Wish that I was on ole rocky top

Warning: a ferociously, obnoxiously long post is about to ensue.  I gotta get it all out, and then we can move on.  Subsequent posts on this topic will be briefer.

I'm finally taking action on an idea that has been percolating in my head for a long time.  Some readers have heard me mumbling about this plan and asking advice; others will be taken by surprise completely. Some of you will have no interest in this project whatsoever; others will hopefully enjoy (or at least be bemused by) my learning curve over the next 14 months or so.

It started several years ago when I read Alexandra Robbins's book Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities, where Robbins spends a year undercover in a sorority house at a big (and I think Southern) university.  For context: I attended a small liberal arts college in Minnesota and believe deeply in both my alma mater and the broader values of a liberal arts education and attending a small school.  But that book piqued my curiosity: what is it like to go to a school on the complete opposite end of the spectrum? 

And one of the most obvious "opposite" qualities is a place where college football dominates the weekend.  What's it like to be part of a campus culture where the whole community starts looking forward to Saturday football games on Monday, in a state where no one plans weddings on Saturdays in the fall, in a place where 90,000 people pack a stadium every weekend to watch their beloved team?

At big southern schools, these traditions play out every weekend in a way that seems very different even from the University of Minnesota--my best comparison--where it seems like not every student would necessarily know when, where, or who the Gophers are playing on a given Saturday.  The Southeastern Conference (SEC for short) links southern universities that all have long, storied college football histories. That spills over into the campus culture in a way that draws together history and tradition and fight songs and mascots to create a culture I can't begin to understand.

Unless I experience it, right?

I don't like to commit to projects half-heartedly.  So here it goes: this year, I will follow and study one SEC football team.  I will get to know the program: players, coaches, highs, lows and traditions.  I will watch games on TV, read articles from the campus newspaper, and learn the stories behind the players.  I also should clarify that I don't even know the game of football particularly intricately, so that will be another hurdle. 

All of this research will be done so that by the time I reach the project's next stage, I'll get it.  I'll understand the fervent passion fans feel for this team, for its glorious wins and devastating, nail-biting losses. 

And then I'll see it in person!

In fall 2012, with all of the knowledge collected, Josh and I will go to the campus for game weekend to see the experience unfold in person, and I'll be all in: I'll know the fight song and cheers, know the team and its traditions.  I'll be one of the 90,000 people, part of the mayhem.  I will tailgate and wear team colors.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though: that's a long time from now.  I've done a preliminary study of my SEC options, talking to football fans and people who went to SEC schools.  (I really confused one such person when I told her about this "project" and she thought it was a work assignment.)  My finalists included Alabama, Ole Miss, and LSU.

But I've reached a decision: the University of Tennessee (also known as Rocky Top, the Volunteers, and Big Orange) is going to be my team.  It fits my criteria:

• I didn't want to jump on a bandwagon and pick simply the best team. UT is in the middle of the conference but has a lot of young players and is on its way up!  It's sort of a wild card, and I love wild cards.
 



Credit


• Obviously, I want a team with a good fight song and a good mascot ("Rocky Top" is simply the best and the mascot is Smokey the Dog--enough said).
• I want a good coach.  This man Derek Dooley is in his second year, and he seems like a straight-up dude.  He emphasizes accountability and has a likeable blend of optimism and realism.  He is also getting some good recruits!
• Above all, I want the campus-wide passion for the team I've outlined above. 

I'm in the research phase, and beginning it was scary.  I wasn't sure how much real information I'd be able to get from Minnesota.  Luckily, we are in an exciting era of information exchange, and I think this stage is progressing much differently than it would have five years ago.  Here are my resources so far:

• I signed up for a recap of Tennessee football and SEC football articles via the Bleacher Report, so I get daily emails collecting relevant news stories from around the web.  This is a huge help.
• I follow the UT local beat reporters and UT bloggers on Twitter, so I get their insights immediately about how the latest practice or scrimmage went, in addition to player profiles and more in-depth stories.  This was timely and handy this week when Derek Dooley dismissed one of his top players from the program.  Rats.
• I bookmarked the campus newspaper's website, which so far has been a goldmine of player profiles telling the stories of athletes like Nash Nance and Da'Rick Rogers, who went to high school together, committed to other schools, and then decommitted late in the recruiting process because they both wanted to play together at Tennessee. 
• I "liked" Tennessee Athletics on Facebook, so video links and news tidbits show up daily in my Facebook newsfeed.  Reading the comments, largely from die-hard Rocky Top fans, is wonderful because they are busting at the seams to get this season underway.

It's going to be a lot easier than I expected to get informed--and because of the immediacy of online content, get excited--about Rocky Top football. 

It's just over a week until the first game of the 2011-12 season, and it's a little secret I've been hiding: I can't wait.

Good morning!

Hi, readers!  I'm planning a longer post for later, but I had to check in and share a cloud picture with you in case you are feeling in desperate need of cloud pictures.  I know it's catching on with at least one reader because I received the following text message last week:

7:51: Perfect sky picture morn

And it was.  I had noticed it when I was running that morning and thought the exact same thing but didn't have my camera.  BOO!  Yesterday morning, I did, though.  I had to take this snapshot because the white parts of the clouds looked almost metallic, like glittery silver or gold but white.  I risked life and limb for this shot because I was photographing these clouds from the middle of a coffee shop's parking lot, thus standing in the way between people and their morning coffee.  I live dangerously.  Here's the view from my neighborhood:

Later, Josh and I went to a nearby pub to celebrate my brother's birthday.  Look how excited my brother is about celebrating a quarter century of life!

A crew of his friends were there, and my sister and her friend joined us, too.  My sister has been 21 for seven months, but six of them were spent in Africa and Europe, so this was the first time all three of us have assembled at an establishment of the 21+ variety.  

Weird...but wonderful.  In a few weeks, all three of us will be living within two miles of each other in St. Paul.  I feel lucky.

Meal planning

I love themes, I love sports, and I love making everyday events feel a little bit special.  

These hobbies mash together perfectly when matching food to places and events.  For each major sporting event on the calendar, I dream about hosting a party coordinating a menu appropriate for each team's home city.  (I guess it should be added here that I also love corny and hokey ideas.)  When I brainstorm with Josh, the conversation usually involves one really easy set of answers and one awkward silence.  Take baseball's 2010 World Series, for example, which pitted the San Francisco Giants against the Texas Rangers.  

San Francisco: sourdough bread, Ghiradelli chocolate, etc.

Texas: ...barbecue?

But every Southern city claims the best barbecue, right?

I tried to do the same thing with Arizona for the 2011 All-Star Game and totally struck out.  (Ha!  Good one!)  Same thing with this year's Super Bowl: Green Bay would've been pretty easy: beer, brats, cheese, etc.  But Pittsburgh?

So you get the idea that my great dreams haven't always panned out, okay?  But I still keep an eye toward matching a city or team to its iconic food traditions, especially whenever I travel: in New England it has to be clam chowder.  If I ever get to New Mexico for the balloon festival, I'll be eating chilis all day long--and in Philadelphia, I'll have to eat a cheesesteak.

Here I am in a region of Colorado known as the Melon Capital of the World:

Secretly, Josh loves it, too.  See?  He's in Maine and his heart is all aflutter over a lobster roll.

There's an opportunity coming up soon to build on this exploration.  I'm spending a weekend in Chicago in October for the Chicago Marathon, and part of my trip-planning includes food-planning.  I've been dying to visit one of Rick Bayless's restaurants for years, so that's inked into the itinerary.  The rest of what I knew about Chicago food traditions is pizza, pizza, pizza, and I'm staying an extra night in the city post-race specifically so I can leisurely enjoy a deep-dish pie.  Yum.

But my horizons were broadened over the weekend thanks to Jeff Mauro, otherwise known as the Next Food Network Star.  He won the competition last week, and his show debuted on Sunday.  In the episode, Jeff featured a recipe for Chicago's famous Italian beef sandwiches--a phenomenon completely new to me.  He toured the kitchens of these little restaurants and delis to showcase this legendary sandwich, and I was hooked.  Another meal to add to my itinerary--probably another post-race one. 

It reminded me of all of the other regional specialties out there that I don't even know about.  Reader, help me add to my idea bank.  What foods is your city known for?  What about your favorite city's traditions?  If you live in Minnesota, what is ours?  Is it walleye-anything, or something completely different? 

These are a few of my favorite things

On Friday night, Josh and I took in some Twins baseball at Target Field.  The radar looked ominous, but instead, the rain held off, and we were treated to a wonderful display of swirling clouds.  Clouds and baseball? 

You don't get that in a Metrodome.

Basil bonanza

This month, I have noticed myself cramming.

It started when I had two days before I left for my weekend in California and I went to a grocery store with the intentions of buying strawberries but left with strawberries, a huge watermelon, and four peaches.  This decision was motivated partially by seeing the price on the strawberries creep up while the quality of the strawberries had dipped gently, which reminded me of the date.

It's mid-August, and there's a smell in the air that will probably always make me think of leaving for college.  I heard a baseball broadcaster say yesterday that there are two weeks until September call-ups for minor-league players, and it blew my mind that the baseball season is practically winding now.  There are signs of fall starting to crop up everywhere, and don't get me wrong, I love fall.  (Get ready for an abundance of leaf pictures, kind readers.)  

But around mid-August, I start going overboard with summer produce and activities that will fade out soon for the better part of the year. As mentioned previously, I start carefully considering what my January self would like me to do and eat on a given summer day.  This weekend, that means going for a sweaty long run, eating canteloupe and corn on the cob, and hunkering down in my seat at Target Field for a balmy Twins game.

On Thursday, I dropped my friend Sara off at her house after our "Crazy, Stupid, Love" movie date.  Sara is a real live homeowner--although this feels silly to note now that we are both nearing 28--and over the past couple of years, she has worked very hard to build up her gardens and learned an enormous amount in the process.  I've seen her gardens before, but August is when gardens in Minnesota really explode, and hers is no exception: it was barely recognizable to me.  Without even realizing it, I found myself taking copious amounts of photos of the crops, which probably caught her off-guard.  I didn't even do it with the intention of blogging about it later--but now I can't resist.  (Hi, Sara!)  

Seriously: this is not even half of the whole backyard garden, and look how beautiful it is:

I also have my eye on this guy come October:

Sara is nurturing and thoughtful, so this summer project is right up her alley.  I love the pride she takes in her garden and the care she devotes to it.  Within two minutes of me entering the backyard, I had already tasted a stalk of swiss chard and a nasturtium bloom.  I was skeptical at first (see below) but it tasted good and spicy!

I loved the colors in her garden: purple and orange and red and yellow.  And green, of course.

I pretend that she tends to her garden in red shoes, too.

And then we were talking basil.  My basil is cooking along, but it's more the kind where I can grab 10 leaves for caprese-related activities than a crop that yields batches of pesto.  "I have to make pesto every week to stay ahead of my basil," Sara lamented dramatically.  I immediately started poking fun at this horrible quandry, and she threatened to send me home with some. 

Okay!!

The enormous plants in this row are all basil. I know Minnesota gardeners encounter a ferocious August produce surplus--it's when tomatoes and zucchinis start appearing in office kitchens everywhere--but I had never really seen it first-hand.  Whoa.

I left with an enormous bag of basil and my sweet urban gardener looked positively gleeful to get rid of it.  This is a win-win situation.

The next day I procured some pinenuts and, you got it, the pesto started flying.  I've never made my own before.  But now I realize: what's the very worst that could ever happen when one is blending basil, pine nuts, garlic, parmesan cheese, and olive oil?  My first effort was a little over-blended, but my taste buds did not notice.

I bought a premium seat on the pesto express train.  Now I just need to make a few more batches and freeze them for winter.