Chow Down Chicago: Good Eats from the Windy City

The full moon in June is known to some Native American peoples as the Strawberry Moon. This year’s Strawberry Moon falls on Saturday, June 3rd. Native Americans name the full moons as a way to track the seasons. For example, the full moon in September is known to many as the Harvest Moon, and the February full moon is the Snow Moon. The Algonquian, Ojibwe, Dakota, and Lakota people use the name Strawberry Moon to refer to the sweet, red berries that ripen in the month of June. The Haida people similarly refer to the June full moon as the Berries Ripen Moon. This strawberry-rhubarb cobbler recipe is less labor-intensive than strawberry-rhubarb pie and just as delicious, making it an easy way to celebrate the Strawberry Moon. Strawberry and rhubarb are often paired together in desserts for several reasons. For practical purposes, rhubarb and strawberries are both late spring-early summer crops, and both peak at around the same time. Also, the tangy sourness of rhubarb balances the ...

Chicago has many ties to the chocolate industry. The Columbian Exposition of 1893 featured a chocolate pavilion, a cocoa mill, a 38-ft. chocolate statue, and German chocolate-processing machines on display. Milton Hershey bought one of these machines and took it back to his home state of Pennsylvania to start a successful business you may have heard about. Chicago is also home to Fannie May chocolates, Frango Mints (sold at Macy’s State Street store), and the Blommer Chocolate Company, a chocolate wholesaler that operates a chocolate processing plant in the West Loop. You can read more about Chicago’s ties to the chocolate industry here . An enterprising mother also found success as a candy maker in Chicago in the early twentieth century.  Ora Snyder began selling candy in 1909 to make ends meet after her husband became ill and had to leave his job. According to the Newberry Library's Source Material  blog, Snyder had learned to make chocolate confections as a child. Her own...