On Tuesday, Stephanie and I went to the farmers’ market. I don’t know if she’d ever been to a farmers’ market before. She wasn’t too terribly interested. Vegetables are not cool, apparently. Although, I must admit that she did try some things I doubted she would. Thank you baba ganoush for all of that. Back at the cookie party, Steph tried baba ganoush and loved it. I don’t think she knew what it was. So now when she doesn’t want to try something I remind her that she would never have wanted to try roasted eggplant if she knew that’s what baba ganoush was. So at Whole Foods they had free samples of some kind of carrot parsnip cake and I took one. She said she didn’t want to try it because it sounded “ew” and I reminded her of baba ganoush. She circled back for a sample. I don’t think she liked it too much, but at least she tried. You never know. She ate raw zucchini slices today and liked it.

Anyway, back to the farmers market. We bought a bunch of stuff. I remember at one point Steph said something along the lines of “this vegetable looks like crap!” I had to remind her that the produce at the farmers market is fresh, natural, dirty, right from the farm. It was picked ripe. It didn’t travel 1,000 miles, get sprayed with coloring and wax and made to look pretty so people would buy it in some super mega store. I tried to teach her a bit about buying local and direct. I don’t know if it’s possible where she lives… but we talked a lot about all the reasons to love a farmers’ market.

For lunch we went to Turquoise Cafe, Roscoe Village’s Turkish restaurant, where Stephanie attempted to get her gyro on again. Turquoise didn’t have gyros proper, but when Steph decided she loved gyros at Retro on Roscoe I told her other names they go by sometimes so she could watch for them at home. Names like… schwarma. So for lunch she ordered the beef schwarma. I got the lamb wrap. When it came we split both half and half. The lamb was more gyro-like than the beef, which oddly kind of resembled a steak burrito. I definitely like the lamb wrap more there. I’ve had it on several occasions.

Hamlin Park, Lakeview, Chicago

We were rushing back from lunch so we could get to the Hamlin Park pool when it opened. .. which turned out to be never. There are tons of big trees down at Hamlin Park from the storm and one was on the fence off the pool. The pool was closed for the whole day. Since we already had swim bags packed, we stopped home quick just to check the swim report and then we headed to North Avenue beach for a few hours. It was nice. The water was fantastic. I don’t think I’ve actually gone into the water at any Chicago beaches. I mean, more than ankle deep. We had fun. And Chicago beaches always freak me out how you sit on wide sand beaches and the lake is so big you can’t see across it. Then you turn around and there are skyscrapers behind you.

North Avenue Beach, Chicago

Rachelle & Stephanie, North Avenue Beach, Chicago

Coming home Stephanie and I got off the bus at Roscoe and Damen at the exact moment that Dallas got to the intersection from his walk from the Addison Brown Line. Kind of funny. For dinner we grilled chicken sausages. Later on Stephanie and I made zucchini blueberry bread with zucchini and blueberries we got at the farmers’ market. More on that later!