Friday we went to Chicago to see the symphony and have dinner with John & Megan.
I’m still on crutches for walking outdoors, even though I don’t need them in the house right now, so we took a lot of Lyfts. I thought we might take the L more, but everyone’s saying it’s filthy and dangerous since pandemic. It has not recovered. Hopefully summer tourists and a new mayor will bring it back.
On the way down we went through Harvard IL where they were still iced in.
I walked a few yards crutch-less in the parking lot at the train station and climbed up on a snow bank to get this picture. I had to sit on my butt to get down. But I like the picture.
When we got to town we took a Lyft from the train, and had breakfast at this new fancy Dollop in the 76-story skyscraper they were building on the corner of Roosevelt and S. Michigan, the whole time we had our place two blocks farther south on Michigan. It’s called Nema. The Dollop has a full menu, and a full bar. I had an egg sandwich (depicted bottom right) and Mark had eggs and potatoes and sausage and toast. With black coffee for me and a pretty mocha for Mark.
Dollop at Nema Google search images
We did another car to the hotel, and then crutched to CSO. The symphony soloist was Julia Fischer, who played Robert Schumann’s violin concerto, I guess one of those pieces that was never played much during the composer’s lifetime and only made public years later. Then in the second half they played Tchaikovsky’s Manfred, based on a Byron poem, and kind of a mess musically, but fun to listen to. Harps and organs and gongs and timpani, and sections of the strings passing a melody around. Here’s the program book with all the notes, see pp. 17-23. It was OK on the cructhes – I used them to get into the aisle, then we stashed them under the seats. I wasn’t going to go to the bathroom at intermission, because it’s in the basement, but when I realized the Tchaikovsky was an hour I decided to hobble on down.
Crutched back to the hotel and had a free beer. Pineapple IPA for Stay Pineapple hotel – like the doggie. Although I still prefer the old name – the Burnham Hotel. In the Reliance Building.
That’s actually my bad knee but you can’t really tell.
Dinner was at a place John & Megan picked, walking distance from their house but we had to Lyft; even if we did feel up to the Blue line, the walk to the restaurant would have been 15 minutes or so – a.k.a. farther than I’m allowed right now.
Enotecca Roma. The dining room was pretty small but seems like in the summer they have a walled in patio out back. We had the bruschetta flight and a couple of pastas. I think the carrot gnocchi was the best. Good cocktails too.
Sunday, back in Madison, we has huevos rancheros for brunch. Not as big a production as that time back in early pandemic when I made home made flour tortillas, with lard, and refried the beans, with lard. I think I even made Gabrielle Hamilton’s ranchero sauce, not quite as big a batch, but I did make the achiote paste. That stuff lived in a little glass container at the back of the fridge for the last almost three years, and I used it a few times, and finally composted it a few weeks ago. This time I used olive oil and bought La Perla corn tortillas that are about 30 calories each. And we didn’t go into a food coma afterward, either.
Mostly vegetarian huevos rancheros – I had 3 sausage links leftover from when we had banana pancakes for dinner on Fat Tuesday, so seemed like they should be eaten – we each had 1 1/2
And fruit salad and rice krispie bars. I had a partial and a full bag of marshmallows that were starting to dry out in the baking ingredients cabinet, and when I measured the ingredients, I realized that a double batch would not only use up all the marshmallows it would use up all the rice krispies too. So, done.
We watched the Last of Us, and I really like the show but it makes me so jumpy. Like I knew the episode would end with the two girls getting bit by a clicker. Monday morning, miserable Monday when the basement leaked because it rained pretty hard last night, with a little lightning & thunder thrown in for fun, I kept having post apocalyptic images from the show sort of superimposed on my apocalyptic basement where I was sopping up an inch or so of water with raggy old towels. Much of last night’s episode took place in a ruined shopping mall, but some was in an abandoned suburban house. Oh well by noon the water had stopped coming in and it was actually drying out. And the towels are so soft and fluffy after their drenching in rain water, and I use the washer to spin most of the water out, and then load them into the dryer.
Jasper seems to have had a good weekend too.
