LittleMissCrepe

This post has made me both hungry and nostalgic! I have very clear memories of standing next to my mom as she made wontons at the kitchen counter. She made very simple (but yummy) ones of ground pork and spinach with an egg or two thrown in to hold everything together. When I was younger, she let me wet the edge of the wrappers and pinch them together. I love the smell of raw wonton wrappers! In college, I called my mom for her recipe and made about a month's worth of wontons. To echo what past posters have said, wontons freeze very well. And they're relatively easy to make (heck, if I can do 'em, anyone can). If you have leftover wonton skins, they make fun snacks. I like to cut them into triangles and bake them, either with sesame seeds or with cinnamon and sugar.

I add another positive vote for Kabul House. The owner - if it's still the same man - is exceptionally nice as well. I remember him telling my friend and me that he opened up the restaurant about six months after 9/11. Quite unfortunate timing given the name, but it sounds like the restaurant is doing well so I'm glad.

I'm fixated on Peanut Butter Cup - peanut butter flavored ice cream with big peanut butter cups! Food of the gods! Of course, I'm more interested in the peanut butter cups, so I have to dig through the pint to gouge out the candy bits, leaving a lot of plain ice cream with big craters in it.

A veteran features editor in suburban Chicago has resigned after the newspaper let the marketing director (a non-editorial staffer) write a favorable restaurant review to appease the restaurant owner - presumably also an advertiser - who was upset with an earlier review. The newsroom union's letter to members and the editor's resignation letter are posted on Jim Romenesko's MediaNews memos page. If that link doesn't work, go to http://poynter.org/romenesko and look for the Thursday, August 28 item titled "Editor quits after paper lets marketing boss pen food review."

Lady T, was Mount Everest the Nepali/Tibetan restaurant you were thinking of? I spent four years at Northwestern and just graduated in June, but I have a notoriously bad sense of geography so I'm not sure if Mount Everest is on Church Street. In Evanston, I like to go to JK Sweets for bibim bop. It's open late at night and the man who runs the place is incredibly nice. The other non-dessert items on the menu are quite hit or miss, but I've been happy with the curry chicken rice dish. For a city filled with restaurants, Evanston - and I'm referring mostly to the area around the Northwestern campus - is disappointing when it comes to good Asian food. But I'll take JK Sweets' curry chicken rice over Joy Yee Noodle Kitchen's overpriced entrees any day. (Oh, but do go to Joy Yee's for bubble tea. Do not get bubble tea at Dozka's.) As far as chains go, I like Giordano's for deep dish pizza (Monday's are half price! Get there early) and Potbelly sandwiches. Chipotle burritos are another guilty pleasure. Chipotle is owned by McDonalds (agh!) but I'm still obsessed with their burritos. I like, but have not been overwhelmed, by Dave's Italian Kitchen. And I like Tapas Barcelona, though I'm no tapas expert so perhaps I just don't know what I'm missing. The waiters at Tapas Barcelona also happen to be very good looking.

Mediocre dorm food is an indispensible part of American college life. A couple years of powdered scrambled eggs, wilted veggies and mystery meat languishing under heat lamps makes the first transition to apartment living that much sweeter! I graduated from Northwestern University in June. We had Sodexho Marriot; they were quite receptive to student feedback (at least in my dorm dining hall) and tried hard to give a range of choices. Still, I survived mostly on ice cream, bagels, cereal, Rice Krispie treats and chicken a la king - supplemented by the typical late-night diet of Papa John's breadsticks. Colleges seem much more receptive these days to accomodating all students, especially vegetarians and vegans. At Northwestern, the dining halls served "tofurkey" right before Thanksgiving! Dining hall food is rarely good (Wheaton College and University of Michigan are supposed to be amazing, however), but I think mandatory meal plans are a good idea. I got to know my dorm mates amazingly well over looong meals as we procrasinated from going back upstairs to do homework. And at some NU dorms, professors will brave the bad food to grab lunch with students.

I'm a very non-outdoorsy girl who hiked 12 miles yesterday (at least 4 miles of that straight uphill), so today all I could do was lie on the couch and eat whatever was easily in grasp. That ended up being the contents of my hiking backpack from yesterday. I think I had four Quaker Oats Chewy granola bars and half a bag of dried apricots. I also dragged myself to the freezer on my currently useless legs to finish off the rest of my Ben and Jerry's Peanut Butter Cup ice cream pint. This might be a new low point. But I've also been known to consume whole 1-lb. pound tubs of cottage cheese for lunch, sometimes paired with Oreo cookies.

A restaurant I like a lot is Bar 6, which is in the Palermo neighborhood. It's located at Armenia 1676 between El Salvador and Honduras, about 9 short blocks south of Avenida Santa Fe. It has a hip New York warehouse feel to it with good steak and fun pasta dishes. I had a great pumpkin ravioli there. You can get a starter, main course and split a bottle of wine for less than US$15-20 (closer to $15). The service can veer toward snobby, and they might say you need a reservation, but I've gotten seated there - even on a Thursday or Friday night - without one.

I adore the Pita Inn in Skokie. I just graduated from Northwestern, where I spent most of my four years wishing they'd open one within walking distance of campus. Thank goodness for friends with cars.