Crosswalks to Nowhere

A few years ago, we were introduced to the wonderment of limoncello by our pal Mitch, the guy who opened Tuscan Market here in Arlington Heights. More recently, Amy, the new owner of the shop, introduced us to Gioia Luisa Limoncello Cream, which is a delighful spin on the traditional drink.

What is limoncello, exactly? Well, it's lemon-flavored, refreshing, and highly alcoholic. Exactly what you need on a summer's afternoon when you just want to crash in your hammock.

This got us to thinking that we should try making our own limoncello: I mean, how difficult could it be? It seemed all we need are some lemons, the appropriate type and quantity of alcohol, and time.

There are several limoncello recipes available on the internet, including the ones found at the excellent LimoncelloQuest site. We decided to modify the recipes we found to suit our needs, and boy, were we pleased with our first-time-out results.

Let's jump right in:

We decided to do some thinning out in the garden the other day and wound up cleaning most of it up.

The tomato plants pretty much breathed their last a while ago-- there were a few straggler romas hanging on the vines, but for the most part the plants were exhausted. It might have been the hot and dry August we just came through, but no amount of care seemed to help them keep going. I was a little surprised because in the past I've been able to keep tomato plants going well into the first frost of October.

The green beans produced a second wave and we have a bunch of cayenne and jalapeno peppers along with some nice cucumbers.

What remains in the garden are our white onions, which should be ready to be pulled in about a week.

I'm pretty sure we overcrowded the garden this year, which contributed to some of the issues we faced. We kind of expected issues since this year was really an experiment in what we could accomplish in that corner of the yard. Part of our plan for next year is to limit what's in the backyard garden and do some serious planting at the community garden where I had some things growing back in 2003.

The sunflowers did well, and I'll be drying the flower heads to get seeds for next year's crop.

The top layer of the garden consists of the compost Lisa made. More to follow on that.

This past weekend, we dealt with the remnants of Hurricane Ike. This is a shot of the detention pond at Sunset Meadows in Arlington Heights taken on Sunday. It's difficult to get a clear idea of how much water we're looking at, but there's about 30 feet of water in the basin in this photo.

By comparison, this is a picture taken from the same angle in May, 2005:

Here's the driving range:

The Weather Service predicts clearer weather for the rest of this week, so we'll get the chance to dry out.

This blurb appeared in our local paper on August 28, 2008:

• Someone took a change machine from Randhurst Mall, 999 N. Elmhurst Road, between 10 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. July 30. The machine, which changes dollar bills for quarters, contained $340 in cash. It was worth $850.

While this wasn't exactly a Danny Ocean-level heist, it says more about the current state of Randhurst than you might intially think. What this article says is that sometime in the middle of the day someone stole what I assume to be a heavy piece of equipment from the shopping mall, presumably without being noticed.

This is quite a change from the Randhurst I grew up with. The inside of the mall consists mostly of empty storefronts now, and is scheduled to be demolished very soon to make way for redevelopment, a mixed-use property called Randhurst Village. (The stores outside the mall, most notably Costco and Home Depot, are doing extremely well-- quite a contrast.)

The Randhurst I knew was a busy place where you could find pretty much anything you were looking for. I grew up near the shopping center (they never called it a "mall"), and many days of my youth were spent there since it was only a bike ride away.

When I was a kid, the anchors stores were Montgomery Ward, Carson Pirie Scott, and Wieboldt's. Wards had a great record department and cafeteria ("The Buffeteria") and I used to get my WLS surveys and stickers there. I never went to Carson's or Wieboldt's as a kid, although Wieboldt's had an S&H Green Stamps redemption center in the basement, and I used to get blank cassette tapes there when I got a little older.

The main destination for us kids was SS Kresge's, in the corridor between Carson's and Wieboldt's. It was a "dime store" in the sense that K-Mart never was. We used to get Frozen Cokes and Air-Popt® Popcorn, and maybe a little toy from the aisles in the back. They also had a little cafeteria where we'd get Cokes if we didn't want the frozen variety. At one end of the store they had aquariums where you could buy various tropical fish and those little turtles the FDA doesn't allow you to buy any more. The fish were right next to the massive display of Contact-Paper rolls. And every Christmas, as my mom will tell you, they had the demonstration table set up with "Balsam Pine, Smells So Fine" incense which came with its own little log cabin.

Speaking of Christmas, Randhurst was quite the destination because every year on the day after Thanksgiving Ringmaster Ned from WGN-TV's Bozo's Circus would welcome Santa Claus to the mall. My cousins and sister and I went every year for a stretch of about 4 or 5 years to witness the event.

When my kids were little, we used to spend hours walking around and browsing the stores. One of the high points for them was getting a table in the food court-- which was next to impossible at lunchtime on the weekends-- and eating their Happy Meals. And right up until earlier this year, Rebecca still liked going to the "sample lady" at the teryaki stand on the second level.

My last visit to Randhurst's interior took place on an early Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago. The place is almost unrecognizable, with nearly every storefront shuttered and only a few customers and security guards walking the once-busy main aisles. The merry-go-round in the center of the mall was still lit and turning, with one or two kids and their parents on the ride. Except for the echoes of the carousel's music, the whole place was eerily silent.

If you Google "Randhurst" you'll find all sorts of remembrances of this once-great mall. (As I wrote this, I thought of hundreds of things that could fill this blog.) For a good overview of the center's history, check out this link to a document at the Mt Prospect Historical Society's site.

Will the "new" Randhurst draw the crowds? We'll have to wait and see.

This past weekend, we visited More Than Delicious Orchard in Woodstock. This was our second year there, and we were once again very pleased with the selection and the overall experience.

Years ago, my favorite place to go for apples was Wauconda Orchards, which was cleared a few years ago for another housing development. Wauconda Orchards was a real destination, with a huge store with a bakery, a petting zoo, and hayrides.

More Than Delicious is much smaller, but certainly more manageable.

Now we have a half-bushel of assorted apples, ready to be turned into all sorts of fall culinary goodness.