I love Logan Square on the weekend

Today is Chef YumYum's birthday! She had a "pretty party" last night, which consisted of a few ladies coming over to her pretty house, dressing pretty (although we all admitted that we wore stretchy clothes so we could eat a lot, and immediately removed uncomfortable shoes), and bringing pretty hors-d'oeuvres and drinks! A lovely, pretty time was had by all!


Here's the pic I took of the spread - if you click on it it'll take you to my flickr page where you can see what everything is:





It's not the best picture because it was dark and I had to use the flash, and there were some hungry, hungry ladies waiting to bust into that food.


Also, the drinks don't appear there, but first we had these kumquat-prosecco cocktails which are AMAZING - so fresh tasting. I also made a mean sangria. (I like that recipe because it requires some actual preparation to get the fruit flavors really integrated with the wine - instead of just dumping everything together).


Here's the sexy shot of the food:





Now you get why the flash was necessary... Check out all Cassie's sexy matching dishes, too!


A word about these chips I made: I was so, so excited about making homemade potato chips. They were baked. But let me tell you, those suckers are HARD to get just right, and they were totally not worth the effort. Other people liked them okay, but they didn't all turn out crunchy - there were a lot of mushy ones and that is gross. I did several baking-sheet-fulls, and each sheet had lots of burned ones and lots that were completely raw. So maybe I don't have the best oven in the world, but the BEET chips turned out great... Who knows what's wrong with YOU, potatoes.





I hate you, crappy chip.


At any rate, I recommend the beet chips. They were so sweet, so delicately crunchy (hard to transport - lots broke!), and so exploding full of beet flavor! They were kind of high maintenance, but WORTH IT. I'd add though, only do these if you have/have access to a mandoline. There's no way I could slice them thin enough with a knife... According to this chart of process/product on Erielle's blog, I'd put the beet chips in quadrant iii - high maintenance, high quality. They're right up there with those cucumber gimlets. And I've MADE those cucumber gimlets so I KNOW. They are WORTH IT.




Then this morning Chef YumYum and I went to our favorite restaurant and spent the morning wandering from thrift store to thrift store and yard sale to yard sale looking for just the right birthday present for our friend Jenny. It was great fun, and I totally scored at a yard sale on a block neither of us had ever been on.


I got these two sweaters with the intention of unraveling them and reusing the yarn. For yes, a mere dollar each.


First up, we have a maroon sweater of 70% angora and 30% nylon:





A little pill-y, but nothing a good soak in the sink can't fix.


Then we have this guy, which is mostly silk (has that good silk smell) and various synthetics:





"Oh, look at my fantastic sheen!"


Finally, when I got back to my block, I found this guy sitting in a box on the sidewalk that said "free":





It currently holds a little-old-lady-curling set which I will probably put out in the alley. I like the case. It will most likely end up holding yarn after I air it out. (plastic smell.)