Eating My Way Through Chicago

[osprey_archer]

Last night in Chicago, we couldn't decide where to go out to eat, so in the end we went to a cheese shop and bought bleu cheese and goat cheese and brie and some hard salty cheese that was very good even though I can't remember its name; and we bought a hard salami, and a loaf of take & bake bread, and a jar of fig jam, and by the time we'd sliced the cheese and salami and opened the fig jam and a bottle of wine, the bread was piping hot and ready and we sliced it too and put the cheese on it so it melted just a little, and it was very good.

I was going to post photos, but I can't seem to upload the darn photos to LJ and in any case, the only photos I seem to have are of the cheese plate in progress. Once it was complete I was much too busy plotting the best eating strategies to take a photo.

Also not pictured: the eggs benedict with smoked salmon instead of Canadian bacon that I ate for brunch this morning. Most excellent. Plenty of salmon, and a perfect hollandaise sauce, and the egg yolks still golden and liquid and just waiting for a fork to release them all over the plate.

I also had an almond apricot strudel at the Christkindlmart - which was not quite as scrumptious as the almond apricot strudel I got last year (a bit too heavy on the apricots this time around, I think), but still quite nice, and I soothed my almond-deprived soul by buying a cone of almonds coated in amaretto sugar.

Also we watched the first hour or so of Julie and Julia this morning, because clearly no food-obsessed weekend is complete without a little Julia Child. I do love that movie - although every time I see it, I am struck yet again by how much stronger the Julia portions are than the Julie. It's sort of a shame that it's not a straight-up biopic.

I thought I owned that movie, and could therefore watch the rest of it when I got home - we had to cut it short for brunching purposes - but alas, I was wrong! Clearly a defect in my movie collection that I should rectify.

We also watched Fried Green Tomatoes. My main thought at this time is pretty much "IDGIE + RUTH, SITTIN' IN A TREE, K-I-S-S-I-N-G." That's practically canon, right? As close as a mainstream 1991 movie could get to canon? I would say "everything but the kiss," but there actually is a kiss - or two or three - just not on the lips.

Also how else to explain Ruth's otherwise inexplicable and totally unnecessary early death? The filmmakers doubtless thought their movie wouldn't be gay enough without a tragic ending.



I also really liked the friendship that sprung up between Evelyn and Ninny. It occurs to me that Fried Green Tomatoes has a similar structure to Julie & Julia - a modern-day woman's story as the frame for the more dramatic story of a woman a few decades past - but it worked better for me in Fried Green Tomatoes - maybe because Idgie and Ruth's story is tense and sometimes tragic in a way that Julia Child's isn't, so it benefited from a frame story to cut the tension? I may have to think about this some more.

Oh, and has anyone read the book the movie is based on? I might like to read it. Which reminds me, I've also been vaguely meaning to read Derby Girl, the book Whip It's based on. And I did read Julie & Julia, as well as Julia Child's My Life in France. I really like that movie, okay.

Comments

[poeticknowledge.livejournal.com]

Oh my gosh!!! All of that food sounds heavenly! <3 It's making my mouth water! :) Have you ever had cheese or chocolate fondue? It's a wonderful idea for parties and get-togethers. <3 For one of my birthday parties, we had cheese fondue for the main course and bought bread from Panera and an assortment of vegetables and other things to dip in the cheese and it was delicious! <3

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I've had both cheese and chocolate fondue! (Separately, of course.) There was a fondue restaurant close to my college, and when my mom came to visit we would go there as a treat. Delicious!

[poeticknowledge.livejournal.com]

Oh yummy!!! <3 We have a local fondue restaurant called The Melting Pot, but I've never been there (fondue restaurants can get rather pricey, considering all the ingredients that need to be used!). I remember my Mom spending quite a bit of money on finer cheeses for the fondue and other ingredients for it for my birthday party several years ago, so it adds up! That would definitely be a fun place to go to for a special occasion though! How exciting! :)