Speaking of, one of the Court’s decisions was to overturn the District’s handgun ban, to which Obama gave his tepid and qualified support. His disagreement with the decision to strike down the use of death penalty on child rapists was much more clear.

In light of these recent policy changes, Obama’s marketing team has been scrambling to update campaign materials, including backdrops, bumper stickers, and t-shirts. Obama announced the new paraphernalia while standing at a podium emblazoned with a red, white, and blue sign that said, “Change…?”

“Red states, blues states, love, puppies,” Obama said. “And don’t forget rainbows, but not the gay ones.”

The crowd responded with thunderous applause and chants of “Sure, I suppose it’s a possibility!”

When I asked Obama to comment on this recent trend of moving towards popular positions rather than clearly explaining his principled viewpoint as he has done in the past, he yelled out, “Yeah! What that guy said! Here’s some candy!” Then, after handing me a piece of hard candy with a ribbon attached that said “Obama ‘08, Pretty Please,” he grabbed a torch and a pitchfork and ran off to join a crowd, murmuring something about monsters as he sprinted away.

Salute the Count, an eight-year-old gelding, tested positive for Clenbuterol, a drug that increases lung capacity. Any of this sound familiar? An athlete beyond his prime doping in order to prolong his career? These guys are all the same.

And don’t try to play the liberal blame game, accusing everyone who’s so much as watched a horse race of complicity. “Oh,” you’ll whine, “Rick Dutrow, the trainer of Salute the Count as well as recent Triple Crown hopeful Big Brown, has been caught giving steroids to horses every year since 2000!”

Or maybe you’ll say, “IEAH Stables, co-owner of Big Brown, just recently publicly stated its horses would stop taking steroids, an announcement that conveniently occurred right before Big Brown’s trainer got suspended, thereby implicitly acknowledging that their hands are dirty, too!”

Or else you crybabies will whimper, “There’s so much money in horse racing, particularly because of its marriage to gambling, that it should be surprising if horses WEREN’T found with all sorts of insane stuff in their systems!”

Whatever. Let’s lay accountability where it ought to be.

Who has more to lose? Some crappy trainer? Or a horse who has access to the finest medical care and nutrition America has to offer, gets to bask in the cheers of drunks and gambling addicts, and gets to walk around victoriously with a bunch of flowers draped over his overheated, frothing body?

So let’s air out this whole business and send the ones mucking up this beloved sport to the glue factory. We almost lost baseball. Let’s not lose horse-racing, too.

So I did, and then I decided to throw it on this site. It’s located under it’s own page called Restaurant Map, which should be at the top of the page right under “The Smoking Kitchen.” As of now, it includes information about the restaurants as well as what was ordered.

Please comment on the restaurants or add suggestions of your own.

As a brief sidenote, the bulk of what I do on my computer - e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets, reading blogs, calendar, etc. - is done via Google. I suppose it’s too late now, but are we sure Google isn’t evil? They could cause vast amounts of my personal resources to disappear in an instant. This is something I actually worry about, though not enough to make any changes. So, if you’re scoring at home:

Conveniences of Google > Personal anxieties

At first glance, nothing seems amiss. But take a closer look:

Flowers! That can’t be good. I assume they’re not poisonous, though if I’m wrong about that, by all means let me know. But just the same, I figure I can’t use them.

So, how can I get these plants back to the point where I can eat them? Any ideas?

I just wish they could be like their brother thyme. He’s such a good boy! He’s gonna grow up to be a fine meal one day.

1. FREE COFFEE

They were giving out free Intelligentsia coffee! Already it was evident that there was a seismic shift in karma from my last visit, which ended with a $200 parking ticket for (unintentionally) parking in a handicap space. This was the most expensive ticket we could’ve gotten. If we had parked on the sidewalk, it would’ve cost less. That’s not hyperbole; they had all the fines printed on the back. I think it only costs you $40. Something to consider next time you can’t find a parking space.

2. SPARKLE STRAWBERRIES - $4

Strawberries started turning up at farmers’ markets a week or two ago. I got these from the Nichols Farm stand (also where I got the snow peas below). They had a half dozen or so varieties, and I chose the sparkle strawberries because the sign said they were the sweetest. I didn’t try the other kinds, but these are delicious. Check out how small they are. This one is standard:

Also, I learned a great way to remove the stem and leaves. Hold the berry with the fingers of one hand and use your other hand to grab the stem and leaves, and then just twist. The green stuff comes right off and you don’t lose any of the fruit. I learned this by observing one of the farmers eating a strawberry. Next week I’m going to bring a notepad and stay all morning to observe their behaviors. If I can secure some grant money, I may even try to study them in their native habitat, the farm.

3. SNOW PEAS - $3

Haven’t eaten these yet.

4. BEEFSTEAK TOMATOES - $6.05

This is the first time I’ve seen beefsteak tomatoes, and I’m pretty excited about them. I bought them not quite ripe so I can eat them this week. My hope is that they’ll be good enough to eat with just a little salt and pepper. 

When I was picking these out, I saw none other than Rick Bayless! For any non-Chicagoans reading this, Rick Bayless has a couple restaurants, Frontera Grill and the more upscale Topolobampo. I still haven’t eaten at either, which is a small crime. He also has a show on PBS, Mexico: One Plate at a Time, and a soul patch.

Anyhow, he was picking out tomatoes of his own, being trailed by a camera crew. I was staring at him and he turned and made eye contact. His reaction was to smile rather than be creeped out, which I thought was nice of him. I was going to say something but the only thing I could come up with was “YOU’RE ON MY TV!” Instead, I was silent and looked away awkwardly.

5. ASPARAGUS - $5

6. KALE - $2.25

I love kale. I think it may be the most beautiful vegetable. The leaves are intricately detailed, but it’s also heavy and sturdy. It reminds me of puffy cumulus clouds. I don’t think kale and cumulus clouds look alike, but they both have the same aesthetic quality. By the way, if you love kale too, you might want to check out this site that I just found.

There were four or five different types of kale available. I asked the guy about how a particular type (I forget the name) was different from regular old kale. He told me that he honestly couldn’t taste a difference. He’s obviously not the farm’s marketing guy, but I’m not so sure he’s a farmer either.

WHAT I DIDN’T GET THAT I’D LIKE TO GET NEXT TIME

Eggs. Dammit, I want some eggs. So does everyone else, though; I was told they’re generally gone before 10am.

Elk meat. Supposedly it’s even leaner than chicken or fish, which actually makes me want it less. I prefer my meat fatty. But I still want to try it, if only to assert my dominance at the top of the food chain.

CRY FOR HELP

Last and most importantly, now I have to eat this stuff. Do you have any recipe suggestions?

The good news is that I haven’t been completely disengaged. I’ve been cooking and occasionally taking pictures.

The bad news is that I can’t really remember when I made the dish in this post, so the details about cooking this meal are hazy. The recipe is from my Jamie Oliver cookbook. I’ve actually made this once before, but I don’t have much of a memory of cooking it that time, either. Wait, what was I talking about? Maybe that story about when I fought in WWII? Hey you damn kids, get off my lawn!

Jamie Oliver calls this “Grilled fillet steak with the creamiest white beans and leeks,” which I think it is a little wordy. Also, in this case, it’s inaccurate because the cut of beef I used was rib eye. The beef was the impetus behind this meal. I went to the Green City Market, which is known as the best farmers’ market in Chicago, I guess mainly because it’s probably the biggest. Also, the atmosphere is festive, with live music and chef demonstrations, and it’s located right in Lincoln Park. It was a beautiful day, so my girlfriend and I made our way over there.

We got there a little late so the stands were picked over or out of stock, but there was great looking meat from Heartland Meats. Heartland Meats is located in Mendota, Illinois, which is centrally located in the vast cornfield that is the rest of Illinois.

Their beef is from Piedmontese cows, which, as everyone knows, is the end result of breeding between the Aurochs and Zebu breeds. Apparently it’s lower in fat content, which Heartland used a selling point. But doesn’t fattier meat mean more taste?

I bought some anyways because, of all kinds of food, I like the idea of buying meat locally the best. Heartland feeds their cattle corn and not grass, but they grow the corn themselves, which is probably as close as I can realistically hope to get to buying meat from a farm that practices polyculture (that is, growing more than one kind of crop). I recently found out that one consequence of the industrialization of agriculture and the spread of monoculture, specifically when it comes to meat production,  is that manure becomes a waste product rather than something to be cherished as God intended. This has led to vast poop lagoons, which are exactly what they sound like.

So, I bought two five ounce rib eyes. Here they are, frozen and vacuum-sealed:

It’d hard to get too excited about beef when it’s been packaged like that, but I guess it’s good for it.

BEANS!

Now, if memory serves me correctly, I made the “creamiest white beans and leeks” first.

First, take a couple leeks. I think the recipe called for two, but I demanded three.

Then I cut them up. Those are my arms, so I have to assume I took the picture with my foot. That’s a glass of wine in the lower left part of the photo. I drink while I cook so I bleed faster when I cut myself.

Um, I guess I then added thyme and two garlic cloves.

Hypothetical question: If you could only have butter or olive oil for the rest of your life, which would you choose?

Thank God I don’t have to choose. Looking at that photo, I have the uncontrollable desire to put butter and olive oil in my water bottle. I won’t though, because you’re not supposed to refill your plastic bottles because of the chemicals the plastic releases.

Then I threw the leeks in. Jamie Oliver’s instructions were to “sweat” them, which at first I thought was some stupid British saying that we chose to abandon after we won the war, but which I later found out actually means to cook on very low heat for a long time so the vegetable cooks in its own moisture. They literally sweat.

Before:

After a period of time which I forget the length of:

The recipe didn’t call for wine. I was trying to refill my glass, but I was drunk and my aim was off.

The good news is that the wine was an excellent addition.

Beans!

I used cannellini beans, because that’s what I had. The recipe calls for lima beans, which I remember being an issue the first time I made this. I couldn’t find lima beans anywhere. Doesn’t that seem weird? I used frozen fava beans that time.

Here I added parsley and crème fraîche. I definitely didn’t use crème fraîche last time. I can’t remember what I used instead, but I regret it. That’s right, crème fraîche made these beans taste so good that it made me regret something I have no memory of.

That was the end of the beans. They just hung out while I cooked the meat.

MEAT!

Here are the stages the beef went through:

In packaging

Raw, room temperature beef

Seasoned with salt, pepper, and olive oil

Oh sweet Jesus no! Zombie cow! It’s back from the dead to avenge its murder! Everyone panic!

Just kidding. It put up very little fight in the pan. Here the steaks are, resting.

And here’s the final plate.

The steaks were terrific, although just a touch overcooked. My girlfriend is my meat-cooking conscience, and she’s the only reason these steaks didn’t end up rubbery and charred. Really, they could’ve used about 30-60 seconds less on the grill. Although I don’t remember the total time they were on there, so that’s completely unhelpful to both you and me.

Those beans, though. Whoa boy. Those are some good beans.

Stay tuned for some potato salad…

Things got pretty busy for me so I didn’t get around to doing anything with them until last night. They were incredibly ripe - maybe too ripe! - but that craving hadn’t gone away. What’s a guy to do?

Answer: Make a tomato salad.

What I did was pretty simple. Here are the ingredients:

• 3 TBS red wine vinegar
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 2 TSP sea salt
• 1 TSP fresh ground pepper
• 8 pounds of red round, red plum, and red Roma tomatoes

I was so eager to chow down on this salad that I even forgot to wash the tomatoes! That’s fine, because I think not washing them imparts a rustic, more organic flavor to the salad.

This salad was delicious and so incredibly easy to make, I urge each one of you to run out, buy all the tomatoes you can, and make this for yourself tonight!

I probably could’ve finished it all last night, but I was interrupted by the handyman who came by to look at my toilet, which has completely stopped working. And of course he wasn’t able to fix it! No matter, though: Tonight’ll be leftovers and then a nice quiet movie night at home. A perfect evening!

For most of the past five months, I had been an supporter of Barack Obama. I reacted to his oratorical prowess with cautious skepticism. As inspiring as he can be, he is, after all, still a politician. But, he’s smart, his community organizing experience puts him more in touch with people, and he would bring a fresh perspective to the White House, not to mention the first new surname in twenty years.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, I found abrasive and off-putting. Her “We’re always right” attitude reminded me of the Clinton years (and not in a good way), and her “Win at all costs” tactics are exactly the type of politicking that I’m tired of. She is not a fresh face. In fact, my feelings toward Hillary Clinton run closer to hate than to love. I wanted nothing more than for her to drop out of the race.

And that is why I’m endorsing her. Clinton’s announcement that she’s dropping out marks the first time ever that a politician has done exactly what I want her to do.

The past seven and a half years have been particularly bad for politicians doing what I want them to do. Specifically, I didn’t want George W. Bush to start a war with Iraq, and then he did. And then at every election cycle, I wanted him to stop talking about 9/11 and the War on Terror, but he wouldn’t do that, either. I thought things might change with the troop surge, because I actually supported that. It’s a tactic that was endorsed by academics and members of our allies’ armies who have studied counterinsurgency. It should’ve been employed immediately after the invasion, but, as they say, better late than never. Bush actually looked like he was going to do what I wanted him to do. But then he didn’t add as many troops as the experts said were needed! Just because I’d been used to him not doing what I wanted didn’t make it any easier to have my hopes lifted and then crushed.

I really thought Hillary Clinton was headed down that same path. Starting with her vote for the Iraq War and up through her idea for a gas tax holiday, she just didn’t do things I told her to do. And then she stayed in the race when it was clear she couldn’t win unless some tragedy befell Obama, which she actually brought up! When I would see Hillary Clinton on TV, my blood pressure would rise, and I would begin yelling, “You’re not going to win! You cannot win! Just…drop…out!!!” And what did she do? She said she’s going to drop out. In a democracy, you vote for someone who will represent your view, for someone who will be your voice. And Clinton did exactly what my voice was saying very loudly at the TV screen.

It hasn’t been only presidents and presidential candidates who haven’t done what I’ve wanted them to do. Take Rod Blagojevich, the beady-eyed soon-to-be-indicted governor of Illinois. Regional public transportation was short on funding and was going to have to severely cut back service. To keep that from happening, the legislature needed to come up with a solution. The governor didn’t want to sign anything that raised taxes, though, so I feared the worst when he received a plan that called for the sales tax to be increased by .25% - .50% (depending on what county you live in). “Just sign the bill, Rod!” I screamed. It seemed like an equitable solution that would allow me to continue getting around town like I needed to. And he said he’d sign the bill, but only if senior citizens got to ride free, a stipulation that no one knew anything about, including the governor, apparently. I said “Just sign the bill,” you hack!

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, complied with my wishes. “What are you trying to prove?!” I’d scream at the newspaper. “You’re helping nobody by staying in the race! Drop out! Drop out!!” And now she’s going to. My voice has been heard.

Non-executive branch politicians have also disappointed me. Idaho Senator Larry Craig has raised my ire on more than one occasion, if not for his conservative politics than for his participation in the barbershop group called The Singing Senators (surprise: they’re all old white men). “F— that guy in the a–,” I uttered on more than one occasion. When Senator Craig was arrested in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport last year, I was pleased to learn that he’d apparently been doing what I said all along. But then he made excuses that were not only lame but also involved awkward pieces of information about his bathroom routine, and denied the whole thing! I assume he did what I said, but he won’t ever admit it so I don’t know if it counts. I’m almost as confused as Senator Craig is.

But with Hillary Clinton - with her I have no doubt. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” I’d yell. “Literally any mathematical way you slice the delegates, you will not get this nomination! The only way you’ll win is if Obama does something terrible or if something terrible happens to Obama , which is why you mentioned Robert Kennedy’s assassination, because it was on your mind! And that scares the crap out of me! Now face reality and drop out of the race!”

And then Hillary Clinton stood at that podium in New York City on June 4, 2008, and said that she was going to drop out this Saturday. Which she’ll do. Probably. What more could I ask for at this point? She’s got my vote.

However, I may alter my endorsement, and give it to someone who isn’t even running, at that. If, in the coming days, Bill Clinton shuts up, apologizes to Obama, and admits that his vociferous and oft-irrational support of his wife is just a way to repent for the Monica Lewinsky scandal; and then he says that’s actually not true, it’s actually because all he wants out of life is to be in the White House again, to feel power, that delicious power. Then I will face a difficult dilemma of who to throw my full support behind.

I’ve attempted to develop a subversive personality, though I’ve preferred to let it manifest itself as a state of mind rather than, say, as any sort of manifestation. As I like to say, life’s short and I’d rather not spend it in a secret prison. My prudence even extended to this website, where I chose to remove such posts as “10 Delicious (and Healthy!) Lunch Ideas for Your Next Holy War” and “Pork: Now There’s a Meat I’d Like to Suicide Bomb.”

In spite of my caution, my contact at the Pentagon received the following message when trying to access my site:

Wanting to avoid the fate that befell The Amazing Mumford, I went backwards through my posts and came up with a list of possible hot words that might’ve tripped the sensors:

• Herbs
• A picture of V.I. Lenin (same link as above)
• Curry
• Stolen and uncited photographs (too many to link)
• An entire post involving time-travel, a well-kept Department of Defense secret
• Curry again!

I actually don’t think any of these items are flag-worthy, so I guess the trigger wasn’t something on the website. Just to be on the safe side, in the future, my posts will be limited to the following topics:

• Potatoes
• How great American food is
• Muppets, except for the aforementioned Mumford, Count von Count, and the Swedish Chef

If my site is squeaky clean, apparently the Pentagon was reacting against my subversive personality. Clearly my prudence is no match for my subconscious. It’s the dilemma of having such a dangerous mind.

So beware the subversive brain, Pentagon! You do not know the thoughts of which I am capable! I shall not shirk my duty - nay, my destiny - to be a theoretical leader in a hypothetical revolution! As long as I’ve been marked as an enemy of the state by a DoD firewall, there’s nothing that’s going to stop me now. Even as your advanced computers are sifting through my blog, I’m thinking about the ways I wish that U.S. foreign and domestic policy was different. And don’t push me - and I’ll know when I’m pushed, because I read the news occasionally - because if I have to, I’ll raise an army of imaginary friends with whom I will have pretend discussions over imported wine about the areas we feel the U.S. government could improve!

Vive la résistance imaginaire!

My computer recently died. My friend Adam - without whose help this website wouldn’t exist - miraculously brought my computer back to life (thanks, Adam). And then my power cord stopped working. Also, my oscillating fan’s motor wore out. I know I don’t have much money, I don’t need my electronic equipment to remind me.

In the meantime, I’ve been getting in touch with my agricultural side by tilling the soil of my back yard.

O.K., so there’s not much soil in the back yard, and what soil does exist I’ve been told not to use because there’s no way to know what has been dumped back there.

My herb-growing adventure actually began in late April, when I bought basil, parsley, and rosemary from Sprout Home.

The plan was to move them outdoors as soon as the weather turned. I don’t even have the energy to go into the latest bad weather superlatives, so I’ve come up with a Chicago weather Mad Lib that should cover the past few weeks, as well as all of the last six months:

This has been the   [ordinal number]   worst   [noun denoting calendar period]   since   [year]  . It has been unusually   [adjective describing inclement weather]  . I can’t believe the   [plural proper noun]   decided to settle here. What were those   [obscene plural noun]   thinking? Of course, I knew what I was getting into when I moved here, so what was I thinking?   [Exclamatory expletive]   .

Anyhow, time dragged on and my plants remained indoors, looking sadder and sadder. One weekend when a spate of warm weather played with my vulnerability and made me think spring was actually here, I went to get a window box and maybe a few more herbs.

I’ve always extolled the virtues of shopping at locally-owned businesses, but like many left wing causes, I only believed in it because of some vague notion that it was the right thing to do, like this rally I went to:

This time, though, I decided to check out Home Depot first, a trip that helped me realize there are pragmatic reasons for shopping local. Here’s the beaut. Notice the overcast skies, thus proving this Home Depot is in Chicago.
 

I picked up the least expensive window box they had - a 24″ plastic “terra cotta” number - and needed to buy dirt to put into it. I wanted to know how much to get, so I flagged down a Home Depot employee. After spending a good two minutes getting him to understand what I was asking - how much dirt fits in this window box - he then walked over to where the window boxes were displayed and read the tag, which of course didn’t say the volume, otherwise I wouldn’t have asked this guy in the first place.

During my year off from college, the first job I held was at Best Buy. The training about company policies, in particular the extra warranties you can purchase, was very thorough. Training about the product being sold - in my case, home audio equipment - was entirely non-existent. Another interesting fact about employment at Best Buy is that until you work there for a certain period of time, they don’t give you the Best Buy blue shortsleeve polo, or at least that’s how I remember the rules going. In either case, I spent my entire short tenure there wandering around the home audio section in street clothes, walking up to other people wandering around the home audio section in street clothes and asking if I could help them out. When I first started, they would suspiciously (understandably) ask their question, and I’d walk over to the product in question and read from the tag affixed to the display. I eventually changed my technique so that when they asked their question, I’d just tell them I’d get someone who knew what they were talking about to help them out. By the time I left, two months after starting, I just silently wandered around the home audio section in street clothes, hoping that Best Buy management, like my customers, would presume that I was an unpaid member of the public, which really, save for $8 an hour, I was.

Point is, I understood quickly that this Home Depot employee had no knowledge of the volume of the window box I had picked out, nor did he want that knowledge. In the end, I bought two bags of soil, which was more than I needed, although I think they only cost $3 a pop. Time well spent.

Learning my lesson, I then hopped into my Zipcar (Yuppie, a-way!) and went to Grand Street Gardens.

This place was exactly what I was looking for. I should write a good Yelp review, but usually I try to only write reviews for places that I can complain about (it’s cathartic). The size alone makes this place great, but the motion of the ocean was what got me. A wonderfully helpful young lady recognized I had no idea what I was doing, held my hand, and got me to spend way more money than I meant to. She sent me packing with seven new plants (to go with the three at home), more soil, pots, and a trowel.

I bought pots because in my enthusiasm for the customer service, my project ballooned to the point where my herbs wouldn’t fit in a window box. And anyhow, the parsley should be by itself for some reason, and certain herbs would be better off being with some and without others. I guess.

Here’s the big pot in my backyard.

Clockwise from one o’clock (in the photo below): Sage, chives, basil, rosemary, and mint.

Here’s parsley, the loner bad-ass of the bunch:

Here’s my window box. From right to left, it’s thyme, marjoram, dill, and cilantro.

By the way, this picture was difficult to take because I live directly across the street from a school and I wanted to avoid the following exchange:

PARENT, WALKING CHILD TO SCHOOL: Hey, what are you doing up there?

ME: Taking pictures for my website!

To avoid such confusion, I took the pictures out my front window early in the morning, when the only people out were those manning the garbage truck. Those photos you can see on my other website, www.sexycityemployeez.com.

If you’re still reading this website, let’s take a closer look at the window box herbs.

First, there’s the thyme. This guy has been growing pretty well, but it just doesn’t look like the thyme I buy at the grocery store. I can’t quite figure out what’s different. It looks fresher or the leaves are bigger or something. I haven’t eaten any yet.

Here’s the marjoram. This one is really doing well. It’s definitely my most noble looking herb. I haven’t eaten any of this plant either.

But something sinister is happening in the left side of the window box.

In the close-ups below, you can see that it looks like someone’s been sitting on the dill and cilantro when I’m not around, or maybe it’s that I have no idea how to take care of plants.

I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO TAKE CARE OF PLANTS

Here are my issues:

• I think I’m supposed to cut these plants back to help them grow, but when? Where? How often?
• Buying ten plants seemed like a good idea at the time, but getting myself to walk down three flights of stairs to get to the herbs in the backyard has severely limited how much of them I eat.
• I’ve only eaten the dill and the parsley. What am I waiting for? I’m waiting to know whether cutting them this early would be good for them, and I’m waiting to know where I should cut them.
• My rosemary should be taller, shouldn’t it? How can I make that happen?
• I was trying to think of issues involving the plants in the back yard and was having trouble remembering what was planted there. Then it occurred to me that I was too lazy to even scroll up to look at the picture. Those herbs just aren’t going to get eaten.
• Besides the problem with my dill and cilantro, it appears that someone or something has been digging a hole into the center of the large outside pot. Could it be the same party responsible?

An already thick plot will undoubtedly thicken as spring shivers into summer, so stay tuned for more exciting plant adventures.