On the Milwaukee lakefront. A couple hours of perfect bliss on a beautiful summer evening in Milwaukee. Here’s what I ate. (Photos courtesy of our cell phones, but a visual’s a visual.)
I shared this sandwich with my dad, but I got all the peppers. The picture is shitty, but you might be able to tell that the bun was really quite good.
Not a sincere smile in the group, but that’s just because the toasted ravioli was too good for us to want to be bothered for a photo break.
After that, I partook of my sister’s calzone (cheese and spinach), and then we had these parmesan potato chips:
I was very enthusiastic about the Amaretto Puffs:
That custardy cream sauce was quite tasty, but I wish the amaretto had been more apparent in these little lumps of fried dough.
For our second and final dessert (we didn’t have room for the rice balls, after all) we had these pretty sorbetti in frozen hollowed lemons and peaches.
To top it all off, we carried a bag of Koepsell’s away with us. My dad swears this is the best popcorn in the world, and he even sends me their jars of kernels and their coconut oil when I’m at school.
This is exactly the meaning of a festival. Feasting. (The words are pretty closely related, etymologically.) I love taking a day and stepping outside of all health-related dietary considerations, to celebrate. What was I celebrating to-day? Well, being Italian, of course, and being back in Milwaukee! It’s beautiful.
The weather is such a vital part of our sense of home. Bernard always used to tell a story about when he did military service in the Côte d’Ivoire with a company of Bretons, and how they slowly realized that all the sun was giving them mal du pays. They were homesick for the overcast, rainy Breton sky. Of course, I was at home in Britanny for similar reasons. And though when I first came to New York, some plants looked outright exotic to me, I quickly adjusted to those, and don’t feel too out of place here, since it’s just a little bit warmer than at home. Of course, I feel most comfortable when it’s foggy. You don’t even notice a thing like that until you leave, but it was always foggy at home. I miss the marshes.
Then there’s the land. I’ll always be for lakes, for instance. The ocean just doesn’t do the same thing for me. Of course, standing alongside Lake Michigan, you can’t see the other side any more than you could standing next to the ocean. But it’s calmer, and freshwater, with coarser sand on the beaches.
So, however badly I might want to go study in the south to get their sense of the English language, I don’t think I could do it. I wouldn’t survive that heat.
I’m behind on the news. I have four editions of the BBC World Service podcast piled up in itunes after a hectic week. But I am so bored of the olympic torch stories. Which is interesting, because I never seem to get bored of the news from Zimbabwe.
And upon further consideration, I do take some interest in the ideas behind the events surrounding the torch relay. It is fascinating that something that really is no more than a symbol can mean so much to people on both sides of the question. And even those people who feel that the protesters are wrong–that they are, in confusion, attacking the symbol of the olympic games, conceived to promote peaceful relations, and not China–must admit that it’s impressive what an object like that can stir up.
Please see: the bbc radio podcasts
