FromeDome

Great brunch and dinner place in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood. Try the tasty Cuc-cai cocktail. (That green thing in a glass.)

Today, this site celebrated its 14th birthday… sort of.

Back then, it was “FromeDome’s Page From Hell,” hosted on a crappy AOL server somewhere. And there have been many years of “under construction” banners between then and now. But it’s still older than Google and many of the sites we use constantly today!

As I spend the next couple weeks traveling around the holidays, I’m going to spend some time working on a few new features for the site, including a photo gallery (so you can see more shots like the one above).

Thanks for visiting, and happy holidays!

One of my favorite email newsletters is from the Federal government. It’s the U.S. Department of Agriculture food recalls list, and it’s both eye-opening and frightening. The companies that make the food we eat screw up all the time.

Sure, there’s a lot of recalls for scary stuff, like millions of pounds of ground beef exposed to E.coli O157:H7, the kind of bug that can kill you if your burger isn’t cooked. But the reason I subscribe is for the rare hilarious recall.

By far my favorite: On Jan. 28, 2004, Hormel Foods recalled 104,000 pounds of canned Stagg Chili, “Hearty Beef with a Kick of Green Chilies” variety. Why? Because they were “contaminated with plastic and other parts of a handheld calculator.”

“The company discovered that the contamination had occurred after receiving complaints from consumers who found a calculator button and a piece of plastic in chili they had purchased,” the email read. Awesome!

I first found out about the USDA recall newsletter from Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation. You can sign up here.

Click photo for larger image. Photo shows the North Side of Chicago and some suburbs from about Newport Avenue (near Belmont). Note Wrigley Field, bottom-center.

Click photo for larger image.

Click photo for larger image. (It’s dusk, and pretty hazy.)

Frijoles, a gourmet burrito restaurant, is opening in Tokyo in early November. Recognize the crumpled foil, color scheme, and fonts? They sure look a lot like Chipotle‘s. Might have to try one when I’m in Tokyo next spring.

My plan for next week’s trip to Paris. (More photos from my 2004 EuroTrip here.)