Southern Comfort Night: The Full Belly Report

Who: (Almost) All the VN Ladies
What: Millennium's Annual Southern Comfort Dinner
Where: San Francisco, Calif.
When: May 22, 2008
Why: Who would want to miss when haute cuisine goes lowbrow?

The Scoop: Virginia Blue Ridge Mountain Oysters. Yes, those are the small round items with the skewers on the plate you see above. When dinner starts out with faux-bull balls, you know you're in for a certain kind of night. The VN team has made an annual tradition of attending this outrageously fun, decidedly down-home event, and we pretty much spend all year talking about what will be on the menu. This year's lineup was just as artery-clogging and decadent as we were expecting. Along with the "mountain oysters," appetizers included beer-battered onion rings, pickled okra, pizza rolls (in the foil), corn bread, bacon cheese bread, and large, icy buckets of the finest Pabst Blue Ribbon around.

From there things just got greasier. Deep-fried Tofurky sausages, anyone? How about salad with a highly thick and creamy bacon-ranch dressing? Remember, this was all before our entrées came out. We had the choice of tamales, barbecue seitan, hoisin-apricot tempeh ribs, or Doritos-crusted catfish. Yeah, you try and pick from that roster. Just in case there was any extra room in our stomachs, Miss Jazz's DIY brownie sundae bar—named for VN contributor Jesse Miner's chihuahua—completed the meal with brownies, rocky road ice cream, hot fudge and butterscotch sauces, and a smorgasbord of toppings.

To complement the over-the-top eats, a few of our group dressed to their trashiest nines, complete with blacked-out teeth and faux-pregnant bellies. As if all this weren't enough to make for a memorable evening, Executive Chef Eric Tucker took Colleen and Elizabeth into the kitchen for a quick lesson in deep-frying onion rings. Maybe they were ecstatic about it. Maybe they totally freaked out and blushed like schoolgirls. Maybe it's not, you know, every day that you get into the kitchen at Millennium.

Here's the whole group of lovely ladies, all of whom, amazingly, were still able to button their pants at the end of the night.

Windy City Green

Who: VN Senior Editor Elizabeth Castoria, VN Distribution Manager Katie Donaldson, and former VN Editorial Assistant Extraordinaire Christine Petrozzo
What: Chicago Green Festival + related revelry
Where: Navy Pier, Chicago, Ill.
When: May 17–18, 2008
Why: Because we're greenies who like to eat

The Scoop: Next to the calm waters of Lake Michigan, the Windy City was recently taken by a green storm. After an opening ceremony hosted by Mayor Richard Daley, hundreds of exhibitors, dozens of A-list speakers, and thousands of attendees swarmed the festive premises of Navy Pier to celebrate the best and brightest of the green industry. From eco-friendly footwear to fair-trade chocolate there were plenty of opportunities to get swept up in the green tide. Is that enough eco/weather references for one post? Okay, we'll move on. The show hours were spent meeting new subscribers, checking out oodles of edibles, and getting the scoop on new organizations, products, and potential story leads. Suffice it to say that at the end of the day, there was nothing we wanted more than to kick back and relax over a leisurely dinner.

After successfully navigating the tourist-friendly El system, we arrived, ravenous, at The Chicago Diner. Immediately taken in by the diner-themed decor, we eagerly poured over their extensive menu, and nearly died from the excitement of vegan shakes and their famous Radical Reuben. Finally, the three of us settled on the Reuben, the Southwestern Chikin Burger, one order of Crab Cakes, a strawberry shake, a peanut butter shake, and a slice of Cookies and Cream cake. Does that all sound outrageously fantastic? Because it totally was. Phe-freakin'-nominal would also be an appropriate description. The dinner was so good, in fact, that even though we were slightly tempted to explore other eateries during our two-day stay, we unanimously decided to go back the next night for more Chicago-Diner goodness. If you're in the area, allow us to strongly recommend the potato skins, Super Gyros, and a side of the mac 'n' cheese. Oh yeah, the leftovers also made excellent in-flight snacks the next day.

If there's anything better than great food and a good cause, it's getting to share the weekend with friends. Below, see some of our favorite ice-cream makers, the men of Chicago Soy Dairy, who evidently didn't do too shabbily at their booth: