Month: August 2008

After a weekend that was heavy on pizza, light on veg, tonight the Husband and I returned to our salad-eating ways.

I’d just read a sweet article in the September Bon Appetit about slow-roasted tomatoes. Just in time: having picked as many ripe ones from my mother’s garden as I could carry, the pile in the veg basket wasn’t long for this world.

So I made the tomatoes this afternoon. It took hours and the apartment smelled heavenly all day. Having collapsed into sticky, yummy heaps, they were incredibly fragrant and had turned a gorgeous shade of red.

I used some of the tomatoes’ steeping oil for a quick balsamic vinaigrette to dress a pile of baby arugula. Spooned the tomatoes on top of the greens, added sliced fresh mozzarella on the side, also some crusty bread which made for an excellent tomato delivery device. Gorgeous summer evening on a plate!

Feeling that we’d redeemed ourselves a bit, we then watched a crazy thunderstorm by candlelight. Hope the tornado sirens were kidding.

A friend who moved to London was back in town on business; she graciously shared her Sunday afternoon with us. Apparently the British Isles are seriously lacking in Mexican cuisine, so we ambled up the street to Picante for tacos and burritos. A sliver of a storefront, you can dine on site only when the weather cooperates. Which today it did. Fresh, fast, and very tasty. Nowhere else have I seen “white boy tacos” on the menu (hard shell, we’re told).

After that we were hot and thirsty. And desirous of people-watching. So we ambled a little farther up the road to hipster ground zero. That’s right: the Pontiac. Love it, hate it, but be honest and admit it: their lemonade-based cocktails are dangerously refreshing and sitting outside whilst drinking is what we Chicagoans love to do during our brief summers. With so many opportunities for snarkiness walking by, we couldn’t help but enjoy ourselves. After several rounds which included a few unexplained free beers for the Husband, we also ordered fries, which come sprinkled with herbes de provence (including lavender). And then home. To bed.

I grew up in South Bend, Indiana, where there’s been a farmer’s market since the 1920’s. We loved going there as kids, and rarely missed a Saturday.

Someone was always stationed at the entrance with a litter of puppies or kittens to give away. There’s a restaurant in the middle that served tantalizing stacks of pancakes. We never ate there. The “Office” was staffed by a no-nonsense woman and featured an array of baby pictures, each with a sassy caption. Amish ladies in long dresses and bonnets sold fresh eggs and insanely buttery cinnamon rolls. We ate a lot of those. Hippie people sold incense and flowing dresses. Cute boys worked at the butcher’s counter. A candy stall made the whole place smell like caramel corn. Farmers’ wives and kids sold tons and tons of produce.

This week I was in town and stopped by. No puppies or kittens, heaven help me. Being a Friday, most of the stalls were closed. But there were a few Amish ladies. And cute boys cutting meat. The caramel corn machine was cranking away. And…blueberries and plums galore, grown about 10 miles away in southwestern Michigan.