Michel Completes His First Semester of Grad School

Let the record show that I, Michel Bigelow, after completing an entire semester, have not yet failed out of graduate school.  I made it from August to December without once being asked to leave the University.  In fact, I am being permitted to come back next semester and continue my studies.  So, in the most basic sense of avoiding abject failure, this semester has been a rousing success.

            In terms of making me a stronger and more prolific writer, this semester has been better than I ever could have imagined.  I have read things I would never have otherwise read and I have written things I absolutely could not have written six months ago.  On top of all that, I have been accepted into one of the most delightful collections artists and weirdos one could ever hope to meet.  The Roosevelt University Creative Writing MFA program is filled with immensely talented people of wildly diverse backgrounds and styles.  I predict that out of the current students in the program there are fifteen future Pulitzer Prize winners, twelve future National Book Award Winners, nine future Nobel Prize winners, eight future recipients of movie deals, and three to five future cyborgs.  I have similar predictions about the amazing faculty, except I only foresee two of them becoming part machine.

            Coming to Chicago to pursue a master’s in creative writing is easily the biggest risk I have ever taken.  Elizabeth and I gave up full-time jobs, financial security, and close proximity to friends and family so I could formally study writing down shit that I make up.  That is insane, yet even after only a semester, I know it was a good decision.  Fall 2013 has been one of the most satisfying learning experiences of my life.

            There have definitely been struggles with things like employment and figuring out which of the eighty-three Thai places within walking distance of our apartment is best (so far none are on the level of Thai Bistro), but overall, I have loved our time in Chicago and my time at Roosevelt.  I am genuinely excited to come back next semester.

            All that being said, Houston, I am coming for your fajitas.  All of them.  Chicago is wonderful, but it’s not really a TexMex town.

Fajitas.

Elizabeth and Michel Visit the Spice Shop

We spend a lot of time in Lincoln Square.  It's a wonderful little small town square in a big city.  So when we realized that there was yet another charming little shop that we had not explored, we decided to pay it a visit on Small Business Saturday.  It was the Savory Spice Shop, and I just happened to need some spices to make gingerbread. 

It's a cute little shop with beautiful hardwood floors and painted wood shelving, warm and inviting with an incredibly friendly and helpful staff.  We've been back twice now, and they recognized us each time. 

That Saturday the shop was fairly busy, but they still made time to show us around the store and explain how it worked.  It's a spice shop.  What more do you need to know, you might ask.  Well, it is a spice shop where you can taste everything!  How cool is that?  So basically, you can walk around the store, tasting whatever spice, salt, rub, herb, curry, or pepper you like and then you just dump what's left of your taste test on the floor.  You might think that the floor was filthy, then, but it's not.  They are meticulous about keeping it swept and clean.  Once you have found your chosen item, you can then take the large jar (in my case ground Madagascan cloves and ground Jamaican allspice) to the center table, and they will measure and weigh your spice for you.  Everything is freshly ground in the morning, and it smells heavenly!

Additionally, they don't just carry traditional spices.  They carry anything you might need from freshly dried cilantro and Hawaiian volcanic sea salt to lavender vanilla bean sugar and ground ghost pepper, the second hottest pepper in the world.  And to top it off, there is always a large pot of hot apple cider with fresh cinnamon sticks for anyone who wants it.  Lest you think spices and herbs are all they sell, they have a wide selection of cookbooks and other cooking related gift items. 

I secretly want to work there.  Michel says it's because then I will be working in a spice shop like Rosalie on my favorite TV show, Grimm (check it out...best show ever!!!), and that is probably true.  But it's also such a cool little store with some of the nicest people in the square.  It's definitely one of our favorite shops now!

Elizabeth und Michel besuchen Sie die Christkindlmarkt

As you've no doubt gathered, there is a strong German influence in Chicago (though apparently not as strong an influence as Polish--our bank advertises tellers bilingual in Polish).  This being the case, there is a large Christkindlmarket, or German Christmas market, downtown every year from the week after Thanksgiving to  Christmas Eve.  This year, the market even boasted its own Christkind, a Christmas fairy or angel, a staple of the markets in Germany.  (Previously the Christkind from Nuremburg has visited for the first weekend.)  The market is always very popular and is beautifully lit at night, but we had been advised to visit during a weekday just after lunch, if we could, to avoid the worst of the crowd.  So we headed down to Daley Plaza around noon for traditional German crafts and treats!

 Kathe Wolfahrt is one of the top Nutcracker makers in Germany, based in the famous Christmas shop in Rothenburg.

 Some of their traditional Nutcrackers

 They also make beautiful music boxes...

 and Christmas scenes.

 The Christmas tree was a little oval shaped, but it was still really pretty!

Some of the other shops carried Black Forest cuckoo clocks, beer steins, scarves, ornaments, and other crafts.  There were also tons of yummy food stalls for pretzels, bratwurst, schnitzel, spaetzel, pancakes, pastries, sugared nuts, and chocolate treats.  Michel opted for a bratwurst with sauerkraut and cherry strudel while I had potato pancakes with applesauce and a Berliner (the custard-filled, chocolate-glazed pastry with which President Kennedy associated himself during his famous trip to Berlin.  He certainly could have done worse; it was quite tasty!).  

Beautiful, handmade clocks in the Black Forest style

A wall of beer steins

The spiced nuts shop: almonds, cashews, macadamias, pecans, walnuts...it smelled heavenly!

These gingerbread hearts were everywhere.

Inside the sweet shop with all of the traditional and popular German candies and cookies.  Our favorite thing was the Christmas cookies--described as "christmascookies".

We had a lot of fun and are looking forward to next year!

Michel Gives a Reading of His Own Work

Sorry, not much of note has been happening in our world.  It has been below 25 degrees pretty much since Thanksgiving, so we've been holed up in our apartment except for the required errands, school/work, the occasional trip to our $5 movie theatre, and a few snowy walks to the square.  However, in the last week, Michel officially finished his first semester of grad school, and, to top off all the writing, he gave a reading of one of his pieces with the other first year fiction students at our favorite independent bookstore, The Book Cellar.  So we ventured out of our hobbit hole into the cold and snow.

The Book Cellar is a great place for readings, first of all.  Half of the shop is a bookstore and the other half is a little cafe with delicious drinks and food.  The wall of the cafe is the shop's magazine wall, and it is in front of this that authors usually read their work.  Several rows of chairs are set up from the cafe to the register on the opposite wall, snuggled in amongst the suggested books display.  The shop is all decorated for Christmas and is a wonderfully cozy place to spend a winter evening.

Michel chose to read an excerpt from his piece, "Superheorism and You", a hilarious how-to guide on becoming a superhero written for his creative non-fiction class.  After introducing himself as the world's foremost expert on superheroism, he discussed why becoming a superhero is the only worthwhile course of action upon the discovery of superpowers along with the intricacies of power assessment.  Everyone laughed and enjoyed the piece, and he received a ton of compliments, including from the director of the program.  Pretty cool!  Personally, I think he was the best one, but I may be biased!

The other five pieces were all incredibly different, ranging from an account of a road trip to a fictional letter from a soldier to his father, and the other authors were all engaging readers.  We've been to a few readings, but I have to say, it's much more exciting when you know the authors!  Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures, and I'm not really sure Michel wanted me to anyway.  I mean, it's not so cool when your wife is taking pictures of your first reading and possibly waving and whisper-shouting your name to get you to look at the camera.  Which I would totally do.  So Michel retained his cool status and I left with no pictures.

This may not be the most exciting post, but I think it was a pretty exciting moment, and I'm super proud of Michel!  Here's to many more readings in the future!

Elizabeth and Michel Successfully Prepare a Thanksgiving Feast

So today is Thanksgiving, and it is our first Thanksgiving away from our respective families.  While we are definitely sad about this, it was exciting to plan, cook, and host our Thanksgiving meal.  Stephen traveled down from the barbaric wilds of Madison to join us for the holiday, and, I must say, it was a rousing success!  We started with pigs in a blanket and mimosas and proceeded to our turkey dinner.

We slow cooked our turkey breast and thighs in the crock pot with lemon, a head of garlic, rosemary, and chardonnay.  While I highly recommend this method of cooking, particularly if you have a small kitchen with one oven that needs to be used to cook other things, I will not post the pictures of our turkey because it looked gross.  Slow cooking will not produce a beautiful turkey.  It will produce a hunk of oddly unsettling grey-ish white meat-like substance. However, the meat produced is beautiful, tender, and flavorful, and helps create a lovely, lemony gravy. 

I have been inspired by my friend Miachel and her beautiful food blog featuring her gorgeous food photography, Spiced Curiosity, and so, I hope you enjoy my very first attempt at real food photography and our Thanksgiving meal!

 Appetizers!

 

 Sun-dried tomatoes and Parmesan crisps

 Peppered brie, chevre, and dill cheese, crackers, and salami

Dressing sausage-stuffed, Marsala marinated mushrooms, pre-baking

I'm kind of obsessed with Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa, and Michel, knowing my love of her food, suggested we try this alternative to a full pan of dressing.  Since there were only three of us for dinner, I thought it would be a great alternative.  And it was.  Michel declared these dressing mushrooms the best thing we've ever made!

 Grandaddy's pea salad

 Not Sister Schubert's, but Trader Joe's had pretty delicious roles

 Stephen making gravy from scratch

 Rosemary and thyme roasted potato fried

 Maple-glazed roasted sweet potatoes

 Stephen's gravy

 Sauteed herbed vegetables (orange bell pepper, mushrooms, zucchini, red onions, and tomatoes)

Dressing mushrooms, fully baked!

 

 Our table!  Nothing fancy, but full of delicious food!

 The gentlemen

 Me and Michel

 My delicious plate!  We did well, my friends!

Stephen made two delicious pies: pumpkin with nutmeg and coriander and bourbon pecan.  Both were delicious, as were our excellent wine choices.  The day continued with excellent conversation and a very happy UT game!  Happy Thanksgiving to all and Hook 'Em!!

Michel and Elizabeth Are Industrious about Science and the Defeat of the German Navy

Two weekends ago, my parents came to visit for what was the apparently last glorious weather weekend of the year.  They brought the Texas sunshine and took it with them when they left, ushering in that first snow fall and days of below 30 degree temperatures.  However, we had a fabulous weekend, showing them our apartment, neighborhood, and Lincoln Square, eating at Marmalade, Fork, and Fountainhead (and trying breakfast at Le Cafe...delicious!), watching UT beat West Virginia in a nail-biter of a game, and visiting the Museum of Science and Industry for the first time.

My parents especially loved wandering the neighborhood and eating in our favorite restaurants.  They loved our visit to Gene's, where along with the usual cold cut samples, they were sampling hot, freshly cooked bacon, several wines, and the most delicious fruit butters ever.  We also popped into a few other shops over the weekend, including The Chopping Block cooking shop and the used book store where my mom found a book for her book club and my dad excitedly purchased a first edition of Edna Ferber's Giant.

Dinner at Fountainhead

We forgot to take pictures at most of our restaurants, but don't worry.  We make up for that with pictures from the Museum of Science and Industry.

Outside of the Museum of Science and Industry, built for the 1893 Columbian Exposition 

(a.k.a The Chicago World's Fair)

M:  The ticket lobby looks like an airport, but the destination is WONDER!
E:  Because we'd bought our U-Boat tickets early, we were able to skip the line and get our museum and Disney tickets quickly.  And the lobby totally feels like an airport terminal.

E: Our first stop was the Burlington Zephyr, the train that set the speed record for the Chicago-Denver route in 1934.  It was also one of the first trains to utilize stainless steel, making it sleek, shiny, and super fast!

M:  It felt a little like a Disney exhibit because of the animatronic Ralph Budd and Zeph the donkey.  It was a cool exhibit, but I don't feel the need to see it with every visit to the museum.

E:  I enjoyed it, but I agree.  I did think it was cool that it was one of the first trains to have air conditioning in the passenger car, though.

Science Trees!

(They were already setting up for an exhibit on Christmas Trees from Around the World)

E:  Dara had recommended we visit the Science Storms exhibit.  It was pretty cool, especially the indoor tornado and the avalanche section.

M:  The spinning avalanche thing was very hypnotic.  I also very much enjoyed the tidal wave diorama.  

We grabbed lunch in the very impressive food court, and then it was time for the U-BOAT!  A quick run through the very entertaining Circus exhibit (where, if you look carefully, you will find a hidden R2-D2 in one of the displays) led to the entrance to the U-Boat exhibit, which presents a comprehensive and interesting history of the U-Boat conflict and the Hunter/Killer groups created to destroy them.  Many U-Boats were sunk, damaged, and destroyed, but only one was ever captured. 

BOOM!  This one.

E:  It is quite the impressive sight to round a corner and suddenly be starting at a behemoth of a submarine.  It was just awesome.

M:  The boat itself is huge and impressive, but when you add in the fact that they got it inside the building without damaging it, it becomes mindblowing.

E:  That was, in fact, the first question we asked:  HOW DID YOU GET IT INSIDE????  They have a time-lapse video showing the process at the end of the exhibit, which is worth the price of admission, but basically they built several Jenga towers under it and slowly removed blocks from the Jenga towers, lowering it into the bunker.  Then they built the roof over it.  All while it was in ONE PIECE!  Mind.  Blown. 

Dad was super excited to see it.

This is the original color of the sub.  It was painted black when the Americans captured it to disguise it.  The museum was able to scratch down to the original paint to find that grey color and repainted when they decided to create the exhibit.  Before that, it had spent several years just sitting on the museum lawn.  

About to go inside!!!

E:  The inside is tiny.  I strongly believe that if you didn't have claustrophobia before, you would after living several months on this sub.  Plus who wants to sleep next to torpedoes?  Also, at times, living on a sub required complete silence.  A dropped pen could be enough to give away a sub's location.

M:  Water was limited to drinking and cooking, which meant no real bathing for the 59 men on board for the duration of the mission.  Instead they rubbed themselves down with rubbing alcohol to combat infection.  It would have been really, really hot because of the engines running along the length of the ship.  No bathing and profuse sweating.  A winning combination.

E:  When the Americans cornered the sub and forced it to surface, the German crew tried to scuttle the sub before they evacuated.  Unfortunately for them, whoever was in charge of setting the charges to explode the sub didn't actually set them, and all the rest of the crew did was open the sea water hatch.  Though the sub was filling with water and in danger of sinking, the Americans simply replaced the cap, thus saving the sub and all of its vital intelligence, including 2 enigma machines.

M:  We can't stress enough how small this thing was on the inside.  We are both small people, and it was still too small for us.  I have to think, on some level, the Germans had to be happy to get off this boat, even if they were doing so officially against their own will. 

Open torpedo hatch

The U-Boat was incredible, and if you come visit us, we will likely try to convince you to go with us to see it again.  But the museum has a lot of other cool stuff to offer, including an impressive transportation display.

E: After the U-Boat, we headed over to the Disney exhibit.  This is a special touring exhibit featuring many major items from the Disney vault.  We've become a little bit of Disney nerds since our trip to Disney World this past summer, so we were excited to see what the exhibit had to offer.

M:  The exhibit was similar to one in Hollywood Studios at Disney World, but it had a number of items we had not seen before.  The overall exhibit was organized chronologically through Walt Disney's career and beyond. 

E:  It really emphasized the incredible art and film making innovations created by Disney and his studio, so we especially encourage artists and art fans to check it out.  As with the other Disney "exhibits" we've seen at the theme park, it was impressively curated, comprehensive, and entertaining.

The original book from the opening of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

Original concept sketches from Snow White, Cinderella, and Fantasia (1940)

Model animator's desk

The original books from the opening sequences of Cinderella (1950) and Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Model Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)

or, as the little girl behind us called it, "A big fish!"

Lego model in process

Maquettes (3-D models used by animators) from Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Little Mermaid (1989), The Lion King (1994), and Aladdin (1992).

E: There were a ton of other amazing treasures in the exhibit from original costumes to a gorgeous painting of London used in Mary Poppins (1964).  It was a great exhibit!  My only complaint was that there was not nearly enough Beauty and the Beast stuff, which is obviously the best Disney movie ever made. 

M:  Based on the events of the last few years, the best Disney movie is Return of the Jedi  (1983).

E:  No, because it was not made when Disney owned Star Wars.

M:  Fine.  Aladdin.

E:  Anyway, we highly recommend the Museum of Science and Industry!  It may be my new favorite museum.  It was a great weekend with my family, too, and we're looking forward to our next visitors!