Today's Adventures
Feb. 20th, 2025 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithToday we went up to Champaign-Urbana to celebrate Black History Month and to do some Ayyam-i-Ha shopping. We're hoping to make another trip, though, because there's more stuff we want to do.
First we went into Charleston to pick up mail and get lunch. My hardback of The Far Roofs arrived and is spectacular. :D
We started shopping at Country Arbors Nursery. I wanted to shop their rocks and explore the gift shop. From the gift shop we picked out a deck of Bob Ross playing cards. I met up with the rock guy again, Paul Berlocher. He helped me pick out two specimen rocks. The reddish slab has a really nice fan-shaped fossil in it, and will go somewhere I can see it often, possibly in the purple-and-white garden. The pinkish pyramid-shaped rock has a lot of shiny mica inclusions, and will go in the wagonwheel garden where it will reflect headlights at night and help locate the end of the driveway. I also got five river cobblestones to add to the edging around the purple-and-white garden. It's nice going in the middle of a weekday with almost nobody there, so I can spend 20 minutes digging through rock bins and geeking about rocks without creating a hassle. :D So that fills this goal.
I'm hoping to get back once more for rocks before the spring planting season activates, and then later for plant shopping. Also, they're developing a team of people to handle natural rock in the future, and the spring shipments will start trickling in soon. If you're looking for landscaping rock in central Illinois, Country Arbors is an excellent bet. They have a diversity of sizes, shapes, and types of stone at reasonable prices even in the off-season. Plus they have a few concrete fixtures left, so I expect to see more of those later too.
Next we went to Common Ground, where we found hand soap, a tomato, dark chocolate cashew butter cups (which we've had before) and milk chocolate sun butter cups (new, and now a serious favorite of mine). Apparently the sun butter also comes in a bag of minis, must remember that. After looking at various halloumi recipes, we decided to make veggie burgers with the fried cheese, portabella caps, and sliced tomato so that's why we went tomato shopping in winter.
We went to Ashar and picked up a couple of juices, sorrel-ginger and pineapple-ginger. We looked for oxtail but they were out. :( The freezer selection is a bit hit or miss, but they'll get some eventually.
We finally managed to visit H-Mart. They were busy again but at least not with people spurting out all the doors. I was curious whether they'd live up to the hype, and yes, they have a ton of stuff. The fresh produce section is enormous, with a large display of fruit, their own Wall of Awesome mushroom section, lots of Asian greens, and also an extensive selection of peppers. :D They had durian, whole and cut; I can confirm that it does smell like garbage, and since I can taste things by sniffing them, I'm not really inclined to eat it. I suppose if it was on a buffet I might take a sliver to lick out of morbid curiosity, but that's about it. Interestingly, they had a kit wrapped up that included some sort of Asian lettuce thing, some baby bok choys, and three or four types of mushrooms -- enough to fill a crock pot. I might like to try that some time. They have a spectacular fishmonger including sushi grade options, a bunch of live food in the back, and furthermore they will process the fish for you in four or five different ways if you wish. \o/ I'm all on board with having someone else remove scales because that is a tedious pain in the ass, but if I have a whole fish filleted I'll probably ask for the head separately so I can make stock with it. Waste not, want not. Among the offerings were several sizes of squid and octopus, so if we ever decide to do a Mythos themed feast, we can source tentacles (and we have a Mythos cookbook already).
Adjacent to the market is a little food court. Three out of the four places are Korean and thus not of much interest to us. However, the fourth is a splendid little bakery that offers pastries, a few savory things like little quiches, and cakes. One of the cakes was what appeared to be a fruit sando cake. Hmm, and now I am remembering that almond pound cake we used to make strawberry shortcake. Anyhow, we definitely want to go back and try the bakery.
Then we stopped at Planted. I picked up a couple of small green plastic pots with saucers, a ceramic dinosaur planter that will be one of my Ayyam-i-Ha gifts, and a succulent plant that's producing five babies on long runners. I think it's a walking kalanchoe, or something similar, which is related to the mother of millions that I had some years back. Turns out, Planted offers a free repotting service, and I just happened to have grabbed small pots that would fit the plant I bought. So sure, when the nice lady asked if I wanted it repotted, I said yes. (They also sell much more upscale ceramic pots if you want something fancy.) Except now I've got the thing home and there is no sticker on the pot nor plastic insert label to tell me its exact name and care. *headdesk* I may swing by next time we're in town and ask about that -- and also point out that if they're going to repot things, they might want to add a care page or make sure the insert gets into the new container, because there won't be the sticker on the side.
We ate supper at Sooie Bros Barbecue. We got a brisket sandwich and a pulled pork sandwich, both tasty but prone to falling apart. For dessert we got a banana pudding that I'm pretty sure was previously frozen. 0_o It's a decent barbecue place, but I think Wood'n'Hog is better (and has that awesome okra).
One place we saw but didn't catch this time was Tasty Tart. They make miniature 2.5" tarts in multiple flavors, apparently prone to selling out early. So our plan is to get lunch on the way up, then hit this tart shop for lunch dessert ... and hope they've still got flavors we like.
It has been a fun and productive day. :D
First we went into Charleston to pick up mail and get lunch. My hardback of The Far Roofs arrived and is spectacular. :D
We started shopping at Country Arbors Nursery. I wanted to shop their rocks and explore the gift shop. From the gift shop we picked out a deck of Bob Ross playing cards. I met up with the rock guy again, Paul Berlocher. He helped me pick out two specimen rocks. The reddish slab has a really nice fan-shaped fossil in it, and will go somewhere I can see it often, possibly in the purple-and-white garden. The pinkish pyramid-shaped rock has a lot of shiny mica inclusions, and will go in the wagonwheel garden where it will reflect headlights at night and help locate the end of the driveway. I also got five river cobblestones to add to the edging around the purple-and-white garden. It's nice going in the middle of a weekday with almost nobody there, so I can spend 20 minutes digging through rock bins and geeking about rocks without creating a hassle. :D So that fills this goal.
I'm hoping to get back once more for rocks before the spring planting season activates, and then later for plant shopping. Also, they're developing a team of people to handle natural rock in the future, and the spring shipments will start trickling in soon. If you're looking for landscaping rock in central Illinois, Country Arbors is an excellent bet. They have a diversity of sizes, shapes, and types of stone at reasonable prices even in the off-season. Plus they have a few concrete fixtures left, so I expect to see more of those later too.
Next we went to Common Ground, where we found hand soap, a tomato, dark chocolate cashew butter cups (which we've had before) and milk chocolate sun butter cups (new, and now a serious favorite of mine). Apparently the sun butter also comes in a bag of minis, must remember that. After looking at various halloumi recipes, we decided to make veggie burgers with the fried cheese, portabella caps, and sliced tomato so that's why we went tomato shopping in winter.
We went to Ashar and picked up a couple of juices, sorrel-ginger and pineapple-ginger. We looked for oxtail but they were out. :( The freezer selection is a bit hit or miss, but they'll get some eventually.
We finally managed to visit H-Mart. They were busy again but at least not with people spurting out all the doors. I was curious whether they'd live up to the hype, and yes, they have a ton of stuff. The fresh produce section is enormous, with a large display of fruit, their own Wall of Awesome mushroom section, lots of Asian greens, and also an extensive selection of peppers. :D They had durian, whole and cut; I can confirm that it does smell like garbage, and since I can taste things by sniffing them, I'm not really inclined to eat it. I suppose if it was on a buffet I might take a sliver to lick out of morbid curiosity, but that's about it. Interestingly, they had a kit wrapped up that included some sort of Asian lettuce thing, some baby bok choys, and three or four types of mushrooms -- enough to fill a crock pot. I might like to try that some time. They have a spectacular fishmonger including sushi grade options, a bunch of live food in the back, and furthermore they will process the fish for you in four or five different ways if you wish. \o/ I'm all on board with having someone else remove scales because that is a tedious pain in the ass, but if I have a whole fish filleted I'll probably ask for the head separately so I can make stock with it. Waste not, want not. Among the offerings were several sizes of squid and octopus, so if we ever decide to do a Mythos themed feast, we can source tentacles (and we have a Mythos cookbook already).
Adjacent to the market is a little food court. Three out of the four places are Korean and thus not of much interest to us. However, the fourth is a splendid little bakery that offers pastries, a few savory things like little quiches, and cakes. One of the cakes was what appeared to be a fruit sando cake. Hmm, and now I am remembering that almond pound cake we used to make strawberry shortcake. Anyhow, we definitely want to go back and try the bakery.
Then we stopped at Planted. I picked up a couple of small green plastic pots with saucers, a ceramic dinosaur planter that will be one of my Ayyam-i-Ha gifts, and a succulent plant that's producing five babies on long runners. I think it's a walking kalanchoe, or something similar, which is related to the mother of millions that I had some years back. Turns out, Planted offers a free repotting service, and I just happened to have grabbed small pots that would fit the plant I bought. So sure, when the nice lady asked if I wanted it repotted, I said yes. (They also sell much more upscale ceramic pots if you want something fancy.) Except now I've got the thing home and there is no sticker on the pot nor plastic insert label to tell me its exact name and care. *headdesk* I may swing by next time we're in town and ask about that -- and also point out that if they're going to repot things, they might want to add a care page or make sure the insert gets into the new container, because there won't be the sticker on the side.
We ate supper at Sooie Bros Barbecue. We got a brisket sandwich and a pulled pork sandwich, both tasty but prone to falling apart. For dessert we got a banana pudding that I'm pretty sure was previously frozen. 0_o It's a decent barbecue place, but I think Wood'n'Hog is better (and has that awesome okra).
One place we saw but didn't catch this time was Tasty Tart. They make miniature 2.5" tarts in multiple flavors, apparently prone to selling out early. So our plan is to get lunch on the way up, then hit this tart shop for lunch dessert ... and hope they've still got flavors we like.
It has been a fun and productive day. :D
