I’ve picked up a couple of new blogs to follow that I thought I’d mention here. I started with The Stew, which picks up has commentary that doesn’t appear in the Chicago Tribune as well as advance articles. That had a pointer to a post in Michael Ruhlman’s blog by Anthony Bourdain (who I adore!) – I liked the blog so much I added it to my daily reading. Then recently, Ruhlman was a stop on the “virtual book tour” by Adam Roberts, The Amateur Gourmet. His amusing, occasionally profane food blog went onto my list. Then Roberts linked to fantastic and funny video about making lobster rolls over at Serious Eats which sent me investigating that blog more, and I became a fan there as well (particularly since they just added Mario Batali to their list of contributors!).

As an aside, you may wonder how I keep up with all these blogs? I use Firefox and every morning click a single button that loads ’em all in tabs, using the Morning Coffee extension. This works well with blogs that are updated daily; blogs that update less frequently I add to my Google Reader page. The latter is the case for Cheese Underground, which focuses solely on Wisconsin cheese, and Megnut, another interesting foodie blog, both of which only update a couple of times a month. Oh! And I should also mention another recent addition to my Reader, Winnipeg Eats. Sure, I don’t live in Winnipeg, but it’s written by a good friend and I like her writing 🙂

Our calendar for the next few weekends is slowly filling up, as it is wont to do. It’s looking like we may make a return visit to Brightonwood Orchard this weekend (mmm, heirloom apples!), and while we’re there we’ll see what’s new at the adjoining winery. I expect a rigorous sampling of the winery’s wares and other spirits may ensue afterwards!

I’ve been reading up on various farmers markets in the area, as well as other local foods (since it is, after all, Eat Local Month) and while the Grayslake Farmers Market is fun, it’s a bit small. And yes, there’s some interesting places in Chicago, but I was looking around and I found many references for the Dane County Farmers Market in Madison, Wisconsin. This dovetails neatly with my interest in finding out more about Wisconsin artisan cheeses (I even ordered a cool Wisconsin Cheese/Wine/Beer tour map!). Since I’ve been wanting to explore Madison a bit anyway, it sounds like a perfect excuse to get up that way. Some Saturday (not the coming one, but maybe the 22nd or the 29th), we’re going to hit the road early and spend the day checking the place out. Should be fun!

And then we have the big trip coming up. As some of you may have seen takaza mention, we’re going to hit the road for a weekend in late October (yeah, he couldn’t keep it a secret 🙂 Patterned after Alton Brown’s recently-completed Feasting on Asphalt 2: The River Run, we’re going to tour Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin along the Mississippi River, shunning interstates and aiming for small towns to find stuff that’s interesting, tasty, and different. We may fail miserably, and eat some of the worst food ever, but we may also find the most amazing and delightful places, too. We’ll be renting a minivan that will hold everyone and drive out to Moline, Illinois on Friday night. Starting Saturday, we’ll strike out north along the river and see what there is to see. While I have a couple of places I do want to see along the way (including Kalmes Restaurant, which AB visited – “A little bit of Luxembourg in Iowa”) mostly we’ll be relying on serendipity to help us find something interesting. We’ll spend Saturday night somewhere along the way (Maybe, Dubuque? Maybe La Crosse, if we can actually find a hotel that isn’t booked), then meander home through Wisconsin. I’m really looking forward to this trip!