Our most recent breakfast discovery is Kaufman’s Bagel & Deli, on Dempster in Skokie.

I’ve read a lot about Kaufman’s and I know we’ve passed it a million times without it sinking in that this is the Kaufman’s. So last Friday morning, before we headed out for the school run, I looked it up to see exactly where it was. Good thing because I know I’d have passed it a million times without ever really seeing it.

It’s right close to the Skokie train station and smack dab in the middle of a pretty busy series of intersections. It’s also a non-descript, white painted building set just enough off the road that you don’t see the sign until you’ve driven past it.

Don’t drive past it. You should definitely stop.

We started in the bakery section where TW got a dozen bagels and a loaf of Challah to take home. Liz ordered a HUGE (she wants me to explain to you that this thing is so huge, she’s still eating it two days later) chocolate m&m cookie. TW and I both ordered a chocolate donut to go.

Then we wandered into the deli section.

Liz grabbed a bottle of milk to wash down her cookie, we got a pint of cream cheese for the bagels and we ordered a 1/2 lb of chicken salad. Liz wandered around looking at the meat case, wondering what in the heck people need tongue for.

The Challah was excellent, the best we’ve had since we’ve been here. The bagels were also excellent - the everything and the pumpernickel in particular have drawn rave reviews. The chocolate donuts were more like chocolate iced Challah, which is really interesting. Besides being huge, Liz reports the cookie is yummy.

Next time we go, I’m ordering the egg salad. And maybe we’ll get some tongue so Liz can give it a try.

On Wednesday, TW was reading her feeds and stumbled across this post about Super H Mart who makes tofu in the store. Fascinating, right?

Even more fascinating is that the Super H Mart in Niles is very close to our house and we’d sort of wondered what was over there… I thought it was just a Home Depot. Boy was I wrong.

The Super H Mart is a heck of a lot more interesting than a Home Depot.

First, it’s huge. Second, it’s really HUGE.

The food court was really interesting and we bought a lot of cool Korean buns before we’d even walked 10 feet into the place. We totally missed the housewares because I assumed we could circle back round to it but I was wrong - we needed to hit it when we went in the door. And what were those big appliances in the bakery area? No idea but I would like to read Korean so I could figure it out.

The produce… wow, there were things we’d only read about and things we have rarely seen. In the freezer section - frozen Monkey Balls with the skin on (that’s what us dumb Americans living in Panama called the spikey purpley Rambutan) who knew you could freeze them in the skin????

There was so much stuff that we had never seen before and all sorts of things we knew about but don’t quite know what to do with. We’ll be figuring it out and buying lots of stuff to try.

In the meantime, we spent $60 on all sorts of interesting things including… Olive vinegar tea that smells like Easter. Its label says something about “for your happy time” and it certainly makes TW giggle (seriously, it does.) It’s a liquid and comes in individual little tubes like the powdered Crystal Light. We also bought some gelled looking citron honey tea that TW says tastes like marmalade… I don’t like marmalade but I will be trying this stuff, seriously. And then there’s the snack sized bag of Nong Shim Sweet Potato Flavored Snacks that I bought and promptly ate… can you say addiction in the making?

Oh and after you check out at the Super H Mart in Niles, there’s a little court of shops - Hello Kitty heaven and Fancy Pencil Land, a dance/exercise place full of tiny Korean women doing some sort of dancing, some “health food” shops that seem interested in aiding the sex life of heterosexuals, a shop that sells those wonderful bidet toilets that will resolve one of TW’s new problems and a shop that sells Korean platform beds… jade inset even (gorgeous, really gorgeous bed.)

Did I mention this place is really interesting? All of that and we didn’t even get to see the tofu making in action because we went late at night and they’d closed up shop in the tofu making area. No worries, we’ll be going back. A lot.

Updated: TW and Prince J went to HMart and enjoyed the food court:

yummy