Chow Down Chicago: Good Eats from the Windy City

Chances are that canned pumpkin you got to make your pumpkin pie came from Illinois. Morton, Illinois, a village of about 17,000 people located about halfway between Peoria and Bloomington-Normal and about a 3-hour drive from Chicago, is the “Pumpkin Capital of the World,” so named because 85% of the world’s canned pumpkin is packed in Morton’s Nestle/Libby’s canning plant.  According to Libby’s, the Morton area is perfect for growing pumpkins. Must be that rich Illinois soil. The Libby’s canning plant has been located in Morton for over 100 years.  To celebrate its status as the World’s Pumpkin Capital, Morton holds a Pumpkin Festival every year. The 59 th Annual Pumpkin Festival is scheduled for September 10-13, 2025. This year’s festival was held September 11-14 and featured such activities as a pumpkin pie eating contest, pumpkin decorating contest, pumpkin princess pageant, pumpkin recipe challenge, and pumpkin weigh off. In addition to the standard pumpkin pie, food ava...

If you go to almost any hot dog stand in the Chicago area, chances are you will find the pizza puff listed among the sides. The pizza puff consists of a deep-fried flour tortilla filled with tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, and usually some type of meat and seasonings. The story of the pizza puff is one of multiculturalism and creativity, two things for which Chicago is well known. The pizza puff was invented in 1976 by Warren Shabaz of the Iltaco Foods company, a supplier of tamales to Chicago hot dog stands. (Iltaco is a shortened version of “Illinois Tamale Company.”) The company was founded by Warren’s grandfather, Elisha Shabaz, an Assyrian immigrant who fled Iran around the turn of the twentieth century. Warren had been getting inquiries from hot dog stand owners about some sort of pizza product that would help them compete with the many pizzerias that were popping up all over the Chicago area. To meet this need, Warren decided to create something similar to a calzone that could ...