My Impression Now live in Minneapolis
Probably my favorite band of all time, Guided by Voices, reunited recently for a tour and I was lucky enough to see them 3 times in Chicago, Newport, KY and Columbus, OH. I got into Guided by Voices sometime around 1998 and remember having my mind completely blown first time I really listened to them. There are a handful of rock bands in my life that have had such a profound impact on me the first time I hear them that in the 2 to 3 minutes from when I hit 'PLAY" and the first song ends, I realize almost instantly that my life has somehow been altered. GBV has probably had that impact on me more than any other band.
Listening to an amazing rock band is bliss for me. My ears may be ringing the next day (I am trying to get better about remembering ear plugs as I am sure my hearing is not what it once was), but it makes me happy in ways few other things do. At my moments of greatest sadness and despair it was music that usually brought me around (along with good friends but in many ways the two go hand in hand for me). When I went through something very traumatizing many years ago I took solace in the music of my favorite bands. Some of my greatest moments of utter joy have been watching my favorite band surrounded by good friends. Rock and roll makes me appreciate being alive.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Pizza and beer
As I said in a previous post, taste is subjective. Yesterday I took a trip to Indiana with a couple friends and had pizza for lunch. It was okay. It wasn't terrible, but it definitely wasn't amazing. It was the kind of thin crust pizza you find all over the midwest. Talking to someone after they were raving about how good the pizza there and I was a little surprised. Like I said, it wasn't terrible, but it didn't strike me as anything particularly remarkable as far as pizza goes.
Is their opinion of the pizza wrong? No. I used to get very opinionated about my tastes in food but over time I've decided that for whatever reason (geographic or biological) we all like what we like so I try to be a little more respectful of those differences.
I moved to Chicago in 2001. I knew when I moved here that Chicago was known for it's pizza. I love pizza and had a couple places I always enjoyed going to back in Boston (Pizzeria Regina in the North End) and Portland, Maine (Silly's on the East End/Munjoy Hill). I'd also spent time plenty of time in New York and had some excellent slices there.
Pizza in Chicago was disappointing. Deep dish to me is not so much pizza as it is a casserole and completely overrated. So my friends told me to try the thin crust. I'm not sure what the appeal is of eating pizza on a crust the consistency of the water cracker but I don't care for it. And cutting pizza into squares just seems wrong to me. Pizza is a pie and should be cut into pie slices, and flexible enough to fold in half. And there was always too much sauce and the cheese had a strange consistency. It wasn't horrible, just really mediocre and not much better than the average frozen pizza.
Luckily, since I moved here, more New York style and Neapolitan style pizza places have opened up. Piece (they actually describe their pizza as New Haven style) and Santullo's in Wicker Park are both excellent. Spacca Napoli in Ravenswood is the best of the Neapolitan style places I've been to in Chicago. They use quality ingredients and the crust has a nice char on the bottom and is a good mix of crispy and chewy.
My favorite of them all is Great Lake in Andersonville. Esquire called them the best pizza in the US and I think they deserved it. They use seasonal, local ingredients and have wonderful crust and they take great care in making each pizza to ensure high quality. Unfortunately there are about 12 seats in the whole restaurant (this doubles in the summer when they have outdoor seating) and one oven and they don't rush so you will very likely have to wait a while. Last I heard they have no intention of expanding. If you go to Yelp and look them up you will see reviews from a bunch of people who don't believe in waiting for pizza and think they should run their business more like Dominos (I respectfully disagree with these people). You will also see reviews from people like me who think they make an amazing pie and think it is well worth the wait. It's BYOB so I suggest grabbing an extra bottle of wine and bring someone you enjoy talking to (or sit at the big communal table and talk to the other customers. Sometimes they will trade slices of pizza with you if you ask nicely).
Most of the native midwesterners I have met disagree with me on pizza so a lot of the places I like I will not recommend to them simply because it's probably not their cup of tea. The pizza I like is not pizza people who think Lou Malnati's is the best thing ever will probably enjoy. Which is fine. To each his own.
I developed a preference for higher quality beer around the time I was legally old enough to drink. I have my brothers to thank for that. One of them worked for a brewery and once when he was home visiting, he turned me on to Guinness and I was smitten. I still drank the cheap stuff because I was young and short on cash and getting drunk once in a while was still a novelty. I drank Guinness when I could though and soon after that started discovering local craft brews. I prefer stouts and porters. I like dark, rich and malty beers and I've never been much of a hophead. I can appreciate good hoppy beers from time to time but they aren't my first choice. There are beers out there I like more than Guinness (Bell's Kalamazoo Stout for instance) but Guinness is a sentimental favorite and rarely disappoints.
My boyfriend is the exact opposite. He likes IPAs and ESBs and beers with names containing the word 'hop'. He tried a Guinness about a month ago because he hadn't tried one in a number of years and thought maybe he was missing something. After one sip he made a face and gave it to me to finish. We have both learned how to recommend beers to each other because usually if one of us doesn't like it the other probably will. And even if I don't agree with him, I can at least respect the fact that at least he doesn't like crappy beer.
Is their opinion of the pizza wrong? No. I used to get very opinionated about my tastes in food but over time I've decided that for whatever reason (geographic or biological) we all like what we like so I try to be a little more respectful of those differences.
I moved to Chicago in 2001. I knew when I moved here that Chicago was known for it's pizza. I love pizza and had a couple places I always enjoyed going to back in Boston (Pizzeria Regina in the North End) and Portland, Maine (Silly's on the East End/Munjoy Hill). I'd also spent time plenty of time in New York and had some excellent slices there.
Pizza in Chicago was disappointing. Deep dish to me is not so much pizza as it is a casserole and completely overrated. So my friends told me to try the thin crust. I'm not sure what the appeal is of eating pizza on a crust the consistency of the water cracker but I don't care for it. And cutting pizza into squares just seems wrong to me. Pizza is a pie and should be cut into pie slices, and flexible enough to fold in half. And there was always too much sauce and the cheese had a strange consistency. It wasn't horrible, just really mediocre and not much better than the average frozen pizza.
Luckily, since I moved here, more New York style and Neapolitan style pizza places have opened up. Piece (they actually describe their pizza as New Haven style) and Santullo's in Wicker Park are both excellent. Spacca Napoli in Ravenswood is the best of the Neapolitan style places I've been to in Chicago. They use quality ingredients and the crust has a nice char on the bottom and is a good mix of crispy and chewy.
My favorite of them all is Great Lake in Andersonville. Esquire called them the best pizza in the US and I think they deserved it. They use seasonal, local ingredients and have wonderful crust and they take great care in making each pizza to ensure high quality. Unfortunately there are about 12 seats in the whole restaurant (this doubles in the summer when they have outdoor seating) and one oven and they don't rush so you will very likely have to wait a while. Last I heard they have no intention of expanding. If you go to Yelp and look them up you will see reviews from a bunch of people who don't believe in waiting for pizza and think they should run their business more like Dominos (I respectfully disagree with these people). You will also see reviews from people like me who think they make an amazing pie and think it is well worth the wait. It's BYOB so I suggest grabbing an extra bottle of wine and bring someone you enjoy talking to (or sit at the big communal table and talk to the other customers. Sometimes they will trade slices of pizza with you if you ask nicely).
Most of the native midwesterners I have met disagree with me on pizza so a lot of the places I like I will not recommend to them simply because it's probably not their cup of tea. The pizza I like is not pizza people who think Lou Malnati's is the best thing ever will probably enjoy. Which is fine. To each his own.
I developed a preference for higher quality beer around the time I was legally old enough to drink. I have my brothers to thank for that. One of them worked for a brewery and once when he was home visiting, he turned me on to Guinness and I was smitten. I still drank the cheap stuff because I was young and short on cash and getting drunk once in a while was still a novelty. I drank Guinness when I could though and soon after that started discovering local craft brews. I prefer stouts and porters. I like dark, rich and malty beers and I've never been much of a hophead. I can appreciate good hoppy beers from time to time but they aren't my first choice. There are beers out there I like more than Guinness (Bell's Kalamazoo Stout for instance) but Guinness is a sentimental favorite and rarely disappoints.
My boyfriend is the exact opposite. He likes IPAs and ESBs and beers with names containing the word 'hop'. He tried a Guinness about a month ago because he hadn't tried one in a number of years and thought maybe he was missing something. After one sip he made a face and gave it to me to finish. We have both learned how to recommend beers to each other because usually if one of us doesn't like it the other probably will. And even if I don't agree with him, I can at least respect the fact that at least he doesn't like crappy beer.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Why am I here?
Food blogs are ubiquitous I realize. I'm not doing anything that different.
Thing is, food is a subjective thing. I have no way of knowing how a bite of food will taste on your palate and what makes one person cringe in disgust will make another drool in anticipation. I do not claim to be an expert on food but I enjoy it and I know what I like and what tastes good to me.
As far as the writing part, well, I have a lot of free time. Like many people I was laid off from my job (long story short, big bank takes over small bank and inevitably there are some redundancies and I was one of them). I spent 8 and a half years working in a bank and prior to that I spent 2 years working for a mutual fund company. I liked working in finance okay, it paid the bills and I was good at it. But I didn't love it. My severance gave me a good cushion and I was fortunate in that I paid off my debt prior to being laid off. I decided that if I can manage it I would like to have a job I really like. It may not happen and I may wind up having to take whatever I can get if I stay unemployed much longer. I don't plan on being too picky because I really can't be, but I spent over a decade working a job I was ambivalent about and I'd like to start a new trend if I can. It may involve going back to school, but that's okay.
I figured while I do my job hunt to spend part of my time doing something I enjoy. I really don't know if I'm even that good of a writer, but it feels good to have a creative outlet.
So this is the place I'll be using to write about restaurants (if you have any recommendations, please pass them along), dishes I attempts to make, dishes other people make, food memories and I can pretty much guarantee that I will go off on many tangents. I will probably tell you too much about myself, but blogging is a somewhat masturbatory exercise so I figure that is to be expected.
Anyway, here goes nothing.
Thing is, food is a subjective thing. I have no way of knowing how a bite of food will taste on your palate and what makes one person cringe in disgust will make another drool in anticipation. I do not claim to be an expert on food but I enjoy it and I know what I like and what tastes good to me.
As far as the writing part, well, I have a lot of free time. Like many people I was laid off from my job (long story short, big bank takes over small bank and inevitably there are some redundancies and I was one of them). I spent 8 and a half years working in a bank and prior to that I spent 2 years working for a mutual fund company. I liked working in finance okay, it paid the bills and I was good at it. But I didn't love it. My severance gave me a good cushion and I was fortunate in that I paid off my debt prior to being laid off. I decided that if I can manage it I would like to have a job I really like. It may not happen and I may wind up having to take whatever I can get if I stay unemployed much longer. I don't plan on being too picky because I really can't be, but I spent over a decade working a job I was ambivalent about and I'd like to start a new trend if I can. It may involve going back to school, but that's okay.
I figured while I do my job hunt to spend part of my time doing something I enjoy. I really don't know if I'm even that good of a writer, but it feels good to have a creative outlet.
So this is the place I'll be using to write about restaurants (if you have any recommendations, please pass them along), dishes I attempts to make, dishes other people make, food memories and I can pretty much guarantee that I will go off on many tangents. I will probably tell you too much about myself, but blogging is a somewhat masturbatory exercise so I figure that is to be expected.
Anyway, here goes nothing.
Confessions of a pain in the *ss (part 2)
So after a couple of years of going meatless I decide to become what people usually call a pescatarian. I was living in Portland, Maine at the time and it's a tough place to live if you don't eat fish. Its just so fresh and plentiful, in addition to the fact that Portland is one of the best places to live if you like to go out to eat. Most of the restaurants downtown and in the Old Port are small and locally owned. I have been to major cities that cannot match Portland in the quality and quantity of good restaurants, breweries, coffee roasters and bakeries. I worked in some of those restaurants and it was in those restaurants that I learned to appreciate foods I didn't care for previously. The one thing Portland was lacking though was decent Mexican food (or any ethnic food that wasn't Italian), but seeing as the state of Maine is 96.5% white that should come as no shock.
I moved to Boston a few years later and in Boston I was exposed to a wider variety of ethnic foods. My neighborhood in East Somerville had this place called Taco Loco that was actually owned by El Salvadorians and my guilty pleasure there were these things called pupusas which are sort of like corn turnovers with cheese in the middle served with this stuff that was a combination of salsa and sauerkraut. Simple but amazing. I also worked for an Icelandic bakery and coffeehouse and discovered that the best way to stay thin eating croissants and scones every day is to run up and down a flight of stairs 50 times during a shift. I also started eating Indian food. I'm a bit of a spice wimp which I will get into later and I took some experimenting before I figured out what I liked.
It was also while in Boston that I was introduced to Trader Joe's. To this day I do about 80% of my grocery shopping there. I can spend way too much money if I make the mistake of going there on an empty stomach. I spend too much there even if I'm not hungry but it does less damage to my bank account than Whole Foods. If I ever decide to move again having a Trader Joe's nearby will be one of the requirements along with a decent public transportation system.
I moved to Chicago in 2001 and lasted about 6 months before I started eating red meat again. Being a pescatarian in Chicago is rather disappointing when you've spent the rest of your life living within a mile of the ocean. I started out with chicken but chicken gets tiresome very quickly. I was in Milwaukee with my boyfriend at the time and he was eating a burger from Kopp's Custard. Not sure what came over me but I asked him for a bite. I wound up eating about a quarter of his burger. The next week we went out to a Colombian Steak place and it was delicious. After almost 14 years I was officially off the meat wagon.
Do I regret being a vegetarian? No. I would not have the appreciation for fruit and vegetables that I have today if I hadn't given up eating meat. Do I regret going back to eating meat? No. I don't think we need to eat meat all the time, but having a high quality piece of meat on occasion is enjoyable.
I moved to Boston a few years later and in Boston I was exposed to a wider variety of ethnic foods. My neighborhood in East Somerville had this place called Taco Loco that was actually owned by El Salvadorians and my guilty pleasure there were these things called pupusas which are sort of like corn turnovers with cheese in the middle served with this stuff that was a combination of salsa and sauerkraut. Simple but amazing. I also worked for an Icelandic bakery and coffeehouse and discovered that the best way to stay thin eating croissants and scones every day is to run up and down a flight of stairs 50 times during a shift. I also started eating Indian food. I'm a bit of a spice wimp which I will get into later and I took some experimenting before I figured out what I liked.
It was also while in Boston that I was introduced to Trader Joe's. To this day I do about 80% of my grocery shopping there. I can spend way too much money if I make the mistake of going there on an empty stomach. I spend too much there even if I'm not hungry but it does less damage to my bank account than Whole Foods. If I ever decide to move again having a Trader Joe's nearby will be one of the requirements along with a decent public transportation system.
I moved to Chicago in 2001 and lasted about 6 months before I started eating red meat again. Being a pescatarian in Chicago is rather disappointing when you've spent the rest of your life living within a mile of the ocean. I started out with chicken but chicken gets tiresome very quickly. I was in Milwaukee with my boyfriend at the time and he was eating a burger from Kopp's Custard. Not sure what came over me but I asked him for a bite. I wound up eating about a quarter of his burger. The next week we went out to a Colombian Steak place and it was delicious. After almost 14 years I was officially off the meat wagon.
Do I regret being a vegetarian? No. I would not have the appreciation for fruit and vegetables that I have today if I hadn't given up eating meat. Do I regret going back to eating meat? No. I don't think we need to eat meat all the time, but having a high quality piece of meat on occasion is enjoyable.
Confessions of a pain in the *ss (part 1)
Growing up I was a fussy eater. To quote George Carlin, "Fussy eater is a euphemism for 'big pain in the ass'". My mom would agree with that sentiment. When I was 11 years old I went on a 2 week school trip to eastern Europe and when we returned a chaperon from the trip informed my mom that I might be anorexic because they had trouble getting me to eat anything. She told them that while she appreciated their concern, I was not anorexic, just very picky. When given the option of eating something I didn't like or going hungry, I would usually opt to go hungry.
My poor mom. My dad rarely got involved in what I ate, and being the only girl in a family with lots of boys I could often use that to my advantage in getting my dad to do what I wanted, including ordering pizza when my mom wasn't around to make dinner.
Fast forward 6 years to my 17th birthday when I decided after another trip to Europe (Spain this time), that I was going to stop eating red meat. I stayed with a wonderful host family in Madrid, they were incredibly kind and my last weekend there they took me to Segovia to this amazing restaurant. When the menu came out they told me I had to order the lamb or the pork as those were the house specialties and since I wasn't sure if I liked lamb I opted for the pork. Growing up in the US, I was somewhat sheltered in regard to where food came from. I knew where things came from but it didn't always completely register. I had a rude awakening when the pork came out with the foot and tail still attached. I ate it, mostly because I didn't want to offend my host family and also because it was actually very good, but I had a hard time looking at meat in quite the same way after that. I think I wanted to cut out all meat but there were two issues with that. 1) I lived in semi-rural northern New England and most restaurants in the area did not have a vegetarian option at the time aside from cheese pizza and salad that was mostly iceberg lettuce. 2) As my mom pointed out when I informed her of my dietary change, I didn't particularly like most vegetables.
She definitely had a point. But being a semi-vegetarian though I had to start liking them. There are some I'm still not especially fond of (cauliflower and green peppers), but I love eating vegetables now. I'm a huge fan of mushrooms, spinach, cucumbers and carrots and I even like eggplant even if it doesn't like me back. 2 years after cutting out red meat I cut out all meat. 18 months after that I went macrobiotic and that lasted 6 months until I found myself at a lobster bake on the coast of Maine. They pulled the mussels out of the seaweed it had been steaming in and there was no way I was only eating corn on the cob that day. I didn't even like mussels before that but these were amazing. Then there were steamers and lobster and I decided that living within a mile of the Atlantic Ocean and not eating fish once in a while was just plain silly. My reasons for being a vegetarian had morphed over the years from being an idealistic teenager who didn't like killing cute animals for food to doing it more for health reasons so eating fish once in a while made sense from a health standpoint. It's the easiest form of animal protein for the human body to digest and it was fresh and local to where I lived.
In case you're wondering, I'm not a vegetarian anymore. But I'll leave the rest for part 2.
My poor mom. My dad rarely got involved in what I ate, and being the only girl in a family with lots of boys I could often use that to my advantage in getting my dad to do what I wanted, including ordering pizza when my mom wasn't around to make dinner.
Fast forward 6 years to my 17th birthday when I decided after another trip to Europe (Spain this time), that I was going to stop eating red meat. I stayed with a wonderful host family in Madrid, they were incredibly kind and my last weekend there they took me to Segovia to this amazing restaurant. When the menu came out they told me I had to order the lamb or the pork as those were the house specialties and since I wasn't sure if I liked lamb I opted for the pork. Growing up in the US, I was somewhat sheltered in regard to where food came from. I knew where things came from but it didn't always completely register. I had a rude awakening when the pork came out with the foot and tail still attached. I ate it, mostly because I didn't want to offend my host family and also because it was actually very good, but I had a hard time looking at meat in quite the same way after that. I think I wanted to cut out all meat but there were two issues with that. 1) I lived in semi-rural northern New England and most restaurants in the area did not have a vegetarian option at the time aside from cheese pizza and salad that was mostly iceberg lettuce. 2) As my mom pointed out when I informed her of my dietary change, I didn't particularly like most vegetables.
She definitely had a point. But being a semi-vegetarian though I had to start liking them. There are some I'm still not especially fond of (cauliflower and green peppers), but I love eating vegetables now. I'm a huge fan of mushrooms, spinach, cucumbers and carrots and I even like eggplant even if it doesn't like me back. 2 years after cutting out red meat I cut out all meat. 18 months after that I went macrobiotic and that lasted 6 months until I found myself at a lobster bake on the coast of Maine. They pulled the mussels out of the seaweed it had been steaming in and there was no way I was only eating corn on the cob that day. I didn't even like mussels before that but these were amazing. Then there were steamers and lobster and I decided that living within a mile of the Atlantic Ocean and not eating fish once in a while was just plain silly. My reasons for being a vegetarian had morphed over the years from being an idealistic teenager who didn't like killing cute animals for food to doing it more for health reasons so eating fish once in a while made sense from a health standpoint. It's the easiest form of animal protein for the human body to digest and it was fresh and local to where I lived.
In case you're wondering, I'm not a vegetarian anymore. But I'll leave the rest for part 2.
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