thanksgiving in the windy city

On Sunday Steve and I braved twelve hours of post-Thanksgiving traffic from the flat plaints through Indiana to the snow-dusted mountains of Western Maryland to return home, after a delightful Thanksgiving weekend in Chicago, Steve’s native place.

Chicago was great. Steve’s family (Mom, Dad, and sister Jordin) were great, and super hospitable, and super happy to see Steve as evidenced by the fact that they took him (and me!) out for deep dish the moment we arrived.

Steve’s family is also really SPORTY (as you’ll read about our bowling adventures later) and really good VISUALLY, as evidenced by his Master’s-in-photography-and-also-basically-Martha-Stewart mother’s Thanksgiving decor, pictured below:

   

Those are two of the THREE tables, as there were thirty people there.

I break out in a sweat just thinking about it, but everything went smoothly and it was a lovely Turkey Day. I swore up and down that I didn’t feel like it was Thanksgiving without cooking and truly wanted to help, so when I padded down to the kitchen Thursday morning in my tee and boxers, Steve’s mom put me to work. When Steve rolled out of bed considerably later, he emerged to his mother and I rubbing absurd amounts of butter under turkey skins in the kitchen. He was “touched” (seriously).

I really wanted to be helpful, out-of-the-way, and inconspicuous, so I didn’t treat Thanksgiving as a Food Blogging Event (though what I have I treated as such, lately?).

I got a few shots of a few fun things, such as the EXCEEDINGLY tasty cheese mold, and the stuffed shells that his half-Italian mother makes every year, based on her own mother’s recipe.

This being my first wholesome Midwestern Thanksgiving (actually, my first Thanksgiving away from home ever!) I tried a number of dishes for the first time:
- Green bean casserole with Funyuns atop (so tasty!)
- Sweet potato casserole with marshmallows (so confusing! Your first bite is dessert, and then you go… vegetables? I prefer them straight up :) As does Steve!)
- Jello for dinner

Most visually noteworthy was the largest quantity of gravy I have ever beheld (and this was after all three tables had gotten a boat).

The thought of arriving to Thanksgiving without something I had baked was unbearable to me, so I opted for simple, easy-to-transport bars.

I totally winged it on this but to give you a rough idea…

Crust: walnuts, oats, a bit of coconut, brown sugar, oil. Enough to put a thin layer on the pan of your choosing (I used an 8 by 8). Whirr in the food processor til crusty looking. Pre-bake at 350 til golden.
Topper: a super ripe banana, 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk, 1/3 cup yogurt, 1/2 tsp custard powder (basically cornstarch and vanilla) whirred in the food processor. Bake atop crust at 350 til set.

Transported semi-successfully in a shoebox (ooh yay alliteration!)

I REALLY liked them. But Steve’s family does not seem very into dessert whaaaaaaaa?! That’s no way to live. 

Thanksgiving was oodles of fun! It felt so nice to be included.

The next day was meant to be a stroll around Chicago day. But since it was, oh, 33 and EXCEEDINGLY windy, even Steve the native son thought it was too miserable outside.

So brunch was followed by bowling.

Sexxxay…

Fun story: Steve’s family is REALLY GOOD AT EVERYTHING. As we chat during the bowling game, Steve’s mom casually mentions all the gymnastics competitions Steve won in high school… when Jordin filled in as goalie once during a soccer game and was the best they’d ever had… Steve’s parents pulled out their own PERSONAL BOWLING BALLS, which they used to play in their WEEKLY BOWLING LEAGUES.

The family racked up strike up on strike! Perhaps the occasional spare. Lots of high fiving, and discussion of technique.

And I… bowled a 26. Eesh.

Let’s move on.

After bowling we got dinner with Jordin and her super-nice boyfriend Bryan at the ridiculously tasty Wok 'n Fire, which had a ridiculously good happy hour with reduced drink prices AND half priced sushi and appetizers.

Then we went into Chicago proper, to hang out with Steve’s buddy Hector, who he’s known since high fschool.

It was meant to be a party involving blind wine tasting (thus our tasteful use of duct tape covering up our $3.99 Trader Joe’s purchase)…

… but it ended up being a low key crowd of Steve and I, Hector, and Hector’s brother Saul and his girlfriend Maki (sp?).

(that Hahn Grenchache blend was duh-licious, incidentally).

So there was just a lot of wine. And cheese. And Jenga!

Fortunately for hydration purposes, Saul and Maki (sp?!) have just started their own small business (!!!!!!!)- Tea Gallerie Chicago (website pending- worth checking out Chicagoans- they’ve got yummy tea!)

I had oodles of fun playing gourmande and describing the various flavors.

  

Saul knew a RIDICULOUS amount about tea and gave us a whole presentation. Who actually knows what polyphenols are? You just know they are “good”. Well, HE KNOWS.

The coconut chai was my favorite :)

I stayed up later than I had in quite some time (plus an hour for the time change) and then collapsed into Hector’s desk-that-turns-into-a-bed WOW SO COOL.

Sunday morning I took a MUCH overdue shower and marveled at yet another feature of Hector’s fairly old apartment- a radiator in the bathroom! I seriously HATE winter showers because I’m always so cold when I get out. This would be a game changer in my own home. I’d probably bathe more!

Coffee, after a whole lotta wine and not a whole lotta sleep, sounded REAL nice.

So we went to the thoroughly rad Star Lounge Coffee. It was decorated in orange, which I love.

And had crazy and cool coffee varieties (which excited me) and bacon donuts (which excited Steve).

 

I opted for the Wake & Bake.

  

YUM! No, it is not the most conventional combination. Just believe me when I say it smelled like Thanksgiving and tasted like heaven.

Then we went to Tre Kronor, a Swedish breakfast place (anyone reading this blog who’s actually met Steve in person immediately understands why this place was chosen) for brunch with Steve’s cousin Melissa and her wife, also Melissa (a blog fan! Hi Melissa!). Steve is SUPER tight with his cousin Melissa and I’d spent the past two years hearing stories about her, so it was a delight to meet her, as well as her baby GENIUS. Seriously, Melissas, baby A. is basically already smarter than I am.

More rich food. Lawd.

Hector and I went halfsies on two of the quiche selections, being unable to decide on our own: witness tomato basil and spinach and mushroom.

  

Steve, who throughout the decadent trip kept vowing he was going to start eating only kale, ordered smoked salmon eggs benedict :)

Then we get to my faaaaaaaaaaavorite part of Chicago, thus far (with my admittedly limited knowledge): Lakeshore Drive!

I told Lydia, my also-dating-a-Chicagoan bestie this, and she went “Oh, LSD!” Apparently I will understand Chicago humor a lot more in the future with my knowledge of this acronym. Noted.

LSD is beautiful.

Our muscles rejoiced at actually walking (whoa) and garsh the city is vair pretty.

I love the idea of this artery leading through the city being accessible by car (and the drive along Lakeshore Drive is an excessively pleasant one) but also on foot and by bike. I was fantastiing about living in Chicago and biking to work downtown, actually. Yknow, me, the girl who hates the cold.

 

But on a sunny day, even in November, Chicago was liveable. Love this picture.

As we got closer to downtown we saw this completely adorable, completely I-wanna-steal-you-except-I-lack-the-energy-to-care-for-you springer spaniel just FLYING along the water. Legs were basically a blur.

Taking pictures of him resulted in generally good pictures.

 

Can you still spot the dog?

And, doesn’t this make you want to go to Chicago?

Being tourists, we stopped at the Bean.

There was no time for ice skating (thank goodness, based on how I’d comported myself at the other athletic event of the trip).

We headed for dinner in Greek Town. I will not discuss this… you’ll see why later.

We strolled around the German Market (presh! And good smells… this is before I started hating all smells… you’ll see, you’ll see…)

We strolled around the Macy’s- nee Marshall Fields- and looked at the window displays. Adorable.

Went up many escalators to admire Giant Tree.

Then we went to Jordin’s Nordstroms! Steve’s sister is a fashion school graduate whose very cool job is now to basically make everything at Nordstroms look awesome so you buy it (yes, I have no doubt there is an actual title for this but I’m failing to articulate it properly). Not only is she an incredibly hard worker; not only did she roll into the house at 7:30 am on Thanksgiving (!) because she’d spent 13 hours (!!!) doing ALL of the holiday decorations in one day (!!!!); she’s REALLY GOOD AT IT. We looked at some of the displays she did (my favorite being a wonderfully geometric look at Kate Spade accessories) and there is so much thought and creativity involved. Lighting, heights, textures, shapes- all go into making the final product look awesome. So cool.

And thennnn… we got back in the car. Got back in the car with the leftovers from the we’ll-leave-it-unnamed Greek place. And WOW, SMELLS. I got queasier and queasier and quieter and quieter throughout the ride- by the end I was basically just nonverbal, hoping no one would notice.

Steve’s parents dropped us off at his car, which was still by Hector’s place. I got out, gulped in fresh air, and firmly told Steve, “I have food poisoning”.

Thus followed a delightful trip back to the ‘burbs with the windows wiiiiiiiiide open while Steve kindly tried to distract me with a thought-provoking discussion of Chicago’s crack epidemic. I thought it all might work out, but a mere two blocks from home… suffice it to say thank God Steve had a spare Trader Joe’s bag in his car.

I wish it hadn’t been paper.

I really wish Steve hadn’t been in the car with me.

However, since life will inevitably consist of ups and downs, if the down of getting violently ill in front of my cute boyfriend was required to cancel out the millions of ups I experienced on my wonderful trip to Chicago, it’s a price I was willing to pay.

why I love electricity

This begins a series of blog posts that I planned and took pictures for a billion years ago but didn’t get it together to publish til now. Enjoy!

The most ambitious “cooking” one can make when the power is out and it is 100 degrees out:

So living in Northern Virginia we were part of the exceedingly exciting derecho that knocked out billions of peoples’ power. Well millions. Okay maybe hundreds of thousands. Still.

While the storm was actually happening, I was enjoying a tasty post-Magic Mike beer with a friend. Heh. The power flickered a bit, and the bartender generously announced that if any women were feeling afraid, he’d be happy to give them a comforting cuddle. Heh. Anyway, then we left and the power was out in the garage in which we’d both parked. Eesh number one. I walked her to her car, she drove me to mine. Safety! Then I pulled out of the garage and quickly realized how insane the storm had been when there was no electricity around me for my entire drive home. Let me tell you, it is a frightening experience. Driving down one four-lane turnpike, I gave thanks for my highbeams as they helped me avoid the tree branches/limbs/trunks blocking much of the entire right lane. I tried multiple routes into my neighborhood, all unsuccessfully blocked by fallen trees. At this point on the verge of hysteria, I reached my sister and learned she and my mother were, yknow, alive, and got a tip on how to get in my neighborhood.

Getting home and looking up at the beautiful and mysterious owl atop the power line, seemingly guarding our driveway, I was reminded what’s important and what isn’t.

Anyway, following an unsatisfying night of sleep, I brewed some sun tea! Not iced tea. Warm tea. A little weird but very flavorful.

But really we were WIMPS and almost immediately (say, 40 hours in) bailed and went to my aunt and uncle’s, who have a generator.

They cooled us and fed us, sheesh. Lucky us. This was SO GOOD. Salad (we contributed farmer’s market tomatoes) and seafood pasta (made with Trader Joe’s seafood mix, which is SO GOOD and I should REMEMBER TO BUY, as well as some extra shrimp). Plus Trader Joe’s garlic naan, mmm.

This wine tastes like grapefruit and is fantastic.

The rest of the time at my aunt and uncle’s consisted of walking on the beautiful GW trail along the Potomac (I saw a great blue heron catch a fish!) and reading THE BEST BOOK I’VE READ THIS YEAR-

Attention loyal blog readers, YOU MUST READ Neversink, a completely enchanting and beautifully written (for what is ostensibly a children’s book, no less) mythological tale about PUFFINS! Get it. You want to. It’s also by a really good friend of ours :)

Continuing with the luxurious life at the generator-owners’ home, lunch was preceded by a delicious cheese plate:

And I used farmer’s market green beans and eggs we’d rescued from our fridge to make a rather spectacular salade nicoise.

   

So duh-licious!

tea with the queen

Oh P.S. My mom went to the UK last month to visit my studying-abroad sister and have tea with the queen so I was kind of foraging for myself for awhile there.

Which leads to things like this happening:

I sit at the computer being all “God I’m so tiiiiiiiiiiiiired. I’m so huuuuuuuuuuungry. I can’t even stand uuuuuuuuuuuuuup”.

And then going “OH MY GOD I WENT OUT TO LUNCH AT WORK AND HAVE LEFTOVERS! I AM SAVED!”

 

In a (compostable!) leftovers container was a deeeeelicious half a veggie burger from Busboys and Poets. Went on a rare and thus very exciting work lunch out in DC to welcome a new staff member at our DC office.

I kind of ordinarily think people who only eat half a sandwich for lunch are ridiculous and probably hungry all the time, but we had gotten their ridiculously good nachos as an appetizer and their veggie patty is also the size of my face. So.

That half a sandwich didn’t fill me up for dinner (not having preceded it with nachos) so then I randomly chewed on:

Tomatoes and bean sprouts, of course.

And SHOCKINGLY, SHOCKINGLY, eating those things with my bare hands did not leave me satisfied. I know. And then I ate a bunch of other crap. Can’t remember. It’s been awhile. April was not my healthiest month. Trying to get it together now.

Steve came over for meals a lot, because he is good company and my house makes scary noises from time to time.

It was good cause I still had all this food at my house, cause we tend to overbuy.

So I did a his and hers leftovers-utilizing thing.

His:

  

Leftover pasta made into salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, hummus, and vinaigrette.  

Hers:

  

Leftover rice cooked up with hummus, tomatoes, kale. Both pretty good.

 

Then my mother returned!

A welcome to America meal, beautifully arranged, if I do say so myself. Nice colors. Nice textures. Nice flavors.

 

I had leftover black bass from a delightful day of grilling, so I made it into a nice pasta dish with caramelized onions, Swiss chard, and vegetable broth. YUM!

 

And my mom did not return from England empty-handed!

First, this chestnut spread:

Um, literally squeezed it out of the tube and onto my finger. Went, “I know this was probably really expensive and I want you to know that I’m really enjoying it despite eating it like a cavewoman.” Didn’t stand a chance. Ridiculously amazing. Not as thick as peanut butter: more the consistency of frosting. And the flavor of sweet chestnutty buttery… awesomeness.

Zoomed right through these, too:

My mom studied abroad at St. Andrew’s in Scotland (where Wills and Kate later met!) and became passionately fond of oatcakes. They are uh-mazing. Super dense, not that sweet, just… so hearty and satisfying and great. And you can put honey on them :D

Finally, proper English breakfast tea!

 

Proper leaves, so I got out my little buddy that Steve gave me.

 

I call him Mao.

so you’d like to host a tea party

Someday, I’d like to host a Mad tea party. But this was just a regular (and very nice) tea party, and in my opinion, tea parties are one of the most underrated of social gatherings.

Much like brunch is an excuse to drink alcohol in the morning, tea is an excuse to eat sweets in the afternoon.

Moreover, as anyone who has seen my bucket/mugs of tea (muckets? Doesn’t that sound like it should be a bad word in England? Maybe it is…) can attest, I love drinking tea.

And my mother and I love to entertain, and overfeed (such is the way of Greek women), the result of which was this quantity of food for what ended up being four people:

 

So it is: the ritual of slathering the mini bread with butter is so pleasurable one wants to repeat it as many times as possible.

And so, a series of tea sandwiches.

My mother’s brainchild: butter whirred up in the food processor with watercress as a base; cucumber atop (those little yummy Persian cucumbers). On white bread. GREAT tea sandwich.

  

A delicious farmer’s market shortcut: smoked bluefish spread (rich- more than a subtle hint of delicious fatty cream cheese!) but celebrating the smoky oily fishy goodness.

On wheat bread, with a toe in the frame. Feet could not stay out of the frame in this post.

 

Also from the farmer’s market, we have tomatoes looking way better than they have any right to in March. Greenhouses and global warming. Go figure.

 

Put together sandwiches by thinly slicing the tomatoes, buttering the bread… but I tried to amp them up the tiniest subtlest bit. Any guesses what’s on that bread?

Curry powder! I love curry and tomato :D

And finally, more white bread, more herby butter (for this round my mom threw in chives, too), and hardboiled eggs.

SO delicious!

 

Sandwiches stacked, semi-artistically. My sister is better at these things, but she’s off studying in England… probably having tea with the queen.

I sort of believe one cannot have tea without scones, or at least some kind of baked good. Traditional scones (the dry crumbly ones) are an amazing vehicle for amazing condiments (devonshire cream and jam, drool!) but I wanted scones with a flavor all their own.

And, uh, might have had crate upon crate of apples to use up. Again!

Thus, Whole Wheat Apple Scones. Made a few tweaks (cardamom!) but more or less stuck to the methodology. They were easy to make, baked all clumped together:

 

And very very very delicious!

Sweet, buttery, flavorful, nicely spiced. I would make these again!

 

And the table was laid!

 

(There is someone waving at you in that picture. Hi, friends!)

Indoor flowers and outdoor flowers, via window. Loving on spring!

 

Apparently sherry is traditional at teatime? I tried a single sip (after all the guests left, no one seemed real interested) and it didn’t do it for me. But adorable glasses!

The highlight for me of this tea party was discovering, just a day after Saint Patrick’s Day, that we have a clover-shaped spoon. This is fantastic.