**Tap Tap** Is this thing on?

Is it possible to resurrect a food blog, even one that never had a high readership?

No idea.

But I have been thinking quite a bit recently about the great food city that I live in.

It's Chicago, for those of you who don't know...

In any case, I have had some money concerns recently, and I've realized that I still eat some pretty amazing food. Mainly because I live in a great food city, probably also because I prioritize food as an essential expense. There are SO MANY great food options here, even on a tighter budget.

So I thought I'd explore some of those, and maybe try to entice a few of my co-bloggers back.

They don't know that I am posting right now, and all of their lives have changed quite a bit since they last posted. However, I'm pretty sure they are all eating interesting things.

I work an odd schedule. I only worked a partial day on Wednesday, then had Thursday and Friday off, and worked all weekend. As I described the gluttony of Wednesday through Friday to my boss, it hit me that I enjoyed that span of eating so much, I should probably tell the world about it. The world, in this case, consists of my co-workers and my roommates. That's a small group, so I thought I'd post it here.

Wednesday. 4/1/09. As a tribute to my mom, who is from Wisconsin and whose birthday is on April first, I had to leave work early so as to avoid going into overtime for the week. Since I was heading through the southwest suburbs back to my apartment, I realized that if I took a certain path home, I would go by a Culver's. This place is a Wisconsin based fast food chain that has started to spread out quite a bit. To my palate, they tie with In-N-Out for best fast food burger ever. So I had a late lunch there around 2 pm. Double Butterburger with cheese basket is only $4.99 right now. Great food, great price. Called my mom to wish her a Happy Birthday. She was jealous, and then gave me a guilt trip for not flying to Boise to surprise her for her birthday. Serves me right for going to Culver's alone. That experience should be shared.

Thursday. Woke up. Roommate # 1, the Asian one, was off last week, and roommate # 2, the student, doesn't have class on Thursdays. I arranged to meet up with Rick, the new dad, for an early lunch at Hot Doug's. Akira (roommate # 1) and Joe (roommate # 2) both agreed to come. So we went to Doug's at 10:45 am. It's been discussed on this blog before, but I'm too lazy to look for it and link to it. Hot Doug's is one of the best restaurants in Chicago. No one will agree with this until they actually go there, but trust me. Or trust the internet. Do a google search, or just go the link I included a few sentences ago and look at the specials menu. His food is REAL. His food is CHEAP. His food is AMAZING. Best fries I've ever had. Anyway, I had the Cinci style chili dog, 'cause everyone was doing it, and I had the Burgundy Wine Pork Sausage with Bacon-Garlic Mayonnaise and Camembert Cheese. And shared some fries. It was unspeakably good. Anyone who wants to visit Chicago, this place has to be on your itinerary. Get in touch with me. I'll take you.

After lunch, I realized I wanted to make Collard Greens. I like the idea of greens. I have a fascination with "Southern Food." I watched the Good Eats episode about greens. So I wanted to make them. Couldn't make them as a meal unto themselves, so I plotted what else to make. I realized I wanted something grilled. Joe's mom provided us with some home grown ground beef. So I thawed that and made an America's Test Kitchen-based recipe for Well Done burgers. (I have a slight fear of underdone ground beef unless it is ground to order). I also made the oven baked onion rings from the same ATK episode, and sour cream and onion smashed potatoes. Not the healthiest of meals, but it was REALLY good. The burgers were superb, the onion rings were surprisingly good, the potatoes were a little runnier than I usually like, but definitely delicious, and the Collards were GREAT. I need to investigate these hearty greens a little more. Usually if I go down that route it's just kale, but mustard greens and turnip greens are now calling ti me. As for the burgers, home grown ANYTHING is so amazing, and that includes beef. Can't say enough about it. And it was a relatively cheap meal. The beef was free, for us, and then everything else was less than a dollar a pound. Potatoes? Collards? Onions? Cheap! The most expensive part of the meal was the ham hock that went into the greens! Oh, yeah. I almost forgot the chocolate mocha cake with chocolate marscapone mocha frosting that I made. It was pretty good, too. All of the roommates joined me for dinner (Akira, Joe, Dane and Hensley), and Leo made an appearance as well.

Friday I woke up and went for an 11 am brunch at Tweet. Tweet may have made it on to the blog before, too, but just in case, let me tell you something. They have the best biscuits and gravy in Chicago, as well as the best hash browns. (I use hyperbole a lot, but they really are that good). They also have a cool space to work in, and very nice waitstaff. Went with David, a friend I used to work with. It was a great time, and we had some great food. Truth be told, I go to Tweet almost every week, so it will make a return appearance here at some point I'm sure. It's not the cheapest breakfast in town, but for quality AND quantity, it can't be beat. Another place I would travel a long way to visit.

Friday night some friends wanted to go to That Little Mexican Cafe. It's a cool place with great margaritas, very good guacamole, and a grilled pork tenderloin entree that really makes me happy. Good company with David, Ryan, James, and Alan. Good food. Easily the most expensive meal I ate over the past few days, but it was worth it. Plus David paid because I agreed to drive him to my place, give him some chocolate cake, and then drive him home. Definitely worth it.

All of that eating in the span of two and a half days made me realize that I missed writing about food, even for the small audience, but the meal that made me sit back down and start typing again came the next night...

Friday the 13th links - the Friends in China edition

OK, I generally don't want to post stuff here that isn't directly food related. I have a dormant personal blog for that. No need to look for it. I haven't updated it in over 6 months.

But, anyway, three friends of mine recently moved to China. And they're all writing about it. Since a lot of what they say is about food, I decided to post the links here. Plus, if they get lots of comments, maybe they'll post more. All three are good writers. Brady and Peggy, it's not surprising. But my friend the Jade Tiger? I know he's funny and witty when he's not quiet and brooding, but his posts are REALLY entertaining. Maybe more so if you know him. Anyway.

Brady and Peggy. The Meisenwangs. Peggy has started calling Brady Matt. And his dad calls him Matt, too. But they're a young married couple who moved to Beijing because Peggy is a genius and therefore gets lots of money to be a genius somewhere else. Brady went because he can only eat bland food, is scared of oppressive governments, and had never left the US before. And he's rather pale and has shockingly red hair. What better place to go than China?

Kevin. Nothing really to say. But I will anyway.

If you've only seen him on the ultimate field, you probably thought, "Hey, how is this 14 year old the best ultimate player anywhere on these fields." And then he would take off the weight vest, shedding 20% of his weight, and you'd realize you're screwed.

If you only saw him at Kraft, you probably thought, "Hey, isn't that Kolb's boyfriend from their cute pictures at the Kraft gym entrance?"

If you only saw him eat, you'd probably say, "Did he just eat his weight in meat at fogo?"

If you only saw his blog, you'd probably say, "I'm surprised he's this funny when he's not drunk."


Anyway, I'm hoping to learn to save money so I can fly over there for a tournament and play with all of them. That would be really cool. Z is probably over there somewhere, too. We only need a few more for a team. Who's in?

Wednesday Morning Links

Sorry for the lack of posting. It seems only world travelers have the time to post to a food blog. Nothing interesting in food for me lately. So I'll just put up three links and hope for more culinary adventures in the future.

Jerry's is the best sandwich shop in the city. Now they will have a second location.

Mmmmm. Bacon sandwich.....

Mmmmm. BBQ.

Wednesday Morning Links. The JL edition.

Just a quick post this morning. Nothing really interesting has been going on with me food-wise. Maybe Joe will post something.
OK. The links.

• Carrots are cool. Go to your local farmers market when it starts up and get some good ones. The non-orange ones are pretty cool and tasty. Joe likes carrots.
  
  
• Because of this review, we went to Sabatino's last night. It was Kolb's birthday, so the guitar player and the violin player did a very nice Happy Birthday for him, and then offered to play him any song. I was hoping for Moon River, but he asked for a Sinatra song. So we heard a very skilled rendition of Summer Wind. Since Joe had the best dish at the table, perhaps he can do a write-up about it.
  
  
• This thread over on LTH talks about a cookbook based on O'Brien's British Navy series of books that Master and Commander was based on. Ex-roommate (ex-pat) Kevin is a big fan of those books. If he ever comes back, with or without a wife, we should make a big meal based on that cookbook. Do you know who else is a big fan of those books? JL.

Yeah, a little light today. I'll do better in the future. Have a good Wednesday.

Wednesday Morning Links. And Some Encouragement

Jess submitted this to the editorial staff for inclusion in the Wednesday Morning Links. This article tells of the first female chef to be given three Michelin stars in the past 50 years. I've never been to a Michelin starred restaurant, but I do understand this is a pretty big deal.

I'd like to try to eat more seafood, and it sounds like it might be a good time to try Scylla. I used to walk past the place quite a bit when I lived in Bucktown.

This thread on LTHForum is about Lenten eating, and features Rick / Eric favorite the Duke of Perth. I think my agnosticism finally overtook my childhood upbringing, as this year I only feel the slightest twinges of guilt when eating meat on Fridays. Still, fish on Friday wouldn't be a bad dietary modification for me, although fried fish probably isn't the way to go.

On to the encouragement. I realize that Drew and I haven't been posting much recently. You can tell because two consecutive sets of Wednesday Morning links bump together on the main page. Very tacky. We're working on it. I'm just lazy and haven't done anything interesting food wise this past week, and Drew has been on a super secret mission. I've already said too much. Anyway, there is a third member to the Scrumptulescence team. Joe. You remember, he posted a little intro about how he shouldn't be posting here. Something about qualifications. Well, to encourage him, and to justify my insistence that he start writing about something here on this site, I am going to link to a few posts from his early blogging days on Crazy Nomad. They're not 100% about food, but you can see the genius, the willingness to share share everything with the world, and the lack of decorum. I have only linked to ones that are at least peripherally about food or drink(ing). After reading through some of these, if you know Joe, email him or IM him and encourage him to start writing regularly for our humble site. Ask about the kale he made. It was glorious. If you don't have contact info for him, just leave some comments here. He'll see them.

• This is one of a number of postings he made while drunk. I like the assaulting of the waitstaff in a bar.
  
• This post has some more good stuff about being in a bar, along with a talent show including a milk challenge, pizza hut, and pretending to drive while drunk.
• More drunken posting, this one involving some BBQ among other things.
  
• He makes soup in this one, and talks about Arrested Development.
• In this he talks about wearing a loincloth, as well as touching on a breakfast place that is run by a cult.
• And the last one, with a mini restaurant review and some details about an unusual path on a train trip.

See? I told you.

These were just randomly sampled from his archives. There's a lot of good stuff there. Which is why we all need to gently encourage him to write more, both here and on his own blog.

Have a good Wednesday.

Wednesday Morning Links, brought to you by the ellipsis......

I like this casual approach to buying wine. I have a feeling that a lot of us don't often find ourselves in Sam's or the Wine Discount Center when we want to grab a bottle of wine for casual consumption. I'd like to be a more informed wine buyer, but who has the time? I mean, I'd like to be a more informed college graduate, too....

This isn't food related, but i found it really entertaining. When I was in high school in Idaho we didn't have any cool 24 hour superstore. We were lucky to have indoor plumbing. Our only 24 hour hangout was the Perkins restaurant by the mall. We didn't have room to breakdance there. Who am I kidding? I'm no JL. I can't dance.....

And, finally, some recipes from the greatest cooking show ever produced: Good Eats. I'm not going to spend time describing the show to you, but I will say that it's funny and informative and makes you think you can cook whatever the host, Alton Brown, is cooking. I have tried all three of these and had good results even the first time......

• For those who want good Texas-red style chili (no beans!), but don't want to take a lot of time to make it, you can use this recipe from this episode and you'll have a very good version of the stuff. You DO have a pressure cooker, right.......


• A great episode gives us a great recipe for broccoli casserole. Easy to make, very tasty, and uses instant ramen in an interesting way.......



• Until I saw this episode, I had no idea that making chocolate eclairs was relatively easy. As long as you can make the pâte a choux..............



• Last but not least, the episode that started it all. It's a good steak, and it's pretty easy. You just have to be willing to deal with some smoke in your kitchen. My roommates have become rather adept at airing out the apartment when I'm cooking. It's not ALWAYS necessary, though......................