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From Old Man on Campus:

The Shoreland’s 13 floors, hundreds of rooms, will be a dorm for another year or so before it’s transformed into high-end condominiums. Meanwhile, plaster sifts from the ceilings, and the lobby is a mishmash of couches, stacks of student publications, a big-screen TV and handbills covering the walls. A friendly, bored staff of desk attendants watches as students — listless, sleepy, harried, running late, dressed to the nines, falling down drunk, depending on the day and hour — file past.

Accurate. I can vividly visualize the scenes he describes. Funny, I miss the Shoreland.

(via Bailey)

St. Patrick’s Day for many means a wholesale celebration of faux-Irishness through Guinness and everything green. While I’m not a fan of beer, I decided to put something green together to eat today. One of my favorite food writers Mark Bittman of the New York Times made a chicken with salsa verde but since I can’t find half of those ingredients in this country, I made a simpler non-Irish dish: a green pilaf, based on Bittman’s own recipe. Why not try a simple green vegetarian dish for St. Patrick’s Day?

As an added bonus, I set this recipe to Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois. I was just in a Chicago-missing mood and listening to it while cooking, and it seemed to work so well.

Time: 45 minutes (mostly waiting, though)
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
Salt and pepper
1 1/2 cups (400cc) chicken stock (I used a bouillon cube—雞湯塊)
1 medium head of broccoli, just the flowers, in small chunks (maybe 3/4-1 cup)
1 cup (250cc) short grain white rice
1/2 cup (130cc) chopped parsley, optional

1. Track 1: “Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois.” Put oil in a pan on medium heat. Add the garlic, onion, and a pinch of salt and stir occasionally until the onion is translucent or until you hear the piano riff on track 3, “Come On! Feel the Illinoise!” In the down time, you can make sure your chicken broth is heated up in a pot.
   
2. Track 3: “Come On! Feel the Illinoise!” Add rice to the onion pan and stir occasionally until they get clear and start to brown, sometime during the second half of track 3, “Come On! Feel the Illinoise! Pt. II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me In a Dream.” Throw the broccolli in the broth to let cook for the last minute of “Carl Sandburg.”
   
3. Track 4: “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” Add the stock/broccolli to the rice/onion pan. Heat to a boil and then let cook for the rest of the track. Stir occasionally. Compare yourself to a serial killer as you watch the bubbles.
   
4. Track 5: “Jacksonville.” Cover and cook until the end of track 9, “Chicago.”
   
5. Track 10: “Casimir Pulaski Day.” Enjoy my favorite song on the CD. Turn heat off and let sit, uncover, stir gently, cover again, and let sit on the burner until track 15, “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us.” Optionally mix in chopped parsley for additional green. Serve.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!