I totally missed the opening day of Randolph Street Market and am disappointed. It’s only open on the last weekend of each month, from May – September. That doesn’t give us a lot of opportunities for fun antique shopping, particularly with the July dates being during BlogHer and the August dates being during TW’s birthday weekend.

I went ahead and purchased the season pass, hopeful that the valet parking and the admission to the extra events would make it worth it. We shall see.

We bought just a few things during our first visit. TW’s mom bought an aluminum cake holder (no idea why she did this but she did.) I bought a shirt for Michelle, for Christmas. TW bought cool retro pattern potholders.

We were tempted by some retro kitchen tables and chairs, a retro desk, some really fantastic wood furniture that would have solved all of our kitchen problems but won’t work now due to the wheelchair needs of TW’s mom.

Also tempted by huge neon signs, old toys from our childhood, and lots of other antiquey goodness that we do not NEED.

The other bakery on Central St, in Evanston… the one we thought we’d buy stuff for the meet up… is Tag’s Bakery. They definitely had good stuff but nothing that screamed “meet up”. If I wasn’t already aware that Jamie was bringing cupcakes, I probably would have grabbed some but who needs 500 cupcakes at a BlogHer meet up of 15 people?

We did buy stuff just for us to eat. The lemon bars were excellent and the kids really enjoyed the eclairs. Some of my crew sampled their Florentine cookies and said they were fabulous.

Last month, we went in search of some sort of treat to take to the Pre-BlogHer meet up in Chicago and found ourselves on Central St, in Evanston. There are two bakeries on that street (not counting Foodstuff which has baked goods but is not just a bakery) and Great Harvest Bread Co was the one we did not think we’d buy anything from.

We were wrong. I think we spent $50 there!

We grabbed huge sticky buns and toffee chip brownies to take to the meet up and there were plenty for us to eat before and after. These things are HUGE so I cut them into quarters and a quarter was still huge. And they’re amazingly good.

We also grabbed a loaf of Apple Crunch bread, based on the recommendation of Prince J and RJ. They were right, it was awesomely delicious and I could eat the entire loaf (but didn’t.)

It’s a good thing this little bakery is not in the most convenient location for us (parking stinks) or I’d probably be there every week.

We ended up at Oz Park for a pre-BlogHer meet up and I was kind of excited to check it out. I am a Wizard of Oz fan. (Nobody else really is – well Jenn is but she wasn’t in town during our meet up.)

I loved the Dorothy & Toto statue and the Tin Man statue. Those were the only two I saw. And was there supposed to be a yellow brick road somewhere because if so, I missed it. (Not hard to do since we were there for a meet up and didn’t take much time to explore the park itself.

It was pretty crowded, lots of kids in the play area. And we did walk past the Emerald Garden which did look quite appealing. I’d go back to hang out (and grab an Orange Julius from across the street.)

I don’t seem to blog very often about places we don’t like, possibly because there are very few places we don’t like. The Dixie Kitchen is a place we did not like. Some of us liked it less than others. None of us have even the first clue why President Obama enjoys eating here. (Did he get a kickback?)

It’s not bad food, but it isn’t great food. I’ve never seen Fried Green Tomatoes the way they made these. The Plantains were excellent but is that really southern cooking? Not anywhere north of Florida, really.

I enjoyed my taco scramble a good bit, very spicy. I think I am the only one who didn’t walk out of there with mean things to say about my meal. But, that’s because what I ordered isn’t in any way shape or form traditional.

TW’s fried green tomatoes and her mom’s oyster po’ boy were disappointments because they expected “real” fried green tomatoes and oyster po’ boys. They didn’t get what they were expecting.