Tribune, Sun-Times: Things We Love
The Chicago Tribune endears itself to us this week with a paean to the emperor of emulsions, mayonnaise. The Trib supplemented their mayo lovefest with a blind testing of some commercial varieties, plus homemade, and Hellman's ranks first, and homemade comes in third. We question the methodology of including "homemade," since it's so unstandardized and the whole "it needs more salt" complaint could have been remedied by, you know, adding salt. But the fact remains that mayo is awesome and certain east coast city MenuPages editors who persist in hating it are just plain wrong. Ahem.
(For ourselves, we are unrepentant fans of the white stuff, with slavish brand loyalty to Hellman's (though we admit the MSG-fueled brilliance of Kewpie), and a mildly embarrassing tendency to attempt to make our own mayo at home, generally only attempting it on humid days when it entirely fails to come together [never mind the old wives' tale about what happens to homemade mayo when a woman makes it during her time of the month].)
The Sun-Times, on the other hand, offers up a little bit of a smooth-going-down reprieve from egg whisked with oil: drinks! Delicious summer drinks! Instead of using up your summer garden harvest on boring ol' caprese salad, make a tomato-basil-kitchen-sink margarita! We think this is brilliant -- not just because we are huge fans of fresh herbs and savory adult beverages, but because we wholeheartedly believe that it's about time the locavore movement embraced its inner alcoholic.
Elsewhere, among other things:
• You know how you're supposed to drink 8-ounce glasses of water 8 times a day in order to be healthy? Ha ha! Not true! [Tribune]
• Via the New York Times, Mark Bittman gives us a no-fail recipe for chilled avocado soup. Which somehow he convinces himself (and us?) is "healthy." Har har. [Tribune]
• Beer sorbet! Beer sorbet! Beer sorbet! Where was this when we were trying to impress people in college? [Tribune]
• The lasting effect of this summer's salmonella scare? With luck, it'll be an increased interest in local produce and sourceable foods. [Sun-Times]
• Kendal Duque, chef at Sepia, weighs in on the use of fruit in savory dishes. Apricot + cherry + lamb = deliciousness! [Sun-Times]
[Photo: Real Mayonnaise, via dougalug's Flickr]
It was a slow week for reviews &mdash perhaps it was the heat? The rash of DOH closings? The fact that you were celebrating 
Chicagoist clues us in to a special, beery event tonight at 
1) Buckwheat bellini with American sturgeon | sparkling Vouvray
Hump day, blah blah blah, we don't have to try very hard to convince you to consume your way out of midweek misery. Here are six deals around Downtown (roughly from 22nd St to North Ave, east of the river) that you can't get any other day of the week:
The Wii is still exciting for some reason. The frenzy is probably in its waning days, and we're not gamers so who knows, it could be over already. However, the "win a Wii" promo we got from 
Yesterday, we dropped 
Researchers offered participants five Cabernet Sauvignons that were ostensibly sold at different prices, but two of the wines were used twice, at different price points. For these repeated wines, the participants tended to like the sample marked with the higher price.
Whatever, not like that would stop you! Brother blog MP:SanFrancisco has some 
That's a very strange architecture! The money spent on the bubbly could have just gone straight to the staff, but instead, they're risking it on this tasting with an unknown rate of return. In the best case, they could, what, maybe double their money? Triple, on the outside? In the worst case, they've bought themselves a bunch of booze - certainly enjoyable, but you can't put a bottle of Krug in the bank, now can you? Okay, maybe if it's an exceptionally good bottle from some decades ago, but then it wouldn't be a $10 tasting.
Connoisseur, across the Chicago in River West, is a, um, how does the 
Okay, the title of this post is a little tongue-in-cheek, but the event we're about to describe sounds fun and progressive. Tonight, the Young Professionals Group (YPG) of 
What struck us about this article was not the factual information it provided - the factoid about protein notwithstanding - is its language, tone, and unclear raison d'être. The author, PS Prakasa Rao, appears to be some sort of agricultural scientist. Of course, the Central Chronicle covers a state with over 60 million people (Madhya Pradesh), and it's certainly possible that there's more than one PS Prakasa Rao capable of writing this piece. But unless it was written by some sort of local beer magnate, what can justify glowing praise like "beer is only an agri-food. In fact, Beer is better than Milk. A glass of beer contains more protein than does the same quantity of milk. What's more, beer has fewer calories than apple juice, milk or cola and contains neither fat nor cholesterol." It takes a lot of chutzpah to imply that beer is healthier than milk or apple juice, without much qualification. Eventually, Rao reveals some stunning insights like, "people with alcoholism or drug addictions should not drink beer," and "people with liver, pancreatic diseases, or really, any type of chronic disease should speak with their doctor."
Anyway, we just noticed that 
By the way, that is annoying. If it's going to cost 25% more, every time, why not just include it in the price? Why implicitly deceive your customers? Nobody likes to be tricked so transparently - it's belittling (opposite of embiggening). It's akin to prices that end in $.99.
Technically, a warm period cannot be termed Indian summer until after the first frost, but screw that, we're schvitzing like no one's business anyway.
Double gold sounds like an empty plaudit, and ultimately it may be just that. In the proximate sense, however, it refers to wines and spirits that have won gold in both of two important, uncreatively named events: the