Check out Episode 2 of the new food podcast,
Chicken 'n Waffles!

Welcome home to the land of fat people and little portion control, Leena!

It all started with the Danny I-Tannery. I knew after the long trip home from Australia to Chicago, the only thing I would want to do was chill with my closest friends that I hadn't seen in a year and a half. And eat. A lot. Preferably in Chicago. My food twin, Bobby, decided to host a weekend at his place, and after a burst inspiration from an old episode of Full House, he created his own Danny I-Tannery for our girls weekend. I love my friends.

Follow up:

Australia sucks at pizza and Chicago doesn't, so we decided to hit up a Chicago-style pizza place for my first food at home. We went with Pequod's, a pizza I had tried right before leaving for Australia and fell in love. Pequod's does a nice Chicago style deep dish pie, but they also have something called a caramelized crust. They put cheese on the edge of the pizza and cook it until the crust gets all nice and brown and caramelized and delicious. Oh. Ma. Gah. Good stuff.

Bobby manhandling the caramelized crust from Pequod's.

It starts off all innocent looking, like this.

One pineapple, Canadian bacon and jalapeno pizza, one pepperoni pizza from Pequod's.

But then you get up close to it, and all of the pizza's magical caramelized-crustiness is revealed. And you might, you know, drool a bit and slip on it, because that is the sort of magic the crust creates.

Gratuitous caramelized crust shot.

Wow. This was exactly what I was missing in a pizza--perfection in a slice. The pizza had a perfectly crisp base, a soft, almost fluffy interior with just the right amount of tomato sauce, and of course, once you were finished, the delicious caramelized cheesy crust waiting for you like a pot of gold at the end of the pizza rainbow. Damn, I missed you, Chicago.

The next morning, I woke up early thanks to jet lag and wanted to get a head start on brekky for the gang. Bobby thankfully lives within a block of a rather large Mexican grocery store. Score. I love shopping at Mexican grocery stores because everything is cheap, authentic, and you can usually get freshly made corn tortillas for like, 50 for $1. In Australia, I used to get 12 corn tortillas for roughly $5 U.S. dollars. It made me feel dirty.

I grabbed a can of salsa verde, some chihuahua cheese, corn tortillas, and a random assortment of juices to mix with our mimosas. On the way back to Bobby's place, I encountered not one but TWO street carts with Mexican food. And this was in the ONE BLOCK WALK HOME to Bobby's place.

I love buying corn from a random man on the street.

In the States, street carts sell anything from snow cones to elotes (this orgasmic corn dish made with mayo, butter, chili pepper, lime and cotija cheese), chicharrones (pork rinds) to sliced mango with chile powder. The food is fast, cheap and delicious.

Hey! We got chicharrones! It makes me so happy, I dance!

I stopped at a tamale cart, where I picked up two of every kind for under $10 (I think there was chicken, pork, cheese, and jalapeno). Then I remembered I forgot to buy sour cream for brekky and ran back into the grocery store, where the paper bag holding the tamales collapsed from the steam and smeared down my pants. Damn, I'm a classy broad.

But I still managed to get a few tamales down my pie hole before that happened.

Nothing like a 9 a.m. tamale bought on the street corner to cure your hangover.

When I got back, Bobby busted out his welcome home gift for me...the best bacon on the face of the planet. Nueske's Applewood smoked bacon.

Nueske's Applewood Smoked Bacon. The bacon of the gods.

Amanda started frying it up, and didn't even try to slap me when I stood over her shoulder and directed her EXACTLY how I liked my bacon cooked. Such good friends.

Ever been bitched slapped with bacon grease, Leena?

Amy tackles one of the surviving tamales pre-breakfast.

We started breakfast with some morning mimosas made of moscato d'asti wine (my fave) and a little strawberry and mango juice.

Mimosas!

To girls weekend!

Toasting with mimosas

For breakfast, I made a glorified huevos rancheros a la Leena by making quesadillas with the corn tortillas and chihuahua cheese, I topped it off with a fried gooey egg, and a bit of salsa verde that I cooled down with some sour cream stirred in, and of course Amanda's perfectly cooked bacon. Warning: quite possibly the ugliest food porn picture EVER. Avert eyes now.

Leena's huevos rancheros are like that dorky girl you knew in high school. G.d. ugly but hot damn, can she hold her own in a coversation!

The Danny I-Tannery had heaps of fun things to do, including but not limited to seeing a movie and doing a hot dog tour of Chicago. We didn't get to the hot dog tour, which didn't bother me at the time, but now does because Bobby became a vegan two weeks later. Carpe diem, fellow food lovers. You never know when your friends might turn into a giant veg-gina.

Ethiopian food, however, was on the Danny I-Tannery and did make it into our weekend. We headed over to Ethiopian Diamond in Edgewater, my hands down favorite Ethiopian joint in Chicago.

We started off with some sambusa appetizers ($3-3.75 for two), which were ground beef or potato and carrots wrapped in a deep fried pastry dough, and served with lemon and a sweet chili sauce. I don't really dig their veggie sambusas, but the beef ones rock my world. They are so simple, but the contrast of the slightly sweet beef (almost tastes like it was seasoned with Chinese five spice) with the tangy lemon and spicy sauce just works for me.

Beef and veggie sambusas

For mains, we got a mix of dishes. Heaps of veggie dishes, of course, because their veggie dishes rock, like yemisir watt (spicy lentil dish), dinich alicha (potatoes and carrots with spices), and gomen (collard greens), as well as some doro watt (spicy chicken) and yebeg tibs (lamb). They serve the food in small piles on top of tangy injera bread, as well as some bread on the side. There are no utensils, you just use the bread to scoop up the food, and when it is all done, the food soaks into the bottom bread, and you get to eat that goodness as well. I love this stuff!

The Ethiopian food before we hit it up.

The aftermath.

The mains ranged from $11-$15, so overall, it was fairly affordable meal. I swear, Ethiopian food must be laced with crack, though, because I find myself craving it for weeks after I eat it!

Here is the group of gals, stuffed and happy.

Me and my bitches, doing it Ethiopian-style.

Amanda had to head out that night, but the next morning, Bobby, Amy and I hit up a local brunch place for some amazing food. Australia doesn't like brunch nearly as much as America does, especially Chicago. I just find that Chicago has such a large number of brunch places that go out of their way to be creative and fun, which I really appreciate as a diner. Lula Cafe was no exception. The only thing that sucked there was the 45 minute wait and the rain that followed us there.

We started off with a lavender vanilla scone. There is no photo of this scone. We were so hungry, it had barely landed on the table before we scarfed it up. And damn, this was one of the best scones I had ever had in my life. It wasn't hard and crumbly like most American scones are. It was light, delicately flavored, and didn't even need any condiments on it. Yum.

We did what we usually do, which is each order a dish everyone wants, and then took turns passing the plates and trying everything. Bobby and Amy went for egg dishes, and I can't for the life of me remember what was specifically in them, except this one clearly looks like a hollandaise. It might have also had Amy's chicken apple maple sage breakfast sausage in it too.

Eggs n hollandaise

I believe this one was a smoked salmon scramble, but I could be wrong. I just know it was delicious.

More eggs from Lula Cafe

My pick was my favorite of all the dishes: a coconut rice porridge with almond milk, strawberries and chocolate. Wow. So good. Like candy bar for breakfast sort of good. I could eat this every day of the week!

Coconut rice porridge with almond milk, strawberries and chocolate.

And that was the end of my awesome girls weekend back in Chicago. If every weekend was like this, I would probably never leave Chicago. Oh wait, if every weekend was like this AND DID NOT SNOW, I would probably never leave:) A lady has got to have her standards!

~LTG!
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Pequod's Pizza
2207 N. Clybourn Ave.
Chicago, IL 60614
773-327-1512
http://www.pequodspizza.com/

Ethiopian Diamond
6120 N. Broadway
Chicago, IL 60660
(773) 338-6100

Lula Cafe
2537 N Kedzie Blvd.
Chicago, IL 60647
773-489-9554
http://www.lulacafe.com/