gnat's fall foliage photoshoot

these photos were taken around my parents' house in northern california, not in chicago, but they came out so nicely that i had to put them somewhere. thanks, carmine III.

i was surprised upon my return to chicago this afternoon to find that the trees weren't bare yet, despite the supposed 30mph winds that delayed my flight yesterday. they're barely hanging on, though. 

gnat bundles up

it's starting to look (and feel) a lot like winter, even though it's technically still fall for at least another month or so longer...

most of the trees are bare of leaves and strung up with tiny white lights. this week we dipped down into the 30s for the first time, and just moments after i took this picture lazy white flecks started floating down around me. unfortunately they were more like very small hail that immediately melted than the great huge snowflakes we got the first time it snowed last year. we still haven't made it quite down to freezing temperatures yet so i'm going to go ahead and say that it wasn't the first snow - just really really cold rain.

fingers crossed for good snowflakes again this year. i still can't get over how great those little guys are.

gnat revels in fall colors (and summer temperatures)

last year i was on my toes, watching the trees for the first sign of yellow so i could document their gradual change over the course of the season. this year they snuck up on me - before i had the chance to notice, the foliage had erupted into yellows, oranges, and deep reds, with of course a stubborn few that are holding onto their green. i say keep at it, green trees. i don't really want it to get cold either.

that said, we have been fortunate enough to have absolutely perfect weather for the last week and a half or so. the sun is out, the skies are clear, and the temperature is hovering in the 75-80 degree range. it's sort of like we have the best of summer and fall at the same time.


this has, sadly, been a detriment to my productivity, as i spent most of this weekend and large portions of the first half of this week lying on the grass with a book in various locations, attempting to soak up as much sun as possible while i still can.


according to weather.com, it's all coming to an end this evening beginning with light showers, then rain, then a sharp dip in the temperature that chicago is unlikely to recover from for the remainder of the year.


the fall purists keep reminding me that what comes next are the crisp days and sweater-and-scarf temperatures, which are refreshing and satisfying in their own right. i don't disagree, but i'll be sad to see summer go for good.

more fall foliage updates to come - i anticipate that after tonight's rain, those trees with weaker constitutions will wind up mostly naked. as for now, i'm taking my book and heading to the park.

gnat experiences falling snow for the first time in over two decades

i woke up this morning and looked out the window and there were white flecks lazily and confusedly floating down, up, sideways, in circles, in every direction, really - SNOW. yes, friends, today, for the first time since my family left illinois 20 years ago, i saw snow fall.

after taking several photos from my living room window, i threw on every item of clothing in the immediate vicinity so i could go outside and stand in it.

once the initial giddiness had passed (i'm totally lying, it's been several hours and i still can't stop looking out the window) i found something magnificent sticking to my sweatshirt:

guys, SNOWFLAKES ARE REAL! to think, all these years i thought snowflakes were a mystical imaginary entity created to keep me busy with scissors and coffee filters in arts and crafts during the winter months. no, snowflakes are an actual thing, and they're seriously amazing, and you can bet your ass i stood outside my apartment in the cold for several minutes, like an idiot, fumbling with my camera to capture the little bits of magic stuck to the front of my sweatshirt before they melted.

so much for considering myself...

an (honorary) today's chicago woman! i don't know if i've talked about the honorary street names yet, they're all over the city and some are pretty amusing. i spotted this one yesterday on ontario outside the corner bakery by school where i study. i wonder if my snowflake photographing stunt disqualifies me?

in far less exciting news, it's time for a FALL FOLIAGE UPDATE!

so, there's no more foliage. the city of chicago was nice enough, though, to replace it all with little christmas lights, which i almost like more:

speaking of christmas, the city is starting to get ready and i'm glad i get to see it before i retreat to california. my girl guy has taken a break from his favorite two lines of music and has instead been regaling us with christmas carols. there's a tree up at the hancock center down the street from the apartment:

and the tops of the buildings are all lit up green and red. here's the hancock tower:

the temperature has barely dipped below 20 and cara and i are already desperately struggling to keep warm. because it felt more winter-y, last night in lieu of taco tuesday we had posole, my new favorite soup, with homemade tortilla chips:

(you may be surprised to see the avocados floating in there... cara brought them back from california after thanksgiving.)

there's a very little part of me that's sad that tomorrow i'll be leaving the novelty of "real winter" behind for california's 50 and 60 degree december lows. there's a much bigger part reminding that little part that i'll be back for the VERY real january and february and that REAL winter does not mean the 20 degrees and fun little flurries of snow i'm so excited about right now...

gnat's duck experiment (a photographic journey)

but first a FALL FOLIAGE UPDATE!

inexplicably, palm trees have appeared in front of the water tower. i know, they aren't native to california either but really?

as far as real fall foliage goes, it's starting to look a lot like this:

scattered reds, oranges, yellows, and greens, a whole lot of bare branches.

it's almost the end of the quarter and i'm coming up on the due dates for several papers and assignments, so naturally i've been procrastinating via all manners of food preparation. peanut butter truffles:

and of course the duck. next weekend i am participating in the assembly and preparation of a turducken, and in the interest of not going into it with no experience i did a duck deboning practice run.

first i procured bess the duck from the dominick's off the fullerton stop on the red line. (i made sure they wrapped her in several waterproof layers before i put her in my purse.)

after taking a day to let her defrost, work up my nerves, and watch several episodes of nip/tuck to get into the mood, i prepped my surgical field.

no good photographic online source for how to debone a duck really exists, so i combined the advice of several sources (including a very surgical account of the chicken deboning process written by cheex, which gave such such instructions as "make a long, bone deep incision rostral to caudal midline along the spine"). still, i was slightly befuddled as to where i should begin.

it took way longer than it should have (maybe because i kept pausing to snack/take photos of my progress/check facebook) but i managed to separate bess from her bones.

i fried her briefly in my trusty cast iron skillet to remove some of the excess fat (with the intention of using it for other delicious applications).

as i attempted to drain the fat off, however, i lost control of the situation and pitched bess onto the newly cleaned and sterilized counter.

i set her aside for awhile because frankly i was a little tired of her (two hours of deboning will do that) and focused on a duck stock made from the bones and some duck fat french fries to munch on.

unfortunately i was overeager and snatched one straight from the pan, dripping hot duck fat down my shirt and giving myself a duck fat blister (which is, two days later, decidedly more disgusting looking albeit less painful than shown below).

worth it.

i stuffed bess with a goat cheese/apricot/soyrizo (sue me, trader joe's didn't have the real stuff) mixture and (shoddily) trussed her, and into the oven she went.

she looked delicious upon emerging, but by that point i had been eating for several hours and the last thing i wanted to do was eat a duck.

upon deciding i didn't really want to eat her in trussed stuffed roast duck form, i threw her into the dutch oven with some oranges so that today we could have...

duck tacos. yeah, they look like regular ordinary tacos but they're NOT.

happy taco tuesday!

gnat has pizza for breakfast (and breakfast for dinner)

for those familiar with chicago's illustrious deep dish pizza purveyors, there may, as of yet, be a few conspicuous absences from this blog's pizza discussion. for example:

giordano's famous stuffed pizza! i tried it when i came to visit in february, but as no photos exist of that experience and i was not yet a seasoned chicago resident we'll pretend that doesn't count.

(note: when cara and i went to pick up the pizza the place was was packed, people spilling out onto the sidewalk waiting for tables, presumably most of them visiting for the weekend. as we were snaking our way out with the pizza, i stopped to take the above photo and a woman behind cara said "see? that girl is taking pictures of the giordano's sign!" to which cara immediately turned and replied, "it's ok, we live here." seasoned chicago residents indeed.)

giordano's was chosen best by chicago tribune, new york times, chicago magazine, nbc tv, and now, also gnat's chicago experiment!

solely by virtue of its beautiful soft crust. one of my main dislikes about all of the deep dish pizza i've tried is that once you get through all the delicious cheese and toppings you find yourself faced with a crust that has the consistency of particle board. at giordano's, not so! it's spongy and wonderful.

also delicious this week, elly's pancake house at clark and north.

aleck ran the "hot chocolate 15K" downtown this weekend, (and kicked ass, congratulations!) and his night before carbo-loading meal of choice was pancakes.

(another note: i don't like pancakes, really. i am not a sweet breakfast foods person. elly's pancakes are amazing. all pancakes should taste like elly's pancakes, and then maybe i would like pancakes.)

i opted for potato benedict, which is eggs benedict on potato pancakes instead of english muffins with hash browns, and we split side of french fries.

we were ambitious and intended to try their pie (sweet potato!) for dessert but for reasons that are probably obvious that just didn't happen. even so, i was all carbo-loaded up and ready to sleep in the next morning and wake up just in time to congratulate aleck as he arrived home from the race (and have pizza for breakfast: see above).

FALL FOLIAGE UPDATE!!!

rather unexpectedly, the leaves have turned abruptly from yellow to, well, no longer there, without any of the transition to oranges or reds i was hoping to see. except for the ones that are still completely green. what gives?

the temperature has been in the 30s and 40s all week and my girl guy is undeterred - he's still been hanging out on this corner, still singing the same few lines of my girl, still making me wonder how long my water balloon throwing range is. (that's my bedroom window all the way on the left, two floors above the brown and white striped awning.)