That weekend marked the first Christmas party of the season for me.  And, I have to say, it was a fine one at that.  I flew up to Chicago Thursday afternoon and met Donette in Town-I-Can-Never-Remember, Illinois.  Her office was having a holiday party Friday evening, and it takes me at least one day to acclimate.  For dinner that night we tried out Lou Malnati’s, one of the endless pizza options in the area.  The topping selection was remarkably limited, but what they did have was quite good.  I’ll keep that opinion to my own pizza;  They just didn’t really have anything Donette liked so she was left a bit underwhelmed.

Friday she put in a good 1/2-day at the office, then we met up with everybody at a hotel in downtown Chicago.  After rounding everybody up, we all hopped in cabs and headed to dinner at the Kinzie Chophouse.  I’d been looking forward to this meal ever since I looked at the menu online.  After much careful consideration, I’d already decided on the Sesame Crusted Ahi Tuna.  One look at the steaks being wheeled out to all the other tables quickly changed my mind though;  I ended up with a 16 ounce Delmonico with lobster sauce.  I don’t know what ever made me think I would actually order fish at a steak house, and indeed I just couldn’t pull the trigger when the time came.  Remarkably, after that enormous meal, everybody still had enough energy left to go out, so we walked a short distance to 10pin Bowling Lanes.  Bowling isn’t really my thing, but it was a great time all the same.  We bowled two entire games (which was quite a while, considering there were six of us on each team,) then some of the group headed home and the rest of us headed over to the House of Blues.  We were enjoying some fine music, and the next thing you know the lights came on;  We’d actually closed a place down.

Saturday morning I would pay the price for this remarkably late night.  We did manage to get up and eat breakfast, then went right back to bed.  Whew, too old for those late nights I guess.  Finally, around 3:00 or so we decided we really should see some sites, so we headed out into the rain for a bit of light shopping.  The streets were absolutely insane;  You could barely walk down the sidewalk without people bumping into you constantly.  I wore out on that scene pretty quickly, but at least we could say we didn’t spend the entire day in the hotel room.  For dinner we met up with our friend Rick, who lives nearby.  He suggested Pazzo’s, which turned out to be a fine meal indeed.

Sorry, a little sarcasm accidentally snuck into my title.  It couldn’t be helped.  It was actually another in my long streak of safely mediocre weekends, which is OK.  Friday, Donette came home from two weeks straight in Chicago so we decided to go enjoy each others company at some new, exciting venues.  We selected the Brooksider, and after that became tiresome we tried a place down the street called “Jalapenos.”  Nothing wrong with a little familiarity.  It might be a bad sign that I could tell the name of every single staff member I interacted with, at both places.  Or it might be good, I don’t know.

Saturday we had chores to do.  Stuff around the house, doggie school, stuff like that.  We did go out for a bona fide Date Night for our evening entertainment.  We really don’t get to see each other too much lately, so we decided to hit the town a bit.  We had a nice dinner at the Savoy Grill, which was awesome.  Top notch, if a bit out of my price range.  After that….  Well I’m not sure how to best describe the next outing.  It had been so long since we’d gone out, I actually thought it sounded like a great idea when she suggested Le Miserables at Music Hall.  Really, I did;  I was honestly looking forward to it.  I think it was about six seconds into it when I realized “Holy crud, this is the show I renamed “Phil Miserable” after we saw it at Starlight.”  Yep, the same.  Except this was inside, with no bats to watch for  diversion and worse seats.  What can I say, I just don’t think theater is my thing.  I tried to gut it out, but I’m not sure I put on a very good front because she mercifully suggested we call it a night at intermission.  I don’t think she was liking it too much either really;  We were too far back and couldn’t see very well.  A nice evening out though, it never hurts to try new things.  Well, maybe a little bit.

Sunday I spent the better part of my day trying out my super-duper new dutch oven.  I made a massive pot of turkey gumbo with all the turkey leftovers from Thanksgiving.  (Yes, Food Safety Majors, they’ve been stored safely frozen since then.)  It came out OK I guess.  The new pot performed admirably, but I didn’t get my roux dark enough.  Ran out of patience, again.  Geez, if a nice dark roux can really be made in 20 to 30 minutes like all the recipes say, I’d sure like to know how.  I gave up at 50 minutes, and it wasn’t near dark enough.  I was just tired of stirring.  It cost me in terms of finished product though;  Just not quite as much flavor.

I saw two bobcats out the window at the office today.  Two!  Together!  I should have taken a picture.

That’s all I got.  Best effort.  Maybe I should just shut down until after Christmas.

Humbug.  I’m slipping into a Holiday-induced slump already.  Nothing but downhill from here.  I don’t even have anything specific to complain about, just a general sense of malaise.  Actually, I didn’t have a bad weekend at all.  Actually, I didn’t have a bad week at all.  Backing all the way up to last Wednesday, I met up with a merry band of elderly gentlemen down at the Brooksider for the annual AKL Alumni Luncheon.  This event originated as a football game many years (decades) ago, but as we all aged and became increasingly incapable of exercise it slowly degenerated into a lunch event.  Much more relaxing I must say.  It was a well-attended event this year;  I believe at one point there were 21 guys around the table.

Thursday was the official holiday, as I remember.  Unfortunately, still being oncall, I was relegated to the confines of my house.  I made the best of it though.  Threw a turkey on the smoker, and made sides of green rice casserole, mashed ‘taters and gravy, and kale with smoked turkey.  It was a pretty solid meal, if slightly non-traditional in the sense we were by ourselves, and didn’t have any pie.  (Oops.  My bad.)  One of Donette’s nephews was kind enough to drive us down some deviled eggs to correct that oversight, luckily.

Friday ended up a rather unplanned day of shopping.  It began with a somewhat benign oil-change appointment, and started going south when I decided to kill some time by walking around the showroom floor.  Eventually, I ran home and got Donette and we ended up test-driving four different vehicles.  (None of which we have purchased so far.)  It was oddly entertaining;  I generally despise car salesmen, not to mention driving in general.  After that we hit a few malls, still on the hunt for the elusive dutch oven deal.  Alas, no purchases were made to that end either.  Exhausted from my thoroughly unproductive day, I spent the rest of the evening at the Brooksider with The Guys, detailing our respective holiday adventures.

Saturday and Sunday are something of a black hole;  I can’t really remember what I did.  I’m sure it was very fun, not to mention rewarding.  Or maybe it wasn’t.  Everyone will be relieved to know I did finally decide on a dutch oven.  I actually ended up ordering one directly from the Le Creuset site, after getting an email that they were running some after-Thanksgiving sales.  Don’t actually have it in my hands yet, but presumably it is somewhere over the ocean at this writing.  I see a large pot of turkey soup in my near future.

That weekend fell squarely in the category of “Making the best of a bad situation.”  I was stuck oncall, but I have to admit I managed my share of fun.  I actually had a relatively fun week overall, including a few new dining experiences, but that would broaden the base of my update outside the normal scope so I’ll leave that part out.

Come to think of it, on further reflection, the only fun I had was Saturday.  Rats, I could have sworn I did a lot.    Well, I crammed an entire weekend of fun into one day I guess.  I got up semi-early, packed up a carload of supplies, and headed up to Martin’s for a day of cooking. He was firing up his smoker for some upcoming holiday or another, and had generously offered to share grill space with others.  I ran out and picked up a fresh turkey at Trader Joe’s, and while I was at it dug through the freezer to see if we couldn’t scare up a batch of gumbo too.  I got up to the Northland around 11:00, dropped off all the stuff, then Teagan and I had to run right back to the ‘hood to attend a doggie class.  We’ve taken a few classes at the local pet store, and since graduated to a private trainer for her “special needs.”  Well, this same trainer was offering a small class at the nearby Spay – Neuter clinic, and she thought Teagan might benefit from it, so I signed us up.  It’s just a basic obedience class, but she needs to work on her socialization skills so I figured what the heck.  (Some might argue I do too, yet I don’t get sent back to kindergarten every year.   Hmmm.  Food for thought.)  It went OK I guess.  At the end of the day it’s a six-week class for less than the cost of an hour visit to my house, so if I get tired of it I figure I already got my money’s worth.  After class I took the pup back home and rolled back north to check the turkey project.  It was going just swimmingly;  There were five or six birds on the cooker, and a good crowd had gathered to enjoy the afternoon.  Martin and I got to work on the gumbo, which kept me up there quite a while after the rest of the crowd had left.  I’ll tell you what, that stuff is quite a process.  Worth the effort though, I was very pleased with the results.  I was hesitant to leave Martin in charge of dividing it up equitably, but I had to go pick up Donette downtown so I trekked back south.  I slept very fitfully that night, convinced he was sneaking an extra scoop or so into his container.  Considering the mess we all left in his kitchen I suppose he deserved a slightly heavier portion though.

Sunday I never really got around.  You know, football and all that.  It appeared to be a beautiful day outside but I didn’t take advantage of it, save a short game of fetch in the backyard.  The vast majority of the day was spent on the couch watching all the games, and researching dutch ovens.  Oh, what a sad life I lead in my old age.  I’ll share the results though, since I am sure you want to participate in this fascinating life-event, and because I literally didn’t do anything else.  I’m in the market for a 5 – 6 qt enameled model.  After an entire day of reading, I believe I’ve narrowed it down to a Le Creuset, Staub, or possibly a Kirkland.  Honestly, I’m leaning towards the Staub at this point.  There are many on the ever-so-reputable Internet who will staunchly swear that Kirkland is the same thing, even that it is made in the Staub factory, so it is still in the mix.  The question remains though, could I do without that fancy name brand stamped on the lid?