She Wrote, He Wrote

CLAIRE WROTE:

The thing about being a vegetarian (which I admittedly am only about 80% of the time) is that you end up eating a lot of side dishes. Mashed potatoes, rice, pasta, greens, salad, hunks of crusty bread, extra cheese and crackers, all because you’re in search of something filling.

Creating a complete vegetarian meal, something that feels as fulfilling as your mom’s Sunday chicken dinner, is a hard thing to do. I don’t necessarily believe that each meal needs to represent the classic protein-carbohydrate-vegetable portion plan, but when your menu is so often relegated to a sampling of side dishes, the three-portion plan starts to seem like a rare treat.

And that’s why–and I hate to say this–I was disappointed with my dining experience at Shawn McClain’s upscale vegetarian restaurant, Green Zebra. It’s not that the food wasn’t wonderful. It definitely was. Bright flavors, local and seasonal offerings, diverse ingredients. It’s just that the whole menu is arranged a series of small dishes and it made me feel like I do when I end up at a dinner party where steak is the main course: resigned to an evening of side dishes.

The way the menu works: The dishes at Green Zebra increase in size and guests are advised to kind of design their own five-course menu from offerings like fresh burrata cheese with piparras peppers and oregano, ricotta gnocchi with honey-roasted figs, potato tots with a sunny-side up egg and heirloom tomatoes. Our party of four shared these, along with some of the slightly larger small plates like the squash tortellini with purple cabbage and a mushroom popover with blue cheese and browned butter.

But as good each dish truly was, I left with a fully belly, still wanting for a meal.

CLAIRE WROTE:

It took me almost a whole week to convince Greg to spend election night downtown. He really wanted to stay home on the couch, watching the returns, yelling at the television, double-fisting his laptop and his phone, and not missing a moment of it.

I, on the other hand, wanted to be out, in the city, in Chicago, with all the thousands of other Obama supporters, whooping it up for change. I promised Greg that we’d find a cozy bar from which we could watch the footage. I advised him to wear something comfortable to work that day. I commented over and over again on what a historic night it would be and how lucky we were to be in Chicago for it. And when I scored tickets to the rally in Grant Park, he finally agreed.

The last two years (I’ve been an Obama supporter for a long time) have been a slow build to the last six months. Six months of intense obsession, of constant emails and a thousand clicks a day through all the news sites I call home. I don’t think a day has gone by in the last half year when I haven’t spoken about this election. It’s dominated my thoughts and my emotions to the point of paralyzation at times. And all because I have never so passionately believed in a leader as I have in Barack Obama. I believe in him in a way that I didn’t think my generation was capable of.

And to prove it, I’ve tried my damnedest to do my part for him this last year. I’ve given money, time, calories, words and more words in support of Barack Obama, and being there to see him win this presidential election was something that I knew I would never forget. As Greg and I left our cozy bar where we’d had dinner with friends as the early returns came in, we set out for Grant Park in awe of the streets around us. It felt like New Year’s Eve, Y2K. The streets were filled with people, filled with energy, with cheers and anticipation, and with more Barack paraphernalia than I’ve ever seen.

We stood in line for over an hour outside Grant Park, in a streaming river of people all waiting to get inside the park, to be part of this thing that we all felt part of. Cars drove by honking and waving, news traveled down the line about which states had gone blue, cheers and shouts erupting from those around us. Finally, amidst a human swarm of political passion, we slipped our way into Grant Park, crushing in amongst the thousands, all of us turning around and around, taking it all in, the crowd, the city skyline, the feeling that nothing like this had ever happened.

And just a half hour after we’d gotten inside, the giant screen showing CNN announced that Obama had taken Virginia. And then that he’d taken the presidency. I could hardly take it in. What, no fight? No contesting of ballots, or fraud, or of some other ridiculous thing? That’s it? Barack Obama has won?

Barack Obama has won.

We were all hugging and crying and the whole field tingled with something new, something no one had ever felt before, or at least hadn’t felt in a long time. My head was spinning. We’re going to end the war, I thought. People will have health care, I thought. The world will stop hating America, I thought. And then I realized how used to things I’d been, how resigned and unhopeful and uninspired I’d been these last eight years.

I’m still taking it all in. I’m still brought to tears thinking of it all, of all the different things electing Barack Obama means. I’m still taking in the idea of hope. And of what it feels like to be proud of my country and the people who live here.

CLAIRE WROTE:

Can I do it tonight? I’m about to nap a little. xx

CLAIRE WROTE:
I grew up going to dinner parties. As the only child of two much older parents who loved to entertain, I think half of my childhood was spent flouncing around the living room while my parents’ guests sipped cocktails and mingled in their Saturday night finest.

Growing up in that environment did two things for me: not only do I now love to host my own little soirees, but I’m very appreciative of the details that go into someone else doing the same. Throwing a dinner party isn’t just about the food. Even though the evening may revolve around that very thing, there are so many other factors that come into play when designing a successful get-together in your home. From the people you invite, to the lighting, the music and even the arrangement of furniture, each angle must be accounted for, otherwise your party may end up feeling a little off, like a table with one leg too short. On the other hand, there’s nothing quite like attending a truly successful dinner party. The feeling you have, upon walking out the door, still slipping your coat on, a warm glow rising up through you, a smile lingering on your face…there’s nothing quite like that.

We went one such dinner party just the other night. Andrea Newberry of the blog Forkably Hip, hosted a fantastic evening in her home in Humbolt Park with her fiance Ira on Sunday. Andrea’s blog is billed as “Slow Food for Fast Living” and uses these events to demonstrate exactly what she means by that. Sunday night’s event was deemed “Forkably Hip” and was co-hosted by fashion blog writer Amber Mortenson of Painfully Hip, thus ensuring that not only would the food be good but the guests would be fabulous (and well-dressed). The menu was French Provincial (a caramelized onion tart to begin, Coq au Vin as the main dish and a luscious dessert of plum dumplings) and Andrea had cleared out the living room, giving way to space for three long tables at which we all sat.

There was only one person that Greg somewhat knew at the party and I knew no one; the rest of the guests were a really interesting mix of magazine editors, aerial theatre performers and historical book restorers. Conversation, as well as wine flowed through the night and Andrea disappeared and reappeared throughout night, presenting us with a delectable meal. As Greg and I pulled on our coats at the end of the night and walked down the steps outside of her apartment, a smile graced both our faces — a sure sign that Andrea Newberry knows what she’s doing.

CLAIRE WROTE:
Today I officially started going out with Lanny. I haven’t been out with a boy since 6th grade which is pretty sad considering that I’m in 8th grade now. I used to like him last year. I don’t know if this is going to work though. It’s so hard to be his friend now.

And so begins the first entry in my 8th grade diary, dated Monday, May 4, 1992.

From the time I was able to put pen to paper I was writing in a journal. And I’ve held onto every single one of them. All these years, I’ve carted them from city to city, amassing even more as I continued to scribble down my thoughts and feelings in their once-blank pages. My personal collection of journals and diaries now line a tall bookshelf in our guest room. There are so many that I can’t imagine someone actually considering snooping into them.

There are too many to chose from. Where would they even start? With my 4th grade diary in which most of the stories center around my golden retriever Annie? Or how about my 6th grade diary — the year in which I vowed to wear a different outfit to school every day of the school year, resulting in dozens of fashion disasters? Or maybe my 9th grade journal which mostly consists of my poor and angst-ridden attempts at poetry? Or even my 11th grade journal all about the dramatic ups and downs of my first real boyfriend?

I thought of all these journals the first time that Greg took me to see Mortified at The Green Mill in Chicago. Billed as a “comic excavation of the strange and extraordinary things we created as kids,” Mortified promises that you’ll “witness adults sharing their own adolescent journals, letters, poems, lyrics, home movies, stories and more.” Yup, that’s the show. Real people get up on stage and read from their real adolescent diaries. And it’s one of the funniest and most heartwarming things I’ve ever experienced.

And the great thing about Mortified is that it’s really well executed. It’s not some kind of open-mic situation, as I feared the first time I went. Rather it takes place in a cool bar in Uptown, the performers (who have auditioned and been through a screening process) read on a stage, there’s a likable emcee and there’s even an opening a closing musical act called The Blue Ribbon Glee Club.

Last week was the third time I went to see Mortified and we took two of our friends, Erica and Elizabeth, with us for their first time. The show never disappoints. Each time there are different performers, different childhood sagas and lives and relationships and hurts and embarrassments, and each time I can’t help thinking about how connected we all are, even when we feel just the opposite.

This time around we heard from a girl who was obsessed with Rick Springfield and whose ultimate fantasy was to move to California and become a pizza delivery girl in the hopes that she would be able to deliver a pizza to Springfield. He’d be “wearing purple jeans and a pink top,” she wrote in her diary. We also heard from a girl who was a young Republican in 1988, writing passionate entries about her admiration for George Bush Sr. Her readings were peppered with her own ironic laughter now that she is a staunch liberal.

After that there was a guy who was torn between two girls who wrote of nothing but the existential terror that encapsulated this drama. He was followed by a woman reading from her high school diary about joining Weight Watchers (she wasn’t very good at following the point system) so that she could be skinny and pretty like all the other girls at school. Her entries elicited a lot of ohhhh’s from us girls in the audience, presumably those of us who have also wished to be the skinny, pretty girl at school. And finally, we heard from an Ani DiFranco-obsessed lesbian at Oberlin who wrote angst-filled songs about the straight girl she had a crush on.

And throughout each, I couldn’t help relate to something these people wrote. I couldn’t help but realize how much we all struggle to find ourselves, to fit in, to become who we are.

If you get the chance to see this show, I highly recommend it. It plays in different cities around the country.

CLAIRE WROTE:

The last political fundraiser I went to was for Howard Dean back in 2004. The fundraiser was in the shape of a fancy party held at director David O. Russell’s (Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees) house in Beverly Hills. I was there under the pretense of working with the caterer, but really I was there to see Howard Dean.

This was before he’d lost his credibility as a candidate and he was still, in my opinion, the most interesting candidate to choose from. When he spoke at the party that night, Dean was funny and frank, his short stature giving him a kind of solid presence I hadn’t expected. David O. Russell was impulsive and strange, sitting and standing at wildly inappropriate moments throughout Dean’s speech on his manicured back patio. I stood quietly on the fringe of the small crowd in my caterer’s black pants and white button down shirt.

Last week, attending a Barack Obama fundraiser deemed “The Audacity of Beer” at The Galway Arms in Lincoln Park, was quite a different experience. Rather than spending an evening with the Hollywood elite, Greg and I joined a few friends for a laid back night of Irish ale and Obama enthusiasm. It’s certainly not hard to find Barack supporters in Chicago these days, but nonetheless it was nice to be around a large and enthusiastic group of them.

We all got something to eat downstairs before heading up to the second floor to peruse the games and tables that had been set up. There were bumper stickers and pins to be acquired, voter registration information to be gleaned, life-size George W. Bush cutouts to pin things on, George W. Bush voodoo dolls to stick pins into (all the pins, save one in his heart, were stuck in his crotch), a Dick Cheney-as-the-devil poster to pin a tail on, and lots of little games like Connect Four featuring Barack’s and McCain’s faces.

Although it wasn’t the most amazing event I’ve ever been to, it was nice to be around like-minded people. It was kind of fun to take some jabs at the soon-to-be-former administration. It was satisfying to donate money to Barack Obama’s campaign and it was great to enjoy an evening out with friends while supporting a political figure I whole-heartedly believe in.

While there’s still more I could be doing, and more I plan on doing, to support Barack Obama’s campaign, I was glad to do at least this small thing: drink beer in the name of the man I hope will run soon run this country.

So, I’ve been mostly vegetarian for the last month or 6 weeks or so and I’ve been feeling really good about it, physically and mentally. There have, however, been a couple of times in the last weeks in which I’ve strayed from a vegetable-friendly diet. One of those times was last week when Greg and I dined at Powerhouse in the West Loop. And man, did I deviate.

But here’s why: At the start of our meal, before we’d even really ordered actually, Chef Jeff Mauro came out to chat with us and tell us a little bit about himself and his vision for the menu at Powerhouse. He spoke of utilizing Chicago’s fantastic farmer’s markets and he talked about the dishes he felt really confident in on the menu, and he even had the humility to admit which ones he felt hadn’t quite found their place yet. He also talked about his dedication to food resourcefulness and to teaching his staff how to truly appreciate the produce that comes into his kitchen.

Chef Mauro looks a little like a young Edward Norton. He speaks quickly, as if he’s afraid that if he doesn’t say everything all at once, he may not get up the gumption to do it in two breaths. I liked him right away and I leaned forward in my seat, as he spoke, in rapt attention to the way he talked about his kitchen. For instance, he recounted the story of an entire pig that they brought in recently. I showed the staff how to use the entire animal, he said and he talked about the difference in seeing the animal in its full form, as opposed to fillets shrink-wrapped in plastic. His eyes glowed with respect and reverence. We even named it, he said. I had to ask. Hank, he replied. I smiled.

And I ordered it. Wild Boar Rack and Loin with Artisanal Rice Grits, Poached Farm Egg, Truffled Pecorino & Ancho Chile Sauce:

One (not all) of my issues with eating meat these days is the way in which its treated before it arrives on your plate. I just can’t stand to think about the inhumane ways in which animals are grown, kept and slaughtered, and I’d like to think that I can do my small part to keep from perpetuating this problem. Now, that may sound silly to you, but cultivating a respect and reverence for all life has become important to me.

And when I have strayed these past few weeks and eaten or cooked some form of meat, I’ve made an effort to truly think about the animal I’m preparing and ingesting. As Chef Mauro said, it’s such a different experience to just cut open a plastic package containing a bloodless chicken breast or a slab of bacon. It’s so easy not to think about the animal from which it came. It’s so easy to dismiss the life that was lived. But when Chef said that he’d even named the boar I was about to eat, I recognized a man after my own heart… or at least my palate.

And so with gusto, I ate the perfectly tender Hank with his delightfully runny poached egg and rich ancho chile sauce, and with each bite, I savored and gave thanks for the animal gracing my evening.

CLAIRE WROTE:

I’ve truly had some disastrous kayaking trips. Well, maybe just one, in particular.

It took place several years ago on a trip to Thailand with a couple of girlfriends. Lucy and Holly and I were in Thailand for reasons involving a poorly executed and failed business plan, about which I won’t go into specific details. Nonetheless, one sunny morning found us on the island of Koh Chang wondering what to do with ourselves. Lucy decided to shower while Holly and I bickered out our plans and finally settled on kayaking.

The kind hotel staff, who had taken to calling us “Charlie Angel,” waved goodbye to the three of us as we set out on a kayaking mission to, what we thought, was a nearby island. Suffice to say, three hours later found us in the middle of the ocean, under the noonday sun, barely half way to the deceptively “nearby” island, all of us exhausted and arguing, Lucy keeping quiet about a fin she was sure she had just seen and me, actually toting a Coach purse along with me for God knows what reasons. I mean, really, who takes a Coach purse kayaking in Thailand?

Anyway, you would think I’ve learned my lesson about biting off more than I can chew when it comes to kayaking. Apparently not, because on Sunday when Greg and I showed up at the Chicago River Paddle boat shack to pick up our reserved kayaks for the day, I did my best to get us into another disaster of a kayaking trip.

This was our first time kayaking on the Chicago River, something we’ve been meaning to do all summer long, and only now have we gotten around to it on this the last weekend of summer. I really had my heart set on kayaking downtown to the Loop. It just seemed like such a cool idea and I felt strongly, before leaving the house, that nothing was going to sway me from getting to kayak straight through the middle of the city, all those enormous skyscrapers rising up around me.

So even after the kayaking guy told us that he strongly advised us NOT to paddle down to the Loop, as it would be at least a 5 hour round trip and there would be nowhere to use the restroom the entire time, and we would have to paddle upstream the whole way back, and they offered a lovely guided tour with a pick up at the end that we could take some time, I STILL put on my poutiest face and did a good job of *almost* convincing Greg that we should still do it, for adventure’s sake.

I’ll just say now that I’m really glad I listen to my husband sometimes. Or perhaps that he doesn’t listen to me sometimes. Needless to say, we did not paddle to the Loop and instead had a very pleasant experience paddling around for a couple of hours, heading North through our neighborhood, admiring ducks and turtles and blue heron and each other. On the way back, going downstream, my arms already sore, although I wasn’t quite ready to admit defeat, I was secretly very glad I had not won out on the adventure argument.

I think one should only have one disastrous kayaking trip in a lifetime, no?

CLAIRE WROTE:

It was Greg’s idea to take surf lessons in Costa Rica. We were in the Osa Peninsula, on a travel writing trip focusing on sustainable tourism, and we were trying to soak up (pun kind of intended) as much of the rain forest as possible. Surfing hadn’t been on the forefront of the things I wanted to do while we were there.

National Geographic calls the Osa Peninsula the “most biologically intense place on earth. Yes, on earth.” And it was. Full of monkeys and impossible-to-spot sloths, giant frogs and tree crabs…and me and Greg, sloshing through the jungle in big, black galoshes.

We were staying at an ecolodge called Lapa Rios and there was a daily list of guided tours and activities that guests could participate in. Had it not been for Greg, my eyes would have skimmed right over “Surf Lessons,” alighting perhaps on “Mangrove Kayak Tour” or “Rainforest Ridge Walk,” but Greg was hooked on the idea of taking surf lessons…and after some thought, I decided I’d rather take them too, than sit on the beach squinting at my husband as he attempted to stand up in the waves.

It’s funny that after four years of living in Venice Beach, California and watching bare-foot, sun-bleached surfers walk by my window every morning, I would try surfing for the first time in Costa Rica. But perhaps there’s good reason for that. The idea that my first attempt to stand on a moving object in the ocean would be witnessed only by strangers, rather than the potential disaster of having some cool Venice surfer guy privy to my initial foray into this competitive sport, made me feel just a bit more at ease.

We met up with our surf instructor on a pretty desolate beach around 10AM on our last day on the peninsula. His name was Oldemar and he was young and cut, with that ocean-water-scraggly hair that all surfers seem to have. He nodded sagely after speaking and said “Cali” instead of California, even though he was Costa Rican and had never traveled stateside. He tossed each of us a red surf shirt and I put mine on, feeling like one of my cats probably does when I try to make it wear some kind of outfit.

After that he threw a surfboard on the sand and began to demonstrate the various positions we would be using in our attempts to stand up on the board. I could feel my cheeks grow hot when he told us we all had to practice, right there in front of each other. There were five of us, by the way. Me and Greg and a dad with his two teenage kids, a boy and a girl. Why I would be embarrassed in front of them is anyone’s guess, but I think I would have been embarrassed to mimic standing on a surfboard in front of anyone.

As a side note, about a year ago, Greg made me pose with him in a fake surfing set-up at a festival here in Chicago. The three minutes we were on that board were truly some of the most humiliating of my entire life. However, I will always be grateful to Greg for forcing me into this, simply for the photo that came out of it.

It took both me and the other girl three tries to get the positions right, the guys only having to mimic our instructor once to feign their surf posture. Finally, we were ready to go. As I carried my board atop my head on our way to the water, visions of Keanu Reeves and Lori Petty swam through my head, the surfing lesson montage and Petty’s gravely voice saying “Pop, pop!” as Keanu struggled to stand and was mocked by the other surfers.

And then we were paddling out to the break and I quickly realized that I had no arm muscles to speak of. It was literally some of the toughest arm exercises I’d ever done. No wonder Oldemar (and every other surfer I’ve ever seen) was so ripped. Miraculously, I somehow beat everyone in our little group, husband included, out to the spot where Oldemar was waiting for us.

He immediately took hold of my board and spun me around. “You ready?!” he shouted, and shoved me off. It was so exhilarating that I literally forgot to stand up. Well, I forgot at first and then when I remembered that standing was the goal it felt like it was too late and I would look stupid if I did it now. I sheepishly rolled off the board, turning around to paddle back just in time to catch a glimpse of the teenage girl shakily rising to a crouch on her board as she coasted toward shore.

Her brother was next, immediately collapsing off his board as he tried to pop into standing and then Greg went, falling over immediately as well. The second time Oldemar shoved me out into a wave, I thought hard about the positions we had learned. Back foot forward, a planted hand, then another foot. I moved my right hand and then suddenly I was squatting on my board. Slowly, I rose up, until I was in that classic surfer pose: knees bent, one arm stretched out in front and the other in back, a sloppy grin on my face as I coasted along the wave.

I watched Greg stand on the next wave, and I caught half a dozen more myself, only finding myself standing when I really followed through with the positions our instructor had guided us through. Finally, I could paddle out no more and I took my last wave in, as close to the shore as I could get, before falling over on my side into the water, exhilarated and exhausted and totally surprised by how much fun I’d had.

CLAIRE WROTE:

Yo soy la Reina de las Cabras.