Kent and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary last week by going to Chicago for a few days. (I showed you our wedding picture back in this post in case you want a peek.) Anyway, we had a blast and I thought I'd share some pictures before getting to a few interesting links that I also have for you today…
Mostly we ATE the whole time we were there (eating is our favorite entertainment, you know) and then walked it off between meals just looking all around the city. Kent researched restaurants ahead of time, trying to find just the right places that would have the Real Food he knew I'd love, what a sweetie, huh? Not surprisingly for me, I was so into enjoying all of it, that I forgot to get many food pics, but thankfully I did snap this one – appetizers from Bar Toma. I had to copy the description from the website because I didn't understand the words – basically it was three kinds of soft delicious homemade mozzarella with three different types of pesto: “fior di latte, mozzarella di bufala, smoked, Genovese pesto, lardo pesto, Sicilian pesto“. Whatever that means. Also we had a chicken liver spread that had a great not livery taste: “Tuscan Chicken Liver Spread, caperberries, egg“. I didn't dig the caperberries, but the egg on top was perfect.
I had a sweet tooth and decided to try Garrett's Popcorn once more (preservative free at least) to remind myself that yes, Kal's homemade caramel corn recipe really IS waaaaay better tasting. Knowing exactly what ingredients are in something is a big part of why everything tastes better when it's homemade, in my opinion anyway.
We stopped for a while to experience the beauty inside this gorgeous Cathedral (I'm so thankful that Kent appreciates these types of stops on vacation just as much as I do):
There were no theatre plays going on while we were there (bummer – last time we saw Wicked and loved it), so we went to Blue Man Group. It was very entertaining, but it's one I'd rather have seen with the kids, because they would have really gotten into it.
Friday morning we went to Mass at St. Peters Church, which is right in the middle of the skyscrapers downtown:
And here's the inside:
Anyone who has visited Chicago as a tourist in the past few years has probably seen “the bean” in Millennium Park:
This is really the only picture we got of ourselves on our trip – a picture of us in the bean reflection, with the skyline in the background:
OK, enough boring you to death for this Monday morning, on to a few links I came across; some are thanks to you, my reader friends, who are sweet enough to shoot them to me as you come across them. 🙂
- This first article makes me feel bad for companies, especially the organic ones like those I met at Expo East last week, who are really trying to do the right things, and then they find out that their food sources contain arsenic. Now they have to spend oodles figuring out how to handle the problem. I suppose learning to roll with stuff like that is part of owning a company, but wow, as much as we, the consumers, get tired of always finding out the next food that we have to be careful about, they must get tired of dealing with it even more. Here's the story about Arsenic in your Food.
- There have been some new shocking comments at this post that you may not have seen: Health Care Workers! How to Refuse Mandatory Vaccines and Not Get Fired.
- As you can probably guess, between homeschooling and working full time, my days are packed full, especially recently when I've been on the go so much, but I do still plan to get up a post soon about our first few weeks of homeschooling. In the meantime, I'd love to hear from more of you about what a typical homeschooling day looks like at your house.
- Let me know what you think about this article, NYC Hospitals Crack Down on Junk Food. Do you think NYC is over-stepping? The part that really irritates me is that to Mayor Bloomberg, sugary foods are right up there with fatty foods in the unhealthy category, and there's never any question about which fat, it's all just lumped together as “bad”… (Find out the truth about healthy fats here.)
- Check out the new olive oil on my resources page, you'll LOVE it! 🙂
- Here's a podcast you'll want to listen to with a couple of great guys in the Real Food movement who I'm thankful to know: Scott Kustes (a blogging friend from way back) and John Moody (a fighter for food rights) – they talk about one of my fav topics: Farm Freedom.
- Speaking of great guys and Real Foodie friends, my real life friend, Carl, wrote a post recently about a new organization, NuSi, who he says is attempting to put some science back in science. Read Carl's article and let me know what you think. Junk Science – A Statistics Refresher Course.
- Remember that this week is your last chance to save $70 on Jill's new online class Go-Grain Free – definitely something to look into if you've had digestive issues or other chronic health problems: CLICK HERE to watch the video or find out more.
Have a great week!
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