Aroma - Champaign, IL

Grown-Up Pesto Grilled Cheese served with Chips and Fruit Salsa

Provolone and American cheese slathered with fresh-made pesto on thick bread

Tucked into downtown Champaign, Aroma (118 North Neil Street) is a Latin-inspired cafe offering coffee, pastries, sandwiches, salads, and more. Small tables line the walls while the background music mixes with the conversations of the patrons. Some people just go to sit and read or work on the internet.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

"So you're the little lady who started this big war."

-attributed to Abraham Lincoln on his first meeting with Mrs. Stowe

Although I've heard of Harriet Beecher Stowe's well-known opus since I was young, I only recently got around to reading it. Three themes are evident in the book: opposition to slavery, belief in God, the loss of children. Stowe coherently creates characters to preach, teach, argue, and promote her positions throughout the book. She doesn't only speak against the ills of slavery in the South, but uses the characters' dialog to point out the hypocrisy of her own Northern neighbors who oppose slavery but do not want to be friends with blacks. She also criticizes the nascent industrial age and capitalism. Speaking through St. Clare, she writes:

"He [a laborer] is as much at the will of his employer as if he were sold to him.

The slave-owner can whip his refractory slave to death, --the capitalist can

starve him to death. As to family security, it is hard to say which is the worst, ---to

have one's children sold, or see them starve to death at home."

How little things have changed! (A parallel argument is made in The Jungle.) The same can be said of the working class in America today. The North Critical Edition (pictured above) provides footnotes contributing to an understanding of the context and nearly 200 pages of historical and contemporary criticism. If you haven't read this book, give it a try. Along with Stowe's historical perspective of the mid-19th century, we can also see how present-day society is reflected in the past and examine the injustices of today. Although the story-telling is quite engaging, the conclusion is a bit contrived as plot lines are brought together with substantial coincidence.

Eyjafjallajökull

Jody Maroni's - San Francisco, CA

Jody Maroni's Sausage Kingdom - Home of the Haut Dog - is another stand in the food court of Westfield San Francisco Centre. (See previous post for another food court option.) Here is what they say about themselves:

When Jody Maroni started the sausage revolution, there was no such thing as gourmet sausage, no Chicken Apple sausage with Sherry, no Yucatan with Cilantro or Smoked Pomegranate Sausage. Sausage was basic and boring and truly unimaginative. Jody Maroni changed all of that.

Born at the carnival known as the Venice Beach Boardwalk, Jody Maroni, the Sausage King, has been hawking his handmade family recipe gourmet sausages since the Summer of ’79 when he first fired up his barbecue and delighted all who passed by with his constant banter and deliciously unusual concoctions. He called them “haut dogs” because they were finer and fancier than any other sausage on the planet, and he made them with chicken and duck and lamb and pork and added in all kinds of natural flavorings such as cilantro, oranges, tangerines, figs, corn and apples. Some of them even had beer or tequila for additional flavor and moisture. He gave them names of the places he had visited or dreamed about like Yucatan, Morocco, Bombay, Louisiana and Cuba.

Grant Avenue, San Francisco

Heart of Chinatown

San Francisco is home to the oldest Chinatown in North America and the largest Chinese community outside Asia. It is a "city within a city" with hospitals, banks, shops, and restaurants. It is also a major tourist site for visitors to the Bay Area. The area is commemorated in the song "Grant Avenue" from Rodgers & Hammerstein's musical, Flower Drum Song.