Church Avenue Chomp

where we live now

Finally! And let’s lead with the positive: one thing I can say about our move is that it was markedly less hideous than the last two.

In May 2006, we joined households. How bad was the ’06 move? So bad that I actually have no memory of  it, but we found a receipt and it took 9 hours, and cost over $1000, and Matthew blanches and sweat starts beading on his brow any time it comes up in conversation. And then, because we had messed up and moved into a mold den instead of a nice and normal place, and even after we tore out the kitchen cabinets the apartment was still hideously rotting and full of insect poop and stinky, we had to do it all again 2 months later. That meant breaking a lease and getting threatened with a lawsuit. And for that move, the movers I’d booked never even showed up, so we had to hire some (even more) random people on the fly.

We were having some problems.

I did have some Cherry Coke right after we closed, since I had forgotten to eat all day, and Cherry Coke was the first thing I ran into that I thought might fix that. (???) But we were still so tired that our collective strategy on the night before the move was — let’s get the living room all ready to go, and then sleep, and we will finish packing while they move that. Well, packing takes longer than moving one room full of stuff, especially if you are racing against a team of professionals, and especially if you run out of tape, bubble wrap, and boxes, as we miraculously managed to do. So when the movers arrived, we were significantly underpacked. It’s not like we hadn’t done a HUGE amount of work in all of the rooms: it’s just that there was a lot left.

But somehow, we finished, and they finished, and we’re here. We were greeting by a bottle of champagne and a lovely heartfelt card from the previous owners, who we loved working with and who we will miss getting to know. (While we moved five blocks from our old place, they moved to Colorado.) We were also greeted by many of the other tenants in the building, with welcoming notes and labels for our door and visits. We also realized that the door to our apartment really actually does not work, and I locked myself in twice in various ways, and that there are some things that will need to happen for this to be wholly our home sweet home. But we’re here! And thus far, its excellent to be here, and though we have unpacking to do, we already know where most of the stuff is supposed to go.

See? I am also ending on the positive.

We are closing on our glorious new co-op apartment on Tuesday late afternoon — tomorrow. And we are moving on Wednesday morning at 8 am.

There are, of course, a zillion loose ends. For instance, the movers are refusing to move one of our air conditioners, because it is larger than 8,000 BTUs.

I brought it up yesterday. “What about the air conditioner, hon? Should we think about getting someone to help you?”

“That’s ok,” Matthew replies, cruising from one room to the next, carrying a box. “I’m just going to bring it over Tuesday night. After the closing. With my mom.”

His mom is coming today, thank goodness. Ostensibly to help “watch the baby.” How surprised she will be that she also gets to stay up all night to help us pack! And, uh, to move air conditioners that are so big that movers won’t even touch them?

“With your mom?” I joke. “Sure. With your mom.” This is pretty funny, this scenario. So I say, like I feel I am supposed to: “Like your mom is better at moving air conditioners than me.”

Matthew cruises through the rooms again, now in a different direction, different stuff in his arms. He does not say anything.

Ugh, we’re too busy here. No time for fun. I hate it when there is no time for fun, but even under these circumstances, I feel that I deserve a reaction to the scenario that I have proposed. To my hilarious comedy joke. But right after I resume speaking, the possibility of an unusual truth occurs to me. “Wait,” I say, and as I say it, I see the seeds of an argument wafting through the air around us, like dandelion fuzz. Fishing for reassurance was not my intention. Nor was fighting. And I know he doesn’t want to fight. So good thing it’s not too late! He can still laugh at the situation, and we can be on our merry way. “You don’t really think your mom would be better at moving a huge air conditioner than I would, do you?”

As he whizzes past this time, he shrugs. “I don’t know.” There is a definite lack of eye contact, here.

Men move air conditioners with other men. Or alone. Or, in a crisis, with their wives. Never with their mothers: their mothers who are, no offense, but 70?

Don’t get me wrong. My mother-in-law is in super shape. She bikes 15 miles at a time in the Chicago winter. Do you think that I am exaggerating? Are you used to me exaggerating. and so you think that I am doing that now? Well I’m not. Only giant piles of snow stop her, and I suspect that when I am not around, people do not conjecture about my superhuman feats of strength against the weather.  Or on bikes. These are people who bought their grandma a bike for her 90th birthday. A bike which she used for several years. My grandmas were not biking at 90, and the fact that they were no longer alive is only a small percentage of the reason.

Wait, why is this story suddenly about how I married into a race of biking superhumans? About how just as in Bewitched, where Sam and Darren scrutinized poor Baby Tabitha for signs of whether or not she would be a witch, I take note that every day since he could walk, the progeny grabs his bike helmet and waddles it over to me and basically, begs? This story is not about that. But it’s not clear what it’s about, and I must go and pack.

Bleat away, but DO NOT STAMP!

I don’t even know what I was looking for: I think it was a recipe for Peanut Butter Pile, which I make all of the time but I need to get proper proportions in order to pass them along for the Pile series. And I’m searching for a recipe that doesn’t call for grated ginger and chicken broth and what-all: I want to tell you about the one where you comb PB and a few other choices pantry staples through spaghetti and everyone gasps at the delicious and worldly dinner you have served them. Which is delicious again the next day when it is cold! Even your child will marvel at your brilliance for combining 2 of the only things he consents to eat — peanut butter and noodles — into one perfect meal.

Anyhow, what my Internet search brought me to first was a listing of foods which cause gout. Gout is a disease that is very painful that rich men used to get from eating rich food. My friend Barry and I made up a limerick about it once, when we were about thirteen years further from gout than we are now. What was the limerick? I only remember the first 2 lines:

When pee backs up in your feet / It’s tempting to stamp and to bleat

(In retrospect, I suspect that it’s actually NOT tempting to stamp: it’s probably only tempting to bleat.)

I shouldn’t have been so cavalier in the poetic explorations of my youth, because what I learned through my accidentally gout-related search of the Internet is that many foods that I love, from cake to dark green vegetables, can build the excessive uric acid that can lead to gout.

So, Peanut Butter Pile recipe to come. Gout recipe below. xox!

Excerpted from http://www.goutcure.com: All of the foods below can be responsible for excessive uric acid production. Even though some do not contain purines, they can still cause the system to naturally produce uric acid. They are as follows: alcohol, anchovies, asparagus, cauliflower, mushrooms, consomme, herring, meat gravies, broth, bouillon, mussels, sardines, red meats, organ meats, processed meats (hot dogs, lunch meats, etc.), fried foods, roasted nuts, any food cooked in oil (heated oil destroys vitamin E), rich foods (cakes, sugar products, white flour products), dark greens vegetables, dried fruits, fish, caffeine, beans, lentils, eggs, oatmeal, peas, poultry, yeast products, acetaminophen, and low doses of aspirin.

Thanks to Vagawi on flickr for the pic. Man oh man, I hope you are feeling better, Vagawi!

Sixteen months. And at this delicious moment in time, aside from his burgeoning independence, there is nothing Henry loves more than car alarms.

heeee hawww heee hawww

heeee hawww heee hawww

His face lights up. Are we that lucky that we have encountered the noise of a car alarm in the distance? Like we do every day?

booooooop!

booooooop!

booooooop!

booooooop!

He looks at me and smiles. He starts stepping from foot to foot with straight legs, flat-soled sandals slapping the pavement.

enh enh enh enh

enh enh enh enh

He grabs his own hands in front of his chest, elbows jutting, and moves his fist left to right.

Booing?

Booing?

Booing?

Booing?

The fabulousness of the car alarm is simply too intense to enjoy alone.  He grabs my hand. We are reveling together in dance!

Forget spreading our genes around to others — this is why we have children: the ability to share in unbridled joy at what would otherwise be either ignored, or construed as an annoyance.

Plus, at this stage, he is eager to communicate, but can’t yet speak the language. There is an intensity and a beauty to this somewhat thwarted desire to connect. We pay a lot of attention to one another, trying to figure things out. It’s as fabulous as going on vacation in your twenties and meeting a goddamn dark-eyed foreigner! Except, much better.

To top it off, this morning during the our walk, a bird way up in a sycamore started imitating the car alarm as soon as it had finished.

Excellent bird. It must be a parent bird, hamming it up for its kiddo. Or maybe it’s a baby bird with a very proud mama.

My objectives for cooking are always shifting. I like to eat delicious food, always, but sometimes I want it to be complicated, and sometimes I want it to be lickety split, and sometimes I want to use up things I have so that I don’t have to move them, and that’s where I am now. I also found myself with a lot of avocados after the weekend.

On Monday I was thinking of making beef tacos with mushrooms, so I bought Portobello mushrooms.

As a rule I do not buy those. Why? Because I am still recovering from a backlash that I, as well as everyone else, developed against poor Portobellos when they became, like Britney would just a few years later, too famous to0 fast.

One day in 1995, I think it was, everyone on earth discovered how delicious these mushrooms are, and grilled them all of the time to eat alongside of steak and or and ate them as fake hamburgers. “They’re delicious! Have you tried them splashed with balsamic?” Et cetera.

And ah, balsamic. That is the other thing we all developed a backlash against, except now, with balsamic vinegar, I am in what I think of as the frontlash.

The frontlash is basically the backlash to the backlash. (This is not a phenomenon particular to food; it also happened with Dave Eggers.) Meanwhile, I have rediscovered balsamic vinegar (“Wow! It really is delicious!”) and balsamic vinegar is one of the things I am trying to use up before next week so that I don’t have to pack the little bottle. Except, the other day I started laboring under the notion that I’d already used it up, and I was upset that I didn’t have any for whatever little project I had going at the moment. (Apparently, there is really no keeping me happy. Good thing that most of these dialogues are internal. Despite what you think, you are only privy to a fraction of them.)

Anyhow, I did not make earthy beef tacos Monday night, I made summery shrimp tacos — I never really tire of tacos, it is true, and perhaps that will be the next series — and I used cabbage as an accent instead of mushrooms. So I found myself yesterday doing a search this morning on “portobello” and “coconut milk,” because I had a half a can (approx. 7 oz) in the freezer. And you know I’m not letting one drop of coconut milk go to waste.

The same recipe, for Portobello Curry with Green Rice, came up from several different sites, but it called for assembling something called Madras Curry, and grinding cloves seemed not like something I could do with a child chomping around my ankles in an impatient rage: I wanted to get a leg up on dinner during naptime, but I barely wanted to do any work at all. Then I remembered . . . my mother-in-law gave us 4 containers of Indian spice mixes for Christmas!

They look and smell exciting, but there are no directions or ingredient lists, so I have been paralyzed when it comes to using them. HOWEVER: through reading the ingredients for Madras Curry Powder on RecipeZaar, and through SNIFFING the powders, I realized that the sweet curry powder seemed like it had the key ingredients: mustard, fennel, cardamom, cloves, ginger, cinnamon. So that was a plus, because I could put a dent in that, though it won’t likely change the estimated cost to move our household — though who knows: it might. And then I realized that a coriander chutney I had in the fridge (cilantro, citrus, ginger, garlic) could stand in as the base for the greenness of the green rice when swished with some limes and the coconut milk. And maybe I would use it up!

Sounded great and like I would have to buy NOTHING save cashews (if I subbed reg onion for green onion) except . . . it had no protein in it, and no green vegetables. But I could throw some frozen okra in there! I could get rid of the okra and not move it! And everyone knows that nuts count as protein, esp. if you are a squirrel or a vegetarian.

It was somewhat popular with the grownups, and scorned by the child. Aromatically at least it was an awful lot like a curry I make with shrimp, except that the spice mixture was more complex and also, premade, and the overall effect was not one operatically balanced, as the Elizabeth Rozin one is. Perhaps I should have followed the actual instructions.

Perhaps I should have added balsamic!