Double overnighter in the big city

Chicago, that is. We went to the second city to see some culture imported from New York City: Wynton Marsalis’ Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, a jazz big band with 15 permanent members. We got tickets for both Friday and Saturday. Friday was origins of bebop, featuring works by Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Mary Lou Williams, while Saturday was hard bop and cool jazz, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Max Roach, etc. I kind of liked Saturday more, even though our seats that night were closer to the ceiling than the stage.

Friday we were still quite high up, but a better view.

Before and in between jazz concerts, we ate and visited a friend and went to the Art Institute and book stores.

Friday at Barnes & Noble we didn’t buy anything, but this store, on Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago, is in a cool old bank building so we took lots of pictures.

We were up on Milwaukee Ave. because we ate at the Robey Cafe, in the Robey Hotel, where I’ve always wanted to stay, but they never have a good deal when I’m coming to Chicago. It wouldn’t be too hard to get to John & Megan’s from there, so we’ll probably get a chance sometime. Mark got restaurant week, and I ordered off the regular menu.

It was all good but a bit on the greasy side.

We stopped at Mindy’s Bakery, another place I’d always wanted to go, and it’s right across the street from the Robey and Barnes & Noble. Mindy’s was almost closing but we got some cookies to eat back at the hotel after the concert. (The cookies, a snickerdoodle and chocolate chunk, were still really good even after being shlepped around all that time.)

Then we walked to semicolon, Mark got a book by David Wiesner, Robobaby, where the big sister has to help the parents assemble the new baby when it arrives. And a handle bag for carrying the book and the cookies (that had been stuffed in my coat).

We killed time for just a few minutes at a little Dollop on N. Wells, and then walked to the fancy retirement home to meet up with our recently bereaved friend who lost his husband of 32 years right before Christmas. Mark and I both worked with the husband in our library professional association, so miss him, too. I broke dry January and had a couple of Negronis in the retirement home’s very cushy bar and we all sat and chatted for an hour or so. We still had time to drop off the cookies and book at the hotel and head to the concert.

So that was Friday.

Saturday morning we went to Intelligensia at Monadnock for coffee and pastries that I think are from Publican Quality Bread, at least the Kougin Aman, then got early entry at the Art Institute, because we’re members.

At AIC, we went to see their big pan-African show, Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica. It was such a big show, we ran out of time to really look at it all before we needed  to get on the L to head to our lunch at Middlebrow. So this coming Friday we’re going back. We also wanted to see a show of baskets show made by Jeremy Frey and didn’t get there either so we’ll look at that one Friday, too.

And, I didn’t too a good job of getting captions for the things I liked and photographed, so I will add those after I collect the captions on Friday. Here’s what I have so far.

So, yea we went up to Middlebrow and ate a big kale salad and a bacon pizza. We missed the Beachwater Bagels pop up, though.

We walked to the blue line at Western and Milwaukee, took it to Clark & Lake, and then walked to the Gold Coast Dollop, where it was very crowded. We squeezed in on a couch and had a quick coffee till it was time to go see Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths at the multiplex around the corner. Which definitely lived up to the hard part of its title. At the end, I just wanna say, I choose to believe Pansy eventually goes downstairs to her husband, waiting for her there, with his thrown out back. After, I thought we should go to the big Whole Foods and grab some cookies or something for our post concert lat night snack, but as we came out of the movie, we saw the Paris Baguette across the street, so we went there instead. We got an apple turnover and an espresso cronut that were both pretty tasty, and also a slice of red velvet cake that was not much like any other red velvet cake I’d had. The cake was red, but there was a pile of whipped cream frosting between the layers and covering the cake, and strawberry slices between the layers.

That brings us back to our Saturday night concert, that like I said despite having less good seats was my favorite of the two.

On Sunday morning we were doing our usual calculation of how to get coffee and a little something to eat and still get to the 10:30 train. The night before we’d talked about going to the Gold Coast Dollop again, and Do-Rite donuts up there, but while Mark was in the shower I mapped a few things and we went to Firecakes and Intelligensia by the Cultural Center instead since that was more like 20 minutes of walking rather than 30, and we had time to bring everything back to the hotel and eat before heading to the train. It’s nice walking around Chicago when it’s empty on Sunday mornings. And Firecakes has a buy 6 get 7 promotion every Sunday, so we got a box. We took the last three donuts to Steve and Heike, who were giving us dinner.

This post has taken me so long to finish, it is now Thursday morning, so here’s a couple of things that happened since we’ve been back.

A piece by Sokari Douglas Camp, the Afro-British artist my friend Susan wrote a book about, that currently in a show at a gallery in London. Came across it while trawling Insta Wednesday.

In one-handed cooking news, on Monday we had hash brown-crusted quiche for dinner. Frozen hash browns, where I’d usually grate parboiled fresh potatoes. These were thawed and squeezed dry, and pretty tasty, maybe a bit mushy. We’ll see if I can crisp them up reheating the leftovers.

And yesterday (Wednesday) I made this choco-mallow, a King Arthur recipe I’d as an open tab in my phone since the cookie party. I added dried cherries; dried cranberries are suggested.

OK, let’s see what Thursday will bring. As you can tell, I am resolutely NOT talking politics, but that might come.