quick trip to chicago

A few months ago, the wife started selling Usborne books, and had an opportunity for a training conference this past weekend in Rolling Meadows, IL (Chicago suburb). We decided to make a short famiry vacation out of it, and invited her brother and his gf along for the trip.

Since BIL is in working full time and taking night classes, we decided to leave Thursday night after he got out of class. We drove up to Btown, met him for dinner after class, and left his truck at his dads for the weekend. We ended up leaving btown around 10ish, and drove through a damn monsoon between Indy and Lafayette. I let BIL drive from Lafayette to our final destination, because I felt like I was going to pass out...but I didn't fall asleep the rest of the ride. I navigated through a detour through the heart of "the region", due to I65 being closed between I94 and I90, and we hit the hotel around 2am. IAC slept through about 90% of the drive up, so that was good.

We all crashed, and woke up at 6am, because the previous jackass to have the room left the alarm set on some mexican radio station. I finally got the alarm shut off after nearly yanking it out of the wall, and went back to sleep until 8:30 or 9, and we got up, showered, and headed to downtown Chicago. Since I haven't been to Chicago since I was a kid, and didn't know what driving downtown or the parking situation would be like, we decided to park and ride the CTA (Chicago's mass transit system) from Rosemont (near O'Hare airport) downtown. It was a pretty long ride, but we all got to see the ghetto areas as we made our way to downtown.

We got off the train near the Sears Tower, and walked over there for the ride up to the top. The weather was pretty clear when we got there, and it was a great view from the top. I'm not sure if it was worth the $13 admission fee, but wif, BIL and BIL-GF had never been before.

We ate lunch in a cafe on the 2nd floor of the tower, and from there walked back towards the CTA stop that we got off of. We decided to go to the Navy Pier, even though the tempurature was dropping and it was clouding up. We went inside, walked through the greenhouse type thing, and some of the shops, and then headed back downtown for a carriage ride. By then it was raining, but they had the carriages covered. it was a nice little ride. with the wife, IAC and I in one carriage, and BIL and BIL-GF in another.

After that, we made our way back to the CTA, the car, dinner at Steak and Shake and back to the hotel. It was a long day, but pretty fun.

The next day, the wife went to her training, and BIL and BIL-GF went to the hottub and he proposed to her. He was going to during the carriage ride, but forgot the ring at the hotel, oops :D After that, IAC, BIL, BIL-GF and I went to a late breakfast at Denny's, then back to the hotel to take IAC swimming for the first time. He was pretty tired though, and congested so he wasn't digging it. After that, we lazed around the room until the wife got done at her training. That night, we went to Gino's East for some Chicago Style pizza with a couple buddies from college and their significant others. The place is pretty cool, and you can sign your name to anything in the place. The pizza was good, and was an experience, but I wasn't a huge fan of the corn meal based crust, and the toppings were relatively sparse. It was a cheap meal though, for the 8 of us only $75, and that included 2 beers each for me and BIL. I'm not sure what happened to the guys I knew from college, but apparently imposters showed up, because they were drinking cherry cokes... In their defense, it had started to snow a bit, and they had to drive back home.

We got up Sunday morning, went swimming, and left around noon after a quick lunch at Panera. The drive home was way better than the drive up, and we got to Btown around 6pm, hung out with FIL and SMIL for a while, and got home around 8pm, ate a quick dinner, watched some tv and went to bed.

All in all, I would suggest a short vacation to Chicago, but do it later in the year, when you don't have to worry about the weather turning to snow, and definitely stay closer to downtown if you can help it. Also, take your walking shoes. A day pass on the CTA is $5, and you can ride as much as you want, but you'll still do a lot of walking. From what I can remember from 20 years ago, the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry are pretty awesome to go to as well.

Cottage Cheese

I made some cottage cheese last night. unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures as I was doing it, maybe next time loyal readers.

Here's the recipe:

1 gallon pasteurized skim milk
3/4 cup white vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons
kosher salt
1/2 cup half-and half-or heavy cream

Pour the skim milk into a large saucepan and place over medium heat. Heat to 120
degrees F. Remove from the heat and gently pour in the vinegar. Stir slowly for
1 to 2 minutes. The curd will separate from the whey. Cover and allow to sit at
room temperature for 30 minutes.
Pour the mixture into a colander lined with
a tea towel and allow to sit and drain for 5 minutes. Gather up the edges of the
cloth and rinse under cold water for 3 to 5 minutes or until the curd is
completely cooled, squeezing and moving the mixture the whole time. Once cooled,
squeeze as dry as possible and transfer to a mixing bowl. Add the salt and stir
to combine, breaking up the curd into bite-size pieces as you go. If ready to
serve immediately, stir in the half-and-half or heavy cream. If not, transfer to
a sealable container and place in the refrigerator. Add the half and half or
heavy cream just prior to serving.

I ended up using about 3/4 - 1 full cup of half-and-half because it was pretty dry. I thought it turned out pretty good, a little "cheesier" And chewier than store-bought cottage cheese, but all in all, a good approximation, and worth trying, if nothing else for the novelty of it.

warning, when you get to the adding vinegar part, it looks pretty disgusting in big globs floating in the whey.

Louie the Cottage Cheese Guy

Was watching Good Eats the other night, and AB was making cottage cheese out of skim milk and vinegar. It just so happens that I have almost a gallon of skim milk that is going to go bad in the next couple days, so i'm going to convert it to 2 cups of cottage cheese tonight.

This made me think of a story I heard in hike school.

One of my favorite teachers from JH/HS was Mr. Jones. He was an interesting guy, painted for a living during summers, had a ZZ Topish beard, studied martial arts, and coached track and cross country. at some point, he and his wife got divorced, and he lived in a camper. He oversaw the weight room in the mornings, because he was there early anyway, due to living in a camper and needing to shower at teh school. he also drove a bigtim shaggin' wagon van with shag carpet, and was known to throw a few back from time to time.

Anyway, one time, he was telling us about a job he had at a large scale dairy. Periodically, he'd take a carton of ice cream off the line, open it, stick his finger in it, close it back up and put it back on the line, just to mess with whoever got that ice cream. The high point of the story was Louie. Louie was a large man, who stirred the vats of cottage cheese as they were being made. He also used a large cutter, to cut it into curds. The cutter for large curds had fewer tines, spread apart for larger curds of course. Sometimes, instead of using the big wooden paddle or whatever, to stir the cottage cheese, Louie would just jump in the vat and walk around to stir it up, and would often have curds stuck in his armpit hair.

The end.