Rose Petal Wine

Our good friend Jonny-D brought over his rose petal wine because he needed an extra hand to bottle the drink. All in all, he ended up with four 750ml bottles and two 375ml “picnic” bottles of his creation. The rose petal wine tasted quite sweet at the time of bottling, but the sweetness will diminish over the next six months as the bottles mature on the shelf. Around mid-July of this year, the wine will be ready to enjoy.

Jonny-D created the wine from wild rose blossoms he foraged for throughout Chicago. He is interested in creating many more wildflower wines this year from wildflowers native to the Great Lakes region. He has several carboys of elderberry wine currently in the fermentation stage, soon to be bottled.

We’re eagerly looking forward to July!

Thanksgiving

The holiday starts now. Have a good Thanksgiving everybody.

+ www.wikipedia.org

New website for Front Street Cantina

I just finished a new website for Front Street Cantina, a Mexican restaurant with four locations in metropolitan Chicago including Geneva, Naperville, Plainfield and Wheaton.

This was the first time that I have worked with a food industry client. The Latin color palette isn’t a color-space I usually visit, but it was a fun project and I think it turned out well. The project went a long way in strengthening my PHP skills.

+ www.frontstreetcantina.com

Reed’s ginger candy

These little guys are super tasty. It’s Thursday, one day until Friday. You’ve worked hard all week, go out and get yourself a little treat, you deserve it.

+ www.reedsgingerbrew.com

Food photography make my stomach growl

I had to take some photos of a bunch of food for a website I’ve been working on. I hadn’t ever done any food photographs so I spent a day practicing.

The food shoot turned out well, I learned a lot from the mistakes I made, and I think I could do much better next time.

Overall it’s a fun subject to work with.

+ www.frontstreetcantina.com

Your shoes are too *** damn big young man

We drove with Ben out to Iowa because it was awful having him leave the city (cue Magnolia Electric). We wanted a few extra days with the guy so we went out there for a seriously memorable weekend. You don’t even care how much fun we had so I won’t bother you with the details, but this little place was a real treat three-quarters of the way from Chicago to Iowa City.

They call it Nopoulos because some Greeks went out to Iowa a couple hundred years ago to open up a soda fountain shop. Not surprisingly they did a real fine job and the place hasn’t closed since. This place is actually the oldest ice cream slash soda fountain shop in the whole of North America, no kidding.

The guy behind the counter made fun of my shoes and I still don’t get the joke.

Photo courtesy of Liz Hazle