Chicago

Neighborhood Linkery

/ Shane / 1 Comment

First off, our favorite neighborhood grocery store got a webpage! Before I went to Hyde Park Produce, I never felt really one way or another about a grocery store. It was just a place to buy food. However, after moving to a food desert and having some bad experiences with grocery stores, I finally found one that I really enjoy. It would be impossible not to like the place. How can you not like a family run business that has, “Welcome…to our dream!” written in giant letters across the back of the store? Everyone is so friendly, and they give Evie a cookie when we check out. True, it is really a produce store, so we have to visit other stores on occasion, but it is really a gem in the neighborhood.

Speaking of things in the neighborhood, there is a “restaurant” which we had never been to that we tried out the other day. The reason why I say “restaurant” in quotes, is because the place is Bake at Home Pizza. Basically, they make a pizza for you, and then you take that pizza home and bake it in your own oven (I guess the name is self explanatory). The pizza was actually really good, as good or better than anywhere else in the neighborhood, without a doubt. I really liked the place. However, I do object to the price a little bit. It’s not that the place is expensive, but it’s not cheaper than going to a restaurant. So if I’m expected to bake the pizza at home myself, then I expect it to be a little cheaper. If they reduced the price on the pizzas by a couple of bucks, I would probably go here all the time. As it is, however, it’s probably only going to be a once-in-a-while type place, when we have a coupon or they have a special.

Finally, the MSI, which is right on our doorstep of course, opened up a new permanent exhibit about weather. It is AWESOME! Maybe it is because we go there so often, so anything new seems cool, but I don’t think so. There are so many large installments to see, from the tornado, to the spinning avalanche thing, to the thing that shoots tennis balls across the gallery, to my personal favorite, the giant lightning machine in the ceiling. When I went, it was surprisingly not crowded, and Evie and I were able to do pretty much everything. Evie’s favorite part was the big color box you can stand in and change the colors. She’s not a fan of the Tesla coil, on account of the loud noise it makes. Overall though, a great addition to the museum!

More Chicago Coyotes

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Over the weekend, we were driving by the park a couple of blocks from our house, when I looked over and noticed a coyote stalking Canadian geese on the baseball diamond.

Coyotes are among us! This picture on the Internet proves it.

This wasn’t like under the cover of darkness or anything, it was in broad daylight, at about 10:30 a.m. We pulled over and watched it for a while, but we didn’t have a camera or anything to take a picture. It is very bizarre to see such a large wild animal, just chilling in the middle of the day on the corner of two very busy streets, in the middle of an enormous city.

Coyotes are taking over Chicago! Send help!

Chinatown

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Sara and I had been looking for a really good place to go in Chinatown, and I think we may have found it: Joy Yee.

This was just sort of your typical Chinese restaurant: very busy, huuuge menu, portions very large, very cheap, and very solid. All of the food was very good. We played it pretty safe, so nothing was outstanding, but perhaps in the future we will be more adventurous.

However, one place that Joy Yee really shown, was the enormous drink menu. We tried 3 tapioca freezes: Avocado, Jack Fruit, and Taro Root. All of them were good, but I thought the Taro Root was particularly amazing (and blue!). Evie was quite surprised to suck up a tapioca bubble. I think this was the most fun, picking out these crazy drinks and finding them delicious.

And to top it all off, even with the drinks, we only spent like $27! There is no question that we will be back.

So, after that rousing success, we couldn’t just stop there. Next up was the Saint Anna Bakery, located just a few doors down. We wanted some desert, and we got it! Everything was very good. We picked out 4 things, including a giant slice of hazelnut cake. Imagine my surprise when the total came to less than $5! Just to top it all off, the lady gave an extra desert to Evie for being too cute.

So, needless to say, a very successful trip. Thanks to Dabu for suggesting it!

Monday Catch Up Post (and quotes!)

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Evie: “Rabbits eat vegetables, like grass, carrots, raisins…”
Me: “I didn’t know you knew so much about rabbits!”
Evie: “I kept it to myself.”

Evie: “Does an ant have 8 legs, like a spider?”

I’m very proud of my smart girl!

Evie, trying some food at a restaurant: “Mommies and Daddies say it’s yummy, but big girls say it’s yucky.”

Last week, Evie took another stab at high theater, when Sara took her to see a play of her current favorite story, Pinocchio. It was a disaster. Complete 180 from the first play. She started freaking out as soon as the lights went down and refused to go back into the theater. Her main complaint was that Pinocchio was “big, not little”, i.e. played by an adult, not a child. I think it will be a while before we give plays another try.

On Sunday, we took the train in to the Art Institute of Chicago, for “Free February”. Sara and I wanted to check out the new Modern Wing that opened up last May. I was a little nervous about how Evie was going to do at a museum that was not hands-on, but she did pretty good. Obviously, when you’re going with a kid, you have to sort of present things in a certain way. Like, “Ohh, look, horses!” Or like, find the things that she would be into. She seemed to really dig the modern art! She liked the idea that we could look at it and decide what we thought it looked like. She even sat on the floor and examined a few for a while. Afterwards, we found some children’s art activities in the basement, and Evie enjoyed them so well, that she didn’t want to leave.

Naturally, we managed to get in a trip to Yolk while we were in that neck of the woods.

We also managed to hit up a new (for us) restaurant in Chinatown, but I think I’ll save that for a separate post tomorrow

Me: ::Throwing a long, beautiful, arching snowball and nailing Evie in the legs::
Evie, excitedly: “Good job daddy!!”

What can I say, it was a beautiful throw?

Frontera Grill

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Over the weekend we hit up another new restaurant, Frontera Grill. This place was a little pricier than we usually go in for. Run by famous Chicago chef-restaurateur Rick Bayless, it serves some truly awesome, authentic Mexican food. It’s also right downtown in a pretty touristy area, another thing we don’t usually do.

Let me back up a second and say how it is we came to be interested in this place. They make awesome salsa. I can imagine most people might eat at the restaurant and then seek out the salsa at the store afterwards, but it kind of happened the opposite for us. We’ve been getting their truly impressive salsa at the store for some time now.

So we went to check the place out, but we pulled our usual trick of going really, really early so that we can be in and out with Evie before the place gets too crowded. The problem is that the plan falls down when a place is so busy that it’s always crowded. There was a line already when we got there 15 minutes before they opened. They told us we would get a table in about 45 minutes.

We spent some time at the fanciest McDonalds I have ever seen, before eventually making it into the restaurant. Despite the wait, and despite the hype, the place still blew me away. The food was amazing. We had a couple of appetizers and entres of course, and even a margarita. With the exception of some salsa that was roughly the temperature of the sun, each thing was more delicious than the last.

I can’t recommend the place highly enough, we will definitely be back there again.

As far as everything else, work is really killing me at the moment, so I didn’t do much else besides work over the weekend. So I apologize for the lack of quotes, etc. Hopefully we’ll be on track again next week.