Hello all y'all.
It's Saturday evening, close to 9 p.m. and I'm listening to Dave Frischberg on the local public radio station. I went for a long-ass bike ride today, part of that was I stopped by Stanley's on my way heading back home.
The logo of Stanley's Fresh Produce is an old Tony Soprano-looking guy smoking a pipe and flying an airplane fashioned out of a watermelon. They are on Elston Avenue...to put this in perspective, Morton Salt is on Elston avenue as is The Blommer Chocolate Factory. Head up a bit, to the intersection of Elston, Fullerton and Damen and there is the Vienna Sausage (i.e. Hot Dog) factory with its, god help us, factory outlet store.
Chicago, hog butcher and general factory type hoo ha to the world is in evidence, even today, along Elston Avenue.
Let me tell you, when it's May and sunny at 5:45 p.m. and you can roll past on your bike past the intersection of Milwaukee, Des Plaines and Kinzie where it smells like a big pan of brownies because that's where the Bronner Chocolate factory is...mmm mmm I would never trade Chicago for anything.
Anyway Elston has all sorts of industrial stuff not to mention lots of quasi industrial stuff (i.e. "Black Tie Hors Douvres!")
so can I just say here, that I know that "Hors Douvres" isn't quite right. Spelling, I mean
I've plugged it into Merriam Webster and my alternatives are:
Horsepowers
Horsehairs
Horseradish
Horsewhippers (horsewhippers???)
Whoremasters (that's what I'm talking about)
but nobody is suggesting the word for "appetizers"
anyway, black tie "appetizers" are available along Elston Avenue along with the only Target within Chicago's city limits.
I have heaps of organic produce, a whole messenger bag-full for $20. Stanley's is down the road from Whole Foods which is commonly called "Whole Paycheck" and Stanley's boasts of their low prices.
For a while a few years ago I tried getting a bag of organic produce from a local market...you would pay a flat fee (I think it was $20) per week and you got a big bag full of whatever was in season. It was like buying a subscription to a bunch of produce...it forced me to think outside my normal routine and eat different stuff. But it meant a two-hour round trip to the store 1x a week and I had a lot of food that began to mold by Wednesday (okay, I appreciate that there aren't any preservatives but damn, you are telling me that I pick up a bag on Saturday and I have to eat ALL that by Tuesday? Uh uh.)
So now I have organic apples (two kinds) organic pears (bartlett) organic asparagus, collards and both cherry and grape tomatoes. Which is not to shabby, I think.
I'm cooking brown rice now which I will then spread out on a parchment-ed baking sheet to cool and then freeze in individual baggies. And baking (baking!) beans in a covered casserole. Chickpeas that I can baggie-up and keep in my freezer. Next is baked oatmeal so that I can eat wedges of baked oatmeal, topped with apple sauce from Trader Joe's.
How wanky is it to talk about my food on my blog? Well it could be worse. I could be talking about my hip-hop class on Fridays.
Such a good bike ride. Got a phone call from Alex...that's a good thing about Cell Phones; why NOT take a phone call in the south loop and chat for a bit there on Canal Street, across from the Northern Trust headquarters. The Post Office is nearby, the one mentioned in radio traffic reports i.e. "40 minutes on the southbound to the post office" and indeed it takes up an impressive amount of real estate.
How in the world did the post office work before zip codes? Zip codes are recent, under 40 years old (and Amen to whatever unsung person came up with naming them "Zip" rather than "priority" or whatever. But before Zip codes...were there special lifers who could sit in front of mail bins and sort all of California, say? All the Santas, all the Santa Barbaras separate from all the Santa Claras. I know that at one time trains full of cargo would cross the country and sorters would ride the rails, tossing mail into specialized canvas sacks for eventual delivery. Just think of California, what it must have meant for the Post Office to have specialized in those who knew all the "Santa"s apart from on another.
It's tough for me to remember the world before bar-codes. I sure as hell can't imagine a world before zip codes.
