Not naked on my first day of school

Yesterday was the first day of school. In some way, it’s nice to be back. I had two classes that seemed to be very interesting – Consumer Behavior and Integrated Marketing Communication, and a third class – Financial statement Analysis, that wasn’t as scary as I was afraid it would be. So all together, it was a very good day. The real test will be the end of next week, seeing how I deal with a whole week’s worth of classes. I really packed my schedule this semester, and right now it seems like it’s going to be alright, because the classes seem interesting, but we’ll see if that’s true or not next week. This was what my Outlook looks like so far:

It was also nice to see everyone, and hear how people spent their summer. It was a bit weird not having the 2nd years there, and alternatively having all the 1st years there, a whole bunch of unfamiliar faces that suddenly “took over” the school.

More updates soon,

Me.

PS – for those of you who aren’t food buffs, the picture from the last blog is the pasta leaves that we hung to dry in our kitchen. Since I haven’t complained about our house in a while, I’ll remind everyone that we have pipes throughout the house (for fire safety reasons). They add that final touch on the house feeling like a bunker. So an added perk to our pasta making was that we were finally able to put them to good use.

Last days of summer vacation

Without school, life in Ithaca has been pretty boring. I love it. School starts Thursday and so I looked forward in the public folder in the school’s event’s calendar – wow, it’s really full. I almost forgot how fast paced things are. So I’m enjoying every second of these last slow-paced days. Whenever the subject of school and my second year came during the summer, I said that I feel that this year I have thing much more in perspective, and that I think I’ll be able to priorities better, I’ll be calmer about things etc. But looking at all the events that start as soon as we get back, I remembered it’s easier said than done.

In the last few days we did do quite a bit of cooking. We invited some new Israeli neighbors for dinner on Monday and made home-made pasta. We finally made a pasta that I’ve been wanting to make ever since Uri’s cousin Talya came back from a trip to Italy. She told us of this little place where they ate pasta that the dough itself was packed with ground black pepper. Doesn’t that sound good? Whenever I thought of making it, I could really envision the dish, which is something that never happened o me with something that isn’t a dessert. In my mind it was the fresh pasta with a really light and fresh tomato sauce, one without many flavors, so that the flavor of the pepper from the pasta would come through. What a perfect summer dish, since tomato is a summer fruit! Well… not in Ithaca… despite the fact that it’s summer it’s impossible to get really good tomatoes, so I used canned whole tomatoes which a puréed and then put through a sieve. Side note: I put the residue that didn’t go through the sieve in cheese puffs (buyakos, page 66, The blue Sheshet ). The end result wasn’t exactly what I had in mind – we put the pasta in the sauce, and it drank the sauce up super quickly. Next time (I hope there is a next time) I’m going to ladle the sauce either over or under the pasta in each dish.

I don’t remember what happened Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, but Saturday was a very eventful day. Cornell had something called the “Dump and Run”. It’s basically a huge yard sale of things people left in their on-campus housing units. Most of it is junk, since most of it belongs to undergrads. Adding to the junk effect is the fact they really put anything in the sale – thinks like half used cleaning supplies, or Mardi Gras beads (I’m pretty sure the latter is the leader in the junk category, though I’m equally sure that there are people who actually buy them). Anyway, it’s become a really popular event which means a huge line to get in. I came first thing in the morning, and still stood an hour in line. Was it worth it? Well you judge – I bought 3 really good winter coats (a new one costs $250 and up), 2 cute winter hats, a sweatshirt and a kitchen rug for, all for a total of $32. Later in the day Uri and I made dolmas (stuffed grape vine leaves). When I said “Uri and I” it’s because ewe both rolled them, Uri is the one that actually made the rice blend to go in, so he should get the real credit for how delicious they came out. It’s not hard to get dolmas here, but all of them are from the lemony – loose rice variety and not the sweeter, gooey-er variety that I like. I think my favorite are the ones that are sold in the Iraqi counter in Dizingoff center’s farmers market), Uri’s didn’t come out as sweet as these, which is probably better because they’re gooeyness is probably 50% attributed to the amount of oil she puts in them, but they did come out great – just the right amount of sweet that makes you savor each bite, but doesn’t make you feel like you’ve gotten to the dessert course. Oh – as I typed that last sentence I remembered another really good dolma, and since I already mentioned Talya in this post, I’ll also mention that Talya’s mother in law (aka Ido’s mother) also makes really good, sweet and gooey dolmas (also sweeter and gooey-er than ours).

Yesterday, we went to dinner at Dafna’s house. Not that we need a reason to get together, but the excuse was that our friend Amit, who will be spending this semester big the Big Apple came up to Ithaca for a week. I made another desert from Dorie’s book – chocolate mini-bundt cake. They didn’t come out that good. I mean, they were fine, but nothing to write home about, and since half didn’t come out of the pan properly, nothing to send a picture home about either. Dafna and the majority of the people she invited for dinner are vegetarian. So the dinner was a vegetarian meal. Since I was the one that planned and prepared most of Tuesday’s dinner, it was vegetarian as well. This means that Uri ate 2 non-meat dinners in one week! I think this is the universe’s way of balancing out the atrocity that was our diet during the road trip.

As for today – both Uri and I have back-to school things we need to get done. So that’s what we’ll do. For me, it’s mainly bureaucracy stuff, but Uri actually has to study up since he’s starting to teach next week. It’s his first time really sitting down and “cramming” since before he graduated – so he’s a bit out of practice. Wish him back, and I’ll report later if it helped or not.

Wednesdays with Dorie

Have you ever had one of those days where you don’t really feel the need or have the desire to leave the house? I had one of those yesterday. I know that TV and movies usually associate that with being depressed. Trust me, that was not the case. It was more that having been out of the house for so long, it was just nice to stay indoors. Also, I just really had no reason to leave. Around 4 pm that reason finally came. I had to go out to buy heavy cream. Everybody is starting to come back to town before school starts, and Dani (who goes to the business school with me) and Yael (formarly his girlfriend and currently his wife) came back from Colorado, where Dani did his internship. So we had them over for dinner. It was nice seeing them again and catching up.

The dinner itself was great – Uri made roast beef from a sirloin roast that he marinated a bit in olive oil and mustard. As a side we had corn on the cob, a big green salad and some garlicky oven fries. To the cooks out there, especially those who are married to people who love fries, I recommend this recipe (You can find it, with pictures here). They came out really great, despite the fact that mid-way in making them the garlic press broke. But that doesn’t really have anything to do with the fries, I think it has more to do with Eitan using it garlic press as a lobster hammer a while ago.

Small note: The recipe in the link is a bit different from the original (did someone say scared of copyright?).

1. The original recipe called for 6 cloves of garlic, not 8,

2. You can use vegetable oil, it really does not have to be olive oil.

3. Originally it was 2 tbsp of cornstarch, not 3

For dessert, Uri said he wanted something chocolaty. I was feeling a bit more decadent then a simple chocolate cake, so I made a “Tart Noir” from Baking by Dorie Greenspan, or simply put a made a chocolate tart with a chocolate base.

Making chocolate pie dough is something that I’ve done may times, and so I’ve had enough experience to develop the opinion that the extra effort of chilling the raw dough and then rolling it out rather then quickly pushing it to the corners of the tart pan does actually give you superior results in the texture of the dough in the finished pie. Despite this, I decided to follow Dorie’s recipe to the letter, and go with the shortcut. My reasoning? Well Dorie has a huge following; there are dozens of food bloggers who make her recipe on a weekly basis. Here for instance, you’ll find a post about the week they made her chocolate cream pie (not the same as the one I made, though the pie dough is the same). So I wanted to see – maybe there was something in her recipe that would change my mind. The tart came out very good (and pretty), though I put a bit too much salt in the dough (oops). As for the dough itself – Dorie did not make me a believer. The dough was crumbly instead of flakey, and was much thicker than it would have been had I rolled it out. I will say though that it took me under 30 minutes of actually prep time from start to finish (pie dough and filling)– so at least there’s that.

Recipe?

The dough you have in the link (here it is again), the filling is as follows:

8 ounces of good chocolate

250 ml of heavy cream

4 tbsp of butter

Chop the chocolate, heat the cream, pour half of the hot cream over the chocolate, stir until all melted, and then pour the other half. Stir in the butter a bit at a time, stir until smooth and lovely. Pour in the chilled pie shell, refrigerate. Take out 30 minutes before serving.

Is it really new to you that we’re a bit weird?

For our last day in Toronto we did a bit of sightseeing in downtown Toronto, mainly in the ”Old York” part of town. It was a more pleasant day, so we were in a better mood for sightseeing, which means I should have had more pictures to share, but unfortunately I left the camera’s memory card in my laptop. But you could always search Google Images, or Picasa or Flikr for someone else’s pictures. I especially recommend looking for a picture of the Hockey Hall of Fame, which ironically is located in a very ornate heavy set building.

We also, of course, went to the St. Lawrance Food Market were we tried a Canadian type of ham called Peameal Bacon. For lunch, since we were trying to complete the diversity/ multi-cultural Toronto thing, we went to an Ethiopian restaurant - the Ethiopian House, that was very good.

After that it was home sweet home – well sort off, we started the drive back home, crossing the border at Niagara Falls. We decided not to stop, since we had been there 3 years ago, though it was neat to see the bridge where we stood that time, on the US side, from the Canadian side.

By dinner time we were in the Rochester area. Since we needed to eat, and also do some shopping to re-stock the refrigerator, we decided to stop at Wegmans. But not just any Wegmans, THE Wegmans, the Wegmans in Pittsford aka Super Wegmans. Yes I know – this sounds silly, we made a pilgrimage to Wegmans. It is kind of silly, but we thought it was funny, and as long as we can amuse ourselves with such trivial things, I think we’re in a good place.

Anyway, if you refuse to take part in the silliness you can skip this paragraph, because I do have to talk about how impressive this store is. It's not just that it’s bigger and has more variety than the one in Ithaca, because that’s not really that impressive. What really got us was the size of the “Market Café”, which among other things, includes a sit down bar where they prepare food a la carte. They also have a tea room and a fine dining restaurant next door. Crazy. Ah... Wegmans, what would we do without you?

BTW – in the pictures, note Uri looking super cool with his new hat.

It's a small world after all

Toronto – it seems like a great city, probably worth more than a day and a half… maybe we’ll come back some day... maybe. Yesterday was an incredibly hot day, so we didn’t do that much. We attempted to walk the city a bit, walking around an area known as Cabbagetown.

Cabbagetown factoids:

1. It has the largest continuous area of preserved Victorian housing in North America

2. It got its name because it’s original dwellers were Irish and they grew cabbage in their backyards (from this you understand that one of the historic features is that all the houses actually have backyards)

3. Nowadays even the small houses sell for over a million dollars.

4. Parking is free except from midnight to 7am.

We started our tour by eating lunch at an Indian restaurant that claims to be South Indian and Sri Lankan. In was very good, Uri actually says it’s one of the best he’s ever eaten. Then we headed out walking through the hood. We actually cut the tour a little short because the heat was pretty unbearable, or at least, it just didn’t make the touring all that fun. Just as we were about to give out, we saw a little truck go by, ringing a bell – no it was not an ice-cream truck, it was a guy offering knife sharpening services. I was very amused, and so was a little old lady that was walking just behind us. The truck struck a conversation between us and when she found out we were tourists, she offered us to take us to “a little hidden corner near by”. She was the one who told us the origin of the name and about the gardens (though Uri thought of the Irish thing himself). I actually thought she would show us a hidden garden, but that wasn’t the case. Oh well… anyway, she was very nice, and the street she showed us (that was marked on the lonely plant tour we were using) was cute as well. It turns out that she spent 13 years in Ithaca, teaching in Cornell (is everybody hearing the music to Disney’s “It’s a small world” now?).

After meeting her we decided to do the smart thing and go indoors, we went to see a movie. Sorry Toronto, the AC calls. Oh – and no criticisms from museum goers, we weren’t in the mood (we hardly ever are). We saw Julie and Julia, which I whole heartedly recommend everyone see when it comes out on DVD. We had to wait about an hour for the movie to begin, so we walked around the mall. Uri bought himself a hat in H&M, so there’s a chance he might become a hat person now. Also, I noticed two interesting shops:

Yes! It’s Fox and the Super-Pharm from Israel. I had actually seen the Super-Pharm all over Toronto, and didn’t know if it was the same one as in Israel, but since we had time to kill, I went in and saw that their private label brand is called Life – so it is the same chain! I know Fox is originally Israeli, but I suspect that the Super-Pharm is originally Canadian, since that explains much better why the logo has an S in it. Do you think that the fact that I’m excited about this means I miss Israel? Or does it mean that I’m becoming one of those strange Americans that loves all things Israel without any judgment? Can we chalk it up to me being interested in brands, and just say it’s a professional interest?

Oh – apropos Israel, you remember I mentioned Anthony Bourdain here a few of times? I recently subscribed to his blog. I read a post yesterday about Thailand, and thought it might be nice to add a comment about the papaya salad guy in the night market in Chiang Mai. When the other comments, I saw that there were two people (both clearly American by their name) that recommended he go to Israel. They were doing it in a rather annoying way, complaining that he had gone to other Middle Eastern countries but not Israel. But they are so right – it’s been my one thought since the very first No Reservations I saw (which was on Egypt). So I used the opportunity to explain why he should come to Israel. It came out as a little manifesto, since apparently I can’t write anything short, you can read it here (comment 34). I hope someone actually reads those things. It would be so cool if Uri and I could take him to Israel!

Oh Canada

We’ve been in Canada for a day and a half now. And it seems like most of the time we’ve been driving. To our surprise (or not) it is noticeably different from the US, mainly in that we really feel that there are less people. Also, there’s a lot less billboards on the highways, there are less major highways and chian-type fast food are further apart. The last undoubtedly has to do with the fact that we spent most of our time in “the country”, areas where the biggest town has a population of 5,500, but still, in the US there’s a McDonalds even in towns of 300, or at least it seems that way.

Yesterday after crossing the border, we just drove to get as close as possible to our next destination – Manitoulin Island, the world’s largest sweet-water island. The drive was actually quite beautiful, afterwards I actually read somewhere that the stretch of road heading towards the island is considered to be one of the most beautiful in Ontario. Had I known that, maybe I would have taken pictures, as it was I assumed the same landscape would continue. Sorry.

Today we did some hiking on the island, namely the “Cup and Saucer Trail” (I still can’t figure out why that’s the trail’s name). It was a lot of fun, and confronted us both with our slight 9and very sane) fear of heights.

It turns out that to get off the island in the direction we wanted to go, there is a ferry that runs only 4 times a day and takes 1.75 hours, that pretty much set the rest of our schedule for the day too. The cruise was nice as well, I say cruise because that’s the only way that I can rationalize the ridiculous amount of money that we had to spend on it. It’s pretty crazy how big these bodies of water are. There was about 30 minutes during the cruise where we could not see land on any side.

After getting off the ferry, we continued on. I say we all the time, but I do want to give credit to Uri who did all the driving today. I emphasize this now because, as I said, no major highways, not much happening on the sides of the road – it was a pretty boring drive. Again, given the ferry schedule, we decide to skip hiking in the Bruce Peninsula – though if any of you are planning a trip to Canada any time soon, it is supposed to be very beautiful. We headed straight for Toronto. Once again, we booked a room through Hotwire, providing us a great deal, though this time we’re not as centrally located (upside: we get to save on parking too). I think Toronto, like Chicago, will mainly have culinary highlights with a theme of celebrating the city’s ethnic diversity. We already started tonight with a fantastic dinner at a Persian restaurant. Mmmm.

Michigan is long

To counter yesterday’s long post, and also since it’s the Sabbath and you’re not supposed to be reading anyway, today’s post will be very short.

The day was marked by us making our way through the Lower Michigan Peninsula. On the way, we stopped to hike in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. This park, like Warren Dunes and others on the shores of Lake Michigan has many sand dunes, but since we already hiked up a sand dune, we opted for a more forest type trail called the alligator trail. It was a nice hike; we saw so many types of mushrooms, that at a certain point I felt like we might find the village the Smurfs live in.

I feel obligated to mention food now… so I’ll note that it’s cherry season in Michigan. Since we were driving on state highways (which are actually pretty small roads) and country roads (even smaller roads) we saw a lot of farm stands selling cherries and peaches. I couldn’t resist the urge to by some cherries, and they are some of the best cherries I’ve ever tasted. They helped me considerably in resisting the urge to stop at stands offering cherry pie. Every time we passed such a stand I took a couple of cherries, and we drove on. They also provided a nice pastime while we were on the hike since, if you didn’t read this in-between the lines, the most interesting thing there were mushrooms (which can, I guess be very interesting, but we’re too good for that). After we took a small break to eat some cherries we had a little pit-spitting contest. Guess who one? Yes – despite the laws of classical mechanics, which state (if I remember correctly) that Uri should have won due to his height advantage – I won!

Anyway, at the very end of the day we did cross from the Lower Michigan Peninsula to the Upper Peninsula, and now we are right at the border, though still in the US. So today we will be crossing, and tomorrow’s post will be from Canada [I’m preparing you, since I’m sure everything, including my writing will be very different ;)]. Here is the plan for the rest of the trip:

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Back to Eastern Standard Time

So I missed a day – what can I say, old habits die hard. Now you’ll just have to endure reading about two days in a row.

On Wednesday we decide to go all-out tourist. I put my baseball cap on, Uri took his backpack and we went out to see the sites on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. We started by going up to the observatory on the 94th floor of the John Hancock Building. Being tourists, we paid the $15 admissions pass to the observatory instead of going up to the lounge/ bar on the 96th floor and paying $5 for a bottle of water. In hindsight it was probably the right choice, since the fee included an audio tour narrated by David Schwimmer of the sights seen through the windows and a bit of Chicago history. This was good since we were too lazy/ cheap to buy a good Chicago guidebook.

After that we started walking down the famous street. While the buildings were impressive, Uri and I both agreed that NYC is much more impressive. We thing part of it is that the streets of New York are more crowded, the buildings are closer and the street itself is narrower so you feel more closed in, smaller as compared to the large impressive city. Sort of like the logic behind the way cathedrals were built in the Middle Ages. Anyway, the Magnificent Mile doesn’t have that.

The buildings themselves are nice, Chicago has a lot of art-deco architecture, and I really like that aesthetic, but at the end of the day, they are sky-rises, and the ground level of most of them are just fancy stores that you can see in most large cities in the US. So, as uncultured as it might seem, other than the observatory the biggest highlight for us was probably the Lego store.

It was only on the next day that we actually reached the end of the Magnificent Mile - Millennium Park, home of the famous Chicago land mark “the silver bean”. What a great park! The bean itself is really nice; a smart idea the weird shape allows you to see a reflection of the Chicago skyline and the sky. What’s funny is that to see that reflection, you actually have to walk to “the other side” of the bean, as in - make your way around it from where you first see it as you enter the park. But most of the tourist just stop either at “the front” of the bean, or underneath it, since there you can see a neat 4 way refection of yourself. We also go to hear the Chicago Symphony rehearsing in the park’s amphitheater (designed by Frank Gary). They apparently were paying Beethoven’s 9th (that’s what the guy in one of the visitor’s information stands said). Despite the fact that neither of us are classical music buffs, we both really enjoyed it, and sat and listened for a while. When we finally left we agreed that combination of the fantastic acoustics with the effect of seeing a live performance (including the conductors very passionate and somewhat animated movements) greatly contributed to our enjoyment, it pulled us into the piece, which is something that hearing it on the radio was never able to do.

After that we hit the road again – back to Michigan for the next leg of the trip.

What?!? No food stories?!? Well – of course not, I was just saving them to the end so that you’ll keep on reading. So for “brunch” on Wednesday (more just on our way to the Hancock Canter) we saw a cute cupcake shop, more like cupcake boutique, and Uri had a cupcake. He went with the flavor of the day – chocolate with soft caramel center, though I really would have wanted him to take one of the weirder cupcakes like the maple bacon – a corn cupcake with bacon bits and a maple-cream cheese frosting. For lunch we went to the Frontera Grill, a restaurant owned by Rick Bayless who some of you might have seen if you watch either food network or Top Chef. I don’t want to say too much about it, since it wasn’t that good, maybe I just didn’t spend enough time reading the menu and then ordered wrong, but what I got was very different from what I was expecting. Oh well... you win some, you lose some. For dinner we went to a pizza place called Burt’s Place. This is the same place we drove to on Monday and discovered was closed. What a quirky experience: To start with the good – the pizza was great, and the atmosphere was fantastic (or maybe the other way around). So what was bad? Well – since the place has such weird hours, we decided it’s probably best to make reservations, so we called in the morning but got that strange sort of ringing like there’s something wrong with the line. We forgot about it for a while, but when we got back to the hotel at 5 pm we tried again. Burt answered the phone and as he took my reservation he asked what pizzas we’ll want. Huh? Apparently, to make a reservation you have to order in advance and then when you get there the pizzas are ready. I asked to call back, since some friends were joining us, and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t ordering something that they wouldn’t eat. It took me about 45 minutes to do this, and so by the time I called back that busy/ off the hook signal was back. Oh boy… what to do? Should we give up and just go for one of those “The original pie! #1 pizza in Chicago!” places? But I wanted to try Burt’s pizza! And I did call! If he takes the phone off the hook, why didn’t he tell me that I have to call back before 5:30? What we finally decide to do was try to get there earlier than we had told him, and hope that he would be sympathetic. When we got there, we were greeted by his wife Sharon, I say greeted as though she was super nice, but actually it took her time to come around, we told her the story and she went to check with Burt. Then when she came back I emphasized a little more that we had come 15 minutes early, and that we were ready to order and just wait for our friends to come and the pizza to be ready. I think with that she understood that we do have respect for their craft or something, and so we became ok. The pizza was indeed great. At the end of the night we actually got into a whole discussion with her, and then with Burt. Turns out she’s Jewish, and very pro-Israel, so who knows, maybe there will be a Burt’s place in Israel sometime in the future.

The next day was our last day in Chicago – so food wise it was the hardest. This city has so much to offer, and unlike NYC, it’s not like we’ll be back soon. What to do? Ever since that elk hot-dog, Uri wanted to go back to Hot Doug’s, but there are other hot dogs that are supposed to be good too…. Decisions, decisions. This is what ended up happening: we went for a hot dog at Wiener Circle, which is a neighborhood called Lincoln Park (since it’s located near Lincoln Park). Small digression here – really nice neighborhood, finally we saw how people who live in the city actually live, and we like it. When we parked the car we saw that there was a Five Guys there too. Since most of you don’t share Uri’s infatuation with US politics: I will explain that when Matt Lauer interviewed Obama in the White House, the two of them went for lunch at Five Guys (hey didn’t fly to Chicago, it’s a chain that started in Virginia), which Obama said was one of his favorite burger joints. So after the hotdog, we went there for cheeseburger. I do actually see why Obama likes the place.

What then, well I said that while I really liked Burt’s pizza, I don’t really know to compare it to a classic Chicago pie, and that I feel that maybe I should taste one of the really famous Chicago pizzas, so I called a Lou Malnati’s I found in the GPS and ordered a small pie. Now I know that Burt’s was hands down better. And that’s it. We were on the highway again, headed towards northern Michigan. On the way we stopped for pie at a place I read about in the Lonely Planet guide – Crane’s Pie Pantry Restaurant. The book had actually taken us to the wrong place, and we had to backtrack a bit. Initially I thought it wouldn’t be worth it, but it sort of was the pie was good (though I think my apple pie is better) but the place was really charming, a nice place to take a few minutes to rest. Today we’ll go hiking in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park, and then we’ll cross the border to Canada.

Until then, have a great weekend and good night. Oh… and happy birthday mom!

Speechless.. I have no speech

I think today I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves... there are a ton, so I’m only putting up collages, but I do encourage people who are either architecture fans or food fans to look at the expanded version with captions here (architects) and here (foodies).

We started the day with going to Oak Park, to see the home and studio of Frank Lloyd Wright. Unfortunately taking pictures of the interior is not allowed, but it was very impressive. I do have to say we were a little disappointed with our tour guide, who assumed everyone in the group knew everything there is to know about Wright and so neglected to out a little color and context into his talking points. Many of Wright’s neighbors hired him to build their houses so we also tool a tour of the neighborhood, so those are the pictures that we do have (again – they are here).

For lunch we went to a place that was both personally recommended to us, and that we saw on several food shows called Hot Doug’s, a very unique hot dog place. We got there at 3:30 pm, 30 minutes before closing, and there was a line out the door and around the corner. I stood in line, while Uri walked over to the next corner to get us tamales from a cart we saw, since we were very hungry and felt that we needed something to tied us over (also, meet stuffed tamale was on my list of things to try). The thing with Doug’s is he takes hot dogs really seriously and treats them with respect. So he has really good basic dogs, but also gourmet dogs (with fancy extras) and also dogs from unique meats.

So here is what we ordered: The regular Chicago Dog with everything (which means relish, tomatoes, mustard and a pickle), a corn dog, a tequila chicken dog with mango salsa and asiago cheese, and an elk meat hot dog with some sauce I don’t remember and a some cheese I don’t remember but was really good. From all of the above the elk was the best and the chicken probably was worst, but the place is awesome and it was worth waiting in line (I think we ended up waiting something like 20 minutes).

Then we went back to the hotel, and at 7 left again for another unique dining experience. We had made reservation at Moto Restaurant which specializes in making creative dishes that toy with the diner’s perception, using molecular gastronomy to do so. So things that look like a dish you know to be sweet but are spicy or food made to look like non-food. It’s really indescribable; you can see a collage below, or the full pictures here.

Just to be clear - it's not only that everything looked amazing, as far as taste dishes ranged from really good to absolutely amazing. Another special thing about this place is that there is a set menu (you can choose between a 10 course and a 20 course meal), so the pace is set by the chef. We were there for almost 3 hours! I don’t think I’ve ever sat at a meal so long without someone telling me of the exodus from Egypt.

International Sandwich Day

Yesterday seemed to have a theme to it – at least for Uri. We started the morning in Ann Arbor.

As usual, I woke up much earlier than Uri, and so went to a Starbucks across the street to use the internet to do things like tell you guys what we’ve been up to and plan the day, including things like book a hotel for our next destination – Chicago! (more on that later).

When Uri got up and ate “breakfast” – leftovers from the dish I ordered at Al Ameer- grilled pita stuffed with ground meet, tomatoes and pine-nuts (Sandwich #1: Middle East). I was ready for a mid-morning snack, we went back to the same place we ate dinner to have something, mainly because we knew we could get internet there and in other places we’ve been having problems due to some technical difficulties. Since we’ve been there twice, I will mention it by name – it’s a place call Zingerman’s. It’s very famous in Ann Arbor, and very good, it’s basically a deli – lots of bread, very good cheese section, and lot’s of salads and traditional deli meats. Special just because it’s rare to find places that everything they do do, they do well.

Uri was using the internet, and I was looking through the menu that I found by complete chance, and I noticed that they make their own corned-beef. From that point, I knew what Uri was having for lunch. I ordered to go a sandwich for Urii, and some gazpacho I had been eyeing since the night before for me, and off we went to cross the lower Michigan peninsula.

The trip was supposed to take something like 5 hours, we did have a pit stop planned along the way at the 4 hour mark. Geeky remark of the post: The pit stop was in Michigan, which follows EST, so the GPS told us we would be there at 3 pm, when we looked at when we would get to Chicago, it also said 3 pm, since Chicago is CST. Anyway, we stopped in a rest area for lunch (Sandwich #2: Jewish American) and then continued on driving. The road took us through Kalamazoo, and we toyed with the idea of stopping and asking people if they know where we can find a kazoo, but we ended up just driving on, . Stopping at a park called Warren Dunes National Park off the shores of Lake Michigan. I got a recommendation to go there from a friend, and thought there were hiking options, it turned out it’s mainly a beach, but we still had a good time, we did hike up a sand dunes and in the forests despite there not being the usual extremely regulated trails.

It was a fun, much needed break from driving. On the road again, this time destination: Chicago. Our plan was to get to the hotel, take a shower and then go for pizza.

As I alluded to before, I had booked the hotel the same day on a site called Hotwire.com. Wow! What a deal we got, judging by the location and décor, we probably saved something like $100 a night on the room. It’s a funny room though – it’s probably the smallest room we’ve ever stayed in, but also the most fashionably decorated.

Then it was off to pizza – I love deep dish pizza so I was really looking forward to it. I will digress again to say that our list of recommended places to eat in Chicago includes over 10 places. The #1 pizza, it turned out, was in the suburbs – so, we drove to the suburbs. And guess what?!? It was closed! Not as in shut down, but as it not open Mondays and Tuesdays. So we started calling other places on the list – the next 2 were also closed on Mondays, so the next option was a place called Al’s Italian Beef that specializes in beef sandwiches that are dipped “au ju” aka in the juices of the beef (Sandwich #3: Italian American). We went to the original, on Taylor street and it was pretty good, not as greasy as I thought and very tasty. More tomorrow… good night!

My new favorite town - Detroit

After Buffalo, we headed out on the road again – thinking that we would rather drive a little today and a little the next day rather than a lot the next day.

The only problem was that we realized only a little too late (meaning I had already passed out and was sleep-talking) that it was a Saturday night and we were driving along the very touristic shores of Lake Erie = even the crappiest hotel was charging over $100 for a room.

Eventually we say an exit sign with 2 motels of unrecognizable names, that weren’t even in the GPS. We stopped and were successful - we found a room for $60 after tax!

Why am I going into this amount of detail? Because as Uri and I were getting out of the car and into the room, we both had the exact same thought “this looks like the motels that people get murdered in on CSI”. For me, the feeling was enhanced by the Circle K across the street, because as some of you might know “strange things are afoot at the Circle K”.

The next morning we headed out towards Detroit.

Our destination was a Lebanese restaurant called Al Ameer that we saw on the same episode of No Reservations I had mentioned yesterday. It looked so good on TV – just like back home. And they even had fried Kebbie (aka Koobe)!

Driving to the restaurant was a bit like driving through an

American version of Daliat El-Carmel and we were a little scared, it was pretty obvious that we should not wear our “I [heart] Israel” shirts. But we were prepared – Uri had not shaved for

a couple of days, and we told ourselves that we would only speak in English, and I would do the ordering. The place itself was pretty surreal. Probably one of the last places in the US to still have a smoking section, decorated with plastic flowers, pictures of Jerusalem (as Uri said “there’s a picture of my house behind you” and Cedars of the Lebanon (we wondered if that meant they welcome Golani soldiers). What can I tell you? It was everything I expected and more. I mean, I could see myself making the 7 hour drive just to come to this restaurant… especially considering that it will likely be another year before I make it back to Israel!

Another highlight was a supermarket across the street from the restaurant. We knew we would go in as soon as we that the English sign was also translated to Arabic. If the restaurant met my expectations – this place defiantly exceeded them. Not only did I find semolina like the one we have in Israel (btw – I bought 6 lbs), not only did Uri find sumac and za’atar, there were also fruits and vegetables there at reasonable prices – like cucumbers “balaadi” as the sign said, for $0.77!

Since even we feel wired going all the way to an out of the way city for one restaurant - we also went to the Henry Ford Museum (actually I had made a note to go to the museum before we knew about the restaurant, but if it wasn’t for the restaurant, we probably would have skipped Detroit). It was really cool – it’s a huge complex that actually has 3 giant museums. We got there an hour before closing – so we chose the museum with the most artifacts in it – it was fantastic. Obviously there were a lot of cars – lots of cars! from wagons from the 18th century to one or two “cars of the future”, which I thought wouldn’t be very interesting, but it was very cool. It turns out they are all in running condition too! There were also other things like the chair Lincoln was shot in (from the Ford theater), and an original copy of the 13th amendment. Also all kinds of chairs from different periods, and a sad exhibit about pop culture in the 20th century which contained things I actually played with like a Speak-and-Spell (that’s why it was sad – I’m now old enough that parts of my life can be artifacts in a museum). Here you'll find a link to the pictures, there's just too many of them to post. But since we seem to be consentrating on food - here are two cool ones - George Washington's mess kit and his field bed:

Oh - and us in a real Modal T:

From there we continued to Ann Arbor, home of Michigan University. A really nice town, but nothing to write home about.

More tomorrow…

Road Trip

This post was started Tuesday, August 4th, continued and finished Saturday, August 8th. Published as soon as we had internet access.

So a quick recap on the 2 and some weeks since my last post: I finally finished my presentation, and gave it. It went fantastically well. Then Uri came back, and it was a Saturday when we headed back to Ithaca, stopping in Boston for dim sum with a few friends, and then taking a slower, scenic route through historic Concord, Sturbridge (that was oddly almost sold out) and Albany. Once in Ithaca, it was time to relax, sort of.

For the past week, we’ve been relaxing, and cleaning and getting all sorts of loose ends tied. Yariv, a friend from Israel, moved to town. He’ll be here for the next 5 years. So, good people that we are, we’ve been helping him “adjust”. It started Sunday when he came over and I made pancakes, then we helped him take stuff Uri’s been collecting for him for the past couple of months (blankets, pillows, tableware, kitchenware etc.), and then we took him to Wegmans. Granted, he probably could have done the latter himself, but the abundance can be overwhelming, so I think we helped out.

Monday was supposed to be the only nice day of the week (as it turned out, the rest of the week was pretty good too) , so we went hiking in Watkins Glen (Yariv took a break from adjusting and came along). The park is supposedly the most beautiful of all the local parks/ gorges. “Supposedly” not because it wasn’t beautiful, but because I haven’t been to all of them to judge the truthfulness of that statement. As I said, it was indeed beautiful, the gorge itself is quite deep and the rock formation is very beautiful, all the trees are green and there are waterfalls everywhere. Part of the fun of Watkins Glen is that there are several places you can walk behind waterfalls.

After wards we headed back home. We found a little Italian bakery that makes cannoli – a surprisingly good find considering Watkins Glen is famous mostly for the gorge and car racing. Also, since I had told one of our Israeli friends who sent me a blueberry muffins recipe, that if we find a fruit stand on the road, I’ll buy blueberries and make the muffins the focus of the trip back was looking for stands. There actually weren’t as many as I thought there would be and those we did find were very small and not that attractive. I was about to give up when 10 minutes from Ithaca I was still blueberry-less but then we saw a sign for a u-pick farm. That means it’s a farm that lets you pick the fruit/ vegetables yourself. Like the wild and crazy guys that we are – we were spontaneous and stopped to pick fruit. They actually didn’t have blueberries to pick, those they only sold, but we did pick raspberries. I think we probably ate more than we collected into the container (lucky thing too, because about 2 days later they all were moldy).

Good thing for that fruit too – since it turned out there were no batteries in the camera, the only leftovers I have from the day are the pictures of the raspberry pan-cake and the blueberry muffins I made.

Now, almost a week later, Yariv is starting to settle in, and we headed out on our long talked about road trip. I know I didn’t talk about it here, but since my internship ended (and even a bit before) everytime someone has asked me “what are you going to do now?” I ‘ve been saying that we’re planning a road trip. Here is the general route:

View Larger Map

Now I‘m writing from the road, we already passed through Buffalo. We stopped there for dinner at a place we saw on Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations (BTW – it’s our new favorite show). Bourdain talked about this place’s Roast beef sandwich, which was indeed good, but I thought the best part was actually the German Potato Salad. The Goulash was pretty good too. Now we’re on the road again, heading towards Detroit. Initially I thought we would drive through Canada, but we’re taking the longer route staying in the USA. Taking border control into consideration, it would probably take the same amount of time, plus apparently we don’t have Ontario in the GPS.

More pictures of food and tales of hiking tomorrow, good night.