Open House

So we went to the most fun open house on Saturday! It was a chocolate factory tour, a printing press/card making open house and a t-shirt screen printing tour/open house all in the same building.

I don't think they were expecting the turn out they got, but it was sooo fun. Everyone was so keen on each of their separate projects and it was so neat to see so many entrepreneuers all in one building.

I liked Taza's Mexican chocolate except it was slightly too cinnamony for me -- I loved the texture though. They're talking about developing more flavors of the mexican so that's something to look forward to. They also sell chocolate nibs (an ingredient which, oddly enough, was used in several iron chef america dishes in last night's chocolate challenge). Nibs are apparently the roasted and separated cacao beans. I like to think of them as chocolate nerds. I bought a small bag just for munching.

Our tour guide was apparently giving us an off the cuff tour and mentioned that they use the husks that they've taken off the cacao beans as mulch and they give it to various places. We asked about it when we were leaving and they just gave us some bags. Very light and slightly chocolatey smelling so nicer than fertilizer in a lot of ways -- can't wait for tomato season :).

Albertine Press/May Day Studio/ Someone else who was really friendly and who's card I forgot to get had an open house too (oops) had a joint open house, just down the hall from Taza. Their handiwork was so fun! May day studio had really quirky and great valentine's day cards. Albertine Press was kind enough to let people try out their letter press. Anyone who wanted to could go away with a valentine they made themselves! They also have REALLY cool cards. My favorite wasn't one of their letter press cards (though I couldn't resist some of those either). I like the circus one below:

It says "Dear mom and dad, I joined the circus. Love, me" They also had a letter press save the date that had all the information in a postmark and lots of other cool stuff (a card that said smarty pants and had a doodle of Einstein). The woman who I forgot to grab a card from made the neatest little books. Tiny little books perfectly bound.

Finally, the last tour/open house we took advantage of was QRST's open house. They have a screen printing shop and he explained the process to us then took us back to the two dark rooms and through the paint room out to the floor where we could see the machines doing several shirts at once on sort of large horizontal windmill machines. They also have a huge digital t-shirt printer where they can inject the ink right into the fabric. You can't even feel the ink on the t-shirt and the details are incredible. He talked about various printers on the market and even answered some tough questions (like are wrap around designs possible -- turns out they are if you make your design right). He even let us take a free t-shirt in the end. Fun stuff. I totally want to get t-shirts made for my next event!

So a fun Saturday indeed. We ended the evening at Midwest Grill. A Brazillian restaurant in Inman Square. It was so good. The staff (other than one rather odd woman) was incredibly friendly and the food was good. I LOVED the Garlic beef (soooo garlicky) and the garlick bread which they grill just like the meat was lovely as well. They had chicken wrapped in bacon that I thought was perfect. There were other delicious options as well, but I would stay away from the strawberry pudding (and probably the chocolate pudding while you're at it).