Now that a month has already passed, I think it’s an opportune time to post about my parent’s visit. Our DSLR camera was being loaned out that weekend, but luckily between the four of us we had our handy dandy iphones to capture all the memories.
You’d think we would have had a full, fun day of Chicago tourism in store for them once they landed from their 6am flight. Instead, we went to work right away weeding my garden. (Before you feel sorry for them, you should know this was at their own behest!)
Speaking of the garden, it’s fun to look back to when it still looked like this:
They took us to Home Depot and hooked us up with some garden essentials like a shovel, some gardening gloves, and this fancy (and rather intimidating) tiller:
Thanks Mom & Dad! The weeds grew back though.. can you come back and help weed again tomorrow???
As if that wasn’t enough excitement, we took them to the Evanston Farmer’s Market on Saturday where they helped me pick out a bunch of plants:
We bought 5 different tomato plants (celebrity, yellow pear, red grape, early girl, and green zebra), 3 pepper plants (ace, mini red bell peppers, and pasilla peppers), and some cucumbers.
We also shared the first strawberry of the season which I ceremoniously divided into 4 pieces.
For lunch, we headed to the Signature Lounge on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building where we admired a spectacular view of the city from all sides.
To accompany our view, we had a lovely meal of a fish sandwich, steak sandwich, and a steak salad.
To be honest, my steak was a bit under-seasoned and the salad tasted too strongly of blue cheese. I much preferred Patrick’s steak sandwich which was piled with giardiniera and fried onions.
In addition to Patrick’s delectable steak sandwich, also worth mentioning is the women’s bathroom which looked out onto this. Don’t ask me why I’m holding my bag so awkwardly.
After lunch, we walked around the city a bit, then went to catch the 4pm showing of The Best of The Second City, an improv show where many notable former SNL cast members, like Tina Fey, John Belushi, and Chris Farley got their start.
It was open seating, so we arrived early before anyone else and landed front row seats.
The show was hilarious and the best part is that, since it’s improv, each show is completely unique. Thankfully we chose seats that weren’t next to the staircase as that was the section where they pulled members of the audience to go up on stage at random points throughout the show. (Note to self…)
For dinner, we were excited to get reservations at Rick Bayless’s Frontera Grill. Our server was, let’s just say a bit unenthusiastic and not very helpful with answering our questions, but the food made up for it.
We split everything we ordered, which included the Frontera Guacamole,
Carnitas Tamales,
Chicken + Pork Tacos,
the chicken entree with grilled green beans, green rice, and tomatillo salsa,
and the Oaxacan-style Carne Asada entree which included Red chile-marinated Creekstone Natural Black Angus rib steak, Black beans, sweet plantains with homemade crema, and guacamole.
I think we also ordered some enchiladas in there somewhere as well.
After a busy day of sightseeing, the next day we laid low and hung out around the apartment before my parent’s flight later that afternoon. We watched Star Trek (the first of the new movies) and enjoyed a delicious homemade meal of grilled soy+orange glazed pork ribs, chips and black bean salsa (which we bought the day before at the farmer’s market), grilled asparagus, corn on the cob, and fruit salad.
Thanks for coming out Mom & Dad!
Squooshed 