Girls Breakfast Date

Last week I met up with my bestie, Lucy, for a wonderful breakfast date. She suggested we go to Walker Brothers Pancake House in Evanston, IL. She said it has the best brunch food she's ever had, and I just had to check it out. Boy, was she right! The menu looked incredible!

Lucy has been really wanting to try the infamous Apple Pancake, so we decided that must happen. At least one of us needed to order that so the other could try it. But, the problem with ordering only pancakes at a brunch place is that you only satisfy your sweet craving. But what about the savory craving? Well, it's a good thing we think exactly alike. Lucy and I both really love our eggs and bacon at breakfast, so we promptly decided that one of us should order sweet and the other should order savory and we'll split both dishes. YES - it's perfect.

We decided the other dish to split should be the Venicia Benedict. This was not your normal eggs benedict, but it was super fancied up. And it was absolutely incredible. It included poached eggs with fresh sauteed spinach, mushrooms, and bacon on a wheat English muffin served with fresh fruit on the side. I like to order the eggs benedict from restaurants as a standard on which to base my opinion on the restaurant. And these were the BEST eggs benedict that I've EVER had! MMM! The apple pancake was also incredible! It was basically the insides of an apple pie woven with pastry dough and baked with a cinnamon glaze to create a ginormous plate of gooey, caramely goodness. It was still bubbling from the oven when it was served! It was enormous, and sinfully delicious!



We also enjoyed the bottomless coffee and we had a great girly date as well :) I love you Lucy!

Coffee: French Press

I love lazy Saturday mornings after a long work week. I sit at my laptop with my bottomless cup of coffee and catch up on emails and what's going on in the world, and let the caffeine take me to a state of relaxed alertness. We have at our disposal a plethora of ways to make coffee, and this morning I chose French press. It's so simple: add boiling water to freshly ground coffee; let it sit for five minutes; press, and voila, you have just made fancy coffee.

Isn't it funny how everyone has their own story about how they started drinking coffee? Nobody really likes it at first, but eventually, it grows on them or they become addicted. I always thought it smelled good, even when I was a little kid, but I never liked the bitter taste. It took me a long time to like coffee. I even started out on the sugary processed creations that you get at major coffee chains. Then, while living in Minneapolis, I discovered Kopplin's Coffee. They make the best latte I've ever had and their espresso is amazing! I thought it was even better than the coffee I had while in Europe. It was while spending many hours studying here that I learned that I do, in fact, like coffee. But apparently, I only like high end good quality coffee. Expensive taste has and always will be my intrinsic weakness.

Luckily my husband, who drinks way more coffee than me on a daily basis, prefers good quality coffee as well. Because of him I will always have many options to make my own fancy coffee and it will always be a bottomless cup of goodness. After drinking coffee all morning and early afternoon, what's next? A late afternoon shot of espresso. Yum!

Chicago

I’m from Rapid City, SD – a small town with a population of about 100,000. Currently, I live in downtown Chicago – a city of about 3 million people in the city and about 10 million people in Chicagoland (which is just a fancy name for the whole city including the suburbs). It’s a pretty big contrast. Good thing I learned how to parallel park in college. Nope, they don’t require that skill in SD. Traffic is awful in Chicago and I have had to experience a little too much of that! Now that I live downtown, my driving stress level has decreased to almost nothing since I can walk practically everywhere I need to go. Now that I’m used to living in a large city, I have found that I quite enjoy the city life. There is always something going on, friends to hang out with, fun things to do, new restaurants to try, and new adventures around every corner.

I’ve taken up running as a new hobby. It feels so great to be in shape again! Well… getting in shape at least. I run downtown, on Wacker drive, by the river, and north and south along the lake shore. It’s fun and interesting to explore the city on foot! Here is the general area where I run:










Cooking is my other recent hobby. I love creating new dishes with fresh ingredients. I’ve recently been introduced to some great food blogs where I think I’ll be spending a lot of my time. I love most anything about food in general. I am an amateur coffee snob, and a recreational wine-o.