Cursed. I can't wait to see the pics from this.
I won't make it.

Those of you who were unable to attend today missed a wonderful lunch. First, I must say that the staff at Hoosier Mama were terrific. They saved a large table for us--even though they don't take reservations--and brought everything out to our table and served us our many, many dishes.

We tried their "special" biscuits with butter and two kinds of jam, which I thought were all excellent. The "hand pies" were the size of empanadas and were very tasty, and they brought us some of their green salad with an assertive, mustardy dressing as a side. We had a sampler platter of both meat (Moroccan lamb and some sort of sausage) and veggie (spinach and feta and curried veggies) hand pies, served with two sauces (harissa and curry). The fillings were all good and the pastry flaky and crunchy. We also tried all three savory pies available--pork, apple, and sage; chicken; and curried root vegetable. It's hard for me to stray from that chicken pot pie, which is probably the best I've ever had, but the pork was very good, I thought (the veggie is going to be my dinner). Our server suggested it for breakfast, and I can see why that's an excellent suggestion. It's kind of like really good sage-flavored pork sausage and apples with a delicious pie crust. What's not to like?

Good LTHers that we are, we also had to sample the sweet pies for dessert, even though we were pretty stuffed. We tried the s'more, which was better than I thought it would be--not too sweet, really a balanced pie. We also had the apple-pear-cranberry crumble and the Hoosier sugar cream pie that were both excellent.

What a nice gathering we had at a wonderful new Evanston restaurant for our last ELG of the year. I love that HM Evanston can easily be on my way home from work. If they were walking distance from my office, I'd be there weekly. They don't always have the smaller size pies (call first if that's what you want), but they seem to have slices and whole large pies more usually available, at least at midday.

Any sense of what the evening availability is? I'd love to stop and get a savory pie on the way home for dinner.

Damn this stomach flu. So sorry I missed it. If only I could have attended without using my stomach ...

Hand pies sound delicious, thanks for the description EvA

Delicious food and fine company at Hoosier Mama yesterday. EvA has done a splendid job of describing our choices. Only one thing to add about the food here because a friend "complained" to me last week that the Chicken Pot Pie had too much chicken and not enough vegetables. I'll take Hoosier Mama's version over any other chicken pot pie I have eaten. The chicken was obviously freshly prepared just for this dish and everything about the filling was tasty. And then there is that wonderful flaky pastry crust boosting it up to yet another level.

I ordered their lovely Tangerine/Ginger tea again and promised myself I will try to order a different tea on my next visit though it would take something extra special to lure me away from the tea I drank yesterday.

No one brought a camera and I was drafted to take pictures with my iPhone so please excuse the quality of the images. This is my first time posting pictures on LTHForum.