Category Archives: cooking

Weekendness

So, I spent most of Friday driving around Schaumburg, Rolling Meadows, Hoffman Estates, and Arlington Heights collecting information for the Midwest FurFest Restaurant Guide. I’ve got a lot of additions, a couple of deletions, and I need to come up with a bunch more restaurant reviews. Fun! That’s something that will keep me busy this week. It was also the end of the financial year for takaza‘s employer, so he was a crispy critter when I picked him up at the end of the day. We came home and we both collapsed, eventually getting around to making quesadillas for dinner.

On Saturday, Dan had gotten some tickets to see the penultimate Cubs game of the season at Wrigley Field. I wasn’t much interested, so he shared the tickets with perro, darkwolph, and woodychitwn and they had a good time. Linnaeus was off hanging out with the visiting saboutlours and carol_kitty (and I hear mirkowuff was around as well), doing the tourist thing, leaving me at home alone. While that’s not unusual given the current state of my employment, it was nice to have a day when I didn’t have to do anything – I watched college football, relaxed, and even dozed a bit. It was a nice break, actually. Come evening, the two groups converged (less Mirko, who had to take the train back to Da Region), and we went to the always-tasty Tre Kronor for a delightful dinner (and abused their BYOB policy with a bottle of Sarah’s Blend and a wonderful pinot grigio, the latter a gift from camstone and mooivos that was very much appreciated!).

Dan and I relaxed around the house Sunday, eventually wandering out to walk around the neighborhood in search of the makings for dinner. The supermercado a block and a half from us had some good produce, but the butcher’s section was mobbed (and I still need to learn what to do with all of the unusual cuts of meat they offer), so we instead wound up at the halal meat market around the corner and picked up some ground beef. The grind was a bit finer than we were used to but it made for some tasty cheeseburgers! Unfortunately, we ate a bit late and the dyspepsia plus worry about miscellaneous things led to a bit of insomnia for me.

And then there’s yesterday: I took Dan in to work, got some promising calls from various recruiters, and worked out at the gym. For dinner, I made a very tasty pork roast seasoned with Argyle Street Asian Seasoning, as well as fried potatoes in butter and olive oil. Arr num num num! As for today, there’s the trip to the gym (ow, still sore from yesterday…) , the usual shotgun-blasts of resumes across the net, a bit of food shopping around the neighborhood, and working on a nice batch of chicken and dumplings, since Dan has had a taste for it lately. Bored? I don’t have time to be bored!

Note to Woody: I don’t EVEN want to hear you complaining about how many links you have in your posts! 🙂

Run Silent, Run Deep

Man, you know it’s getting time to post in your journal when your mom complains about she hasn’t read anything new there lately 😉

Well, on Saturday we started out by taking takaza‘s mom to lunch for her birthday. I understand that she’s just happy to spend time with us, but I admit that I’m used to making a bit more of a to-do over such things; she was just fine with us going to Steak and Shake, which she’d never been to before. Dan and I grew up with very different family dynamics. Neither is better or worse than the other, but sometimes it can be a bit weird. We had fun, though, and it was a pleasant lunch. Afterwards we went to roho and genet‘s place and had a fun evening with them and datahawk, feren, lady_curmudgeon, and linnaeus. A surprisingly small amount of alcohol was consumed, and we all were feeling pretty tired before midnight even rolled around. Ah well.

Sunday began with the traditional trip to Las Vegas Restaurant, where I had their always-fabulous Las Vegas skillet. From there we headed back into the city and lazed around the house for a while. For dinner, Dan and I tried to come up with something new and different to do with the large amount of fresh corn that we purchased. Dan cut the kernels off the cobs, then I sautéed up some garlic and added the corn to the pan. A little salt, a little pepper, some paprika, and…bleah. It’s not often that our culinary experiments go awry, but this one was to neither of our liking; the sweetness of the corn was a weird match for the garlic, and while the paprika started to bridge the gap, it just wasn’t enough.

Monday and Tuesday were unremarkable, except that the weather cooled down enough to make going outside actually a pleasant prospect. I took the bus down to Lincoln Square and spent about an hour and a half outside of The Grind reading The Reader and enjoying a tasty blueberry smoothie. the weather was nice enough (low 70’s and low humidity) that I decided to walk back. My stroll took me past Kempf Plaza where tango tunes from the 40’s and 50’s were being played on a tinny speaker while older couples danced around the plaza (please pardon my lousy cameraphone quality). I had to stop for a while and enjoy the music and the spectacle – it was a magical thing on a cool summer evening. The rest of the walk home, the music played in my head and provided a moody background to the quiet neighborhoods.

When I called Dan after work on Wednesday he mentioned that parking was going to be limited on the street in front of Linnaeus‘s place for the next four days while they re-pave, so we decided that it would be better for him to just leave his car at work and we can car-pool for a few days. After I picked him up, we drove over to the Renaissance Schaumburg and Convention Center to check them out. They just opened the place six weeks ago, and they’re still a bit rough around the edges (missing signage, lights missing on the elevators, wallpaper edges still showing a bit). Once they get everything ironed out, though, the place is going to be nothing short of amazing. And huge, too! I’ll be curious to compare that against the still-under-construction Westin Lombard Yorktown Center once that is complete. (No one should read this as an indication that MFF is moving anywhere, but it’s always good to know all of the available venues in the area.)

And so, tonight. Linnaeus is hosting a Happy Hour at The Red Lion, and I hope to make it to that. Hope to see some of y’all there!

It’s Just Right

Some weekends are too busy…some are too lazy. This one was juuuuust right.

On Saturday I left takaza hugging his pillow and mumbling “G’way!” and struck out for Vernon Hills to join roho, genet, feren, and datahawk for lunch at BD’s. The lamb there is just delicious, and really lends itself to my favorite combination of soy, ginger, and garlic. After lunch Data and I headed back to our place where we bummed around for a bit then took the El down to the Lincoln Park Fest (which, it turns out, was right outside the Zoo. We probably still missed you by an hour or so, Quasi). We were joined by chouette and Ed and saw moryssa as well. Carbon Leaf just flat-out rocked. We were standing front and center in front of the stage and I really enjoyed the 90-minute show. There was a huge crowd of fans and it seemed like everyone knew the words to the songs, which is always cool and must be really gratifying to the band. I took some okay pictures of the show with my cell phone – at least you can make out who’s who.

After the show we repaired to the Golden Nugget at Clark and Diversey. We speculated whether this was the diner that was featured on This American Life (it wasn’t) and had a so-so dinner. At least the company was good. Linnaeus, having freed himself from his familial obligations, joined us to mill about a bit and figure out what to do for dessert, but eventually we just decided we were too tired and headed home. We watched a bit of “I’m Alan Partridge” which strikes me (like “Father Ted”) as one of those Britcoms that I should probably find hilarious but I just, well, don’t. Eh. I dozed a bit while we were watching it and eventually was ordered off to bed.

We puttered around a bit on Sunday, relaxing and watching TV a good part of the morning. Eventually we got motivated and Data and I did some shopping while Dan worked on preparations for Anthrocon. I picked up a dandy charcoal chimney at Home Depot and was able to get a lovely bed of coals going in the grill in about 20 minutes. I cooked up some delicious cheeseburgers (garlic overload! woo!), which we finished just in time for the Midwest FurFest online staff meeting to start. We’ve got a lot of work to get done in a short period time (like, before Anthrocon!), so it’s going to be a challenging week or so ahead. After the meeting we chatted and Dan and I talked out a disagreement that we had, much to Data’s amusement. Finally, laundry was folded and we were off to bed.

And so we’re at a new week. Manpower has been prodded that yes, I would in fact like a new job at the end of the month, thank you. I applied for a couple of positions on Careerbuilder, and got a call from Aerotek Scientific about a 6-12 month contract position in the O’Hare area. At this point, there’s no a question of turning down contract positions in hopes of something permanent – I’m all about the paycheck. We’ll see if I can poke this along to fruition. Additionally, I hope to be meeting with unclevlad sometime this week to work out some Registration issues for MFF. But for now I need to figure out what we’re doing for dinner and get ready to head on home. Whee!