Chicago –Sunday, Field Museum & Willis (Sears) Tower

Sunday morning we left the house bright and early and headed out to find the subway station.  The station is located one half mile from the house.  I love to ride subways, I like the efficiency of it, I like to people watch and it makes me feel all gritty and urban - like I’m really living life and out in the mix. 

Home Sweet Home

Jacob on the “L”.

The Field museum is my idea of a proper natural history museum, with soaring coffered ceilings, marble stairways and rooms full of wooden museum cases. Oh, and MUMMIES.

The Field Museum.

The ceiling in the main hall.

The bannisters.  OK, I know I went all the way to Chicago and a museum full of wonders and I took a picture of the bannisters. Whatever, it’s what I like. Aren’t they marvelous?

A mummy.

This docent guy wrote both kids’ names in hieroglyphics. Pretty cool.

Bastet.

This is Sue, the tyrannosaurus at the Field museum.  She is the most complete specimen in the world.  This is her actual skull, which is too heavy to be on display with the rest of her body (the head in the lobby is a replica).  Anabel loves skulls so much and was happy to pose with Sue’s.

Next we went through early hominids.  They had displays of their heads and hands and Anabel thought it was funny to make them pose with her wolf.

Here is Neanderthal holding Kayla.

Here is another one eating my children’s fingers.

And the remains of Lucy, yeah the actual Lucy. 

Ice age mammals - A mammoth, a giant ice age bear and some horse-type things.

A moose.

Down in the basement was a whole kid’s play area. one section was set up like a pueblo and the kids had a great time harvesting and grinding corn.

There were do many other things we did, we dug for dinosaur bones, we saw a 3D movie about Egyptian Mummies and we went through several more exhibits.  There was still whole halls upon halls that we never saw.  You could easily spend days in this museum and not see it all.  It was beautiful and thoughtfully laid out and just wonderful.  Given the opportunity I would definitely come back again.

Afterwards we went to Willis Tower (Formerly Sears tower)

I feel bad for Anabel, so much of the world is just not on her scale…

Anabel was fearless about walking on the glass part of the floor.

Afterward we took a somewhat involuntary tour of down town (aka got a bit lost) but we did end up having awesome Chicago street food at Portillo’s.

Favorite shot of the day…

Safe and Sound

We arrived today in Chicago and have settled in nicely into a rent house in Lincoln Park. We had a lovely Italian dinner and then found Trader Joes and a corner store all just blicks from the house. Thusly supplied with coffee, cereal, milk, wine, beer and Oreos we are back "home".

I love being in busy urban spaces and am soaking up the bustling young energy of this neighborhood. It's cool to be able to walk everywhere and I enjoy the shady streets with rows of Victorians nestled together comfortably.

The house is comfy; wi-fi, a kitchen and four bedrooms, with hardwood floors, but no central AC. Sadly our journey northward has not provided any respite from heat and mugginess. The rooms have fans and there's a window unit, so I'm sure all will be well.

Anabel doesn't travel well but a spaghetti supper and a bath seem to have set her aright. She has a tiny room to herself with a twin bed and a window seat looking out over Orchard St. all painted in robins egg blue with flowered curtains.

Jacob is happy watching baseball with his grandpa and excited to see dinosaurs and the Egyptian section at the natural history museum tomorrow.

I'm in need of a shower and a cold adult beverage, traveling with little ones is tiring! I love the freshness of their perspective though and their enthusiasm. LOTS of pictures are coming, I promise!

Trader Joes Recipe Series – 4 Paprika Mediterranean Chicken

This recipe was inspired by one over on Macheesmo but then I changed things up a little by grilling everything instead of baking it and using bone-in chicken instead of boneless breasts.

Paprika Oil:

• 1/2 Cup olive oil
• 2 Tablespoons paprika
• Tablespoon chili powder
• 2 cloves garlic chopped fine
• Pinch of salt and pepper

Marinate the chicken all day in about 2/3 of this mixture. Add a big tablespoon of it to 1 C of plain Greek yogurt. let that sit all day too.

Add some tomatoes (I used these little tiny heirloom ones)  and a can of chick peas to the remaining 1/3 of the Paprika oil, roll to coat and then I put them in this little foil dish and covered it with foil and stuck it on the grill.

Grill the chicken, boneless are ten minutes per side, bone in were about 15 minutes per side. I threw some asparagus on too.

While you are watching the grill have cocktails and take over exposed pictures of your spouse.

I served this with couscous and some feta cheese crumbles. Don’t forget the yogurt dipping sauce, it really makes the dish. It was the best chicken ever. 

Trader Joes Recipe Series –3 Sausage & Eggplant

 

Prep the veggies

• 1 C chopped eggplant
• 1 C chopped bell pepper
• 1 C chopped squash/zucchini
• 1/2 C chopped onion
• 2 cloves garlic – chopped

Brown 1 lb Italian Sausage (casings removed)

Remove sausage and put it into a square casserole dish .

Add veggies to skillet and sauté until soft.

Remove veggies, add to sausage in the casserole dish.

Sauté onion and garlic for 2 minutes, then add 1/4 cup chicken broth, deglaze pan.

Add onion and garlic and 1 28 oz can of whole stewed tomatoes (Drained and crushed) to the casserole dish. Stir it all together. Add a pinch of salt, a pinch of pepper and a small pinch of crushed red pepper flakes.

(note: This was an improvisation because I did not want to add tomatoes to my cast iron skillet yet. It would be better to let it all simmer together on the stove for a while. But since my pan is newly seasoned it cannot yet handle the acidity of tomatoes so I did it this way, it was great.)

Top with chopped fresh basil and mozzarella cheese.

Bake 15 minutes at 350 until cheese melts and it’s all hot and bubbly.

 

Thoughts: This was good, it would be really really good over pasta but we had it by itself.  It’s very juicy and the broth is amazing.

Trader Joes Recipe Series –2 Pollo Asada & Hatch Green Chilies with Jalapeño Cream Cheese

OK this one is totally cheating, but it was so good. I bought pre-marinated thinly sliced chicken breasts at Trader Joes.  I know, it’s ballsy to write about using food out of a bag, but seriously it was awesome…

First I heated up the grill. I got the chicken out. I got out some hatch green chilis and some corn tortillas.  I put the tortillas into a foil pouch and sprinkled them with water Then I had moment of inspiration.  I remembered that I had some jalapeno cream cheese. And so I thought I would stuff the chilies with the cream cheese.

omg. These were so easy and so good.

Grill the chicken and the peppers. 5 Minutes on each side for the chicken, it cooks fast. When the peppers are blacked, take them in, place them in a zip lock for a few minutes. Then peel, make a slit, pull out the seeds, stuff them with jalapeño cream cheese top with cheddar cheese and return them to the grill for about 2 minutes so the filling can get hot and cheese on top melts. Warm the tortillas in the foil pouch on the grill, about 5 minutes.

Best picture of the night, in my opinion…

Serving was easy, slice chicken, serve in warm tortillas. This made great left overs.

The pollo asada at Trader Joes is $5.50 a pound and the chilies were, I have no idea .50 or something.  We bought more to make this again the week. It took ten minutes to get dinner on the table, perfect for a weeknight.