Bonsoiree

Ursula and I enjoyed a fantastic dinner at Bonsoiree on Sunday evening! The food and wine were excellent and I was so glad that I tried this local neighborhood gem!

First course: Salad of baked fish, radish, beet, chard and all kind of other goodies. :)

Second course: Porcini mushroom soup with a foie gras dumpling, thai basil oil, shaved truffle and crispy cauliflower. This was my favorite dish of the night - the soup was so rich & savory.

Main course: Braised short rib, lamb meat ball, parsnips with black sea salt, crispy potato shoe strings, sugar snap peas, crispy kale and a wasabi-apple sauce. Yum!

Dessert course: Pink peppercorn pound cake with a creme anglaise, huckleberry ice cream, raspberry sauce, caramel drizzle and chocolate fudge mounds. The perfect ending to a satisfying meal!

Graceland Cemetery

I recently became a member of the Chicago Architecture Foundation - and could not think of any better way to spend my Halloween afternoon than on a tour of Graceland Cemetery. The cemetery is beautiful and very well kept - and it was a beautiful, sunny and crisp fall day. Aside from the occasional rumbling of the train - it was an oasis from the hustle and bustle of the city.

We saw the graves of many distinguished Chicagoans - ranging from Marshall Field to Louis Sullivan to Daniel Burnham to the Pullmans, the Palmers, the Kinzies, the Kimballs, the Carsons, the Piries and the Scotts. There was even a headstone for a Whipple.

Moroccan Vegetarian Stew

I tried a new recipe for a Moroccan Vegetarian Stew. I love all of the colorful ingredients and spices - it just *looks* like fall - and tastes like it, too!

The veggies consist of sweet potato, butternut squash, zucchini, onion, carrot, tomato and chickpeas.

The spices range from sweet to savory - something that I love about Moroccan dishes - a deep smoky flavor of cumin and spice of cayenne pepper that is delicately contrasted with warmth and sweetness of cinnamon, allspice and cardamom.

Yum yum!

Cocktail Anyone?

A cocktail is not a "cure all" - but it certainly helps at the end of a rough day!

Halloween Pub Crawl

A "super" time was had by all on the Halloween Pub Crawl...

All Things Halloween....

Potato & Onion Hash

This dish made a yummy breakfast - crispy potatoes & onions mixed with some scrambled eggs.

Wright Again.....

I traveled to Wisconsin this past Friday to visit mom & dad (it was their 34th wedding anniversary) and to drop off Otis (I'm traveling to San Fran for work this next week and mom & dad are playing dog-sitters).

Since I was already going to be in Wisconsin, I decided to turn it into a fun day trip. So, Saturday morning, I drove two hours to southwestern WI - the town of Spring Green - to see Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin estate and Hillside School & Theatre.

It was a beautiful fall day and I took a ton of pictures of the beautiful landscape and architecture - but pictures don't come close to showing how amazing it was. The Taliesin home has 37,000 square feet of interior space - that's like 25 times the size of my condo. :) The name "Taliesin" is a Welsh word for "shining brow" - which is significant because the estate was built into the brow of the hilltop. Wright built the home into the hill rather on top of it - his philosophy, "why ruin the best part of nature by building on top of it?"

After seeing the home & studio, I drove over to Unity Chapel, which is the Lloyd-Jones family church and the site of Wright's first grave. It is also where his mistress, Martha Borthwick Cheney was buried after the fire at Taliesin. When she died, Wright planted a white pine tree in her honor - the pine has lasted the test of time - growing to over 100 feet tall.