Day 32: Moocowgo, Mariano's and vegan breakfast cookies

Day 32 was a Monday so that meant I was scheduled for a weight-training session with Damian in the morning. At that point, my back felt a lot better after resting it for over a week so I figured it would be safe to do some non-back-intensive lifting and I was correct! This time I arrived in Hyde Park a little early to have breakfast at Valois. I ordered a broccoli and feta omelet with hash browns and a hot tea. I can't really explain why I like Valois so much because I know that it's not objectively amazing food. I think it just makes me feel safe since I ate there for three years when I used to live at 53rd and Harper.

When I met up with Damian I found that he had had a party at his house the night before for new econ PhD students. I think he was still a little drunk because halfway through our session he ran upstairs and said, "Do you want some applesauce? I'm craving it right now." I didn't but he came downstairs 10 seconds later with a sizable bowl of applesauce and proceeded to eat it between sets. Ha! I can probably go back to more back-intensive stuff next week as long as I keep the weight very light.

That afternoon I met up with my friend Laura (she and I went to the Isla de Cafe food truck together) for lunch at Big Star and we sat outside in the shade. We had a very nice lunch of tacos, drinks and a huge salad. On my way home from lunch, I turned the corner and saw this on the sidewalk:

A moocowgo magnet.

I looked on the back and there was a twitter address, so I went to see what it was all about. All I could really glean is that someone brought it upon themselves to create 15 painted cow magnets and to scatter them all over Wicker Park and Bucktown to see if people would find them "grazing." Well, I mine was grazing on asphalt and was number 9 of 15. Here's the full set that was posted through their twitter account.

The full set. Photo courtesy of twitter.com/moo_cowgo.

I tweeted at them to say I found this one but it seems like I'm the only one who did. I wonder if anyone else found one or if they're still all out there. Either way, I thought I'd help spread the word. I'm not sure why they're doing this, but they're cute and funny, and I support cute and funny.

After lunch, I decided to check out that new grocery store on Western near the Belmont viaduct, where the Dominick's used to be. It's called Mariano's and it's definitely a new breed of grocery store.

Mariano's

The inside looks a lot like a Dominick's but the feel is pretty different. Here are my key observations:

• The people who work at Mariano's are trained to ask you how you are an be very friendly and helpful. I'm not sure how long they'll keep the quality of the service up so I'm really interested to return in six or eight months. I at first found everyone's chipper attitude to be extremely off-putting but after spending over an hour in the store, I found myself a more civil citizen upon exiting. That wore off after about 10 minutes.
• The prices are low. It makes me suspicious but my food has held up pretty well so it's not like shopping at Stanley's, where you get great prices but the food goes bad in a couple of days. 
• The quality of the produce is pretty high and they offer a lot of the same organic brands that you'll see at Whole Foods. I really appreciate that they carry some organic brands as well as conventional brands since I hate shopping at more than one grocery store to get exactly what I want. Still, I thought that their gourmet options were a bit lacking and that ultimately makes me less likely to return. 
• The layout is better than that of a Jewel or Dominick's. It's generally easy to find items here and the placement of kiosks and bins is such that it encourages a meandering pattern rather than basically standing in line in a vegetable straightaway. 
• They care a lot about the quality of the grocery shopper's experience. There are employees on the floor with trays handing out samples near the deli and cheese areas and there's someone baking cookies in a toaster oven in the refrigerated section. I asked a couple of salespeople where to find some items and they were extremely nice about helping me. The woman at the deli counter was patient with my request for very thinly sliced ham and even gave me sample slices to see if the thickness was to my liking.
• Building on the last bullet point, and I think this was the craziest part, there was a piano player near the checkout aisle. Was this to quell anxious, impatient nerves? Maybe. I don't know how effective that's going to be but I appreciate the effort.

All in all, an interesting and overall good experience. I usually shop at Whole Foods so seeing the bill after shopping at Mariano's was a breath of fresh air. I also appreciated that I could buy brands like Bush's and Goya for beans. Every organic canned bean I've tried tastes like shit. I think my culinary snobbery will still keep me a Whole Food's customer though and my experience of shopping in the cheese section clinched it for me. 

I was looking for French feta to make a whipped feta recipe in that Spice cookbook I got at Sofra in Boston. The first guy I asked who was cutting cheeses deferred to another woman in that section and she pointed me to the one type of French feta they carried. I ultimately needed to whip this cheese and it wasn't stored in water so I asked her if the density and dryness was too high on a cheese packaged this way. Her answer was less than satisfactory. She proceeded to tell me that she was a culinary student and that she whipped feta, not the brand we were talking about, for a stuffed zucchini blossom a few days ago. 

I could tell her motivation for telling me about that was to impress me or make me think that her urging would be enough to buy the product. She didn't answer my question but I took a chance on it anyway and it turned out okay. I could have done without the statement of qualification though -- I don't care if you're a culinary student, or even a chef for that matter, that doesn't mean I should trust you and that definitely doesn't mean I'm going to forget that you aren't directly answering my question.

I suppose that's more of a cut at poor communication skills rather than service. Sorry for the rant. 

I ended up having to go to Whole Foods afterwards because I had my heart set on making these vegan carrot cherry breakfast cookies and they did not have dried cherries at Mariano's. I baked cookies that evening and used this recipe from Joy the Baker's blog. She adapted the recipe from a 101 Cookbooks post, another wonderful food blog, and after comparing the recipes I think I'd prefer Joy's version since the 101 Cookbooks one had nuts in it. 

My cookies. They turned out well.

I know what you're thinking, how could a vegan cookie be good? I was thinking the same thing so I had to make it. I'm a big risk-taker when it comes to tasting food, especially when it seems like it wouldn't be good. For example, when I'm at restaurants and see an item that sounds like it shouldn't work, I'll almost assuredly order that item. This particular risk paid off because I love these cookies. They don't have any sugar in them, just a half cup of maple syrup for about two dozen cookies, and using coconut oil instead of butter makes them way less bad for you. They're perfect for breakfast and taste pretty close to carrot cake, except, you know, with cherries. Joy's recipe was amazing and I tucked it away in an online document so that I can save it for life.

Kevin bit into one about 10 minutes after they came out of the oven and said, "Oh, that's good." So there you have it! An endorsement from a third-party. I should mention that if you like really sweet sweets these probably aren't for you. 

At the end of the day I received the end table I ordered from Etsy so look for before and after photos of my living room for my next post!