Hey yo! I've been super busy this past month doing crafty, travel, tasty things so I'm going to post a few things and catch you all up. A few weeks ago I traveled to Chicago w/ my younger cousin. She was accepted into Roosevelt University and wanted to check out the Loop located campus. As I briefly lived there for 3 months I volunteer to be her tour guide. We traveled separately on the train into town thanks to the frequent rider points of a couple of my dearest friends (Thanks Kidder/Hoekstra fam!). We also stayed in the lovely Logan Square neighborhood thanks to another friend of mine (DRL the greatest hand model alive). Of course any travel plans equal a foodie tour for moi so we got down to the business of eating lots of good food.

Last time I was in Chicago I checked out Rick Bayless' Xoco because I'd heard they make awesome churros. The first time I had a churro I was in southern Spain and I've been trying to find that churro y chocolate combo since 2003. What I've come to realize is that Spanish churros are totally different than Mexican churros. So I guess I'll have to update my passport. This second most recent trip to Xoco was inspired by a post online about their torta ahogada. That's a Mexican sandwich drowning in a spicey tomato broth. The menu's selection has carnitas which I don't eat. But a little birdie told me you can order a side of the ahogada broth to go with the torta of your choice. Which is what I did.

After ingesting our own private food babies my cousin and I walked (ok we got a little turned around) to a local used book shop. As we're both big readers we browsed the aisles for a while. She ended up buying 2 new books... one at my recommendation. While inside it'd started raining so then I took my cousin on a hunt for galoshes as I was just wearing my "phoms" (my fake Tom's shoes bought from Payless). A Ne Griot with soggy cold feet is not a happy tour guide. So it was a must! I found some awesome yellow rain boots on sale at Marshalls for $15. You will see them in an upcoming picture.

The next morning we woke up and headed downtown to Roosevelt's campus. Once at the open house I spied a logo board which I promptly made my cousin pose in front of a la red carpet style. Here she is reluctantly striking a pose.



Afterward I was psyched to check out a new doughnut place downtown called Do Rite doughnuts. They make fresh fryed fancy pants doughnuts. The plan was to meet up with my friends and have snack and a chat. My friend Kidder went to one of the other institutions of higher learning my cousin got into and so he offered to give her the rundown on undergrad at a small Quaker school in Indiana. However,things did not go as planned. In all my planning I didn't realize that Do Rite is ONLY open weekdays. So we did a quick yelp search and headed up to the Gold Coast area to More cupcakery.












As you can see I chose the s'more cupcake. Who can pass up a mini-hand crafted marshmallow? Not I! My cousin got Irish Coffee flavor. K and H shared a champagne cupcake. In the end I found the cake to my nice and moist. A must for any cupcake in my opinion. It's not just about the frosting. That's a good thing w/ More too b/c the whole lot of of found the frosting could have used MORE sugar. More gets points for not having an overly sweet frosting w/ a super smooth texture. But, they loose points because butter cream frosting is supposed to taste like more than whipped butter.

On Sunday I dropped my cousin off at the train station and got down to the business of some quality grown up time. K, H, and I treked to the Logan Square/Palmer Square area and had fancy dranks at this new gin joint called Scofflaw. I HIGHLY recommend it. I am a true gin girl and can down gimlets with the best of them. It's actually how I got through K & H's wedding (I kid!). Then on Monday I was finally able to get to Do Rite and get my doughnut fix. It's a small shop that makes small batches of doughnuts. They begin frying at 6:30am and stop at 11:30am. The shop closes once the doughnuts run out. And me having OCD tendencies meant that I was convinced they'd run out of doughnuts before I got my lazy self out of bed and downtown. They didn't and I was able to not get arrested for throwing a brick through the window's shop in anger.




We got a half dozen doughnuts for $17! The flavors we chose were: old fashioned buttermilk, chocolate valrhona (x2), pistachio w/ meyer lemon glaze, maple bacon, and carrot cake. Do Rite does them right so I think it's totally worth it. We sampled them all immediately and left a few for late night grazing.