The four letter word terrifies me. Rice. Every time I pull a pan out of the oven and peel back the aluminum lid, I cringe. Will it be fluffy or mush? Rice is the standard by which cooks in our kitchen our measured. There are roughly seventy two hundred grains of rice in a cup, and in our industrial size kitchen, we literally […]
Chinese-American Test Kitchens
Off the Grid
The words were stuck in my mouth like a dry piece of dressing. Not even the green Jell-o could help out. “No, I don’t live in a shelter. I live with people who operate the shelter.” “Are they homeless, too?” “None of us are homeless,” I tried to explain. “We live in an intentional community…by choice.” I thought about the weird […]
The Best Recipe I’ll Never Eat
As a cook for a Motley Crew that serves the homeless in Uptown, I have come across a lot of recipes that I’d never eat. They include Indian curry using beef scraps from an Italian diner. I’d always be afraid I’d find a pinky ring in the scraps…still attached to a pinky. Then there’s the recipe for roasted Brussels sprouts […]
Eight Cents a Toe
There were more shoes in his cart than a centipede had feet. “Dang, sir, ” I started, eyeing the blue platform pumps hanging over the push bar, “What are you going to do with all of these shoes?” “What I do, no business to you,” he snapped in a thick Belizean accent. You think I had asked if he was wearing women’s underwear. The […]
Jesus Jail
So I’ve been incarcerated for almost a year now. Not at Cook County, but Jesus Jail. But you might know it as Jesus People or JPUSA, an intentional faith based living community. Folk from all walks of life live here: artists, musicians, junkies, punkies, the tatooed, tattered and torn, all taking time out from whatever broke them to recover. And people come […]
A cuppa wifi
He was shaving outside of the donut shop with one of those disposable razors you get in a hospital care kit. I imagined how dull that blade was as he checked his reflection in the glass. As he moved in closer to shave his jawline, the man stopped to read a sign. FREE WIFI He placed his razor down on the cement curb and hustled inside. […]
Walk of Shame: Displacing Uptown’s Homeless
Over the past two days, I witnessed two walks. First, was the walk of thousands of music lovers in Chicago’s Uptown to the Mumford and Sons concert. They walked right in front of where I live, lemmings on their way to the concert venue at Montrose Harbor. The Alderman wanted to make sure the streets were clean for these drive-by visitors […]
Sugar Glazed Justice
“Miss, could you spare a dollar so I could get something to eat?” I took a good look at his leathery face as he rattled his cup near the Dunkin’ Donuts in Uptown. “Nope.” I didn’t feel guilty at all when I said it. That’s because I was the cook in the building where he lived. “I am so insulted!” I laughed. “Are […]
Creating a Craving for Literacy
Harriet the Spy. Curious George. Homer Price with his donut machine Three of my favorite childhood friends. I would travel around the world and back with them, my ticket to these places being a local library card. Now, kids aren’t even getting off the tarmac of their imagination, as some won’t read anything longer than a tweet. In Asia, there […]
Food Wizard
“Just a minute Lord! Before you serve that fish, let me dress it up with a sprig of these!” the bearded boy suggested as he plucked wild herbs from this bush. “Anything else, Mikey?” “Be sure to hone your knife before you cut those loaves. You don’t want to cut your finger.” And that’s how Jesus ended up feeding five thousand instead of […]