gnat (begrudgingly) catches up

i am experiencing writer's block.

gnat's chicago experiment has been m.i.a. for a few weeks now, and not owing to lack of material. i keep opening blogger, staring at the empty white box for several minutes, getting disheartened, and giving up in favor of stumbleupon or something else that requires no creative input on my part. sadly even now i'm having trouble coming up with exciting things to say about the exciting things i've done since my last update. you'll have to bear with me.

so yeah... st. patrick's day happened.

every year chicago dyes a stretch of the river green in celebration of st. patrick's day. (los angeles, which lacks both a river and a sufficient non-brown population to be very interested in recoloring it, dyes a few pints of miller lite green instead.)

...gross.

the previous weekend i tagged along with taylor and eileen to st. louis for mardi gras (another holiday los angeles is completely uninterested in) where i enjoyed gumbo, beverages in squirt guns, and entertaining encounters with fellow fat tuesday revelers in the streets of historic soulard.

here's a picture of some beads in a tree. i have absolutely nothing clever to say about them.

before leaving st. louis we stopped at the arch, where taylor and eileen (former resident and frequent visitor, respectively) sat looking entertained as i frolicked in the grass and took pictures from every possible angle...

...including the obligatory "pushing on the arch" shot below.

en route back to chicago we stopped in springfield, the capital of illinois and my former place of residence! also the home of abraham lincoln and one of the stranger sandwiches i have encountered in my sandwich eating career: the horseshoe.

two pieces of toasted white bread, topped with a hamburger patty and a handful of french fries and then drizzled with cheese sauce. i don't know who thought these four food items would go well together, nor am i sure it can really be called a sandwich. mostly i am mystified as to why it's called a horseshoe. (wikipedia offers no guidance on this issue.)

also in springfield, my old house!

yep, that's where i lived when i was three, during gnat's illinois residency round 1. the walgreen's around the corner that i used to ride my red tricycle to is still there.

i've been spring break-ing in california for a little over a week, but will be returning shortly to chicago for more adventures. here's to hoping the blogging deities bestow some fluency upon me between now and my next update.

gnat says OPA!

chicago is a huge center of greek diaspora. (according to wikipedia so are new hampshire and florida, who knew?) i'm 1/4 greek, so it's a little bit unacceptable that i've lived here for eight months and haven't been over to greektown to visit my people.

instead, because the end of the quarter was looming and i had papers due left and right, (and because you can only cook tacos so many tuesdays in a row before it gets really boring) i decided to throw a GREEKSTRAVAGANZA! on monday.

before you can throw a greek dinner party you need greek ingredients, some of which are basically impossible to find in your average run-of-the-mill grocery store. aleck (a fellow greek and chicago native) was kind enough to poll his relatives about their preferred food shopping location, and the overwhelming consensus was:

fresh farms market! way out in the northwest suburbs of chicago. lucky for me, taylor was as excited about the prospect of a grocery-related field trip as i was, so on saturday we embarked on a mini road trip to niles, IL to get all of the goodies on my list.

so, fresh farms market is my new favorite place. i'll spare you a detailed description of our time there, because odds are we will be going back and it will get its own post. despite my giddiness throughout the shopping experience somehow i managed to exhibit a tremendous amount of restraint and only left with things on my list.

...it was a long list.

my menu was pretty ambitious, so i began to prep little by little on saturday and sunday.

by the time guests began to arrive on monday, i was greeksuited up and in the last stages of cooking.

there was a veritable smorgasbord of all my favorite foods to cook and eat: dolmas, moussaka, tsatziki, greek salad, lemon chicken, spanakopita, shaareya and tabbouleh, the last two of which are actually egyptian but shhhhh.

side note: smorgasbord is a swedish word for a buffet type food situation. unfortunately, extensive google searching (and mother phone calling) has failed to turn up a greek equivalent.

the most exciting food item by far was the saganaki. saganaki is a hunk of kefalotyri cheese that's been floured, egg washed, floured again, pan fried, soaked in booze, then lit on fire. that's right - cheese on fire. saganaki isn't actually traditonally greek, but originated in a restaurant right here in chicago's greektown.

a lovely little greek lady at fresh farms market told us to use sherry, but after several failed attempts to light the cheese we resorted to vodka. even so, the cheese was not as on fire as i had hoped it would be.

next time we'll use bacardi 151.

also notable, although probably to nobody but me, my first truly successful baklava making attempt. it turns out the secret is to use a loooooot of butter. i won't tell you how much.

we wore laurels and togas, we listened to greek music, we wined and dined. we GREEKSTRAVAGANZA!d, that truly is the only word for it.

once the guests had gone i promptly passed out on the couch.

throwing a GREEKSTRAVAGANZA! is hard work.

the next day, because it was tuesday and there was a downright disgusting amount of leftover food, (and because i was in the midst of far less fun than GREEKSTRAVAGANZA! excessive procrastination induced paperwritingstravaganza) i had greek tacos for dinner.

don't be fooled, they may look cool but there is a reason that greek tacos are not a real thing.

one of these days i will make it to actual greektown. in the meantime, i am up to my ears in enough leftover dolmas and tsatziki to keep me fed through the remainder of paperwritingstravaganza.

OPA!