two suburbs in one day (swim meet and pork sandwich)

Elmhurst. It's a name I'd heard before. No clue where to find it whenever it was mentioned. Still no clue now. West of Chicago, I think.

Today, this morning, I was there.

I went along with a half-dozen team mates to coach them at a small, morning-long meet at the superginormous high school out there. A 50 meter pool? You're kidding me.

The meet was fine, I was delighted with some of the swims, but this blog is mostly about food, so some photos from the pool...

Tim

Corinne and Tim

Dana

Corinne

Steve, Tim, Heidi, and Dana

Patrick

...and then lunch afterward in the (apparently) neighbouring suburb of Villa Park. Not as nice a town, from the looks of it. A little less well-off, and a little less choice for lunch. We found a family restaurant and settled in among some joking about my food snobbery.

Oh heck, it was friendly. The wine, had we ordered it, would have been ridiculously cheap. And lunch? Well, my friends didn't care much for the tomato rosmarina soup (modeled here by Steve),
though Tim liked his navy bean soup.The two looked a little indistinguishable. I ventured to order the broiled pork chop sandwich with fries (carbs, BAD!),and I have to say, it was decent. Unadorned but tender, and the toasted roll absorbed any meat juices well. I was pleased with it, really. See, I have an open mind for dining out!

tree trimming

Normally we take care of the tree on the day after Thanksgiving, and had we been planning to spend Christmas in Vancouver (ah, now there's a dream), it could have been so. Not this year, however, and so the trimming was later in the season (weeks after I started playing Christmas music almost non-stop).

Frank came over, as did Tim and Corinne. I fed them all some split pea soup and soda bread and let them graze among the cookies as they wished. And in the end, come 3:00, we were all done, sipping a bit of wine, and glad to see all the ornaments on the tree. All in all, a lovely afternoon.