Shainaf87

We’ve gathered five essential This American Life episodes that every Chicagoan should hear. [ more › ]

Stop licking the website, please. Back away.

Thank you.

Now, to business: this is Dorothy's pie built on a crust of crushed Oreo cookies and pretzels. On it she layered ice cream, peanut butter, hot fudge, caramel, chocolate sauce and sprinkles.

Link -via Love from the Oven

I came across the Dia de los Tamales booth at the Milwaukee Arts Fest recently, and was excited to find not only comfort food but a chef-driven menu that embraced the whole farm to fork concept. Unfortunately I had a huge breakfast before attending, so the only room I had was for delicious aromas.

A friend suggested we go to Pilsen to try it last weekend, and I was all in.

We were there a few minutes before they opened at 11a.m., and the rice wasn’t ready. So we chose to load up on sides instead. The chick peas were laced with chunks of braised pork and the black beans with green olives — however, both were strangely bland. I would’ve expected more salt or a deeper flavor, but it was lacking.

The tamales were far more enjoyable. I tried the vegetarian roasted red pepper and goat cheese tamale that held the promise of more flavor that it delivered, but was still a good complement to the tender masa. The spicy black bean and corn tamale had far more kick and intense flavors, and was well worth the bite.

My friend doubled up on the red pepper tamale, but snagged a coconut curry chicken tamale, too. The mild curry with the peanut sauce was interesting, and overall a good vehicle for tender shredded chicken.

We both agreed the apple cobbler tamale was a winner. The buttercrust masa was laced with enough apples to give it flavor but not fall apart. A rich, salted caramel sauce was laddled on top, with real dollops of whipped cream. Really excellent.

The service here was fast, friendly and cheerful. It’s a cute spot, lined with ethnic artwork for sale. There’s no room to sit indoors, so plan to eat on the outdoor cafe seating or take it with you. Parking in the area is plentiful.

All the tamales are $3.00. The lunch combo with two tamales, sides and a fountain drink is $10.

Dia de los Tamales
939 W 18th Street
Chicago, IL 60608
(312) 496-3057

A new video featuring California moms who've incorporated pot into their daily routines and into their dinners took Twitter by storm Wednesday afternoon. It can, they say, even make them better parents. As one of them explains in the video: "I'm calmer. I'm more rational. I'm not angry. I'm not stressed."

Watch:

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1930. Mini Golf Course in the basement of the Riveria Theater.

We've seen our fair share of pranks but HOLY SHIZ is this one scary!

James Williams must be trying to get his girlfriend to break up with him! Why else would he be scaring her in her sleep with this TERRIFYING TV trick?!

The prankster wrote on his YouTube page:

"I wanted to see how my girlfriend would react to a ghost coming out the tv trying to grab hold of her."

You have to see her HIGHlarious reaction! We have never seen someone scream so loud!

Or open their mouth that wide! Srsly, look at that. It's like she unhinged her jaw! Maybe her plan was to just eat the ghost???

Ch-ch-check out the WORST/BEST prank a boyfriend has ever played on his girlfriend! (below)

[Image via YouTube.]

epicpugs:

HAI.

It looks like a cake covered with disgusting savory toppings, but it's actually a tasty layered sandwich with smoked trout mousse, smoked salmon, cucumbers, mustard sauce and topped with a sour cream and cream cheese "frosting" and salmon, shrimp, eggs, radishes and parsley. Even if you aren't big on the fish filling, try your favorite sandwich fillings instead...just imagine a Reuben Smorgastarta. It might not be authentic, but man would it be satisfying.

Link

This morning I intended to write about "This Town," a new book about Washington DC by a writer named Mark Leibovich, but last night I got distracted and spent ninety minutes watching "Two American Families," a "Frontline" documentary that aired on the local PBS affiliate. It's one of the best, and most heartbreaking, documentaries I've seen this year. It's not about a tragedy or disaster. It wasn't "hard to watch" because it was about a singularly awful moment in human history or one unspeakable monstrous act -- a hurricane or war or even a specific crime committed by specific people -- but because it just happened to document the lives of some struggling working-class families beginning at shortly after the point when the ground fell out from beneath the American lower-middle class and ending now, when there's clearly no hope for a return to economic security.

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Now you don't even have to walk to the doughnut shop. [ more › ]

I met Ojay Morgan, aka Zebra Katz, back in 2012 when he invited me to style his music video. I got super excited to work with a new musician who has a such unique way of expressing his work.
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untilwhen:

Bjorkin’ Pug

awwww-cute:

A tiny pig eating an ice cream on a tiny bench under a tiny parasol

“I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted / To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.”

Sylvia Plath — beloved poet, little-known but masterful artist, lover of the world, repressed “addict of experience”, steamy romancer, editorial party girl, bed classifier — endures as one of the most influential yet poorly understood figures in literary history.

In 1957, Plath approached the BBC, submitting a few of her poems for consideration for broadcast in the celebrated series The Poet’s Voice. They were rejected. Plath kept trying. By the summer of 1960, she finally broke through and two of her new poems were accepted for broadcast. Between November 20, 1960 and January 10, 1963 — just four weeks before she took her own life — Plath’s voice regularly graced the BBC airwaves, producing at least 17 known broadcasts. From The Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath — the magnificent collection of the surviving BBC recordings, preserved by the British Library Sound Archive — comes Plath’s exquisite reading of her poem “Tulips,” written in 1961 and published in Plath’s posthumous volume Ariel (public library), one of the most memorable and important poetry collections in modern literature.

Penned two years after Plath’s lovely children’s story about the perils of self-consciousness and two years before her suicide, “Tulips” was inspired by a bouquet of flowers the poet received while recovering from an appendectomy at the hospital and bespeaks in equal measure a serene inner stillness and a subtle existential emptiness, which Plath’s evocative voice, at once sensual and stern, channels with unequaled mesmerism:

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.

They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep.
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage —
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.

I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat
stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.

I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free —
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down,
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.

All tracks on The Spoken Word: Sylvia Plath are an absolute treasure, and Ariel remains an indispensable piece of literary history.

Complement with the only surviving sound of Virginia Woolf speaking, also for the BBC, and the only known recording of Walt Whitman’s voice. Also enjoy Plath reading “A Birthday Present.”

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89cats:

Cotton’s 1st bath by Betsy Cole Photography

Via JMG reader David.

First Glance

We mentioned a few months ago that the Michigan based grocery store, Plum Market, approached the Local Beet about advertising. We gladly said yes because we knew Plum from some visits to Ann Arbor. We knew from those visits that Plum, like us, likes it local.

Plum debuted its Chicago store last week. They got the word out, and a lot of people showed up for free Intelligensia coffee, too many samples of candy, and the splendid opportunity to purchase the breads baked by Zingerman’s Bakehouse. We were there too, with our special eye out for local food. Unfortunately, between the bedlam and some other commitments, we could only get some glances around the aisles. We took a few pictures, grabbed two loaves of Zingerman bread and found a few other staples like Meyer’s dish soap.  The rest will have to come for another day. Soon.

A Michigan based store better have Michigan asparagus.

Local herbs.

Tell us what local foods you’ve seen so far at the new Plum Market.

1233 North Wells
Chicago, Illinois 60610
(312) 229-1400
Store Hours 8am – 10pm Everyday

Beer and donuts! It's like a meal designed for Homer Simpson. Tieghan used a full bottle of beer for her marshmallow recipe and then placed the marshmallows between sliced graham cracker donuts. This magnificent sandwich is then finished with hot fudge, peanut butter and graham cracker crumbs.

Link -via Tasteologie

neiru2013:

“Apparently my desk is nice and cool on hot days”

Looking for an ultimate summertime treat? Then why not try combining the greatness of a s'more with an ice cream bar with these great Campfire Bars. Essentially, you just freeze marshmallow cream in graham crackers, then dip them in chocolate and then freeze the whole sandwich. Excuse me, I've got to go get some graham crackers and marshmallow cream now. 

Link

The wildly creative film director oversaw the video for Trent Reznor's first single in five years as Nine Inch Nails, "Came Back Haunted."

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When dumplings are this cute, it's hard to know whether to eat them or cuddle them and take them on walks. You can find these lovely little snacks at the Richmond Summer Night Market in Vancouver. 

Link Via Cute Overload

Celebrating the Supreme Court's historic ruling in favor of gay marriage this morning, Google gets behind gay rights with a fun easter egg. Search "gay," "gay rights," and related terms like "LBGT," "gay marriage," "homosexuality" and "domestic partnership," and you'll see the Google search bar light up with gay pride.

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