I am still in food coma from the delicious dinner party recently attended, like, an hour ago, at my friend Mary's place, in honor of my departure to California. See, we hogged out on cheese and crackers, fruits and wine, and the best part of all was the tasty announcement that I am staying in the city and thus available for more dinner parties. Woohoo!!
Last time I hung out with Miss Mair we concluded our bar evening with a cheese spread, crackers, fruit and water. The idea of having a dinner party consisting entirely of "schmeary" stuff was born.
My contribution to tonight's event was an Apricot and Jalapeno baked brie, served with apples and animal crackers.
Originally, I wanted to do a Chokecherry Ancho chili cheese spread with crackers or tortillas, but it didn't come together for me the way I wanted to this afternoon. Necessity is the mother of invention, and since I had the jalapenos, I whipped up this ooeygooey dish instead.
Here's what you need:
1/4 c. jalapenos, cored seeded and diced
1/2 c. stewed apricots
1/4 c. pecans, coarsely chopped
Mix up wet ingredients in a food processor, and you've got your spread.
At first, I thought this might stand alone quite well, paired with the animal crackers, as a dessert "schmear." It tasted good, but then I decided that since cheese makes everything better, I'd add brie.
Get one 8 oz. round of brie, and one can of crescent rolls (or use puff pastry), and spread this dough out on a piece of oiled tinfoil, making a shape as close to a circle as you can get. I used generic crescent roll dough, so it was a little thin, but held up in the oven just fine.
Cut your brie in half, then, rind side down, put it on the tinfoil. Poke holes in it and spread a layer of the jalapeno mixture over this, letting it sink in. Add more goo if necessary. Once you've added enough, spread a layer of pecans on the goo. Put the other piece of brie on it, rind side up, then poke holes in that too. Spread jalapeno goo one more time, add a few more pecans, cover the cheese up with the dough, crimping any edges to prevent jalapeno spread from oozing out. If you used too much jalapeno spread, it will "melt" out the sides of the dough, but shouldn't be too much of a problem.
To seal the dough, whisk one egg until frothy, then baste dough. Sprinkle remaining pecans on top, and pop the thing into an oven set at 450'. Ten minutes gives you a nice golden crust.
Core and cut a large Granny Smith apple (or two), dig out the animal crackers, and dig in.
I had a room mate who once did something like this with brown sugar and butter instead of the apricot and jalapeno, but I must say, the spicy kick and the fruity sweetness are such a great combination.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Universal (health) care
Without a second thought, I decide to stay in Chicago. Over the invisible buzz of cellular connections, Jay's instability and true nature become deafeningly clear, and I know in that one nanosecond that going to California would be the biggest mistake of my present life.
When I make this decision, it feels better and more right immediately than any of the considerations I had given to Cali over the past couple of weeks. Back and forth, back and forth I've gone over this dumb decision, knowing and yet not wanting to know, that Chicago is where I belong. I need to trust myself, my intuition, my own sense of crazy self-knowledge and just listen when the universe tells me something.
And last Saturday, it told me in a big way that I needed to stay in Chicago and work on the spirit/soul part of my life, the heat's desire that I guess has been present in some latent stage for a while.
So I'm staying. I feel crazy sometimes, like my logical and impulsive selves are raging inside me and consistently threatening to tear me apart and split my very consciousness in half.
Which is why there are a stack of yoga studio brochures on my desk and a clear spot for meditation on my floor.
Since I left for Thailand I've known that I really need to get in touch with whatever is out there that is keeping me (barely) sane and protecting me from the injurious shit I put myself through. And since I got back from Thailand, the few times I've made it into Mountain pose or Warrior Pose or even just Child's pose I've felt so much better about myself and what my "purpose" is. So why would I not just focus on that instead of these external distractions like Cali or anything else?
Yep, I feel crazy sometimes, and I feel like each blog is just a public display of that insanity, but somehow, in writing it here, for all the world (whomever may find it, that is) to see, I'm absolving myself of it instead of keeping it close to my, tucked away in a private journal somewhere. Is that crazy too? *sigh* Oh, probably.
When I make this decision, it feels better and more right immediately than any of the considerations I had given to Cali over the past couple of weeks. Back and forth, back and forth I've gone over this dumb decision, knowing and yet not wanting to know, that Chicago is where I belong. I need to trust myself, my intuition, my own sense of crazy self-knowledge and just listen when the universe tells me something.
And last Saturday, it told me in a big way that I needed to stay in Chicago and work on the spirit/soul part of my life, the heat's desire that I guess has been present in some latent stage for a while.
So I'm staying. I feel crazy sometimes, like my logical and impulsive selves are raging inside me and consistently threatening to tear me apart and split my very consciousness in half.
Which is why there are a stack of yoga studio brochures on my desk and a clear spot for meditation on my floor.
Since I left for Thailand I've known that I really need to get in touch with whatever is out there that is keeping me (barely) sane and protecting me from the injurious shit I put myself through. And since I got back from Thailand, the few times I've made it into Mountain pose or Warrior Pose or even just Child's pose I've felt so much better about myself and what my "purpose" is. So why would I not just focus on that instead of these external distractions like Cali or anything else?
Yep, I feel crazy sometimes, and I feel like each blog is just a public display of that insanity, but somehow, in writing it here, for all the world (whomever may find it, that is) to see, I'm absolving myself of it instead of keeping it close to my, tucked away in a private journal somewhere. Is that crazy too? *sigh* Oh, probably.
The hoboes
The kids talk to me before I talk to them.
"Her name is Jazz," says the one in a faded purple shirt, right after the white puppy trots after me. She's got a bandana around her neck and a brown spot over her left eye, and when she hears her name, her forehead wrinkles into a story of puppy love and recognition of the boy's voice.
He is slouched against an old building in Uptown, the one right around the corner from the Lawrence stop, and without shoes, his feet are cut and dirty, blackened like tar on the bottom. I saw them as I came around the corner onto Broadway, noticing the sign before the sprawl of legs and cardboard cushions.
"Hungry, Hungry Hobos," drawls the back of a notebook, black sharpie on creased yellow paper.
I pause, look at it, but without cash or snacks, I walk on. What can I do?
"She just loves people," the boy adds as I walk away, and that's all it takes.
Matt tells me his story as I sit, folding my legs underneath me. He's a carpenter, he and his woman split a while back, and he misses his tools, god how he misses coming home from work and working the rough grain of knotty wood into the curved lines of chairs and other art.
At 25, Matt is the oldest of the group, but he has the boyish good looks of Huck Finn, a real-life story in front of me. Hair curled and messy from a week on the road, he is cute, but looks so young, especially when pairing the curls with the rolled up jean bottoms and bare feet.
I talk with Matt about his travels, warming the sidewalk opposite the Green Mill, and for a couple of hours, I watch the world pass by with these dirty children of the road.
They are going to California, going to work in the "fields," take part in the grand harvest that approaches.
"We're going to make 20 bucks an hour, make some money, man," says the other boy around a mouthful of bottle.
At 22, Chris has already been out to Cali for the harvest once before, and this adventure isn't the first one taking him cross-country on the free ticket found in the back of a freight train.
"I don't have any work lined up, not yet," he tells me, pulling thoughtfully on the cigarette his girlfriend rolled moments before. "But I've been out there in the past, and I hope to get some carpentry work too, get in with the locals, you know."
Jillian nods her head at this idea, nubby brown pigtails bouncing in agreement. She has been silent, plucking absently at a small guitar, but once she joins the conversation, her quick chirp clips along with youthful enthusiasm.
"Have you been out there before?" she asks me, eager to hear my take on it. "I hear it's supposed to be really great."
I tell her that I haven't, but yes, have heard good things. At 20, Jill is the youngest member on this adventure, and I can see why she's drawn to Chris.
He wears his scruff in a way that becomes him: a shadow of the road spreading across his face whether he intends it to or not. He's tall and lanky, and as she leans into him, his arms wrap around her, white and bare against the gray fabric of her sweater. I know exactly how it is that she feels, a short little girl taken care of by her tall hippie boy, but I can't say that I really miss that feeling. Not tonight, not anymore.
But it's more than this outward physical thing that draws her to him. This too, I know. It's his life.
Chris has lived. He's hopped trains before, he's harvested crops and stories with others in Cali, and because he is all the things that a career in dental hygiene is not, she is enamored and brought to life by this.
I can see it in her face as she calls a friend on her phone and squeals out the story of the day in Chicago. She is young and in love, and I remember what that's like at 20, how my own tall lanky boy made me feel back then, and earlier. I like Jill because her sense of adventure runs deep, and I imagine that's what Chris likes about her too. He's teaching her about the world, his world, and she's eager to hear it all. When I tell her about my recent trip to Thailand, her eyes open as wide as her mouth, perfect circles of awe and excitement, and I hope that she is as eager to embrace calamity as she sounds, should it befall her on this trip. She has considered this possibility, and is afraid of what will happen if the cops take Chris away. They almost did that at Union Station today, but when I ask her if they've discussed a strategy for that, I see disbelief and fear color her face more than the streetlight illumination from above.
"God, what would I do? We haven't even talked about it, no."
She stares down at Jazz for a minute, and then snuggles into Chris' side, feeling the emptiness of a life on the road without her man. What would she do? I would like to think she'd figure it out, maybe late, but better then than never. That's what I did.
Up until Monday, I had planned on going to California, too. Not so much to take part in the harvest, exactly, but to be part of that culture of people who pass the seasons waiting for it like my family waits for the first spring-time sprout of life to color the fields.
A mess since my return to the states from Thailand, I was unhappy in Chicago, ill-at-ease among the skyscrapers and dull sheen of life in the US. Thailand had been too much, too much fun, too much happiness, too much… everything, and life in Chicago had been boring and flat, a watercolor wash of grey day after grey day.
So when I started fucking a friend in California and he suggested I move out there, first I thought "no, what a terrible idea." And then as the weeks passed each other with the slow monotony of spring in the Midwest, it sounded better and better, almost perfect. Not because I anticipated any sort of real life out there, but because it wasn't Chicago, which wasn't Thailand.
I looked at apartments here, evaded the real world and sought refuge from it in my books and my writing, and the night before I signed a lease on the most boho apartment I could find, my friend said that yes, if I went to California, everything would work out. For a few days I even believed it, and then, after posting my few possessions on craigslist and ending my lease, the reality of the situation came to pass, taking with it the charm and illusion of sandy shores and a life of stoned simplicity in the sun.
What is it about going West that reaches for the American spirit like stalks to the sky? How was this story started, and who perpetuates it to this day? These kids grew up together, friends in Baltimore, east coast elites gone organic, escaping the hum of existence by hopping trains and sleeping on sidewalks. I wanted to do that once, around the same time I thought living like a broke writer would be so bohemian and 1950s.
"How very 'beat' I'd be" I cleverly thought to myself, imagining all of the scenes from a Ginsberg or Kerouac epic in my own bedroom. "How very perfect for the storyteller in me, all of those bodies and lives and sorrows crashing against the stable shoreline of my being. It would be the life to end all lives, the adventure and chaos of a life lived to its fullest that I've always sought.
And then as quickly and randomly as the idea of attempting a life in California was proposed, the allure of it rubbed off like some dollar-store trinket gone brassy in the western sun. The dream, or the illusion of the dream imagined by someone else, someone I'm not, fell from the sky. And like a candle holder chipped and shattered against the cold tile of my floor, I swept it up and threw it away.
By 1 am Jill was needing sleep, and I could see a fight in her shoulders, if they didn't get to going where ever it was that they could sleep tonight soon.
"If my doorman isn't around, you can stay at my place," I offered, sparking a flame in her eyes and a glance upward from Matt, who was buried in his journal, Sharpie in hand. Chris smiled, busy chatting with the homeless and probably schizophrenic man laughing crazily at our feet.
"But with Jazz, the lobby has to be empty or else it won't work," I continued, hoping the man would go away before we headed to my place. The idea of showers and food had garnered their attention, and I felt bad for bringing it up, knowing that the doorman was probably around.
"I'll go home and check, then call you if it'll work."
My block came up quickly, lit up and alive, even at 1 am. The neighborhood has gentrified, and instead of my own neighborhood schizophrenic, it is my maintenance man and his wife, out with their baby, I run into at this late hour. We wave, cross paths, and I enter the lobby. How different our lives are, all of them.
This small family of three, neat and tidy at 1 am; me, sweaty and dirty in running gear and puppy tracks offering my home to another family of sorts. Am I crazier than the man laughing outside?
I think of the kids I've just met as I pack crackers and fruit and granola bars into a plastic bag. I can't get them in, not tonight, but if I make it back there before they seek shelter, maybe I can feed them. Maybe I can take care of them in the only way in have at this hour.
My train rattles along up the track, past Argyle, past Berwyn, back into Bryn Mawr. I get off slowly, letting the drunks stagger warm, boozy circles around me. The night has cooled down, and I wonder where the hobos will sleep tonight, how far their train will take them tomorrow; if Chris will get caught and separated from his mamma," and what Jill will do if he does.
"I didn't get much sleep last night," Jill said as we parted ways. "So I've got to get some tonight. Sleeping on the train is hard, and with Jazz, if I have to hold her… my arms…oh, it's just hard."
I nod my head in agreement, imagining that it is indeed, a challenge. But what do I know of hopping trains and holding sleeping puppies and chasing someone across the country because "that's what you do?" That's not what I do.
What do I know of trains and harvests and feet as black as the midnight tar on the street outside?
What I know is Chicago, and my own sense of adventure, my own heart and the things that I love: words and stories, not people. I know the way the right ones seem to find me, the stories that make whole my life in a way that the living of it never does.
What I know is that in another lifetime, I might have hopped a train and rattled off to Cali to chase some dream and some adventure. But not now. Not tonight. Not anymore. Instead, I will return to my apartment, sit on my couch, legs once again folded and firm beneath me, and capture the essence of this life lived in a night in my own words. And for me, for now, in this lifetime, that is good enough
"Her name is Jazz," says the one in a faded purple shirt, right after the white puppy trots after me. She's got a bandana around her neck and a brown spot over her left eye, and when she hears her name, her forehead wrinkles into a story of puppy love and recognition of the boy's voice.
He is slouched against an old building in Uptown, the one right around the corner from the Lawrence stop, and without shoes, his feet are cut and dirty, blackened like tar on the bottom. I saw them as I came around the corner onto Broadway, noticing the sign before the sprawl of legs and cardboard cushions.
"Hungry, Hungry Hobos," drawls the back of a notebook, black sharpie on creased yellow paper.
I pause, look at it, but without cash or snacks, I walk on. What can I do?
"She just loves people," the boy adds as I walk away, and that's all it takes.
Matt tells me his story as I sit, folding my legs underneath me. He's a carpenter, he and his woman split a while back, and he misses his tools, god how he misses coming home from work and working the rough grain of knotty wood into the curved lines of chairs and other art.
At 25, Matt is the oldest of the group, but he has the boyish good looks of Huck Finn, a real-life story in front of me. Hair curled and messy from a week on the road, he is cute, but looks so young, especially when pairing the curls with the rolled up jean bottoms and bare feet.
I talk with Matt about his travels, warming the sidewalk opposite the Green Mill, and for a couple of hours, I watch the world pass by with these dirty children of the road.
They are going to California, going to work in the "fields," take part in the grand harvest that approaches.
"We're going to make 20 bucks an hour, make some money, man," says the other boy around a mouthful of bottle.
At 22, Chris has already been out to Cali for the harvest once before, and this adventure isn't the first one taking him cross-country on the free ticket found in the back of a freight train.
"I don't have any work lined up, not yet," he tells me, pulling thoughtfully on the cigarette his girlfriend rolled moments before. "But I've been out there in the past, and I hope to get some carpentry work too, get in with the locals, you know."
Jillian nods her head at this idea, nubby brown pigtails bouncing in agreement. She has been silent, plucking absently at a small guitar, but once she joins the conversation, her quick chirp clips along with youthful enthusiasm.
"Have you been out there before?" she asks me, eager to hear my take on it. "I hear it's supposed to be really great."
I tell her that I haven't, but yes, have heard good things. At 20, Jill is the youngest member on this adventure, and I can see why she's drawn to Chris.
He wears his scruff in a way that becomes him: a shadow of the road spreading across his face whether he intends it to or not. He's tall and lanky, and as she leans into him, his arms wrap around her, white and bare against the gray fabric of her sweater. I know exactly how it is that she feels, a short little girl taken care of by her tall hippie boy, but I can't say that I really miss that feeling. Not tonight, not anymore.
But it's more than this outward physical thing that draws her to him. This too, I know. It's his life.
Chris has lived. He's hopped trains before, he's harvested crops and stories with others in Cali, and because he is all the things that a career in dental hygiene is not, she is enamored and brought to life by this.
I can see it in her face as she calls a friend on her phone and squeals out the story of the day in Chicago. She is young and in love, and I remember what that's like at 20, how my own tall lanky boy made me feel back then, and earlier. I like Jill because her sense of adventure runs deep, and I imagine that's what Chris likes about her too. He's teaching her about the world, his world, and she's eager to hear it all. When I tell her about my recent trip to Thailand, her eyes open as wide as her mouth, perfect circles of awe and excitement, and I hope that she is as eager to embrace calamity as she sounds, should it befall her on this trip. She has considered this possibility, and is afraid of what will happen if the cops take Chris away. They almost did that at Union Station today, but when I ask her if they've discussed a strategy for that, I see disbelief and fear color her face more than the streetlight illumination from above.
"God, what would I do? We haven't even talked about it, no."
She stares down at Jazz for a minute, and then snuggles into Chris' side, feeling the emptiness of a life on the road without her man. What would she do? I would like to think she'd figure it out, maybe late, but better then than never. That's what I did.
Up until Monday, I had planned on going to California, too. Not so much to take part in the harvest, exactly, but to be part of that culture of people who pass the seasons waiting for it like my family waits for the first spring-time sprout of life to color the fields.
A mess since my return to the states from Thailand, I was unhappy in Chicago, ill-at-ease among the skyscrapers and dull sheen of life in the US. Thailand had been too much, too much fun, too much happiness, too much… everything, and life in Chicago had been boring and flat, a watercolor wash of grey day after grey day.
So when I started fucking a friend in California and he suggested I move out there, first I thought "no, what a terrible idea." And then as the weeks passed each other with the slow monotony of spring in the Midwest, it sounded better and better, almost perfect. Not because I anticipated any sort of real life out there, but because it wasn't Chicago, which wasn't Thailand.
I looked at apartments here, evaded the real world and sought refuge from it in my books and my writing, and the night before I signed a lease on the most boho apartment I could find, my friend said that yes, if I went to California, everything would work out. For a few days I even believed it, and then, after posting my few possessions on craigslist and ending my lease, the reality of the situation came to pass, taking with it the charm and illusion of sandy shores and a life of stoned simplicity in the sun.
What is it about going West that reaches for the American spirit like stalks to the sky? How was this story started, and who perpetuates it to this day? These kids grew up together, friends in Baltimore, east coast elites gone organic, escaping the hum of existence by hopping trains and sleeping on sidewalks. I wanted to do that once, around the same time I thought living like a broke writer would be so bohemian and 1950s.
"How very 'beat' I'd be" I cleverly thought to myself, imagining all of the scenes from a Ginsberg or Kerouac epic in my own bedroom. "How very perfect for the storyteller in me, all of those bodies and lives and sorrows crashing against the stable shoreline of my being. It would be the life to end all lives, the adventure and chaos of a life lived to its fullest that I've always sought.
And then as quickly and randomly as the idea of attempting a life in California was proposed, the allure of it rubbed off like some dollar-store trinket gone brassy in the western sun. The dream, or the illusion of the dream imagined by someone else, someone I'm not, fell from the sky. And like a candle holder chipped and shattered against the cold tile of my floor, I swept it up and threw it away.
By 1 am Jill was needing sleep, and I could see a fight in her shoulders, if they didn't get to going where ever it was that they could sleep tonight soon.
"If my doorman isn't around, you can stay at my place," I offered, sparking a flame in her eyes and a glance upward from Matt, who was buried in his journal, Sharpie in hand. Chris smiled, busy chatting with the homeless and probably schizophrenic man laughing crazily at our feet.
"But with Jazz, the lobby has to be empty or else it won't work," I continued, hoping the man would go away before we headed to my place. The idea of showers and food had garnered their attention, and I felt bad for bringing it up, knowing that the doorman was probably around.
"I'll go home and check, then call you if it'll work."
My block came up quickly, lit up and alive, even at 1 am. The neighborhood has gentrified, and instead of my own neighborhood schizophrenic, it is my maintenance man and his wife, out with their baby, I run into at this late hour. We wave, cross paths, and I enter the lobby. How different our lives are, all of them.
This small family of three, neat and tidy at 1 am; me, sweaty and dirty in running gear and puppy tracks offering my home to another family of sorts. Am I crazier than the man laughing outside?
I think of the kids I've just met as I pack crackers and fruit and granola bars into a plastic bag. I can't get them in, not tonight, but if I make it back there before they seek shelter, maybe I can feed them. Maybe I can take care of them in the only way in have at this hour.
My train rattles along up the track, past Argyle, past Berwyn, back into Bryn Mawr. I get off slowly, letting the drunks stagger warm, boozy circles around me. The night has cooled down, and I wonder where the hobos will sleep tonight, how far their train will take them tomorrow; if Chris will get caught and separated from his mamma," and what Jill will do if he does.
"I didn't get much sleep last night," Jill said as we parted ways. "So I've got to get some tonight. Sleeping on the train is hard, and with Jazz, if I have to hold her… my arms…oh, it's just hard."
I nod my head in agreement, imagining that it is indeed, a challenge. But what do I know of hopping trains and holding sleeping puppies and chasing someone across the country because "that's what you do?" That's not what I do.
What do I know of trains and harvests and feet as black as the midnight tar on the street outside?
What I know is Chicago, and my own sense of adventure, my own heart and the things that I love: words and stories, not people. I know the way the right ones seem to find me, the stories that make whole my life in a way that the living of it never does.
What I know is that in another lifetime, I might have hopped a train and rattled off to Cali to chase some dream and some adventure. But not now. Not tonight. Not anymore. Instead, I will return to my apartment, sit on my couch, legs once again folded and firm beneath me, and capture the essence of this life lived in a night in my own words. And for me, for now, in this lifetime, that is good enough
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