Why I Oughta...

The storm last night was a big one in Elmhurst.  We didn't loose power (thank you!), but we took on a lot of rain the backyard.  We weren't the only ones, as Palmer Underpass - the main route around Downtown Elmhurst - was closed all day.  This photo was from Saturday at 3:30 PM and the water was still almost 10 feet deep. Traffic is snarled all over because of this blockage.  To compound matters, the ramp to the Eisenhower off of North Avenue was closed for hours this morning.

Today is YouTube's Life in a Day.  TODAY! For those of you who don't initially know what that means, you can see more details on their YouTube Channel or the O fficial YouTube Blog post  or on Faceboo k.  Alternatively, you can read my description below. It really is a pretty cool concept (you guys do know that I work for Google , right?  They're paying me, but not paying me to promote this!) where ordinary people from around the world should whip out their Flip Cameras or mobile phone cameras and contribute a short bit of footage from their lives today.  In the end, Life in a Day will be turned into a feature-length documentary film that is set to be premiered at Sundance 2011.  And...if that's not cool enough,  if your footage makes it into the final cut, you’ll be credited as a co-director and may be one of 20 contributors selected to attend the premiere. There are some heavy hitters involved ( Ridley Scott , Kevin McDonald ) pulling the whole thing together.

People are finding our little skunk site.  And...reporting their skunk sightings across Elmhurst!  I've updated the map over at ElmhurstStinks . View ElmhurstStinks.com in a larger map As a reminder, I wrote this post about the genesis of the site b ack in March as a way to utilize a series of free Google tools to build a site.  Either July is skunk season or my "dollar-a-day" AdWords campaign is bringing the folks in as 4 people have submitted sightings in the past 3 days. Since we've put up the fence, I haven't had a single skunk encounter, but the summer isn't over yet!

San Marzanos, according to Wikipedia are the most desirable sauce tomatoes in the world.  At the retail level, they typically run upwards of $5.00 per 28 ounce can.  They have a few varieties at Angelo Caputo's, but the Jewel doesn't carry them.  You can buy cases here - and those run $4-5 per can, too.  I have to think that a case of these babies would weigh a ton, making shipping a bit pricey.  With our home pizza-making adventures taking on new, interesting ingredients, I've now tried to add these to our regular rotation. The history of these tomatoes is rich in history : The story goes that the first seed of the San Marzano tomato came to  Campania  in  1770 , as a gift from the Kingdom of  Peru  to the Kingdom of  Naples , and that it was planted in the area that corresponds to the present commune of San Marzano. They come from a small town of the same name near  Naples ,  Italy , and were first grown in volcanic soil in the shadow of  Mount Vesuvius . Compared to

Earlier in the year, Nat and I spent time at Blueberry Hill in St. Louis near Wash U (Nat's alma mater).  In each of the booths (on the bar side, by the dart room), hung one of these beauties. There must be 10 of them on one wall - all with glass shades.  They're certainly not reproductions, but it is a wonder how they could have kept these in such pristine condition throughout the years.  Nat tells me that "Blue Hill" was a Wash U hangout, so they must not have been as rowdy a crowd as the one I spent many a night with at Kam's.  Guess that's what happens when you're school is ranked 12th in the nation.

Back in May , I showed what our little pear tree looked like early in Spring.  The little limbs are now jammed with small fruit.  So much, in fact, that they're weighing them down big-time. This post says that pears should NEVER be allowed to ripen on the tree and that we're within a month or so of harvesting.  It doesn't look like we have all that many pears - maybe 25 - so we should be able to scarf them down before they go bad.

York Tavern 3702 York Road, Oak Brook, IL  60523, (630)323-5090 Pizza Snob Says: The York Tavern puts out (as one would expect with such a name) tavern-cut crackery pies that come out a bit cold, under-cooked, under-seasoned and served on styrofoam plates.  Come for the beer and the Hinsdale "slumming-it" crowd. Rating:   Two "Ats-a-Nice" They list five Speciality pizzas on their menu including "The York's Special" - which is a SMOP (sausage, mushroom, onion and green peppers), "The Hawaiian" - with pineapple, bbq sauce and bacon, a Vegetarian, classic Margherita, and the pie we ordered: The Pizza Bianca: a olive oil-based artichoke/garlic/parmesan combo.  The place is owned by the same folks who own Roberto's in Elmhurst and the pizza menu looks surprisingly similar .  (compare the link to the image below) Unfortunately, I didn't grab a photo of the pie we ordered, but I can tell you that it looked nothing like the on

Last summer, I kept seeing cucumber pickles at our Farmer's Market week after week.  They weren't too terribly expensive, but I had never pickled, so I was hesitant to buy them.  After a few searches, I settled on an easy recipe for  refrigerator pickles .  I made them spicy and gave away a few jars.  They were good, but they weren't really pickled using traditional methods.  The refrigerator method takes away a lot of the brining, processing, and storage time, so it was a good introduction to pickling. This year, after finding a book at the library entitled " The Joy of Pickling ", I decided to give the longer-version a try with all the boiling/processing/waiting that traditional pickling calls for. At two markets, we purchased the pickles, garlic, and dill.  I threw in black peppercorns and red pepper flakes.  The slices were packed in pints and the spears were packed in wide-mouth quarts. Both recipes call for a one-month storage in the root cellar (our ba

The new Transformers movie is shooting in Chicago this weekend and it is making big news - as evidenced by this pretty cool photo on the homepage of the Chicago Tribune and the updates streaming in via Twitter . On Thursday, I was walking back from lunch with Matt at Venice Cafe (my favorite place to lunch in the City!), I spotted a bunch of rubble in a vacant lot across from the Billy Goat in the 300 block of West Washington (lot below from Streetview). View Larger Map Back a few years, they used this same lot to stage lots of Batman equipment - including a bunch of trailers.  I was either working at FeedBurner and walking from LaSalle Street Station or at Google and walking from Union Station (when we lived in Naperville) and was always excited to the new items and movement in the lot.  This is what it looks like today:  full of faux rubble. You can see the Ford Explorer crushed under what appears to be concrete.  Maybe the Illinois Film Council is helping secure this lot for

Last Saturday, Nat, the Babe and I, went up to Park Ridge to hit their Farmer's Market.  We were in Michigan and missed the Elmhurst Market earlier in the week.  Both Nat and I were after some produce; her for baby food, me for pickling and such. The Market, itself, is pretty nice.  Small and compact, it gets hot because it is, like many, in a parking lot that reflects the days heat.  Saturday was also the same day as the Taste of Park Ridge, so I can't tell if the crowds were heavy/light compared to other weeks.  Some of the vendors were vast, some were pretty sparse when it came to produce.  They do have a really neat knife sharpener with a HUGE old-fashioned wheel that uses to sharpen knives on site. All that was great, but the one vendor that stuck out for me was the Park Ridge City Council.  They have a Listening Post set up each Saturday morning and it was filled with elected officials and residents. Not sure when this started, but this is a pretty smart move.  Talk