It was supposed to be over by now. It was supposed to be a done deal. The search for all fifty states should have been history. Then came the 2020 pandemic.

Over the last few years, I’ve been working hard at trying to see at least a portion of all fifty states. I started taking it seriously when I went to the Carolinas in 2017. Last year I picked five new states. Arkansas, Idaho, South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. There were only four to go starting 2020. The first week of March I spent a couple of days in Utah. Pretty scenery Zion National Park. Nicer than I imagined. The magic number was three. Nebraska, North Dakota and Alaska.

Here’s how it was supposed to go: A trip to Omaha, Nebraska at the beginning of April. Next came a day trip to Fargo, North Dakota sometime in May. I was going to check out the Roger Maris museum. The finale was going on a week-long Alaskan cruise that was scheduled to leave on Father’s Day.

Fifty states complete! Victory was going to be mine!

But all that changed a week after getting home from Utah. Coronavirus. Pandemic. No flights to Nebraska. No flights to North Dakota. No flights anywhere! As for going on a cruise…yeah, right! That may never happen for anyone….ever.

So at this point, the magic number remains at three and is likely to stay that way for quite some time. I don’t really see the purpose of going to Nebraska or especially North Dakota if I can’t ever get to Alaska. Let’s just say that the search for fifty is on an indefinite hold…and to be honest, with more than 140,000 dead Americans, there are things to deal with that are more serious and important.

However, just because you can’t get on an airplane or a cruise ship doesn’t mean you can’t go anywhere, does it? Your car still works, right? Even in a pandemic, right? How about taking a good old fashioned road trip! You just need to be extra careful and avoid places where coronavirus is peaking. That means no driving through the south to get to Disneyworld or South Beach, in Florida. Ehhhh…it’s too hot there in the summer anyway. No heading west to get to Arizona….and talk about hot. I don’t really need to go somewhere if the temperature is 100 degrees at night.

So where oh where can a guy go to get away for a day or two?

A few weeks ago, I was checking out the travel section in the Chicago Tribune. Their page one article was about the cheeses of Wisconsin. I love cheese and I love Wisconsin, too. This might be my kind of trip! The city is called Dodgeville. They have a yearly grilled cheese festival there, so you know they take their cheese seriously.
It’s one of those one stoplight towns that makes you think of Mayberry. The population is 4,689. Cool! A small population gives you a better chance to keep away from people. Social distancing is a way of life there. It sounds a little romantic, doesn’t it?

One restaurant was featured. Their specialty is grilled cheese. On Monday’s they make a sandwich with three types of cheese melted together, on whole wheat bread, with fruit jam.  YUM!!! I know, it’s not an Alaskan cruise, where you could probably request multiple grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, but we’re in the middle of a pandemic and this is the best we got!

I checked Google and from Chicago to Dodgeville is about 180 miles…even less since we were leaving from the north burbs. Three hours of driving time. It’s off to the land of the grilled cheese.

At first we planned to drive up in a Sunday, check into a hotel, spend one night and then check out the world of cheese. It would break up the driving into two three hour rides. We go online, find this hotel that had lovely photos of the room and booked it for under $100/night! Score! However….plans change, especially during a pandemic.

To be honest, we got scared…okay, maybe it was me. I’m a little leary of staying in a hotel, especially one that isn’t a chain, when the virus is still prevalent. Yeah, I know, you can bring your own sheets, pillows and towels. Yeah, I know, you can bring disinfectant, bleach and whatever cleaner you want and wipe down all the surfaces. I did call the hotel to see what their procedures were for keeping their rooms clean. Even after their speech, I wasn’t all that convinced.

So….the hotel was cancelled. It’s a day trip to Dodgeville. We leave at 10 and we’re there in time for a lunch of grilled cheese!!

It’s Monday morning. We hit the road to Wisconsin. About an hour in we need a bathroom stop and some drinks. Here comes a McDonald’s. That’s got to be safe, right? The bathroom is clean…phew! I stop at the counter to buy some cokes. There’s a woman in front of me and she’s having a discussion with the server about getting free french fries. It turns out it was national french fry day in America. The server didn’t have a clue about this. It turned into a louder discussion and a call to the manager. OY! All over a dollar bag of fries. OY! I gave up on the drinks. We can get something in Dodgeville. OY!

About an hour later, I see the first road signs to Dodgeville. Fifty miles away. I can taste that grilled cheese! Forty mile….thirty…twenty…mmmmm my mouth is watering with anticipation….ten…five…..there’s the sign…WELCOME TO DODGEVILLE!! Not bad…we’re there in under three hours.

Now it’s time to find the restaurant. Hmmm…in a town of less than five thousand, it can’t be that hard. We drive around for a few minutes, then find someone who for sure would know where it is…a mail carrier. She knew the place and in less than five minutes, we are parked in front. Ummm…this can’t be the place. It looks like a bar where the specialty is a shot and a beer, not the greatest grilled cheese in the midwest! We drove three hours for this? Well, it’s not like we’re going to turn around and head home. It’s grilled cheese time!

We get inside and it really is more of a bar than a restaurant. It has a pool table in the middle of the room. “Go grab a seat wherever you want and I’ll get you a menu.”

There’s plenty of available seating because there’s only one other couple in a booth and a dude at the bar. Good for social distancing. The menu comes and I’m expecting it to be filled with exotic cheese dishes. Nada. Nothing. Zip! I don’t even see grilled cheese on the menu. The significant other sees it in small print at the bottom. Oh man, this can not be a good sign!

The waitress comes over and I start talking to her about the Tribune article. Yeah, she saw it…the whole town did. All 4,689 of them! I mention the grilled cheese and she asks what type I’d like. They have swiss, american and cheddar. Sigh….three hours of driving and no exotic cheese. Not even the three melted cheese combo. SIGH! But, how about the jelly? She brought out a small container of raspberry jam. SCORE…I guess! We also got some french fries to go with the sandwiches. They weren’t free. I guess no one in Wisconsin was aware of national french fry day.

The meal is over and it’s time to head out. Let’s take a quick peek around town before heading back home. Hey, there’s the hotel where we were going stay. WOW. A dump would be a nice way of describing the place. SCORE! Finally, one for the good guys.

We head back and as we get close to Kenosha I say, “Hey honey, can we stop at the outlet mall?” I did find a new watch at the Fossil store for about $60!!! There’s the real score of the day!!!!!

Another hour and we’re back home in time for dinner. I don’t remember what we had, but I’m positive there was nothing cheese related in the meal.

So what’s the moral of this diatribe?
Never drive six hours for a grilled cheese? Nah…that can’t be it, can it?
Don’t try to take a vacation, even a one day vaca, in a pandemic? Nah…that’s not it either, is it?
Maybe there is no moral, it is what it is! Yeah, works for me!

In the meantime, I still need those three states. Do you think I can get a good grilled cheese in North Dakota?

Related Post: The search for all fifty states

Type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

Books read long ago still have a message for today.

Remember the bestselling book from the 1990’s “All I Really Need to Know I Learned In Kindergarten”? It was filled with truisms like “Don’t hit anybody” and “Be nice.” Good stuff, but in talking with an old friend recently I realized we didn’t learn it all in kindergarten. We also learned some important life lessons in Mr. Wohlberg’s 8th-grade class at the Eugene Field School in Rogers Park.

Our class featured a daily hour for “Reading Club.” This was the first year in which we were assigned short novels and works of non-fiction for reading and analysis. The book list was carefully curated, and in looking back I recognize that each had a lesson, one that we can also apply in our current time.

The Eighth Grade Book List 1971-1972

• Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther. This green covered paperback was a series of sketches about a family in England just before the onset of World War II. I remember it as a warm look at the nation, just before immense tragedy and great changes were about to take place. Knowing that England survived can bring hope and optimism to us who are now at the precipice of another world-altering event.
• Goodbye, Mr. Chips by James Hilton. Another warm-hearted tale set in England, following the long career of a sweet, under-assuming teacher in a boy’s boarding school. Sort of a pre-Dead Poet’s Society. The take-away to remember?  Kind and gentle can have more effect than bluster and braggadocio.
• The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck. A family saga of early 20th century China. Not every character is a champion, but by studying this novel of other people and other cultures, we can learn not to demonize the unfamiliar in our world.
• Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy. Yes, JFK wrote (or had ghost-written) this book while he was a Senator from Massachusetts. Life episodes from 8 U.S. Senators who took actions considered by Kennedy to be heroic. Current re-imaging of history may have cast some of his assessments of heroism in doubt, but the concept that our elected representatives should be courageous–hey, what a wonderful, novel, idea!
• Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif. Probably the least known of these books, it tells the tale of 11 men (sorry, no women in the bunch–or in the group of Senators in Kennedy’s book) who were instrumental in advancing science, in introducing and promoting the concept that many diseases were caused by minute organisms, and in discovering ways to fight those bugs. Imagine that, science advancing mankind! Think that could have any relevance in our era of anti-vaxers and COVID deniers?

Great lessons, though hopefully, my education didn’t end in 8th grade. Now more than ever, we need to be life-long learners. It’s the only way to survive.

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise!
___

———————————–

The beginning of shelter-at-home felt like New Year’s Resolutions on steroids. It wasn’t okay to have the mindset, “Wow, without my morning commute, I think I’m gonna sleep in a little bit.” No, you had to pickup jogging. And read all of the literary classics. And hold a nightly Zoom call with your entire extended family. Your quarantine wasn’t to be wasted. It was an opportunity to become a better you. 

Well, five months later, I just feel proud to still be wearing pants.

One of the surprising hobbies to emerge during this time is a love for making bread. Specifically sourdough. People all around the country are perfecting their loaves. I won’t dive too deep into the history of bread, but worth mentioning, sourdough is the oldest form of leavened bread dating back sometime between 2,000 – 4,000 BC. The first sourdough loaf was likely baked in the Fertile Crescent region of the Middle East. This land was south of the Black & Caspian seas containing parts of modern-day Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Cyprus. The main setting for most of the Old Testament Bible.

Unleavened bread means it doesn’t rise much higher than a Club cracker. Examples of unleavened breads: Mexican tortillas and Matzo (think Jewish Passover or the bread used at a Church of Christ communion). Leavened is what we think of as traditional bread, aka the kind that rises.

But, surprising to me, our common everyday baking yeast hasn’t been around very long. Those who think Louis Pasteur was a one-hit-wonder (pasteurized milk) have another thing coming when they find out he also discovered how yeast works back in 1859. He studied how yeast “feeds on the starches in flour, produces carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide expands the gluten proteins in the flour, then the gluten proteins cause the dough to expand and rise.”

Nine years later, Fleischmann’s® flour was founded. Combine that with the newly invented steel rolling mill and a new era in faster-paced breadmaking was underway. 

In the 1900s, more chemicals were added to loaves of bread. Bread became whiter, softer, could last much longer. Flour became heavily processed lacking vitamins and minerals. These new breads were a high-status symbol. The elite in 20th-century society wouldn’t dare be seen with loaves of rye, bran, or sourdough. It’s a view that’s pretty much completely flipped as low-priced white bread is now public enemy No. 1 in the grocery store.

Back to Sourdough

Instead of using baking yeast, sourdough begins with what is called a starter. The starter is a “mix of wild yeast, lactic acid bacteria, flour, and water. During the bread-making process, the starter ferments the sugars in the dough, helping the bread rise and acquire its characteristic taste.” Bakers form a bond with their starter, it’s less of an ingredient and more a member of the family. As Vanessa Hua wrote in her sourdough article on CNN:

“People can get very attached to their starters, forming a bond that lasts through breakups, job changes, and multiple cross-country moves. A friend who forgot his starter had it mailed to him. Another friend fondly remembers the one she kept in her more carefree 20s, a gift from her parents’ neighbor, who’d started it years earlier in another city.

Starters are the gift that keeps on giving. Some starters last for decades in the fridge. This lady in Wyoming is taking care of a 122-year-old starter.

Once you have the starter, there’s no shortage of sourdough bread recipes to choose from in cookbooks or online. One recipe that’s often recommended is from Michael Pollan in his book “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.” Pots-and-pans-wise, all you need is a dutch oven. From there it’s a lot of trial and error.

But what happens after you get into sourdough bread baking? When you’ve made a few loaves that your wife, husband, roommate says, “Hey, that’s actually really good. You should like sell these?” What comes next?

Enter Douglas Callegario. This is the story of a baker who went from what he describes as an “awful” first loaf to selling sourdough breads out of his house, to now baking over 250 loaves a week for his growing business Nourish Foods. For bread lovers in the Algonquin, Fox River Grove, and Barrington area, Douglas’ work in leavened bread is rising in popularity (bread pun intended) the way a local band gains momentum or how I imagine people once talked about seeing Chris Farley, Tina Fey, or Steve Carell at Second City.

Sure, Nourish Foods is still flying under the radar, orders are done via Google Form and Farmer’s Markets, but it might just be the best bread in the Chicago area.

From Brazil to Algonquin

Douglas grew up in Brazil and developed a love for baking and cooking early on. His grandmother made pasta, mom made bread (although not sourdough). He went to the University of Rio to study a new innovative program focused on food science and the culinary arts.

After graduation, he met his now-husband on a beach in Rio and joined him first in Los Angeles, then they moved to Washington, and around 2016 moved to Algonquin for his husband’s teaching job. Once they settled in, Douglas discovered All Grass Farms, a local farm nearby, and asked if they needed any help.

“When I moved to Illinois, the first thing that I noticed was the farm very close to my house,” Douglas said. “I wanted to learn how food is grown, how animals are raised. I started buying food from All Grass, the milk, the meat. I wanted to learn so I asked to work there as an apprentice. At first, they didn’t have a position for me, but someone dropped out so they brought me on.”

Around this time, about three years ago, his husband bought him the Michael Pollan book. Douglas saw the sourdough recipe and decided he wanted to perfect this process. He needed to get rid of the memory of his first attempt at sourdough back in college.

“I made my first sourdough bread in college as a project. It was kind of an awful bread. I had people mocking me. My friends were mocking the bread, this is an awful bread. I remember that to this day.”

The trial and error process was underway. Douglas was focused on the tiniest details, perfecting the process.

“You go back to the original techniques,” Douglas said. “What brand of flour? The quality of the flour. What’s the humidity of the place that you’re in? The water. The book is very useful to guide you, give you ideas, but it’s very hard to master by yourself. It took me several years of sporadically trying, a couple years of baking bread every single day. The whole technique is very hands-on. It’s much more of a feeling, closer to an art than a science.”

Douglas describes the process in steps, you’re learning a little bit each time.

“First, the most challenging thing is getting the bread to be soft on the inside, crispy on the outside. Texture is the second step. Third step is the appearance. How crispy is the crust, how brown is the crust. Final stage is how to perfect it.”

Douglas started bringing the sourdough breads to work and co-workers asked if he’d make some for them. Co-workers, friends, friends of friends. One dutch oven became multiple. Baking for friends became baking for purchase on Saturday mornings at the All Grass Farm Store. Douglas was trying to balance all of this with working six days a week at the farm, eight hours a day. And for those who’ve worked on or grew up on a farm, you know those eight hour days aren’t easy.

The momentum continued to build. Douglas got the licenses required to bake and sell out of his home. He didn’t set up a fancy expensive website. No venture capital raised. Just a Facebook page. And a Google Form. You place an order, show up for pickup on Thursday. Simple as that.

A look at a few of the different options from the Google Form:

$7 each
All organic, local, and freshly ground wheat and rye berries, with heirloom and ancient varieties.
Every single bread is naturally leavened with my sourdough starter, fed with 100% rye.

Suburban – Basic Sourdough. Balanced flavor and acidity. Perfect everyday bread. Just filtered water, heirloom wheat and rye berries, and Himalayan salt.

Milkbread – Soft Loaf Pan. Soft and delicate sandwich bread. The best toast, grilled cheese or peanut butter & jelly you will find! (With the farm’s milk and butter, soft bread in a pan sandwich style).

Pumpernickel – This naturally leavened rye bread gets soft, flavorful, and colored only by the addition of blackstrap molasses, cocoa powder, brewed coffee, and star anise. No artificial colorants over here!

Also on the menu: bagels and Brazilian cheese puffs. A brown butter spelt salted chocolate chip cookie. Orange fennel cashews, cinnamon clove pecans, and chipotle lime almonds.

Thursday pickups. Saturday morning deliveries before 9 am when the Farm Store opens. With summer here, Douglas is also doing the Grayslake Farmer’s Market on Wednesdays and the Elgin Farmer’s Market on Fridays. That’s a lot of bread.

“Nowadays I’m making, with farmer’s markets, 250 breads per week.”

Douglas says the challenge now isn’t so much keeping track of the orders, it’s how to maintain the highest quality when you’re making 250 a week instead of 25.

“How do I get the quality that I want, that I need to provide, how do I make it happen when I’m basically working by myself and I basically have to make 50 breads a day. Sometimes I work for 12 hours. I have to deliver. The results are still good, probably still the best you can find in a 50-mile radius. But it’s not the absolute best bread that I can deliver. If I’m not making a high volume, I can make perfect bread every time.”

I saw this commitment to excellence firsthand when me and all the fellow customers one week when we received this email:

Hello, supporters!

First and foremost thank you so much for trusting my work (and using your hard-working money on my business).

I have been growing the number of products, flavors, and most importantly the number of customers I attend. This does not come without some setbacks: I had some inconsistencies with my cookies (too dry), crackers (too soft), and nuts (almost burnt). I am working on my processes (although things keep changing because I keep having to scale up) to make things consistent.

I can’t taste every batch (my cookie intake is already on maximum haha), so I am asking you to tell me how you feel about what you ordered.

I make a promise: whenever you are not 100% delighted by what I cooked, please do let me know. I will give your money back, or issue a credit, or just replace it next week, whatever makes you happy. This also helps me to keep tabs on what is working or not, and to improve my practices. My worst fear is to make you dissatisfied.

I hope you can keep trusting my work and I will keep improving to deliver the best food for you.

Thank you,

The email reminds me of a quote from Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life” when Brad Pitt’s character is sharing with his son about one of the all-time great musicians.

“Toscanini once recorded a piece sixty-five times. You know what he said when he finished? ‘It could be better.'”

When a loaf of bread has been made with such careful consideration on every single ingredient, and the process itself has been perfected every day over the span of a few years and, after all of that, there’s still this drive for perfection – even as the order numbers multiply – it’s no surprise when you try this bread and immediately say, “Wow, this is just better.” It’s hard to imagine how it will continue to improve, but I know that it will.

And so maybe all of these newfound hobbies will be one of the biggest positives to come out of this year. If the shelter-at-home chapter leads us to new bakers like this, people selling awesome breads right out of their home, well, then we have a great future ahead. A local bakery on every street.

Over the last several months, I’ve been using the Medium Rare blog with a different format, featuring local restaurants around Chicago and the Chicagoland area. These also, from time to time, drift into a little bit of philosophy and stories from my own life. To catch up on some of the posts and read about other great local spots, here they are below:

Taste of New York Bagels & Deli

• The Wonder of Saying Yes and Letting Go (Part 1)
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

Tango Sur

• Chicago, Argentina (Part 1)
• Chicago, Argentina (Kierkegaard intermission)
• Chicago, Argentina (Part 2: The Family Behind Tango Sur)
• Chicago, Argentina (Kierkegaard Finale)

Black & Caspian

• Black & Caspian – Part 1
• Black & Caspian – Part 2

To subscribe to Medium Rare via email, just enter your email address in the box below. See you next week!

Concerns of the pandemic’s impact began to worry buyers and sellers alike, but due to a mix of record-low mortgage rates, high demand and low inventory, sales’ of homes were at their highest levels in a decade at the beginning of COVID-19’s spread.

In March, the Feds passed a $2 trillion stimulus bill and cut the interest rate by half a point, which made it a great time to refinance or purchase a new home amid the pandemic’s pending impact on economic activity. The stock market also showed concern during this time and it tumbled into a bear market, or a market transition from widespread investor optimism to overall fear and pessimism. Loan officers and mortgage companies began to transition to touch-less transaction coordination and home closings while real estate brokers and companies began to transition to the global new normal.

Construction has definitely slowed and supply chains have been disrupted, causing schedule slippage for existing construction projects, while stops and delays occurred on proposed ones. Pent-up demand from low inventory of homes on the market at the start of the pandemic will provide an environment ripe for activity once COVID-19’s numbers subside and public ease returns.

Home prices began to rise as the market continued to respond to high demand; low inventory and low mortgage rates are fueling strong purchase numbers while year-over-year real estate buys have increased by 24.7% for single family homes and 19.2% for condos and townhouses. Housing inventory will remain marginally low from COVID-19 concerns; however, once seller comfort is increased as the global pandemic subsides, we will see an increase in inventory and subsequently an ease in home prices.

If interested in purchasing a home during the pandemic, lean on loan officers and real estate brokers who have strong digital tools in place to create a touch-less experience. This will certainly meet the need for new real estate acquisitions and dispositions during a time of global unrest and strained economic activity.