The Rallying Cry of Rhubaaaarb!!

I love rhubarb. It's so odd. And when reduced to a sauce with some sugar added it's damn tasty. But it has a short growing season, and is sometimes hard to find so it's best to pounce on it when you see it!

I did that a few weeks ago. I bought 1 1/2 pounds. I was reallly excited because I knew exactly what to do with it! My Mom's rhubarb crumble was all I'd been thinking about for weeks!

It's a great recipe as it only takes half an hour, uses pantry staples and it's simplicity makes the rhubarb-y goodness the star.

Miss Linda's Rhubarb Crumble

The Jam:

2 c (a little less than a pound) rhubarb cut into 1" pieces

1/3 c sugar

pinch of salt

1/8 tsp cinnamon (I'm heavy handed with this ingredient)

1 tbs water

Bring to a boil in a saucepan. Cover and simmer until saucy, 5-8 min.

Preheat the oven to 400.

The Crumble:

3/4 c butter (ok, I've been using about half that, first out of necessity as I was out, and adding milk until you obtain the crumbly consistency works just dandy so I've been doing that since...)

1 c brown sugar

1 1/2 c flour

1 1/2 c oats (I use Old Fashioned Quaker Oats)

1 tsp baking powder

Cream the butter and sugar together then mix the rest of the ingredients. It should be a nice crumbly texture.

Put 2/3 of the mixture into your pan (9x13 or in my case two loaf pans) and pat it down so it's a nice even crust. Pour the jam over top, spread it out evenly. Crumble the rest of the crumble on top!

Now here's where I went rogue from Miss Linda's recipe. I put it in the oven. I wanted to get a nice browned crust on top and I feel it may add to the flavor of the oats. I just leave it in there for 20 min or so until browned. And to be fancy I put some nicely sliced strawberries on the top of the crumble before baking as decoration. I've also added sliced strawberries to the jam occasionally, though using less sugar may be good as they are so sweet this time of year!

Enjoy your rhubaaaaaarb!!!

P.S. My Mother has informed me that she ALWAYS bakes her crumble. Rebellion squashed. (But she never puts sliced strawberries on top so THERE!)

Yes Jim James, Louis Sullivan IS God.

Photo Orange John via Flicker

So, this isnt' a post about food. It's kind of about Father's Day, even though it's a day late...go figure.

One of the things my Dad and I are constantly talking about...other than food...is music. He has an insane music taste and is always finding out these awesome bands which often become some of my favorites (Dexateens!!). In my Rock Star Job, really, all I do is sew and listen to music all day, and we are always finding/meeting new bands so my iTunes library has had a crazy growth spurt in the past few years. The good ones get passed on to Dr Karl for review of course!

Well one of my favorite bands is My Morning Jacket from good old Louisville, KY. Home to the Louisville slugger, the Derby, and Mo. She got me hooked years ago in Boulder and since then I have bought almost every album. I saw them live for the first time last year with Mo and our dear friends H&B, and let me tell ya. That band live is an amazing thing to behold!

So this year when they rolled through town again I was a little miffed because it just wasn't going to work out that I could see them. Until 5:30 pm the night of the show when my boss calls to say he has an extra ticket.

Yup.

And not only that, but they were playing in the Auditorium Theater which was built in 1889 by the firm of Adler and Sullivan. As in Louis Sullivan, my architecture boyfriend. Last year I read a whole book about his life and work that gave me back problems it was so heavy. I love him. (And hilariously enough I grew up a stones throw away from a Sullivan building.) The external ornamentation on the Carson, Pirie, Scott building is my favorite but his later works, especially the banks, are just incredible. The Auditorium Building is one of the largest Sullivan buildings here in Chicago and I've been meaning to get inside of it to check it out.

I mean look at this place!

Photo John Chuckman

Photo Dwell

I was actually sitting on this level over in the second section from the right by that beautiful painting of Spring.

Needless to say, it was an incredible concert. And I felt so damn lucky to experience it. There was a moment where, before starting one of their softer acoustic songs, that Jim James the front man began to talk about the architecture of the Auditorium. There are these huge arches that go above the audience which are covered in ornament and exposed old time-y light bulbs and he asked them to turn off all the spot lights and just leave on the "golden rainbow". It was like being under the stars. They played the rest of the show with the ring of lights and it was too cool. Oh wait, was that a Souldier strap Mr. James was wearing on his acoustic guitar WHILE THAT AWSOME SHIT WENT DOWN?!?

Photo XRT

Yup. My life is ridiculous. As is his hood. But we'll let it go. He is a guitar God after all...

Of course the first person I needed to tell about all this was my Dad. We gushed and enthused about the righteousness of Southern Rock and Modernist architects. And steak. And then the next day I get this in my Gmail:

(on the Auditorium...)....the sweeping segmental form of the auditorium's ceiling is so rooted in the Roman baroque classicism of Borromini and Bernini...the wall surfaces enlivened with pattern and form recalling the Roman imperial 'baroque' of Vespasian through Hadrian...Sullivan turned the actual vocabulary of the classical detailing on its head but kept the overarching structures of traditional Western form...amazing, and the integration of incandescent lighting into both detail and structural design is so Modern, capital 'M' :^) Love that Louis Sullivan!!!!!!!!!

If that isn't 100% Dr. K I don't know what is. Love it! And I actually understood most of what he was saying (need to look up this Borromini dude) which is a little scary. But it was just a great culmination of how all this awesome stuff is in my life, a lot of it because of my Dad and who he is. So there ya go. Happy Fathers Day everybody!

"A Woman Must Have a Room of Her Own" V. Wolf

It’s a work in progress but here is my wee place (before and after...)

I’ve got the sitting area around the front windows with one set of nooks for my books and the other as more of a display area that I’m still tinkering with.

And on the other side of the room is my bed with the desk in between!

And of course there’s the kitchen. Very Important.

My parents got me this amazing bakers rack to tackle the whole no countertops issue and there’s even enough space between it and the doorway I may get another small table to fit in there for more counter and storage space. And the kitchen is the perfect place to hang the lovely print my Aunties M and D made me for my Birthday! What hums in you??

As I said, the closets are my two areas not quite sorted yet. This one is my Dressing Room/Linen Closet and is already looking better than in these photos but still isn’t done yet. The other closet I’ve just been throwing things into so you’re not going to see that!!

And the bathroom! Which is so cute and wee! Miss Cait gave me a little jade plant to put in it.

My windows look out onto a vacant lot and there’s a Bunny comes out sometimes, a dog who lives in the apartment across the lot and last Friday a lady and mister mallard duck took a rest by the big puddle! It’s like wild kingdom.

Oh lord and then last night some Dudes who live in that apartment were playing corn-hole on the sidewalk. CORN-HOLE. I may have moved out of Ohio but apparently you can never escape corn-hole. Damnit.

The building itself, the “Damen Arms” its just too quirky for words. It’s terribly old, Dr Karl thinks maybe 1930s and a lot of the original fixtures are still here. Like the elevator. The foyer smells like cigarette smoke and sometimes weed but it’s still charming with its faux fireplace and little architectural details. I’m doing my laundry today and you have to beat the shit out of the coin slots for the washers and dryers to start working, so that’s fun, but they do work!! I chipped a nail...

So that’s it for now, more photos will come as things change but for now I’m delightfully content!

Oh My Goodness!! It's been so long!

Lexana the Bear is alive and well and living in her very own apartment. (And has the internet so can tell you all about it!)

My darling parents drove up for the move (three weeks ago) and we camped out in my barely put together space. Then we schlepped and schlepped, took a break to check out Lincoln Square, then schlepped some more! The first proper meal made in my apartment was salad and spaghetti with a lovely Malbec and chocolate for dessert. Classic and delicious. As a Thank-You I fed my folks banh mi from the lovely Ba Le in Little Saigon and introduced them to the Chicago Dog at Budackis down the street. I may flatly refuse to acknowledge deep dish “pizza” as legit Pizza but the Chicago style hotdog has won my heart. Though slightly skeptical at first (“Honey, all pickle relish is green.” “NO! It’s like emerald green!!”) my parents agreed to it’s awesomeness too.

I’ve now been in my place three weeks and it has been absolute bliss! I’ve been unpacking and rearranging to my little hearts content! I’ve still got to work out the closets, get the internet going (I’m getting twitchy), and spend some quality time with a bottle of bleach in the bathroom but other than that it’s lookin’ pretty good! There was a Terrible Incident when I tried to use my oven for the first time. The dumbass who lived here before me sprayed oven cleaner in there and just left it so about a month later I move in and promptly fill the apartment with smoke from the residue. That was special. My poor Mom had to stand there waving a towel at the smoke alarm while Dad and I knelt on the floor peering into the oven trying to figure out WTF was going on! One spatula, a flashlight, several rinses with a sponge later and the damn thing was residue free!

I also don’t have a toaster anymore so I have mastered the art of toasting bread under the broiler. The key? Constant vigilance. Every morning I put the kettle on and preheat the broiler. While my tea steeps I sit cross-legged on the floor with an oven mitt on my hand, constantly opening and closing the broiler door, for approximately 4 minutes. It reminds me of one of the many wise things Lady Agnes Jekyll says in her book Kitchen Essays:

“Toast, to be good, demands a glowing grate, a handy toasting-fork, and a patient watcher-counsels of perfection indeed, for the ideal rack is like friendship and the immortality of the soul, almost too good to be true“. So there. I’m just following the good Lady’s advice. Because is there anything as tragic as burnt toast? No. There isn’t. Although I’m not sure I really qualify as a “patient” watcher. Just so sleep addled that sitting on the floor for a while seems like a good plan.

Actually I’ve had several kitchen fails in the last two weeks now that I think of it! Or at least some Interesting Moments like “Huh. How the f*ck do I use this Ikea can opener”. I had to Google it embarrassingly enough. There’s a part that folds out from the handle but it was too cleverly designed for me. Stupid Swedes.

Oh and then I injured myself on some asparagus. I know! One of my favorite things to do to asparagus is to attack it with a vegetable peeler-the poor girl’s mandoline-to have either as a raw salad, or slightly cooked over some linguine. Well a slice of the shaved asparagus jumped ship and encrusted itself to my stovetop, but when I went to pick it off a splinter of it went right under my fingernail! An asparagus splinter. I can’t make this shit up.

Then yesterday I was going to try and make soft-boiled eggs and just succeeded in wasting three. One I cracked when I realized that by turning my burner to low I had actually just turned it off so the fluctuation in heat made it blow. And then when I went to peel the last two I found they hadn’t solidified to an edible state so into the trash those went. I ended up just scrambling some eggs (which I do really well thanks to Julia Child) and they tasted just fine with my roast asparagus and slice of toast. And looked rather pretty next to all my green books!

But on the upside I did manage to make brownies without the use of a liquid measure and survived two weeks without a microwave and only one pot to cook in! And my folks got me really nice olive oil and balsamic vinegar so I’ve been making these massive salads that I manage to devour in seconds flat.

Because I may only have one pot at the moment but I do have a salad spinner and a dressing bottle!! I really just need to get my ass to TJ Maxx and buy these things since I have a gift card, I’ve just been so very busy! Perhaps I'll do it this weekend...