The Fall Eating Season III: Fifteen Years! Fifteen Years! She had one of my kids, got me for fifteen years

November sixth was my fiftieth wedding anniversary. Fifteenth. Fifteenth anniversary. Why would I say fiftieth? It doesn't feel like....time isn't dragging...don't feel like we're seventy-five...um....

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November sixth was my fifteenth wedding anniversary. Fifteen years...well, not in a row. That is another story for another time. Shit, my wife reads this blog. She is going to be pissed off that I even alluded to our marriage having its rough patch.

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November sixth was my fifteenth wedding anniversary. We celebrated. Twice.


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November sixth was my fifteenth wedding anniversary. For years now, we have given each other token gifts -- fragrance, or a book, or movie (or two). Our wants are small. We do like to have a nice meal together somewhere. This year, it was at Cafe Borgia, the Chicago southland's famous northern Italian trattoria.

Recently, Cafe Borgia moved from it's digs in the old Lansing House of Pizza location to an airy new building in neighboring Munster, IN. I would love for House of Pizza to go back into the Lansing location, as that was the kick-ass thin crust of my youth. House of Pizza in Hammond, IN, is pretty similar to the old Lansing HoP; but, by the time I bring a pie home from Indianapolis Boulevard, it's cold. There are various Zuni's HoP and Dante's HoP locations around the area, supposedly (I have my doubts) owned by the same family as the old HoP, but the pie is different.

Wedding anniversary? Cafe Borgia? House of Pizza? Sentence fragments? WTF?


I do not know Karen and Mike Jesso, the mom-and-pop of Cafe Borgia. There is a story that goes around town about how they met. The story holds that in their youth, they first met while they were waiting in line at Lansing House of Pizza to pick up their carry-outs. After their marriage, after culinary school, they found that Lansing House of Pizza had closed and that the very place they met was available for lease just as they were about to open their own restaurant. Serendipity! Kismet! Fate! Karma! Interjections meaning luck!

Now the old Lansing House of Pizza is the old Cafe Borgia, and the old Cafe Borgia is empty. The new Cafe Borgia is built across from the Munster dump. Like every dump in America, this is called Mt. Trashmore by the locals. Munster has been developing the area around Mt. Trashmore: exhibit-style veterans memorial, shiny new park, pricey subdivision downwind of the dump, and Cafe Borgia.

We went for lunch. This was our first time at Cafe Borgia since it moved.

There is a fine line between ambiance and pretense. Cafe Borgia treads upon that fine line like Karl Wallenda (Google it, kiddies).

Just inside the front door, appearing at first to be a narrow corridor, the bar juts off at a right angle. The quick peek I gave the bar told me it was fashioned after a club-car in Rat-Pack chic (remember the bar in Phil Smidt's?). We were seated immediately in the main dining room. This new building fosters the impression that it is a converted warehouse -- high clattery ceiling, duct-work to nowhere. The large open kitchen is on the same side as the bar, with a yards-long order-up window that had me worried that Mel Sharples was going to ash his cigarette on my food before passing it to Flo or Alice. Our waitstaff could not have been more attentive if they had chewed our food for us and fed us like nestlings.

The menu was short but varied. The usual Italian suspects were present: pizzas and pastas, chicken vesuvio, risotto, calamari, veal, lamb this, eggplant that. Not-so-usual fare includes: cubanella peppers with four cheeses and marinara, duck ragout and polenta, and a salad of apple and mixed greens with gorgonzola and pine nuts in a raspberry vinaigrette. The daily-specials menu was nearly as long as the regular menu.

We started off with the marinated olives and the baked goat cheese.

• Marinated olives were a great appetizer: starting off a meal in a classy joint by spittin' out pits, ptooey. The lightness of Cafe Borgia's favored olive oil cannot be overemphasized. Other places, an appetizer of marinated olives looks and tastes like an unchopped version of the olive salad in a nice muffuletta; Cafe Borgia's olive marinade did not overwhelm, so that the different flavors of the different olives (kalamata, cerignola, galega, and castelvetrano) were distinct.
• Goat cheese was served as something of an Italian version of brie en brioche. Baked to gooey bliss in a thin pastry crust and surrounded by marinara, the goat cheese was the kind of good that makes me roll my eyes and smile as I chew. On rounds of the warm house bread, or by the forkful, we couldn't leave it alone until it was gone.

The herb and raspberry tea was strangely appealing. Even though a small carafe of tea was left on our table for self-service, not a sip was taken that was not immediately refilled by the staff. If the service at Phil Smidt's ever really was the way Dad bragged that it was, it would not have beaten this.

Our main courses came just as we were finishing the last bites of out appetizers. I ordered the pork scallopine limone. My wife, a pecso vegetarian, had an ultra-thin (Roman-style) pizza off of the daily-specials menu.

• My pork scallopine limone consisted of thin triangles of pork tenderloin that had been sauteed in olive oil with garlic, artichokes, mushrooms, and lemon. A lot of lemon. A lot a lot a lot of lemon. I love intensely sharp acidic flavors, so I was pretty okay with this, but this is not for everyone. This extreme acidity, however, was only evident in the pork, so I think it must have been marinated in a strongly acidic solution. As much lemon as I like, this was a little much even for me. I would have liked to cut the sour a bit with a little salt. Here is where the pretentiousness of this wonderful trattoria comes in. There are no salt-and-pepper shakers on the tables. Of course, ask and ye shall receive -- as the service is beyond reproach. The pretense is that the chef knows just the right balance of seasonings, all seasonings -- even salt and black pepper -- so no possible correction should be necessary. There's the tiniest of social stigmas attached to asking for the salt and the pepper you pissy little cretin...No soup for you! I have already given more space to this than it deserves. The only other thing I'll say on the subject is that the alleged Italian Christopher Columbus braved the uncharted Atlantic to bring back black pepper from India but found America instead, so maybe an Italian restaurant in America should consider having some black pepper -- and its longtime companion, salt -- on every table, like every other restaurant (see my blog entry The Fall Eating Season I: ...and since Columbus discovered India in the Dominican Republic, we use precious cinnamon to make elephant ears. for more on the spice trade). I digress. I do not think I was ever told what my side dishes were, but they appeared to be a large-grained couscous in a tomato sauce and some grilled green beans of the spindliest variety in the world. Both were unexpected, unusual, and excellent.
• The daily pizza was a Roman-style ultra-thin crust with eggplant, arugula, and cherry tomatoes. This was large enough to feed two and somehow tasted alive...almost like is sparked when eaten. I assume that this was because of the exceptional freshness of the produce used. This was the greatest pleasure in a dinner of many pleasures.

With no empty space in our stomachs and half of a pizza to take home, we still managed to share a desert and have coffee. The coffee came with real cream and real sugar. I might be tempted to burst into a tirade here about the waitstaff not supplying artificial sweeteners with the coffee, like my earlier tirade about salt, but this is different: anyone who is willing to eat even half of a high-calorie dessert and then worry about the 16 calories in one teaspoon of sugar, well, that person is a nut. Great coffee. If you aren't hungry, just stop by for coffee. Great coffee. Thick and strong, not even the slightest bit bitter. I usually drink my coffee straight black, but when it is really excellent coffee, I like to add just a drop of cream and about half a spoonful of sugar to really bring out the complex flavor. Who's being pretentious now? It's me, bitches.

If you take a ball of white chocolate mousse with pistachios, wrap it with chocolate cake, slice off one half, and serve it -- apparently, that is called zucotto. The zucotto was plated with a pool of chocolate sauce and a pool of raspberry sauce. This was a lot of wonderful competing textures and flavors. This was the fireworks after the home run.

If it sounds like I had a foodgasm at Cafe Borgia...well, a gentleman does not kiss and tell. Outside of a brief lemony leg-cramp, this was the consummate anniversary dinner -- food I loved at a restaurant I loved with the woman I loved...love...the woman I love.

Yeah, yeah. Awwww, right back at you.

Next time: more hi-jinx, and how to be a good little orphan.

The Fall Eating Season II: Candy, Candy, Candy -- I can't let you go.

I love Halloween. I love my wife. My wife loves Halloween more than I love Halloween. I love my wife more than I love Halloween.

What does all of this mean?

My wife is a Halloweenie. It is her thing, her thang. All-year round -- every day is Halloween. Mostly, I find it uber-cool to be married to an old-school goth (albeit a closet-goth for her roles as homemaker, librarian, and room parent). Occasionally, I feel the bats and cats and rats and skulls are all staring at me, trying to psych me out.

What does all of this mean?

In 1992, Halloween was my holiday. I was a graduate student at Southern Illinois University -- where Halloween was celebrated with much drinking and burning of cars.

In 1993, Halloween was our holiday. We were still in Carbondale. We were finalizing our wedding arrangements -- the Interfaith Center, the cake from Cristaudo's, the reception at Fiddler's (gone, but not forgotten), the honeymoon on Miami Beach. A week later, we were married on a snowy Saturday afternoon. A week after that, I was in the hospital for three days with Legionnaire's disease. A week after that, we were on Miami Beach for only fifteen minutes on only one day of our week-long honeymoon while the Legionnaire's disease kept me in bed (in the wrong sense for OUR HONEYMOON).

In 2008, Halloween was her holiday, and has been for years. Not that her version of Halloween is substantially different from my version of Halloween -- but, as far as I am concerned, the day is all hers. I love Halloween, but it's her thang.

I'm contented just to be a patron of the art she creates with Beistle cutouts, plastic skeletons, and monster fur. I still have an important role in the festivities:

I am the candyman.

(If you think that means I want to do something unspeakable to Virginia Madsen...um, well....)

It is my job to pass out candy to the kiddies every year. It is not as simple as it may seem:

• Who? Without even factoring in the weather, some years we get fewer than thirty kids, other years we have had over 150. My first thought is to just say no to the high-school kids with no costume and a used Wal-Mart bag; then, I think of starting November with a busted-out picture window. There are people who drive vans up to our house, let a dozen kids out on the side-street, have those kids trick-or-treat our front door, try to trick-or-treat our side door, then leave the neighborhood.
• What? Chocolate, that's what...and not motherfucking Tootsie Rolls either, you cheap bastard. If you are only giving out a piece or two per trick-or-treater, please please PLEASE make it all name-brand chocolate. If you give more candy than that, mix it up with non-chocolate. I know Skittles are just as expensive as Snickers, but to a nine-year-old Skittles are as much a filler-candy as Double Bubble...or Tootsie Rolls, you cheap bastard. Given the unpredictable number of trick-or-treaters we may have, we make sure there is enough chocolate for 200 really hungry kids.
• When? In broad daylight...nowadays. Check out my blog entry, "I think Barack Obama is avoiding me..." for more on daytime trick-or-treating.
• Where? My front door. I live on a corner. Every year, kids go to my front door, then go to my side door. For some reason, some kids only go to my side door. My house is a slab house of less than 1,100 square feet. My side door is in the breezeway connecting the house to the garage, but it is obvious to anyone close enough to the side door to ring the bell that this breezeway doubles as an ersatz junk-filled basement.Also, I would have thought that the large obvious sign on the side door saying "Please use front door" might help. It gets a little harried trying to answer both doorbells at the same time -- my fat candy-snitching ass huffing and puffing back-and-forth through the kitchen.
• Why? Just before my Druidic ancestor were ransacked by my Viking ancestors, they did something with an oak tree and Stonehenge I think, so now we give kids candy on Halloween. Hey, it's all I've got. That is at least as convincing as the story about the stepson of a Jewish carpenter who was horribly tortured to death in public, so now every year a rabbit hides hard-boiled eggs.

I estimate that I saw about 125 trick-or-treaters this year. We had enough candy for 200 kids. We had (yes, HAD) a lot of leftover candy. The largest hole in my face is just the right size for Fun Size candy bars. Additionally, we always shop the after-Halloween markdowns. Here's a tip: every year one of the big discounters completely screws up and buys way too much of something good. This year, that was Target. So, here are my two favorites -- my 2008 Favorite Halloween Candy, and my 2008 Favorite Post-Halloween Markdown Candy. Drum-roll, please (no Tootsie Rolls, you cheap bastard):

2008 Favorite Halloween Candy:Nestlé Crunch Caramel

This is a newish variation on an old favorite. It's like a Nestlé Crunch Bar with a Cadbury Caramello on top of it. This is a great texture pairing that work against logic. Like thin-crust pizza with extra cheese, Nestlé Crunch Caramel pairs the crispiest of the crispy with the gooiest of the gooey. The Fun Size bars are not exact miniatures of the full-size bars: the Crunch Bar to Caramello proportions are different, better (I think) in the Fun Size.

2008 Favorite Post-Halloween Markdown Candy3 Musketeers Mint

This is another newish variation on an old favorite. The whipped mint nougat dipped in dark chocolate is even better frozen and cracked like you might do to a Charleston Chew. Target was selling bags of 18 in their Halloween clearance for $1.14, while they were selling the same size bars with earlier expiration dates in the 8-bar packs for $1.29. Mint and dark chocolate sound pretty Christmas-y to me. WARNING: if you ever get heartburn at all, mint and dark chocolate together might just be your kryptonite.

Next Time: More hi-jinks, fifteen years of wedded bliss (not in a row), and more of the Fall Eating Season.

The Fall Eating Season I: ...and since Columbus discovered India in the Dominican Republic, we use precious cinnamon to make elephant ears.

Columbus Day. My sister's birthday is October tenth; so, growing up, every year for her birthday she got the gift of a three-day weekend from the school district. In fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, wished for a westward passage to India, blew out the candles, and had a piece of atomic cake with the Arawak shamans, so my sister got a three-day birthday. I'm not bitter.



Fenugreek is bitter. Fenugreek is not an important seasoning to "Western" cooking: you can't just pop into the Kroger and get a bottle of McCormick fenugreek. Half an eon ago, Columbus sailed the wrong way around the world to "India" in search of fenugreek and cinnamon and coriander and especially black pepper -- to make rotten European pork taste less, um, European. Today, black pepper sits on every "Western" table (it's the stuff that makes us say,"Oh shit," when we see the grey flakes and realize we didn't grab the salt shaker as intended). Coriander has been relegated to pickles and Mexican food. Cinnamon. Cinnamon is the spice of Columbus Day, the spice of every day when the darkness is longer than the light. The Fall Eating Season commences for me each year when I first smell the cinnamon goodness of fresh elephant ears at the Covered Bridge Festival, which begins Columbus Day weekend.

For the Covered Bridge Festival when I was a kid, The Rockville locals would set up two parallel cinder block walls knee high and a foot apart along one entire block of the courthouse square. The space between the low walls was filed with blazing firewood -- a block long barbecue grill. In recent years, the crowds have shifted to other parts of Parke county, so the grilling setup is a lot smaller. Still, not much has changed on courthouse square in the 30 or so years since my first Covered Bridge Festival. Nowadays, instead of our family searching as far as Terre Haute or Indianapolis for lodging, we make it a day-trip.

• SAVORY HIGHLIGHT: Pork chop sandwich with complimentary hot tea or (perfect) coffee.



• SWEET HIGHLIGHT: Warm persimmon pudding with gingersnap "sideboards" and whipped cream.

For the displaced hillbillies or fans of Andrew Zimmern, there's always a big bowl of fried chicken gizzards. Mmmm...the more you chew them, the bigger they get!

Next time: More hi-jinks, and a pre-post-election rant that I should really post pre-election.