After nearly two years, the Reader is ready to serve up some of that mulefoot pig it adopted to some hungry folks. And they're doing it in style, with a six-course dinner starting 6 p.m. October 19 at Blackbird to benefit Slow Food Chicago. The meal will feature dishes by Paul Kahan and Publican Executive chef Brian Huston, Vie's Paul Virant, Lula Café's Jason Hammel and Amalea Tshilds, and Justin Large of avec. The cost......

A couple weeks back we attended the Green City Market farmer's dinner at Goose Island's Clybourn brewpub. That was the one that featured dishes from a host of chefs including Dean Zanella of 312 Chicago; Brian Huston of Paul Kahan's the Publican (opening in mid-autumn); Elissa Narow of Custom House and Paul Virant of Vie in Western Springs. Virant's dish was easily the most ambitious of the courses, utilizing lamb in unexpected ways. Virant......

There are a couple of really interesting beer dinners of note in the coming weeks that could wind up being hard reservations, if you're the type to wait until the last minute to get reservations. Next Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. Brasserie JO (59 W. Hubbard, 312-595-0800) is hosting a special four-course beer dinner featuring selections from Van Steenberge beers (brewers of one-time "BotW" selection Piraat). Piraat is not on the menu for this tasting, but......

First item: there's a new website called Super Cook that allows users to find recipes based on what ingredients they have at hand. This will come in handy when you have, say, those porcini mushrooms that are on the verge of turning. we've been fooling around with the site for a couple days now and haven't been disappointed. More online recipe goodness: Sun-Times writer Dave Hoekstra gets his own "Bachelor Pad Royale" going by......