Unique and Not Unique

Another thing I love about Chicago is its proximity to farms. Not only because we can get to Thunder Valley Inn in about three hours, but because there are great Community Supported/Sustainable Agriculture (CSA) programs to join. disc0 and I have signed up for Home Grown Wisconsin, an organic farm cooperative, and we got our first box of goodies last week. Every two weeks we get a dozen fresh, organic eggs and whatever fruits and veggies and herbs have been harvested that week. I know this is not unique to Chicago--they had this kind of thing in Atlanta and I'm sure they do in NYC and definitely in smaller towns. But it's still great! We're already eating more veggies than normal (although we still aren't sure what to do with the rhubarb...we're waiting on a rhubarb custard pie recipe of which we've heard tell...). The sugar snap peas were out of this world and I even liked the collard greens.

What is unique to Chicago is the beautiful skyline view over the lake from our friends' gorgeous lakehouse roof (picture below: identities have been shielded to protect the chef). We got to visit last night for a lovely July 4th BBQ (we brought organic deviled CSA eggs--yum) and soaked in the beautiful evening. Soaked it in figuratively that is...it didn't rain until much later, and then we were able to share fellowship with other wet Chicagoans on a long, and delayed, el ride home. The el ride was stupidly delayed with traffic at 1:00 AM--that's bad. But people were still friendly and chatting it up on the ride--that's good.