...your sister is getting married, and she's been nagging you to get fitted for your bridesmaid's dress in Lincoln Park. You put it off and put it off--hate weddings, not excited about the dress, don't want to deal with shopping in LP--until your sister offers to do anything to help the process along including chauffeuring you to the dress store. Seeing an opportunity, you cut a deal: will get fitted for the bridesmaid's dress only with a ride and two sausages at Franks 'n' Dawgs first. Making my "maiden" voyage tonight.

Two days of eating on the road through Fort Wayne, Indiana and Columbus, Ohio. Driving home via Lima, Ohio, we see a Skyline Chili Parlor. The idea of a visit is quickly vetoed because one person wants only to visit Skyline at its home base in Cincinnati. Everyone agrees because we are stuffed from our prior meals.

Drive no more than half a mile, a Kewpee sign is spied. The car turns into the driveway and parks. The argument we were too stuffed dissolves as we order hamburg, cheese hamburg, malts, raisin pie and sugar cream pie.

We have our priorities.

Regards,

We are in Madison, WI
trying to decide whether to go home thru Rockford (Machine Shed)
or via Milwaukee (Kopps)

way to decide?
what is the Kopps Flavor Forecast?
Cookies n Creme and Boston Creme Pie!

Way home is via Milwaukee
Boston Creme Pie Custard, makes for a heavenly dinner!

irisarbor wrote:We are in Madison, WI
trying to decide whether to go home thru Rockford (Machine Shed)

Hooray! Another Machine Shed fan!

happy_stomach wrote:...your sister is getting married, and she's been nagging you to get fitted for your bridesmaid's dress in Lincoln Park. You put it off and put it off--hate weddings, not excited about the dress, don't want to deal with shopping in LP--until your sister offers to do anything to help the process along including chauffeuring you to the dress store. Seeing an opportunity, you cut a deal: will get fitted for the bridesmaid's dress only with a ride and two sausages at Franks 'n' Dawgs first. Making my "maiden" voyage tonight.

Good Luck. They only have truffle fries on the weekend, but dare I say it their regular fries were tasty during my 3 times in one week run a couple of weeks ago.

...you're at the Garfield Park Conservatory, standing in front of these plants:



You overhear a Hispanic family talking nearby. You don't understand Spanish, but you definitely pick out the word "Nopales" being repeated several times.

In case you didn't know, there's a low-growing variety of prickly pear cactus that grows natively in Illinois. It's the easternmost range of the family, and can be found at Illinois Beach State Park in Zion. I've got a very similar species in my garden (could be the same, I don't believe it was taken from the wild, though). It flowers in June, but has never produced any significant fruit.

I haven't tried consuming them -- cleaned nopales are easy enough to obtain at nearby grocers, on the rare occasion I'm in the mood for cactus.

sitting at Toon's last night eating ribs for the first time there, and say out loud " these are so good, they must be Gwiv worthy"

...your car dies twice in one week, it needs to be towed again, fixed again, and you're wandering around Arlington Heights with a dead phone too, while swearing and saying things through gritted teeth like "hate world, revenge soon" which is quickly replaced by "......ooh look, a sushi place!"

... you plop your groceries on the counter and the woman behind the counter starts talking to you in Thai, assuming you must speak the language if you're buying those items.

Thailand Food Corp.
4821 N. Broadway
Chicago, IL 60640

-Dan

dansch wrote:... you plop your groceries on the counter and the woman behind the counter starts talking to you in Thai, assuming you must speak the language if you're buying those items.

Thailand Food Corp.
4821 N. Broadway
Chicago, IL 60640

-Dan

That is really neat!

Cathy2 wrote:

dansch wrote:... you plop your groceries on the counter and the woman behind the counter starts talking to you in Thai, assuming you must speak the language if you're buying those items.

Thailand Food Corp.
4821 N. Broadway
Chicago, IL 60640

-Dan

That is really neat!

I will have to vouch for Dan's southeast Asian roots, given his Cha Gio Ha Noi service at the LTH picnic. As authentic as they get, frying on the ground against the side of the building. Food truck gone ethnic, true ethnic, old country ethnic.

Your cat turns his nose up at processed cheese.

When on the Adriatic coast, you make your way through thick cactus brush, shirtless, in front of horrified tourists, your girlfriend included to retrieve four ripe, luscious prickly pears. Later you eat them greedily on the rocks, ignoring thorn wounds and scratches all over your upper body, licking sun-warm cactus nectar from your fingers, regretting nothing. Then you spot a grove of olive trees, ripe with fruit in the distance, and think "I can brine and eat those in the two weeks I have before going home." And off you go......

You da man Habibi, you da man!

Geo
PS. nicely enough, the cacti on Santorini were mostly of the Burbank needle-less variety!!

...you spend hours putting together menus for Halloween, Thanksgiving (x2), Christmas (x2), Christmas cookies, holiday work parties (2) and New Year's all before the first week of October is over.
...you put together a catered event and when the photographer mentions he didn't get pictures of the food, you think, "how could you not get pictures of the food?"

I order duck in a restaurant, and it is served without any sort of glaze or sauce. The duck is good, but I think it needs a sauce or a glaze. I discuss the situation with my dining companions, and they think I'm food obsessed. I fidget and fuss around, and finally call the restaurant owner over and tell him that I think the duck needs a glaze or a sauce. He happily takes the duck back and returns it with a lovely cranberry sauce. I am happy; my friends think I'm one odd duck!

Truth be told, I ran the marathon last week. To cross Wentworth Avenue to get to a Chinese restaurant, I had to find a break in the runners. I joined in running at the same pace with a left to right move. Yep, I possibly ran 50 maybe 70 feet. It took a good lunch to get over the experience.

You're sitting down with 5 other LTH'rs looking forward to a wonderful meal and before the apps even hit the table there's already a rousing discussion on the venue for the next meeting.

Cathy2 wrote:Truth be told, I ran the marathon last week. To cross Wentworth Avenue to get to a Chinese restaurant, I had to find a break in the runners. I joined in running at the same pace with a left to right move. Yep, I possibly ran 50 maybe 70 feet. It took a good lunch to get over the experience.

Cathy-

This made me laugh out loud. Thanks for sharing!

-Mary

Mary,

I'm glad you enjoyed it, too. I kept thinking of Billy Crystal running with the bulls in City Slickers.

Regards,

C2--

Only problem was, after all that exercise, 30 minutes after lunch you were hungry again!!

Geo

You are at H Mart food court eating kimbap with a side of kimchi for breakfast reading LTHForum on your pda after having a lively discussion about the cabbage shortage and rising price of kimchee in Korea with the kiosk clerk.

...you're watching basketball and whenever a player loses possession you think, mmmm...turnovers.

. . . A visit to a vintage furniture store in Gage Park somehow justifies lunch at Birrieria Zaragoza followed by not-at-all-on-the-way-home detours to both Dat and Old Fashioned Donuts.

Ronna

both Dat and OFD? Were you doing head-to-head fritter comparisons?

(Dat's is too thin and overglazed for my tastes, no of course I've not done the same thing why do you ask?)

...when you tell your dearest that you can't wait to be done with all this Halloween baking and he offers to just pick something up for his office party instead, you shout "don't you dare!"

JimTheBeerGuy wrote:both Dat and OFD? Were you doing head-to-head fritter comparisons?

Yep, both. We figured we don't make it to that area too often, so we should try them both. The only overlap in our purchases was glazed donuts. But, Dat's had sat a bit and OFD's were piping hot and right out of the fryer (surprisingly not the ideal time to eat a donut, IMHO), making a comparison difficult.

Ronna

...you talk to your creations. When I take something out of the oven and it looks good, I tell it so. Am I the only one that does this?

...you are driving to work bleary-eyed and sleepy for a 6 am meeting and you approach a formerly vacant restaurant with new signs in the window that say No hiri. You perk up thinking that there is a new Japanese restaurant in the neighborhood, then slump back down in the seat as get closer and see the whole sign--you remember that that space is slated to be a Homemade Pizza Co. and realize the sign actually says Now Hiring.