meprip!

the green city market rules

website

the photo shows only a fraction of the booths there. just fantastic. multiple places to get pasture eggs, several cheese stands (ones where they actually make the cheese they're selling), a choice of grass-fed farms, some excellent whole milk, even a place that specializes in elk.

it reminds me of the Broadway market, but bigger. and without the clothes stalls.

we got their early to ensure we could still get eggs from T&J Farms. we did, but they were already out of bacon (this is where we got the pepper bacon used with the flank steak). no worries, we took home some of their pork chops, which i'm definitely looking forward to. our favorite lamb place, Mint Creek Farms, just this week started offering beef, so we got some ground beef and will also be trying their mexican chorizo sausage, with eggs.

yum.

oh, you crazy signmakers pt. 2

just found this one online...

oh, you crazy signmakers

the stupidest person i ever met was a waiter i worked with at a Pizza Hut in southern Indiana. the two of us worked the lunch shift. he, with his one or two tables (more than he could handle, really), and me handling the other twenty.

at least 5x a shift, he would ask me the price of breadsticks. "$1.79," i would reply, my answer always the same. sometimes i would point him to the menu at our station, that we could use to look up prices if we'd forgotten something. he would react as if it were new.

waiting was only one his jobs. he was also a signmaker. discovering this suddenly put into perspective all the "professional" signs i had seen with spelling errors, bad grammar, and all the horrible misuses of quote marks.

today, I am relieved to know that if my writing or speech ever become unclear, or if i go off-message too frequently, that I can use any number of well-known international therapies to get me back on message.

evanston farmers' market = lame

what is it with the residents of Evanston? listening to them, you'd think it'd be the best place on earth for everything. we'd certainly heard overwhelmingly good things about the saturday farmers' market.

due to the Chicago Air and Water Show, we decided to forgo the (much much much) superior Lincoln Park farmers' market and head up to Evanston.

need peaches, cukes, or blueberries? that's good, because about 22 of the 25 stands there have them!

need meat? sorry! only one stand there, "grass started and corn finished." no thanks.

need cheese? sorry! again, only one stand, and he was hawking pre-packaged products from a variety of places, all of which could be found in the same packaging, and for cheaper, at Whole Foods.

need eggs or milk? sorry! none found anywhere.

there were two bakery stands, neither had any customers that I could see (same with the meat stand). No, Evanstonians appear to love their produce, and perhaps I'm projecting but I think a good number of people at the market are vegetarian. Or fruitarians, if the produce on offer is indeed an indication of the prevailing diet of the shoppers.

on the plus side, i had assumed there would be a substantial number of arts/crafts stands. there were none!

we did get a number of things, including some good blueberries. I tried blueberries from, iirc, 7 stands, and 6 were on par (or worse?!) than you'd find at Jewel. The basket we did buy was actually pretty tasty.

i predict zero return trips.

what's for dinner?

flank steak! marinated for 3 days, then wrapped with (very) peppery bacon and cooked perfectly. very tasty and i could cut it with a butter knife.

enbluening: complete!

aside from the new treads and risers on the steps, the ironwork has brand new footings and is very solid now.