Groundhog Day

Today is Groundhog Day.

Staten Island Chuck was hauled out of his burrow and predicted that spring is on the way. Nice!

Punxsutawney Phil, who lives much closer to here, saw his shadow. Six more weeks of winter. Shit.

As I was wondering which rodent oracle to believe, I found some groundhog-shaped cookies in a Cleveland coffee shop. Awesome, I thought. This ought to be good for some local divination. I'll get one and name it Cleveland Cookie! Maybe it means there will be an early spring.

I bought a cookie and headed out the door. Immediately afterward, I involuntarily skated down a giant ice patch that was the result of the melting and refreezing of January's 41 inches of snow. (This January was the second snowiest month ever in Cleveland records, which go back to 1870.) I went splat on the pavement. In the carnage, Cleveland Cookie was beheaded. So, uh, does that mean spring will never come? Eek.

Even less about Cleveland

I know, I know, the blog is supposed to be about Cleveland. I know I've been shamefully neglecting our nation's 40th largest city (in 2007). (BTW--I'm not alone in this neglect. Cleveland was the 33rd largest US city on the 2000 census. Its population has dropped 8.4% in those seven years. Ouch.)

Sorry, but I've been out of town a lot.

Last weekend I harvested a bumper crop of apples in New Jersey and saw my much-missed friends in New York.

This weekend I'll be in New Mexico.

Up next: New Hampshire? It would round out the news.

PS--The Plain Dealer included a recipe today for croissants in a can with chocolate chips slapped in the middle. Wrote it out as a recipe and everything.

aRABica vs. araBICa

The best kind of coffee bean is arabica. (The less-good filler one is called robusta.) It is pronounced aRABica. SRSLY, I quote the internet.

In Cleveland, a chainlet of coffee shops is called Arabica. Make that araBEEKa.

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Also, I'm going to an Indians game tonight.

Grocery store hijinks

My first trip to the grocery store in Cleveland involved some googling. I clearly don't know shit about this town, but I needed milk. It seems that there aren't too many options for grocery stores. There's a Whole Foods, which I didn't want to go to, and a Trader Joe's kind of far away. The standard issue grocery stores are Dave's Market and Giant Eagle (or Giant Iggle, to Pittsburghers--no kidding).

So I got directions to the Giant Eagle nearby. Every single customer except me was black.

The next time I went to the store, I tried the Dave's Market, about the same distance from my house as the Giant Eagle. The customers were white.

There is some very weird shit going on in this town.

For the record, my car was probably the beater-iest car in either parking lot.

Food bitching

Not "the food is bitchin.'"

I did get a decent bagel at Bialy's. An ex-New Yorker guy I met informed me that, no, I didn't get "a" bagel. I got the only bagel in Cleveland. The rest are the dreaded bread ring.

Today I paid $6 for a bottle of Sriracha. I was delighted to be able to do so. The store SOLD Sriracha. This is most certainly not a given.

I found some tortillas. Alas. They were mass-market corn tortillas that turned out to have wheat in them. And a whole bunch of other weird shit. Manny, the tortilla conglomerate guy, has gone to the dark side.

There are no local apples that I have seen, despite an article in the Plain Dealer reporting an epic apple harvest this year. Ok, I'm still figuring it out and all, but damn. Sell me an apple from Ohio! I'll buy it!

And speaking of the Plain Dealer. It is really a good paper. Solid international coverage, a lot of local news, and much, much more actual content than, say, the Chicago Tribune. It even has comics! Did you know that "Mary Worth" is still being published? No "Phantom" though. And it has a gigantic classified section every day.

But. But. There is a food section called "Taste." It is full of food abominations.

They include a story about and recipe from a woman who makes a vast amount of tomato sauce in her garage. The article includes a long disclaimer about how this recipe JUST MIGHT give you botulism. According to the government or some other such clowns.

Got a lot of zucchini on your plants this year? (You have a huge back yard. Duh. What do you think your $800 a month is paying for? Just that three bedroom house?) "Coat slices with a paste of garlic, olive oil, and ketchup, then grill and chop. Toss with cooked pasta tossed with a little oil, then dress for a room-temperature salad with feta cheese, kalamata olives, parsley, and a simple vinaigrette." Ketchup. On zucchini. With pasta. Ketchup with olives. Ketchup with feta. Ketchup?

Perhaps the most indicative of the tenor, though, is a recipe I read. I quote.

Homemade Skillet Meal Seasoning Mix

2 cups powdered milk
1/2 cup dehydrated onion
3 tablespoons beef or chicken bouillon granules
2 tablespoons garlic powder
2 tablespoons onion powder
2 tablespoons dried parsley
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground black pepper

Add that shit to a pound of ground beef and some egg noodles. Maybe some canned mushrooms! Eat up, Cleveland!

It's my theory that they spell out the measurements because if you gave a rat's ass about your mouth--and therefore knew the abbreviation for tablespoon--you wouldn't be making this.

Then I looked in the Plain Dealer archives. They have an article about how mustard is good on hot dogs.

Help!

Bagel quest!

It's a Sunday. What more could a person want than a bagel? (This also applies to other days of the week.)

I've been hunting around for the word about bagels. Here's what I've come up with.

Bialy's (as mentioned before):
Recommended by an ex-New Yorker, a law partner named Barbara.
Reviews
Map

Unger's:
Recommended by a historian of Eastern European Jewry.
Map
An apparently unrelated but cool Cleveland Unger

A place to poke about: Frum Cleveland. Maybe that'll turn up some pickles.

Friends & a Fudgie

I have some kick-ass friends.

Plus today I was inadvertently reminded of how in college I went to a 99 cent store with a certain other party and bought frizzy weave hair in big bunches. We wore them around campus in only the finest of styles.

Also I have some leads on bagels in this town. Apparently there is an orthodox neighborhood and two recommended shops. One is called Bialy's. That's promising.

And I have a Fudgie! Fudgie the whale is the best whale ever.

Go Ohio Carvel! Much moreso, go awesome pals.