Last year, River Forest's Bridget Connelly and Luna Bay, her all female-run brewing company, launched a line of "hard kombucha," a boozy rendition of the centuries old fermented beverage that contains probiotics, the live cultures found in yogurt and pickles and believed to support immunity, a special concern during this time of Covid-19.

Aside from adding crunch and tangy help build your immune system to fight Covid-19 and other infectious diseases.

Most of the truly delicious pickles you've enjoyed have probably been naturally fermented; they've been brined for sometimes weeks with salt and spices until their flavors – and probiotic potential – have developed.

Delicate microgreens and knife sharpening: not a predictable matchup, but those are the goods and services offered at the American Pride MicroFarm stand at the Oak Park Farmers Market. We'd walked by the American Pride MicroFarm stand several times this summer; last Saturday, we stopped by. 

At Carnitas Don Alfredo, the nice lady behind the counter asked, "Would you like the meat with or without fat and skin?" She added, wincing, "Without is less greasy." When asked "Which one do you like," she replied "I like it with fat and skin," so we bought a pound of carnitas with and a pound of carnitas without fat and skin, just to compare the two. A pound of carnitas is priced very reasonably at about $10. The "greasy" version wasn't very greasy at all, but it was was, unsurprisingly, much more flavorful than the drier