Chicago

Found-Mulberry Scones

/ Shane / 4 Comments

The first Friday of the month is reserved for recipes. You can see additional First Friday Food posts here.

The Reason:

I like scones as much as the next guy, but I have to be honest: pastry blenders kind of scare me. Well, it’s not so much that they scare me, it’s just that nothing I do with a pastry blender seems to turn out right. Too complicated to chop butter, too bulky to use as brass knuckles. What’s a boy to do?

So when I came across this recipe that does not use butter, I knew it was a match made in heaven. (Before you get too excited, it more than makes up for that in heavy cream, so you’re not exactly getting away with anything) (Except using a pastry blender)

The Journey:

The recipe calls for strawberries, so we tried that first and it is as good as advertised. However, we have been making this recipe with any kind of fruit we can get our hands on, strawberries, blueberries, and even scavenged mulberries.

It turns out that Chicago is absolutely crawling with mulberries, if you know where to look. In fact, even if you don’t know where to look, you can’t help but stumble upon them. Literally! Because they make the most god-awful, bird-dropping-looking mess all over the sidewalk or your car if you are unlucky enough to park under one.

It turns out we have not one but TWO excellent locations for scavenging mulberries right next to our house; the sidewalk outside of the YMCA and the grass lot surrounding the abandoned fire station. And nobody seems to mind one bit if you steal them.

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Evie: “What does that sign say?”
Sara: “No trespassing, violators will be prosecuted.”

That’s right, ILLEGAL mulberries. That’s just how we roll around here. “Kids, it’s okay to ignore the law, as long as it results in delicious scones. Remember that.”

What a pain mulberries are! They are the most stain-y things on god’s green earth, and if you work with them you just have to commit to purple hands for the rest of the day. The first time I actually took all the little stems off, but I will never do THAT again, thank you very much. I couldn’t tell one bit of difference between the scones where I took them off and the ones where I didn’t. So there’s 30 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.

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The Verdict:

I dare you to say to my face that you didn’t like these. Double-dog dare. We CAN NOT stop making them. They are a little moist and a little sweet and a lot wonderful. I would eat them every day. I would force my kids to illegally break and enter on public property to get at the ingredients if I had to.

And don’t forget the most important ingredient: a pinch of photobomb

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The Recipe:

Recipe (*very* slightly adapted) from West of the Loop.

  • 2 cups white whole wheat flour
  • 1 TB baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • Zest of one orange (used a lemon in a pinch)
  • 1 1/4 cups heavy cream
  • 1 cup sliced strawberries (or whatever)
  • 1 1/2 tsp. Turbinado sugar
  1. Preheat the oven to 450 and line a baking sheet with a parchment paper.
  2. Whisk the dry ingredients together in a medium-sized bowl.
  3. Add the orange zest and the sliced strawberries. Gently toss the strawberries until they are coated in flour.
  4. Pour the cream in all at once and stir with a fork until the dough comes together. It will be wet and sticky.
  5. Scoop the dough onto the prepared baking sheet with a large spoon, making eight (largish) scones.
  6. Sprinkle 1/4 tsp. of Turbinado sugar on the top of each scone.
  7. Bake until firm and golden brown, about 15 minutes.
  8. Cool on a wire rack. Serve warm.

Break-in Follow-up

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Since the break-in at our house, everybody has been asking me the same question: what are we going to do about it?

The short answer? Nothing.

In the aftermath of the whole thing, I expected to feel very unsafe. The fact is, I never felt it. I’m sure losing so little has a lot to do with it, but honestly I don’t feel any different today than I did before this happened. It’s just a thing that happened.

Yes, we talked about putting bars on the basement windows. We haven’t ruled it out. But at the end of the day, if someone wants to get in, they’ll get in. We’re not going to bar up every window of our house, and there are plenty of windows they could break if they wanted to. Heck, they could just stand outside and break windows, and that would probably be costlier than anything they could steal.

Honestly, if I felt like we needed bars on our windows, then I think we shouldn’t be living here anymore. But I don’t feel like that. I feel like some stupid kids did something dumb, and it could have happened anywhere. First and foremost, don’t blame Chicago. Everyone who doesn’t live in Chicago gets a look on their face like, “Well, that’s what you get for living in Chicago!”

Look, statistically speaking there are probably more break-ins in Chicago, but there are a lot of factors in that; you have to look at it on a per capita basis, you have to factor in neighborhood and habits and personal associations. Even after all of that, we might still be more statistically likely to have a break-in, but I bet the difference is smaller than you think. And certainly anecdotally I know of at least two break-ins that were much worse and happened in much smaller towns: one with 2.3% of the population of Chicago, and one with 1.1% the population.

I think you also have to look at the cost of “preventative measures”. There’s always more you can do to “protect” your home, but is it really worth it? The window would have been broken in any case; would it have been worth $1000 to save $30 in stolen items? Is it worth creating an atmosphere of terror and paranoia for the kids to save *any* amount of money? My happiness and well-being would be negatively affected by surrounding myself with security measures and bars on my windows. I don’t know what my happiness and well-being is worth, but I’m certain it’s worth more than any object my house has to offer.

At the end of the day, it was just a thing that happened. It could happen again, or it could not. Maybe I could have prevented it, maybe I could not. Maybe next time it could be worse; they could have stolen more, or damaged more, or we could have been home. I could get mugged or hit by a stray bullet. But I also could be hit by a car, or hit by a falling anvil, or contract antibiotic resistant MRSA. You can not 100% ensure your safety.

So the question is, do I spend my time between now and then living in fear, or do I forget about it and move on? I think you already know the answer to that question.

Someone broke into our house

/ Shane / 5 Comments

I was at work when I got a call from Sara.

“Did we leave the bedroom doors open today?” she asked.
“Hmm, I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I guess we could have,” I said.
“What about the front door, did we forget to lock that today?”
“No, for sure that was locked. I waited by the back door until I heard you lock it, because I wasn’t sure if I should come lock it or if you were going to get it.”
“Huh, well, it’s not locked now. Maybe I just partially locked it?”

5 minutes later she called back again.

“Someone broke into our house. I’m standing outside, and I’m calling the police.”

As far as we can tell, they cut the screen on the back window first, before circling around to the front and breaking a window. They must not have been in the house long, and they must have exited through both the front and back doors. Our neighbor saw the front door open around 3 p.m. and called a few times to see if we were home. Finding we weren’t, he shut the door for us, but did not notice the broken window.

I’m so glad for our neighbors, one of whom checked out the apartment for Sara to make sure it was safe before I could get home, and another helped us fit a board contraption over the missing window. Right at that moment I don’t think I would have known exactly what to do, and I seriously doubt I would have been able to come up with something logical. But now I know what to do! So I guess I gained some experience out of the whole ordeal. Whoo hoo!

Now, the joke really was on whoever “robbed” the place, because they broke into the wrong house. We really don’t have much for them to steal. I can only imagine the looks on their faces, like “Oh no, someone got here first and stole all the tvs!” That being said, we’re not exactly talking about “professionals” here, considering they didn’t take any jewelry (including Sara’s engagement ring) or our cameras, all of which were sitting out.

Instead they stole some loose change and a bike I bought at Goodwill for $10.

The strangest part is that they stole about $0.65 off the counter in the bathroom, but they picked through it and only took the silver, no pennies. Beggars can’t be choosers, my thieving friends! Pennies still spend here in America! They rifled through quite a bit of stuff, including emptying a bag on the bed (side note, we CAN NOT figure out what bag they went through, since it contained only really old kid’s clothes; when’s the last time we had a child wearing 2T pants?) and taking change out of the bowl I keep next to the bed (leaving the pennies untouched, naturally). The “big score” was our container of probably $10 in card-playing change.

Sara pointed out that if they wanted to make some real money, they should have grabbed a couple of hundred dollars worth of yarn.

By far the most bizarre incident was the box of shoes. We had ordered some shoes for Oliver for the wedding, and they had just arrived the day before. So the box was sitting right by the door, unopened. I don’t know if they saw the box and said, “Hey, a package, might be electronics!” or if they recognized Zappos and said, “Maybe they just bought some cool kicks!” In either case, they were bound to be disappointed (unless they were, in fact, criminal 3 year olds).

So Sara said, “You know, I’m going to go look around in the alley, because when they realized they were kids shoes, they probably just dumped them right away.” Even more so when she discovered the box in the dumpster; so we knew that they had opened them and saw what was inside. Sara was sure she would find them somewhere, but we didn’t. So she quickly hopped on the computer and ordered a new set of shoes so we could get them in time for the wedding.

Later that night, totally unrelated, Sara opened up the knitting cabinet looking for some knitting needles, and there were the shoes!

This completely baffled us. So they opened up the shoes in the house, saw they were kids’ shoes and then hid them in a cabinet? And then politely took the box out to the dumpster? Sara and I have been puzzling over this ever since. How could that possibly make sense? Sara said, “I’m not going to sleep tonight. Not because I’m scared, just because I’m confused.” In fact, we were so confused we kept saying, “One of us must have done that and then forgotten, right? I mean, that’s the only thing that makes sense.” Eventually though, Sara pointed out that if we had opened the box we would have put it in the recycling, not the dumpster. So it definitely couldn’t have been us.

So, as far as robberies go, I’d say we got off as lightly as possible. The broken window was by FAR the worst of it.

The truly miraculous part was that the kids weren’t here. This was actually the end-cap on our first nights without the children EVER. That’s just about six years without a night off. I would say it was wonderful, but, you know, it kind of ended badly. On the other hand though, I’m so glad the kids don’t know that this happened, and we’re certainly not telling them. Evie would probably never sleep again. She is such a worrier, and I just know this is the sort of thing that would really rattle her. So it was amazingly fortunate that they just happened to not be here. We’ve been able to keep it from them, but we wouldn’t have been able to that night while we were dealing with the cops and broken glass and everything.

Speaking of the police, I was less than impressed with the stellar performance of the Chicago PD. Despite Sara telling them on the phone she wasn’t going back in the house until they came, it took them 4 hours (and 2 phone calls) to actually make it out (luckily Sara relented on waiting outside!). By that time we had already cleaned up the glass and boarded up the window. The officer was really nice and apologized for the delay. At that point I just wanted to have an official report in case we needed it for insurance or something, but she actually called for a crime scene technician to come out and take a look. We filed the report and she said the CSI tech would be out in “twenty minutes to an hour”.

Now, call me crazy, but I did not expect any kind of attempt to actually solve the crime. I mean, we all know they’re not going to catch these guys. But having a CSI tech come out was kind of badass, especially when he was dusting for prints. And then this happened:

csi_ourhouse

Unfortunately, the CSI guy did not arrive in “twenty minutes to an hour”, he arrived at 11:30 p.m., about an hour after we went to bed and a full 7 hours after we originally called 911.

“Did you touch anything?” he asked.
“Uh, yeah. We called at 4:30,” we said.
“Oh. Well, we won’t be able to get anything then.”

He did attempt to dust for prints, but basically he pointed out that anything we had touched, or breathed on, or looked at funny would have lost the prints. And cardboard doesn’t hold prints. And doorknobs are no good for prints. Apparently fingerprints are delicate little snowflakes and are almost impossible to get (especially if you show up, like, a day after the crime was committed). Needless to say, he didn’t find anything and it was a big waste of everyone’s time.

So that’s it. As far as break-ins go, pretty tame, and I almost feel funny mentioning it. Things are already back to normal around here and we haven’t even gotten the window fixed yet.

As for our ferocious guard-cat, Nala did take the opportunity to make a break for it. Kind of. She walked out through the broken window, munched on the plant a few inches away, and then immediately came back inside and threw up said plant on the glass-strewn windowsill. Not a Shawshank Redemption-level jailbreak perhaps, but she did experience several seconds of freedom and apparently that was enough. I can only imagine these thieves walking around our house with Nala following after them everywhere they went, talking their ears off. Maybe she is a good guard cat; that’s probably why they left so quickly – they were sick of that nuisance cat.

May Food Swap

/ Shane / 2 Comments

I’m a little late in posting this, but Sara attended the May Food Swap.

In exchange for:

  • whole wheat honey bread (6 loaves)
  • yogurt (5 14 oz jars)
  • cantaloupe vanilla jam (3 4 oz and 1 8 oz jar)

We received:

  • Cinnamon pecan butter
  • Preserved lemons
  • Overnight French boule
  • Focaccia
  • Orange sea salt caramels
  • Hot pepper jam
  • Strawberry rhubarb orange preserves
  • Potato, cheddar & chive frittata
  • Rhubarb curd shortbread bars
  • 2 copper river heirloom tomato plants
  • 1 wapsipinicon peach tomato plant
  • Garlic & oregano butter
  • Plum with vanilla orchid tea jam
  • Cardamom peanut butter
  • Cashew butter with candied Pomegranate
  • 4 chocolate peanut butter Whoopie pies

May Food Swap

Naturally, the desserts are always the favorites at our house. In this case the Whoopie pies carried the day, with the rhubarb curd shortbread bars a close second. However, for my money, nothing beat the garlic & oregano butter / focaccia combination.

It was also a cool idea to get tomato plants. We’ve planted them in the garden, so hopefully they take off (I believe they had been started from seedlings, so two of them at least were little tiny baby tomato plants). If they do, they are certainly “worth” a lot of food compared to a loaf of bread.

Speaking of bread, that was a lot of bread! I was baking bread for 2 days, since I did 6 loaves for the swap, another two loaves for us, a couple of batches of granola, and a batch of oatmeal cookies on top just for funsies. Seems like it was worth it though, since Sara traded all the bread, including even the one that she had sliced up for samples. Besides, usually Sara makes everything for the food swap, but i do a lot of the eating, so it was probably time to pull a little weight.

As always, very glad to have an opportunity to try a bunch of unique homemade items!

Meez Meals

/ Shane / 3 Comments

I don’t consider myself or Sara to be lucky people (I mean, aside from being born in a country where people are more worried about their cell phone data plan than if they’re going to have anything to eat tonight) (which is actually kind of relevant to this post, now that I think about it). So it is always a pleasant surprise to actually win something.

And that’s exactly what happened a couple of weeks ago, when Sara won 3 free Meez Meals courtesy of the West of the Loop blog!

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, we used to do Dinner by Design and Dream Dinners to stock up food prior to having a new baby. Meez Meals is sort of similar to that, except even better: you get all the ingredients to make a home-cooked meal, but instead going somewhere and assembling the meals, they actually deliver it to your door! (and for roughly the same price)

Some people might wonder why you would pay to have someone deliver food that you then have to make yourself. It’s a valid question, I suppose, but it’s sort of like having all of the upsides of cooking yourself (adjust the salt, add chicken, make it spicier, etc.), without the downsides (chopping all the veggies, having a million different preparation dishes, running out of a key ingredient, etc.). And the food they offer is much more healthful than your average take-out meal.

Some people might also wonder about the price. If you’re cooking it yourself at home anyway, isn’t it a little pricey compared to home cooked meals? Well yes, it is, but it’s not comparable to making dinner at home; you have to compare it to going out to eat. It requires infinitely less effort than planning a meal, shopping for the food, and doing all the preparations.

Still, it’s a fair criticism. It’s not cheap, especially for someone like us who very rarely go out to eat. I wouldn’t advocate abandoning all food-making and only eating from Meez Meals from now on, but I will say that the week we got our 3 free meals, it was a life saver. It could certainly be invaluable now and again. There is no price too high to place for not having to plan meals, and it’s also nice to add a little variety into dinnertime to avoid getting stuck in a rut.

Alas, I wish I could tell you that the food itself knocked my socks off, but I thought it was only okay. However, my main complaint was that a lot of it was somewhat bland, which is probably something I could actually do something about. Oliver, on the other hand, couldn’t stuff spaghetti squash in his mouth fast enough, literally, eventually abandoning the taco part altogether:

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Oh, two more things I want to mention!

First, we saw some complaints that the food comes in a million plastic bags, which was true, and it did kind of drive me and (especially) Sara crazy. Sara boycotts entire brands for using too much packaging. However, we heard that in Chicago the bags are recyclable. We haven’t confirmed that yet, which is why we have a huge stack of what looks like trash sitting next to the dishes.

Second, this email:

We’re Sorry!We’ve heard from some members that the Moroccan Tacos are delicious, but the portion was smaller than we intended.Please have a meal on us next time.  Go ahead and place your next order the usual way, then send us a note with your pick for an extra meal.  We’ll get it all together for you.

How’s that for customer service?? We found the portions were more than generous and had plenty for leftovers, including the Moroccan Tacos. So that was really going above and beyond if you ask me.

So anyway, special thanks to Meez Meals and West of the Loop for hooking us up. We’ll have to do it again some time (I mean, except not for free) (unless you’re open to that, because I would definitely not turn you down).