Eric Idle is inordinately fond of grilled cheese.

Thanks to Tigh & Aubrey for clueing me in to National Grilled Cheese Day.

How much does Eric Idle like grilled cheese sandwiches?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVDlrbZLnyQ

Cook This: Meatballs...check 'em out. They're good.

If you go to Tony's Deli on Northwest Highway in Chicago like I do every December 23, you buy Italian foodstuffs for Christmas Day dinner.  Tony's is the real deal.  They make their own noodles for their housemade lasagna for chrissake.  A tiny, ancient woman named Helen mans the cash register in front of a wall of "Mob Hits" CDs.  And don't you dare joke about that because she won't smile.  Trust me.

Maybe this sauce might follow you home.  It's not cheap but it's very excellent. If you're lazy you could buy Tony's amazing housemade meatballs.  But if you're up for it, try the recipe on the back of this jar.  No they're not vegan but they bake in the oven so...extremely easy.

Gia Russa Homemade Baked Meatballs


1 lb. ground beef, 80/20 (chuck)
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup seasoned breadcrumbs
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1 Tbsp. olive oil
salt, pepper, & crushed red pepper flakes to taste

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl, and mix thoroughly.  Do not overmix, as this will make the meatballs tough.  Form into 2-oz. golf-ball-sized balls, place on baking sheet and bake for 12-15 minutes.  Remove from the oven and top with your favorite sauce.

Texas Sheet Cake: lovely chocolate treat in 1 hour flat. Honest.

Two years ago I posted this recipe on FB.  Since then it has appeared on family birthday tables at least a dozen times, and soon I'll be making it for an 18-year-old I know.  It's as easy, fast, and yummy now as it was then.  You can literally bang this out in an hour start to finish.  Consider making one for Valentine's Day - they will taste the love.

fastest, easiest, yummiest chocolate cake ever: Texas Sheet Cake

I stumbled across a truly wonderful recipe and wanted to share it with you special people. OK, here's the scene: it's your turn to bring the cake for a party. You have to leave in an hour. You want something yummy and chocolaty, with a minimum of bowls to wash.

You may look at the recipe below and think (as I did), "This looks weird; not enough cocoa. It won't work." Give it a try anyway sometime, gobble it greedily as we did, and then pass it on to YOUR favorite bakers.

* * * * *
Texas Sheet Cake (chocolate-buttermilk sheet cake)
slightly adapted from the Better Homes & Gardens 2003 Cookbook

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1/3 cup cocoa powder - it doesn't look like enough, but it is.
1 cup water
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk or sour milk (1/2 c. milk + 1-1/2 tsp. lemon juice or vinegar, left to stand for 5 min.)
1-1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 recipe Quick Chocolate Frosting (below)

1. Grease a 13x9x2 baking pan & set aside. In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt; set aside. (Using a 15x10x1 jelly roll pan is fine too; more like brownies).

2. In a medium saucepan combine butter, cocoa powder, and water. Bring mixture just to boiling, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Add cocoa mixture to flour mixture and beat with an electric mixture on medium to high speed until thoroughly combined. Add eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla. Beat for 1 minute (batter will be quite thin). Pour batter into the prepared pan.

3. Bake 35 min (or only 25 min for the 15x10x1 pan) until a toothpick comes out clean.

4. Pour warm frosting (below) over the warm cake - no need to wait or poke holes in the cake - and spread evenly. Leave cake to cool in the pan on a wire rack; cool thoroughly.

Quick Chocolate Frosting

As soon as the cake comes out, make the frosting: In a medium saucepan combine 1/4 cup butter, 3 Tbsp. cocoa powder, and 3 Tbsp. buttermilk or sour milk. Bring to boiling; remove from heat. Add 2-1/4 cups powdered sugar and 1/2 tsp. vanilla. Beat with a spoon or spatula until smooth. If desired, stir in 3/4 cup coarsely chopped pecans.  We always skip the nuts and it tastes just as good.

This week: 1999 in 1967, He-Man sings the '80s, mutter paneer, and falling down at ALDI.

Big week.  Mostly good, a little bit not so much.  Here we go:

Good:

This fantastic1967 short film about the year 1999.  Produced by Philco Ford for its 50th anniversary.  Apparently we were all supposed to be wearing Nehru jackets.  Featuring Wink Martindale, and bonus points if you even know who he is.

http://archive.org/details/Year1999Ad

The undisputed best cover ever of 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up (What’s Going On?)”  He-Man does it so much better than the original.  Prepare to boogie, cringe, or possibly both.  Look for Skeletor’s hilarious cameo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ5LpwO-An4&NR=1&feature=endscreenusan

Homemade Mutter Paneer on Kid3’s Birthday:  Homemade sautéed cubes of fresh cheese & peas in a tomato/butter/cream sauce, followed by double chocolate torte.  Pretty darn good, I’m just sayin.  Thanks to Kid3 for being born that day and requesting Mutter Paneer so we could have such a yummy dinner.  Here’s a great recipe for the curious.

Not That Good:

Falling down in the parking lot at Aldi while trying to exit my car.  This is what I get for only wearing pants to work.  The skirt lining had somehow wrapped itself mummy-style around my legs so that the lead leg couldn’t move out to break the fall.  I fell, redwood-like, attempting to absorb the impact with my right hand, which folded up the wrong way like a sad old Ortega taco shell.  Also, both shoes flew off and I sustained a big bruise on my leg.  Many saw; mercifully, no sarcastic clapping.

cook this: pineapple tofu fried rice.

stolen pic, but you get the idea.

Only the rice/water ratio must be obeyed; everything else is negotiable.  You don't have to be vegan to eat it, it either; omnivores at our house enjoy it as well.

Vegan Pineapple Tofu Fried Rice
8 servings or so

2 cups rice
4 cups water
1 pkg. firm or extra-firm tofu, cubed in 1/4" dice
Olive oil
1-2 large onions, chopped.  Can't have too many onions.
1-2 carrots, peeled and finely chopped
1 bell pepper (any color), seeded and chopped
Garlic - 3 minced cloves or I just use a big spoon of the stuff in the jar
1 can pineapple in juice (NOT syrup), tidbits or chunks, drained but reserve the juice please.
Soy sauce
Handful frozen peas
Sesame oil if you have it - gives a nice flavor at the end

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

• Bake tofu cubes on an oiled cookie sheet while you're making the rice and take out when the rice is done.  Set aside. (Baking dries and browns the tofu.)
• Bring rice and water to a boil; simmer, covered, for 20 min. and turn off heat.  Set aside.
• Stir-fry onions and carrots in 1-2 T. oil on med-high heat for 6-8 minutes.  Keep them moving occasionally so they don't burn.  You can add a bit of water once they brown to take advantage of the caramelization happening on the bottom of the pan.
• Add chopped pepper and garlic and stir-fry 2-3 minutes.
• Add drained pineapple and stir-fry 3-4 minutes more, until the pineapple starts to caramelize.
• Chop in the cooked rice.  Add the reserved pineapple juice plus 1/4 cup soy sauce.  Stir well to incorporate the liquid, add baked tofu cubes and frozen peas on top, then reduce to low and simmer, covered, 5-7 minutes, stirring once or twice.
• (Optional) Add 1-2 tsp. sesame oil on top, remove from heat, then mix gently and serve.  Pass soy sauce at table.

Cake Wrecks: funny till it hurts.

Under our coffee table we have a little book by Jen Yates called Wreck the Halls, by the author of the unbelievably funny and entertaining website (and 2009 NYT bestseller!) Cake Wrecks.  Subtitled "When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong," Cake Wrecks chronicles actual cakes created for money by unintentional Wreckorators.

Best of what?

Naked Mohawk Baby Carrot Jockeys

It's big boffo laffs every time you look.  Heck, it's an easy abdominal workout just from cracking up.  Between the misspellings, words that should not have been added to the cake, clumsily (or just terrifyingly) made cakes, Wreck the Halls never fails to leave me in tears of mirth that have to be wiped with my shirttail.

Schadenfreude in Andersonville: Premise Restaurant is no more.

Back in May, I joined friends at Premise (the former In Fine Spirits), which turned out to be the most entertainingly awful restaurant experience in Chicago.

Shortly afterward, to my horror, the June 13th issue of the Chicago Reader ran a long and glowing review of Premise by Mike Sula, accompanied by droolworthy photos. 

Today, Gapers Block Chicago announced the abrupt closure of Premise and firing of its staff.

Arun's: Everything you see is beautiful AND yummy.

I like all food, including fine dining.  But there's an off-putting difference between presenting beautiful, delicious food (Arun's) and just showing off.  Today, I entreat all lovers of delicious, non-insulting food of any kind, whether highbrow or down-home, to follow what they like, not what they think they're supposed to like.  Don't give in to the system.  Fight the power.  Tell the Emperor he's not wearing any clothes.  Pass the bacon.  You know what I mean.

Back from Ireland: Tip o' the neill to ya!

It's midnight Dublin time but we're back enjoying the cicadas of Chicago at 6pm.  Too many photos to show yet but a few impressions from the trip:

1.  Tons of tourists, largely French, German, and Italian.  Irish super-friendly.
2.  Hardly any Americans in Northern Ireland.
3.  Derry/Londonderry is an important place for anyone to visit who wants to understand Irish politics.
4.  The roads are as tiny as they say, but at least they are paved.  Sean did a heroic job driving.
5.  Best dairy products in the universe - butter, milk, yogurt, cheese, ice cream.
6.  Sausages available as part of every full Irish breakfast, but where are the pigs?  We saw at least 50,000 sheep, about a dozen donkeys, but literally only two pigs.
7.  "Champ" = mashed potatoes, butter, salt, pepper, chives or green onions.  Too good for words.
8.  Slieve League: highest sea cliffs in Europe (1,291 feet).  Photos when I can dig them out.  Unbelievable.
9.  Also tons of medieval and megalithic sites.
10.  Much amusing signage and graffiti.  Again, hope to find all the photos we took of it.
11.  Surprising geographic diversity for such a small country.  Also an astonishing amount of water.  Also astonishing beauty around nearly every bend.
12.  Wheaten bread (extra-coarse whole-wheat/oat Irish soda bread) and Club Lemon became our car sustenance as we usually skipped lunch.  Wheaten bread produces a very specific and evil type of fart which cannot be replicated with any other food, sort of  like the smell of gym shoes gone wrong.  Very bad indeed.  But the bread is so tasty you just get up the next day and eat it again at breakfast.  The crazy thing is you can get this amazing rustic bread anywhere, even at their crappy little convenience stores.
13.  Tea.  Tea with milk and sugar, and wheaten bread with divine Irish butter.  The things they do well, the Irish do really, really well.  The Irish seem to like their tea incredibly strong, almost as dark as coffee, so 1-2 cups in the morning is plenty.

That's all for now....just to stay up a few more hours till bedtime (yawn).....

This week's nugget ratio: 71% favorable, 29% unfavorable.

1.  The annual Blueberry Run with friend Ann to Stateline Blueberries in Michigan City, IN (5 stars on Yelp).  Closer than Michigan, and better.  We each picked 5 pounds in 45 minutes flat.  They even have bathrooms and soap-on-a-rope to wash your purple hands. 

Molto reubene.

U-Pick, U-Eat.

2.  Our pickfest was followed by a delectable banh mi-style sandwich and an equally nice reuben at her cousin Joe’s deli, David’s Delicatessen, in neighboring New Buffalo, Michigan (4.5 Yelp stars).

3.  Miniature golfing at Novelty Golf & Games in Lincolnwood this past Tuesday.  In operation for over 60 years.   You know, that place you always whiz by on the way home from the equally legendary Dairy Star (4 stars), with huge pine trees and a big Frankenstein head, and you think, “yeah, someday I need to go there?”  Well, you do need to go - in fact, Groupon ran a 2-for-1 deal just today for the place.  Authentically old school, with not one but two fiberglass chickens and hand-painted signs featuring the Fonz, reminding you to dress properly. The glow of the yellow bug lights against the evening sky still thrills me as it did when I was a teen mini-golfing at the place next to Kiddieland on North Avenue.  Even our 21^st-century crew enjoyed it.

Del Stater's Rabbit Hut it ain't.

4.  Putt-putt golf in Lincolnwood must, of course, give way to subpar soft-serve swirl cones at the Bunny Hutch immediately to the north.  Who cares if Oberweis is packing them in across the street?  It’s critical to go to these old places because…. 

Off-the-hook waffle from Pat's Place.

5.  …well, because they might go away.  I was chopfallen to discover that Pat Bellos of the incredible Pat’s Place in Skokie lost a fight with her landlord and had to close her restaurant recently after many decades of service.  She says she’ll reopen but she doesn’t know where.  I have often envisioned growing old and taking all my meals there (breakfast and lunch) – read my rapturous Yelp reviews of the place here.

6.  Coming in from a lie-down on our new patio sofa just now to discover that I do, in fact, have ants in my pants.  

7.  If you squint right, my Blogger graph looks just the tiniest bit like the top of Batman's head.

this week's good/bad thing ratio: 13:6.

13 good things:

1.      Upgrading from contract status to a legit, full-time gig as a program consultant for Kellogg Executive Education.  The get-a-job dance appears to have worked again, thank goodness.

2.       Discovering the wondrous Bookman’s Alley bookstore in Evanston.

3.       The 1844 Bureau of Indian Affairs “ American Red Man” book on sale therein.

4.       Taking a paid lunch for the first time in years.

5.       An abbondanza of good lunch places in Evanston, including Pret and the over-the-top Edzo's Burger Shop (27/30 Zagat rating).  Parenthetically, next time you're tempted to say plethora, stop and say abbondanza instead.  It's saucy.

6.       Homemade strawberry shortcake for dinner.  I do it once a summer,  and today was the day.  Yum.

7.      Discovering the NeilMed Nasal Rinse (cousin of the neti pot) is indispensable for flushing Sour Cream 'n' Onion Pringles out of one's nose.

8.      Watching Cabaret, loaned to me by my friend Tigh, Mr. “Video Junction.”  He is my TV dealer, responsible for my Mad Men addiction.

9.   Attending a raucously fun block party of some friends of ours and surprising myself by downing an entire bottle of prosecco.

10.   Pulitzer Prize-winning Tribune columnist Mary Schmich wrote me back today.  I think she might be my new girlfriend.

11.   Lounging on our new patio furniture on our new patio.  I napped so long a bird almost pooped on my cheek.

12. The weather turning human again!

13. A chocolate soda.  And then another one a few days later.

Funny how many of the good things have to do with food and drink...

6 bad things:

1.       Laughing with a mouth full of Sour Cream ‘n’ Onion Pringles and inhaling them into my sinuses.  That seasoning stings something awful.

2.       Learning that Bookman’s Alley will close sometime in August.  Wah!

3.       Andy Griffith died.

4.       Ernest Borgnine died.

5.      The inescapability of Joel Grey's creepy Cabaret face.  He haunts me night and day.

6.       Daring to drink my out-of-date skim milk at work.  There will come a day of reckoning, and soon.

Chicago's Festa Pasta Vino: Viva il Formaggio!

Even Elvis wants a piece of this action.

Yes, long live cheese...as in, the extreme cheesiness and enjoyment of Festa Pasta Vino, billing itself as Chicago's only Italian festival, taking place every Father's Day weekend in the Heart of Italy subneighborhood in Pilsen (basically a two-block stretch of Oakley Avenue between Cermak and Blue Island. (link to Festa page)


It's worth a trip to this ancient, tiny Italian enclave any time of year, a truly old Chicago neighborhood that boasts a number of fine mostly Northern Italian restaurants, among them Bruna's, which my husband and I have enjoyed many times with friends.  It's the kind of place Michael Corleone might have gone to meet Sallozzo and McCluskey but more romantic and nobody gets shot in the head.  They know their way around a chicken Vesuvio, let me tell you.

Bruna's: Old-school Italian done right.

Anyway, dear friend Ann and I, with whom I seem to have my wackiest adventures, found ourselves accidentally at Festa Pasta Vino as the result of a dinner date at Bruna's.  After a fantastic meal of chicken vesuvio, eggplant parmagiano, and some wine, we stepped out of the restaurant into the tiniest, coziest, cheesiest festival in Chicago.

The funeral home is handy if you eat/drink yourself to death.

My phone camera pictures won't do it justice, but here are a few choice morsels of the experience.
* Rented plaster statuary stuck at intervals down the middle of the street.
* A guy named Frank, who looked just like Joe Pesci, sweating stoically under an excellent Centurion costume and an inexplicable Billy Ray Cyrus mullet wig.
* Having my photo taken with Frank the Centurion. 
* Lighted-up plastic grapes festooning vendor booths.
* The requisite license plate holders saying you touch-a my car, I break-a you face.  
* Fake gold-plated giant necklaces spelling out CLA$$Y.
* A former Jersey Boy on the main stage belting out "Working My Way Back to You, Babe."
* Legendary Chicago radio fossilized stick insect Dick Biondi, who came out and talked about his favorite performers, such as Bobby Darin.  Dick was then presented with an electric guitar painted red, white, and green, which I was seriously afraid would snap him in two with the effort of holding it up.
* The mysterious Piedmont Club, about which I was able to find NOTHING on the Internet, which intrigues me no end.  Do let me know if you find out anything.  It needs to be the set of a movie, I think.
* A charming gentleman with an interesting backstory which discretion forbids me from relating, who bought us drinks at Bacchanalia.
* People walking into bars and restaurants with open drinks in their hands, sometimes both hands.
* The diminutive West Town (Anzilotti-Bacigalupa) Funeral Home, where Vito might easily have taken Sonny after they massacred his boy.
 
* Adding yet another fun, goofy experience to so many I've been fortunate enough to have with my buddy Ann.  Many more in our future, I hope, dear lady... :)

Happy Summer and Happy Friday everybody - and remember, mark your calendar for next Father's Day Weekend for Festa Pasta Vino.

Summer at Aldi: 99-cent raspberries and Nutella under 2 bucks!

$1.99...

$4.49 @ Walgreens...$7.58 @ Amazon...

The latest Aldi goodness...Maybe you wouldn't want to eat Nutella and fresh raspberries together, but you can get them both this week at Aldi for hardly any money.  Their version of Nutella is indistinguishable from the brand name in every way but price, being oh, about, four times cheaper compared to Amazon...

The second find this week was big, beautiful jewel-like raspberries, with nary a moldy one in the bunch, for 99 measly cents a carton.  At this price, one can afford to dump a whole carton or two into the blender with some ripe bananas, a bit of OJ and ice, for a fruitylicious shake.

It's immensely satisfying to fork over one-fourth or one-third of what other people pay for these yummy finds.  And of course it justifies your buying that many times as much!  Mmm, raspberries.....

Evil work fridge from hell.

The sign of our truly evil office refrigerator:  its stench can be detected from several feet away with the door closed.

I've got a good quart of skim milk in there, and today is cleanout day, so the clock is ticking.  Heaven forfend I waste 60 cents' worth of milk.  Chugalug!

Premise: The most entertainingly awful restaurant experience in Chicago.

Tasty-looking, but be warned:  this is at 100X magnification.

Premise:  a restaurant so complexly wrong it can be enjoyed only as a psychosocial experiment, or a piece of masochistic experimental theater.

We went there this past Friday to celebrate dear friend G's birthday.  The prices left us agog, the portions required a scanning electron microscope, the service was both fussy and arrogant, and the amuse-bouche served at the start of the meal was literally inedible.  And I will eat ANYTHING.

This is one of those restaurants where the menu spells out every single ingredient in each dish (broccoli roots, lark eyeballs, etc.) - but it neglects to mention that the fish dish that G ordered (a pescatarian) is slathered with ham gravy.  When G brought it up to the server, he was dissuaded from ordering it without the gravy because it was a "really integral part of the dish." - and then chided for not mentioning his special dietary needs.

Ten minutes later, the server accidentally poured G a glass of rose instead of the red Malbec he ordered, and when it was pointed out to him, he said, "There, now we've BOTH made a mistake."  !!!!  Really?!  That's what you say to people who are paying $11 per person for something called "compressed melon," which turns out to be five (5) honeydew melon balls the size of Peanut M&Ms?  Where falafel costs $19?  Our table was breathless at the audacity of these and other remarks.

The entire experience felt like you'd walked into some kind of experimental interactive theater for foodie masochists.  Somebody, somewhere, must get off on this sort of thing.  In my book, when it comes to food, you have to hit on at least one of the following cylinders:
1.  Tastiness.
2.  Quantity:  doesn't have to be Old Country Buffet, but you know what I mean.  A certain amount of real estate on the plate.  Five tiny melon balls is not a salad.  You don't want to leave hungry.
3.  Service:  Don't be a jerkface.
4.  Value:  It's OK for food to cost money as long as it hits on cylinders 1 and/or 2.

The more of these cylinders you're firing on as a restaurant, the better things will be.  I walked in and saw nothing I wanted to eat on the menu.  I drank my dinner instead and had two of their tiny but delicious popovers.  Oh, and the fabulous M gave me a bite of his tempura sweetbread, which again, was quite tasty, but about one-fourth the amount of food you would want to have at a normal meal.  The portions were so small it shocked me that this table of men didn't immediately grab street food from the Midsommarfest going on right outside the doors on Clark Street.  I should have done that or I would have felt better yesterday.

I do like to end on a good note.  The cocktails were fine, intensely flavored and strong.  I enjoyed a Hemingway (a very fresh, tart grapefruit daiquiri) as well as a topnotch Sidecar.  Upstairs at Premise appears to be the in spot, as people in shiny clothes kept funneling up the stairs, while the first-floor dining room was nearly dead at 9:30 on a warm Friday night.  So go there for cocktails if you must, but please, do yourself a favor and stay away from the food.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/premise-chicago

food: chocolate croissant or abomination?

Croissants on my mind....

Looking for croissant recipes today, I came across this stunner on Cooks.com:

CHOCOLATE CROISSANT
1 can refrigerated crescent roll dough 1 stick butter, melted 4 fun size bars of Three MUSKETEERS® 1/4 c. confectioners' sugar Cut MUSKETEERS® long ways. Tear crescent dough and put MUSKETEERS® in middle and roll up. If you can see MUSKETEERS® at the ends, pinch together. Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes. When done sprinkle with confectioners' sugar.

You read that correctly.  It's greasy, commercial crescent roll dough wrapped around wretched 3 Musketeer Bars, with sugar on top.  The whirring sound accompanying this post is Julia turning over and over in her grave.

The demented thing is, I may actually attempt this.  Film at 11.

Aldi, part 3: The ugly (or, Why'd you mess with the fake Cheerios?!)

In milk, bad fake Cheerios grow to the size of donuts.  Grrr!

Heading my list of Top 10 reasons why ALDI rocks is that their fake Cheerios ("Crispy Oats") are practically free at $1.59/box.  I walk in there every few weeks and shlep home a case of 12 boxes at a go.  [We eat a LOT of fake Cheerios.]  And they appear to be made by General Mills, as I can discern no difference in quality from real Cheerios.  So who wouldn't want to save, like, three bucks a box?

...until two days ago, when I purchased a case, only to discover the old-style subpar fake Cheerios, the very porous ones (right) with visible holes that look obviously punched out of a big sheet of Cheerio dough.  These would, I knew, swell up unacceptably as they sogged and softened in the milk.  I wanted to pull a full-bore Howard Beale moment, but had no one for an audience but the kids, who were already a bit annoyed at having to continue eating not just fake Cheerios from now on, but crappy fake Cheerios at that.

Not really this angry, at least not now.

Aldi, I thought we had an understanding.  Can't we just go back to the way things were?

Seriously, though, I understand and respect that the reason for Aldi's success is that they keep costs low and quality reasonably high.  But somebody made a bad quality decision here by changing their private-label manufacturer.  I'd rather pay a bit more for fake Cheerios than the same low price for crappy ones.

hunger makes crappy food yummy.

Why does strong hunger bring everything, even (or perhaps especially) crappy food, up to Yummytown?

Can't believe how good this $5 Hot 'N' Ready cheese pizza from Little Caesars is.  Wolfed down two pieces in three minutes and currently contemplating a third.

Probably helps that it's piping hot and I had no breakfast or lunch.

Still...better hurry or it'll get cold and then we're back in Crappytown.

20120315: this week in random awesomeness

Every week yields its catch of random awesomeness (or awesome randomness), for which I continue to be thankful to the universe.  I humbly offer you the catch of the week, and bid you the awesomest of weekends...

Aldi, part 2 of 3: the bad...

Happy Friday!  Today's post follows my recent chronicling of the good to be found at Aldi, with a mercifully much shorter sampling of the bad below.

In fairness, a huge swath of fair-to-middling foods are omitted because they are perfectly fine, but not worth special mention.  All the dry cereals, for example, or the 100% whole wheat "L'oven Fresh" bread (which gets extra points because it sounds like McLovin from Superbad.) [caution, funny-but-sweary link]

Anyhow, here are some of the more dubious-looking items unearthed on a recent trip.

Previous ALDI goodness/badness/ugliness found here.

When Aldi's food stylists can render the Macaroni & Beef no more appetizing than this, just remain calm and look across the aisle at the nice cheerful pineapple chunks.

The hummus makes both the good and bad lists, because although it's cheap, it's basically mashed chickpeas.  Unobjectionable on its own, but come on!  Tahini, please?

"A pork and soy protein product."  Check out the exploding Oink-ometer!  Mainly it provides an excuse to say this.* 

I bear canned potatoes no ill will, but I fail to grasp their point.  Looking at them makes me feel desperately sad and poor.  I mean, a potato costs about a nickel.   Heaven help you if you can't afford a damn potato.

* 1) Years ago, Sean and I lived below the two nice young Jewish heirs to the great Moo & Oink fortune.  We gave them a bunch of our furniture when we moved out, and they gave us a Moo & Oink clock.  Fair exchange, I think.
2) Sean was featured on the back page of the Chicago Tribune wearing a Moo & Oink T-shirt, for a story on the birth of our oldest son, which I should tell sometime.
3) Moo & Oink's classic commercials during Soul Train vie for first place with the equally jaw-dropping Scottie Pippen Mr. Submarine ad (yes, he really does dunk a sub) as a high/low point of Chicago commercial history.

20120302: top 11 randomly awesome things this week.

How can my cup runneth over with so much random awesomeness?  Way too much time on my hands.
But seriously, you are probably surrounded by awesomeness all the time also.  You just don't have the time to notice it, geek out, take a picture, and write it down.  You should do that sometime.  Meanwhile, there's more than enough random awesomeness to go around:

11. Sammy the three-legged rescue cat at Forest Glen Animal Hospital.  Coy fellow, you can't see his beautiful face.

10. The pointless-but-fun rainbow foam jets they squirt on you (on your car, I mean) at the car wash out by my mom's house.  It doesn't need to be rainbow - just allows them to charge you nine bux for the deluxe.



9. My very first no-chip manicure.  I'm about as likely to pamper myself or my nails as I am to get up one morning and take up jogging.  Nevertheless, there you are.  To me, they look both pretty and slightly plastic/strange, which I enjoy.

8. One more reason to hate Jewel a little less:  the dollar wall!  Right by the girls-on-cars magazines.

7. These pencils look better than they sharpen, but you have to appreciate the marketing goofiness of mangling the beloved Ticonderoga brand into "Tri-Conderoga" to emphasize the triangular cross-section.  Somebody talked somebody else into something, I think.

6. This sweet pair of slippers, which I made out of an accidentally densed Gap lambswool scarf found at the Village Discount Outlet.  I densed it again and voila: cold feet problem solved.


5. Being named Crafter of the Week at the Economy Shop.  I've been avoiding blogging about it because I'm greedy, but the Economy Shop is a legendary century-old thrift store,  open just a couple days a month.  Three full floors of a huge old house are filled with well-organized rooms, great merchandise at reasonable prices, and friendly volunteers.  The craft room is to die for:  as my friend Jim puts it, "a Brigadoon of crafts."  Yarn, fabric, notions you've never even heard of.

4. The drama of lunchmaking.

3. Butter Boy.  He butters corn!  Fast!  You could go to some pretty awkward places here, but I'm just going to put him down and walk away.

2. New profile pic.  Trying to look all professional and shit.  The wooden bathroom door really classes it up.

1. OK, drum roll...here it is...can you stand it?  A unicorn candle, that set me back $1 at the Irish American Heritage Center's first annual rummage sale last week.  The kids made me swear never to burn it, so it stands sentry on our kitchen windowsill as I write these lines, radiating its legendary powers over us as we eat dinner.

But wait, there's more awesomeness that didn't even make the list.  How about these Paleolithic NOMA Christmas lights with mismatched bulbs that look like they'll burn the entire building down if you breathe on them funny?

or just this really cool key?  Why don't companies just design all keys to look cool?  Doesn't cost any more.

**PS:  Listen, you may or may not know, but I started this blog partly to kick a Facebook addiction.  Blogs are fun, and they're even more fun if a bunch of people read them.  And even though I'm a junkie, I'm not averse at all to publicizing the blog on FB.  So, if you like something you read here sometime, it'd be great if you want to post a link to it on FB.  Just saying.  Thank you so much.  Hope you have a lovely weekend - during which you take a moment to notice something randomly awesome! (post it here as a comment for extra credit :)