
Amish Friendship Bread is bread made from sourdough starter that is shared in the same fashion as a chain letter. Someone, who knows when, starts the dough and it gets fed and reproduces like crazy. At the end you use a bit of your dough to make bread or muffins and then pass on bags of starter to your friends.

My coworker Aimee passed some starter on to me a few weeks ago. I took care of it, fed it, bathed it, in sickness and in health. About ten days later I added a few more ingredients and made it into cinnamon raisin walnut muffins. Dallas and I ate a bunch of them over a weekend. The rest I brought to work on Monday, where they were a big hit!

I passed extra starter dough onto Anjum and Jess. Hope their bread/muffins turned out as good as mine!
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Tags:aimee·amish friendship bread·anjum·Chicago·cooking and baking·dallas·jessica·logan square·muffin·roundarch

On Friday night a bunch of people from my team went out for happy hour at Bull & Bear, a bar around the corner from our office. Aimee, who is officially the PM of HH, called ahead to reserve a tap table for us. I’ve been to Bull & Bear before, but only to the bar area. This table area was new. Here’s how it works:

Each table has two beer taps, one Bud Light and one something else. Ours was Bud Light and Stella. Some of the other tables had different kinds of Goose Island beers. The waitress gets you glasses and starts the meter and then you are free to help yourself to all the beer you want. There’s a computer with a screen that displays how many ounces of each beer that you have poured. It’s a pretty cool concept. Dangerous. We had so many people we were kind of all mingling in front of the table and the table was serving as our own private bar. I can imagine people sitting at the table and just drinking glass after glass without even the delay of wait staff going to get your drinks. Also, we wondered how many people had gotten totally bombed and put their mouths under the taps! I’m sure there’s the obvious reason for this, but just seeing how many ounces you’ve poured without a dollar amount attached is pretty useless. 72 ounces? No idea how much that bill is.

After just about everyone left I somehow thought it was a good idea to go with Ryan and Doug to O’Leary’s Public House. I grabbed some grub and had one more beer. It was a nice surprise to see a Green Bay Packers flag hanging in there!

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Tags:aimee·bull & bear·doug·olearys public house·roundarch·ryan

Keefer’s Kaffe, River North, Chicago
Keefer’s is located at 20 W. Kinzie St. I worked in that building for a year and I never noticed that there’s also a seperate restaurant, Keefer’s Kaffe, in that building. It’s more casual and lunch-y, than Keefer’s. A few weeks ago Aimee, Anjum and I went and got lunch at Keefer’s Kaffe. Good lunch option. Better than lunch at Keefer’s, which can be kind of formal and pricey. I had this chopped Greek salad (romaine, cucumber, grape tomatoes, pepperoncini, picked red onion, bell pepper, olives, feta, oregano vinaigrette) and it was awesome.
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Tags:aimee·anjum·Chicago·keefers·keefers kaffe·river north