Critically Critical of Critic's Critic

I was a bit surprised that the grand old daddy of Chicago food bloggers, Paul of Foodblog, was not included in today's Chicago Tribune report of bloggers and their pics. Paul surely shoots with the best of 'em. So, I go there this morning to see what the Trib's been missing, and I find this link to a critical analysis of Chicago food critics.

Now, surely the world of Chicago food critics could use some criticism no? Granted, the Phil Vettel Game's been mostly retired as he seems to be working harder with the new At Play section, but could a review of food critics not notice the weeks that pass without Vettel action? What about the failure of the biggies to cover ethnic and neighborhood eating--consigning these to the hyper-segmented Cheap Eats reviews for instance.

What's worse, is this piece seems oddly, weirdly, out of date. It's been a while since Laura Levy Shatkin's pieces were the leads in the Reader's restaurant reviews. Worse, how could a critic's critic not love last week's Reader take-down of Mulan in Chinatown. In fact, the fact that the Reader gives you the good the bad and the ugly in dining options a reason to cheer it on? Or Time Out Chicago, again, you have range and variety that's not noted. Is not James Ward gone. Did he ever matter given his obviousness? Who reads or cares about Sherman Kaplan or "biweekly student newspaper Chicago Business."

The food media in Chicago can use a critic.

Organic Farming is Hard and Other Reasons to be Blogging

Blogging is quite Newtonian. A blog that stays in motion stays in motion and a blog stuck in inertia, well no one goes there any more. It’s not like I have been away from the Internets. I wrote long takes on Las Vegas high and low, and I made by contribution to the LTHForum GNR program here. Still, it has been almost two months between blog posts. But Farmer Vicki and her farm, to the blog!

It’s been two years since I last visited a working farm. As I noted then, if you are a chowhound, if you love to eat and live to eat, you owe it to yourself to visit a farm. Your tasty dinner has to start somewhere. Genesis Growers enjoys none of the scenery of Henry’s Farm. This IS what Illinois looks like. Flat. Parcels of land divvied up long ago. Conventional farms, soy and corn surround Vicki, and if she is concerned enough to irrigate with tape, across the street they use a very big sprinkler—my lawn obsessed neighbor would really be jealous. Ok, this was not about the view. It was about learning how to farm, organically.

What you learn: it’s hard. There are weeds. Weeds battle the crops. Always. A dragging tractor gets about all the weeds. That is a percentage, however, that farmer’s cannot handle. Vanquish weeds. Work. Vicki and her crew take daily to the fields with special European hoes, square rings on the end of long poles, and hoe, hoe, hoe. Try it. We visitors did. Twenty minutes and I had my workout of the day. Do that all day? Beyond the weeds, what about what’s left. Wander a field of, say cucumbers, and you see there is no easy way to get those things beyond stooping. On top of that, there are prickles. With so much effort involved, organic vegetables are a real bargain.

I did learn a bit more about organic farming (beyond that: it’s hard). I learned that there are bands of yearly shifting weeds. The whole field cannot be turned over to crops. Keeping some weeds is necessary for various botanical purposes, but they also serve as resting spots, spas, for the other pests. In other words, they are temptations for the bugs so they do not eat the real crops. Of course, with organic farming you can eat the weeds too. Already a couple of times our weekly box included a big bag of lamb’s quarters, seen at Green City Market as “wild spinach.” We were promised purslane soon, which we munched on after we got tired of trying to hoe. An organic farm is very alive. There was catnip growing near the stream and wild raspberries and elderberry for this guy. I picked up one weed that looked edible, mint-like, and I learned that I was right; Vicki’s Mexican farmers knew it and used it. They gave me the name in Spanish but I forgot already.

What else.

Do not take the lack of blogging to mean that I have given up on eating local. Perhaps, when something becomes so natural, so innate, the there is less thrill in writing about it. Our Spring CSA took through June. It was not a great Spring for crops. Vicki had bad maggot problems that ate into a lot of crops. We actually had to rely a bit more than expected on freezer stuff and local potatoes found at odd spots.

June began a very abundant new CSA from Genesis. As promised, we are getting more each week than we can possibly eat. The only problem, a few things are not right for the freezer. Can you say too much lettuce. On the other hand, I mistakenly made a salad of escarole this week. We supplement the box with Oak Park Farmer’s Market, better than ever and trips to other farmer’s markets. Take a recent dinner. First, bruschetta, the ciabatta bought at Wednesday’s Green City Market; tomatoes from Genesis Growers hoop house, meaning ground grown; snips of arugula from Growing Power Farm, only the condiments not local. Second, sautéed chicken livers from the market, mushrooms from the market, over pasta not from the market. Last, market raspberries and teeny-tiny strawberries. If you enjoy eating well, you need to eat local.

The best thing: we recently purchased a freezer. We purchased some canning supplies too, but the freezer, that we can do. We are starting now, now. Plenty of asparagus has gone in the freezer, blanched first as has some rhubarb (also blanched) and berries, many berries. My other method of saving, infused vodkas. Strawberries work especially well for this as it only takes a few days to produce a gorgeous liquor.

Another best thing: Thank you Ann Fisher in the comments. If you ask Tony at the Scotch Hills farm stand (Oak Park Farmer’s Market), he might have some five pound bags of Wisconsin grown soft wheat. Makes a great clafoutis. His eggs are pretty good too.

More soon.

A Swing and a Miss
Or the Perils of Straying

What a price I pay for being non-local. And I am not talking about the $15 for a chunk of fresh mozzarella. We went to Caputo’s Cheese Market in Melrose Park intending to eat local. Asparagus purchased that day at Chicago’s Green City Market, steamed; topped with a farm egg, fried in local butter. All we needed to accent, the smallest portion of imported Parmesan Regianno. We could have used local, heck Kraft is based in the Chicago area, but we are snobs. We had to have the real thing.

There are days when you do not feel like shopping, and there are days when the money’s burning a hole in your pocket. We went to Green City in a shopping mood. We expected to get all the foods to enhance our Eat Local efforts that have been hard to get of late. Local meat, local eggs, and especially, local grains. Surely, because it took me an hour to go from Damen and North to actually shopping at the market, having to fork over $4 to boot for a parking space, I was not predisposed towards liking the market. We found our grain guy, Wilmont Milling, who stone grinds in Indiana, missing. (He would be there on Saturdays.) Some of our favorite meat guys, like Land Connection/Wettstein and Milwaukee’s Growing Power (for their chickens) were not there. All of a sudden, the prices seemed high, the selections not what we wanted. We got the barest of necessities: winterized parsnips, chives with flower, and the harbinger, asparagus; also some delicious apple butter from Seedlings, equally delicious goat cheese from Prairie Fruits Farm and equally equally delicious cheeses (butterkase and cheddar) from Prairie Pure Cheese. Plus, the littlest of meat purchases, chicken livers and ham hocks from Twin Oaks Meat.

Our quench to buy exploded at Caputo’s. It started local, a giant (and I mean giant) torpedo of Wisconsin Provolone beckoned. We grabbed a chunk. Then a chunk of this, a chunk of that. So many cheeses at these prices, mostly $5/lb (or less), shrink wrapped for time, we got local and not local. Then, we got to the fresh mozza. Caputo’s makes their own, and they have won the blue ribbon several times at the Illinois State Fair. What were we thinking when we saw giant balls of imported mozzarella di buffalo. Well, I was thinking, how fresh could it be? They told me it had come in just today. Could that be true? I took them on their word. Go for it. Splurge.

We re-wrote the menu. Out the Lombard style asparagus (scroll down for the recipe). In, a deli style dinner focused on our imported mozzarella. We assumed that this one outstanding ingredient would dominate the meal. To accent, we got a few slices of Parma ham, some eggplant salad and some weird spinach pancakes that would be our hot course. We had good crusty bread, pickled vegetables and olives at home. It seemed like a good meal, and only later did I realize I was subconsciously imitating Johnny Apple from earlier in the day (reg. required).

It started with the mozzarella. It just did not blow me away. There was a complexity to it. It tasted a bit more like goat cheese. Still, the flavors were muted. There was no epiphany. It drove the whole meal down. It did not help that the spinach pancakes were awful, the eggplant salad dry. I liked the ham a lot but it was a losing battle. Some times you have an idea and it does not work. Every time I drag my family to some new restaurant that sucks, I say, you have to kiss some frogs to find your prince. Not a restaurant per se but a frog nonetheless. And what happens, I suppose when we go non-local.

A Tale of Two Non-Local Dinners
In the Same Night
With a Non-Local Treat

If you know anything about the Omega, the mega-Greek Coffee Shop in Des Plaines, you would find it hard to believe that I was still hungry after dinner. Yet there I was, driving down Cumberland looking for something interesting because, yea, I was still hungry. Many (many) years ago, Mike G asked how. Not how I could still be hungry after eating dinner, but how one finds interesting eats. He focused on Mexican restaurants, but it was a good question for any restaurant. What do people look for when they are out chowhounding. Me, I’m a sucker for signs I cannot read. In languages I cannot recognize.

So, I U-Turned and pulled into this strip mall in Norridge, intrigued by what exactly was Tasty World. There were two especially pale cones of gyro. I did not want that. I quizzed the fetching girl with green eye shadow. She showed me a tri-part menu with value meals across the range of Chicago fast food. I tried to figure out a way to ask nicely. The sign, what the hell does it say. What the hell language is that. Which is what I finally blurted out (or something to that extent). Bulgarian. Bulgarian she admitted. She told me that the sign roughly translated as tasty cheap treats, or Bulgarian fast food. But where was the Bulgarian on the menu. “Oh, this menu,” she showed me—in Bulgarian Cyrillic. She kindly read me the list.

Mousaka, tripe soup, sausage, Bulgarian burgers shaped either long or in patties, a few other things. I got the burgers, one in each shape. It came with, as my daughter noted, Bulgarian ketchup, think red, but thicker and spicier; an onion heavy salad with bottled dressing and crinkle-cut fries (something Ms. Green Eye shadow was especially keen on). It was supposed to be the same meat, but I liked the round patty better. The onion flavor seemed more pronounced and integrated in the meat, a more complex product. It was, as advertised, cheap but tasty food.

Like I say, I should not be hungry after Omega. I mentioned to Pigmon yesterday how I (oddly) loved this place. He zeroed in right away on what made it appeal to me but not him. Vegas. Eating at Omega is like eating at one of the Vegas buffets before they went gourmet. If you know Las Vegas, think Station Casino. Of course, there is no buffet, they just bring the food. Completes start with big bread baskets, croissants, muffins, soft rolls, then soup, salad, big portions of your main, starch, vegetable and finally a dessert that neither looks nor tastes too special but fits properly in this meal. Few people, even me, eat a complete. Rather, we split.

While I love Omega, I really limit myself to a few offerings. My favorite is what I split with my daughter the other night, Greek style skirt steak. I like the meat and its lemony-oregano bath, but I also like (nay love), the Greek salad offered with this dinner. Again, this is like the buffet comes to the table, a big mass of feta fingers, peppers, anchovies, thick vegetables and a creamy, hearty dressing. I just wish they’d dry the lettuce better. It’s not just the gluttony that makes Omega Vegas. It is the crowd. It is my people. Alter-kocker heaven. The loud kibitz, the duds, the packing away the rolls to go, well you just will not find this kinda place very much longer. Appreciate it while you can.

Finally, a purchase far from the Eat Local Challenge; in the same strip mall as Tasty World is a small Middle-Eastern market called City Food. They were selling tiny-tart green plums from California. I figured how much degradation of product could something supposed to be picked too young, to green be? If anything was meant to be shipped, was this not it?

Tasty World
4834 N. Cumberland
Norridge, IL
708-453-2725

Omega Restaurant
9100 N Golf
Des Plaines
847-296-7777

City Food & Grocery
4832 N Cumberland Ave
Norridge, IL 60706
(708) 453-1899

Seek This Out
(or $3.69 Very Well Spent)

Pudding z owocami-wisnie at Avenue Food Mart

Also know as pudding with cherries or cherry cake. Actually a babka, or yeast cake, in a aluminum round mold. I'm no baker, so maybe I should not say this, but I always feel that yeast cakes are cheating a bit. Those little microbes do all the hard work to make the cake fluffy, light and moist. And $3.69. Get two!

Avenue Food Mart is near the top of my favorite Polish supermarkets. It is one of many new school supermarkets that have opened in Chicago in recent years, combining the best of ethnic markets with the scale and presentation of a supermarket. Like any Polish market worth its salt, it has a great selection of deli meats. I swoon over the six or so kinda headchease, including ones dedicated just to tongue or just to ears even if I would never order. I do frequently get the turkey, the various hams, the Hungarian salami, and different cheeses. They offer two versions of pickled herring, in winegar [sic] and oil. With value, they weigh and price the herring, then add a good amount of onion garnish. There is Amish organic chicken and really fantastic sour pickles--maybe the best I have had in Chicago. It is a place worth seeking.

Avenue Food Mart
6850 W. Belmont
Chicago, IL
773-286-0606

It Takes a Community to Eat Well

On Chowhound.com's site board, Jim Leff argues against community:

The more we maintain a super tight focus on compiling a data trove rather than being a conventional social network, the better we'll all eat. And that's the goal.

True? Compare the trove on Chicago's Chowhound Board to LTHForum.com I have longed believe that a great community leads exactly to better eating, and the rich content of LTHForum surely shows that.

I know, to most Chicago foodies, this seems like a battle long over. That does not mean I cannot still point out how right we were, no?

Tyranny of the Fresh

I knew one person who liked canned peas, my grandfather. He is, though, no culinary hero of mine. He went years on the same three meals: poached egg on toast for breakfast; (American) cheese sandwich on toast for lunch; and plain hamburger, baked potato and canned peas for dinner. His condiment, his sole condiment for all this food, salt. Pale mushy peas and their evil cousin pale mushy green beans are the foods that leap to most people’s mind when you say canned. Begin an Eat Local Challenge in any month, and a segment of foodies will declare, “well only if my farmer’s market was open” or “we are down to a few things in our market.” Even in California there are fallow periods (there are, aren’t there?). That’s because we are trained to expect fresh. How can they eat local if there is no fresh? The inventories of our stores convince us that we should have a fresh product. We have fallen victim to the tyranny of the fresh.

People are scarred of canned. Andy Warhol may have famously painted soup cans, but where in the museum do you see a still life with canned peaches? Consumers want their supermarkets to sell fresh, a year round supply of fresh tomatoes, fresh berries, fresh heads of lettuce, and fresh bell peppers in assorted colors. This is supposed to be real food. Never mind the environmental impact of a grape hauled into town from Chile, a tomato that has to be gassed to look red, let’s just talk about flavor.

What do we get as fresh. Whole Foods labels told me the other day that their pretty bell peppers, their vivid red tomatoes with tight green "vines", came from Canada. What does that mean. It means hydroponic. It means all of the flavor, all of what a vegetable should taste like is gone. On the other hand, take something out of the freezer. Food scientist Harold McGee notes that food picked at its peaked, properly frozen, is of higher quality than food picked off-ripe to survive long shipping. Besides, the places that can supply you with off-season products are not the optimum places for the products. Is Florida really the area where blueberries prosper? Yet, the market demands blueberries in March, and farmer’s can coax something round and blue out of the ground in March down there. Because most of the supermarket inventory comes from California, we get the impression that the best vegetables grow in California. Yes, great vegetables grow in California. Not what find in your supermarket. It is just that vegetables grow in California. Period. How many people realize that Green Giant is based in Minnesota, Birdseye started in Massachusetts. This is not to say that our food conglomerates do not harvest around the world, it’s just, I think, it points out that the stuff worth preserving, often does not come from California. Extrapolate that back to fresh vs. frozen. Does this convince you that fresh is not always the best product?

Here’s three ways I battled the tyranny of the fresh last week: 1) canned strawberries preserved in syrup; 2) frozen red peppers cooked into a frittata and 3) candied preserved pear as part of an ice cream flavor. Three different ways of putting things away, by can, by freeze, by drying/candying. The strawberries, well they had that real, that true strawberry flavor so unfamiliar to most eaters. The peppers taste of sun of summer. The pears made every cliché of “explodes with flavor” and “burst in your mouth” go through my head. Sure, there were textural issues. The strawberries are soft, seeds more noticeable; the peppers flaccid, the pear gummy, but why do we need all of our foods to have the dry, static texture of fresh. You could not dip canned strawberries in brown sugar or make a salad of the red peppers. So. Find dishes that match the food, for instance over ice cream as Vie served the strawberries. The Elmwood Park shop, Massa, expertly mixed the candied pears with Nutella into a mascarpone gelato base. My wife, the Condiment Queen, knew how to use the peppers.

If we remove ourselves from the tyranny of the fresh, we can eat local without the farmer’s market being open. We do not need to rely on someone else, on weather, on seasons. Obviously, one cannot march into this battle wily-nily. But this is not a “how-to” post. There’s plenty of time for that. Before taking the time, the effort, the capital to start preserving your food, you have to enlist. You have to become a conscript against the tyranny. Wallow in conserved foods. Realize you can eat a peach in February, just not a fresh peach. Maybe you will even develop a taste for canned peas.

Eat Local Challenge
On the Radio Today

For those interested in the eat local movement, Jen M, the instigator and workaholic of the Eat Local Blog, will be on the radio today--the Tom Douglas show in Seatle. There will be no archive, but if anyone is bored this afternoon, with a good connection, here's the url:

http://www.710kiro.com/

Here's the url for the Douglas show:

http://www.tomdouglas.com/

The Box
Spring CSA Week 5

We did not subscribe to the spring CSA from Farmer Vicki in anticipation of the May Eat Local Challenge, but having the CSA surely makes the challenge that much easier. In the Chicago area, it will still be a few weeks before the first farmer's markets open. Vicki, however, using greenhouse technology provides me and her subscribers with a big box of produce each week. And because of the greenhouse, our box includes, of all things in early May (for this part of the world), zucchini.

Last week's box seemed like a bit of more of the same. This week, the box took a nice detour. New for the week, for the season, well beyond the freaky zucchini, was sorrel and a cabbage. Repeats were more breakfast radishes and white icicle radishes and the ever present carrots and green onions. The bag of mixed greens this week was labeled spicy mesculun instead of just plain mesculun. There was no head lettuce this week.

We intend to use the greens (radish tops, last week's turnip tops) in soup, with locally ground corn. The cabbage, I've been reading a bunch of traditional French cookbooks, and that has me hankering for potee, a spring one pot meal of pork products and cabbage. The chinni, I think we will slice, blanch and freeze since it is hard to do much with two fruits. Finally, the sorrel. Anyone have some good ideas? I tasted a bit. The stuff is incredible. It's green but it feels almost exactly like biting into a lemon. Almost like something served at Moto (beware flash!).

Eat Local Challenge
Lunch

I came home from the gym as hungry as a guy could be at 1:30 who has already skipped breakfast. My wife practically dared me to eat local. I countered with the fact that we had nary much in the bungalow to eat, local or not.

Day 3 of the challenge. My first lunch of cheese omelet and green salad was local all the way up to its olive oil and lemon dressing. Yesterday, I strayed a lot further with canned Italian tuna and canned Italian white beans (over local greens). Today, I returned to the fold.

Here's a nice simple local lunch, when hungry:

A few Farmer Vicky radishes
Some Belgioioso aged Provolone cheese
House made dried sausage from D'Ancona market in Berwyn*
Freddy's bread and butter*
OK, and a few olives for contrast

*Manufactured locally from ingredients who knows where.

Eat Local in the Future

"The city is considering a year-round public market," said Kathleen Dickhut, acting deputy commissioner of planning and development. "We've been looking at the idea of farmers markets in general and at a year-round public market."

The Chicago Tribune does a good feature today on Milwaukee's public market and the lame attempts to get a market in Chicago. Here's the link, but I'd pay the 50 cents for the nice pictures.

My (overly) cynical take on a Chicago public market, is that it will be like Millennium Park. It will sound great on paper. Take seven extra years to build, and then arrive with a lot of pizzaz and little substance. As the Condiment Queen pointed out this morning, what makes the Milwaukee Public Market such a treat is its complete lack of Great Steak and Fries shops. It aint no Faneuil Hall. We have no trust that if a public market opened in the Chicago that would be true. Hope we're wrong!

For those not seeking to wait, the Tribune also provides a directory of farmer's markets in the Chicago area.

What's Local This Week at Caputo's

Pasta (tip to the Chicago Tribune)
Michigan Apples
Igl Farm organic red potatoes

As Jamie S writes on the ELC Blog, one of the keys to eating local is to poke around. Find local where you shop. Yea, it's not like a balanced meal here, but again as Jamie says, "Sourcing anything locally is a success."

I post this first, to get people to Caputo's in Elmwood Park; then, to get people to see what else might lurk out there, at Cub Foods, your local bodega, Jewel, Fox & Obel, A&G, and god forbid, Whole Foods!

Eat Local Web Site Up!

Eat Local Challenge

I really feel honored to have been asked to contribute to this site. It already has an amazing collection of data on eating local, and how people attempt to eat local. The authors come from all across the country, and have various insights into eating local in their neck of the woods. Still, I should add, that we are not of one mind on HOW to eat local, and we subscribe to no one set of rules. See how each person approaches the problems, the exceptions, and the solutions.

Stop by often to see what's happening there.

The Box
Spring CSA Week 4

Farmer Vicki noted in her weekly e-mail that her spring greenhouse crops were not coming in so well. She sez:

"We have been having problems with one greenhouse in that the crops are not all getting ready at the same time. It is frustrating, but so far I have not figured out why. The only clue I have is that we did a poor job spreading the composted manure. In some places it is thick and others, thin. In this case, though I have been a poor diagnostician."

It's not the box came empty, but it brings up some of the weaknesses with CSAs. Essentially, it is a lot of the same: radishes (standard red and long, white icicle), lettuces, a bunch of turnips, larger than last week, and a couple of carrots. Yea, and some green onions. Farmer Vicki recommends using the greens from the radishes and the turnips to extend the stuff. Still, it is not enough to make a week's worth of eating. Another thing that makes it hard, the head of curly green lettuce provided this week wilts very quickly. There is some mescalin that will last longer.

OK, enough with the complaining. Last week we made pasta with our kale and chard, with goat cheese and ricotta salata, our kidz loved it. We also made good use of carrots, tiny turnips, and radishes with home-made aioli. I will say that the green onions are piling up. I have a recipe for braised green onions to try, but green onions are not a favorite of mine. Even if the boxes cannot support a whole week's worth of eating, each meal they support is highly delicious. (And oh so local!)

Eat Local Challenge
May 2006

I'm in!

As I mentioned the other day, an Eat Local Challenge has been issued for May. Since I'm trying to eat local in January, February, March, April...June, July (well you get the idea), I had no problem with jumping aboard the May challenge. Of course, a May challenge is a lot harder generally than an August (or summer) challenge.

Jen, who is helping organize the challenge, has asked all participants to address the following questions. I have indented my responses.

1. What's your definition of local for this challenge?

The Locavores are using a 100-mile radius around their home to define local foods. [Jen] will be doing the same. You could define local as anything from within your county to within the state or the United States.

In an urban area like Chicago, 100 miles is too limiting. I've said before, that my eat local circle roughly covers the Big 10 conference. Essentially, I eat stuff from Northern Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan. I think of downstate Illinois and Indiana as slightly less local because the climate is a bit different than up here. Still, I consider local, various providers of milk, eggs, cheese and meats from all around the Big 10 states.

2. What exemptions will you claim?

There are some things that are a part of your everyday life that will be impossible to source locally. Will you be drinking coffee during this month? What will you do about spices? In many areas, local grains are hard to find. What will you do if you can't find them?

That's a great question. There are many things off the bat that I know cannot be local, the way I want to eat, both from a economic perspective and a culinary perspective. Skip coffee. What about olive oil, wine, salt and freakin' pepper. But I have ideas here, see below. The other problem, as I have mentioned before, it costs a lot more to eat locally grown meat, chicken, etc. So, while I have a preference for such products, my budget does not allow full commitment.

3. What is your personal goal for the month?

You don't have to set your goal at eating every meal locally -- while that is the ideal, we want to be realistic here. You could set a goal of having each dinner with local products, having one family meal a week, or even hosting one weekend picnic with local foods during the month.

So, here's the important stuff. What does the May Challenge mean (to me). I have two main goals. First, it is to see how much I can "localize" things. How many exceptions can I reduce or eliminate. For instance, my wife and I talked about using honey and local syrup more instead of sugar. What else. Then, I want to carry the spirit and the effect of eating local to all my food buying. Like, I want to see how much packaging I can eliminate when shopping, say think about the way a local butcher wraps meat as compared to the supermarket.

During the month, I will post, as always, on my local buys, including the Farmer Vicki Spring CSA. I will also post resources for others seeking to eat local. The main thing, though, is focusing on the idea of localizing. Stay tuned to see how I do.

The Big Picture

I get annoyed easily; really, too easily. My wife tells me I should look at the big picture.

Jerusalem Cafe opened in Oak Park this year, in a space formerly of Panda Express. Surely an improvemment, especially as I have finally run out of patience with the mediocre Grape Leaves. I'm not sure now. At this place, there is a sign, and I paraphrase

Forgive the extended time it takes to get you your lunch. We cook everything fresh and from scratch

Immediately in eye view of this sign are 15 or so falafal sitting under a heat lamp. Also, within eyesight, a man working chicken chunks on the grill that will sit around under the guise of "shwarma".

Alas, I must look at the big picture.

Jerusalem Cafe
1030 Lake St.
Oak Park 60301
708-848-7734

Eat Local In the Media

Artie Bucco prepares dinner last night on the Soprano's

Just 'nother Brilliant Idea From the Condiment Queen
(Not Local)

Prosciutto and melon or prosciutto and figs are common antipastos. Anyone ever think of prosciutto and papaya? Well my wife did.

The other day, when we were on Da'Bomb, we picked up some very ripe papaya. Somehow in this lean time for fruit (yea apples do get boring), a papaya seemed more in the spirit than international berries. And now that Ms. VI came up with the idea of combining it with prosciutto, well I have a noted exception.

Add a course. We have realized that one of the best ways to enhance a family meal, to make it elegant, is to have a first course. And we have realized that first courses are easy. Sometimes we just open a container of olives. With nearly every meal lately, we have tried to have a first course. Yesterday's papaya with prosciutto was one of the best (not counting my wife's home made soups). It also set up well against our second course, pasta with freezer pesto (whew, I did not think there was something local in the meal*.) The funky yet sweet taste of the papaya contrasted exactly right with the funky yet salty taste of the prosciutto. If anything, the more intense papaya works as a better foil than the relatively mild cantaloupe. Do try.

Make sure you give credit where credit is due.

*Actually, the meal also included local green beans from the freezer, and the freezer neither ruined the texture for the pasta dish, nor sapped any flavor.

Eat Local Blog Coming Soon!

The launch day for the Eat Local blog is nearly there, perhaps even next week, in conjunction with Earth Day. There will be about 35 authors on the blog, repersenting all parts of the country. The stated goal for the site is to create a year-round resource for people who would like to read about eating local or to set up their own eat local challenge. It should be both an inspiration and a database.

Stay tuned.

Argyle Street (and nearby)

I used to live a block from the Asian food center that is Argyle Street on the North side of Chicago. Quite bizarre, I grew tired of eating around there while I lived there. I really contribute that now, to the lack of Internet resources.

This post by Erik M on LTHForum is especially useful and would have kept me motivated if I lived there.