I remember when we used to see a half dozen Melissa Ferrick shows a year… those were the good ole days. When we were young. Not that I’m complaining or anything. I’ll take what I can get and when I can get a show as fan-fucking-tastic as last night’s show at Evanston Space was… well, that’s enough.
Her opening act, Ria Mae and Margot Durling were talented AND adorable. (Hi Margot! You need a fan page of your own because… duh, you’re awesome. Heh.)
Anne Heaton joining Melissa for a couple of songs was fantastic, too. (That’s one of the good things about living here, I guess. Odds are higher that we’ll get a surprise guest during a show.)
Michelle, TW and I all have slightly different “favorites” (and our “favorites” lists are very very long) and it was pretty cool that she played one song from each of our “favorites” list. That doesn’t always happen, believe it or not.
I got Nebraska.
TW got Anything, Anywhere (with Anne Heaton, which was a treat.)
And Michelle-Belle got Burn this Guitar (which I didn’t record because a very large guy sat down in front of me towards the end of the show and obstructed the camera view. To record, I’d have had to shift way left or way right and then obstruct someone else’s view. Darn it.
We couldn’t have asked for a better show. Really. Melissa played hard. She had fun, so we had fun. She was funny. She looked happy and healthy (except for that shoulder) and I’m looking forward to seeing her back here in the spring. (Unless she books some shows in Florida before that, then we’ll have to pull out the credit cards…)
You can see more of my videos from last night’s show here: Melissa Ferrick at Evanston SPACE
Jenn and Teddy
Several months ago, Sassymonkey Yammered that she and the fake husband were taking an impromptu road trip. This annoyed me because we never get to take impromptu road trips anymore. I stewed over this all morning and decided we WOULD take a road trip, a tiny road trip but still a road trip. So, we headed off toward the commissary and rather than continuing down Waukegan Rd, I hooked a right onto Deerpath (completely confusing TW) and we stopped at the gorgeous Lake Forest Public Library.
Our Glenview library was closed for more than a month and we were running out of books, so this seemed like a good mini road trip stop – and boy was it. The Lake Forest library is gorgeous. It’s exactly the kind of library we could fall in love with. A beautiful old building with gorgeous murals, amazing reading rooms, and old fashioned 70s metal shelving. Not to mention amazing nooks and crannies where you can get lost in a good book (or 10). They have an adorable children’s section, and there were no children tearing madly through the shelves, either.The landscaping, the gardens, the sculptures – all fabulous.
After our trip to the library, we wandered over to the main shopping district, parked just across from the Southgate Café. We were slightly under-dressed and very under-prepared for this little restaurant. The food was good, though more expensive than we’re used to but exactly what you’d expect from downtown Lake Forest (one of the 10 highest money earning towns in 2008…) What we were really not prepared for was the portion sizes. In this day and age, portions are generally huge and at Southgate I think we got the smallest sandwiches we have ever seen (except for tea sandwiches of course.) I’m not complaining, it was exactly the right portion. It was just surprising.
After our lunch, we wandered around the shopping district. William Sonoma, a nice bookstore, a cute toy store, a hobby shop, all very nice. As we were finishing our tour of the shopping district, we passed The Green Teaist and peered through the window. Nobody inside. We looked at the menu. Pricey! But cool. We kept walking and ended up back at the car… carried on with our normal Saturday shopping schedule and went home.
I looked up The Green Teaist and found that there are two locations – the one in Lake Forest, IL and one in Hollywood, Ca. That’s it. Huh. Fascinating, right? I surfed the site some more and discovered some incredibly high priced teas. TW and I thought this would be a cool place to take Prince J for his birthday – without his siblings. A couple of days later, I showed the website to Joe and he was appalled at the price of the teas (having just returned from a trip to Japan… hahaha) and then he promptly forgot all about this place. But we didn’t…
We took the Prince to The Green Teaist yesterday, without actually telling him where we were going. It was awesome. The shop was still empty, though a couple did come in while we were there and they bought tea from the little store part of the shop. Prince J selected two teas that he wanted to try and we ordered food as well – the finger sandwiches for me and TW and the green tea waffles for the Prince.
The first tea, the Kukicha, was served with a little bar of dark chocolate. Excellent combination.
Then, our server brought us a tiny shot of an iced tea (I’ve forgotten which one) as a palate cleanser… this tea is brewed with ice, in a special pot. It takes about three hours at room temperature or overnight in the refrigerator. The tea is placed in the top part of the jar with ice over top. As the ice melts, it drips through the tea into the bottom of the pot. It was awesome. I want one of those teapots!
The next tea was The Green Teaist blend and it was served with a tiny piece of green tea pound cake. Again, excellent. Our food came out at the same time and Joseph’s tiny waffles were apparently awesome. He did not offer to share, heh. TW tried both the green tea infused whipped cream and the TGT Hojicha Gelée and liked both. The jelly was so good that we bought a jar to take home. (The prince has spirited that away to his bedroom though he swears he will share… hah.)
We wandered around the tea shop and the Prince requested some loose TGT blend to take home, I complied. While that was packed up for us, we ordered tea to go – the Matcha latte for me and Joe and TW ordered the Hojicha Latte (at least I think that’s what she ordered…) both were yummy, though TW’s needed some sugar syrup added to it. When our bag of tea and jelly were ready, we discovered our server had provided Joseph with a birthday gift – several tea pouches of various teas that they sell in the store. That was incredibly kind of him and was very much appreciated by Joseph (and by me and TW.)
We had a great time at The Green Teaist – we’ll definitely go back. And, if you’re ever in Lake Forest or Hollywood, you should visit. If you’re not, and you want to try some pricey (and incredibly yummy) green tea, they do have an online shop. Their tea pots and caddies are gorgeous.
When TW suggested we attend the DIY Trunk Show at the Pulaski Park Fieldhouse, I was game. Mostly because there was no snow on the ground and I was hoping we could skip the Renegade Holiday Craft show at Pulaski Park when there will be snow on the ground and a lot less parking. So – we went – and we found relatively good street parking just around the block from the fieldhouse. WIN!
The show itself was a huge win. It was a lot less crowded than the Renegade Holiday show usually is and the selection was just different enough from that show that we found tons of stuff to buy. Just wait til you see what we found for Prince J… I can’t show you yet, but I’ll post a photo on Thursday afternoon… it’s awesome.
This is the awesome lamp we bought for Prince J’s birthday. He loves it, which is too bad since if he hated it – I could have stolen it!
Besides the stuff we did buy, were tempted by many many other things:
From WeenerWare, there were cute pins and pendants for Michelle and Liz (and TW). Their Christmas ornaments almost did us in but we couldn’t afford the price, $40 a piece – not when we need six minimum… too bad, because they’re quirky cute and exactly right for our kids.
LittleRumble’s wallets were awesome but I couldn’t think of anyone who really needed a wallet.
The thing I really should have bought and really regret buying was a blue scarf, silk and felted, from Frannie’s Felts & Fancies. It was perfect for Michelle. I should have bought it. Maybe I still will.
These necklaces, from Gray Raven, were fabulous but we couldn’t decide (again) who needed one. Someone will eventually get one of these, I’m sure.
See the vintage cookbook print from Space Oddities? I almost bought it.
Re-Girl’s arm and leg warmers are freaking fabulous. Someone (or several someone’s) need these. I just need to figure out exactly which ones they need….
Last but not least, the Evil Kitty was there and had the most fabulous dress ever. I’m glad Michelle wasn’t with me, or that it looked like it needed a little more chest than she has, because I’d have thrown $350 at the Evil Kitty in a heartbeat. It was beautiful.
Our newest favorite breakfast destination is Orange Brunch, just down the street from the Glenview Library. We passed it a million times, neither of us mentioning it but both of us apparently wondering about it. The parking lot was often full, which is probably why I never stopped there. (Nothing worse than having to wait in line to be seated for breakfast when you’ve got a busy day ahead of you – and we always have a busy day ahead of us.)
But one morning in June, I decided to stop and give it a try and we’ve been there many, many times since then. Sometimes just me and TW – sometimes we take TW’s mom, or the little kids. And we’ve taken my mom and Michelle, too. The food is pretty terrific, though there have been times when some of the dishes have arrived a little on the not hot side. Elly is a fan of the steak benedict. I’m a fan of everything on their breakfast menu (except the meat, I don’t do breakfast meat.) I think my favorite breakfast is still the first dish I ordered – the Orange Rosemary French Toast.
They have “pancake flights” that are new every week. Tiny silver dollar pancakes, four different flavors, usually created around some type of theme. The pancake flights are always a hit.
We’ve tried a couple of their lunch selections and those were excellent, too. But really, our favorites are the breakfasts. And the best part is the frushi (fruit sushi!) and the fresh juices (you choose your own ingredients and I always choose watermelon, lime, ginger.)
As a side note, Melissa Ferrick has visited the Orange on N. Clark St and Twitter/Facebook raved about their benedicts, so I’m guessing that branch is as good as ours.
Denise
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This blog has been broken since late February. I have no idea why it was broken – it just was. And in the 20 minutes that I had to spend looking at it way back in March, I couldn’t fix it. So… I left it dead and assumed it would be dead until I could spend some quality time with it (or convince someone else to spend some quality time with it.) Yesterday, I took a minute to go into my Bluehost c-panel to update all of my wordpress blogs and I figured what the hell, I’ll see if this one will update so at least I’m keeping up with versions… not only did it update, the blog came back. All by itself.
Yesterday was a great day.
Now I have a lot of catching up to do. We’ve been many places. We’ve eaten a ton of food. We’ve seen a lot of places close because of the crummy economy. I’ll blog it all. Slowly.
UBAA Old Crawford Inn
While the decor was interesting and it seemed like just the kind of place we’d like – it wasn’t. The food wasn’t great. The restaurant was kind of smelly. It’s rare for us to find a restaurant that we don’t like enough to go back to. This is one of them.