Chicago forecast: cold and ice cream

I was invited to participate in a summit on nutrition in medical education in Chicago, I suspect because of the pair of essays I wrote about my nutrition elective for medical students, which incorporates the history of nutrition.

It's hosted by three of the important regulatory bodies, and we hope to stimulate the creation of (inter)national guidelines for the incorporation of more teaching about food and nutrition for medical students and residents.

Cardiologist Dariush Mozaffarian gave the keynote lecture, from which I really liked this slide, which explained that one of the reasons for some of the nutritional problems we have now in the 21st century (obesity, malnutrition, processed foods) is that we are still living with the food system that was created in the 20th century for different problems (war, famine, undernutrition).

A colleague of mine sat on one of the panels, in which she talked about wanting to provide disease-specific dietary guidelines to her co-residents, but she found out they didn't even know how to do a dietary assessment in order to diagnose a nutritional problem.

My contribution to the conversation was a drawing with my group's answer to the question, What is going well in nutrition in medical education? The table's legs are culture, food, community, and health. The dishes are hope, tools and experts, and creativity. There is also a little empty dish to represent the bitterness of the educators who have been working on this topic for years with little purchase. We think the time is finally right for multiple stakeholders to recognize the centrality of nutrition to health and wellness across the lifespan and for both patients and practitioners. The session organizer invited me to stand up and give a little bow for my "Picasso."

For the 2.5 days of the summit, they fed us very well; here's a tropical dried fruit and and nut mix for afternoon snack.

On the left, a view of cool architecture from the conference room.

On the right, the lighthouse visible in Lake Michigan from my hotel room.

Bodéwadmikik ėthë yéyék
You are on Potawatomi land

Banners over the Chicago River, died green with vegetable dye for the St. Patrick's Day celebration this past weekend. It was surprisingly green, when we could see if from the windows beyond the occasionally driving snow.

Other things I saw: Room 9 2/8 in the hotel is Harry Potter themed.

A tiny glass greenhouse open during the week; presumably you could eat lunch there,

or have a team meeting in a different location.

In the evening, I treated myself to a visit at the Museum of Ice Cream [paid promotion follows],

one of several locations in the United States and Asia.

Groups are let in on the half hour. We were encouraged to create a fun nametag for ourselves; I made a play on our old cat's name, "Erasmus," as "Razz" (think: raspberry) with a kitty face. We were herded onto a pink replica of the inside of a bus so the staff person could explain the format, and then she gave each of us a (free) milk chocolate frozen Dove bar.

I chose to sit and eat that in the main dining area, where other ice cream as well as cocktails were available for purchase. This room is for an extra experience that can be bought--indeed, the place is set up for groups of various sizes (e.g. a birthday party). As a single middle-aged woman, I am not their target demographic, except insofar as I fancy myself a social-media influencer. Since I had no one to take my picture, I should have invested in a selfie-stick like some of the other guests.

It's also not a great place to bring very small children, since they won't be able to eat that much ice cream, unless you're planning to help them with it. Hasty visitors could miss the pink touch screens which ask provocative questions, like whether the guest would rather float away in a hot air balloon or some other equally fantastical option.

On the left, "Why ice cream? Ice cream is the ultimate unifier. It's accessible across the world and all cultures." It turns out New Zealand consumes the most ice cream; the United States is second.

On the right, "Did you know? In 1782, the first not air balloon was set to fly with a rooster, a duck, and a sheep in it. These three musketeers were recorded as the first hot air balloon passengers ever."

In the jelly bean room there were a few hands-on activities, but mostly you could eat this pineapple confection with a hard cherry shell. Some people scoffed when I said I was visiting on a day when there were flurries in the forecast, but is there a bad kind of day on which to eat ice cream? 

In the next room I took a selfie with the enormous cherries and searched this image for cherries and strawberries. The whole place was instagramable. I just wish there had been a coat check, as it was tough to juggle the kind of winter coat you need in Chicago with ice cream and a cellphone.

The next room with food had "Superman" (an unidentifiable concoction of red and blue) and raspberry sorbet. I chose the latter and was disappointed by the blandness. Again not a whole lot to do until I got to the next room which had too much stimulation in it. Late in the game, here was a wall with objects from the history of ice cream and hard-to-read labels of red on pink. There was a cute little video about ice cream and the museum foreshadowing the next taster. Two walls of interactive exhibits, not all of which were in very good shape anymore. And a couple things in the center of the room. It seemed late in the game to have so much interactivity in a room that could lead to large crowds, if they even had the patience or interest.

These large scoops of ice creams from around the world taught me that, for instance, "Aukutaq is a frozen treat unique to western Alaska and northern Canada, made by whipping caribou fat together with salmonberries, fish, tundra greens and a dash of seal oil."

In the next room you could play 3 holes of minigolf (I came very close to a hole-in-one, couldn't get the ball to fall into the hole despite a depression, and skipped the last one). It was also the location of a hotdog-flavored ice cream served on a bright pink mini bun with mustard and relish. It was...different. 

 Since I was supposed to be meeting a friend "for dinner," I skipped the last room and sample (chocolate cookie dough and arcade games) in favor of the famous "sprinkle swimming pool," which is a large indentation filled with plastic sprinkles. They are less viscous than your typical ball-pit balls, so everybody floats.

Then it was off to meet my graduate school "work spouse" at the original Billy Goat Tavern for which the "curse" of the Chicago Cubs is named. The burgers are supposedly very good, but I just watched him eat one since I was full of frozen treats.

Maybe it's counterintuitive that the "health nut" thinks it's okay to have ice cream for dinner, or maybe it's all right once in a while to start with dessert and skip the entrée.

Anyway, it was a quick trip to the Windy City for a lot of work and a little bit of play (a different friend had picked me up from the airport on Sunday for a convo and a healthy snack). The Museum of Ice Cream has other locations and is worth an hour or so of time, especially if you're there to take photos while catching up with friends or family.

An Elite Yelper in Phoenix

Bonus post! Here are some pics from the more memorable of our food experiences while on vacation in Phoenix.

Lunch at The Fry Bread House -- A must if you're interested in Native American culture in the Southwest. The Gastro Obscura article in which I learned about it explains that "fry bread" is either the product of forced assimilation with white culture and government food boxes, or an example of culinary genius when faced with limited resources. Either way, cheap, fast, and delicious. This is my Yelp! review. 

Dinner at Organ Stop Pizza -- Dear Husband heard about this unique eatery at an American Guild of Organists chapter meeting, when the presenter discussed famous theater organs. It's the oldest pizza parlor with the largest Wurlitzer theater organ. The food is just okay; you're really there for the atmosphere. Here's my Yelp! review.

If you go, be prepared for sensory overload.

Bottom left: trumpet stops at the back of the balcony.

Bottom right: disco ball overhead and a shot of the console with the lights on.

Dinner at Cochina Madrigal -- After hiking South Mountain, we were ready to treat ourselves at THE best restaurant in these United States of America, according to Yelp's 2022 100 Best Restaurants List. It was loud, and busy, and we enjoyed our Mexican dishes. I wish had had someone to go with us to share an order of their famous churros, because DH wasn't interested, they're not as good rewarmed, and I couldn't finish off a whole order by myself. Here's my Yelp! review.

Lunch at Pizzeria Bianco -- Alas, we did not get to visit this famous pizza parlor, because I didn't realize it was across the street from the baseball stadium where the World Baseball Classic was being held at the very same time. 2.25-hour wait? Not if we wanted to catch our flight!

Honorable mentions: lunch on the sidewalk at Farm & Craft in Scottsdale; take-out from Harumi Sushi& Sake with its famous purple rice; a relaxing meal at Palette at the Phoenix Art Museum; and dinner at Flower Child at Desert Ridge before a concert.

Didn't place: Ice cream from Shakes & Cones; Sonora Taco Shop; and the Wildflower at the airport.

Bicycling along the canal with Camelback Mountain in the background.

A Peaceful, Friendly Garden in Phoenix

For the last day of vacation, I was so pleased that our departing flight didn't leave until late afternoon that I had looked for an activity to do on Saturday morning, like a pottery-making class or a couples massage. I was thinking of our pre-pandemic trip to Portland, OR, when we participated in a free Kung Fu class at the Chinese Garden. So I was delighted to discover a class at the Phoenix Japanese Friendship Garden on ikebana (flower arranging). It seemed like the garden itself was small, so this would give us an excuse to spend more time there. Alas, about a month before our trip, I received an email that the instructor was no longer available, and did I want to enroll 2 weeks later or have a refund? I took the refund, but we still ended up spending over an hour at the garden, mostly sitting on a bench by the water, enjoying nature and people watching. Dear Husband mentioned it was the perfect way to hang onto that relaxing "vacation feeling." It turns out we needed those reserves, because I had unknowingly planned for us to eat "the best pizza in the country" at a restaurant next to Chase Field at the exact time that a World Baseball Classic game was scheduled. Traffic was terrible, and the wait at Pizzeria Bianco was 2.25 hours, so we opted for a taco and a burrito from Sonora Taco Shop, a hole-in-the-wall eatery closer to the airport, and then watched the game on the TV in the sandwich place where we got second lunch before going through security.

This is a kasuga doro, a 10-foot-tall stone lantern named for the Kasuga Shrine in Nara, which was the capital of Japan in the 9th century.

In 1976, Phoenix and Himeji became Sister Cities, and in 1987, Mayor Matsuji Totani proposed this joint project. Completed in 1996, the 3.5-acre site includes a tea house with garden, a stone garden, a courtyard garden, and the stroll garden we walked through.

Its name includes the Japanese words for heron (ro), the bird symbol of Himeji + phoenix (ho) + and garden (en). RoHoEn was designed as a miegakure or "hide-and-reveal" garden such that you can't see all of it from any angle.

The koi pond has over 300 fish in it. In the middle background is the 12-14-foot waterfall, and on the right is a yukimi doro or "snow-viewing lantern," whose roof is designed to catch snow. The stony peninsula behind is is supposed to look like the scaley back of a fish.

From the bench where we sat, we watched a hummingbird visited bushes, gardeners weeding, and other visitors taking photographs of each other. The city is very close, but the traffic noise wasn't bothersome compared to the burbling of the stream and the sounds of the waterfall.

Meet Shachi, a mythical creature with the face of a lion and the body of a fish. In Japanese folklore, he can make it rain. Shachi "gargoyles" were used to protect important buildings from, such as Himeji Castle.

On the left is a stone pagoda (tasoutou) designed to store Buddist relics. It should always have an odd number of tiers.

The four distinct landscapes represented in the garden are low-lying grasslands, woodlands, forested mountain, and stone beach, if you walk in a clockwise direction.

All of the stones, rocks, and boulders in RoHoEn come from Arizona--including the 25-ton behemoth next to the waterfall--except for the blue-grey cobblestones on the beach, which come from Mexico.

From above, the koi pond is suppose to have the shape of the kanji character "kokoro," which means "heart" or "spirit."

The other bit of Japanese culture I wanted to experience in Phoenix, given its proximity to the West Coast, was Japanese soda. You see, one of the comics I read regularly online featured a character who has a crush on another student, so she offered to buy and open a bottle of Ramuné for her (on Valentine's Day, no less). Only there were no words, so I had to look to the comment section to find out what was going on. sjordane explained,

Ramune is a Japanese carbonated soft drink. It was introduced in 1884 in Kobe by the British pharmacist Alexander Cameron Sim. Like Banta, an Indian lemon drink, ramune is available in a Codd-neck bottle, a heavy glass bottle whose mouth is sealed by a round marble thanks to the pressure of the carbonated contents.

I found a short video on YouTube of a family demonstrating how to do it and put it on my Phoenix bucket list. Sure enough, at the Japanese Friendship Garden, they offered several flavors. Dear Husband got the sweet lychee, and I chose the more mellow melon. As you can see, we managed to open our bottles and enjoy their contents.