End of June Farmers Market

This is the first year we started buying fresh eggs at the market, as well as locally raised beef and pork.  (beef and pork not pictured)

Whoah! Obama was on WTTW’s Check, Please! in 2001. He reviews one of our favorite Evanston restaurants, Dixie Kitchen. Although we’re excited to see the full episode (it airs on the 16th on WTTW), we have to take exception to his pancake sleepy-fear…we love those johnny-cakes, so does Wilbur.

(PS.  we’re having steaks, a great gift from some friends.  What are you cooking?)

Steel Cut Oats

On the spectrum of oatmeal choices, steel cut oats are on the far left of the unprocessed scale, whereas instant oatmeal is as far as you can process the oats without making them a powder.  Because they’re not squished down, they have a lot of flavor, but require a lot of cooking.

We like them a whole bunch, but the 15-20 minutes of cooking time make them a hard choice during the week.  You can put them in the slow cooker overnight, but we don’t typically plan that far in advance.  In our book, steel cut is a weekend treat.

Scottish / Irish Oatmeal

Easy to make, lots of flavor.

Scottish / Irish oats (really, no difference that we can see, clearly the whole Irish / Scottish thing is a marketing gimmick) are slightly more processed than steel cut but significantly less processed than instant.  They take about three minutes to make, and have lots of flavor.  The formula is straightforward, use one part oats to three parts water, microwave for three minutes.  The multiple threes make it easy to make them on auto pilot at 5:45 in the morning when Wilbur wakes up.

Great, I have a bowl of plain oats, now what?

One thing instant oats have going for them is lots of crazy flavors.  You don’t have to think much about adding stuff, because they’re already pretty sugared and mapled.  With the less processed varieties, the flavor is your burden (and joy) to bear.  Here’s a few options we’ve tried that work out great:

• dried fruit
• chopped apples
• sliced bananas
• milk and honey
• brown sugar
• nuts
• any combination of the above
• and, the most controversial, (our favorite): peanut butter

“Peanut butter?  In oatmeal?  Are you crazy?”  Yep.  It’s awesome.  Our friend Erica Burns’ grandfather clued us in by way of Erica, and we never looked back. It’s our favorite oatmeal additive. If we owned Quaker, we’d release it as a flavor and clean house. The world is ready for peanut butter flavored oatmeal, get on board while it’s still hip and underground.

PB Oatmeal, not much to look at, but it's delicious.

A few days later, we had a big fat pot, a bunch of Old Bay Seasoning and a recipe. This was in the middle of summer. Last week, we got some friends together and had a full fledged shrimp boil. Going into it, we made a few assumptions: 1) this is going to be a lot of work, 2) it’s going to be messy, and 3) we’ll never do it again. As it turns out, we were totally wrong: 1) it’s dirt easy, 2) it is messy, but…meh…messy is fun and 3) we’re going to do it again.

The shrimp boil, or really, seafood boil is a big community event with a long history in the south east.  As devoted northerners, who enjoy grits, we’ve heard of shrimp boils, but never really done one ourselves.  Having done one, we’d probably compare it to making a big pot of chili.  Take a bunch of rough cut food, mix it up with a bunch of seasoning, and you’re done.

Here’s the recipe we followed:

Ingredients

* 1/2 cup Old Bay Seasoning
* 2 tablespoons salt
* 4 quarts water
* 1 (12 ounce) can beer
* 8 medium red potatoes, cut in quarters
* 2 large onions, cut in wedges
* 2 lbs smoked sausage, cut in 2 inch lengths
* 8 ears frozen corn on the cob, thawed (I use Birdseye Little Ears)
* 4 lbs large shrimp, in shells

Directions

1. In an 8-quart stock pot, bring Old Bay, salt, water and beer to a boil.
2. Add potatoes and onions; cook over high heat for 8 minutes.
3. Add smoked sausage; continue to cook on high for 5 minutes.
4. Add corn to pot; continue to boil for 7 minutes.
5. Add shrimp in shells, cook for 4 minutes.
6. Drain cookin liquid; pour contents of pot into several large bowl or shallow pails.
7. Sprinkle with additional Old Bay.

Another misconception we had was that it would take a few hours to finish. Totally incorrect, it took about a half hour, including rough chopping vegetables.

If we were totally hard core boil-folk, we’d dump the finished food out onto newspaper and eat with our hands. We’re far from hard core, so we just put it on a big serving plate.  We still eat with our hands, so we’re still relatively tough.

Thanksgiving, to us, is the ultimate food holiday, so it’s an appropriate time to relaunch the site, and recommit to putting out regular updates.  Welcome back!  Also, on the technology front, if you’re on Facebook, you can become a fan of the site, check out the fancy new Tastebud Chicago Facebook page.

So…turkey.  Here’s our annual Thanksgiving postcard picture.  We adore it.

A vintage postcard, from a time when we didn

Barry was nice enough to pose for a picture.

Camri surprised me with a trip to Smoque for Father’s day today. It was our first time, and well worth the wait in line. Great BBQ, great atmosphere, and really friendly folks helping us to get Wil-Wil a good table to eat his Mac and Cheese at.

Camri had pulled pork and shared Wil’s Mac and Cheese, I had a half rack of baby back ribs, corn bread, french fries, and a smoked sausage. The ribs were good and chewy, Camri’s pork was smoky and good, and Wil scarfed down a ton of Mac and Cheese. Our friend Jerry came too, and mixed it up with St. Louis ribs and a side of brisket. The brisket was over the top good, I think it’ll be my main course the next time we go.

As we were leaving, we ran into the owner, Barry, and got our picture taken with him. He was pretty busy, but took the time for a picture for the blog. Thanks Barry!

Last week was Mayfest here in Lincoln Square. Camri, Wil, and I went over for Thuringers, beer, and delicious potato salad. Like all previous Mayfests, you pay for all the goodies with tickets, rather than cash. I was in charge of ticket purchasing, and ended up buying way too many. We had a few options, drink the tickets away, or buy a bunch of cake. Pre-WilWil, we probably would have just drank up the tickets, but in this post-William world, you have to consider the big picture. No one wants a picture of drunk mommy and daddy stumbling home with the baby.

Camri went to get us a load of cake, and found out that they were completely sold out. Instead, she bought five pretzels. “I have a plan,” she said, and left it at that. We went home, sober, baby-safely in tow, lugging around five pretzels. By the time we got home, we had three pretzels…they sure make good walking food.

The finished casserole.

The next day, Camri made a surprise dinner, Pretzel Casserole, which she made up her very own self. It turned out great. Clearly, when Camri has a plan, just follow her lead. Here’s the recipe, in all its glory:

1/2 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon spicy brown mustard
2 tablespoon whole grain mustard
1 teaspoon canola oil
1 teaspoon water
3 Mayfest pretzels, cut into 1″ chunks
3 oz cream cheese
1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, grated

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cook onion in non-stick pan until translucent (about 5 minutes), add garlic and cook about 30 seconds
3. Mix mustards, oil and water together, add onion and garlic mixture
4. Mix cream cheese and cheddar cheese
5. Coat pretzel chunks with mustard mixture, transfer to a casserole dish sprayed with cooking spray
6. Take cheese mixture and break off pieces and drop into pretzel chunks, mix some in and put the remaining ones on top
7. Put the lid on the casserole dish and bake for 15 minutes, or until cheese is melted.

1/2 jar of mini dill pickles
1 packet of cherry kool aid
1/4 cup of sugar

Add the sugar and kool aid to a quart jar filled
with the pickles.  Don't worry if the jar has some pickle
juice in it.  Our jar had a bunch of chopped onions
floating in it, and it went just fine.  Fill the jar to the top
with water, cap it and shake.  Leave the pickles in
your fridge for a week.  Then eat them. 

They're crazy.

Folks, we were skeptical. These things are crazy good though, jump right in. Don’t be afraid of the red pickles. The red pickles are there to freak out the squares. You’re not a square, right? You’re a cool dude. The kind of cool dude that wants to eat a crazy red pickle. Get out there red pickle eater…face the world…proclaim your love of oddly colored foods!