Spotted driving down lake cook...

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probably the only post dealing with hockey there will be this year --

yeah, so i haven't really been following the hawks. they do meet my criteria of a team to cheer for (wooo chicago! and black/red/white with green and yellow accents are pretty awesome) but over the course of their post season i've been busy with studying for finals, getting an internship, and hanging out with friends/the mama.

i start my internship next tuesday (AHH SO PUMPED I'LL POST ABOUT IT LATER) so i probably won't have the time/desire to watch any of the upcoming games either. ummm next season i guess...?

aaaaanywho this story about the hawks did catch my eye. welll because it deals with food (of course). apparently mayor daley has been making bets with the mayors of the cities the hawks have been up against each round. the following is the official list of what daley is wagering against for the stanley cup. what's kind of funny is this was compiled even after philly's mayor announced he wanted to bet service projects instead of food...lolz

THE LIST (i've also taken the liberty to highlight things i find awesome):

Abundance Bakery: three dozen red velvet cupcakes.

Al’s #1 Italian Beef: 100 Italian Beef Sandwiches.

Allen Brothers: six boxes of 34 oz. USDA Prime Long Bone Ribeye steaks (The Blackhawk Chop) for Philadelphia and 5,000 burgers to Blackhawks Charities.

Azteca Foods Inc.: 10 cases each tortillas, tortilla chips, salad shells

Billy Goat Tavern: Three dozen double “cheezborgers.”

BJ's Market: Barbecue Turkey Ribs, Mustard-Fried Catfish, Roasted Turkey Wings.

Bobak’s Sausage Company: 100 Italian Sausages and 100 Gourmet Chicken Burger “Pucks.”

C. J. Vitner Company: 10 cases of Chicago Style Potato Chips.

Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs: “Cowboy” by David Todd Trost.

Chicago Public Library: A collection of books by some of Chicago's great authors, including Scott Turow, Innocent; Carl Smith, The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City; Gwendolyn Brooks, A Book of Poems; Saul Bellows, The Adventures of Augie March; Studs Terkel, Touch and Go; Sarah Paretsky, Body Work.

Connie's Pizza: 50 Large Deep Dish Sausage Pizzas.

Eli's Cheesecake: 500 slices of a "hat trick" of Eli's Cheescakes - Original, Strawberry, and Chocolate Chip.

Garrett Popcorn Shops: 25 gallons of Mixed Popcorn.

Gibsons Bar & Steakhouse: Once Case of the “Chicago Cut” USDA Prime Bone-in Ribeye steaks.

Glunz Family Winery & Cellars: 12 bottles of Glunz’s de la Costa Sangria.

Goose Island Beer Company: 10 cases of Goose Island Honker’s Ale.

Great to Be Here Tees: Chicago/Philadelphia Sports Fan T-shirt package.

Half Acre Brewery: one case each of Gossamer Golden Ale, Daisy Cutter Pale Ale and The Invasion Helles Bock.

Harry Caray's Italian Steakhouse: 49 6-oz. Double-Cut Lamb Chops.

Illinois Specialty Cut Flowers: A sustainably grown Blackhawks bouquet.

Kim & Scott Pretzels: Round-trip airfare to Chicago for two, hotel room for one night, free dinner at Kim & Scott's Cafe Twist at 2218 N. Lincoln Ave. and a case of Kim & Scott's Gourmet Stuffed Pretzels.

King Wah: 200 egg rolls.

La Preferida: Assortment of over 50 Authentic Mexican food products including refried beans, Jalapeño Peppers, Organic Products, Salsas, Tortillas, and Seasonings.

Lyric Opera of Chicago: two tickets to Verdi’s “A Masked Ball”, two Lyric fleece pullovers and baseball caps.

Manny's Cafeteria & Deli: A Deluxe Manny's Care Package containing sliced corned beef & pastrami, potato pancakes, rye bread and a bottle of Manny's Horseradish Mustard.

Margie's Candies: five cases of Margie’s turtles

Mullen Foods: Chicago's Finest Applesauce

Original Rainbow Cone Inc.: 25 quarts of Original Rainbow Cone ice cream

Reebok: 100 youth hockey sticks

Reggio’s Pizza: 10 Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizzas

Robinson's Ribs: three cases of Robinson's Barbecue Sauce -Original, Brown Sugar and Hot.

Stanley's Kitchen & Tap - West Loop: 20lbs, 10oz. of toasted macaroni & cheese.

Stewarts Coffee: six cases of Stewarts Private Blend Coffee and two cases of "Red Eye" Blend.

Terry's Toffee: 30 pounds of toffee.

Vienna Beef: 1961 Maxwell Street Polish Sausages and 2010 Chicago Style Hot Dogs

Windy City Soda: cases of Windy City Soda to the City of Philadelphia and 15 cases to the Chicago Greater Food Depository.

World's Finest Chocolate: 50-lb. chocolate almond bar.

what do ya'll think about the list? is it a good representation of chi-town's food..?

there are definitely tons of very awesome chicago-y food. but some are things i've never heard of..like ever. am i just that uncultured bout chi-town or are they really just that random?

and i think they should have included lou malnati's and uno's instead of the connie's or regio's. i've never heard of reggio's and connie's to me is just gross weirdness served at stadiums and the mccormick place. i also find manny's and king wah wayyy overrated, so i guess i understand why they're being offered but definitely not something i find interesting. oh and robinson's?? same deal. like i understand why it's listed but no bbq can compare to black dog....so it's gonna be considered ehh in my book.

but -- can we note that out of all of goose island's beers (312, bourbon county, or the other 2343243 that have won awards) they chose my favorite one, honker's ale!?!?! hollerrrrrr

cafe laguardia

so i kind of created a monster when i introduced my mother to groupon. a few months ago, i casually forwarded a groupon for zapatista, which is this yummy mexian(ishh..) place in that's 15 mins from my house and becca's bday dinner was there :) lemme know if you wanna check it out. i'll def go...even sans groupon.

mother was too late to buy the one for zapatista but she did ended up signing up for groupon....andddd buying every other offer they had.

no, like....seriously.

practically every week, i got a message from my mom saying "i bought a groupon for _____! we can go over the summer :)"

might i let you know-- i haven't heard of half of these places!!! so get ready for some interesting posts about random places this summer.

cafe laguardia was one of these restaurants my mom bought a groupon for. apparently it's been featured on check, please! and tasty travels..? yeah, i didn't remember it either.

the place is in bucktown, about a block off of damen and armitage. street parking was easy to find (we parked right across the street) aaaand it's free.

(pic of the outside thanks to menupages.com)

based on their fancy purple awnings with pretty fonts and colors, you'd think this was a classy place with pottery barn-esque decore. boyyyy was that wrong. there was so little lighting we had to move to a table by the window in order to see the menu. the white air ducts are spray painted zebra print. the chairs are black and white cheetah print...ohh and fuzzy. i wish i were making this up... and yeah, i got zero pictures because of the lack of lighting.

(but to give it some credit, the bar was pretty cool...marble floors, elevated wooden tables, a fancy wood bar with pretty bottles behind it haha.)

soo to the food. for a drank, i got the mojito* (per r.ray's suggestion). the thing i realized -- i don't like mojitos. whoooops. the mint's woodiness is incredibly over powering and almost reminds me of floor cleaner. but after diluting it with extra seltzer and adding an equal..it was alright for me lolz. soo yeah. i mean, i'm sure it was a good mojito? but they're not my thing so maybe it is worth all of the hype..?
(*sidenote -- mother was all up for me trying to get this. she was just like heyy it's lunch! and i'm with you! just act cool and go for it. and it worked. hahha)

for apps we started off with the ceviche and cuban tamale. the ceviche tasted like brothy pico de gallo. it was delish but def not good when you're paying $9 and expecting at least some taste of calamari and shrimp and there are none. the tamale was better though. the masa was light and nutty while the stuffing tasted like cured (?) fatty pork..def a good thing! and for $4..hullo (shoutout to c.bontempo on that one) but idk the diff between this and a mexican one...

for entrees we ordered the taste of cuba and red snapper. i was really excited about the red snapper because (FAVORITE OF RACHAEL RAY AND CHECK, PLEASE!) was printed in bold in the description. the fish was fresh and cooked well. and it came with good shrimp too (yeahhh FINALLY got some shrimp). but the white wine sauce was incredibly rich and made everything taste pretty much like bleh. i think the basil-tomato compote and onion garnish was supposed to cut through that but it didn't do enough. i do love my sauces..but this was just wayyy too much. and i think i may have gotten a few bites of unincorporated butter....either that or coagulated sauce. is there really a better of the two? yeah total grossness. needless to say, the dish wasn't that good. so fail rachael ray and check please. faillll

the taste of cuba seemed perfect for swongy -- there were 8 different items!!!! i'm just gonna list each thing out in order of how much i liked them:

1. fried pork medallion - well this sounded interesting right?? yeah it looked really good may have been pork belly aka my new obsession. but it became this dry, crunchy and salty piece of meat that was pretty inedible by itself.
2. braised beef -- the tomato-y was good but the beef was really dry and tough. my mom joked that she couldn't eat any more in fear that it would stick in her teeth and she didn't have any floss or toothpicks with her.
3. ground beef - yeahhhh. basically ground beef with some onions thrown in. and maybe some spices. it was good...but then again, it's ground beef. so idk how u can really mess that up?
4. white rice - surpriseee i like rice.
5. black beans - well, it should be noted that my basis of black beans is chipotle's so idk if that's like...legit. but in any case i did like cafe laguardia's more. the beans were more soft, and had a smokey, ham flavor. and it worked well as a sauce for the dry meats described above.
   
6. fried plantains. can't mess that up i guess.
   
7. tostones -- carbs that are fried twices. durrr i'm gonna love it.
8. croquettas de jamon. OBSESSED. fried mashed potatoes...YUM-O (hi r.ray). aaaand then add to that a hint of haminess and richness from sherry wine. legit getting that at every cuban place i go to from now on.

annnd to recap. while there were some good things, overall cafe laguardia was a bit of a disappointment. to get rave reviews from two pretty significant sources..? huhhhh???? while i appreciate their introducing me to cuban ham croquettes and serving me(...), it's too far away from my house for too mediocre of food. i'd rather go to a mexican place closer to home or find a yummier cuban place downtown.

Spotted at the sweden shop...

A lime green french press?!?!?!
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Meat Versus Miles: Why Less Meat is Better Than Going Local

more reasons to cut down on red meat...interesting stuff, yo.

I thought I'd share with my readers a few fascinating numbers that demonstrate the enormous environmental value of a low-meat diet.

1) Replacing your red meat intake with chicken, fish or eggs for just one day per week has a carbon equivalent impact of driving 760 miles less per year.

2) Switching to a vegetarian diet for just one day per week has a carbon equivalent impact of driving 1,160 miles less per year.

3) Switching from a standard American diet to a vegetarian diet has a carbon equivalent impact of driving 8,000 miles less per year.

4) Switching to 100% local diet has a carbon equivalent impact of driving 1,000 miles less per year."

(via casual kitchen)

yummy snackage -- apples and cinnamon (why this took me so long to discover i don't know....)

(sometime i like to pretend i'm a food photographer.)

for the past few months (maybe a year now...) i keep having weird changes in food preferences. especially with fruit. i don't like pineapples, strawberries, kiwi, or grapes. and with apples -- i keep changing my mind on em. one month i'll love them another i'll hate em...which is unfortunate because apples are so good for you! they're high in vitamins, low in cals, and full of fiber (which becca and i appreciate..)

so over spring break i loooved them and brought back a box of braeburn apples from cotsco. ohhh but wait, i hate them again. shooot.

after realizing i couldn't do apples-and-peanut butter every day (the pb added a good 200+ cals), i had to come up with another way to trick myself into eating apples. gosh..i've become a 4 year old..

but lo and behold -- just sprinkling some cinnamon makes these apples sooo delish! like a yummy dessert. and if you leave them sitting for a little bit, they get even better. i don't know if there's any scientific proof behind that, but that's just from my observation haha.

so try it. i promise it won't disappoint :)

anderson cooper profiles jose andres on 60 minutes

so tonight was the highly-anticipated first televised interview of coco. there were fb statuses and tweets all in anticipation about what conanando would finally say. welll it kinda was a disappointment. he's contractually not allowed to say much about jay and what he could say i've heard already.

buttt on this episode of 60 minutes there was also this segment with the beautiful (questionably gay), silver fox andy cooper talking with jose andres! andres has a cool rags-to-riches story, he finds fruit and veggies sexy, and he makes sure to spend time volunteering at a soup kitchen (oh you know...going from charging 200+/head to feeding the homeless, normal stuff..) homeboy has some really interesting opinions about things and this unexpected interview was wayyyy better than coco's.

oh and sidnote-- if you didn't know, anderson cooper is my all-time old man (aka anyone 40+) crush.
and wtf..i wanna take that harvard class.