ponder: a thematic men’s room sign.

Samurai bathroom attendantI saw it about a year ago in Dallas at the Ann & Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Museum. As I write this, the wires – quaint, that term – are burning up with news of the first U.S. Ebola case, and the honor goes to Dallas. Well, why not? Texas excels at so much else.

I doubt that we’ll get an epidemic, though. What we will get is excessive news coverage. Just another reason to avoid cable news, out in that vast wasteland. Vaster now than when I was born; a regular Sahara.

Newton MinowI didn’t know that Newton Minow had an honorary street sign in Chicago, but I saw it downtown last month. I’m happy to report that at 88, Mr. Minow is still alive and kicking.

Thursday Debris

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Distinctly cool today. We’re in for a run of cool days — enough to use the heater. A bit of fall too soon, but there will be some more warm days before there aren’t any more until next year.

The local skunk population seems to be way up. I smell them often when driving along. At night, I’ve seen a few live skunks scurrying down the street – the first time that’s ever happened since I moved to the northwest suburbs over a decade ago. By day, I see dead skunks on the road.

Not long ago, early one evening, I went out the front door and there on the driveway was the distinct black-and-white of a skunk. I stopped instantly. It stopped too. I figured it would do what most animals do in the face of a larger animal – get away. Advance on the animal, get sprayed. Otherwise, not. I was right, it hurried away.

A headline spotted today, via Google News: “Islamists Are Not Our Friends.” An Op-Ed in the NYT. Glad you cleared that up, headline writer. I would drag out Captain Obvious, but that seems a little adolescent, as many Internet memes are. Why is he a captain, anyway? Patterned after Captain America and the even greater Captain Canuck, I suppose, but isn’t –man the common suffix for a superhero, even a satirical one? Greater minds than mine will have to sort these questions out.

Another head: “DC teacher has sixth-graders compare George Bush to Adolf Hitler.” That from Fox, which is probably trying to highlight the shocking things that public school teachers do, especially if they have the temerity to belong to a union. But then again, you can compare the two (and I’m assuming they mean the younger Bush, but it doesn’t matter). Conclusion of such a comparison: Bush wasn’t much like Hitler. No major American politician has been, is, or can be. Well, maybe Huey Long had a bit of der Führer in him, but we’ll never know for sure.

From Newser, which seems to be a Weird News site: “Waitress Hits Lottery, Won’t Quit Job.” Why is that news? Is that supposed to be salt-of-the-earth admirable in some way? Or just the mark of a shriveled imagination? It just begs for an Onion satire. They’ve probably already done it: “Waitress Hits Lottery, Says Take This Job and Shove It.”

Product Thursday, example 1: Vigo Black Beans & Rice. In the convenient 8 oz. package, “completely seasoned & easy to prepare,” as the package says. Also: an Authentic Cuban Recipe. For a thing you cook in boiling water for a while – and that’s pretty much all there is to it – Vigo Black Beans & Rice is pretty tasty. Everyone liked it. Now if I could only remember where I bought it.

Example 2: Pirate’s Booty. Yuriko, impressed by a sample being given away, bought a bag of the white cheddar snacks. Shrug. Coincidentally, Lileks had a comment about the bag this week: “I have always hated this guy. Partly for the way he’s drawn. Partly for the fact that the food within is overpriced and insubstantial. But mostly for THAR BE GOOD, which he says on the larger packages. It just bothers me.”

The cartoon pirate on the bag does look like a Hanna-Barbera reject, but the stereotypical pirate verbiage doesn’t bother me particularly. After all, Talk Like a Pirate Day is coming up soon (next Friday). Like National Gorilla Suit Day, it comes but once a year.

Speaking of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon factory, I saw the introduction to the original Space Ghost the other day, probably for the first time in well over 40 years. Why? One of those things that happens when you’ve got a lot of other, more important things to do. One thing struck me about it. Space Ghost sure seemed to fight a lot of man-sized insectoid creatures.

There Ain’t no Coupe de Ville Hiding at the Bottom of a Cracker Jack Box

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I never was much for Cracker Jacks. Maybe because it was marketed as the kind of thing adults thought kids should like. Or maybe that it seemed fossilized in another time even 40 years ago, though simply being old usually doesn’t put me off a thing. Mainly, though, it’s that molasses taste.

A box of Cracker Jacks made its way into the house recently. I think one of Ann’s friends brought it over. At least it still looks like a box of Cracker Jacks should, complete with mascot Sailor Jack and his dog Bingo. The candy is, of course, part of Chicago history, though it hasn’t been owned locally in quite a while, unlike that other Gilded Age favorite, the Tootsie Roll.

I didn’t eat any Cracker Jacks this time, but I did find the “prize.” An Arizona Diamondbacks sticker. I’ve read that there’s also some kind of code for some kind of app, but I couldn’t find that. Really, Frito-Lay? You can’t spring for two- or three-tenths of a cent for a little plastic toy made in Guangdong Province?