Cousin Carla graciously offered to write a guest post for Odd, musing about chocolate sundaes (Monday) and coffee milk shakes (Tuesday) while I worked on tomorrow’s El Morno. 

Ok, so I told her: no dinner until after she wrote an Odd guest post – she graciously agreed!

Please help yourself to some jelly bellies while Carla brings you up to date.

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Before I begin I would like to let everyone know that regardless of what my dear, dear cousin may post, I did NOT try to kill her with a piece of gum.

STOP THE GUEST POST!! SHE DID TOO!

Carla insisted this was the best gum in the whole world!!

I never suspected anything of the piece of gum Carla handed me, but after chewing it, my eyes started to water, my throat started to burn, and my head started to ache–Carla immediately said, “Oh I hope it isn’t the gum!! Would you like me to drive?”, and then when the gum did not kill me she said with indignation that the only way to “be sure it was the gum” was for me to try another piece!! No thank you!

Sorry Carla…please go on…

As some of you know I have made it a bit of a tradition to escape the Florida heat and come hang out in Chicago for a week in the summer.  This year I was a little slow to plan.  Partly because I have been a little overwhelmed and partly because I was trying to find out which week would have the best “food of the day”.  KB refused to post the menu in advance so I just had to wing it. I can’t tell you how glad I am that I missed last week’s adventures with caviar, however I was more than a little sad that I also missed Margarita day by mere hours.

My first day here was ice cream sundae day.  WINNER!!  Kb, Cole and I proceeded downtown and enjoyed a great lunch at Bistro 110.  One of my favorite parts of coming to Chicago is all the great food.  To make things even better my lunch companions were totally willing to let me have a taste of whatever they were having.  I love that!  At home people are much less willing to share their food and my husband still doesn’t understand why he has to tell me what he’s ordering before I can decide what I’ll be having . . . but I digress.

After lunch we hopped next door to Ghirardelli for a hot fudge sundae.  I had read about Ghirardelli’s in one of Dear Cousin’s previous posts and was prepared.  A smiling employee, handing out free samples, greeted me at the door.  It occurred to me that perhaps Dear Cousin set her standards too high.  We approached the counter and placed our order with another smiling staff member.  I was getting used to the smiles and was getting ready to scold Dear Cousin for wildly exaggerating just for the sake of good copy when I was slapped in the face by the $18 for one sundae and a milkshake.  Okay, maybe it is not all exaggeration.  We took our number to our table to wait.  Moments later our confections were delivered by an unsmiling boy who mostly threw them at us and turned to scurry away.  He was stopped in his tracks when Dear Cousin said “Excuse me!  Where’s my cherry?  Did you eat the cherry off of my sundae?  I think you did!  I think you stole the cherry right off the top of my sundae!”  Unsmiling boy, sneered shrugged and slunk away.  (Okay, okay, perhaps Dear Cousin didn’t exaggerate at all.)

Dear Cousin was not going to take this mistreatment of herself or her sundae.  What kind of person would she be if she did not say something (besides it just wouldn’t look good in the picture if there wasn’t a cherry on the sundae)?  She marched to the counter and asked very nicely if she could have a cherry for the top of her sundae.  “I put one on it, but here you go,” the counter guy told her.  He scooped a couple of cherries into a plastic cup while looking at her like this was some kind of ploy to bring Ghiradelli’s down one cherry at a time.  Her suspicions confirmed Dear Cousin returned to the table to place the cherry artfully on top of the sundae while she began the picture taking process.  While all of this went on I, the loving, patient, dutiful cousin sat calmly as I watched my beautiful sundae melt down the side of the glass until she got the perfect picture and we were finally allowed to eat it.  Food of the day was a lot more complicated that it looked.

(Note: *Emily’s sundae has cherry on and extra whip cream!)

Today, the day of the supposed gum incident, we set out on another adventure to the Jelly Belly Jellybean factory.

We took a short tour on the making and the life of a jellybean,

were handed a free sample

and funneled into the retail store to buy some candy.  There was a sample bar where you could taste what ever flavor bean you wanted.  I went straight for the margarita flavor, especially since I missed margarita day.  Cole asked for grass, dirt, soap and sausage.  Go figure.

After the tour we drove into Kenosha (at which point I said “Wait a minute.  Are we in Wisconsin now?”).

Not knowing much about Wisconsin and even less about Kenosha I was searching my mind for what Wisconsin was famous for that I could order for lunch.  We stopped at Mike’s Burgers and Beers, which seemed like a reasonable neighborhood-y kind of place.  Cole ordered a burger.  Dear Cousin got soup and onion rings.  I perused the menu, now knowing what everyone else was getting, and saw that they offered no less than a dozen varieties of macaroni and cheese.  Eureka!  Wisconsin=Cheese!  I decided to get the mac’n’cheese of the day which included crab, snap peas, bacon and about three different kinds of cheese.  When lunch arrived I could hardly wait to dig in.  My mac’n’cheese had no crab, no snap peas and no bacon and I pretty sure only two kinds of cheese.  Maybe I was wrong about Wisconsin and cheese.

Not to worry we still had the food of the day to find.  Unfortunately, for me at least, the food of the day is a coffee milkshake.  Who is making this list, anyway!?  Although I was not thrilled at the thought of a coffee milkshake, I was pretty happy about the fact that we would have to go somewhere with ice cream to get it.  I began happily pointing out every Baskin Robbins that we passed.  Eventually we got to one while Cole was in his archery lesson.  We got to the counter.  Dear Cousin ordered her shake and kindly turned to me to ask if I would like on too.  I said “No thank you.  But I would love a strawberry cone!”  Dear Cousin looked at me and saw me for the traitor I was.  After one day on my food of the day quest I jumped ship and got the good stuff.  She sighed a deep sigh and bought me my cone.  We got to the car where she dutifully snapped a picture of her boring brown coffee milkshake oozing out of its cold plastic cup, while staring longingly at my strawberry cone.  Thinking back I probably should have offered her some.  Oops, maybe next time.

(Note: My Dunkin Donut Coffee milk shake was a nothing much-er! Emily, on the other hand made an awesome Coffee Milkshake! I want that pink straw–EMILY!!. Next time I am going to make this Coffee Milk Shake)

Thinking back I probably should have offered her some.  Oops, maybe next time.

(Note: Carla likes to share YOUR food. She did not even look like she wanted to share her cone with me…)

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Let’s muse again tomorrow over Crème brûlée!