Proper use of use-package

Question

I am using the following init file to download and load packages from melpa-stable in fresh Emacs installations:

(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa-stable" . "https://stable.melpa.org/packages/"))
(setq use-package-always-pin  "melpa-stable")
(package-initialize)

;; Download use-package
(unless (package-installed-p 'use-package)
  (package-refresh-contents)
  (package-install 'use-package))

;; Reduce load time
(eval-when-compile (require 'use-package))

;; Get packages
(use-package foo :ensure t)

;;... etc

I have two questions/problems.

First: (eval-when-compile (require 'use-package)) is suggested by github.com/jwiegley/use-package, to speed-up the init, but to me it gives the non-critical error:

Eager macro-expansion failure: (file-missing "Cannot open load file" "No such file or directory" "use-package")

Secondly, while use-package is proposes a safe approach to automatically install packages, the author does not tell how to do same with use-package itself. The test (package-installed-p 'use-package) works, but since it requires initialising all packages, I suspect it can slow-down the init, and wonder if there is a faster way.

Edit

It seems that after switching from https://stable.melpa.org/packages to https://melpa.org/packages the eager macro-expansion failure disappeared from the Messages buffer.