gnat surfaces

alright so me being m.i.a. is not a new thing, we all know this - in any case, here's a recap of what happened after i unplugged the router and went offline two weeks ago.

we packed. and packed, and packed, and packed.

everything in the apartment broke at the same time - no kidding, the kitchen sink stopped up, we blew a fuse in the hallway, the microwave mysteriously refused to turn on... it knew we were vacating and it was not happy about it. i spent several hours plunging and cursing and fiddling with circuit breakers, all to no avail.

we packed some more. well, cara packed, i plunged.

...cara had a lot of things to pack.

i had fewer things to pack, which managed to fit in a few suitcases... with a little finagling.

i took a break from the packing and plunging and finagling to say goodbye to some friends over pizza.

finally, we managed to empty the apartment.

the last thing to come down was the chicago skyline. because we were sleep deprived and it seemed poetic at the time, each of us took down one of the three panels: eileen the first,

cara the middle,

and myself last.

and then it was time to go.

these pictures don't really capture the utter disaster that our moving day actually was - when i say we were sleep deprived, i really mean we hadn't slept properly in a few days (cara hadn't slept period), we stupidly packed the kitchen first thing in the morning and couldn't feed ourselves despite having a fridge full of lovely things like eggs and milk, the movers were hours and hours late, and as i've mentioned before things just stopped working left and right. to top it off, my girl guy must have known we were going because he started up before 8am and didn't quit all day.

i suppose none of this matters anymore, because we don't live there anymore.

anyway!

we moved. i am no longer a chicago resident. this may cause you to wonder what's going to happen to gnat's chicago experiment, a blog about my life in chicago. fear not! i have plenty of backlogged adventures that never made it into posts, so i have enough material to keep the blog afloat for a bit (provided i ever get around to writing it down).

so goodbye for now, from california, more chicago adventures coming soon.

gnat cries wolf

after two days of anxiety, tense conversations, visits from supportive friends, and general freaking out, cara and i signed the forms to say that we have withdrawn our intent to sublet the apartment.

(it was only fitting that we celebrated with a cupcake from more)


what this means is that i'm staying - until when exactly, i'm not sure, but i will not be vacating at the end of march.


it's dramatic, i know, but coming that close to giving up the apartment felt something like the chicago residency equivalent of a near death experience. until the end was staring me in the face, i didn't realize how much i wasn't ready for it. my life in chicago has become routine - i guess i've lost my sense of wonder, or at least my will to act on it and take advantage of everything the city has to offer. it's time to shake off the complacency and really enjoy what remains of my time here. i want to be sure that when it actually is time to leave, i don't do it with feelings of regret.

that said, it's time to make a bucket list. what things do i absolutely need to accomplish before i leave? what things do i need to go back and do again? help me interwebs - i want to do this right.

gnat's picaken experiment: a culinary feat never to be repeated

the "picaken" has been a sort of running joke in my life for a few years now. when jalees, cheex and i first tossed around the idea of making a turducken for fakesgiving 2010, one of them suggested that a pie baked inside a cake would be the perfect dessert. we all laughed it off, of course. since then, every once in a while i've gotten an email from someone with a picture of a picaken, since apparently my friends know me and my predilection for strange kitchen experiments all too well. i usually laugh and respond that i'm not really much of a baker.

the last such email came from eileen, and contained a link to the first recipe that i had seen actually call the baked good behemoth a "picaken." what was so different about this email that made me suddenly entertain the idea of following through on this stupid, stupid quest?

the subject line said "challenge."

(unfortunately), i am not a girl who backs away from a challenge easily, which is why three days and several sticks of butter later this happened:

but i digress.

the first person to whom i made my intentions known was my little sister alex, who immediately asked "what is with you baking things inside of other things?" i wish i knew, alex.

so last saturday, after extensive googling of pie flavors and cake flavors and polling really everyone about potential combinations thereof, i assembled the ingredients and equipment and cara and i began picaken-ing. you may be wondering how exactly one accomplishes such a feat. lucky for you, i have pictures.

first you bake a pie. i had never done this before, so it was an experience in itself.

we made a nectarine filling (which, if you think about it, is totally ludicrous considering it was january in chicago. on second thought, not that ludicrous in comparison to the whole rest of the experience).

then you bake the pie. bonus points if you do it in a pi dish.

if you live in a big city and can't cool your pie on a windowsill (like in tom sawyer or dennis the menace or whatever) you open your bedroom window to let in the frigid january air instead. this was surprisingly effective.

this is the point where normally you would stop. after all, you've just baked a beautiful pie. or, you could remove the pie from its dish and set it in a springform pan...

and pour yellow cake batter over it.

where did it go?

it comes out of the oven looking like this. voila! picaken.

you could also stop at this point. picaken accomplished, after all.

cara and i did not stop at this point. what we did instead was assemble another pie, this one banana. we baked it, we window-silled it, and we popped it right out of its dish.

...flipping a perfect, fresh baked pie out of its dish is something of a harrowing experience.

we put it in the springform pan,

and covered it with batter. this time, lemon cake.

we piled our two picakens onto a makeshift cake stand (an upside down cast iron skillet covered in aluminum foil) and frosted that bad boy.

then we invited as many people over as we could so that they could help us eat the thing.

after the first slice came out, i may have cried a little on the inside. the inside of our picaken was far from beautiful. the banana pie turned purple - google offers little guidance as to why this happened, except that it has "something to do with potassium." it also maybe didn't hold together as well as it could have, as demonstrated by the "slice" i am holding below.

despite its less than winning looks, the picaken was delicious. 

i won't tell you how long the whole experience took, because frankly i am a bit ashamed to admit how long we spent on it. was it worth it? absolutely - picaken challenge accepted, and totally dominated. next person who emails me a recipe is getting this photo of a double-picaken slice in response. done and done.

you may have noticed in the first picture that a blue and pink candle were inserted into the finished picaken - because how much of a shame would it be not to use it in celebration of some important event? cara and aleck blew out the candles in honor of their recent engagement (congratulations guys!).

i would like to say that i've learned my lesson about ridiculous food assembly (and my reluctance to back down from a challenge) but picaken-squared was totally worth the time, effort, and mess. that said, i'm never ever going to do it again. probably. we'll see.

gnat is reminded what "real winter" looks like

i've been back in chicago to for two weeks, but the weather conditions have been causing me to wonder if i hadn't fallen through a wormhole to a universe where the state of illinois had relocated itself 700 miles south of its actual location. it's been in the 40s and 50s since i got back, not that different from the northern california winter i returned from.

well, it definitely looks like "real winter" today. i woke up to heaps of snow falling out of the sky, upsetting pedestrians and blanketing cars, trees, and just about everything else in sight. in seven hours we've had upwards of four inches of snow, and it's still going strong out there.

unfortunately instead of spending the morning giddily dancing around in the snowflake melee (which is what i did last year) i had to be a real person and stomp off to the library. i'm not sure how it's possible, but everyone else walking around me seemed to be unaffected by the weather, whereas i arrived at school with my coat, hair, and scarf encrusted with a thick layer of ice. cara says that she too looked like a snowman in a class full of dry, composed students. maybe snow has a honing system that helps it preferentially attack non-natives? so much for being better at winter the second time around.

i'm off to warm up with a huge pot of posole.

gnat's quarter century: complete with flaming cheese

so, i should start by telling you that ever since greekstravaganza and my failed attempt to recreate saganaki (flaming cheese) in my kitchen with cooking sherry, i have been itching to use the "things on fire" tag again. unfortunately there has been a total lack of things on fire in my life since february... i suppose this is not a thing that people normally complain about, but for months i have been impatiently awaiting the day when i would triumphantly tag another post "things on fire."

anyway - the day started like most others, with a pot of coffee and several quality hours on my word processor. thus is the glamorous life of a graduate student. then, because it's tradition (fine, i've only done it once) i walked to the chicago city farm stand on clybourn and division for birthday tomatoes:

cara came home with treats of a delicious though slightly less healthy variety, in the form of blue cheese walnut praline, cookies and cream, vanilla, and key lime cupcakes from more:

we were joined at the apartment by aleck, eileen, lisa, and cara's visiting friend austen, and trekked over to greektown for dinner. believe it or not, i hadn't been since my first visit to chicago almost two years ago. there are several greek restaurants in the area (and a walgreen's whose sign is written in greek letters), we settled on greek islands.

i was not prepared for how much food i was about to consume. really, in deciding on greek birthday dinner i hadn't thought much further than the very first course - wait for it...

CHEESE ON FIRE!

this fellow is less enthused by the fact that the cheese is on fire than any of us were (or maybe just me, whatever) but we'll chalk that up to the fact that he gets to do this several times on any given night. i also made him hold off on putting it out with the lemon until i could get a decent picture, which may be why he's so cranky.

after the flaming cheese there were gyros with tsatziki and skordalia (garlic potato spread),

followed by a greek salad, of course,

and then several family style plates of greek favorites. clockwise from the bottom, greek rice pilaf, spanakopita, pastitsio, potatoes, keftedes, and moussaka.

i don't know what these people were thinking when they designed this menu. it is way too much food to eat even a fraction of comfortably.

then (why!?) they gave us dessert. baklava, galactoboureko, and some spice cake that i didn't recognize and concluded that it must not really be greek.

like i said, this is way too much food to eat even a fraction of comfortably. we took something like four boxes of food home with us and somehow i STILL wound up so full that i immediately fell asleep upon arriving back at the apartment. how's that for a wild birthday celebration?

excellent variety and sheer volume aside, the food at greek islands is good but not spectacular and i'll probably try a different restaurant next time i'm in greektown. still, they fulfilled my only prerequisite for an amazing birthday dinner celebration - things on fire. (lies. other prerequisite: awesome people to share it with - check!) i'll save you all my expounding on how old i feel (except to let you know that as it is now officially fall and the temperature has started to dip, you can look forward to my whining about aching joints in addition to all of my typical complaints... you're welcome.) and wrap up instead with a big thank you for everyone who helped celebrate my 25th (gah) birthday, last weekend in california and this week in chicago. you're wonderful!

gnat enjoys free summer music

this morning i realized i hadn't yet posted about what is probably my favorite chicago summertime activity - evening concerts in millenium park.

regular attendees include cara,

myself,

eileen,

and sean,

with occasional guest appearances by aleck

and andrew

among others.

about once a week cara and i load up bags of snacks, wine, and blankets and head down to millenium park, where we all play card games and listen to free music all evening.

this summer we've heard everything from rachmaninoff to egyptian music to iron & wine, all from this patch of grass.

in other news, all of my pictures are going to be in hipstamatic for a while, both because i'm basically obsessed with it and because carmine II is in the hands of the geek squad after sustaining a fall. (yes, again. shut up.)