Music and Pork

On Friday night, the stars aligned, and yet again Kevin and I were invited to a meat filled dinner by our friend Ian. He works at Simpatica Dining Hall and this weekend he got to write the menu and cook dinner for everyone. His muse was the pig, and we ate a lot of it. It started with headcheese with spicy pickled beets and mustard. Headcheese is delicious but kind of creepy (you know I don't mind eating face, it's just the gelatin part that gets me) but I found Ian's to be very pleasant. The next course, my most favorite of all, was risotto with sugar snap peas, sharp cheese of some kind, and a big slice of caramely pork belly. If only I could have a big bowl of that right now for breakfast... The main dish was double thick pork chops that he roast on a spit in front of the restaurant (we got to stand next to it and sniff on it for a few minutes before we went inside to sit down) with sweet smokey grits. And of course, dessert was great too- caramel ice cream with pralines and candied ham chips. Ian explained that he made the ham chips by boiling them in a thyme simple syrup- then he reduced the hammy simple syrup and made an incredible caramel sauce with it. This was a perfect evening because it started with going to Lille and tasting some of Dave's chocolates, then the pork dinner, and ended meeting up with Dave again for some vermouth! I've said it before and I'll say it again, I just can't wait until I'm an old lady and can be a vermouth alcoholic.

Last night, another fateful evening of delight. We managed to scrape together some tickets to the sold out Neko Case show on craigslist! I started listening to her this winter after years of claiming to hate her, and fell in love. By now my love has grown so much, it's stupid. Her voice is SO BEAUTIFUL, and live it is unreal. She had a pedal steel player. My heart belongs to the pedal steel, especially one being played under a tasseled lamp such as this one was. She also had a large owl painting/cutout that her tour artist made for the stage, and it looks just like Jacky Scrapple.

One great moment was when Neko said "this next song is about waking up and not knowing where you are, only to realize you're in prison and have to clean toilets for the rest of your life" and her backup singer said "That's better than working in a restaurant." And the crowd when crazy. It was a service industry kind of night, I suppose.

I also liked her hair and clothes. I could not see her shoes which was a sad thing. She did not play my two real favorite songs but I was still able to squeal and say "my favorite!" a lot of times anyway (I have a lot of favorites).

And she has a running video in the background of pretty things like cartoons of little girls combing tigers fur and killer whales swimming through the sky.

I'll stop.