Sierra

Let's see if this works... every time I've tried to post these pictures from Hello, they post to the blog, but there's no record of them and I can't access them online to edit them. And any subsequent post on Blogger overwrites the Hello-posted pictures. It's like phantom posting. So odd. So, let's see if copying & pasting does any good.

It's a big day in Chicago. The main Independence Day weekend fireworks are tonight, and there are people everywhere. So, before the crowd in Grant Park got too dense, we decided to go to Taste for lunch.

Unlike yesterday's glorious weather, today it was pretty hot and hazy out. Enough to get a slight sunburn. (I forgot to put on the 45... sigh.) And enough so that everyone was soaked with sweat. Hot and steamy summer day.



Watched some people cook...



... and ate lots of food. Had another samosa, had a bite of Alvin's mutton biryani from the place I got the pakoras from yesterday, split jerk chicken with rice and beans (see picture below) which was pretty tasty, and a taste portion of "grilled chopped lime chicken salad" from Grill on the Alley (see picture 2 below). Not a bad lunch... and all taste portions.



The salad from Grill on the Alley... it's really good and definitely worth the tickets for the taste portion. It's also refreshing to have something not fried. Fried foods and grilled foods are always pretty easy to do for street festivals, so having the salad was a nice break. (Unlike that time we went to Taste for dinner when the only non-fried foods were the hummus taste portion and Alvin's turkey leg. That time we had mustard fried catfish, fried okra, hush puppies, samosas... very good, but all fried.) Doesn't the salad look yummy?



Didn't want to spend the 3-9 tickets it would take to get a drink, so we headed over to the Sierra Mist stand thinking that maybe they had free samples. They did! They're doing the Sierra Mist challenge to see if you can tell it apart from Sprite. So, two little cups of soda. Works for me! While there, Alvin also entered into Sierra Mist drinking contest, so he got a whole can of cold soda. Pretty nice considering how hot it was outside.



Alvin during the challenge... he ended up taking 3rd out of the bunch, but that's not bad considering his competition were guys still in college who do this all the time!



A birds-eye view of part of Taste (Alvin took this one, obviously, not short little me... I wanted to go on the ferris wheel to take pictures, but then realized that took 5 tickets... one more ticket and I could have 2 salad portions - why would I waste it on the ferris wheel?). Anyway, it's pretty packed on the street. Lots and lots of people here to celebrate July 4th.


Probably going back to Taste tomorrow... have some more tickets to use up, a couple of things I want to try, and it's actually pretty affordable eating out. Also, some of Alvin's friends will be downtown. And Moby and Blue Merle are performing. I'm trying to squeeze every ounce of enjoyment out of this weekend that I can... because I know the really horrible part of bar studying is right around the corner. :)