The Dill Pickle Co-Op's benefit concert goes down tomorrow night at the Av-Aerie, 2000 W. Fulton. Bands scheduled to perform include Reds and Blue, Pit er Pat, and Detholz. Things kick off at 8 p.m. and the cost is a suggested $15 donation. Professor Bruce Kraig of the Culinary Historians of Chicago will be at Kendall College Saturday morning hosting a seminar on "Changes in Food Consumption Patterns After the Civil War." The seminar...

For some people, the ultimate gift is something techy, like a Wii, an iPhone, or a GPS device. For us, it's a growler of beer, which we received over the holidays. The beer inside, "312." was nothing special. the growler, however, was refillable. It's the gift that keeps on giving, like a communicable disease. A couple weekends back we made the trip to Goose Island's Clybourn brew pub to trade in our empty for...

Grapevines, like everything else in nature, have a limited life span. The older a vine becomes, the less fruit it produces. But the fruit that these vines yield is bursting with flavor and character that like fruit from younger vines lack. It takes a patient winemaker to make a quality wine from this fruit. The Gnarly Head vineyard in Lodi, California is highly regarded for the quality of their old vine zinfandel. Before trellising...

Remember in Moulin Rouge when Ewan McGregor's character drinks some green liquid, the camera tilts to a canted angle, the crazy music starts playing, and you felt like maybe someone had slipped a hallucinogen into your popcorn? The green liquid, of course, was absinthe, and its purported psychoactive properties have been well extolled by the likes of Oscar Wilde, Outkast, and Johnny Depp. Known as the Green Fairy, absinthe is an anise-flavored (read: licorice) alcohol...

Va Pensiero in Evanston officially celebrates the return of wine director Jason Prah (most recently of Eno) with a tasting of eight "wines to survive winter." Prah will be on hand to present the wines and appetizers will be served. Cost is $35 per person, and the event starts at 7 p.m. The Alliance Francaise de Chicago has been offering a fair amount of cooking classes lately. Their class on Saturday will focus on...

For all you whiskey buffs out there, now you can vote on your favorite brands of the past year, as well as your favorite and most hated marketing campaigns, at the 2007 Drammies. The awards, created by the man behind the whiskey website Inebrio, celebrates the year in scotch, bourbon, rye, Irish, and blended whiskies. You can vote for best new product, most innovative product, best and worst marketing campaigns, and distiller of the year....

Last weekend we had the opportunity to eat at the recently opened Takashi in Bucktown (we'll have a full review of that later this week). Normally when we frequent the chef-driven concepts we try to take a seat at the bar - when there is one - and watch the goings-on around us. Sometimes, the bar is where you find all the real action and, if you're lucky, find out the behind-the-scenes dirt. Chef Takashi...

Does it surprise anyone by now a lobby might donate money to a politician's campaign fund as a "favor" for supporting their special interest? If not, we can move on. What is shocking is the amount of money wine lobbies around the country throw at politicians around the country in the interest of passing laws geared toward "wholesale protection", tightening their grip on the three-tier distribution system. The Specialty Wine Retailers Association released a report...

Like a lot of you, we took advantage of yesterday's weather, donned some shorts and ate brunch (Vella). On the way home we decided to make a detour and taste some wines. The weekly tasting at Lush focused on the staff picks for 2007. Our favorite of the lot was a monster blended red from Twisted Oak Winery in Calaveras County, California. In a unique coincidence, we recently re-read Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog...