ramblings

Yes, this has been delayed a bit, but hey, at least it’s done now.

JenTastic and I set out on the long drive from Chicago to North Carolina on a Tuesday morning.  It was a bright, happy morning and we were armed with coffee, grapes, potato chips and french onion dip (safely ensconced in an iced baggie) as well as other random car snacks.  We had plans to drive about halfway and then stop for the night.  No specific plans about where to stop, just whenever we felt tired enough.

As you will soon find out, that is not always the smartest strategy!

Our first cool sighting was the wind turbine farm we saw along I65.  These things are HUGE.  They don’t look that big, but when you get up close and personal, they are gigantic.  I hear there’s lots of controversy about strobe light effects on the people who live nearby, as well as the dangers to the birds flying through the area.

Still cool to look at, though!

Ooh hey look we’re in Kentucky!  Drive faster!  I can say this, as someone who lived in Kentucky for a few years.  I went to a grade school where you got extra credit for wearing shoes.

This was in 1980.

True story.

Need I say more?  Hunk-a-pizza?

At one point, the car started making a really loud grinding noise every time Jen hit the brakes.  Since we were at least 8 hours from our destination, this was cause for concern.    In the end, it turned out to be something easily fixable (though not until we arrived in NC.)

We were never in danger of crashing into a ravine.

No, Jen really, we were safe the whole time.  Promise!

Then there was the time we stopped at a doozy of a place to fill the tank.  I had to use the bathroom (remember I have major public bathroom issues).  One, teeny tiny problem. This wasn’t a gas station. It was a service shop with a few gas pumps, a garage and a greasy spoon dinette/shop/place.  The bathroom was inside the restaurant (and believe me when I say I’m being polite calling it that). Throwing caution to the wind, I left all my stuff in the car and ran into the building. I had to ask the short order cook, who was flipping over eggs and hash browns to direct me to the bathroom.

It was about 1 1/2 feet from a table where people were eating.  Ew, that’s a little gross, but beggars can’t be choosers.  I went in and closed the door quickly realizing the light was not working.  It was literally pitch black in this tiny room.  I panicked.  I opened the door to let enough light in about three times so I could see where everything was. Let me be clear here, I’m not scared of the dark, but I have an irrational fear of tiny, public bathrooms with no lights.  I was so mad that I didn’t even have my phone to use as a light source.  Needless to say, it was the quickest bathroom trip ever.

Back to happier things…along the way, there were sightings of beautiful scenery

and, um, some not so beautiful scenery. As if Piggy Bank Pawn isn’t bad enough, they are in a town called Locust.  I’m sure that’s a lovely place, but I prefer not to stop anywhere named after bugs.

At the end of Day 1, we stopped in a little town in Tennesse.  This was the bad part of the “no planned route” trip.  This hotel, while it was clean, safe and full of friendly people on motorcycles, was out in the middle of NO WHERE.  We asked about a restaurant and we were told that the mini-mart at the gas station had a great food selection.  For real.

Someone also had a fascination with statues because the property, outside and inside, was filled with them.  Here is a sample of the greatest.

Zeus

Then Genghis Khan

I’m not sure why the eagle is eating JenTastic’s foot, but it looks painful to me.

No idea what’s happening here. When she gets this like, I just nod and smile.  That happened a lot on this trip.

I thought this was creepy until we saw what was next to him….

A strange hungover, sleep deprived Mr. Lincoln.  He looks like he could use some coffee.  And shampoo.

Here’s the lovely eagle again, without Jen’s foot in it’s mouth.

I don’t know what’s weirder here…you decide.

After we had a good night’s sleep, a decent breakfast and stocked up on coffee, we were ready to hit the road for day 2.  JenTastic commandeered the camera and took these shots.

A few hours into our drive, I did a spot check with Roberta (the navigator) to see what interesting things were around us.  Hey, we were 2.9 miles away from Gran Nanny’s Goat Milk.  Too bad it was in the opposite direction, that just might have been fascinating.

Ok, this is not scary or dangerous at all.

Really, Mr. Truck, you’re doing a great job with that dental floss holding back the tree trunks from flying into our car and crushing us like ants, and those tiny orange flags, yeah, those are really obvious.

Finally, we arrived at our destination, lugged our stuff into the house and quickly collapsed for the night.

I did get acquainted with Chick-fil-A on this trip. Boy, they have delicious lemonade.

I also discovered the Food Lion grocery store chain, where I saw this very exciting ad, especially for someone like me with an eyeball fascination.

Another Food Lion gem (reminiscent of the potted meat product Kim gave me for my 20th birthday, along with a hot pink toilet plunger)

We went to a local place for lunch and the food was absolutely terrific.  We shared a cheesy seafood dip with pita chips (delish!)

as well as a burger with brie, carmelized onions and arugala and the best sweet potato fries I’ve ever had. They tasted like candy, so sweet.

Look at that burger!

The only weird thing…look at the ads on the glasses?  Strange, no?

You’ve already seen the tour of the house and our trips to PikNPig but I’m strictly forbidden to discuss anything else that happened on this trip.

Not even the batch of raw cookie dough that was never baked, but mysteriously disappeared from the fridge

or the entire morning we spent laughing hysterically over Photo Bombs and Passive Aggressive Notes and didn’t get anything productive done

or the mysterious techniques we resorted to when building Rick’s desk

or the gem of a movie Jen dragged me to starring her movie star boyfriend that left us both stunned and in shock

or the “giving of the eyeball” at WalMart and the slippery shoes that almost caused my death or at the very least, serious maiming

or how I was tortured with Ke$ha for ten days and Jen was tortured with Celtics/Lakers games

or the countless times Roberta yelled “RECALCULATING” at us while we drove around

or when I had to restrain JenTastic from taking out a neglectful grandma in Barnes and Noble

or how many cups of coffee we actually drank

or the way JenTastic’s van kept giving me a concussion

or the number of times JenTastic called someone an assclown

or “The Great Eating Dessert in the Car” caper

My lips are zipped.

Nope.

Not saying a word.

One of the other things we did with The Canadians this visit was take the kids to the Chicago Children’s Museum at Navy Pier.  A few months ago, I purchased a Groupon that gave me 10 passes for $40. This is a deal because it normally costs $10 per person to get in the museum. Saving all that dough allowed us to park at Navy Pier for $20/week day – UGH!

Mom, Zoe and I met The Canadians there when the museum opened.  Zoe hasn’t seen her buddies since Christmas, so she was plenty excited. She was also itching to give Kenzie back her toys that have been hanging out in the back of my car since December.  It was really important to Zoe that they toys got back where they belonged.

I hadn’t been to the Children’s Museum before and I was really impressed. There is a lot of hands on stuff for the kids to do. We were there for about 3 hours or so and we only saw about half of the exhibits.  The kids were a getting a little shell shocked.  This is definitely a membership I’ll consider getting.  If you live in Chicago, it might be a better deal because you wouldn’t have to pay for parking, you could take the CTA or possibly a taxi.

Here are the rugrats! Aby, Zak, Kenzie and Zoe.

3 Kids and a Horse

I love Zak’s expression here, he was obviously highly amused by the horse made of “stuff”. I think it was the hair dyer that put him over the edge.

There was a fireman exhibit, with a fire truck and hoses.  The kids played here for quite a bit.  We tried to get Zoe and Kenzie to pose for a few pictures, but after one or two, Kenzie had had enough.

There was this two story climbing net that took you to the upper levels.  The kids had to climb all the way.  Aby and Zak flew up there, and Rob helped Kenzie.  That kid is like a monkey!

Here’s Zoe scooting across the netting.

Next up was the Block Party exhibit.  There was a stage and instruments set up for a band, all sorts of grilling stations as well as a make your own pizza spot.  They had a cool brick oven that the kids could slide their pizzas on.  We almost had a pizza-catastrophe when a boy put his pizza on top of some other pizzas, but luckily Zoe handled the situation by telling the boy “You have to share the oven, that means, wait your turn!”

Apparently my niece doesn’t have the pizza topping issues that I do

Our next stop was at the sculpting station.  Here kids are supposed to make a sculpture of their face using lumpy clay things.  It was hard.

According to Zoe, her face resembles a jack-o-lantern.

We moved onto the large games section and we bowled for a bit.  Look at that form!

Soon, Zoe was buzzing around like a bee pollinating all the plants.

After that, she and GeGe got into a Parks vehicle to water some plants.  Crazy driver!

We finally met back up with our Canadian friends and soon they were all digging for dinosaur bones. This was a very cool exhibit.  They had large bones covered in rubber mulch and the kids were given paleontology tools to uncover them.

Zak and Zoe inside the T-Rex mouth!

Good alternative use for rolling pins.

Rob and Kenzie!

At this exhibit, you had to create your own flying machine and then see how long it stayed in the air.  The one with the red dot is mine. I went with the propeller theory and it managed to stay in the air for a good amount of time.

Finally I have a picture with Kenzie  This kid is too cute for words.

She’s quite fearless for two and a half.

Big sister Aby is scooping up fish.

During lunch, Aby turned to Zoe and said, “Get your passport, so you can come and visit me in Canada.”

Kids = hilarious.

My lunch item of choice was the Atlanta Dog - chili, mustard and coleslaw – hold the ketchup and raw onions.  (I love ketchup, but it doesn’t belong anywhere near a hot dog.  Ever.)

We ended our day with a ride on the Navy Pier ferris wheel.  It was a hot, humid day, but with a beautiful sky.

I can’t get over how big both these girls look.

My new favorite picture of Zoe and Gege, with the Rob photo bomb in the background.

Dueling photographers

Wrapping up our day Rob and Zoe hug it out.

Finally, Rob likes to pretend that pink princess bag belongs to one of his children, but he’s around it a lot.  He once took it on a trip (without children) to York, England where it made quite the impression on the desk clerk.

The older kids had one last treat, a ride on the carousal.

I will be taking Zoe back to the Children’s Museum at Navy Pier.  There are a lot of things we didn’t see, but we had a terrific time seeing the exhibits we did squeeze in.

Thanks so much to our friends for spending the day with us!

It’s that time again!  Time for the semi-annual visit of the O’Tooles. [often referred to as The Canadians].  Rob, Caroline and their three (soon to be four!) children came in for their summer visit.

Aby is nine, Zak is six, and Kenzie is two and a half.  I spent a lot of time with Aby and Zak when they were little and lived close to me, before their parents decided to move to England for two years and then three years ago relocate to Montreal.  Kenzie was born after they moved away, so it was nice to spend some time with her.

We were lucky enough to see them a few times this visit.  We had dinner, then I took Rob and Caroline to Chuck’s for breakfast, and we were able to squeeze in an ice-cream run, too.  Caroline is about 6 months pregnant and she’s addicted to ice cream when she’s pregnant, so this was not a surprise.

Here’s an photo from 2003 when she was pregnant with Zak.  This was a trip to Friendly’s (which sadly, we do not have in the mid-west)

Rob, Aby and I weren’t able to finish our sundaes but Caroline not only finished her giant banana split, she also cleaned out our sundaes as well.

Hey, she has healthy babies, so this must be working!

Oh look, what a surprise, she’s eating ice cream again!  If I remember correctly, this was a three scoop sundae consisting of pistachio, cherry chocolate and chocolate chip mint, with hot fudge, caramel and pineapple toppings.

Did I mention that she’s pregnant?

More ice cream?  Oy vey!  Thankfully, Caroline has a good sense of humor and doesn’t mind me poking fun at her ice cream addiction. Right?  Caroline?

Just to prove that I can pick on another member of her family, here’s Rob clutching his ice cream like someone (ahem -not mentioning names here) is about to yank it from his hands.

I’ve mentioned in this blog how predatory Rob is about his food. He doesn’t share.  Especially not french fries.

His sour face is probably because I had just asked him for the four hundred and tenth time to join Facebook.  He’s resisting, but I think I’m wearing him down.  Do it! Do it!

Rob, if you join Facebook, I’ll send you the Blackhawks championship shirt no one else in your family sent you. You know,  the one you’re dying to have.

Obviously, I’m not above bribery.

There’s nothing about the menu I made for this year’s 4th of July that screams patriotism. Except maybe the strawberry shortcake, but mom ended up bringing that, so I can’t even take credit for it.  I’m trying to get into a more regular blogging habit so I figured I might as well work on some of my recipes for the “cookbook” I’m supposed to be writing this year.  Did I say supposed?  I mean, the cookbook I said I’d work on this year.  There, that’s better. Less pressure on me.

I made a very traditional bbq chicken breast and a few unconventional sides.  I love watching Giada DeLaurentis cook and I even have a few of her cookbooks, but I don’t make a lot of her food.  Yesterday I watched a show and was very intriuged by two dishes so I decided to give them a whirl.

One was herbed cheesed stuffed dates wrapped in prosciutto.  Easy enough until I had to find mascapone cheese.  Apparently it’s extremely hard to find in regular stores in the midwest and when you do find it, it’s ridiculously expensive.  I sucked it up and paid an exorbitant amount for a small container.  Soft, creamy goat cheese is also expensive when you don’t buy it in bulk at Sam’s, but again, I took one for the team.  The other two ingredients are fresh basil (something I can’t live without) and dates.

Herbed Cheese-stuffed Dates with Prosciutto
mascarpone cheese
goat cheese
Prosciutto
basil leaves

Use about a quarter cup of each cheese (at room temperature) and mix together until combined.
Chop basil leaves finely.
Mix all items together and add salt and pepper to your preference.
Pit the dates, if they aren’t already, and stuff each one with a spoonful of cheese
Wrap each date in a piece of proscuitto (I cut them in half lengthwise)

That’s it!  Super easy. *sidenote – I discovered bacon wrapped dates a few years ago, and promptly introduced them to all of my friends.  They are so good!*

The other recipes will come soon, in the meantime you’ll have to be satisfied with a few photos. I spooned some of the extra herbed cheese on the warm potato and zucchini pancakes as well as some unsweetened applesauce. Delicious!  These pancakes were finished on the grill, so they have a little extra char!

Here’s a picture of the whole meal.  The green beans were grilled with olive oil and garlic.  Aren’t those tomatoes beautiful?  They were the most lovely yellow and orange heirloom tomatoes I bought at the farmer’s market last week.  BBQ chicken rounds out the meal.  Simple but tasty.

Another photo of the tomatoes. (I really love the macro zoom on my camera.)  One thing I love about food, besides eating it, is how beautiful it is.  The colors of these tomatoes reminds me of changing leaves in the Fall (my favorite season!)

Finally, dessert!  Mom brought strawberries with vanilla and hazelnut syrup and homemade whipped cream. (something I love, but have little patience for, unless I’m making a trifle).  We bought the traditional spongecake cups, but a chocolate version.  Who knew??

Happy 4th of July!  Thanks to all of the people who have and are selflessly serving our country every day.

I love pizza. It’s probably one of my favorite foods.  I admit to being very particular regarding my pizza toppings.  My ultimate preference is for simplicity.  Just sauce, cheese and fresh basil.  I will eat mushrooms (fresh only please.  No respectable pizzeria should even think about using canned mushrooms!) and occasionally sausage, but I’m super picky about it.   Something I will not eat on pizza ever (and cannot even be picked off because it smells like feet) is pepperoni.  I will graciously allow you to have pepperoni on your half, but don’t expect me to eat it and please keep it from contaminating my side of the pizza.

Other things I will eat on pizza… dollops of ricotta, thinly sliced onions, sometimes garlic, meatballs (again depend on the place). Once I had a pizza with garlic and broccoli, it was very different for me, but I really liked it.  As for crust…I’m a New York girl at heart. If you can’t fold it in half, it’s not real pizza.  And for the record, pizza should always be cut into slices, like pie slices not tiny little squares, thankyouverymuch.  A nice chewy crust is best, but I can now appreciate Chicago Deep Dish style of pizza even if it’s not my first or second choice.

So I just wrote all of these things about my favorite kind of pizza and this blog post is about a pizza that’s completely different from what I just explained.  This is a true Chicago treat.  It’s in a little place that’s been around for years and has a very interesting history.  It’s called Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder.  They have a very limited menu which allows them to make those items really well.   I’m pseudo-apologizing for the darkness of the phots and video right now. This place is a dark cave of a restaurant, which is cool when you’re in there eating, but doesn’t set the stage well for photos.

CPOG has really good, fresh salads.  Even better are the dressings that accompany them.  They have a sweet poppyseed dressing as well as a spicy garlic one.  Put a little of each on your salad and mix it all up and it’s a very good taste combination.

They are also known for their Mediterranean bread which is a giant flat bread that arrives at your table on a really tiny plate.  The bread hangs over the plate and you rip it into pieces and chow down.  They put an herb and spice topping on it that is full of dried onions, garlic, parsely, salt and pepper and probably a million other tasty things.

This is a gigantic bread as you can see from the photo below:

No, really, it’s huge.  Here it is in relation to a human.

(This same human has also requested his own Mediterranean bread on the occasion we bring more than four people to  CPOG.  He loves it that much and he doesn’t like to share. Much like my friend Rob who refuses to share his french fries.)

(Same human after eating the majority of the Mediterranean bread.  I never say “I told you so” even though I always say “Don’t eat it all!! You’ll regret it later”  Now, I’ll just flash this picture instead of not saying it.)

They are best know for their pizza pot pies (I don’t know how else to explain them).  The pizza comes to you flipped over like a bowl of dough and they flip it out onto a plate leaving it cheese side up.  They come in two sizes, half pound and full pound. (In thirteen plus years, I’ve never seen anyone eat a full pounder!)

Look at this thing of beauty:

Your options are for meat, meat and mushroom (with a few giant mushrooms) and vegetarian.  The sauce is a thick meaty sauce that would taste amazing on a plate of spaghetti. It’s really a hearty meal.

Here’s a short, dark video clip of the flipping of the pizza pot pie.

The last thing I’ll say is that after you’ve had this amazing salad, Mediterranean bread and then the hearty pizza pot pie, they bring you the most delectable chocolate honeycomb candies.  The waiters guard these candies with their lives. You can’t get more even if you beg for them and forget about finding out the supplier.  At least that’s the experience I’ve had over many years.

If you’re in Chicago and are looking for a different kind of pizza experience, give Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder a try.  you’ll love it.  Just letting you know, they only take CASH! and the wait can be long.  Go when they open for an early dinner and wave at the crowds as you leave.

CHICAGO PIZZA AND OVEN GRINDER COMPANY
2121 NORTH CLARK STREET
CHICAGO, IL  60614
773-248-2570

And that, my loyal readers (you ALL know who you are) is the latest installment of Fave Foods.