Beer and My Favorite Museum

Wow. It’s been almost a year since my first beer event at the Field Museum. I didn’t realize. I’ve gone to write about about it a few times and always found myself at a loss. This is not the fault of the beer, which was tasty, or the museum, that put on an awesome event. This was about me being at my favorite museum, the reasons why it’s my favorite museum, my old life, and my new life. So, I set it aside for awhile. Someday, I may even write it.

Going for another beer event last November was much more interesting, because it was all very centered on my “new” life. I was invited by Matt Tanka of Lakeshore Beverage (then River North Beer) to the “media preview” of the museum’s new bistro-style restaurant.… Continue reading →

Something of an Inheritance

One of my most recent posts was simply a photo that showed what makes me really feel that I’m in my mother’s kitchen.

It’s not the recipes. It’s the tea. And the big ol’ slab of a cutting board with a scorch mark. The recipe box. But not the recipes. My mother doesn’t, and hasn’t ever, needed recipes. But she has them.

I don’t know how many times I’ve said, nor how many times I will say, that I didn’t learn to cook from my mother. That I spurned that offering and have, as such, had to do a lot from scratch a thousand miles away.

I’ve gotten there. I’ve become deeply invested in food and cooking. Thus, my most recent visit home, I expected to cook.… Continue reading →

On History

The blog move is kind of annoying. Making things work in WordPress that worked in Serendipity is surprisingly touchy and difficult. It’ll all be worth it in the end, but it’s seriously obnoxious in the meantime.

Work, computer! Just do what I want! Magically! Magic is how computers work, right?

One of the things I’m having to do is go through and read all the entries and look for coding errors or similar problems. It’s astoundingly slow going. It’s good for mostly-brainless activity, but as I’d like to get this done by the 22nd of October, it’s also something I’ll have to do while I have brainpower. Thus, it’s really dull.

There’s been some upsides, though. The first being that I’m seeing the list of cookbooks we own, and thus recipes I’d been so excited about making & then forgotten.… Continue reading →