Market inspiration

Kristen blogged about the fabulous meal we cooked up a few weeks back.  The early summer veg were perfect: candy-sweet sun gold tomatoes, delicate squash blossoms, cosmic purple carrots and dragon’s tongue beans!  Deelish!!

Salad of Petite Summer Tomatoes with Vine-Ripe Tomato Sorbet

A day of cooking from The French Laundry Cookbook

For 14 hours this weekend, Jesse and I channeled Thomas Keller — from an 8 a.m. trip to the Green City Market, to blueberry motherfucking soup after midnight. Hell yeah.

Check out my little photo documentary of our French Laundry madness.  For future reference, these recipes are spectacular, but completely ridiculous to make at home.  If you’ve got the time, go for it — but for most folks, this is a coffee table cookbook.

I’m pretty sure that I have one of the only food-smudged copies in existence 

boxes of raspberries by kthread

Green City Market

If you haven’t had the pleasure, the Green City Market is Chicago’s superfantastic local and sustainable farmers market.  It’s open Wednesday and Satuday mornings in Lincoln Park, near the zoo.

Be sure to get there early!  If you’re there at 7 or 8 a.m., you’ll beat the crowds and get your hands on the best fruits and veg.  Plus, you’ll get to see all the restaurant chefs browsing the bounty (and buying all the good stuff!).

I’m writing about the Chicago River on the Windy Citizen! My beat this quarter is the river, so I figured, heck, I’m finding lots of extra neat stuff. I should post about it somewhere.

Fun!

From In Search of the Tamale Guy, by Elizabeth Winkowski:

“Tamales! Tamales!” A quiet, persistent cry cuts through the din at the Rainbo Club early the next Saturday night. Behind the beer taps, a stage with ornate, white, polished-wood columns and a black velvet curtain suggest the bar’s former glory as a strip club — and favorite haunt of Nelson Algren.

I love Chicago.

It’s called The Sixth W. The name is a play on the five Ws: who, what, where, when, and why, plus a new one, web. It seems that some other folks already came up with a sixth W, what’s next, but sucks to them. I’ve got the domain name, so I win.

Check it out!

An especially big Blues Brothers fan has made a map of locations where the film was shot! Anybody up for a tour?

She’s also a wonderful photographer, so it makes me very happy to know that she likes my photo.

Gladys Knight and Ron Winan’s Chicken & Waffles in Atlanta, Georgia.

Deeeelish.

President Bush is a fascist and a terrorist, according to Keith Olbermann. I tend to agree.

Bush and his cronies threaten our freedom and democracy. Please help. Join the Electronic Frontier Foundation today.

I’m changing gears. Last May, Xeni Jardin wrote a post on Boing Boing about a new scholarship offered at Northwestern. Medill was giving full scholarships to programmers who want to study journalism.

Six crazy months later, I became a graduate student. Classes started just after New Year’s, and I’ve been having a blast. The workload is heavy, and I’ve got very little free time for a life outside of class, but I’ve got no complaints.

Frequent readers might have noticed that a few months ago I posted the essay I wrote for my application. The folks who helped me write it were just wonderful. Thanks again, guys!

If you’re a programmer interested in being a journalist, there is still lots of scholarship money left! Go get it! Rich Gordon is the mastermind behind this business. Check out his blog for even more information.

Time to get back to work. Tomorrow morning I start reporting!

The roads in Chicago are useless — yet another reason to take the CTA.