We were stoked (yes, stoked) when Southport Grocery and Café opened a few years back. The fresh sandwiches on artisan bread, the tasty cupcakes and cookies, the savory omelets — the spot has become a great place for brunch, lunch and takeout.

So when we heard that our favorite neighborhood market now has an online grocery store where you can purchase homemade and gourmet goodies without leaving your home, it was too much. We can have Southport Café's peanut M&M peanut butter cookies, house-roasted nuts pancake mix and homemade granola bars for the week, all delivered to our house (or pick-up if you prefer)? It was too good to be true. That and the other options the site offers — gourmet goodies like Melina’s tortilla chips and River Valley Ranch spinach and artichoke dip, plus other hard-to-find bottled sauces, vinegars and oils. As a host or a gift-giver (you can order baskets, too) the options seem endless. OK, maybe not endless, but you get the idea.

What do Brooke Shields, Grant Achatz and this Chicagoist mama have in common? All three have a professed love for the convenience and taste of HomeMade Pizza Company.

HomeMade Pizza Co. sells uncooked pizzas that you then take home and pop in the oven. Twelve minutes later, you’ve got a fresh-tasting, thin-crust dinner. Voila! June Cleaver has nothing on you.

Menu options include funky, artisanal options like goat cheese and herbs or a combo of ricotta, poblanos and chicken sausage, but you can always create your own pie from their list of over forty toppings. Prices are a bit steep and start at $9.75 for a bare-bones pie to $16.75 for their more involved pizzas. Health-conscious diners can choose a whole-wheat crust; localvore fans can take heart in their commitment to using Wisconsin cheeses. They even let your picky eater select their own topping for a mini-pie ($5.75), and offer a party package ($39.95) for five little ones (or you and your friends) to create their own pizzas, complete with all ingredients as well as hats and chef’s aprons. We tried their BLT pizza and were impressed with how well their crunchy, salty, generous bacon slices combined with their baby spinach and chunky garlic. We also got suckered into buying their massive chocolate chip cookie, which ideally cooks in the oven as you eat your pizza. It wasn’t anything special, but a hot cookie straight from the oven is sometimes as good as it gets. For the pizza and the cookie, remember to remove the cardboard and plastic wrapping but not the parchment, and stick that bad boy right on your oven rack.

Now, we’re not saying that this place has the best pie in Chicago (we heart you, Art of Pizza!); it’s certainly not the heavy, thick pizza that most of us crave, and some of our friends claim there's a quality difference between locations (five in Chicago, more in the surrounding area and Minnesota). We loved our pie for its fresh ingredients and the convenience of a twelve-minute meal that actually tastes like it took longer. When our other options are an hour-long wait until delivery, time-intensive cooking from scratch, or subjecting other diners to our wailing wonder, HomeMade Pizza Company seems to be the perfect solution to feeding a family with a cranky toddler.

Check their website for a location close to you; we visited the store at 3430 N. Southport.

Now that we’ve recovered from the sugar crash, we can tell you about some of the things we found during our visit yesterday to the National Confectioners Association’s All Candy Expo at McCormick Place, which ends tomorrow. The industry-only event draws 20,000 visitors to town to sample over 2,000 gums, candies, and snack foods. New products and trends within the industry are also unveiled with all the accompanying sizzle to prospective retailers and wholesalers. The Greater Chicago Food Depository can also expect a large donation of candy from NCA once the Expo wraps.

If what we witnessed was any indication, a majority of confectioners are doing their best to capitalize on raised consumer awareness regarding antioxidants, organic foods, and concerns about obesity by marketing a wide variety of products claiming to help in the battle of the bulge or to strengthen the immune system. We couldn’t walk down an aisle without passing a booth promoting the health benefits of dark chocolate and a Department of Agriculture-certified line of organic snack food. While we’ll never argue against less dark chocolate on the market, products like Jolt! Caffeine gum and Nutra-Trim weight loss gum would have no place in a society that had its priorities straight. The latter, in particular, soaked up the saliva in our mouth like a sponge, leaving us parched and searching for the nearest water cooler.

Following the jump, we’ll list some of our highlights of the Expo.

This week Chicagoist bought pork tenderloin with the plan of writing about making it into a dish for the site. The only slight set-back we faced was that we had no idea what we were actually going to cook. We'd already done tenderloin this, rather classic, way and felt, at least at first, over-inspired. When cooking, we often start ourselves off with a main ingredient (often enough meat) then research all the ways others have already made it. We regularly peruse sites like Epicurious, the Food Network and Martha Stewart's online presence. We also check out the smaller, non-corporate world of personal food blogs, always inspired by all the people out there cooking their hearts out. But having so many resources at our disposal (we still consult cookbooks as well) can get us turned around. One moment we would be smitten with an Asian-influenced preparation of the pork but then two seconds later we would be attracted to a recipe with more of a Latin flavor. Options are good in every aspect of life, cooking especially, but there are times when it's overwhelming and that's what it was like for us on Monday. Eventually after much mucking about in recipe archives, we found one recipe for pork tenderloin with lemon and another recipe featuring horseradish. We decided to conflate the two main aspects of the recipes into a wholly separate creation. Also known as the recipe that follows.

We know from experience that local foodies can be a vocal and opinionated lot. Two new groups are now looking at adding their input to the discourse.

The Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance, according to their mission statement, is "dedicated to celebrating, exploring, and preserving unique food traditions and their cultural contexts in the American Midwest." They plan on supporting the mission with public events, developing archival resources, and creating print publications. Their inaugural event, focusing on Midwestern sausage traditions, takes a look at how tubesteaks have shaped the cultures, economy, and cuisines throughout the region. The event runs from 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. tomorrow at Kendall College. Cost is $35.

A more informal group is the newly formed Globally Intrepid Gourmets (GIG). Their focus is on authentic ethnic dining experiences: what different cultures eat and why they eat it, including the weird, wild and wonderful. In short, the Bourdain approach. GIG's September event will focus on West African cuisine with a visit to Yassa. The event will be held on September 23, cost is $21 and restricted to members of the GIG Meetup Group (a quick perusal of their page shows that the event is nearly sold out).

While on vacation in Tennessee this summer, Chicagoist went to multiple get-togethers that started with wine and cheese. One particular cheese caught our eyes (and more importantly our mouths) and didn't let go. This cheese was a semi-soft goat cheese. It resembled gouda in texture only creamier. It was a bit manchego-like in taste but with a clear goat's milk flavor, enhanced by a rosemary crust. It was cut either extraordinarily thin and eaten on a cracker, or thick and served on nothing at all.

We liked it so much we asked our hosts where they picked it up (we were in a rural setting where gourmet food stores simply don't exist). The answer was a surprisingly chipper "Costco!" This excited us, as we have a membership to the bulk foods warehouse, so we drove the distance (about an hour) to the local Costco to pick up our own wedge. Worth it people, worth it.

Fromartharie brand Rosey Goat Cheese (second one down), imported from Spain, is a perfect cheese for starter plates, but it can also stand up under heat. We personally used it in a cheesy scalloped potato dish that was just delicious.

The problem, hence the name of the post, is that we can't seem to find it in the Chicago area. We cannot believe that in the culinary wonderland that is Chicago this cheese can't be found and yet we've called all over the place with no success. We've called two Costcos, Pastoral, Fox & Obel, Whole Foods and, of course, our favorite place to find a new cheese of the month: The Cheese Stands Alone(here on out known as T.C.S.A) and not one of them have it. They all seem to have cow's milk manchegos with rosemary. T.C.S.A. has a sheep's cheese version, but Rosey Goat isn't even on their radar. The man we spoke to at T.C.S.A figured that Costco bought all of it and distributed it as it saw fit. We hope that perhaps you readers have come across this product in your cheese wanderings. Perhaps you can recommend a similar product. One of the things that made this cheese so good, to us, was the fact that it was specifically a goat cheese. A semi-soft goat cheese is, to our palates, more interesting and complex than the more common chevre. So the question is ... the search is for: a semi-soft goat's cheese with an herb crust (ideally rosemary but we'll deal if it's not). We'd also love to hear suggestions for next month's cheese of the month ... preferably a less elusive cheese.

Here’s a question for you: If politicians can use the “I didn’t inhale” line when asked about past drug use and the military can hide behind its “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” slogan, can localvores get away with eating non-local foods if they don’t swallow? OK, mind out of the gutter, please, and Chicagoist isn’t referring to the chew-and-spit diet featured on a Sex in the City episode. Instead, what we were hoping was to get ‘permission’ to chew gum.

Here’s what else comes to mind after Day 2 of the Green City Market Localvore Challenge:

• Chicagoist isn’t craving chocolate anymore—well, at least not to distraction—but is definitely hoping to find some allowed sweets at today’s Green City Market.
• That it’s a good thing we don’t mind having the same foods—scrambled eggs with Wisconsin cheese for breakfast; grass-fed lamb with roasted potatoes and onions with a green salad (note to self: add balsamic vinegar to exemption list) for lunch (see photo); and an apple for dinner—two days in a row.
• That cooking for one is just as tiresome when you eating a localvore meal as a regular one, hence last night’s apple for dinner.
• That while initially we thought the Localvore Challenge would mean we would be spending more on food, the opposite just might happen. But that’s because our usual treats—latte and biscotti at Intelligentsia, for example—are off limits.
• That just because it’s local doesn’t mean it tastes better. Case in point: The mealy peaches we bought at Whole Foods.
• That while we saw a banner at the Whole Foods on Huron in the produce section promoting local products, all we could find were the above-mentioned peaches. We did, however, buy some great Wisconsin cheese and was told by the butcher that they’re working on finding some local meat options.
• That in order to do this for any length of time learning how to cook—or start dating a chef—would be a really good idea.

To be continued...