Spring comes to Barry backyard – finally

Pat and I enjoyed yesterday’s taste of spring. We both had the day off as compensation for working too many hours the week before. We had hopes of starting the day in the backyard doing the usual spring clean up and covering the frozen ground with plastic to jump the gardening season. Unfortunately our neighborhood pyromaniac had the day off as well. He had already started a fire burning old lathe and wet leaves. We wisely decided to take a walk until the smoke cleared.

Our walk included a stop at Devon Market where we filled our backpacks and a couple of canvas bags with broccoli rabe, spinach, asparagus, kale, potatoes, grapefruit, bananas, avocados, pasta and fresh mozzarella for about $30. Carolyn was coming home for spring break so we took the opportunity to stock up.

We returned home hungry. So I chopped and sautéed some onions, peppers, tofu, ginger, garlic and carrots then added leftover green beans, spinach and rice. While the fried rice was cooking the straw-thin asparagus was steaming. Yum.

By now pyro man and the smoke were gone. I was ready to tackle the yard, but before I could head out a very large cooper’s hawk appeared and treated us to a graceful display of soaring on the wind and chasing the backyard flock of pigeons. Pat thinks it’s the biggest cooper we’ve seen, with a wingspan of over 3 feet.


After the cooper left, Pat went out front to prep and repaint the front steps and install a dutchman (a wood block to patch a rotten spot) and I went out back to clean up under the bird feeders. I easily filled the wheelbarrow with cracked open sunflower shells, feathers and rabbit droppings. All of which I dumped in the compost.

Pat and I regrouped for some late afternoon coffee and were treated to a kestrel sighting. And not just one kestrel, but two! The pair hung out for half an hour then flew east.

The backyard flock returned soon after the hawks left. The male cardinal fed the female, a couple of male finches fought over a female and a robin appeared. Spring is here.

Pam makes stone bowl Bip Bim Bop

We had a great experience Saturday at Chicago Food Corp. (aka Joong Boo Market) on Kimball, the store that Becky's family used to go to. We've known about it for a long time but had only been to the company's other store on Pulaski across from North Park Village. What a difference!

This place was like a visit to Seoul. It was jammed with mostly Korean shoppers, had a nice little lunch counter in the back (where we had some Bip Bim Bop), was basically unheated (we ate in our coats and hats) and had all sorts of wild foods like daikon radishes (in photo) and many, many things that we had never seen before.

What we had seen were stone bowls for making Bip Bim Bop and Korean-style soups, and even though we didn't know how to use them, we bought a couple for $5.99 each and brought them home along with our fresh veggies, fried tofu pouches and Korean deli items. Pam went to work on the internet, found various YouTube Korean chef-teachers and recipes, and tonight made us very authentic Bip Bim Bop.

Here's the surprise. Pam cooked the oyster mushrooms and spinach and rice, then we layered into the cold pots those ingredients along with raw julienned carrots and zucchini, and the cold tofu. I thought, no way, that can't be right. But then we put the covered bowls straight onto the burners, put them on medium flames, and cooked them about eight minutes, until we could hear them sizzling.

Perfect! It tasted just the way it should, crispy and hot and spicy with the red sauces we stirred in, vigorously, as we've been taught by Stern Face at the Tofu House restaurant. And because of the stone bowl, it stayed warm right to the last crusty morsels. So now we know how to make Dol Sot Bip Bim Bop.

Christmas Food Shopping at Family Fruit

I got out of bed reasonably early Saturday morning to do my Christmas dinner shopping at Family Fruit Market. It’s on Cicero and Belle Plaine, and we’ve been going there for about fifteen years now. It’s got that Northwest Side ethnic mix to it – owned by Italians, staffed by Mexicans, selling to Poles. Thus you can get Polish magazines there, all sorts of dried Mexican chilies (I picked up a bag of anchos recently) and true Parmigiano-Reggiano.

I was there for the best-priced beef tenderloin in town ($7.99/lb) and all the sides and fixins for our Christmas for thirteen. I picked up about twenty California navels, first of the year, and only $39 a pound. Later I added a bag of California clementines, so we’re OK on the citrus for a while. The asparagus was overpriced (I actually counted the number stalks and weighed a rubberbanded bunch and, figuring five pieces per person, I was lookin’ at about $16 for asparagus). So it’s green beans this year. I got some Yukon gold potatoes and some fennel (later found out I should have got fennel seeds – oh well).

The staff and the customers all seemed to be in good moods. Two firefighters in their logoed sweatshirts talked across the tomatoes. “Don’t tell him you saw me,” one said to the other. “I owe him a day.” The other, a woman who seemed to too old to be a firefighter, asked “Chili?” “Of course!” was the response. Later, I saw the chili chef at the deli, putting in his order in broken Spanish. All the deli staff wore Santa hats.