Another food day

 

Another lazy day—maybe it’s the three-day weekend, though why in the world would a holiday weekend affect my schedule? At any rate, it was lazy—went to online church in the morning, spent too much time on Facebook but the political stuff is so interesting these days (if you’re careful about what you read). Spent quite a bit of time going through the cooking and food magazines that had accumulated on the left-hand corner of my desk, where papers seem to multiply of their own accord. Actually got some helpful articles for my chef course and some recipes that I put aside for us to try.

I saved a page for Christian because it was about fried rice, which he’s been wanting to try. But when I started to give it to him, I realized it was just one big picture with the simple advice that you should coat every grain of rice with egg yolk. I told him that and threw it out.

It pains me to admit this, but I probably will let my subscriptions lapse to everything but Southern Living—and they are in danger if they don’t stop featuring so many shrimp dishes that I cannot eat. Since I am at heart a print person (due to my age and training), it is hard for me realize that the magazines simply take up space on my desk and challenge me to go through them. I mostly find recipes online. At my advanced age, I am being drawn into the internet—I get my recipes there, and I read my books there. And publish my books. I am part of a revolution I try to resist.

But the big food event of the day was that we ordered dinner from an upscale Mexican catering service that both Christian and I burned to try. I had been to one of their catered brunches and was blown away by the food. One thing I particularly liked, and I found true again tonight, is that they season the food but do not feel called upon to test taste buds with hot spiciness. Their food is flavorful, but not overly spicy.

Dinner for two turned out, as we planned, to be enough to feed six or eight, but it was expensive. And good but not great. Ever since take-out became a thing, I have maintained that food doesn’t travel well. It is better eaten newly cooked in whatever restaurant but not reheated at home—hamburgers particularly suffer from this. Tonight’s dinner was delivered at noon, and we reheated to serve at seven. Reheating never benefits food, just dries it out.

Tonight although there was plenty of food, we each had miniscule portions of tomato soup (very good, with a seasoning neither Christian nor I could identify), Caesar salad, Beef Wellington with mushroom duxelles, chicken breast with sauce, baked salmon with chimichurri, Brussel sprouts (none of us like them), and broccolini with lemon sauce that I couldn’t detect. You can see though why dinner for two feed three adults. There was a dish of mac and cheese which we put aside for Jacob. Shhh! Don’t tell him it has truffle oil. Dessert was an apricot crumble with white chocolate—again, probably better when fresh out of the oven.

I count this evening’s meal as a lesson learned. We were so intrigued by their menu—so now we’ve satisfied that intrigue, and I doubt we’ll do it again. I would still love to go back to that catering service when they have another of their in-house dinners, but meantime I think Jordan, Christian, and I come up with better meals, and we should stick to cooking at home. The best take-out I’ve yet had was Macaluso’s last night.

And slightly food-related: Mary Dulle sent me a posting about Chicago’s Palmer House closing. For my book, The Gilded Cage, I delved into that history, and when my kids and I were in Chicago, a visit to the Palmer House was high on our list. And in my new book, Saving Irene, I set the climactic scene in the Palmer House. Food is part of it too—their menu includes a lot of fish fresh from the Great Lakes and a
“rooftop honey” salad dressing, made with honey from the hives that sit atop many of Chicago’s downtown buildings. A fascinating fact I uncovered in research.

These days it’s a Hilton property, but it has apparently been closed since early in the pandemic. And now there are foreclosure actions against it for something over $300 million indebtedness. I don’t expect them to tear it down tomorrow—these things work their way through the courts slowly—but I hate to see that grand old dame become another victim of  pandemic.

 

Enough. The world is sometimes a discouraging place, but it will be brighter tomorrow. Happy Labor Day everyone.

Putting good memories into fiction

Palmer House loobby

In the fall of 2016, my four adult children and I went to Chicago. It was a pilgrimage for me—I wanted them to see where I grew up. We stayed at the Drake Hotel, epitome of luxury when I was a Chicago kid, we toured my Hyde Park/Kenwood neighborhood, they gawked at my childhood home (a sort of red-brick brownstone built in 1893—I had always stressed the modest means of my family, and I guess they thought I grew up in a shack), and we ate at fantastic restaurants, mostly on the near North Side. It was a trip that made memories I will treasure forever.

One highlight though, for me, was lunch and a tour of the famed Palmer House Hotel, now a Hilton property. I had researched the hotel for my “big” Chicago novel, The Gilded Cage, which is fiction loosely based on the life of Bertha Honoré (Cissy) Palmer, one of the first women to combine wealth with philanthropy. Cissy’s husband, entrepreneur and robber baron Potter Palmer, built the hotel as a wedding present for his bride in 1871. Within weeks, the city of Chicago burned, taking with it the hotel. Potter Palmer rebuilt, and for a few years the Palmers and their two sons lived on the top floor.

In the 1920, the original structure was rebuilt into a 25-floor hotel. For well over a century, the Palmer House has provided luxurious splendor in its public areas, oversized private rooms, and sumptuous meals. It has hosted the rich and famous – Mark Twain spoke at a reception for General Ulysses S. Grant (related by marriage to the Palmers) and Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland were among the entertainers who performed in the Grand Ballroom.

museum

The Palmer House is the only hotel I know of with a museum and an on-staff historian who gives daily tours. Historian Ken Price presides over a tiny, glass-walled museum tucked away in the mezzanine and overflowing with memorabilia—menus, hotel bills, signed celebrity photos, newspaper clippings, portraits, books, even ashtrays and a teapot. On his daily tour of the hotel’s public spaces, Price takes visitors to the Grand Ballroom, the Red Lacquer Room, and, of course, the lobby where he is quick to point out the Tiffany chandeliers. Afterward, there is an informal discussion in the museum.

I loved every minute of it, and this week I’ve been able to weave that experience into my work-in-progress, a culinary mystery set in Chicago. The Palmer House fit into my plot as though I had planned it all along, and I’ve had fun mentally replaying that tour, sitting again in awe in the lobby, ogling like a teenager just off the farm.

Is it a stretch to put the hotel in the mystery? I hope not, but you’ll have to tell me when Saving Irene is released, probably in September or October. Meantime I have memories to savor.

Red Lacquer Room

The Palmer House

In planning our Chicago trip, one of the highlights I almost insisted on was lunch at the Palmer House hotel, followed by the lecture and tour on the historic hotel. Lunch was at noon, and the tour began at 1:30, scheduled to be over by 3:00. Last May I published The Gilded Cage, a novel of Chicago in the late 19^th century, the Potter Palmers, the Palmer House Hotel, and the Columbian Exposition. Okay it’s much more than that, at least I think so, but those are the main events. I wanted to see if I was on the mark or not, and I wanted to see the famed hotel, though I think I was probably there with my parents as a young child.

Lunch was delicious—most of the kids had salmon, but I had a buttery homemade pasta with mushrooms and truffle sauce. Absolutely delicious.

We met the tour guide in the lobby adjacent to the restaurant. Everybody stood around talking, while Ken Price, the guide, questioned us. Eventually he led us up a floor to the hotel’s museum. Now, how many hotels do you know that have their own museum? Price was, if I got the story straight, hired to do marketing for the hotel, but today he is the archivist, whether or not he still does marketing.

We gathered around a table in the crowed small space, and he went around the room asking each of us questions. When he found out I was an English major, he zeroed in on me. But before that he had orchestral music playing, told us it was from the 1930s and asked who knew what orchestra it was. I said Eddie Duchin, because who else played in that decade. A lucky guess.

The next question was a quote: “In the room, the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo.” His question was the source, and he looked directly at me. I said T. S. Eliot, and he asked for more, so I said Prufrock. Yes, it was from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

His final question was, “Who called Chicago the hog butcher of the world?” Easy. Carl Sandburg. I was a little bit filled with pride to have been singled out and to have acquitted myself well.

For the next two hours he gave us a random, rambling history of Chicago, the Palmers, the hotel, and himself. Charming, garrulous and knowledgeable, he was one of those people who liked to name-drop and had me convinced that he had important ties. I was convinced he had important connections. He’s occasionally drag out posters or other visuals to augment his talk.

When the overlong lecture wound down, he suggested a 15-minute break and then a tour of the hotel. We had dinner plans and couldn’t stay which didn’t bother me a lot. I had learned much from his lecture, most of which confirmed that I got the information in The Gilded Cage right except when I deliberately veered off into fiction.

We left a copy of The Gilded Cage with him, along with a business card, and he promised to be in touch and read the book. Who knows? This might be my one chance at fame and fortune. On the other hand, I’ll probably never hear from him. But it was still a heck of an interesting afternoon.