The Agenda War

While some families strive and stress to keep up with the Joneses, my family's struggle for glory is more internal in nature. And while the typical family looking to one up their neighbor measures and ranks wealth, stature, cars, kitchens, and closets full of crap, our familial rivalry is rather immaterial. Every weekend, the text messages fly from pool lanes to opera houses; from the nation's skies to its great lakes, from one's room with a view to someone else's with an arguably better perspective, as we engage in an innocent game of who is having more fun with their 48 hours of freedom. As soon as the first cocktail is poured on Friday at 5:00 PM, lines are drawn and the battle of the ultimate weekend agenda commences.

At a young age my parents preached that we should make every trip count, that an idle hand is the devil's workshop, and that time is money. The combination of these valued life lessons has made each of us agenda over achievers, trying to make the most of our time in and out of the office. Sure you can just go to the pool for the day, but if you can go to the pool, network your way into five business deals, eat the best, yet healthiest lunch you've had in decades, learn how to prepare said recipe, swim a zillion laps, teach all the children around you how to swim as well, read one book, two magazines, and every leading national newspaper, tan evenly, and find time to have a couple laughs, well than that's a quality pool day. 

While my brother, sister and I dare to compete with my Mom and Dad every weekend, generally they win without contest. In fact, I'm willing to bet that their calendar could often times beat out the most intense presidential schedule.

There were times, days, weekends when I was favored to win the war, but since Mary has come along our ability to cram in as much as possible has been limited. Recently, a friend even asked how all the other stuff was coming - she had read about motherhood, but she wondered if I was still gardening, running, cooking, baking, and entertaining.

While I've been focusing on small wins in the kitchen, around the backyard and on the sidewalks of Chicagoland for the past three months, this week was different. As Mary becomes more and more acclimated to life, calculating her agenda becomes easier and easier, and Peter and I have been able to move ourselves further and further from an established comfort zone. This week, we nearly did it all: there was a pretty rapid 5K run (3.1 miles in 20:50 - boom!) followed by a barbecue with the Joerns, a trip downtown - 20 miles in the car for Peter and Mary, just 10 for me because I jumped out halfway to get a run on the Lake in, boating, a bargain night out at Vie with Claire and Trent (best French 75 ever!), visitors, a week-long love affair with rhubarb - in the form of crumb cakes, crumbles, and an iced slab pie, FIGS!, trimming roses, and (oooh, ahhh) vacation planning! Arguably, to a fussy little baby on Sunday night, we did too much.

So as Mary starts showing signs of crawling, so too are her parents, eeking our way back into more adventurous routines and all the other stuff that makes us who we are. But we're still a far cry from first place.

On today's agenda - baking a birthday cake for Uncle Trent and wishing the gold medal winner in calendar court, my Mom, a very happy birthday!

Lo.

Fig Salad with Prosciutto, Goat Cheese and Toasted Walnuts 
Serves four 

Six fresh figs, cut in half
Four slices prosciutto, cut into strips
4 ounces Cyprus Grove purple haze goat cheese, crumbled
1/4 cup toasted walnuts, halved
Red leaf lettuce, enough for four salad plates
1 teaspoon honey
2 tablespoons salad oil
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
Salt, pepper

Make dressing by whisking together honey, vinegar, oil, salt and pepper. Set aside.

In a large bowl, toss lettuce with dressing and goat cheese.

On a salad plate, arrange portion of lettuce. On top place three figs, ribbons of prosciutto and toasted walnuts. Serve.

30 and One Day

Had a quiet happily ever after birthday party.

Cleaned my plate.

Posed for a picture.

Slept on it.
And 30 plus one day feels great.
Need to run off the damage though.

Lo.

The Great Midwest

You know how in grade school the teacher used to ask the class, "did anyone do anything fun over the weekend?" And you hoped that you had that winning weekend experience to relay - something that would trump the birthday party you weren't invited to. Well on Monday, before my department commenced a big planning meeting, the room was polled with just that question. Before anyone could even digest it, I blurted out, "I butchered a pig!"

YES! It was the most satisfying, exciting, interesting response I ever could have imagined - and it was not only mine, it was 100 percent true!

The entire room chuckled, looked at me, (yeah right), and begged for more information. So I explained.

Well ... Peter is obsessed with the pig - that is, in the smoking, roasting, pan frying, and devouring of him. So for Christmas, I went beyond Bacon of the Month Club and enrolled us in a Whole Hog Class at Vie Restaurant in Western Springs - a what do you do when you find a whole, dead 250-pound pig on your kitchen counter class.

So on Sunday, we cashed in Christmas morning, went to swine school, and found out what to do with that hog. To make a bloody, four-hour, long story short, you take a sharp knife, saw, and cleaver, dig in your hands, and dissect the bestial animal into the good parts - the ribs, the belly, the ham, the cheeks, the tenderloin and the loin - and grind up the rest to make sausages and country pate.

The faces of the people in the room took on expressions somewhere in between disgust and disbelief. Seriously? This little girl at the end of the table took a cleaver to a hog? Yes I did! (And loved it.)  They didn't seem to share my enthusiasm. They didn't understand why I was so proud of my unique weekend activity - that it was more than the sum of the pig's parts. It was the fact, that after it, I felt a little more midwestern.


Ironically, on Saturday, while at the beach with our friend Becky and her three-year-old daughter, Eleanor - both Chicago natives, but current residents of Boston - Becky said that she wanted her daughter 'to grow up with some Midwest in her.' It made me wonder if after nearly four years living in the Midwest, I was getting some of it in me. 

Vie confirmed it. I had.

Vie is labeled as a French restaurant and directed by a head chef  who is trained in the French culinary arts - its chef de cuisine, the man responsible for day-to-day kitchen management, has a passion for Italian peasant cuisine - its supplied by the sustainable farms and farmers of Illinois - and its located in a town similar to Mayberry. Rather than stick to its label - contemporary French, contemporary American - they have decided that they are more. They are different. They are Midwestern.

Nathan, the pig professor and chef de cuisine explained that Chicago is a historic and character-driven melting pot - that the food of the Midwest melded old world European cuisine with what was available from the abundant farms of Illinois, the slaughterhouses, butchers and meat packing factories, and the store rooms of preserved vegetables and cured meats that they needed to get through the long winters. Vie embraces that heritage and celebrates it in its simply, uniquely, elegantly prepares dishes each evening.

But Vie takes Midwest beyond their cuisine - their comportment and attitude embodies it as well.

Like my family and friends who are Midwesterners, they have an open door attitude. On Sunday, they welcomed perfect strangers into their kitchen. They put us to work. They laughed and joked with us. They even prepared us a hearty lunch. They treated us as friends and we left feeling like we were part of their foodie family.

They aren't afraid to get their hands dirty - in fact, they don't just dismember pigs at Vie, they go at it with cows as well.

They act like themselves too. They don't pose or put on a show. They're not trying to be trendsetters, (but like any great restaurant, they probably will be.) When asked what his favorite section of the ribs are, Nathan didn't go with the manly chef answer, he said, "the baby backs."

I will always be a Pittsburgh girl, but I love the fact that I feel like I have some of these typical Midwest qualities now - that living here has shown me a friendlier, heartier side. And that attending swine school didn't intimidate me, but taught me that the pig makes countless great meals, even if the fat ratio is a little scarier than I'm used to.

In the end, Eleanor and I will have the best of both worlds. But after a three days of pig products - pork belly, sausage risotto, sausage pizza and sausage sandwiches - this yinzer is ready for some leaner cuisine.


And now for a recipe that is pure midwestern fusion food.
Breakfast sausage sandwiches for dinner

Homemade breakfast sausage patties
Fried eggs
Spicy mayo - mayo, lemon, hot sauce, salt, crushed red pepper
Slaw - shred green and red cabbage, carrots and green pepper, add green onions, cider vinegar, sugar, lemon, dollop of mayo, salt, pepper, celery seed
Smoked mozzarella - got a paprika smoked one at Whole Foods, which worked very well!
Brioche buns - great recipe!

Make the Breakfast Sausage

Stack up the ingredients.
And dig in.

Lo.