ShareTweet When people are sick, my first instinct is to feed them: big bowls of chicken tortellini soup, hot challah from the oven, creamy spaghetti bolognese. Watching my father being fed the same vanilla flavored nutrition liquid through a nasal tube for the last five months has been one of the many painful aspects of… Continue Reading
Category Archives: food
Quotes and Optimism From Michael Pollan on Cooked Book Tour
ShareTweet On Sunday night, I headed to Elmhurst College with Emily Paster to hear Michael Pollan discuss his latest book, Cooked. Although I’m a big fan of Michael Pollan, I was a tad apprehensive. I was tired, mind churning with the planning to get through the busy week that would begin in the morning. I… Continue Reading
Sumo Oranges: Stalk Them and Hunt Them Down Before It’s Too Late
ShareTweet Last February, I was trawling the fruit bins of my Whole Foods when a Whole Foods employee tempted me with the ugliest orange I’d ever seen. It was bulbous, misshapen and fat. The little sticker labeling it a sumo orange struggled to cling to its deeply dimpled skin. In spite of the sumo’s look,… Continue Reading
Cinnamon Infused Olive Oil and Dreams of Chile
ShareTweet The weather in Chicago has been brutally cold for the last week. The cold is slowly taking over the house. We’ve been adding layers and wearing slippers, but the best way to beat back the chill is to cook and fill the house with great smells that suggest warm weather climate. Spices make me… Continue Reading
Become an Illinois Field Mom and See First Hand Where Your Food Comes From
ShareTweet Are you curious about where your food comes from? Now is your chance to see how the food you purchase is grown and ask all the questions you’ve been worried about. For the second year in a row, the Illinois Farm Families organization is inviting Chicago area moms to become Field Moms who will… Continue Reading
A Mom’s Dairy Adventure: Milk From Farm to Fridge
ShareTweet What type of milk do you buy for your family? Whole? 2%? Skim? Do you buy organic or conventional? Or do you reach for soy, almond, or even hemp milk in your dairy case? Having so many choices and so many conflicting news reports to sort through has made purchasing milk an overwhelmingly complicated… Continue Reading
Do You Know Where Your Milk Comes From?
ShareTweet As a mother and foodie, I want to know as much as I can about where my food comes from. I’ll travel to farms near and far to see first hand how our food is produced. Our relationship with food is increasingly tinged with fear and guilt. I met a woman recently who was… Continue Reading
Peeking Into the World of Hog Farming
ShareTweet Have you ever wondered what the inside of a modern hog farm looks like? I was more than a little nervous last week when I set off to visit the Wuebker Family Farm, but was pleasantly surprised by what I saw, smelled, and learned during the trip. While I probably wouldn’t pick a weekend… Continue Reading
Sensory Overload on the Pork Sustainability Tour
ShareTweet What was your most memorable pork foodie moment? That question kicked off the Pork Checkoff Sustainable Pork Farm Tour that I attended for the last two days, a trip that brought together six bloggers to get up close and personal with hundreds of sows and their adorable pink piglets in the heart of Ohio… Continue Reading
Ask Pork Questions to Feed the Hungry
ShareTweet Do you have any questions about how pork is raised? Share them here and you’ll be helping to feed hungry families. I’ll be headed to Ohio in a few weeks along with a few other bloggers as a guest of the National Pork Board. We’ll be traveling to the Wuebker Farm to learn about… Continue Reading
Crowdsourcing 4th of July Inspiration from Pinterest
ShareTweet Pinterest is the new mindless flipping through a magazine, a delicious way to lose time. Seconds turn into minutes magically while the beautiful images tile by in front of your eyes. And while it can seem like a complete waste of time, Pinterest is a great place to get entertaining ideas for special events… Continue Reading
Proud to Be a Ziplist Featured Partner
ShareTweet What apps have made your life easier? When I first got my iPhone, I loaded it with apps. But the truth is, other than email and texting there are only a handful of apps that have actually made my life easier. Don’t get me wrong, I get my nightly Scramble with friends fix, but… Continue Reading
Getting Real with Meat
ShareTweet Eating healthy by increasing the amount of whole foods in our diets is a goal many of us have. We make little changes, join CSAs, go to the farmer’s market, but it’s a long journey, filled with scary doomsday predictions, and higher food bills. It’s a journey that our family has been on for… Continue Reading
The Next Chicago Food Swap
ShareTweet The next Chicago Food Swap is only a couple of days away, and if you’re in the Chicago area, we’d love to have you join us! When: Saturday, March 17 3-5PM Where: Pretty Little Things, Forest Park, IL It’s free! Just register before coming so we can have a space set up for you.… Continue Reading
Diving Into the World of Chocolate at the Callebaut Chocolate Academy
ShareTweet I spent a delicious morning yesterday diving into the world of chocolate at the Callebaut Chocolate Academy. The class was Chocolate 101. It was a thorough overview of the chocolate making process that concluded with a chocolate tasting and demonstration of chocolate crystallization by Chef Richard Cusick. I’m not going to pretend that tasting… Continue Reading
the Sorcerer’s Apprentice: a Must Read for Foodies
ShareTweet Do you consider yourself a foodie? Being a foodie comes in many formats. A foodie can be someone who watches the Food Network religiously, sitting at the edge of their seat for each episode of Chopped while eating frozen Lean Cuisine dinners. Foodies share pics of their food on Foodspotting and Pinterest. And this… Continue Reading
Butter Bliss Valentine
ShareTweet Some women buy shoes. I buy butter. Since my husband got an iPad, books, magazines, music and games suddenly became completely useless presents, destined to sit in a sad pile on his nightstand. So instead of resorting to hand colored sex coupons, I gave him the next best thing: butter. Before you cringe and… Continue Reading
Stalking the Fancy Food Show Trends from Afar
ShareTweet The Fancy Food show is one of my favorite events to attend. Walking the giant hallways filled with every temptation imaginable is like a foodie olympic, an assault of the senses, and a true test of how many tastes one mouth can handle in one day. It’s so overwhelming that I made a few… Continue Reading
Rich Bounty at the Chicago Food Swap
ShareTweet For the last few weeks, I’ve been helping Emily Paster organize the first (as far as we could tell) Chicago Food Swap. I have to admit that although I thought a food swap sounded like a great time, I wasn’t entirely sure how it would happen. Would people haggle? What would people bring? Would… Continue Reading
XMarx Secret Supper Club and Dose Market
ShareTweet I’m not a food snob, or at least I try not to be. I’ve had amazing, drool-inducing foodie experiences at my local supermarket and at many greasy spoon hot dog joints. Great food is everywhere, not just fancy, exclusive restaurants and markets. That said, last week I dove into the Chicago food scene in… Continue Reading
Become a Field Mom To Learn About Illinois Farms
ShareTweet It seems that nowadays we all have more difficult choices to make about what foods to buy, whether its eggs, fruits, meat or milk. There’s free range eggs vs. organic, grass fed beef vs. grain fed, and conventional vegetables vs. organic. The news is filled with terrifying accounts of outbreaks and everything you put… Continue Reading