Sunday, July 17, 2011

University City Dining Days + Why Philly is Awesome!

The folks at Philly Homegrown were kind enough to invite me to dinner last week. Philly Homegrown is an initiative of GPTMC. They have some pretty great goals like getting more consumers to buy local and promoting the folks creating all this amazing local food - from farmers, brewers, cheese makers, and bakers to the chefs that are serving local foods in their restaurants. Check out their website: food.visitphilly.com.

We had a quick visit to Clark Park Farmer’s Market and then a delicious dinner at Rx in University City. Rx is one the many restaurants participating in University City's dining days that are dedicated to using fresh, local ingredients. Have you heard of Dining Days? It's like Center City Restaurant week but with $15, $25, and $30 price options - see more info on that here. It's a real bargain and it only goes through July 28th - so get to it!

My Rx dinner was great - I had a delicious salad with spicy pecans and local apples:
Trout with black eyed peas and green beans:
and rice pudding (I tried all the desserts and they were great - chocolate bread pudding? chai creme brulee? fried apple pie? Yes, please).
I'm going to try to make it back out to Dining Days this week for 3 dishes at Biba for $15 - bargain, right?

This was my first visit to Clark Park Farmer's market - I've been meaning to go for months and can't wait to check it out again on a Saturday. It was chock-full of local fruits, veggies, meat, dairy and baked goods. Ever had ice cold goat's milk? No? You should try it - it's seriously delicious.

We also had the opportunity to chat with folks from The Food Trust. They're an awesome organization in Philadelphia that is working hard to make sure everyone has access to healthy food. They're in schools teaching healthy eating habits, starting farmers markets in every part of the city, working with corner stores to help them stock healthy foods and so much more. They're pretty amazing.

Thanks, Philly Homegrown, for a lovely, informative evening!

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