Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this week:

We’ve written about our love of the Hatch green chile before, but if you’ve never heard of them, they are green chiles grown in the Hatch Valley in New Mexico and only available for a few weeks out of the year. We’re not sure what makes them better than regular green chiles, but they are hands-down the best. Considering the distance between New Mexico and Illinois, as well as the lack of any respectable Tex-Mex dining options in Chicagoland, we didn’t think we’d be seeing any Hatch chiles around these parts. So we were beyond surprised and excited to see that an upscale grocery store a few towns over was having two glorious days celebrating (and selling) the Hatch green chile! We bought a bunch of the roasted chiles, portioned them out and stocked our freezer. We’re looking forward to many batches of green chile chowder this winter.

If you ever need to find us on a weekend during the summer, check any and all local art festivals. The Port Clinton Art Festival last weekend was a quick train ride north, and it was one of our favorite festivals this season. There were a ton of wonderful artists and an impressive variety of delicious food options.

 We couldn’t resist purchasing this glass bowl from the festival and had fun chatting with the artist to learn how he makes the bowls.

Anybody need some jalapenos? The plants in our little terrace garden have produced way more jalapenos than we can use before they spoil, so we harvested the ripe ones (and there are still a ton more on the plants!), filled up four quart-sized ziplock bags and stuck them in the freezer. As a Texas girl, it makes me happy to have an entire shelf of our freezer dedicated to green chiles and jalapenos.

While it’s not necessarily my favorite (*understatement alert*), football season is pretty much the best time of year according to Dan. He especially enjoys the fantasy football league that he has participated in with his brothers for more than a decade. They had their draft last night, and Dan tells me that he’s got a good line-up for his team formerly known as the Texas Trainwrecks. Now that we no longer live in Texas, he needs to come up with a new team name. The Illinois Windburn is the top contender currently, but he’s open to any and all suggestions.

Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this week:

My brother J and his boyfriend came to visit us last weekend, and we loved showing them around. We’re proud of our home and the life we’re building here in Chicagoland—sharing it with our people makes it even more special. And we still think that the architecture boat tour is the best way to see the city (even when the tour guide’s best—only?—interesting quip of the day is “art deco echo”).

We forget how good this potato leek pizza is. With pre-made pizza dough from Trader Joe’s and already-cooked bacon leftover from the weekend, it’s also really quick and easy for a weeknight meal.

It only took 9 months of living here and several visits from family to finally update our condo’s white walls, at least in two of the bathrooms. I found this “Devine Color” line of removable wallpaper at Target and used the “Compass and Gold” in our foyer powder room and the “Firefly” (with coordinating paint) in our guest bath. I’ve never installed “real” wallpaper, but I have to imagine that the peel-and-stick, remove-and-readjust aspects of this wallpaper make it easier to hang than the kind you glue to the walls. Or at least that’s what I tell myself when I look at the entire corner of 2-3 wonky seams that I messed up and need to fix.

Dan sometimes gets strong, random cravings that dictate our next meal, such as shrimp with Old Bay seasoning. Hence, Friday Night Shrimp Boil at Casa de Conrad!

Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this week:

Dan had a quick work trip to Madison last Friday and I went along for the ride. It’s a great little city and we thoroughly enjoyed our 27 or so hours there.

One of Dan’s friends from work went to law school in Madison and after they were done with work, he took us to the Terrace at the University of Wisconsin’s Memorial Union. Described as “Madison’s most popular back porch,” it’s a lovely spot to unwind for a few hours on a beautiful Friday afternoon in the summer, sipping cold beverages, listening to live music and watching the boats and people. Even though it’s a huge outdoor space and was pretty crowded that day, it still felt relaxing and intimate—like hanging out on the back porch with friends at your favorite neighbor’s house.

Dan’s friend talked up the Madison farmer’s market quite a bit, so we had to see what the buzz was about Saturday morning. Wow. The market is HUGE, with vendors of all kinds stacked booth to booth all the way around the Capitol Square. Quite impressive! Street musicians were playing throughout the square as well, including this band that could have been auditioning for the movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou,” costumes and all.

Our trip to Madison would not have been complete without sampling some meats in tube form and various kinds of cheese. The trio of cheese spreads and “Wisconsin’s Best Wurst platter” at The Old Fashioned did not disappoint. (Not pictured—only because it wouldn’t fit in the picture with the other food—the giant plate of fried onion strings that I had to force myself to stop eating. It’s probably a good thing for our health and waistlines that we don’t live in Madison.)

Shout out to Dan’s brother J and our sister-in-law C for recommending the Showtime show “Ray Donovan” to us. It’s a little like a Boston version of “The Sopranos” meets a Hollywood version of “Scandal” and is hands-down our current favorite show on TV.

In a “lemons to lemonade” moment, we salvaged a disappointing dining experience at one restaurant with take-out from another. All week, we had looked forward to Thursday night, when we planned to sit outside at La Macchina, eating a delicious dinner and watching the final “Let’s Dance Evanston!” concert of the summer. From the moment we were seated at La Macchina, the service was deplorable. Dan finally had to go inside to ask for someone to even take our drink order, and they sent one of the cooks out to attend to us. He brought us our wine and appetizer, but no one ever spoke to us again, until Dan again had to go inside and ask someone to send out the check. Unhappy and still hungry, we passed by Soulwich on our way home. We’ve been wanting to try their food, so we got the Indonesian Ginger BBQ Pork sandwich and homemade Asian slaw to take home and share. Both were so delicious that we ended up glad that our initial dinner plan fell through.