North America,  Travel,  U.S.

chicago week 12

June 5, 2023 /

Memorial Day Veterans Memorial Day long weekend, my friend and I walked all the way from Lincoln Square housessitting to Foster Beach. Summer is here, and people everywhere come out to bask in the sun. The winter in Chicago is too long and the summer is too short, so everyone hastened to come out when the weather is good.

On Tuesday, I tried a new Indian dish, sabudana khichdi, which is mainly made of sago (small tapioca pearls), peanuts, potatoes, curry leaves, green chilies and Indian spices. The technical requirements are much higher than most other Indian dishes, because if the heat is not well controlled, the pearls will be sticky and the taste will be bad. I made do with it, and it tastes good.

On Wednesday, I went to the Ukrainian district with my newly-acquainted teenage friend who immigrated from Ukraine to the United States on the couch, and mainly went to a small local restaurant he recommended for lunch, which was Lviv’s restaurant in Ukraine. Apart from two or three a la carte dishes (Ukrainian/Russian dumplings pelmeni and vareniki or soup), it is mainly a buffet with a lot of choice. There is no sign and name for each dish. My friend said that because the people who come here to eat buffet are usually locals or people who work nearby, they come here often, so they all know what dishes they have. My friend said that most of the dishes here are not only available in Ukraine, but also in Russia, Poland, and Germany. Several dishes have mushrooms in a creamy sauce, and their usual herb is dill, also known as anise. They also use beet beetroot in several dishes and soups. There is a dish whose main ingredients are beetroot and horseradish horseradish, which is similar to wasabi mustard, which is very strong and a bit spicy. It's a small family restaurant and the only waiter is a young guy whose mother is the cook. His service attitude is very average. It can be seen that he doesn't want to work here at all. When asked him any questions, he doesn't say much, which is more perfunctory. After eating too much, I really wanted to know the names of the different dishes. Although my friend is Ukrainian, he came to the United States when he was very young and forgot the names of many dishes. Moreover, he basically spoke Russian since he was a child, and Ukrainian was only learned in school. So I decided to ask the waiter to write down the names of some dishes. After asking him, I felt that he was quite reluctant to write it down, and kept saying that I would sue you. I asked him for a pen and paper, but he couldn't find a piece of paper for a long time, and finally found it. I asked him the names of a few dishes and how to spell them so that I could write them down. This is actually more troublesome. Wouldn’t it be much easier if he just wrote it down on paper for me? This egg-looking dish is called banush and is made with cornmeal, cream, feta cheese, mushroom sauce, and bacon crumbles. The other is goulash, which is a vegetable soup with stewed beef cubes. Originated from Hungary. There is also a cabbage roll with sauce, and the waiter can't name it. I love blintzes, which are crepe-like rolls filled with cream cheese and fried to a golden brown on the outside. Dessert is of course indispensable, and I found that poppyseed poppy seeds are often used in their dessert bread.

Because I had to try everything, I ate several rounds, and my friends were amazed that I could eat so much. We both ate very full, went out for a walk, and went into a handicraft store, and many of the products were very exquisite. Also passed many murals and two cathedrals. Afterwards, I went to the small Ukrainian supermarket that he often goes to with his friends. He introduced me to some unique Ukrainian foods, and gained a lot of experience.

Went to a Couchsurfing organized event on a Thursday night to Maifest, a German festival in Lincoln Square. There was a German band playing traditional music and some dancing, and most people came here for beer. Because Thursday is the first day, some shops are not yet fully ready to open. When I passed by on Friday night, I took another look. There were huge crowds of people drinking and chatting with big draft beers, which was very lively.

I went to a small Turkish restaurant with a friend for dinner on Friday night. I arrived first. When I opened the door, I saw several tables of Turkish men playing cards. They all spoke Turkish. I sat down at a table and waited for my friend to come. . We ordered Turkish pizza Lahmacun, mixed barbecue (sheep beef chicken), katmer (dessert made with pistachio nuts, cream, thin crispy phyllo skin, etc. When eating, it is very interesting to watch the middle-aged and elderly men playing cards at the tables around, Although I couldn’t understand what they were saying, they were chatting and laughing, joking with each other, and it was very lively. There was a small table next to the card table. Some people ordered tea and creme brulee dessert, and ate while playing cards. After a while, One of the people at one of the tables ordered food from the table next to us. After serving the food, I glanced at him and found that the food he ordered didn’t seem to be on the menu, so I asked the owner and cook what he ordered, and he said it was indeed It’s not on the menu, and it’s usually a special dish of the day that their regular customers order. When ordering dessert, I chatted with the owner and cook. He also recommended creme brulee flan, which is not on the menu, but we ordered another special Turkish dessert, but Unexpectedly, he gave us a crème brûlée for nothing when serving dessert. He was so enthusiastic. Then the big brother at the next table saw that I was curious about the dishes he ordered, so he also started chatting with me, and told me how they played cards. , It does feel similar to mahjong, but it is all numbers and different colors.

Lahmacun
Katmer

I went to the city center with my friends at noon on Saturday. The weather was getting warmer. Every weekend there were various activities and open-air concerts in the city. There were so many activities that it was hard to decide which one to go to. We first went to the Gospel Music Festival in front of the millennium park, and there is a bigger stage for this music festival on the lawn behind.

After that, we went to see another dance performance held by See Chicago Dance at the Military Harbor Wharf. There are Indian and Spanish flamenco dances on the same stage, three-person contemporary dance, Peruvian indigenous dance, contemporary dance for disabled people in wheelchairs, Korean dance, tap dance, and square dance taught by Korean aunts on the spot. Some audience danced together on stage, which was quite funny. A Latin American aunt danced so high that she seemed to have a heat stroke when she was done, and she was helped out.

After watching the dance performance, go to the other side of the military port pier to watch the band performance of Live on the Lake. After listening to it, when I walked out, I saw a female DJ playing music live, and the onlookers were listening and dancing.

After that, I rode a Divvy bicycle with my friends along the lake to the Lincoln Park area to participate in the Greek Festival. Within two minutes of shopping, I was very disappointed. The whole street is full of handicrafts and small commodities that have nothing to do with Greece. Until the end of the street, there is a big shed that sells Greek food, but you have to queue up to get in. Just like the Mole de Mayo event in Mexico last week, the food sold was very expensive and probably not tasty. Later, I was curious and checked online. If I wanted to set up my own food stall at a similar event, I would have to pay an average of 1,000 to 2,500 dollars, depending on the size of the stall and the scale of the event. No wonder the price has been raised so much, customers help pay for the stall. This Greek festival is far from the Greek festival I went to in Oakland, Bay Area a few years ago, which is much more authentic than this one. But fortunately, I caught up with the only performance with cultural characteristics, and a Greek dance started at 7 o'clock. They didn't look like professional dancers either, maybe they were friends or event organizers they met in the Greek church. Most of their dances are in a circle holding hands. The most interesting thing is that the leading man will take turns dancing. He is very handsome and will become the focus. Touch the shoes of the person next to you. During the period, someone handed him a wine glass to drink for him.

Leaving the Greek Festival, take the subway bus to the Do Division Street Fest in West Town. Today I learned how unreliable the estimated arrival time of Google Maps bus is. At first it said that it would arrive in five minutes, and then it turned into half an hour. Similar situations happened several times. No wonder my friend bought a Divvy bicycle. Annual card, I would rather ride a bike than wait for the bus. I was hungry while waiting for the bus, so I went to the pizzeria across the street to buy a piece of pizza to satisfy my hunger. This is one of the rare times I didn’t find a restaurant in advance and just ate casually on the street, but this pizza is pretty good food. The bus came before the pizza was finished, and it was my first time eating on the bus.

It was past nine o'clock in the evening when we arrived at Do Division Street Fest. Young people who like to drink, smoke marijuana, listen to music and dance gather here. There are a lot of people, and the live music is very loud, but the food stalls look better than the ones we visited recently. Several other activities were more diversified, and I saw a stall called "Old Friends" selling Chinese food, but none of the staff was Chinese. I can't bear it after half an hour of strolling here. This is a big open-air bar, which is not my taste at all. I have to shout loudly when I talk to my friends, otherwise I can't hear anything. After I came out, I felt much better after being clean.

I went to the Maxwell Street Market on Sunday morning. It is similar to a flea market selling second-hand goods. The market is small and looks relatively depressed, but the highlight is that there are several stalls selling authentic Mexican street food. I ate tamales with my friends. Friends said that this market used to be very brilliant, it was the birthplace of Chicago blues and Polish hot dogs, and it was once the largest open-air market in the United States. It was called Ellis Island in the Midwest because it was always full of people from all over the world immigrants from different cultures and countries.

Customers with US bank accounts can enter several local museums for free this weekend, so on Sunday my friends and I went to the Adler Planetarium, which we hadn't visited yet. When it was said that I wanted to use my Bank of America card to enter the museum for free, the staff actually told us that we could not enter through the main entrance and had to go down and enter through the side entrance. Is this discrimination? Or do you not want other people who bought tickets at the main entrance and didn't know about this offer to know? This planetarium is much smaller than the other museums I visited in the past few months, and it came out after about an hour of shopping.

I took a car to the Devon Indian district in the north and had something to eat first. The menu of this restaurant has too many choices, about 100 kinds. Although the price is super cheap, the taste is very average, but it is an interesting experience. Most people around eat directly with their hands.

Afterwards, I went to the Mandala Makers Festival and watched music performances by some South Asian artists, mostly from India, Bangladesh, and Palestine. Also met two other couchsurfers here, one of whom was sharing the event.

Last day away from housessitting made dal again, this time with mung beans and left half for the housesitting homeowner. After they came back and tasted it the next day, they sent a message to thank me and told me that it was delicious, and that the taste was quite authentic. Hope it's not just polite words.

dal

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