July 2009
23 posts
2 tags
Greensgrow CSA Week 11
This week in the CSA basket, we have:
Tomatoes - Lancaster County, PA
Peaches - Beechwood Orchards, Biglerville, PA
Corn - Lancaster County, PA
Eggplant - Lancaster County, PA
Green Peppers - Lancaster County, PA
Onions - Lancaster County, PA
Cheese - Allegheny Chevre - Firefly Farms, Long Valley, NJ
Dairy Option - choose one: 1 dozen Free-Range Eggs, 2 Pequea Valley Yogurts,
1/2 Gallon...
2 tags
Best cookies: Hope's Cookies
After the Cupcake Truck’s visit, I decided to highlight some of my other favorite treats in and around the city. Today, cookies!
When I see people walking out of Reading Terminal Market with a big bag of Famous 4th Street Cookies, I shed a tear for them. Not because there’s anything wrong with 4th Street, but because they came so close to the best cookie in America, and walked away with...
1 tag
Do you like Restaurant Week?
I didn’t really mean to take part in University City Dining Days. In fact, I try to avoid such things as a matter of course. But Nick and Mariah are moving to New Hampshire at the end of the week, and they got engaged last week, and they had never been to Distrito, so we made plans to go, and when it was dining days, well, that was not about to stop us.
Typically, a Restaurant Week menu...
2 tags
Best muffins and quickbreads: The Bakery House
After the Cupcake Truck’s visit, I decided to highlight some of my other favorite baked goods in and around the city. Today, muffins!
I love muffins. More than one professor in college referred to me as “the muffin girl”. The demise of My Favorite Muffin, which truly had my favorite muffins (cinnamon cheese), was a crushing blow for me.
Enter the Bakery House in Bryn Mawr,...
1 tag
Pavlovas
Knowing that I’m part of a food blog now, I realized I couldn’t sit on my “going to restaurants and taking photos” and “having a cute baby who eats” butt for too long. I wanted Helen to be happy that she invited me to blog with her. When Paul told me he had invited his brother and his brother’s fiancee over to have dinner, I decided I was going to make a...
Ocean City, Maryland
Paul, Nathan, my mom, and I packed up last week to go to Ocean City, Maryland. I know it’s not as common for Philadelphians to go to non-Jersey shores, but my father used to take us to OC, MD when I was a teenager, and my mom went just last year and loved it. Since my mother wanted to go with us this year, I planned our trip for MD rather than NJ.
I had wanted to take photos of the food...
2 tags
Buttercream, the roving cupcake truck!
Pobox.com and Listbox.com were lucky enough to be selected for Philadelphia’s newest cupcake purveyor Buttercream’s Bring A Cupcake To (our) Work Day, and the results were sweet!
Cupcake captain Kate brought 2 varieties of her cupcakes for us to try, a yellow cake with chocolate ganache, and a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting.
I have two pet peeves when it comes to...
1 tag
Make anything into a salad
Yes, I know intellectually that I can put anything I want into a salad. But sometimes, when you’re staring at your pile of CSA goodies, and you don’t want to cook, it would be so nice if someone would just tell you 3 things that go together. Bittman comes to the rescue, with 101 summer salads!
Now, who wants to recommend a nice, but not-too-expensive balsamic vinegar to go on all these salads?
Farmable, sustainable tuna?
Fish is delicious when fresh, but its quality is more fragile than ripe strawberries. I try not to think about how much fish must get thrown away daily at Reading Terminal Market alone. Overfishing has decimated edible fish populations around the world, and farmed fish is decimating the population of stuff we don’t bother eating. (Luckily, my beloved oysters are sustainably farmable, and...
Review: Fogo de Chao
I have resisted pressure from many corners to go to Fogo de Chao (aka the Meatateria.) in the past. The idea of all-you-can-eat meat is more disgusting than delightful to me, and I felt pretty confident that I could not consume anything close to $50 worth of meat. I went with a table full of men, and they all seemed to think it was great, so, take what I say with a grain of salt. But I think...
Blueberry boy bait
When you rarely bake, baking anything from scratch is such a pain. Either you’re buying every ingredient, or you’re trying to resurrect your year-old rock-hard brown sugar while fashioning muffin cups out of coffee filters.
I don’t know that two successful projects makes one a baker (though I can tell you that the world’s greatest chocolate cake also becomes lovely...
2 tags
Greensgrow CSA Week 7
This week’s haul:
Greensgrow Bucks - Five Bucks - Philadelphia, PA
Corn - Gaventa Farms, Swedesboro, NJ
Baby Bok Choy - Flaim Farms, Vineland, NJ
‘Goddess’ Cantaloupe - Lancaster County, PA
Red Beets - Flaim Farms, Vineland, NJ
Cheese - DiBruno’s Cheese Spreads- Philadelphia, PA
Dairy Option - gotta have my 1 dozen Free-Range Eggs
Chicken Sausage (contains pork) -...
Preview: SquareBurger at Franklin Square
Franklin Square, I love you. I love your mini-Philly mini-golf. I love your playground. I love your fountain, and carousel, and sand sculptures. (I don’t love your idiotic “no photos” policy. Get rid of that.) And I love that you realized that your concessions needed to go beyond soft pretzels and hot dogs.
(Photo by Louis Clotman)
Mary had heard that Steven...
Buttermilk biscuits
Meng is one of those cooks who likes to add new recipes to his repetoire by cooking the recipe at least 20 times. (See: smoked gouda omelets) Thanksgiving 2007, his recipe of choice was these drop biscuits. Much to our excitement, he made them twice in the three days he was here. On the second go round, a spontaneous biscuit party resulted. Your results may vary.
Best drop biscuits
2 cups...
Fresh doughnuts at brunch
Scott and I had brunch at Craftbar, and I was in the mood for something sweet. I noted that most items in the pasty section were $3, while the doughnuts were $7. This is typically a sign that something special is going on, so I asked Scott if he had eaten them before. He had not, but had eaten the cinnamon rolls, and said he wasn’t impressed. “They were cold, and I think it had...
Lacroix: Philly's greatest brunch
After visiting Brunch Philly, I realized I have never shared with you the joy that is the buffet brunch at Lacroix. Even I, who refuse to photograph in restaurants, could not resist the urge to snap a pic of this delight:
This brunch almost has to be experienced to be believed. It’s got everything you would expect from a high-end hotel brunch: the lox and cream cheese, the carving...
Fried mozzarella nuggets and red scallion rings
This week’s CSA went super quickly! But, after making french bread pizza, there was still a lot of mozzarella left. bda suggested trying to make our own fried mozzarella. And I didn’t want to forget about the red scallions….
Deep-frying is not easy, but it definitely is simple. Since I was only frying small things, I set up a small pot with a good depth of oil, rather than...
6 cans + a pound of chicken = 5 dinners
Do you like Thai food? Good — me, too. My friend Pierre taught me how to make this, and it immediately (read: after he moved away, and stopped making it for me) became one of my staples. Take a pound of chicken. Add:
It’s dinner tonight, and it’s 4 more freezer-friendly meals for 2.
Chicken Green Curry
1 lb chicken meat (Pierre always used thighs; I prefer breasts. ...
The best chocolate cake ever
Once upon a time, Paul made this cake, and I went nuts for it. I said, “This is the greatest cake ever,” and he promptly wrapped up a huge hunk of it for me to take home. I proceeded to eat it for breakfast for the rest of the week, when it exhibited the magical property of getting better every day.
Fast forward 8 months to my birthday. Paul made me the cake. And then proceeded to...
Berry Season
Hello, World! I forced Helen to invite me to her blog, so I could invite her to my own crafting blog. Since she’s invited several people now and none of them have posted, she is probably unwilling to admit that she invited me! So, to make her feel like the invite was good, I posted almost immediately.
Now that I no longer work right next to Reading Terminal Market, I’ve been dying...
What's your favorite recipe site?
Jenn and I have often discussed how there should be a ravelry for cooking. Ravelry, should you not have any knitters in your life, is a knitting “social networking” site, but it’s really a massive repository of information about all things knitting related. And where it’s really most relevant to the world of cooking is patterns.
Ravelry has a massive database of pattern...
2 tags
Greensgrow CSA Week 5
It’s soaring highs, crushing lows week in the CSA basket. It’s a giant pile of YUM! And cucumbers. Blech. bda even threatened to eat them.
Basil - Greensgrow Farms and Spring Thyme Herbs, PA
Peaches - Fifer Orchards, Wyoming DE
Blueberries - Hasmmonton, NJ
Romaine Lettuce - Flaim Farms, Vineland, NJ
Cucumbers - Lancaster County, PA
Corn - Gaventa Farms, Logan Township, NJ
...
2 tags
In search of the simple dinner party
My go-to company dinner is roast chicken. Everyone (except vegetarians) likes it, there are very few ingredients needed and there are no complicated 24-hours-in-advance steps.
Bittman has a great recipe, and so much faster than most. I was forever inviting people over, then serving them dinner an hour later than I intended. Not so with the Bittman technique.
Preheat the oven to 500. Rinse...