While we’re on the topic, I’ve found that I don’t care for sport peppers either. Too mild and the skins are waxy and unyielding. Give me sliced jalapenos any day.
They can absolutely do with being spicier. Some are hotter than others, but most of them are not all that spicy. What you get at Jim’s Original or Express Grill (Polish sausage places on Union Street) are much more fiery, but they’re not those tiny small peppers. They’re more like serranos or something.
I meant to make a stop there during my stay, but that’s just gonna have to wait until the next visit.
Overall, I found the local specialties I did get to sample to all be very… heavy, for lack of a better word. High calorie count in a small package, to the point where a bite or two makes you feel like you’ve eaten too much even though you’re still hungry in the aftermath.
When I first heard of the idea of putting cream cheese on a hot dog it sounded disgusting, but the coolness of it really balances out with a good spicy dog or Polish link, brown mustard, and grilled peppers. After we got our own hockey team a few years back, a local company called Bavarian Meats started producing officially licensed Kraken dogs that even have the cream cheese and jalapenos injected into the sausage.
That’s why I like the hot dog: 350-400 calories for one, and it tides me over to the next proper meal. I don’t quite get the “hungry in the aftermath” part of your comment – once I have a beef or Polish I’m good for about six hours or so. It’s not like rice or pasta where you eat it, feel full, and two minutes later are starving again. Something like a beef sits there for hours – that’s what’s particularly nice about it. A hot dog doesn’t quite sit there as long, but it still tides me over.
But yeah, cream cheese goes good with pretty much any meat. I frankly don’t understand why people find it odd to pair it with a hot dog. I grew up with my mom feeding us open faced sandwiches with cream cheese and ham/Canadian bacon/smoked Polish meats of all sorts, so cured smoked meat plus cream cheese was always pretty normal to me. Dammit. Now I want a Polish with some cream cheese and jalapenos! Well, I know what’s for lunch or dinner in the next couple days.
I mean in that it weighs you down so much after a bite or two of a beef sandwich, or a couple bites of pizza, it seems like that should be enough food, but if you stop there you’ll still be hungry.
Cream cheese belongs in pimento cheese, not on a hot dog.
Although I did put pimento cheese on a hot dog once. Pretty good, actually.
In any case, glad to read you are back home and ok.
I love the flavor profile of the sport pepper on a dog - but it’d be a hell of a lot easier to eat if they’d chop it up and make a little giardiniera with it and the pickle (which you’d swap out for cornichons). It maybe becomes a little too mushy when you factor in the relish (which is essential, imo)? Then julienne the peppers and pickle into a bit of a slaw. I bet that’d be good.
Epilogue: I got the hospital bill. For six hours in the ER including minor surgery under local anesthesia, various CAT scans, X-rays, and ultrasounds, about 36 hours in ICU, and 72 hours in step down, with food and drink, multiple saline and medicinal IVs, antibiotics, God knows how much supplemental oxygen (I was on 3 liters/minute for about a day and a half), maintenance medications, dozens of injections and blood draws, who knows how much lab work, nursing care including bedpans and sponge baths and insertion/adjustment/removal of a rectal tube, and some brief physical therapy helping me regain the strength to stand up and walk on my own after I was no longer dehydrated, I owe Northwestern Memorial Hospital a grand total of…
(drumroll)
…$182.76, which I get to pay off in monthly installments of $25, interest-free.
Man, it’s good to work for an employee-owned company that subsidizes the hell out of our health insurance. Surprisingly, nobody at the hospital ever asked to see my insurance card - it wasn’t I’d been in there for a day and a half or so before someone from registration even came to talk to me, and I told them who my provider was but they didn’t ask for any other information. My mother, who I gave as my emergency contact, says that they called her to ask for my insurance info (which she didn’t have) and she told them I got it through my work, so I’m guessing that they were somehow able to just look me up in my provider’s system and find my account.
I haven’t gotten a bill for the ambulance yet, and my insurer’s website says that claim is still pending. I wouldn’t be surprised if what I end up having to pay for the ambulance is comparable to what I’m having to pay for the entire rest of the stay. I briefly got excited when I got a letter in the mail from the Chicago Department of Revenue the other day, but it turned out to be a privacy rights notice rather than a bill.
Hopefully my next trip won’t be quite as eventful.
I worked for the Northwestern system until I retired. Good care, and a reasonable bill if you have decent health insurance. I was billed $103,000 for my cardiac ablation. I owed NM nothing.
My former boss at the ad agency where I worked joined Northwestern Hospital, on their marketing team, a few years ago. A big part of the reason why he did so is that his wife has a chronic heart condition, and will, sooner or later, need a very expensive surgery; the coverage he has as a NW employee will mean they’ll pay far, far less out-of-pocket than he would have on pretty much any other insurance plan.
Crazy story you actually could’ve died without medical intervention maybe So how many nights total in Chicago?
Yay for excellent insurance.
Nice! I’m pretty sure I would have maxed out my yearly deductible for my high deductible plan to the tune of $6k or so in similar circumstances.
8 total - 2 actually doing tourist stuff, 5 in the hospital, and 1 in a hotel just holed up eating Taco Bell.
Zombifying this thread, 'cause I’m doing it again. I’ve just booked another 4-night trip to Chicago, coincidentally enough for the exact same dates I was supposed to have been there for last year (not intentional, that just happened to be how fares and hotel rates worked out). I’m flying both ways this time instead of taking the train, and there’s one big difference - my 63-year-old mother will be tagging along. She was supposed to accompany my sister and nephew and I on a trip to Legoland last summer, but she had a medical emergency and had to cancel last minute, and since we have a flight credit in her name I decided to invite her to come with.
Largely I plan on doing the same stuff I was supposed to last time, but I could use a few recommendations. We’re definitely doing the Art Institute, the Field, and MSI, a Second City show, and Sears Tower. I enjoyed the architecture cruise, but I don’t think my mom would be into it, so I’m thinking that a lake cruise would be a lot of fun - can anyone recommend one that’ll be operating in late April? I’d also like to take her to at least one “nice” restaurant aside from the pizzerias and diners and beef sandwiches and hot doggeries - nothing Michelin-starred or anything, but I think she’d enjoy a nice seafood dinner, or an Italian place that makes a solid lasagna. We probably won’t make it to Wrigley since she’s not into baseball (unless I go solo and she does something else, but I don’t think she wants to go wandering a strange city on her own) so I could use a few recommendations for evening activities to take in after the museums.
I definitely plan on making it to Chicago Pizza & Oven Grinder this time. Not for the pizza, though - since there’ll be two of us this time, we’re getting the salad.
Hopefully nobody catches a childhood disease and almost dies this time.
We’re planning to do 5 nights in Chicago in late March (with long term doper @scareyfaerie), and wondering where in the loop is best to stay, not booked a hotel yet.
Off to Detroit after, but staying with some friends we met in Main Street Station’s bar in Vegas, so they’re sorting us out for places to go.
Is there a reason you want to stay in the Loop? That is Chicago’s business district and gets a little sleepy after dinner time.
You might find it more interesting to stay somewhere along the Mag Mile (which is not far from the Loop at all).
That said, staying in the Loop is fine too. Just maybe a little less fun.
In the Loop the Chicago Athletic Association hotel is pretty great and being on Michigan Avenue, across from the park with a lot of restaurants nearby, it is not sleepy. And the Mag Mile is a couple blocks to the left (north) of the front entrance.
I thought that is where the choice to stay, where the restaurants and bars are. I have in the past though stayed in “Downtown” to find it as you describe, not much going on, in Seattle for instance.
I have no real idea of scale of the area too. It looks like my first choice of Chicago Hilton as not good now…
Hilton Chicago (720 S. Michigan; there’s another Hilton on Michigan farther north that is the Magnificent Mile Hilton) is a good starting point, I’d say. It puts you in walking distance of all the cultural stuff you may want to do, and if you want to go to the Magnifiscent Mile part of Michigan Ave., it’s just a mile walk straight north to where it starts. You’re about a 10-minute walk from The Art Institute. You’re about a 15 minute walk from Museum Campus: Shedd Aquarium, Field Museum, Planetarium. Keep walking north from the Art Institute and you have Millennium Park. And then you’re just five minutes or so from the river, cross the river and you’re at the beginning of the Magnifiscent Mile string of shops. The boat tours start right there (don’t know what the schedule in March is, though). Go see the historical rocks in the wall of the Tribune Tower; step into the world’s largest Starbucks (which I find surprisingly cool), check out all the shops. Etc.
So what you propose is perfectly sensible. I honestly prefer the south side of the river because there’s just more cultural stuff to do there, but it is a little sleepier than the north side of the river. But “sleepy” is all relative. It’s still fairly busy and you’ll find plenty of reasonable restaurants, just not necessarily the absolute best in Chicago (though I do like the Gage). You’ll also find the more old school type joints there, like Miller’s Pub (134 S. Wabash), The Exchequer (a block south), The Berghoff (17 W. Adams), etc.
For lunch during the week, I would step into at least Revival Food Hall for a newer, chic collection of prepared food vendors. That should be about a 15-minute walk, but it’s directly west (like 5 min?) of the Art Institute so it’s an option when you go up there.
Have you been to the Frank Lloyd Wright home and studio tour? I quite enjoyed seeing his house and office and all of the interesting things he put in.
The chimney with a large window above it, the grand piano that is built into a wall, the moving file stands in the office were all really interesting to me.
This map may help:
From the bottom of the map to the top is about three miles.
The colorful box in the center is “The Loop.” It is the elevated train tracks. Technically the Loop extends a little outside of that box but close enough. That is the main business district for the city. Also, there are theaters in there (plays).
At the north-east corner of the box you can see a big street crossing the river. That is the south end of the Magnificent Mile which, as the name suggests, runs for about a mile north along that street (Michigan Ave) and is a chic shopping area.
Straight north of the box is the River North neighborhood which is positively loaded with restaurants and bars.
Due west is the West Loop neighborhood and Fulton Market area which are also known for loads of restaurants and bars (you can walk from one to the next easily).
Due east of that box is Grant Park. Think like Central Park but smaller and not quite as fancy but still nice. Also has the Art Institute museum which is well worth a visit.
In the lower right corner of the map is the museum campus with the Planetarium, Shedd Aquarium and Field Museum (natural history…dinosaur bones and such). All worth visiting. Far south (several miles and not on this map) is the Museum of Science and Industry (also very cool…tour an actual WWII U-Boat among other things).
Most things on that map are walk-able or a short cab ride.