It's Official

It's official: I will never be the kind of girl who uses a styling dryer brush to get her hair to curl under, it just takes way toooo long.

I'm in Tennessee now, the land of lack of wireless internet. So no pictures until the university's library reopens. There are still a few meals to get up and a few rants to get out...but right now I'm listening to the local news dealing with my less than perfect hair. Not that it matters, the hair, since the New Years Eve game plan is going to my parents' friends' house at 7 and leaving at 9. I believe the median age (which is lowered due to two kids under twelve) will probably be about 60. Yeah. I guess I could consider it a test run for Key West where, according to Craigslist personal ads (shut up), the average man looking for a woman is 49, way too tan and wears orange shorts.

Happy New Years Eve people. Try to forget that our world is slowly falling apart and drink some champagne and kiss someone pretty or handsome if you can.

Dinner c/o Silver Seafood

Well, I saw the episode of Check, Please! where Silver Seafood was reviewed favorably and it was the cherry on a top of my desire to check this restaurant out...so after seeing Juno with the 'rents, we had dinner at the restaurant. It was not as great as I expected. We all had the house soup (looked bland and not interesting but was, in fact, not bad). We shared the fried oysters, the sizzling seafood and egg rolls. Egg rolls: I continue not to understand why people would ever order you in the first place. The oysters were good in that fried way and the sizzling seafood was perfectly adequate.
I'm willing believe that it was the choices we made that made this meal not as amazing as I expected. Other tables had shrimp and crabs and such that looked good...though many plates weren't emptied of their goodies.
Well, I probably won't have another chance to try the place out so all three of you Chicago readers should go in my stead and tell me about it.
Be warned: the staff is not so good with the English. Which I am not saying in a bad or judgmental way...it's just that if you have a question, and you ask it, well, even if they answer it you won't really know what they're saying. That's a terrible saying to say isn't it? Shit.

Tokyo Marina, Adieu

The day after Christmas, for lunch, the 'rents and I went to Tokyo Marina. I had the tempura udon and a Miami roll. It was (I can hardly believe I'm going to say this) too much tempura for me. Not a bad situation, especially when you have willing eaters nearby to pick up the slack.
What exactly is udon soup broth made of? It's not miso. Is it beef broth? Interesting question that--if I was an actual food writer--I could look into and find some super interesting story about cow slavery in Bengal and then publish in the Atlantic Monthly. Unfortunately, as it stands now, I'm not so much a food or anyother kind writer. So the question stands.
The Miami Maki was fried and had cream cheese. I think it was one last nod to House of Sushi and Noodles.

Maps

Brunch Like You've Never Brunched Before

On Christmas day my parents and I went to the Park Hyatt Hotel, specifically NoMi Restaurant. There we had brunch like we'd never had brunch before: looking out at the Water Tower (one of a very few buildings to remain after the great fire started by that pesky cow).

It was buffet style but this was not Sizzler or, really, any other buffet. There was a seafood station complete with sushi, oysters, shrimp, seaweed salad, smoked salmon and crab claws.
The bloody mary was stupid expensive and not all that spectacular, I won't lie. The olives were good though.
There were cured meats and fancy tasty cheeses. Oh and smoked duck and pate. All of which was AMAZING. My parents contended that the country paté was some of the best they'd ever had.
Chesnut soup wasn't that amazing. But I'm not sure if I have any real feelings for chesnuts in any form.
We had the option of an entree. I had the Eggs Benedict with lobster medallion while my parents had bass with truffle jus. The Hollandaise sauce was very good and not neon yellow. We were told that, if our stomachs were were capable of it, we could have more than one entree. When we first got there and started with the seafood we were all optimistic and talking like 'oh after I try a little of everything I'll get another shrimp or crab claw along with another small triangle of this here paté'--but after trying a lot of things and the entree there wasan't a lot of room for seconds. Just as well.

Lovely cheese and the chorizo (or whatever kind of cured meat it was) !


They had all these three-bite sized desserts...like nine million of them...none of them actually blew me away. The blowing away was in the cheese, meat and seafood.
So good.

Heat Lamp Central

The night of McCormick & Schmicks my parents went downtown before me and saw Charlie Wilson's War--which I understand is an enjoyable film but I have very little interest in seeing on the big screen--while I did some clearing up of the apartment. It was cold, cold, cold so when I got myself put together to meet up with the 'rents it was a bundling not to be trifled with. What? So the above photograph is of me underneath the heat lamps of the el. After dinner, as we walked to Michigan Avenue to catch a cab back north, we came across another well lit heated oasis and I took a photograph of my parents looking rather silly.

Seafood Fest @ McCormick and Schmicks

A while back I received a $75 gift card for a meal at McCormick and Schmick's. We were going to use it back in November but then left it at home and ate the meal anyways. On Christmas Eve the parents and I went down and used that there gift card and had a good meal. I started with a Raspberry Crusta (so very tasty special without being cloyingly sweet). I had a dozen oysters--a sampler platter.
My parents opted for another round of lobster while I ordered the seared scallops with "Israeli Cous Cous" and "Palestinian Mushrooms".
Okay, that's not true. It was Israeli cous cous and Shitaki Mushrooms and it was quite creamalicious subtle taste perfect. The scallops were nicely seared. My mother and I shared a mini key lime pie tartlette type thing, which was good and I had my fave: Courvoisier.

White Belly Wonders

Sleepy kitty.

Chinese Dinner

Last week I ordered Chinese food from Beijing Gardens. This was mainly because some dude on yelp had called it the best Chinese food he had...and he had gone to a good number of places. I ordered small portions of golden tofu, mongolian beef and curried chicken along with a barbequed pork appetizer. Each thing was about 5 bucks, which is how and why I rationalize the variety of dishes. Plus No-Longer-Wayward came over a bit later and helped too. Oh and then my parents came and we had lunch and snack from the leftovers. The tofu wasn't crispy but the sauce wasn't bad. The curried chicken was tasty but consisted mainly, I would think, of curry powder (no mingling of individual spices...but what would one expect from a Chinese restaurant?). The Mongolian beef, well, I've never had Mongolian beef before so maybe the texture of the meat was on purpose...it didn't resemble beef as much as soft pieces of I don't know what (tempeh, flour, dough?)...the actual taste of the dish wasn't bad, a little spicyness but not to the point of burning tongue. They threw in free egg rolls that were far more daintily wrapped and fried than many an egg roll--the filling wasn't all that great (actually, can someone explain to me what the exact appeal of eggrolls is in the first place?). The barbequed pork was so-so...some pieces were nice and tender while others were tougher with gristle.

Office Lunch

On another of my last days at work there was a catered all office lunch. The food came from Qdoba. I ate some of it. I thought the chicken was better than the beef and that the cheese sauce/dip was better a wee bit congealed.
The guacamole and salsa weren't so bad either.

My Unfulfilled (Probably Forever) Desires

I want one sooooooo bad! And one out of so many? Come on.

Pie and Pumpkin

Yesterday I went to Kopi Cafe to have a quick hello/goodbye with one of my fave professors from grad school. I got there about four minutes early and she came a little late. This gave me plenty of time to consider the couple sitting at the table in front of me, specifically the dude facing me. I am 89% sure that it was James Iha. The age was about right. As was the face and hair. In fact he looked a lot like this:
Only without the funny outfit, hat and eye make up. We'll never know for sure but I'm adding him to my very short list of run ins with famous people.

1. I shook Connie Morella's hand when I was in elementary school.
2. I was mere inches away from Tom Hanks when he spoke at Vassar's 2005 graduation.
3. Uma Thurman and Lewis Black.
4. George Clinton too, he said hi to me.

That's it.

The conversation was good as was the Mexican Latte and cherry pie we shared. Really good pie, actually.

Doggy Do Good

Thursday night I headed out to Simon's to meet up with M. Lady, Player with Words and another SAICer that I never gave a name so's we could get our glogg on. Problem was, of course, that it was super duper crazy stupid busy. So we aborted the plan and headed up to Farraguts instead. Farraguts, in what I can only guess was an effort to compete with Simons, also had glogg. But as multiple members of our party agreed: Farraguts' glogg tasted like grape juice and cough syrup...and there weren't any alochol laden raisins and almond bits at the bottom nor were the drinks served with ginger coookies. Still, it was a good last bar night out with a few gal pals.
On the way home we met Aurora the dog. I was so smitten that I let the rest of the party leave without proper goodbyes so I could talk to Aurora's gay German owner more/play with the dog. I want a dog. Oh well.

Gnocchi and Guacamole c/o Pizza Capri

On Thursday one of the owners of the company I worked for up until yesterday took my department out to lunch at Pizza Capri. There were 8 of us. It wasn't bad. The food or the strange workish conversations. Actually, we talked about Key West and The Bahamas (my cubicle mate was also leaving for warmer climes just two days before me) and art and education and politics. If only that was the job. Regardless, we shared the guacamole appetizer which was pretty good. There was also a never ending supply of bread and herbed olive oil. I had the Gnocchi alla Vodka. I was tempted to get spaghetti and meatballs or lasagna but thought I would branch out. The sauce was creamy but not overly spectacular and I wonder if I even like gnocchi. I should, potato pasta: what could you possibly not like? But, when it came to whether I wanted to bring the leftovers with me, I realized that I did not.

How It Was

On Tuesday, after all the moving and whatnot, the ebf and I went to La Tache for dinner. I had a dirty martini, the onion soup and the salad Lyonnaise. We shared the creme brulee for dessert. The salad was good as always, though the egg (perfectly poached if for breakfast but a little more medium than is good for the salad) didn't run as much as I'd like. The soup wasn't the best. But overall, a wonderful-if bittersweet-meal.

Boys in Hats, Girls in Dresses

People came to the party. There were wardrobe changes, unearthings of prom dresses and hats.


We tried to get a good photograph of the two of us, below, and this was truly the best.

Shin Diggery

There was a bit of a party that I threw for myself a little while back. There was food. Cheese and more cheese. Some Tonguethrust's Alaskan smoked salmon with accompanying caperberries.

Chickens?

CHICKENS!

Whiskers

Today Zul had the mother of a hairball. I became momentarily convinced that he was dying. I ran around in a panic and shaking hands but it seems that I might have overreacted.