Here’s What Happened While I Was Away … With so much of my time spent away from the site in the past 4-6 weeks, I thought I’d give a “here’s roughly what’s been going on” round-up. I had intended for a lot of this to turn into their own stand-alone posts but this will be faster.…
After we said goodbye to Jimmy last night, we made plans to meet up again today for our final full day in Chicago. There was no real plan other than shopping on Michigan Avenue and getting a feel for Chicago. We were going to do a boat tour but the weather was too brutal. Next…
Eataly in Downtown Chicago Should Be Your New Italian Grocery Store After hours browsing the Thorne miniatures and the paintings, sculptures, and pottery at the Art Institute of Chicago, we were hungry. Jimmy wanted us to see a grocery store he thought we’d love called Eataly. He was right. This place is everything a grocery store…
Narcissa Niblack Thorne was born in 1882. She fell in love with her childhood sweetheart, James Ward, and they married. He was the heir to the Montgomery Ward fortune, one of the biggest in the world at the time thanks to a chain of department stores that were once as ubiquitous as Target or J.C. Penney. A graduate of art school, the Chicago socialite wasn’t content to sit around and make small talk all of her life. She began designing and orchestrating these incredible one-foot-to-one-inch scale historical replicas of different architectural, interior design, and furniture styles throughout history to serve as models of how homes and spaces had changed over the years. She was meticulous and insisted upon accuracy (e.g., the wood, down to the grain direction, of the tiny furniture had to be made in exactly the same way as the model piece upon which it was based.)
Aaron and I arrived in Chicago less than two hours ago and are spending the weekend visiting our friend Jimmy from college. We had promised to come up for awhile and he wanted to show us the city. We’re having dinner at an Italian restaurant called Tocco in the Wicker Park district. [mainbodyad] Afterward, we…
On the way back from spending the week with friends, Blake and Karen, on Captiva Island, we decided to take a detour to meet up with two other old friends we don’t get to see very often, who happened to be at Walt Disney World. We were heading toward Tampa and re-routing to Orlando would only a…
After we visited The World of Coke at the Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, we traveled another 600 miles to Captiva, an island off the coast of Florida where we’ll be staying for the rest of the week. Our friends Karen and Blake got married – you met them years ago when we had dinner at…
We woke up in Atlanta, Georgia this morning and decided to go to one of the most sacred spots in the entire Western Hemisphere: The World of Coca-Cola. What might appear as a mere beverage to some is practically a cult in the South. Coke reigns over this city like royalty thanks to the fact…
It’s Time to Make Christmas Candy as Gifts! We’re making Christmas candies, chocolates, and cookies as part of our gift strategy this year. I’m probably most excited about trying my hand at the Jacques Torres Nougat Montilimar, which is going to require a deft hand. (It looked promising, and we stopped in one of his…
Do Any Of You Have a Steak Brandy or Cognac Butter Reduction Recipe? Ten or eleven years ago, I went to a steakhouse in Omaha, Nebraska during a trip home from college. The chef that day had decided to make either a brandy or cognac reduction sauce using the drippings from the beef. Feeling adventurous,…