April 3, 2020: Chicago, IL
Friday was the warmest day in Chicago since the lockdown began, and the city came out in force. The Mayor is angry for good reason. Tess and I went for a walk down through some nearby, non-shuttered portions of park and witnessed every version of non-essential gathering imaginable: a group fitness session on the Lincoln Park Conservatory lawn (you can’t help but wonder, was this a priority before the lockdown?), two friends conversing at almost exactly six feet apart on a bench, a couple kicking a soccer ball back-and-forth. Several groups half-assedly attempted to disguise their intransigence from the two police officers in the van idling outside Cafe Brauer: a family (very conspicuously) hid its picnic on the backside of a (very small) hill, a guitarist (very audibly) strummed “La Bamba” on repeat inside one of the tunnels that cuts under the park’s paths.
As we rounded fence along the African Painted Dog range at the padlocked zoo, we saw far more dogs than usual active and on the prowl, peering through the bars as if starved for human contact (or flesh!) and also one bucking the trend and rollicking belly up in the sun. (S)he behaved much like any easily amused family pet.
For dinner, we made this strange Australian barbecue meatball dish, which we discovered by rounding up ingredients (milk, ground beef, onions) approaching expiration in the fridge/on the shelf and searching for a recipe around them. Allrecipes, in my opinion, is by far the most underrated site in the recipe game. In a space littered with rambling, self-indulgent manifestos masquerading as cooking instructions, it gives you concise steps and ingredient lists along with two game-changing features (that it has offered for over a decade, if memory serves): the Ingredient Search (do what we did, by which you back into a recipe from what you already have) and the Servings Adjuster, which updates every ingredient to obviate the need for any mental arithmetic.
In any case, while I cannot vouch for the recipe’s authenticity, it tasted pretty nice.
Gummies and Orange Soda 