about stores recipes      pictures links archives contact

2001.october.27 --------------- it's a nice day for a walk, so ellen and i hoofed it over to jimenez, a decent-sized grocery store on western with many imports from mexico. i got:     + broccoli     + spinach     + white button mushrooms     + bimbo bread     + chocolate silk (soy milk)     + marinara sauce     + chocolatine cookies     + a can of beefaroni     + shredded chihuahua cheese     + a liter of squirt in a bottle total: 16.87 what i bought today is pretty indicative of what i would normally buy when i have no food and not much money, but the same lot usually costs around 25 dollars or so at dominick's. and jimenez has a nice selection of soy milk! it's not rice dream, but silk is still pretty good stuff. carrying the groceries home, i was reminded of a girl i saw a few days ago near the art institute dorm: she had one of those old lady 2-wheel metal grocery carts. i remember thinking that was kind of cool, but by the time ellen and i got halfway home, wow, was i wanting one. lately i've been concentrating on buying food in its basic components: bags of potatoes, eggs, cheese, fresh vegetables, butter. i've eaten too many just-add-water meals from a box; i'd like to start making more of my own food from basic ingredients. butter is my new luxury. when i learned to cook, it was with olive oil; that's what comes to mind when i think "saute." but this past week i've been making everything with butter: spinach with lemon juice, hash brown potatoes, mushrooms. i blame wishbone: their sauteed spinach got me started. 2001.october.26 --------------- it was cold out last night, the perfect time to make acorn squash, heating the house with oven power. we were out of brown sugar though, so i ran 3 houses down to the store with no name (i'll find out what it's called one of these days). they didn't have any, so i bought four bananas for 41 cents and ate two while the squash was baking, using a cinnamon/sugar mixture as a brown sugar substitute. yeah, i'll get a recipes page going soon. till then, spot the old one. 2001.october.18 --------------- we ran out of olive oil making tofu and shitake in the wok; fortunately, i work in greektown. so i went to athens grocery, where they had glass jars and huge aluminum jugs of the stuff. i also picked up some choco-wafers, which may have been hazelnut, but the label was in greek so i'm not sure. they had a lot of interesting-lookin stuff in greek. one other thing that caught my eye there were cans of dolmas, stuffed grape leaves. i'm quite the fan. usually i buy them fresh; joe's deli in minneapolis has my absolute favourite. but i was intrigued by the pull-top cans, and got the ones that were "recommended for vegetarians." afterwards, atomly and i ate lunch at a chicago institution: a red hot shack. i had a pizza puff, just like in high school. 2001.october.16 --------------- this site is finally live, thanks to people who helped me: rbgrn for the hosting, chrise for the logo, and my roommates for their patience ;) hopefully i'll get moveabletype installed soon, for comments and blogging n stuff. content will grow in time. stay tuned. 2001.october.13 --------------- we're throwing a party tonight, spent all morning cleaning and buying liquor at chicago's massive alcohol source, sam's. for shits n giggles, i picked up:     + 1 handle of stoli     + a fifth of french vanilla kamora     + a fifth of aunt bea's butterscotch     + stone sour mix     + grenadine ellen got the handle of baccardi, fifth of tequila (sauza), and a case of bass. by the time we made it home lunch was overdue. too lazy to walk all the way down the block to pete's, i went to the other, smaller shop four doors from mine that i don't think i know the name of. got some bimbo bread and made tuna salad sandwiches. 2001.october.9 -------------- running pretty low on food, good time to go to stanley's. it's nice to come home with two bags of food and everything is fresh. i got:     + an acorn squash     + 2 zucchini     + extra firm tofu     + fresh mozzarella     + a bunch of shitake     + lots of spinach     + broccoli     + 4 bananas total: $11.91 once we got back from stanley's, ellen and i scrounged change, walked down the block to pete's, got bacon, and came home to make blt's.