grow/eat/decorate: Is it Rick Bayless Week?

Have you ever noticed that whenever you learn a new word all of a sudden it seems like that word is everywhere? Or you hear a song for the first time and then it seems like every radio station in the world is playing it all the time? Well, that happened to me last week. Only it wasn't a word or a song...it was Rick Bayless.

For those of you who don't live in the Chicago-land area and might not have heard of him, Rick Bayless is a celebrity chef with several restaurants in Chicago. He specializes in Mexican cooking and while I haven't eaten at any of his restaurants myself (yet) I've heard they are incredible.

My inadvertent Rick Bayless week started at Lit Fest. There is a food stage where cookbook authors show off their stuff and he was presenting. My friend and I were planning on going to another event at the same time so I didn't get to see him cook, but I did walk right next to him on the street. Unlike when we saw Rachael Ray who was carefully guarded by security, he was just walking down the street by himself. I could have reached out and touched him if I wanted to. I didn't though of course. That would be creepy.

Then on Wednesday night I was channel surfing and came across a really old episode of Iron Chef. It was Rick Bayless vs. Bobby Flay. Bobby Flay won unfortunately which was a bummer for me because I've always found him a bit smug.

All this lead up to the main event on Thursday...a garden tour of Rick Bayless' garden! A lot of the salad greens and herbs for the restaurants are grown on this property which spans 3 lots in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood. This tour was already planned prior to the rest of all my sightings so its funny how things work out. The tour itself was amazing and really interesting. It was given by the man who designed and manages the garden so he was incredibly knowledgeable.

Here are some highlights:

These raised beds grow about 500 lbs of greens in a season! I was amazed at how neat and clean they look and how closely they plants were packed together. They were definitely designed for maximum efficiency.

They are constructed of metal to make the most of the space since the thin metal takes up less space than brick or wood. And it makes it really easy to clip the bird netting to the frame.

One thing I was really interested in that I think I'm going to try myself is how they grow butternut squash. They grow them vertically in cages (for support) so they don't sprawl out all over the garden and take over. We have a spare tomato cage at my parents' garden that isn't being used for anything right now so I might try to convince them to let me grow a squash plant or two.

Overall, I was surprised at how pretty the garden was. I knew it was a working garden that was supplying the restaurants with food, so I wasn't expecting any space to be dedicated to landscaping and non-edible plants. It was really lovely though and truly still looked like someone's home garden.