When Ellen Carney Granda began learning her way around a kitchen a few years ago, she armed herself with two things: a DVR, for recording every cooking show on the air, and a copy of Julia Child’s The Way to Cook. The latter taught her how to roast a chicken well enough, but when she decided to try her hand at baking, the bible let her down. Or so she thought: “Julia Child had a French baguette recipe, and it was really disappointing,” Granda says....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Like traveling by air, being on television has lost a great deal of its glamour and prestige as it’s become accessible to the common citizen. In TV’s case this accessibility has come in the form of reality shows and news programs that find half their stories on YouTube: these days anybody with a dream, a willingness to eat animal penises, or video footage of a debilitating BMX accident can find himself transformed overnight into a TV star, before being immediately and absolutely forgotten....

Friday19 ChordMario Diaz de LeonJames Falzone’s Allos MusicaBill Frisell’s Disfarmer ProjectIncantationDJ Shadow Saturday20 CatburglarsMiya MasaokaJoe McPheeMike Reed’s Loose Assembly with Roscoe MitchellTiesto Sunday21 Barn OwlJoe McPhee Monday22 Grinderman Wednesday24 Ballister MARIO DIAZ DE LEON Electronics have been part of classical music since at least the 1930s, the conservative programming of most mainstream presenters notwithstanding, but aside from Iannis Xenakis I can’t think of a composer who’s pushed harsh noise like young New Yorker Mario Diaz de Leon (he also plays in an experimental metal band called Mirrorgate)....

Not long ago a letter to the editor required three things: time, an idea, and the ability to put it into words. All three impediments have been swept away. Once American bedrock, today a letter to the editor is often a chunk of computer-generated boilerplate. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I read the message on January 24, waited a few days, then did a computer search of the nation’s newspapers....

This “transadaptation” for the GroundUp Theatre by company member Julie Levinson, who moves the action to Martha’s Vineyard during the Me Decade, reiterates that Chekhov got it right the first time. Updates only seem to date his work, diluting the good doctor’s diagnosis of the defining struggle between heartbreak and hope. And Sabrina Lloyd’s staging, in which the acting varies from unearned stridency to slacker silliness, throws away any opportunities for “relevance” the 70s setting promises....

Battleground Chicago Frank Kusch (University of Chicago Press) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » These are regular guys who fought in World War II and Korea, lived in the bungalow belt, and found themselves on the fault line during one of the tectonic cultural shifts of the period. And every time one of them is quoted, the story comes alive. It’s hard to read their accounts of those days—even with their blatant prejudices flying in your face—and not feel some sympathy....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Nicholas Ray—the brilliant director of They Live by Night (1947), In a Lonely Place (1950), On Dangerous Ground (1952), Johnny Guitar (1953), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Bigger Than Life (1956), and Bitter Victory (1957)—knew Chicago well. A native of La Crosse, Wisconsin, he spent a lively semester at the University of Chicago in the early 30s, sampling the city’s night spots and becoming a protege of playwright Thornton Wilder, and nearly 40 years later he returned to the city to make a movie about the Chicago Seven conspiracy trial....

By law the mayor of Chicago is entitled to appoint replacements to open City Council seats, and on Monday Mayor Daley tapped businessman Proco “Joe” Moreno as the new alderman of the First Ward and state rep Deborah Graham as the new alderman in the 29th. Daley said he and his aides had interviewed 44 people for the posts after soliciting applications online, a process that left him confident he’d ended up with the best candidates available....

When Pulitzer-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks makes a resolution, it’s a doozy. In November 2002 she decided to write one play a day for an entire year. In November 2006, in what is surely the most breathtaking example ever of theatrical cooperation, more than 600 theaters across the country began presenting them, a project to be completed in a year. A new set of seven plays will be performed each week in different locations, with part of the interest being the widely varying modes of presentation....

See the rest of our (almost) romance-free ode to Valentine’s Day. #LeastRomantic We had to cut our honeymoon to 3 days so that hubs wouldn’t miss bowling league. — shelly larson (@sl220) January 22, 2013 @chicago_reader For Valentines Day, MrsJM’s previous boyfriend took her to see “Silence of the Lambs” #LeastRomantic #ThanxForLoweringTheBar — MrJM (@misterjayem) January 22, 2013 Fella takes me out for ice cream… To McDonald’s. And then ordered himself a cup of water....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » As a case study, let’s take Chicago native Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate. He was in the news awhile back because he wrote a book called The Bush Tragedy. In his essay “The Bush Who Got Away,” he explains that Bush wasn’t the moderate he sometimes said he would be, and that sucks. I guess we all learned something?...

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One reliable pleasure of attending the Chicago International Film Festival is discovering filmmakers who have solid reputations in their home countries but aren’t especially known in the U.S. This year I’ve enjoyed catching up with Alain Guiraudie (Stranger by the Lake), a French writer-director who’s made about a half-dozen films since 2000, and with the Netherlands’ Alex van Warmerdam, who’s been active since the mid-1980s....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Tomorrow night you can check out Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. at House of Blues, Langhorne Slim & the Law at Lincoln Hall, Dan Croll at Empty Bottle, or Electric Six at Double Door. On Wednesday there’s Sam Amidon at Old Town School of Folk Music, Katatonia and Cult of Luna at Bottom Lounge, and Ra Ra Riot at Double Door....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On Tuesday night, at the Public Chicago hotel, Tony Karman and his well-outfitted team announced the gallery list for the International Exposition of Contemporary/Modern Art and Design or Expo Chicago, which will happen next September. Karman, who is both president and director of the new art fair, spoke to a crowd of journalists, gallerists, patrons, and art dealers. “Expo Chicago is a way for the world to know what’s happening in Chicago....

Not every dance artist finds his calling at age five, though sometimes it seems that way. Jonathan Meyer says he was “not a particularly physical kid.” He wanted to be a writer—right up until he started at Oberlin College and danced for the first time. “I felt an immediacy,” recalls the 38-year-old founder and artistic director of Khecari Dance Theatre. “And everything else felt like a translation.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Chicago newcomer and blogger Gwynedd Stuart loves to eat out, but she also happens to be a poor person because she’s a Chicago newcomer and a blogger. In this weekly feature she seeks out affordable midday meals that don’t exceed five bucks (*actually seven, with tax and tip). I should admit that I’m a relative banh mi neophyte, which I’m sure contributed to the awe by which I was struck upon discovering how goddamn cheap these sandwiches are....

For the past couple days I’ve been trying to catch up on the stack of promos that’s eating my apartment. It’s an exercise that almost always ends up with me facedown on my desk, utterly convinced that every band out there sounds the same. (Thought: blog house remixes are the grey goo of modern music, devouring any original ideas they encounter and turning them into an undifferentiated mass of Justice-isms.) So thank you, Ohio-based black- metal noise project Boot, for putting up a MySpace bulletin urging all your friends to check out Crack Cats....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Last week I ran over a suburban rock and ruined my lawn mower blade; ordered and received a replacement from sears.com; installed it; discovered that it’s an inch longer than the previous blade and won’t work; called customer service; waited on the phone for 15 minutes; was told that the part had been appropriate for that mower; was given the phone number of the Parts and Repair Center nearest to my home; found that number had been disconnected; called the main Sears store in the vicinity; was eventually connected to lawn & garden; was told to call the Parts and Repair Center at another number; was told to bring the part in to the center, which is located a mile away from the Sears store in a K-Mart; drove 45 minutes there, where they declined to sell me anything but the blade I already had, and told me that if it didn’t fit something else must be wrong with my Sears Craftsman R mower, which they had never seen....

The Chef: Chris Curren (Stout Barrel House & Galley)The Challenger: Matt Troost (Three Aces)The Ingredient: Ghost pepper Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “It’s really hard to even get a flavor out of it, just because the heat’s so overwhelming. It does have a sweetness to it, almost like a bell pepper—a little more so, I think, than jalapeños or habaneros.” Curren knew that capsaicin—the compound that makes chiles spicy—is soluble in both fat and alcohol, and used that to his advantage....

During the 2008 Wimbledon final, I decided I was watching sport at its ultimate. Nadal was playing Federer, and the match was a supreme test of their speed, strength, agility, endurance, intelligence, and will. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Federer-Roddick final was long and dramatic, yet at no time was it as interesting as the Federer-Nadal match the year before. This year’s last set went to 16-14, but not because neither player gave an inch in battle....