Favorite Xmas Dish

I was really pleased with these ricotta chard malfatti (essentially big gnocchi) served with a large dab of gingered cranberry relish.

Xmas Dinner

Yule Log in Terrifying HD

Xmas Langues de chat

Based on a recipe from December's Gourmet: Langues de chat with hazelnut praline. Should go nicely with Christmas Eve's pumpkin pie and Christmas Dinner's egg-nog panna cotta.

Chard Core

4 bunches of chard reduced-- by cooking and removing moisture-- to 1 cup of chard.

Wholly Candid

I love this picture Kenneth took of me preparing a salad. It's wholly candid. It also features my hairy arms, which I like.

Chicago's Culinary Excess

My blog is in decline, I know. I feel I'm in a new life phase, and I can't decide whether blogging will be part of that new phase.

While I mull it over and wrestle with xmas tree lights, here's something to feast your eyes on: images I prepared for a post on Chicago's culinary excess, a post I failed to complete in a timely manner.


2 huge cinnamon roles at Ann Sathers. This is but one of two side dishes included with a brunch entree. Truly delicious, but... excessive.


A slice of Chicago-style (stuffed, I think it's called) pizza. It has two crusts. I drew a blue arc into the below image so that you can see the upper crust:

The tomato sauce just floats on top of the whole shebang. I can get behind the decadence of this dish-- especially as one who's lived through multiple midwestern winters. However, I think the toppings (a misnomer, as they go inside the pizza, below the top crust) get lost in the lower cheese layer.

I Was Very Proud of that Brioche

From the UW Archives: 1898 Tennis Team

I believe we've seen this set up before.

NBLND

Poking around on Jack's blog reconnected me with the night before last night's dream:

Debbie Gibson died. Subsequently, it is revealed that she is responsible for several of Britney Spears's recent hits: what we believed to be Britney singing is actually Debbie.

Lou Mitchell's

We used to eat regularly at downtown Madison's Great Dane Pub. After a few dinners during which the space was so cacophonously loud that we emerged with something vaguely akin to shellshock, we stopped going. (There was also the garden incident, but that's another story.) During a couple of recent trips to the Great Dane's new Hilldale location, we encountered even more confusion-- once eating hurriedly as a happy-hour crowd repeatedly sloshed up against the outer edge of our booth's table. An ordeal rather than a hospitable dining experience.

If we can't stomach such confusion, why do we love Chicago's Lou Mitchell's? The place embodies hustle and bustle. Both times I've been to this downtown institution, it's been packed with a stream of hungry folks lined up out the door.



Parties are either jammed into tiny booths or seated at a continuous series of two person tables. In the below pic of Kenny, you can see the arm of an adjacent diner on the right (there's another on the left who fell just outside the frame, despite my best efforts).



The wait staff squeezes among these masses of bodies and furniture with amazing stamina and aplomb. Unlike the personality-deprived & perennially green servers of Madison, Lou Mitchell's waitresses are efficient, skilled, and delightfully sassy. And the place offers a constant parade of treats. While waiting for a table, everyone is offered complimentary donut holes (made on site and without trans fats). While the LADIES wait, they get a complimentary box of Milk Duds. Upon ordering, you get a little bowl with a stewed prune and a slice of orange. You can see the remains of Kenny's on the table. The omelets are served with breakfast potatoes, all in skillets. And it's all flat-out terrific. After the meal, everyone gets a little tiny cup (just a little shot) of ice cream. Last Sunday, the place was so loud, I could hardly hear our waitress-- who was no frail flower-- but the atmosphere at Lou Mitchell's was so convivial, so refined in its own way, that I left fatter and happier than ever.

From the UW Archives: Bobby Cook

Bobby Cook--in 1947, the leading scorer both in the Big Ten and on Big Ten Championship Team-- is cocked, by which I mean ready to go off, by which I mean about to shoot. Everything about this photo vibrates with exciting physical tension-- a body fixed on the verge of release.

Keep on Rocketting in the Free World

On our Thanksgiving trip to Chicago, we saw the Rockettes. More on this once I get my act together, scan some things, etc.

Document

My wonderful therapist is a savvy earth mother (think heavy cabled knits with metallic flecks) in her later 50's who, when I reported that I'd begun to pump iron, replied, "Oh! I do free weights!" She proposed that weightlifting shifts the focus of exercise from losing weight to something more likely to produce a feeling of accomplishment. You can see and feel the work you've accomplished. I think she's right. I also promote a sense of accomplishment through record keeping.



I've been meaning to share this with you for ages, but I misplaced it for several weeks. Do note that my record-keeping methodology here is peculiar-- more focused on utility than accurate representation of what I've done. "65" in a squat means that I load each side of the bar with 65 lbs. This removes arithmetic from the process (65 x 2 + bar = 175 lbs) . "30" in a dumbbell exercise means I use 30 lb. dumbbells. I ain't braggin'. I got miles to go before I'm strong. I just want you to know that I can bench more than 35 lbs.

Disturbing Fingers Diptych

1. During a dinner at Monty's Blue Plate, Erk witnesses the young, fresh tall waiter sniff his fingers tips while trotting towards the diner's counter.

Erk: That's not something you want to see. Although, maybe it's something delectable...
Knnth: A special sauce?
Erk: Cockcheeseburger?
Knnth: [blanch]

2. On his morning busride, Erk spies what look awfully like shitty finger smears on a laminated surface abutting the seat in front of his. It's not as harrowing as the incident of several weeks ago in which Erk sat behind a guy with dandruff the size of rolled oats, but it's captivating nonetheless.

Evening Bus Ride

A woman in her mid-20's enthusiastically reading Reader's Digest. Erk repeatedly inspects her hands: "Is she really in her mid-20's?" Yes, apparently she is.

120 Memories: Just Can't Function No More

I'm haunted by this series of images that open the video for Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart. The camera tracks up a flight of stairs. At the top, it encounters a hand disappearing behind a door which then opens to reveal an empty room. Because I had difficulty capturing the hand's slide out of sight, I highlighted it below:



The door marked Ian C. beckons us and then opens to emptiness.

Thank you, Ian C.

Goodbye, Ian C.

Jenga

Erk chillin.


Kenneth epitomizing concentration.

120 Memories: Introductions in Dust

We recently altered our cable package, trading a Showtime bundle for a different, cheaper set of channels which include the-n, BBC-America, the Sundance Channel, and VH-1 Classic. The change has revolutionized our lives: I'm watching Absolutely Fabulous regularly, I suddenly have access to a great deal more Degrassi: The Next Generation, and Kenneth has taken to recording and sharing music videos from the VH-1 Classic shows We Are the 80's and VH-1 Classic 120 Minutes.

I fret about how this revolution demonstrates the importance of television in my life, but I fret about most everything.

Kenneth and I sat down to watch a video or two over dessert the other evening and ended up chatting and thrilling our way through all 120 minutes of Classic 120 Minutes. The show-- sadly-- does not replay old episodes of the MTV's alternative feature which was hosted back in the day by the likes of Kevin Seal and Dave Kendall. You can get a small taste of or return to these from various tiny clips on youtube like this, this, and this. Classic 120 Minutes does feature only alternative and new wave and whatnot videos, most of which were made in the 80's. The experience of revisiting certain videos and discovering other ones has been so delightful and intense that I'd like to blog about it in a new series which I'll call 120 Memories.

I have no adolescent memories of seeing Siouxsie and the Banshees' Cities of Dust-- making my series's title something of a misnomer at least in this instance-- but I can't stop thinking about the brilliant video which Kenneth and I agree holds up as a solid work of (audio)visual art. You can catch the whole thing here. Below, I've captured my favorite bits.



The long opening shot of bubbling red.



Siouxsie reclining and singing as molten veins spill down towards her exposed flesh. Fragile, fierce: her head and shoulders radiate the same heat.



The same shot, now with a shower of SPARKS.



Gorgeous contrasts with the previous images.



Simple but highly evocative layering of images throughout. The bouncing of these marionette skeletons is whimsical, but it evokes delightfully childish delicacy, the ephemeral and theatric, the jangling hubbub of life-- the whimsical's inescapable correlation with the civilized.

TiVo Triptych

Empanadas

Janghwa, Hongryeon Triptych

DeFacebook

Kenneth has recently expressed reservations about facebook ("It's just another thing to check" and "I've quickly lost interest in that [the Visual Bookshelf] feature"), but I remain enthralled. If you're not on facebook-- you know who you are-- you should be, you should friend me, and you will be delighted by how much more in touch we are or seem or whatever.

Many of facebook's gadgety features (Visual Bookshelf, for example) are delightful. I'm so excited to finish a book, rush to my computer, and update what I'm reading and what I've read. Lately, I've been reading 1) 18th- and 19th-century novels over 600 pages in length and 2) food-oriented works that I move through at a rate of a couple of pages per week. Which is to say that I don't often rush to my computer and update. But when I do, well, it is something of a rush...

Many more of the gadgety features are dreadful, and too many people (my facebook friends nonetheless) seem unaware that they can control their newsfeeds so as to keep me from being updated when their Werewolf has attacked some Vampire...

And there there's My Personality:



Absurd. Surely I am at least as neurotic as I am conscientious! I mean, the other evening when I misplaced Neil Young and Crazy Horse Rust Never Sleeps (a disc I'd had in hand just a couple of days prior), I spent ages frantically rooting through piles and nervously scanning through the cd shelf (where I ultimately found it filed under Pete Townshend, who's been on my mind lately). When Kenneth replaces the butter in the fridge without properly wrapping it up, I f-reak out. When a lady dining 20 feet away from me in a restaurant drops her lipstick from her pocket mid meal, I find myself distracted by trying to remember to see when she gets up to leave so that I can notify her of her dropped lipstick should she not have discovered it there on the floor.

That's all I wanted to share: My Personality sucks. Thank goodness it can be vanquished at the click of a button.

<-| H o t |->

GLENN GOULD
Glenn Gould was hot No. 1 in B Flat Major

Glenn Gould was hot No. 2 in C Minor

Pete Townshend was also hot No. 3 in A Minor

PETE TOWNSHEND WAS ALSO HOT, Guitarist

Sydney Owenson/Lady Morgan on Manners in The Wild Irish Girl

"Manners, like the graduated scale of the thermometer, should betray, by degrees, the expansion or contraction of the feelings, as they are warmed by emotion or chilled by indifference. They should breathe the soul in order to win it."

I'm fascinated by the notion that being well-mannered does not merely mean being kind, nice, or tolerant-- that we communicate through manners.

You look at me as if you're in a daze.
It's like the feeling at the end of the page,
When you realize you don't know what you just read.

Final Market

Throughout summer 2006, I posted my weekly take from Madison's Capitol Square farmers' market. This year, I was a much less avid attendee of the market-- unable to get there early and unwilling to brave the cloying crowds after 9:00 am. Likewise, when I made it to the market, I failed to share its fruits (and vegetables) with you. Here, though, is an exception: today's take from this year's final Capitol Square market. Beautiful little turnips, vibrant pink chard, a massive stalk of Brussels sprouts, half a raw sheep's milk cheese from Butler Farms. Sadly, no sorrel. But still, a lovely end to the season, no?

From the UW Archives: Bed Race, 5/22/71

Soup that Features Sorrel

Sorrel is available late spring through early summer and-- weather permitting-- in autumn. It's a leafy green that tastes like concentrated sunshine. Lemony without being acidic. I happened upon lovely bunches of sorrel at the last East Side Farmer's Market of the season. The market took place during a brief bright respite amidst a slough of chilly gray weather. The overcast was beginning to take a toll, and cooking with the sorrel really perked me up. As I served the soup into these bowls, I unintentionally managed to create almost identical slops on the rim of each. Rather than clean it off, I opted to go with the flow.

Morning Bus Ride

Erk is the first to board the special extra #38 which sometimes runs at the end of rush hour.

The driver, jawing on his cellphone, greets him warmly. Erk is overwhelmed with joy to enter an empty bus.

The driver smiles throughout the drive; he repeatedly waits with a cordial look on his face as people dash for the bus.

Two Communication Arts graduate students begin to talk about their students, who have asked for an extension. Erk finds this stultifyingly dull and turns up his Sony Ericcson Walkman Phone: I'm not a child anymore. I'm tall enough, To reach for the stars. I'm old enough To love you from afar...

Erk exits the bus and, as he marches past the resting bus, waives to the driver not really caring if the fellow sees the gesture. Don't say that you love me! Just tell me that you want me! Tusk!

From the UW Archives: Godlike Hair & Racy Shorts

Rugby match, November 1971

With this image in mind, I welcome the approach of November.

I like zombies

Wait a minute baby...

Listening to Tusk which sweet Kenny gave me for my birthday. Puzzling over the song Sara:

"Drowning in the sea of love,
Where everyone would love to drown."

more at twiigs.com...

Morning Bus Ride

Riding the #4 bus to work, Erk puzzles over fellow rider's woven South-American-looking backpack, every pocket of which is crammed full of godknowswhat.

Erk puzzles over anti-fur button pinned to above-mentioned backpack. The button is not new.

Erk witnesses above-mentioned rider hand anti-fur card to another rider with a fur-lined collar. The card has an image of an animal and the text, "I'm not a coat." Erk puzzles over this.



As above-mentioned rider exits the bus, fur-lined collar and her male companion smile and puzzle over the anti-fur card.

Someone riding a bicycle on the sidewalk crashes to the ground. The crashed bicylist places hands on face and unhelmeted head and lies still with leg twisted in wheel.

Tweeners at the back of the bus exclaim, "...he hit the ground so hard!" and begin to puzzle over the gender of the crashed bicyclist.

Above-mentioned back-pack-wearing fellow rider, having exited the bus during the bike accident, runs over to crashed bicyclist. She throws her backpack aside and kneels down beside the crumpled body. Bus driver briefly hops off the bus and then begins to call in the accident on his phone in the bus. Anti-fur continues to talk to the bicyclist, gingerly attempting to remove the bicyclist's book-laden backpack which lolls awkwardly to the left. Another woman joins the crashed bicylist. She lifts the bicycle away, untangling the rider from it. The once tangled leg assumes a more natural position.

Tweeners now refer to the crashed bicyclist as she. Erk, with earphones in one hand, looks on like monks afloat in the river in Andrei Rublev.

Crashed bicyclist sits up, revealing a large bloody splotch on face. Also reveals gender. Anti-fur digs in her backpack, removing a tissue which she uses to blot the crashed bicyclist's injured face. Crashed bicyclist takes the tissue, holds it to his face, and, sitting upright, folds into a fetal position with his face in hands. Additional helper offers him an unopened bottle of Glacéau Fruitwater.



In this gesture, she reveals to all that she has a purple cast on her arm and wrist. From the bus, Erk realizes she is explaining that her injury resulted from a bicycle crash. There are other women assisting the crashed bicyclist but they remain plain, only their gender and their number (the group is small enough to read as concerned individuals willing to assist, but not so small as to need additional assistance) is apparent.

Tweener goes to the head of the bus, gets a bus schedule, and returns to the rear of the bus. Erk cannot tell if she did this merely to get a closer look or different view of the crashed bicyclist.

The bus's phone rings. The driver answers it. Erk has ceased breathing but does not realize this. The bus driver steps off the bus and reports something to the group, which appears slightly smaller. Anti-fur's movements are tender, appear nurturing. Purple cast looks calm yet intent. Crashed bicyclist continues to hold tissue to cheek and face in hands.

The bus rolls forward, and Erk puzzles over what he has witnessed. The next stop, roughly 200 meters away from the accident, is his.

From the UW Archives: Airborne Women on Campus

Long jump circa 1916


Circle dance, undated (prob. 1930's), by Fritz Kaeser


Basketball, circa 1935