A fellow alum from the University of Chicago created a ghost tour for her hometown of Cedar Falls, Iowa that might interest other entrepreneurs -
Ghost Tour Article from UChicago Magazine
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying Francr
Seafood Noodle Phô at Saigon Noodles in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget
I learned to love Vietnamese food when I lived and worked in downtown Chicago (Illinois) and ate at the Mekong House Restaurant after work. I had graduated with a degree in East Asian Studies from the University of Chicago and considered myself to be doing graduate work in Southeast Asian Studies when I ate at the Mekong House.
I mostly ate deep-fried egg rolls that I wrapped in a fresh mint leaf and tied with a string of fresh carrot before dipping them in sweet-and-sour sauce. The lemongrass chicken stir-fry I ate and loved was a close cousin to the Chinese stir-fries I also loved.
I did not venture into Vietnamese soups until I moved to Monterey County California and ate them at the Orient Restaurant in Seaside, California.
I like how phô soup has three layers of food items surrounded by delicious broth:
-half a bowl of rice noodles or glass noodles
-half a bowl full of sliced beef, sliced chicken, or seafood
-garnish toppings such as bean sprouts, fresh basil, lime wedges, and jalapeño slices
I recently tried seafood noodle soup (phô) at Saigon Noodles in Salinas, California and liked the large bowl of rice noodles and seafood ingredients that came with a container of broth that was large enough to fill the bowl twice.
The flavorful broth tasted like a bone broth that had been boiled with shrimp shells and strained. The soup was full of curled shrimp, scored squid slices, fish dumplings, fish balls, and imitation crab made from fish.
The soup came with packages of hoisin sauce for salt and sriracha for salt and spice. I like hot, spicy broth so I added sriracha to the soup.
Flavor and quantity of food in the seafood noodle soup (phô) at Saigon Noodles in Salinas, California make this dish a great deal for an international lunch.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Feta Omelets at the Agora Restaurant by Ruth Paget
A delicious memory I have of attending the University of Chicago is eating feta omelets at the Agora Restaurant in Hyde Park before going to study at the Regenstein Library.
My college roommate was a Greek-American, so getting her to support the local Greek diner was no problem. We took the University bus to the nearest stop and walked the final few blocks.
We were the steady diners, but three of our friends always tried to make it to breakfast, too. I warned them that if they did not come, we would talk about them. One of our male friends joined us for breakfast once and called us the female mafia.
By the time senior year rolled around, we spent our breakfasts sharing job-hunting information. We were looking for work in different industries, which made it easier to share what we had learned. There was a recession in 1986 with fewer recruiters coming to campus. We were unhappy about this, but industrious about finding work nonetheless.
I had found an international job in downtown Chicago doing informational interviews. I was a salesman at a translation agency that also did public relations work. (I eventually helped two classmates get work with the agency doing foreign-language narration and teaching/cultural consulting.)
Since I was employed, I bought two extra pots of coffee for the table, so my friends could have abundant coffee refills as we talked about Richard N. Bolles’ book What Color is Your Parachute?, which counsels people on how to find dream jobs.
We were all mortified that employment agencies downtown had typing skills tests. I told everyone to bite the bullet and learn to type 50 words per minute without a mistake; it could help with finding a job. Most businesses still used IBM electric typewriters in 1986 and were just beginning to introduce desktop computers to the workplace.
The University of Chicago had “Apple” computers in the study halls, but companies downtown used all kinds of computers with Microsoft software being introduced. Knowing lots of software programs was an asset and hard to obtain.
The tech change happening in 1986 was stressful. I credit the food I ate during this period of competitive and stressful tech change with keeping me strong, able to sleep, and willing to learn new ways of organizing and presenting information. Notably, I loved my weekly calcium-rich feta omelet with sliced, kalamata olives and roasted red peppers preserved in olive oil.
Greek diners offer plenty of nutritious sides to go with omelets like this that I always ate including bacon, whole wheat toast with butter, calcium-added orange juice, and real cream to go with coffee. (In addition to dealing with technological change, I credit this meal with preventing me from having osteoporosis – weak bones – later in life.)
After this robust breakfast, the female mafia would walk to the Regenstein Library like the “Reg Rats” we really were for a day of studying as we thought of dream careers and the reality of entry-level jobs.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Chicago Dim Sum by Ruth Paget
Eating Chinese dim sum was one of the money hacks I used to lead an urbane existence in Chicago on a budget as a young woman.
On Sunday mornings, my husband Laurent and I would leave our apartment in Marina City and walk up Michigan Avenue to Water Tower Place Shopping Center. Our destination was Rizzoli Bookstore. At Rizzoli’s we would buy Le Monde and Financial Times newspapers. I would sometimes buy art books or novels by Nadine Gordimer and Salman Rushdie.
We would check out upcoming movies on the way out and walk down to the Chinese restaurant with dim sum tea lunch, which is what I think is the Shanghai Terrace of the Peninsula Hotel now. I liked the circular booths in the restaurant.
We ordered fragrant jasmine tea to start as waitresses wheeled carts of steaming dim sum by our table. We pointed at many of them, and waitresses noted our choices with a Chinese stamp and wrote how many we chose.
There is a very good book for ordering dim sum called Dim Sum Field Guide by Carolyn Phillips. Her book is not a cookbook, but has line drawings of various dim sum, dim sum tea etiquette, Chinese characters for the various dim sum, alphabet spellings for Mandarin character pronunciations, and dim sum ingredients.
I used the cookbook Dim Sum and Other Chinese Street Food to find ingredients used in three dim sum “dumplings” that you can order in almost all dim sum restaurants:
*jiaozu – ravioli-like coin purse pasta made with minced pork, Napa cabbage, bok choy, and garlic chives
*Siu Mai – egg dough cups that are squeezed and twirled before steaming that are made with minced pork and shrimp, bamboo shoots, black mushrooms, and water chestnuts
*Har Gau – Crescent shaped dumplings stuffed with minced shrimp, water chestnuts, pork fat, and sherry
Leung’s cookbook shows hot to set up bamboo steamers in a wok over boiling water as well.
Pre-made dim sum would be welcome to many people who are working at home, because you would just have to steam them or heat them up in an oven. H Mart in California just might have all you need to set up dim sum tea lunches from tea to chopsticks.
By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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| Ruth Paget Selfie |
