We tried to take advantage of the beautiful 50 degree weather in Chicago this weekend by investigating a new park with the dog. What was not considered was the amount of meltoff and flooding that would come with the 50 degree weather, considering all the snow and cold we have had up to this glorious weekend!!! MUD CITY!!! Alas, it was a fun adventure. I’m trying to work my way around all the city parks, there are so many of them and the dog loves getting out and about as much as I’m enjoying seeing something new. But anywhoozle. The point here starts then with post dog park mud explorations we were planning on getting some groceries on the way home.
On our way to Trader Joes, we saw a sign outside a Church Building advertising “WINTER FARMERS MARKET : PUBLIC WELCOME” So we swung a right with the car, circled back and went in to check out the goods. I was initially hoping for a larger variety of fresh vegetables and squash and such, but what we found was 40 bucks worth of homegrown goodness such as …
Organic Salsas with no added sugar or preservatives. Eat it up!!! Brought to you by Tomato Mountain Farms in Brooklyn Wisconsin. The smoky one is super tasty!!
Breakfast Sausage and Lean Ground Beef from Arnolds Farm. Note – this guy takes orders for his meat and makes some kind of monthly delivery to the Chicago area. I’m looking into this more as these were some super tasty links!!!!
Buckwheat Flour – Seriously we couldn’t even find this stuff at Whole Foods, the mecca of out of the way “Health Food” flours such as Buckwheat. It’s in a Foodsaver container which is a whole other post to come. April foodsaved most of our freezer this past weekend 
You can find this one at Ted’s Organic Grainsin Dekalb Illinois. Which ooh, they have a bunch of flours that all look rather spectacular!!! Perhaps we’ll have to try some others
Baby Bella Mushrooms – No pic, but these things were plump and beautiful!!!
Blue Cheddar Cheese – I want to try some Mac and Cheese Recipe for this tasty consumption!!! Know of any?? This one is from Ropp Jersey Cheeselocated in Normal Il. Holla at my Aunt and Uncle!! They used to live in Normal.
Next time I see one of these signs I’ll be sure to be stopping again!!! You never know what you are going to find.
The 1980’s seemed like the heyday for the food myth that eggs are bad for you. Too much cholesterol. You shouldn’t eat more than 3 a week. They would be your doom. Times have changed and we know that eggs arent’ the the threat they once loomed to be. Which is perfect for me and my weekend breakfast. We seem to have eggs every weekend. Never the same, which is one of the reasons eggs are so fascinating. They go into so many foods, can be prepared in a myriad of different ways, but they’re always an egg. This past weekend we had them
On Saturday…
Poached atop a wholewheat mini bagel with melted mozzarella, tomato tapenade and garnished with cilantro. Also a side salad of avocado with lime and cilantro.
We bought this poaching pan at a garage sale for a quarter, it looks kind of like this one. 
The problem being we only have the insert and don’t have a pan that the insert fits into thus making it worthless. Until… I watched April put the mini bagel halves in the holes and put the whole thing under the broiler. Brilliant!!! If it worked the way it was supposed to and the the eggs were more perfectly round they might fit atop the bagel better without hanging over, but I like the way these ones kind of drape over the side. They certainly taste just as good. And I’ll venture better!!! Because they require a bit more care and love to cook
And on Sunday…
Poached again, but with a side of sausage links and a green salad.
This was some of the tastiest breakfast sausage I’ve had in a long time. We randomly stopped at a Winter Farmer’s Market on Saturday held in a church basement down in Roscoe Village where we got the links straight from the source. Arnolds Farm. (I’m working up the entry about all the other great stuff we found at the market. Great spontaneous stop shopping trip!!) With a side green salad with blue berries and a fig vinaigrette. And a piece of toast!! HEAVEN!!
I always used to believe that pizza was best ordered out. Call it my Chicago roots talking but I love deep dish Chicago style pizza. Thick and cheesy. Giordano’stops my list but there are many other places I love a slice at. This is not something you can just make at home either. So with that considered, making pizza at home was usually seen as a money saving opportunity or food adventure by making my own crust and topping it with unlikely items, (like the prosciutto and egg pizza we tried earlier this year). So last nite I was just looking for an easy fix to the problem that we had extra pesto in our fridge and needed a food solution to use it up. Stepping up to the plate was Trader Joes.
Trader Joes sells pizza dough still in it’s raw dough form. You just have to roll it out, top it with whatever you choose and bake for 7 or 8 minutes. It’s fresher and tastier than any kind of Boboli or other pre-baked pizza dough, and it comes in a Whole Wheat version which makes it a little healthier. (I say a little because even at home, pizza is not the prize winning choice for healthy meals. However… last nite it was easy to make, cheaper than getting a pizza delivered, and one of the tastiest homemade pizzas I’ve ever made!!!
Instead of using a red pizza sauce, I used the pesto as the base. I topped it with some pepperoni and fresh mushrooms and then covered it with a part skim mozzarella. In the oven for 8 minutes and wala!!! Heaven. We ate the whole thing. I felt overfull when we were done, but when it tastes that good you just can’t stop yourself. Well maybe YOU can, but I can’t.
I did most of the grocery shopping yesterday at Harvestime Foods. A place extolled by our friends Dan and Anne. Located near Lincoln Square on Lawrence just west of Western this store has great produce, meats and breads. It was a very pleasant shopping experience. Poking around in a new store, checking out their specialty items (in this case lots of pickled vegetables, canned seafood and a variety of Greek and Latin foods) is always somewhat of an adventure. Trying to find all the things you need can initially be a challenge, but looking at all the different food stuffs is something new I am enjoying.
The produce looked quite nice. The berries I purchased black and blue, were found at the low prices of $1.19 and $.99 each. Such a steal!! I was thrilled. They also had some other fun fruits, like pomegranate and papaya. They had a variety of different apples, oranges and pears, and the fresh herb section was especially nice. Fresh basil, dill, parsley, the only one I wanted that they didn’t have was rosemary (this was unfortunate). But the basil was fresh cuts, not just the leaves, packaged up for consumer packaging tastes, but cut, put into bundles and rubberbanded together. Wonderful!!! The only other item I wanted that I left without was shallots. I know they aren’t the most popular item, but I certainly thought they had climbed up the ranks of onion/garlic stocks to be on the shelf. 
The meat counter was especially nice. Fresh cuts to order. 1 pound of sirloin and 1 pound of ground turkey. Cut and packaged to order. They did have a small section of prepackaged meats, but most of it was laid out deli style, with a glass case, counter and a butcher waiting on the other side to take your order. Love it!!!
They also had a variety of fresh baked breads. Things made from the simplest list of ingredients. Flour. Yeast. Honey. Water. None of the extra preservatives and colorings and High Fructose Corn Syrup. A Ukranian Rye and Sourdough. Mmm… I purchased a round loaf of Whole Wheat. Tasty tasty toast!! It’s nice to find foods closer to their origins. The list of ingredients on convenience foods moves the item further and further away from actual food, that it starts to become absurd.
All in all I would recommend shopping at foods. If you cook from scratch and don’t require a lot of extra processed items, you will most likely find 95% of what you’re looking for. And other people know what I’m talking about. The parking lot was entirely full. I waited 10 minutes for a spot before giving up and finding one on the street. I don’t mind carrying the groceries a little ways. It’s good for me. So try it out. It’s got the goods.
We picked up our last Winter Food Share this past Thursday. We have been inundated with lots of squash, potatoes, and onions in all the deliveries, plus a variety of other food stuffs. Parsnips. Turnips, Popcorn on the cob. Maybe not standard items purchased at the grocery store, but still easily recognizable. Then there were the roots we were delivered. Upon pulling them out of the box, I declared “Parsnips, except they seem a little brown and smaller” the next item that came out I again thought “parsnips, but wait I declared the last item to be parsnips, so they can’t both be parsnips, so what the heck was the first thing?” After going to the website of the CSA Homegrown Wisconsin (you can sign up for their Summer CSA now!) and checking out the Newsletter I was able to identify the food as salsify. What the heck is salsify you ask?
All the dishes (and there weren’t many) that I found on various sites seemed to pair salsify with seafood. Based on wikipedia, I assume this is because of the oyster flavour ascribed to the root. We are currently planning to try out this new root in the following dish by Emeril Lagasse. Flatiron Steak with Lemon, Herbs and Olive Oil with Sauteed Salsify and Elephant Garlic Chips. The next problem of course being, what is a Flatiron Steak?? While I like to think of myself as a Foodie. I may be misrepresenting myself. I have a lot to learn. I don’t know different cuts of meat or which part of the cow they come from. I’ve never had lobster and Dim Sum was unheard of only a year ago. I’ve come a long ways already, but I have many more miles to go. But I’m willing to try. Bring on the salsify. I’ll see what I can do. Worst of all, you throw it out and order a sandwich.
Check back later this week to see how it turns out
Make a plan and stick to it. This used to be religion. Planning my life and sticking to the plan no matter what was my saviour from depression. You figure out that you’re miserable. You live in it, you let it consume you, you reach that all time low and then you decide to do something about it. I’m not the depressive I used to be, and planning is still a big part of my life. (perhaps at times I need to let go and live a little bit more in the moment. However…)
I present the food planning that happens at our apartment, and perhaps the new heights we are taking it to.
Several months ago April and I ran into our friends Dan and Ann at the local Trader Joes. It was your basic “Hey, funny running into you here” conversation, that is until Dan spotted our shopping list. April and I attack our food plans in a very exacting planned manner. Seven days in a week. Meals for every day, planned out with shopping list to fulfill said dishes. It’s organized, it’s to the point, it gets the job done. Dan thought it was a little crazy.
The Ins and Outs to our food planning.
Plan for Dinner first.
When you are cooking for two there are often leftover. While the above picture shows plans for breakfast lunch and dinner, this is more of an anomaly that a standard practice. If you make a dinner plan, you will often have leftovers such that one or both of you can have food to take for lunch the next day. This saves on money spent at lunch, ensures you will eat healthier than the fast food joint close to work, and if you have the kind of commute I do, it allows you to eat while you work, and spend a little less time at work.
Know that as much as try to plan it, your plan is going to be broken.
You’re going to come home late some nite and not be able to execute the meal you were planning on. This is just how life works. If you can plan this inability to always stay on task (Seriously, this happens to everybody!) you’re going to feel much better about it. It helps to plan to at least one meal a week around ingredients that will keep if you dont’ get around to using them. Therefore on the day that you just can’t get a meal made at home, and you end up ordering in from the local Chinese joint you wont’ have to be upset. It’s as if it’s part of the plan.
Pick things you like.
This sounds too simple, and I am a victim of over thinking it. While it’s fun to experiment and try new things, don’t overwhelm yourself. Choose dished you know how to make and you know you like. Then when things go astray some nites you’ll know you have your favourite meal to look forward to the next day.
We use the method of planning meals and making our shopping plans accordingly. While convenience would like to push us to shop at one location, know that if food is important to you, you will probably have to go to more than one store to get everything you want. Nobody has everything. Rank the importance of certain things to you and shop accordingly. Do you care more about freshness or cost? Would you rather pay more to have something be certified organic, or get a good deal at the local mart?? These are things to consider as you execute your shopping. We shop first at shops that supply organic, local and eco-minded foods. Then what we can’t find there we pick up at our local marts, supporting the local mom and pop operations. If we still don’t have what we want, we move on to the chains.
But whatever you do… Enjoy your food. It’s a huge part of life. You shouldn’t skip over all the wonder it has to offer you.
Filed under: Shopping
This set of Organic Fruits Children’s toys sold by Uncommon Goods is too cute!!! I smell a baby purchase in the future. Our friends J&R (the baby shower cake recipients) had their baby earlier this month and I have apparently already become the aunt that can’t be stopped. stuff for babies is too darn cute!! so small. it’s kind of like shopping for shoes where you see them on display in a size 5 and they are just so cute you can’t wait to try them on, and then they bring them out in your size (a 10, so sad) and they just look enormous. Well baby things are like display shoes. so freakin’ cute!!! This set of fruits are made using “vegetable dyes and hand picked 100% organic Egyptian cotton” so cute, safe for your kid, and good for the world.
I got the catalog for Uncommon Goods randomly in the mail a couple of years ago and I always enjoy browsing through their stuff. The company strives to provide customers with products that are looking out for the world. Their print catalog had this to say
“our commitment to sustainability
We care about the impact our business decisions have on the outside world. Everything we sell is made without harm to animals; we offer many recycled and organic products, and we print this catalog on FSC-certified paper. We’re proud to have been selectd as a founding member of B Corporation a standard for social responsibility that promotes sustainable practices, such as paying a living wage to our employees”
all in all seems very cool. I’ve read about the FSC but I need to do some research about this B Corporation. Looks like something that may be a standard stamp of approval that if successful would help tip off consumers that a company meets a certain set of standards. Very cool. So if you’re looking for a gift for someone and you don’t know what to get, maybe you should check out UncommonGoods and see if something there strikes your fancy.
I finished reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser on the way to work this morning. I’ve never considered becoming a vegetarian before this, but this book made me seriously consider it. It really affected me. And I’m certainly not the only one. The book is a New York Times bestseller. I feel bad that it’s taken me this long to read it. I’m certainly behind the times and glad to be catching up. The book was published in 2001 and most of the research was done the three years before that. However reading it now in 2008 doesn’t change the impact much, nor do I believe there has been significant progress in changing the ways that many of the companies described in the book do business. There are of course exceptions to every rule, but it remains true that just a few companies still ultimately control too large a share of the food production that make it difficult for large scale positive changes to occur with any immediacy. Despite everything he had to talk about from the way cattle are slaughtered in the American Meat Packing Industry (look away and stop reading, at times it was like watching a PETA video) to the obscenities regarding the safety of the food we eat in it’s homogenized state, I remain (like the author) optimistic.
There have been changes (even if some of them may only be surface changes) since this book has published that are encouraging. Take for example the more widespread use of the word “All-Natural”. While it may be true (as Fast Food Nation explained) that what the government considers “All-Natural” is not what the public may generally be thinking it is, the public cares more about seeing those words on a label. They are not so in the dark or convinced of the positives of processed foods that they continue to choose them when offered “healthier” options side by side. They are more likely to buy a product that is labelled in such a way.
The success and expansion of Whole Foods and Trader Joes which supply organic and hormone and anti-biotic free foods to consumers is a sure sign that attitudes must be changing. Even the more general food stores such as Jewel and Dominicks now have separate produce sections for their Organic items. They have consumers that are looking for these products and are willing to pay for them. As more people buy these items and make a demand for them, the companies will have to follow through and offer them to the public. Fast Food Nation argued this point that it makes business sense to sell what people want. Consumer voices seem to be making a difference.
If you’re looking for a good and informative read concerning Fast Food, which pushes beyond to food in general I would highly recommend you check this book out. It’s never to late to get more information and be better informed.
Filed under: Shopping
Trunk Full-O-Pumpkins
With the combination of it being the first weekend in October and an obligation free Saturday, April and I headed out to Kuiper’s Family Farm located in Maple Park, Illinois. The Kuipers first opened their 71 acre pumpkin farm to the public 10 years ago, back in 1998. So while they have most likely been in the pumpkin business longer than that, their goods were most likely being sold to the public through somebody else. Their decision to make their selling experience something that was more local and accessible really seems to have paid off. In their own words they hoped “families would enjoy the simple pleasures of a fall day spent on a beautiful Midwest farm“ Their hopes seem to have been fulfilled. People came to spend a fall day, and now they’re comin in droves. It may not have been this way when they first started, but 10 years later it is a burgeoning business that features a U-Pick pumpkin patch, a U-Pick Apple Orchard (featuring more than 20 kinds of apples), a Corn Maze (which was much harder than I had anticipated), a Barn area with animal petting and feeding areas, hay wagon rides, giant tire pile for climbing and countless other children’s activities, plus 2 stores which sell pumpkins and apples directly without having to pick your own. And if going now isn’t enough, you can go back in 2 months and cut down your own Christmas tree. The parking lot on the day that we attended, (which was a Saturday around 2PM) had at least 300 cars in it. Families were shuffling back and forth across the road from the Pumpkin Farm to the Apple Orchard. The place was packed.
The Pumpkin Farm serves up a large variety of pumpkins (both edible and ornamental) , squashes and guords for the fall and Halloween season. We purchased seemingly at least one of every kind, and this is only the more unusual ones Kuipers has to offer.
What are you doing this Halloween? Maybe you too should head out to Kuipers and pick up some pumpkins. Of course no one will give you a hard time if you don’t purchase quite as many as we did
I’ve been searching out Halloween ideas for the upcoming black and orange holiday!! Last year I was on a pumpkin cooking kick that included, Pumpkin Lasagna, Pumpkin Cheesecake, Pumpkin Seed Pesto, and a Pumpkin Scallop dish with Spaghetti. While this year I am excited again to make pumpkin dishes, I was getting excited to try and make some Halloween Ravioli’s by dying the pasta dough ink with squid ink and then filling with either a Pumpkin, Sweet Potato or squash varietal filling. The problem seems to be procuring Squid Ink locally. When I tried to look up the procurement of squid ink, I was hoping it was going to be found at an ethnic grocery store of which I did not yet know. Such as the easy finding of pumpkin seeds at Mexican groceries, or rice papers at Asian groceries.
What I seem to be finding is that it may be more of an exotic gourmet item available for purchase at Gourmet Food Shops like Fox and Obel on the Near North side, or on-line from Marky’s
There are instructions on how to get your own squid ink from the squid directly, check it.
But really this seems like a lot of work, unless you were also going to cooking with the squid, which perhaps may be the route I end up going?? Also, when I tell my girlfriend about this option she looks at me like I have two heads!! Do you know where I might find it in Chicago?? Help?!
