The Man in the Mirror...

Don't worry, I don't plan on turning this into a blog where I ramble incessantly about my pet, but bear with me for a while, as Zoubie is new to our lives, and very cute.

In case you didn't know, betta fish are very aggressive, territorial creatures. Originally, they are from Thailand, and are also known as "Siamese Fighting Fish," because they were selectively bred to kill each other for sport, kind of like a Southeast Asian version of cockfighting. Today, they are valued more for their bright colors, but all those generations of breeding for their fighting prowess mean that bettas don't play well with others. Zoubie will be an only child for his entire lifespan.

Not only do bettas not get along with one another, they can even become enraged if they spot their own reflection. Unfortunately for Zoubie, the walls of his tank are somewhat reflective, and he will puff up his fins and rush at his own image in order to defend his home from this perceived threat.

I'm aware that the glass fishbowl is upside down here. You can blame Zoubie's dad for that one.

All of this makes it all the more sad/ironic that Zoubie's only companions are a pair of tiny glass fish, locked together for eternity while Zoubie is condemned to a life of solitude. Sometimes, I catch him swimming near them, and I imagine him musing on this existential torment in the anger-inflected French accent that I have created for his inner monologue. Perhaps it is as Sartre said, no? "Hell is other people," even if those other people are a couple of tiny fake fish who forever mock your loneliness.

Opa...

Recently, at work, my friends and I were discussing whether we would elect to have a personal chef, if it meant that they made all decisions about your food for you. The group was divided; some people  thought they would be relieved to be rid of the burden of cooking and didn't mind the thought of surrendering their freedom, as long as the chef made food that adhered to their general tastes and food preferences. The other half of the group was horrified by the thought of losing their autonomy over meal selection. They wanted to be able to run out and buy the ingredients to make whatever dish would satiate the craving they were having in that specific moment. 

I can't say I really fell into either camp; I like cooking for myself, even if it does represent a huge investment of my time, but I couldn't relate to the idea of cooking on a whim, and responding to cravings. My meal choices are almost always predetermined. I sit down once a week with the sale circular for my local grocery store and my Pinterest inspiration board and try to pick out whatever recipes look good at the time, and feature ingredients that I can get on sale. After I run to the store, we have those meals in the order of whatever ingredients I think will go bad first. 

Though I try to honor his requests, Justin's situation is even worse. He is subjected to whatever I've picked out for the week, and generally doesn't get very much choice about whether to eat it. Thankfully, he seems to like my cooking.

Tonight, the complex calculus of selecting recipes based on bargains led us to eating spinach and feta stuffed chicken breasts -- there was a great sale on spinach, and chicken was reasonably priced as well. I still had to shell out for some rather pricey feta, but we had all the other ingredients on hand, so it seemed worth a try, especially since both Justin and I are fans of Greek food, and spanakopita in particular. The filling reminded me a great deal of my beloved spanakopita recipe, so I had been longingly eying the recipe for a while.

Sadly, what works so well when surrounded by crisp, buttery phyllo dough did not translate well into a stuffing for chicken. Though the filling featured lemon and a healthy dose of salt, both flavor enhancers, the dish was inexplicably bland. Also, the chicken took forever to cook with so much filling, and it was so tough and stringy that it was rather unpleasant to eat.

Clearly, the next time I'm craving Greek flavors, I should reach in my freezer and defrost some homemade spanakopita. I'll just have to be sure to factor it into my planning for the week...

Touch The Sky...

With my tenure at the History Museum ending in a matter of weeks, I've been doing my best to squeeze in as many free museum visits as possible. Though our trip to the Field Museum with Abel and Sinead was about as spur-of-the-moment as the rest of their visit, our recent foray to the Art Institute and today's visit to the Museum of Contemporary Art had been on my summer to-do list for a while. Like the Lichtenstein exhibit, the MCA has an exhibit called "Skyscraper: Art and Architecture Against Gravity" that is ending soon, and I'd been keen on seeing it.

After all, what is more iconic to Chicago than the skyscraper? The architectural form was practically born here, with the construction of the Home Insurance Building in 1885, widely considered to be the world's first skyscraper, though its ten-story height would put it firmly in mid-rise territory today. Today, our skyline includes such icons as the Sears, ahem, excuse me, Willis Tower, the tallest building in the United States, and it's near twin, the Hancock Building. The Trump Tower has made its presence known in the past few years, but there are architectural gems to be found in Chicago from practically every decade since the 1880s.

With the MCA's focus on art, as opposed to architecture, I was curious to see what they would bring to the table with their exhibit on the subject. Not to be anti-intellectual, but their exhibits are often too cerebral for me. I often come away from there with the feeling that their offerings are like the raw kale of the museum world -- I know it's good for me, but it takes a very specific palate to appreciate it.

Hence, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually really enjoyed "Skyscrapers." There was a good mix of pieces that were totally "out there," and ones with an obvious connection to the theme. For every bicycle-operated machine erecting an enormous red and white penis painted on multiple panels, there was a clever sculpture playing on the ideas of grids and verticality.

I was especially moved by the inclusion of a room that dealt with our changing relationship to high-rises in the wake of 9/11. In particular, I was fascinated by a mammoth installation of 151 newspaper front-pages from September 12th, the day after the attacks. It was interesting to see how much space was dedicated to the topic, how this varied by country, which images seemed to be most popular with the press, and the various headlines that were used to describe the tragedy. The whole room made me hunger for an exhibit solely dedicated to art inspired by 9/11. Now that we're a decade removed from the events of that day, I think the world is ready.

The exhibit had a notable Chicago bias, which I didn't mind, given that I have a Chicago bias myself, and the skyscraper is inextricably linked to our city. I'm not sure how well it would play in a different city, but it was a perfect exhibit for the MCA, and one that surely attracted a broader audience for them. It was certainly the only time I've ever been tempted to buy an exhibition catalog for anything I've seen there, and if the MCA continues to host exhibits like "Skyscrapers," I may make a point of returning there in the future, even if I have to pay for the privilege.

A Fish Called Zoubie...

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great joy that I announce that Justin and I have expanded our family with the arrival of a new addition. This development has been in the works for over a year, since Justin and I first started talking about moving in together. You see, Justin has been longing for a pet for quite some time. Deep down, I know that he'd really rather rescue a dog, but with my allergies to pretty much anything covered in fur, I've always told him that we'd have to get a hypo-allergenic dog through a breeder, which would not only be prohibitively expensive, it would lack the feel-good intent behind adopting a shelter dog.

As a compromise, I told him we could get a fish, and I bought him a fish tank for his birthday last year. As in, last October. When I went to Italy, also last October, the souvenir I brought back for him was a small, Venetian glass fishbowl with two goldfish inside, representing the two of us. I thought it would make a nice aquarium decoration. We decided to defer the purchase of our actual fish until we moved and got settled in, but fate kept conspiring to delay us.

Finally, yesterday, after more than a year, we finally found ourselves at the pet store. We picked out an ugly/cute goldfish with bulging eyes that we were prepared to name Ackbar, but just when we were ready to buy, the salesman told us that Ackbar's entire tank was being medicated for parasites, and we couldn't take him home. We were crushed, but vowed to return when he had been restored to health.

Then, this morning, I started doing more research on caring for goldfish. Nearly every source I read said that it was tantamount to animal cruelty to keep a goldfish in a small, unfiltered tank like ours. Our fish would inevitably fail to thrive, and would likely die an untimely death. I knew I couldn't buy a goldfish after reading all that, so we elected to get a betta fish instead, since they can thrive in a small environment.

I sent Justin back to the pet store to pick up the betta that had caught our eye yesterday (I opted to stay home for this momentous occasion, because the pet store sells all manner of furry friends as well, and I was practically dying after our last visit), and he brought the little guy home and got him comfortably installed earlier today.
 

I present to you, Zoubie.

After relatively little deliberation, we settled on the name Zoubie. For whatever reason, our fish seemed to possess a French spirit to me, and we toyed with a few Gallic names for him. Jacques, after Jacques Cousteau, seemed too obvious, and I liked Claude, but it didn't quite seem right. Soon, Zoubie popped into my head, after a made-up word that Justin creatively misinterpreted from the song, "Zou Bisou Bisou," in last season's premiere episode of Mad Men.

Apparently, the song is about sweet little kisses, and Justin has come to use the word "zoubies" to refer to little pecks on the cheek, which he also calls "fishy kisses." To me, it seemed like a natural fit. (Don't worry, I'm aware that that story is unbelievably cheesy, but this is the only time you'll have to hear it.)

So please join me in welcoming our aquatic child into our lives. May his life be long, and full of as much joy as can be obtained by swimming endlessly within the same four walls.

Baby On Board...

In my years at the History Museum, I've been blessed to make some really great friends. Even as people have moved on from the museum, I've kept in touch with many of them, and my current crew helps make every day go by faster and more pleasantly. We've been down a member lately as McNulty takes her maternity leave, but she came in today for a visit, accompanied by her beautiful new daughter, Kiera. 

My friends and I had been eagerly anticipating her arrival ever since we first heard that she might come in to the office. We were keeping an eye out for her all day, and were just heading out to lunch when she arrived. We spotted her at the end of the hall, and the whole group of us practically stampeded across the entire north-south distance of the building to get our first look at the baby. We're lucky we didn't terrify them both!

Both mommy and baby looked fantastic -- no small achievement for a new mother, and it was good to see both of them looking so happy. It was a bittersweet moment for me, as my time at CHM is drawing to a close soon with the end of my current project next month, and my last day will come before McNulty returns from her leave. I'm glad I got to be around to witness this time in her and her daughter's life, and that I could help welcome little Kiera into the world by co-hosting McNulty's baby shower. Congratulations on the new arrival; I'm so happy I got to meet her in person!

This Must Be Pop...

I feel like summer really got away from me this year. Perhaps this is what happens when you are a new homeowner -- not only are we fighting the nesting instinct to spend as much time in our new home, we are also too house poor to get get out and do much. Factor in the remote location of our new abode, and it's hardly surprising that we haven't exactly taken advantage of everything Chicago had to offer this summer.

We didn't make it to a single street festival, we went to zero movies in the park, we didn't dine al fresco at any of the city's ubiquitous restaurant patios, and I only went to one art festival and it wasn't even outdoors. Instead, our summer was spent learning how to grill and hosting so many cookouts that I actually can't even remember them all.

One thing I have been adamant about doing this summer is attending museums, mostly because warm weather will inevitably return to Chicago next year, but there is only one opportunity to see a temporary exhibit before it closes. Tonight, Justin and I finally made it to the Art Institute to see the Roy Lichtenstein retrospective that I've been eying all summer.

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for the big, temporary exhibits put on by the Art Institute, from the audience-friendly Impressionist retrospectives of my youth, to last year's phenomenal, albeit challenging, exhibit on World War II-era Soviet propaganda posters. The only exception I can think of would be 2010's Matisse exhibit, and that's more due to my not being a fan of his work than any fault of the museum's. It's safe to say, however, that the Lichtenstein exhibit will go down in my memory banks as another one of the Art Institute's successes.

I went into the exhibit not knowing much about Lichtenstein, other than that he was an important figure in the Pop Art movement, and that his work drew from cartoons as source material. Not only did I learn a great deal about Lichtenstein's technique for creating the precise Ben-Day dots borrowed from the world of printing (he, or a member of his staff painted through a screen), but I learned that there were layers of complexity to his work that I never would have anticipated.

For his paintings that borrow from the language of the pulp comic books of the 1950s and 60s, Lichtenstein did not simply copy images outright, as I had thought. My assumption had always been that Lichtenstein appropriated the images from comic books, blowing  them up to an epic scale, and thereby turning objects of "low culture" into art, or "high culture," not unlike Marcel Duchamp's embrace of "readymades" as a part of Dadaism. However, while Lichtenstein drew inspiration from comic books, he would often change the composition of the images he drew from, emphasizing certain elements to enhance the message that he was trying to convey.

Since Lictenstein's comic book-inspired pieces are perhaps his best known, and are most represented in museums and galleries, I was surprised to discover that he explored a much larger variety of themes in his work. He was particularly drawn to the subject of art itself, and art history in particular. In the image depicted above, Lichtenstein poked fun at the Abstract Expressionist movement, the predominant style of painting when Lichtenstein was beginning his career. Here, he turns the splatters and energetic daubs of paint that were meant to capture the emotions and individuality of the artist under Abstract Expressionism, and turns them into something mechanical and easily reproduced.

Lichtenstein was also fond of giving his unique spin on the work of other artists. In this series, Lichtenstein reproduces Claude Monet's famous "Rouen Cathedral" series. Monet painted some thirty images of the facade of this cathedral in order to capture the effects of different types of light at different times of day, throughout the course of the year. Lichtenstein took things one step further, by employing different printing techniques to render the same image. 

The Lichtenstein retrospective not only taught me a great deal about the artist's work and gave me a greater appreciation for his creative genius, it was fun. Part of the appeal of Pop Art is that it is easily accessible, and it has a sense of whimsy about it. It was easy to breeze through this exhibit, taking in the information and enjoying the artwork. Although I generally disagree with the concept that all museum exhibits need to be constructed as a form of "edutainment," I felt that the Lichtenstein exhibit blended the two seamlessly enough to be truly memorable.

Lemon Head...

Now that we are headed into the back stretch of August, fall is coming up just around the corner. For us, that means that our days for grilling are numbered, so it is time to squeeze in a few more weeknight cookouts before it gets too chilly to cook outdoors. Considering that I didn't really enjoy grilled food when we bought our Weber two months ago, it's surprising how well I've taken to it. I think it helps to be in control of the grilling process, so that the food gets a nice smoky flavor without becoming charred and blackened, like so much grilled food seems to be.

My Pinterest board has filled up with recipes for the grill that I never thought I'd be drawn to, but for tonight, I opted for a citrus and rosemary flavored chicken dish, because there was a good deal on lemons at the grocery store this week.Though I've never been a fan of regular lemon chicken, or lemon in general, I thought that this dish might be a better option because it tempered the tartness of lemon with the addition of orange juice.

I turned out to be partially correct. While the orange blunted the sourness of the lemon, and added a pleasant complexity to the dish, the predominant flavor was still lemon. Still, it was different enough that I really rather enjoyed the meal. The thought of cooking and reducing the leftover marinade into a sauce was rather unnerving for me, as I was paranoid about all the bacteria from the raw chicken, despite the fact that I was to boil it for an extended period of time. Neither Justin or I have food poisoning yet, but it's hard to ignore all the years of food safety indoctrination telling one to dispose of anything that has touched raw chicken.

This meal will definitely be gracing our table again when grilling season rolls around once more, but with one exception. The original recipe called for grilling up two sliced oranges and two sliced lemons, with the intent of squeezing them over the chicken at mealtime. While the gently charred citrus wedges looked beautiful on the platter, the chicken already had a sauce, and squeezing more citrus over it was overkill that doused the plate and made everything else on it soggy. We ended up not using them beyond the first portion, and now we've got a ton of leftover grilled citrus for which we have no other use. I hate wasting food, so I'm going to omit that step in the future unless I want to wow some house guests with an impressive and beautiful food display.

Grilled Citrus Chicken Breasts
adapted from Bon Appétit

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil plus more for brushing
1 cup fresh orange juice
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons minced fresh rosemary
2 teaspoons kosher salt plus more for seasoning
2 1/2–3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, pounded gently to even thickness

Whisk 2 tablespoons oil and next 4 ingredients in a large bowl; stir in 2 teaspoons salt. Add chicken breasts; turn chicken to coat, cover, and chill overnight.

Build a medium-low fire in a charcoal grill, or heat a gas grill to medium. Remove chicken breasts from marinade; set marinade aside. Place chicken breasts on grill. Cover and grill, moving chicken to different spots on the rack for even cooking but without turning, until slightly charred and cooked through, about 165 degrees.

Meanwhile, bring marinade to a boil in a small saucepan and cook until reduced to glaze consistency (about 1/3 cup); season with salt. Transfer chicken to a platter and spoon glaze over chicken.