Hot Doug’s

Posted on January 30, 2010 by Roger

Last Saturday, we joined our friends for a food adventure — a trip into the heart of Chicago to Hot Doug’s. We deliberately planned to visit after the lunchtime rush, but it made no difference. We arrived at 1:45 and found a line of probably 70 people standing on the sidewalk next to the building.

It was a gray day, with temperatures in the mid-20’s. We stood at the end of the line and waited. After about 15 minutes, this was our view toward the door.

The couple immediately in front of us were locals who dined at Hot Doug’s frequently. They were with a friend from Amarillo, Texas, who also dined there whenever he was in town. They were very friendly and gave us a lot of tips about what to order and how the restaurant worked.

After about 45 minutes, we finally got inside and looked at the menu on the wall.

Doug himself was taking the orders, and I saw why it took so long to get inside. He paced his order-taking to match the rate that tables opened up, which makes perfect sense.

While waiting for our food, we had plenty of time to look at the decor, almost all of which involved either hot dogs or Elvis.

Then the food came. I’d ordered the Saucisson Alsacienne, which is bacon sausage with creme fraiche, caramelized onions and camembert cheese.

My wife had the Foie Gras and Sauternes Duck Sausage with truffle aioli foie gras mousse and sel gris.

We both cut off about a fifth of our sausage and traded, and we both agreed that both were very good but that mine was a little bit better. I also had an awesome corn dog.

And we split an order of duck fat fries. At first, I wasn’t overly impressed, but they grew on me as we worked our way through the pile.

A friend had the Ribeye Steak Sausage (left). His wife had the Mountain Man Sausage made of venison, elk, antelope and buffalo (middle). The picture on the right was painted on the wall in the men’s room.

When we left, the place was scheduled to close in about half an hour, but there was still a line of people on the sidewalk. We all thought it was an experience worth repeating — but don’t go there if you’re in a hurry.

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What Is the Plan for Tomorrow?

Posted on January 22, 2010 by Roger

The heading of this post is the final sentence in The Wall, by John Hersey — a novel about a group of Jewish friends in the Warsaw ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland.

And The Wall is the final book on the Racine Library classics list that I started working on back in the late 1980’s. I had determined, back then, to start reading classics. My sister found a list of “must read” classics at the Racine Library and gave me a copy. I began reading books on the list and soon became discouraged. Most of them were gloomy and depressing. I wasn’t having any fun.

I decided to make my own list of classics to read. (This eventually turned into the Carp 500.) I completed that list in 1999 and looked for something else to read. That’s just the way I am — I thrive on listing.

And there, just waiting for me to pick up where I’d left off, was the Racine Library list. I started in again. And got discouraged and quit again.

And a few years later, started in again. And got discouraged and quit again.

But something about the stupid list kept eating at me. Maybe because it was the first one and I hadn’t finished it. I don’t know. But I felt compelled, somehow, to complete it. This battle with myself continued. On the one hand, I wanted to finish the list. On the other hand, I hated the list and wanted to be freed from it forever.

At one point, I even went so far as to destroy every copy of it. (I’d made a spreadsheet on my computer, I had the original copy at home and a second copy in my car for when I went to the library.) I tore them up and deleted them, and that was that.

Until I was browsing through an old blog and found it all over again. There were about 35 books left on the list. All those times I’d returned to it over the years had gotten me closer and closer to completion (and there was a fair amount of overlap with the Carp 500 — not all the books on the list were turkeys).

So I started again. I put no pressure on myself to complete it by a given date or even to read every book all the way through. If you follow the link above, you can see where I’ve marked the handful of books I quit. But even in those, I read a minimum of 50 pages, just to be legit.

For no reason in particular, the final unread book on the list was The Wall. And now I’m done.

During the past 20 years, when I’ve been a slave to this list, I’ve often imagined the librarian who originally compiled it. I figure she’s a woman — most librarians (and all “shes”) are. I imagine she put as much thought into the list as I generally put into my breakfast (Frosted Raspberry or Frosted Blueberry Pop-Tarts?). I see her retired now, living with her married daughter in Waukesha. I picture her sitting on a couch eating Cheese Puffs and watching reruns of The Simpsons, never knowing the power she had over me all these years.

But now I’m free! I’m free!

I think “What is the Plan for Tomorrow?” is a very fitting final sentence.

I’ve got to find another reading list soon.

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Wagon Wheel Restaurant — Greenbrier, Arkansas

Posted on December 29, 2009 by Roger

I found out about this place on Roadfood.com. It’s supposed to have excellent pies, and I love pie. We stopped in for lunch on our way back from Mount Magazine on the final day of our vacation.

It didn’t look like much from the outside, but the lot was packed. We parked in the very last available spot, way in the back next to the dumpsters.

We walked across the dining room to the pie display. A waitress came over and asked if she could help us. I told her we were there for the pie, and she directed us to a nearby table. The previous diners were slobs. There were crumbs all over the place. No problem — the waitress came over with a rag, made a wide sweep across the surface and brushed the entire pile onto my lap.

If I had been there for fine dining, it would have ticked me off. But since I was there for a blog post, it just made me laugh. As you can see from this photo taken shortly after, she didn’t do a very good job on the table either.

Here’s the waitress. Her name was Trish. I thought it odd how the “regular” customers felt free to wander into the food preparation area and help themselves to refills on coffee.

Table-wiping skills notwithstanding, Trish was actually a very good waitress. She asked us where we were from. I’m not sure how she knew we didn’t live in the area.  We split a chicken-fried steak sandwich for lunch. It wasn’t bad, but it had enough grease to fry a turkey.

Trish had told us when we came in that “the pies don’t look very good today.” I ordered coconut cream, my wife ordered chocolate cream. They were sorta runny looking, but they did taste good.

We had fun, although I don’t think I’d make a special trip to visit again. If you happen to find yourself driving through central Arkansas and are in the mood for a bit of local color and some pretty good pie …

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A Room With A View

Posted on December 29, 2009 by Roger

Our room in the lodge on Mount Magazine had a small balcony that overlooked the Petit Jean River Valley and Blue Mountain Lake.

I took a vast number of photographs, most of which didn’t come out at all the way I wanted them to. It was hazy, and the Ouachita Mountains were too far off for my camera to focus. I tried all sorts of settings and everything else I could think of to capture the feel of the place. I present the best of them here, with the times that I took them. Every photo on this post, except for the one above, was taken from the balcony during the 19 hours we spent at the lodge.

Monday 3:53 pm looking southwest

3:53 pm looking east. The cabins are part of the lodge.

3:54 pm looking south at a Turkey Vulture soaring over the valley.

5:14 pm looking east

5:15 pm looking south across Blue Mountain Lake toward the Ouachita Mountains

5:12 looking west

5:30 looking southwest

6:44 pm looking southeast over Havana and Belleville

Tuesday 7:01 am looking east

7:12 am looking east

7:20 am looking south

7:27 am looking southeast

7:28 am looking south

8:15 am looking southwest

9:11 am looking southeast

9:26 am looking south

10:14 am looking southwest

10:15 am looking southeast

We stuck around until the very last minute we could without getting charged for an additional day and were very reluctant to leave.

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Mount Magazine

Posted on December 28, 2009 by Roger

We got to Mount Magazine an hour and a half before we could check into our room. We spent the time looking at the scenery. First we drove along the north rim and stopped at several overlooks.

To the northwest, most of the slope was already in the shade, although the sun was still hitting the very top branches of the trees down below.

At another overlook, I noticed a Black Vulture that seemed to be enjoying the scenery.

We drove to the east end of the Mountain and took a short loop trail along the rim of Bear Hollow. That’s Mount Nebo with the flat top. It’s 36 miles away from Mount Magazine.  The plume of smoke visible on the left is from a nuclear plant near Russellville. Note the near-full moon too.

Looking down into Bear Hollow.

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