Zarlengo’s soft serve was worth the trip. I got the peanut butter mania. It featured super smooth vanilla gelato, homemade peanut butter sauce, hot fudge, crushed Reese’s peanut butter cups, and whipped cream.

The plating was superb: the toppings came in 2 layers. This was my breakfast before a hike around the Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park.

I went to Montrose Beach for a Memorial Day BBQ. Brie brought her parents and black poodle Henry. Chef Carl of Boka and Chef Cedric of Urban Belly roasted some of a pig in a Caja China: the forelegs were confited and the head transformed into terrine. Henry snuck into the garbage and gobbled the kidney or liver: they chased him to a corner and he anxiously gulped the whole organ before it could be taken from him and it lodged awkwardly in his throat making his breathing irregular until stomachs acids dissolved it. I brought white cake balls.

Brie’s dad told me that he worked on a fully functional landlocked nuclear submarine in Windsor Locks, CT from the sixties to the seventies. He went on to run submarines’ nuclear reactors: chief engineer. I asked if he got a sense of the dimensions of the vehicle, the way you eventually inhabit the shape and bulk of your car. He said yes. I asked if he got a thrill from diving deep from the surface in the big machine to the watery depths. He said absolutely.

Meghan moved in with her man Rob in Andersonville. We got dollar oysters and saw the new place. Etta cut the cat’s hair and now it looks like Jim Carrey in Dumb & Dumber.

I took a class on tea and learned that all tea is leaves from the same plant. The oldest still growing tea tree is thousands of years old.

Etta and I went to MingHin for late night dim sum. We got something like five or six different kind of shrimp dumplings: all good. Small cuttlefish in yellow curry were snappy and chewy. I didn’t like the pork belly but did enjoy the tender and meaty lotus root braised with it. Etta ate the pork belly like it was her job. She ate my box of Swiss Cake Rolls. She also ate all the pizza. The firmness of the coconut pudding sealed the deal: this was the best dim sum I’ve had at Chicago’s Chinatown.

Lotus roots have been found to be rich in dietary fiber, vitamin C, potassium, thiamin, riboflavin, vitamin B6, phosphorus, copper, and manganese, while very low in saturated fat.

Chef Moyo brought me dat donut from the South Side: it was a big, buttermilk masterpiece. David asked about the donuts from Buffalo: I told him about the donut woman’s warning, at Verna’s in Cambridge. I met the GM of Doughnut Vault: she brought donuts.

The sand dunes located on the Michigan shore are the largest freshwater dune system in the world.

Etta got a season pass to Warren Dunes State Park for thirty something dollars. We drove out on my one day off and stopped off at Carlson’s for chili cheese dogs, fried cheese cubes, and root beer. It was almost a year to the day that I went to Carlson’s last year. I must have some kind of internal fried cheese cube clock. Yet again I passed at a cone from Bubble’s Ice Cream Parlour.

Despite thunder clouds passing ominously overhead like the spaceship from Independence Day, and two Indian-American children losing their beach ball in the wind, that I recovered for them in the water, and then, despite their pleading screams for me not to, tried throwing back to them only for it to get lost again in the wind, it was a good day at the beach. I did get the beach ball, and the ice cream. I got Toffee Fantastic at Oink’s Dutch Treat.

The team has invested in equipment for me. I have a lavalier microphone. A shoulder brace for steady cam. A dead kitten. The computer is coming soon. Rick directed to never split the eye. “Abundance for the dining room, composition for the photo.” He recommended the food photography of Penny De Los Santos.

After Rick and Deann had finished a long dinner that included flights of mezcal, I talked to them about hotdogs.

Four years after getting my camera, I filmed and edited my first video. Kelly and I went to Lawndale, a dangerous and poverty stricken neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago. We visited Sweet Beginnings, an urban apiary, also known as a bee farm. They hire folks who have serious obstacles to employment: criminal records. They help get people back on their feet, and also make amazing honey and honey-based skin care products. We serve the honey at Tortas Frontera.

I brought Kelly to Phil’s Last Stand after the shoot. She is from LA and had her first Chicago style char dog. I had a char cheddar dog on the patio. I also drank a black iced cold brewed coffee and got to editing. That night Etta and I went to La Scarola for an old school Italian dinner. She got lasagna and I got that other Chicago classic, chicken Vesuvio.

Here is an approach to make fine dining more approachable by offering a $14 hotdog. I liked it. The sausage made in house was thick and snappy, like a Superdawg but drier. I liked how the condiments for the dog: mustard, relish, tomato, onion, real sport peppers, were totally separated from the balsamic ketchup for the fries. Chicago kosher. I liked how Gene, our silver fox server, split the sunchoke salad, chicken fried softshell crab and hotdog and we didn’t have to ask. Gene spaced the meal in such a way that I was able to recover between courses, creating a lovely Sunday dinner with Etta.

He impressed right off the bat moving us from the crowded front window dining room full of young families and crying children celebrating Mother’s Day to a table in the quieter and more stately interior dining room beside a roasting marble fireplace. I embarressed myself when I inquired why the header on the dessert menu read, “Sweets & Stinkies,” and he kindly informed me that it’s pastry and cheese. They offer a $26 31 year old cave aged pu-erh tea, a $14 hotdog, amazing service from Gene, and for dessert the cheesecake sundae. It’s grapefruit granita and poprocks over graham cracker crumbles, savory cheese, and huckleberries.

I dreamt I was on a trip with Jon Murray, Jonathan Rodriguez, and others, about 5 of us. We were staying at a resort owned by a Scandinavian woman. Jonathan brought weed and gave me a bag. We went on an excursion to swim in a river. I had my phone in the water. The river was muddy and full of leaves. I got on a rock in the sun and gave my phone to Meagan, a cook at Topolobampo. She almost dropped it because it was slipping out of the plastic case. Meagan showed me the photo: I had manboobs. We swam back to the resort. Walking away from the water, Murray commented on the intricate blue tiles by the entrance to the swimming area.

On the way back we saw the police searching the resort, room by room. I had a bag of weed, so I detoured into an animal hospital. An elderly woman had a Portuguese water dog and a smaller dog. “Is that a Portuguese water dog?” I asked. “Yes,” said the small dog, “and my name is Rex.” Then the small dog said, “Hungry, dog food, hungry, dog food.” “That’s wonderful,” I told the motionless old woman. “It’s a talking dog.” The scandinavian woman found me and showed me a room full of wild birds. The owl stared into my eyes. I realized then I had left my grey towel by the river. It was old, from my mom’s house, and I knew they would throw it in the trash. I went back to the swimming area to find it and the Scandinavian woman was there, standing nude on the blue tiles.