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!

Zucchini Salad

This recipe had been all over the blogs and when my friend Mark made it a few weeks ago I knew it'd become a no-cook standby.

Zucchini thinly sliced on the mandoline, lemon juice, olive oil, pine nuts, parm (grate it on your cheese grater not your microplane - way better), salt and lots of fresh ground pepper.

Yum.

Sweet Potato Pancake with Arugula Salad

Please forgive my iPhone photo! I don't have my camera handy but I wanted to share this easy dish.

I grated a sweet potato and cooked it in a pan coated with nonstick spray until brown on both sides - it wasn't crispy, just cooked through. I topped it with an Arugula salad that was simply dressed with lemon juice, honey, olive oil, salt and pepper. A touch of blue cheese and almonds made this simple salad pretty darn tasty.

Greens, Greens, and more Greens

Our CSA is pretty heavy on the greens and that's a good thing because I love greens! I'll happily incorporate them into my breakfast, lunch and dinner. Here's an easy, healthy, green-y breakfast:

I sauteed some swiss chard in a little olive oil with some garlic, red pepper flakes, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and a splash of water. Once the greens were wilted I added some white beans and halved cherry tomatoes until they were heated through. I topped it with (surprise!) a sunny side up egg!

Like I said, I had this for breakfast but I've also had versions of this for lunch and dinner.

P.S. I think that "put an egg on it" is the culinary equivalent of "put a bird on it" - just sayin'.

Picnicking

A couple of weekends ago Ron and I picnicked in Redhook Brooklyn. We originally planned to picnic in Prospect Park but decided to venture a little further from Ron's apartment. We had homemade hummus, roasted vegetables with feta and shrimp salad with artichokes, olives, parsley, cherry tomatoes and lemon. Oh and little cans of Sofia champagne :)

But really we should have brought NOTHING because the Redhook ballfields are home to a ton of great food trucks. See evidence here. Everything looked and smelled great, we'll be back soon empty handed to snack on things like empanadas and pupusas.

Breaking the Fast with Zucchini Pancakes!

I'm off the juice! The 4 day Catalyst Juice Cleanse that is. I feel a little lighter, a little "cleaner" and a lot relieved that it's over. This cleanse was relatively easy - you just pick up the juices (6 a day) and drink up. I was never hungry but I did have a dull lack-of-caffeine headache for the first 2 days. The only real problem with doing a cleanse is that it's BORING, especially for people who love to cook, eat, and drink, like me! I did this Wednesday through Saturday and yesterday there was a BLOCK PARTY on my block and I had to stay inside like a hermit so not to be tempted by the booze and grub. It was a real bummer. But I'd certainly recommend a juice cleanse especially if you're finding yourself stuffing your face with too much bad-for-you food and drink.

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas of last year I did the Master Cleanse - you know, that nothing but maple syrup, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper for 10 days diet? There are additional unpleasantries that I'll omit because people come here to read about food not um...poop. Anyway...the Master Cleanse is something I refuse to believe is healthy although it helped me lose about 10lbs (about 7 of them stayed off) and really set my eating habits back on track. Not because I thought I did something really healthy for my body but because I kept telling myself things like "You just didn't eat a thing for 10 days, don't screw up the results with those french fries!". The juice cleanse it WAY easier and more pleasant - I didn't love any of the juices (there is even a lemon juice, agave, cayenne one that gave me pretty scary Master Cleanse flashbacks!) but I didn't hate them either.

Now lets talk about my first solid meal in 4 days, okay?

We're doing the Greensgrow CSA again this year and I think it's started stronger than ever. Last week we got zucchini and since I didn't eat for 4 days this week I wanted to use them up today before they went bad. Zucchini and summer squash tend to get stock piled in my fridge around this time each year so I'm always searching for new recipes. This is an Ina Garten Zucchini Pancake recipe. They came together really quickly which is good because frankly, I was hungry.

I halved the recipe - 1 grated zucchini, 1 egg, 3 Tbs flour (I used whole wheat), 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1 Tbs grated onion, salt & pepper.

I like to use my potato ricer to squeeze liquid out of anything that needs to be squeezed! It's the best way to dry shredded potatoes for hash browns.

I used a little spring release scoop to make all of the pancakes the same size. I'm sort of crazy about things being even - if you've ever seen me pour a glass of wine you'll know what I'm talking about! Instead of frying these in lots of oil I used nonstick olive oil spray. Flip them when the top started to bubble, just like regular pancakes.

I topped them with sour cream and halved cherry tomatoes that I had tossed with salt, pepper and a touch of red wine vinegar.

Ooh and I had coffee, too. It was delicious.

Weekly Detox

While Ron's away working in NYC I tend to eat super healthy during the week - heavy on the fruits and vegetables and light on the meat. I eat this way during the week for lots of reasons: it's good for me, it's easy, it's cheap BUT most of all it's because my weekends tend to filled with things like this:

Our weekends in NY are indulgent to say the least - Ron has a roommate so sitting around the house and making meals at home always seems a little awkward so we eat out...ALOT at places like Eataly (aka heaven) where the above picture was taken and great little joints in Ron's Park Slop neighborhood like Miriam for brunch and Palo Santo for dinner.

So come Monday mornings I generally feel like a little detox in necessary. I lean on meals like this one:

Tons of roasted vegetables (in this case mushrooms, onions, carrots, broccoli AND red cabbage!) with some chick peas, feta and toasted pita on the side. Roasting enough vegetables for five meals is just as easy as roasting enough for one and lately I've been making a giant tray of them and eating them all week. Plain greek yogurt with fruit and whole grain cereal for breakfast and meals like this for lunch and dinner so far have kept me fitting in my pants while allowing me to still be a giant pig on the weekends (see proof of piggy-ness here).