gnat prepares for her last day in california

yes, the one month mark of my california stay is fast approaching and with it my impending return to chicago. here's a sampling of the things i did while i was here:

i spent the first week fluishly and furiously (like fast and furious but with more phlegm) knitting from the couch in my parents' living room.

i made my way south to LA and back (twice) to see some of my favorite people and eat some of my favorite foods, including this pizza from enzo's in westwood:

it's just so damn satisfying.

i visited san diego and celebrated maya's birthday and larry's newly awarded permanent residency. (hooray for no longer having to worry that he'll get deported!)

can you find anything wrong with this picture?

i saw some free (well, almost free) music that would have caused 15 year old me to flip out at the del mar racetrack:

i collected some evidence that we have seasons here in california, too:

and, perhaps because i've begun to miss living right on top of a purveyor of silly flavored cupcakes, i baked.

blue moon orange with honey cream cheese frosting:

and irish car bomb cupcakes (guiness chocolate cake, whiskey ganache filling, bailey's buttercream frosting) for very late celebrating of daniel's birthday.

all of this and more! sadly most of the trip went undocumented, owing to carmine's accident early on. he couldn't be fixed, so tomorrow i'll pick up his replacement - carmine II. thank you, accidental damage warranty. also tomorrow, packing. not looking forward to that.

stay tuned, only one more day before gnat's chicago experiment is actually about chicago again.

gnat has an accident...

blogging is suspended temporarily, on account of poor little carmine the camera having sustained a fall while i was in LA. he is under the care of best buy's geek squad for the next two weeks. as soon as i get some photos from friends' cameras i'll be able to update on so-cal adventures. (yeah, i know this is supposed to be about chicago adventures but the weekend was so kickass that i'll make an exception.)

in the meantime, i'll leave you with this photo, a staple of my california diet:

gnat channels chicago from the other side of the country

so, i'm still in california, shall we say, indefinitely.

tomorrow i'll be making the cross-state trek from my parents' house to LA (does it still count as cross-state if you're going north/south? sounds strange to me.) for probably the 29586th time, but i suppose i'll be doing it with a renewed sense of vigor as it will be the first time in six years that i am a visitor to southern california rather than a resident.

i guess travel channel is in the middle of a man vs. food marathon, and i happened to turn it on during an episode featuring chicago foods. ok fine, i watched several episodes and one about chicago finally came on. anyway, adam richman is currently stuffing his face with "the meaty legend" at gino's east a few blocks from my apartment.

a few moments ago he was at al's beef, where he got his italian beef sandwich DIPPED. i, of course, tried al's beef for the first time a few weeks ago, but my sandwich sampling trio failed to notice that we could get our sandwiches DIPPED.

total fail. now i have to go back.

gnat goes goes back back to cali cali

and gets laid out by the flu the moment her plane touches down at san francisco international. awesome.

no matter. it means i get to take some time out from lying on the couch, wheezing, knitting, and watching harry potter movies to post a couple of pictures.

thursday night i got a little crazy at trader joe's for snacks and two buck chuck (which costs three dollars a bottle in chicago... seriously chicago, wtf.) for a picnic in millenium park. cara, eric, laurena, maya, daniel and i wined, dined, enjoyed some free jazz, and hobnobbed with some hungry mosquitos.

on friday myself, cara, aleck, and cara's friend lisa who was in town for a brief visit, went looking for billy goat's tavern - a chicago legend. this saturday night live skit is evidently about it. there are several locations around the greater chicago area... we chose the absolute sketchiest one.

in case we weren't sure we were in the right place, this sign was posted outside:

also notable this week, i did battle with and subsequently vanquished a disgusting little apartment intruder. i had to sacrifice a tupperware to do it but he's gone and isn't coming back with any of his little cockroach friends. gross.

gnat has more visitors

and (more) more cupcakes, which cara and i got to reward ourselves for the rapid progress we've made in apartment arranging. (total bs. we still don't have a couch, a table, chairs, a vegetable peeler...)

we tried the goat fig merlot and salted caramel:

the goat fig merlot had a slightly cheesy cake with fig filling and red wine tinged frosting. the caramel had caramel flavored cake, caramel flavored frosting, and caramel oozing out of the center. go figure.

the next day (yeah, i'm pretty ashamed about this) i took eric, laurena, and maya, who are in town for a visit, into more to show them the ridiculous selection. we walked out with MORE more cupcakes. this time we went with cookies and cream and gin and juice.

i have no idea how or why anyone would make a gin flavored cupcake, but they did it.

i also learned a valuable lesson, which is that if you walk into the shop 15 minutes before closing and buy one cupcake you will probably walk out with a few free ones to keep it company.

we brunched at orange restaurant, home of frushi, fruit sushi, which is as silly as it sounds. the flavors of the day were pineapple with blueberry rice and kiwi grape with coconut melon rice.

they were significantly more difficult to eat with chopsticks than actual sushi.

despite my usual dislike of sweet breakfast fare, this week's pancake special at orange was too intriguing to pass up. four sets of silver dollar pancakes, each with a different combination of citrus, herb, and cheese.

with the exception of the grapefruit cottage cheese, these were very tasty, but they did leave me aching for eggs over-easy and fried potatoes. lesson learned. salty breakfast food is the only breakfast food for me.

we spent the day at the lincoln park zoo and the wizard of oz park, and once we had worked up an appetite we stopped for pizza. yeah, more pizza. this time the culprit was lou malnati's in lincoln park.

we chose to enjoy our pizza al fresco in a nearby park while sipping on a communal two liter of diet coke. it was the ultimate in classy dining.

even if it wasn't, the pizza was still delicious.

also notable this week was my first taco tuesday since leaving california. i was so excited that i had tacos not once but twice at two establishments across the street from each other in the course of one evening. i'm sensing a theme here.

gnat comparison shops

jalees and nicole were in town this weekend and jalees, who had never been to chicago before, had three items on his agenda.

1. italian beef

2. hot dogs

3. deep dish pizza

i turned to google to determine where the absolute best of these three items, starting with the italian beef, could be found. i came up with al's #1 beef, a chain with a location within walking distance of my apartment. it seemed like a simple enough plan.

al's definitely didn't disappoint. however, lunch didn't end there. on the way to al's we had walked by a portillo's and recognized the name as also being known for hot dogs and italian beef. naturally we decided that we needed to try both. we promptly finished our sandwiches at al's, cleaned up, and headed across the street...

...where we maybe got a little carried away.

the people eating next to us watched amusedly as we took several photographs of our food and were kind enough to snap this shot of us. they expressed some incredulity at the sheer amount of food on our table, and when jalees told them about the first half of our lunch adventure this gentleman jokingly offered him the rest of his half finished pizza. jalees, because he's jalees, accepted.

it was a struggle...

but we finished all of it.

the verdict? al's beef wins! the food was greasier and dirtier which, though it sounds counterintuitive, was far more satisfying. portillo's food was just too refined and unsatisfying and - dare i say - touristy.

so don't let the sign fool you!

gnat continues to move across town, solely by virtue of the chicago transit authority

i spent this week lugging suitcases back and forth across the city on the bus and i'm down to two more trips worth of stuff at the old apartment. while here, i took some scissors to the leftover ugly chair and made some improvements:

now it's convertible!

for ugly chair comfort either sitting upright or lying down.

yesterday while hanging out at the new place i decided to explore food options in the immediate vicinity. a quick trip around the corner brought me here:

johnny's grill. home of possibly the greasiest food i have ever eaten. i decided on the gyros special, the first greek food i've eaten since arriving in chicago. (there's a LOT of greek food in chicago and you'll be hearing about more of it sooner than later.)

on my way home i noted that there is a small cupcake shop just steps from my front door called more and decided to check it out. i selected a cupcake that cost almost as much as my lunch.

bleu cheese walnut praline. sounds ridiculous, i know, but i was between this cupcake and a blt flavored one (yeah, blt like the sandwich) and the girl who rang me up said the blt had ranch dressing flavored icing. no thanks.

after examining the cupcake for a bit and photographing it from several angles i finally brought myself to taste it. maybe you can't tell from this picture, but... the cake is definitely bluish.

the frosting was delicious but the cake tasted like, well, bleu cheese, and while i do love me some bleu cheese on a nice cobb salad i think i've decided that bleu cheese cake is not for me.

living so close to a (ridiculous and exorbitantly expensive) cupcake shop with so many silly flavors promises to be dangerous, but i figure if i try one every few weeks i'll have made my way through their lineup by the end of the year. therefore, more cupcake (get it) stories to come, i'm sure.

gnat comes to you live from the new apartment

the previous tenants left behind a hideous but comfortable chair, which is currently the only furniture i possess, so here i am.

the ethernet cord i borrowed from my roommate is like three feet long so i'm pretty much tethered to this spot but there's a nice breeze coming in through the windows so i don't mind. right now the people next door are wondering who are these crazy new neighbors who are blasting queen at 9:30 on a sunday morning.

i'm waiting on bed bath and beyond next day delivery to bring the basic kitchen/bathroom stuff i picked out yesterday, in the meantime i'm trying to elucidate what furniture i'll need and how the heck i'm going to get it here (not to mention when).

more pictures to come later.

gnat hideously overcompensates

probably owing to a month of pedestrian-ing i seem to have dropped a pant size since i got here. upon coming to this realization i decided that today i would go on a pant-shopping and chipotle-eating extravaganza. however, i got derailed on my way out the door by my roommate's offer to borrow her car.

naturally, i accepted, and the first thing i wanted to do was go to my very favorite place: the grocery store. it was the first time in almost a month that i've driven a car and it felt really good so i celebrated by going way overboard at the jewel.

if you know anyone in the greater chicago metropolitan area, or really anyone in the state of illinois, by all means send them to my apartment for dinner. one person cannot eat all of this food.

but dammit, i'm going to try.

gnat sees more free art and hears more free music

i know, i know, enough already.

the museum of contemporary art, which until about a week ago i had no idea even existed, is free on tuesdays so yesterday i paid (ha?) a visit. they have an awesome exhibition of alexander calder's mobiles which is mostly cool because, well, alexander calder invented the mobile. photography wasn't allowed in that particular exhibition, unfortunately, because they were really something else. (the photos in those links really don't do them justice)

post exhibit i settled on the lawn in the sculpture garden and listened to the jazz stylings of mwata bowden while reading my new book - alton brown's gear for your kitchen. there will most definitely be more on this later.

gnat tries crack (not actual crack, guys)

and it came from garrett's popcorn shop - a chicago tradition! they're scattered all over the city and we walked by one during our wandering today, so i made daniel stop in so i could try some.

i opted for the chicago blend, a mix of cheese and caramel flavored popcorns. and i can't. stop. eating it. i don't even like caramel (which is probably why you'll notice the cheese are looking a little outnumbered).

today was the first and hopefully the last time i will ever buy this popcorn. not that it isn't delicious (and addictive), but i think i can feel the cellulite forming with every bite.

gnat decides never to eat again. ever. no, seriously.

so i felt really proactive about going down to the jewel and getting sandwich making supplies so i wouldn't have to keep getting the nice people at the little market downstairs to make them for me, but last night i made a terrible discovery:

i accidentally bought fake cheese. or at least, i was pretty sure i had, until i double checked the label... i'm still not sure whether or not this is real cheese but if it is i think i can settle this debate once and for all. wisconsin cheese sucks. the happy cows win, suckas.

after another long day of apartment hunting, cara, aleck and i went to a celebratory dinner at pizzeria due (a block away from pizzeria uno). this was cara's last meal as a visitor to chicago - when she gets back we'll move into our new apartment! you know, if we find it.

we opted for the spinoccoli which is exactly what it sounds like (spinach and broccoli... with some other stuff like garlic):

we ate two hours ago and i still never want to look at pizza again. guys, i think that i may be a new york style pizza girl. i just can't handle all this food masquerading as pizza. i mean, you have to eat it with a fork.

not to say that it wasn't COMPLETELY delicious.

so i figured out how you can tell when it's going to go from sunny and beautiful to dumping buckets of water. for about five minutes in between the two, the sky looks like this:

see how theres a little bit of blue hanging out in there behind the grey, taunting you? yeah. that means you had better get inside because pretty soon it's going to do this:

taken from the safety of my bedroom. that looks like fog but it isn't - it's a bajillion tiny droplets of water whipped into a frenzy by the wind on its way down to terrorize innocent pedestrians in shorts and sundresses.

gnat demolishes the entire spider population of apartment 2110 in one fell swoop

remember the spider that was living in my window? well he brought all his friend spiders and kid brother spiders and today when i pulled up the window shade i found a spider city, nay, a spider metropolis, booming in my window. i know, completely disgusting.

a can of raid, a roll of paper towels, and 983568 plastic shopping bags later, we are spider free. it was a spider genocide. i am never, ever opening that window again.

gnat fears life without vegetables

yesterday it was about 34007509 degrees out, so naturally daniel and i chose to spend the day sitting outside in direct sunlight listening to (yep) free music. we watched fireworks from the lake then from daniel's apartment. i guess fireworks aren't illegal here, because the whole skyline was all lit up with fireworks being set off all over the city from nightfall until past midnight.

i spent today with cara, the future roommate, who is out in chicago for a visit to look at apartments. we did some preliminary hunting and will be continuing the quest for the perfect place tomorrow.

then i paid a visit the jewel-osco, the midwest equivalent of ralph's. the produce section was a little depressing, which worries me because it's june so i can't imagine what it will be like in january. a full 1/3 of the section was apples, and the only fresh herb in sight was parsley. sooner than later i am going to be hurting real bad for some cilantro. i need to find a mexican market somewhere.

after selecting all of my items, i had to carry them the eight blocks back to the apartment. i am going to have to learn some serious self control when it comes to grocery shopping.

and i cooked! i had forgotten how much cooking improves my mood. i've been showing you pictures of food that everyone else in the city made, so here's some that i made:

the best pastitsio i have made in my entire pastitsio making career. seriously. i put on my big fat greek wedding while i was making it, you know, to set the greek food mood.

gnat contemplates the futility of modern art

my parents are visiting! they're on their way to canada to visit my aunt so they stopped in for a couple of days to check out chicago. naturally, my dad had two things on his agenda. the first was food, which we will get to later, and the second:

the art institute of chicago. my dad, in case you did not know, is a wonderful painter but he hasn't painted anything in about five years. he says he has no inspiration. he set out to find some in the modern wing of the art institute, which houses some real gems like this one:

yes folks, i paid $12 to see this. and this one, only marginally more stimulating:

actually, the art institute's modern collection is pretty excellent and i've enjoyed it every time i've gone. i've just chosen to highlight a few of the less... exciting pieces that i saw.

anyway, my dad wasn't the only one who was inspired, i headed over to blick discount art supply and picked up brushes, canvas, and this:

but no pencil. oops?

also notable on this parental visit was some ridiculously awesome food. we went to buddy guy's legends for dinner and saw live acoustic jazz while enjoying this:

half a bbq chicken, fries, cornbread, coleslaw and collard greens. like one person really needs all that food.

then later, a lamb burger on a pretzel bun with house made chips at kitty o'shea's.

which makes me realize that it's a good thing my relocation has stripped me of my car and forced me to walk miles and miles every day, because this food plus sedentary lifestyle spells coronary at 24.

gnat has lunch with the love of her life

you read correctly. the love of my life. and here it is:

the chicago dog. a hot dog that eschews ketchup (my single least favorite condiment) in favor of onions, relish, mustard, a pickle, and tomatoes. yes, tomatoes in their pure, delicious, unadulterated, non-disgustingsugaryketchuped form. and next to it - sweet potato fries. i'm hooked.

nothing else remarkable happened today, except that i got punched in the face on the bus. (but that was an accident... i think.)