04.02.03
Some of the things I am looking forward to most about living in Chicago are culinary in nature.
I am excited about the fact that there are tons of stores throughout the city that stock wonderful, sometimes exotic, and frequently mundane items that the stores in Iowa neglect to carry. Or are only available at the co-op and tiny ethnic specialty stores.
World Market carries my most favorite wine in the world, boxes of palmier cookies, and bars of Lazzaroni bittersweet chocolate with Amaretti di Saronno crumbles.
Every store that carries crackers has Carr's assorted crackers for cheese, which I could only find at Super Target in Cedar Rapids, and they don't even seem to have them now, and Dominick's -- the regular old grocery store -- carries things like kefir, a co-op only staple around here.
Sam's Wine has not only every wine I could ever possibly desire to drink except the one that World Market carries, but also explorateur cheese, and other wonderfully odd foodstuffs. And the cashiers there are sweet, in a ghetto fabulous sort of way.
"Baby, what's this?" *holds up a small container of saffron*
"Saffron?"
"What do you use that for?"
"Um, you cook it in things like Spanish Rice and Moroccan food."
"Oh, okay." *rings it up and hands it to me* "Baby, you better put that in your purse so you don't lose it 'cause it's small."
And people actually ask me why I want to leave Iowa.*
*My stock answer used to be, "Because I hate Iowa, and I never wanted to move here in the first place." but has now transitioned to, "Because I don't really have any friends around here (meaning Iowa City) anymore, and I just need to be somewhere with more opportunity and a better selection of stuff. Plus, they have IKEA."
Somewhere a lot of people I have spoken to about this in Iowa have gotten the mistaken idea that Chicago's residential sector is entirely comprised of ritzy downtown condos, and ghetto tenements. Sure, those sorts of things exist, but there's a whole lot of in between there too. And most of it doesn't involve $12/hr parking ramps, Banana Repulic, soul food, or getting your hubcaps stolen.
What's in your head?