Winter in Chicago… and temperatures are falling just as quickly as the stock market…

Pardon my sardonic humor, but the prospect of eating locally can be pretty bleak during a Chicago winter. That is unless you know where to go.

As the year ends I look out my window and see a snowy, cold Chicago afternoon. Yet I know that a few miles from here, underneath the protective covering of our hoophouses, delicious, fresh vegetables are still doing well. Spinach, lettuce, salad-mix, and kale are doing especially well. They don’t grow fast because of the lack of sunlight, but rather the hoophouses serve as a kind of refrigerator, keeping them safe throughout the winter.

I am in love with my neighborhood.

Little did I know what pleasures lied ahead when I left my crime riddled corner of Wicker Park far behind and moved onto a leafy block with pretty gardens, porches that are actually occupied with people in rocking chairs, and streets where “Happy Birthday Daddy” is occasionally scrawled in chalk.

When people from out of town ask me what neighborhood I live in, in Chicago I tell them “Lincoln Square,” pause, and then say, “not Lincoln Park; Lincoln Square.”