back from chicago. much to report:

1. newly created chocolate cherry bread pudding with zingerman's bread, bailey's and lots of love. a little creme anglaise and it'd be so good i'd plotz.

2. hanukah dinner: brisket, asparagus, latkes made by me and lrhg. the latkes, if i may say so, were absolutely fantastic and worth smoking out the entire house.

3. good, dependable breakfast burrito at heartland.

4. failed attempt to dine at lula cafe. damn!

5. sushi. and more sushi.

6. chicago-style pizza.

7. taste of heaven cake. sigh. i'm not much of a cake person, but that stuff makes me melt. lrhg, who is a cake person, just about cried. serious.

dinner tonight: saigon garden: chicken pho and BellJar, a book i curiously made it all the way thru my angsty highschool years without reading. so, reading it now. its just hovering on that line between normal sadness and clinically depressed enough that it makes me feel totally depressed although not suicidal.

good: "disconsolate mosquito."

poor sylvia!

follow-up

deepfry,
Your recent pimento-flinging blog entry reminded me of something I read recently.
Manners are a preoccupation of the middle classes.
The truly entitled do whatever the hell they feel like.
Throw those pimentos, deepfry.
Throw them with the confidence of a woman entirely outside the petty squabbling of those beneath her.

Shakespeare said it best in Henry V:
O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings.
Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's fashion:
we are the makers of manners, Kate.

-librarianavengers
ps.
Dirty martinis are so so good.
One of these days I'm going to cut out the middleman and just order a glass of olive juice.

Yay! found the best place for dirty martinis last night! FullMoon makes the tasty "High Society" with belvedere. ask for it dirty and with olives instead of a twist and, oh, you will be a happy fancy person. i was almost a fancy person, but i don't think that i quite made it. picking the pimentos out of the olives with the yellow plastic pick on which they had been speared maybe wasn't really all that much class. especially when not one, not two, but three pimentos went flying across the room during three different pimento-removals. one almost landed on m's jacket. but it missed her. of course, i'm not entirely sure where it went either. oh well.

remember: me=all class, all the time.

also, have discovered the tofu fapita at Oasis, the fast food falafel joint across the street from school. i ate $2.50 falafel sandwiches there on an almost daily basis first time around and the thought of one now is deeply unappealing. but i decided to give oasis another non-falafel sandwich go and ordered the tofu fapita. granted, it's a whopping $0.75 more than the falafel, i think i've found my new sandwich. rice, very sauteed thinly sliced carrots, onions and garlic and very marinated and baked tofu all wrapped up in a pita. splendid! quick, only marginally messy and its not falafel! i'm happy. although the woman who serves the sandwich--wearing pants that tight cannot be good for the circulation. i'm concerned.

for dinner, lrg, mj, rala (best i use code words...heavenforbid someone KNOW who i'm eating dinner with!) and i went to Mr.Greek's Coney Island. i stared long and hard at the chicken strips with fries (with coleslaw) listed on the menu but decided to be the good vegetarian wannabe type and got the portabella/o panini (with fries). it was ok. well, it was decent. but what can i expect from Mr.Greek's Coney Island? these Coney Island places are all over the detroit area and are consistently mediocre, judging by the two i've visited. there are three in ann arbor alone (well, two Coney Islands and one Koney Island) and, frankly, they're nothing like coney island at all. not one roller coaster in sight.

now i'm hungry and at the library. i am surrounded by frat boys. they are outraged by their cellphone carriers and filing suits. oh, and it seems that the brother of one got busted for something and has to do community service. good thing that his friend's dad got the kid a "big shot lawyer."

usually this gig is fun. sometimes it makes me hate all of humanity.

i wish i was eating some type of fried potato product right now instead of sitting at the reference desk.

yesterday:
breakfast: half a pot of coffee. oops. too much.
lunch: lunch. lunch. uh, nothing that i can recall. oops.
dinner: bibimbop w/tofu from University Cafe with LRG and others. it made LRG sick. oops.

today:
breakfast: half a pot of coffee. oops. too much again.
lunch: um, none again. oops.
dinner: yet to be decided. something tasty, though.

i hate finals week. its just not good for me and my bod.

Last night, LRG made me the most fantastic dinner while i sat on my bum and watched "What Your Library Needs to Now About the Patriot Act" or something like that put out by ALA, ARL, AALL and another library association with a complicated acronym. she made butternut squash with feta, pine nuts, onions and tomatoes, first sauteed, then baked and fixed up some israeli cous cous to go with it. ohmyword, totally delicious!! and seasonal, too. oh, the joys of being cooked for! especially by someone who is a good cook! i highly recommend it!

and then, from there, off to a party at which we gorged ourselves on only the classiest of party foods: cool ranch doritos, goldfish, taco tubes (that's not what they're called at all, but you know what i'm saying), chocolate chip cookies from a tube and miller high life. it doesn't get more sophisticated than that, now, does it?

and this just got me thinking of a fantastic party idea. Tube Food! a party in which everything that is served either comes from a tube or is shaped like a tube! so good! cookies from a tube, pringles, those taco things, perhaps ants on a log, maybe a buche de noel, the possibilities are endless!

wow, monday was the perfect day of South University Avenue dining, if such a thing is possible. The street does not have much to offer, but the restaurants that are good are good in that just-eat-here-and-everything-is-gonna-be-alright kind of way. nothing fancy, nothing exciting, just good, wholesome dependable food. the good restaurants on south university are kind of like an old pair of sneakers, but, um, without the stink.

for lunch, i dragged nick to Red Hot Lovers where i got cheese fries and a reuben tofu dog (yum!). he got fries and a hot dog with ketchup...an interesting choice but he said it was heavenly. my mission this year is to introduce as many people as i can to the divine wonder that is red hot lovers. i've already hooked denny on the cheese fries, have gotten april, mellanye, kate and now nick going there. i mean, i feel that its my duty as a friend to share the love that is waffle cut cheese fries with real cheese. how can you keep that from anyone you care about? i can't!

after my tasty cheesy lunch, i went to Saigon Garden with rachel. my first year at school, i got to saigon garden at least once a week. when i returned this year, it was closed down! for shame!!!! the horror!!!! luckily, just a few weeks ago, it REOPENED. although the bibimbop at the university cafe on church is pretty tasty, nothing compares with a big bowl of noodles (in broth or served cold) with a crispy spring roll from Saigon Garden. and i received a fortune cookie which reads: "A smile is your personal welcome mat." i'm not sure exactly what that means, but i know its good.

so that's it: red hot lovers for lunch and saigon garden for dinner. perfection. in that south university kind of way.