What is all that pirate money?

One of the residents made me laugh out loud yesterday.

I was telling her how I had joined a friend at the Jazz Showcase  on Saturday, where we listened to the Vijay Iyer Trio play.  They were just great, really fabulous, I mean I’m not a big jazz person, but I loved it! My friend told Vijay after the show that it was ‘very accessible’. I thought the music sounded like a storm gathering and breaking, rising and falling, and all of that. I liked the way Vijay Iyer thanked the audience for letting him ‘paint pictures’ for us.

Anyway, the thing that made me laugh had to do with parking. I parked in one of those new parking garages in the South Loop, and after the show my friend offered to walk me back to my car. On our way out of the garage,  I payed with a twenty dollar bill and the machine spit out a bunch of shiny yellow dollar-coins as change for my twenty. As I was telling the resident all about this, she laughed and said, ‘yeah, I know, what is all that pirate money, anyway?’ which, in turn, made me laugh out loud. It did look like pirate money, all dubloon-like and everything.

Driving home from the show, I listened to ‘The Play’s The Thing” on NPR, which I love. Driving along the freeway, cars rushing past, the lights of tall buildings blazing against the night sky, I felt cocooned and warm inside the car, the hushed voice of the radio announcer and the sounds of the play all around me.

“Perciatelli. A kind of pasta I never even knew existed. It’s almost like if macaroni and spaghetti had a kid…. it’d be perciatelli.”

I found this blog, with this particular recipe, while searching for Lebanese thyme bread. Well, it’s because the pasta sauce has got thyme bread crumbs* in it, so that’s how that happened.

During the holidays, one of the resident physicians brought this wonderful Lebanese dish of thyme bread to one of our potlucks. We have the best potlucks because so many of our staff are from different countries. Our potlucks can have everything from Filipino, to Indian, to Polish, to good ole’ southern fried American dishes. It’s seriously awesome. Anyway, she brought Pizza Dough with Thyme (she had a little sign for the bread so everyone would know what it was), and it’s her quick little ‘Americanized’ version of Lebanese thyme bread. Basically, she bought the spice for it at a Middle Eastern grocery store, and spread it onto little rounds of pizza dough after drizzling the dough with olive oil. I cannot tell you how good it was. Well, actually, I can: it was really, really good.

So, at work today, I asked one of my colleagues, who is from Syria, to bring me some of the thyme-spice whenever she happens to visit one of the Middle Eastern grocery stores she frequents.  Even I can make this stuff without messing it up, I’m pretty sure.

*It’s a variation of that Sicilian dish that is all about anchovies and bread crumbs, you know?

**And, on a more serious note: “And as I sat there enjoying fresh bread and thyme, I had a nagging worry in the pit of my stomach. Well, you have to read the post to know why it’s a more serious note. Click over, if you are curious, it makes for interesting reading.

“If this sounds like a farewell post, it’s NOT. Because now’s the moment to break the news: we’ve got offers to turn our blog into a book! Not just a collection of our essays, but fresh content that weaves our existing posts into a much longer narrative about living in Delhi. Like this blog, it’ll be enjoyable both for those who know Delhi and those who don’t—locals, NRIs, and expats alike.”

Our Delhi Struggle is moving on, traveling around Nepal and South India and other places (to be determined) in Asia. As I said in their comments section, “Aww, I’ll miss your delhi updates but I look forward to your new adventure. Be happy!”

Some people have interesting lives, don’t they?

Spacca Napoli!

I went to Spacca Napoli last week with a group of friends, including a couple of Neopolitans. The two said the pizza was a fair approximation of pizza in Naples, particularly for Chicago. Well, the owner of the pizzeria travels to Naples, frequently, in order to make everything just so.

I had the Salsiccia, and one of my friends started out with the mussels which were very, very good - I know this because I had to try them, of course. We also had wine, I’ve forgotten the name of it, but my friend said that it was a particular wine from her region of Italy (close to Naples). The best part about the mussels is that when you are finished there is a wonderful leftover tomato-y sauce at the bottom of the bowl perfect for scooping up (scarpetta-like) with bread.

Lovely mellow evening, and after dinner we gathered for a few moments outside the restaurant to say our good-byes, but the temperature had dropped so rapidly during our dinner that we scattered faster than normal. Drawn-out Italian good-byes! I practically ran to my car with one of my friends following me, both of us shivering in the cold sharp city air; such a surprise after the delicately scented air of the restaurant.

“Letters from a Librarian”

I always seem to discover the best blogs just as the authors decide to take a ‘break’. Never fails.

*This is the post that I found searching around for random things and which led me to the blog ’Letters from a Librarian’ : “On Lucy Snowe, or Confessions of a Bronte-phile”

There’s nothing wrong with an open mic nite, unless…

You can see a list of open mic nites here at the ChicagoPoetry site. I’ve actually been to one of the open mics nites mentioned on the blog (as an audience member). It was vaguely horrifying as my mother tagged along with me and one of the open-mic’ers recited nothing but dirty jokes. How is it that I always seem to get myself into these situations? Seriously?

Teapot shout-outs, talent and youth!

So, this is how my muddled jumping-around brain works: I’m thinking about music, and searching around on youtube, and I remember that I kind of like that 1,2,3,4  song by Feist, and so I go searching for it and find a cover version by artist Kina Grannis, instead.

Watch to the end of the clip to see her do shout-outs from a teapot (you’ll see what I mean if you stay with the clip until the end). Clever-ish, really.

*The little black-and-white cut-out drawing at the beginning is sort of sweet, too….

Would you buy a book based on the cover?

I do it all the time, or, at least, I’m tempted to do it all the time. I’m sure book publishers know all about that impulse…..

Anyway, I was wandering around on a bunch of other blogs and ran into the Politics and Prose bookstore site where I found a review of the Orange prize-winning book pictured below.

 

I love the cover, because I love rain and all rainy things, as I’ve mentioned, and I like that it’s a color photograph. I would so buy the book based solely on that cover. Oh, and the fact that I like the excerpt I found at the ‘webby’ Barnes and Noble.  Please don’t recommend a book without providing an excerpt, book reviewers; I never understand the point of a book review that doesn’t include a sample! I mean, if you go to an ice-cream shop they give you a sample, so why shouldn’t they do the same for a book?

“I used to wander round Manchester all glum and wondering what was the point in it all. I thought my life was great but all it really entailed was a lot of futile and short-lived debauchery. I didn’t know what I was looking for, I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there had to be more to life.”

I used to wander round Manchester all glum and wondering what was the point in it all. I thought my life was great but all it really entailed was a lot of futile and short-lived debauchery. I didn’t know what I was looking for, I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there had to be more to life.

On 7th July 2005, I found out that I was pregnant. I imploded, I was devastated. I hated children, they had never been on my life plan, I wanted out. Yet on the bus to the clinic to find out my options, there was a bomb scare. Suddenly, instinctively, I grasped my abdomen. I wanted to protect my baby.

Reading this made me smile, all of it, it’s really something, one of those ’stop you right in your tracks’ moments you get on the internets. I found the above while reading normblog, where I very often find wonderful, wonderful things.

“so it’s time again for some musings on america”

A nice comment was left on my post about Turkish coffee, by commenter franzi, and lo and behold, visiting franzi’s blog lifestartsnow, I found a post called  ‘visions of america’. I really like reading that kind of stuff, you know?