I was born at Swedish Covenant Hospital up on the north side, lived there for a year, then my folks moved out to the western suburbs. Winfield. We lived on Christiana just north of Foster. My dad is Swedish and my parents both went to North Park, and my grandparents went there, and I went there. I moved to Alaska for a little while, but came back because I realized I’m much too much of a city girl for doing that full time.
North Park University (photo by npu via Flickr)
Whether it's strawberry basil infused s'mores or Cuban street food, going gourmet can be as complicated or as easy as you choose. Upcoming events this week focus on serving up gourmet food anywhere from on the street to in your own kitchen.
National S'more Day Sale
Although s'mores from a campfire may be a summer classic, Chicago-based artisanal chocolate and confections company Truffle Truffle's gourmet twist on the childhood favorite will please any sweet tooth. The company's delicious homemade s'mores come in a variety of flavors, from chipotle peanut butter (marshmallows infused with dried chipotle and combined with homemade peanut butter sandwiched between two peanut butter cookies and covered in milk chocolate) to coconut key lime (marshmallows flavored with pure coconut extract and key lime juice sandwiched between graham shortbread cookies and covered in milk chocolate).
We've been having lots of trouble. (6 words can say it all)
Amy has been working on a‚ post with a few extra goodies to take you into the weekend, but the technical side of things has been glitchy, preventing us from posting it. So, I'm posting up this slideshow that we have put together to share your fabulous 6-word memoirs (music selected by Corey). On Monday we will do our best to do better. See you then; enjoy the show!
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Please please please let me get what I want.
We've had some great entries this week, as many of you are obviously excited about the chance to attend Share Our Strength's "Taste of the Nation" at the Aragon next Thursday. I've been awarding two tickets each day ($190 value) and we're concluding the contest today, with our final challenge:
Last night, I had a remarkable meal at the Girl and the Goat, Stephanie Izard's new restaurant on Randolph Street. The amazing thing was, Stephanie wasn't even there - she had to attend a charity event - and yet the kitchen was just humming as tables filled up late into the night. Execution was near flawless, and I loved how almost every dish had a terrific balance of salt, sour, acid, fat and heat.
Steve Cochran
If everything hadn't‚ gone so terribly, terribly wrong at WGN-AM (720), Steve Cochran would be closing in on his 20th month as morning personality there. He'd also be lead-off man for a real Chicago news/talk lineup that might have included good guys like John Williams, Bob Sirott, David Kaplan and Bill Leff (or, unless they really had chosen to retire by now, women like Kathy O'Malley and Judy Markey).
Science doesn't always tell us what we want to hear, and our record of accepting unwelcome findings is less than stellar. We have been known to shoot the messenger; or at least lock him up until he concedes that the universe revolves around the earth. In this podcast installment of Clever Apes, we meet a Chicago artist inspired by the story of Galileo Galilei. Galileo's discoveries radically recast our picture of the known universe, and for his trouble he was denounced and arrested. Christopher Furman of Chicago Robotic Theater helped produce a play on that theme of outcast truth-tellers with a very unusual cast.
Get more stuff like this by subscribing to our podcast, and tune in the last Monday of August for the next full installment of Clever Apes.
A dilapidated building not too far from my neighborhood recently got this touch-up.
Pie lollipops at last year's "Taste of the Nation" (photo: Deja Views)
Time to give away another pair of tickets to this year's Taste of the Nation at the Aragon on Aug. 12th. As you can tell by the picture above, sweets play a major role in the festivities - there will be 15 different pastry chefs showing off their creations at the event. Please construct a sweet rhyme, haiku or limerick for me, integrating any of the pastry chefs' names who are participating this year, and the most creative one wins. Good luck! Deadline is 4 p.m. CST, and you can only enter once.
