barefoot and in the kitchen

Setting up the kitchen was one of my favorite parts of the moving in process.  I invested in some (cheap!) Ikea jars for having all my grains accessible, and some spice jars for the same purpose.  I'm happy with the result, although it kind of makes me look like one of those rice hoarders who have been in the news lately.

A few years ago I tried to maintain a food blog, but it didn't last long.  However, I still love cooking and taking pictures of what I make, so perhaps I'll bring some of that to this blog.  The first meal I cooked in our new kitchen was an homage to South Philly--a tomato, basil, mozzarella pizza.  Unfortunately, the dough--whole wheat pizza dough from Trader Joe's--stayed goopy no matter how long I put the pizza in the oven, so I ranked it a failure.

My next meal was more successful--I marinated some orange roughy in a blend of olive oil, cilantro, lime juice, garlic, red pepper, and blue agave nectar (which tastes a lot like honey, but is less sticky.)

Penang

If you know me well, you know that my favorite place to eat is Penang, in Philly's Chinatown. So imagine how cool I thought it was that the local South Jersey paper did a review of Penang!  Well, then I read it.  I don't want to be the stereotypical hyper-PC grad student, seeking out racial, ethnic, or gender slights at every opportunity.  

But DUDE.  He said the waiters looked like NINJAS.  

I sent the author an email.  I won't reproduce it here because I tend to get long-winded and rhetorically self-indulgent when I write angry emails, but I'll let you know if he responds.

good art, good food

When I first came to the Philadelphia area for college, one of my first trips into the city was to take part in College Day on the Parkway.  On a Saturday in September, all of the museums located along Ben Franklin Parkway are free for college students.  It was such a great experience, especially because it coincided with the Steuben Day Parade, so as we walked up to the museums, we watched people in lederhosen shepherding ducks along Philadelphia streets.

The Ben Franklin Parkway is a wide avenue with City Hall at one end and the Philadelphia Museum of Art at the other.  It's lined with museums--the Franklin Institute, the Moore College of Art and Design, the Rodin Museum, the Free Library.  It's a very grand section of the city.  It's also lined with the flags of the nations, but as you can see, the United Arab Emirates flag is showing some wear.

Yesterday, Greg and I and two other couples met up at the Art Museum to go to the Frida Kahlo exhibit, which was a nice break from working on the house and on papers.  The exhibit was really interesting--they displayed a lot of photos from a private collection that had never been exhibited before, as well as, obviously, many of Kahlo's paintings.

I'm no art critic, so I won't try and make up some kind of uninformed review of the exhibit, but I will say that one interesting element of the exhibit was that the walls were painted really bright purples and blues.  I'm only used to seeing art displayed on clean white walls, so the colors were interesting.  Either it was a really cheesy way of recognizing the "exotic" "vibrancy" of the Mexican artist, or it was meant to evoke Frida's house, the Casa Azul, which was painted in these kinds of colors.  

I'd like to give the exhibitors the benefit of the doubt that it wasn't cheesy, but the gift shop that the exhibit dumps you into seriously undermines that reading.  Frida prints!  Frida postcards!  Frida notebooks!  Bright paper Frida flowers!  Frida umbrellas!  Frida jewelry! Alas, I didn't see any Frida shot glasses.  I guess that would be considered tacky.

After the exhibit, we had reservations at a tapas restaurant called Tinto.  (Greg and I decided to count this as our anniversary gift to each other for last year, since we had celebrated by me cooking tilapia and green beans, which I cook roughly once a week.  In other words, it had been nothing special, so we used it to assuage our guilt about going out to such a fancy place.)

Tinto's chef is considered one of the bright lights of the Philly restaurant scene (wow, that sounds sooooo lame for me to write that, sorry) and the food did not disappoint.  We ordered the Chef's tasting, which meant we didn't have to decide what we wanted.  They just kept bringing food!  At one point they cleared our plates and we thought we were done, but then they brought new plates and several more dishes!  Most of the people at our table thought that the duck wrapped in serrano ham and served on a slice of baguette with blue cheese and a cherry was the best, but my humbler palate was delighted by the mini crock of black beans, sausage, and braised cabbage.  There was also a dish that was basically really fancy tater tots.

Greg and I are such dorks that on the way home, we stopped at Blockbuster and picked up the movie Frida.  I had seen it before, but Greg hadn't.  All in all, it was a totally indulgent, educating, and appetizing day.  And now it's back to work!

Temple

One of the reasons we ended up buying the house we did was because of that old real estate maxim: location, location, location.  For those of you not familiar with Philadelphia, it's very helpfully laid out in a grid.  Broad Street runs North-South and Market Street runs East-West. The two intersect at City Hall.  Our place is about two miles south of City Hall, and Temple University, where I am a student, is about two miles north.  

All I have to do to get to school is walk a block, hop on the subway, and ride for 15 minutes.  It's very convenient, especially compared to my current commute: drive to a regional rail station (10 minutes), ride the train (30 minutes), walk a few blocks to the subway (5 minutes), ride to Temple (10 minutes).  When you add in waiting for the trains, it's easily an hour-long trip.  I don't mind too much because I get a lot of reading done, but it's not like I can just hop on over to school to pick up a book at the library or check my mailbox.  Additionally, it's not cheap--the round-trip fare is almost $10. When we live in the city, I will be able to get to school quickly and cheaply, and we will be able to get rid of one of our cars and reduce our expenses and carbon footprint.  

These are a few pictures of Temple, which I took Saturday.  I spent the day in the library while Greg was busy working at the house.  These pictures show the more picturesque parts of the campus.  The building I spend most of my time in is actually really ugly and poorly-designed to boot.  It's a very neat place, though.  The campus is huge (at least compared to the other schools I've attended) and urban and always PACKED with students--total enrollment is over 35,000.  

One of the best-and most dangerous-aspect of the school is that you can get any kind of food your heart desires, from Middle Eastern to pizza to Vietnamese to cheesesteaks to Korean to crepes to salads.  I have to walk past a lot of these food stalls to get to my building, and resisting the delicious smells is definitely an act of willpower.

There's the Temple Owl.

A South Philly favorite done right in South Jersey

We didn't make it to Mercy Street this weekend.  Greg is nursing a sore throat and I'm working on end-of-the-semester papers.  However, we did make it out for a stroll to the Water Ice Factory, which is just a few blocks away.  Water ice is a local delicacy, not to be confused with slushees, sno-cones, or Italian Ice.  It's frozen yet creamy in texture, and in my opinion, tastes best in some kind of tropical fruit flavor, like mango or coconut.  Looks like we'll have to do the hard work of testing all the options in our new neighborhood.

South Philly Freestanding Chick-Fil-A

At the end of a long day's work, it's nice to know that Chick-Fil-A is right down the street.  The  South Philly Chick-Fil-A is not just any Chick-Fil-A, however.  It has something I haven't seen at any other Chick-Fil-A I've been to.

That's right, Texas Pete hot sauce.  It is the perfect complement to the original Chick-Fil-A chicken sandwich.  Why is South Philly so special?  Why don't all Chick-Fil-A's offer this delicious condiment?  I don't know, but I'm glad I live by this one.

And even more exciting, the view across the parking lot.

Local Flavor

Yesterday I spent the afternoon scrubbing walls and removing staples and nails from the bedroom and office floors.  Greg and Dennis came over after work and the three of us decided to take a walk to local sandwich place for dinner.  Here are some of the conversations we overheard while we waited for our cheesesteaks:

***

[Elderly man enters.]

Owner:  Hey, buddy how you doin'?  Where's your brother?

Man:  He's working on my car...did you hear I got a new car?

Owner:  Oh yeah.  Did you have a good New Year?  Of course you did, you're a Mummer*. Mummers always enjoy New Year.

***

[Delivery Woman returns.]

Delivery Woman:  Anything ready?

Cashier:  Nah.

DW:  Did you hear about the weather this week?  60 degrees on Wednesday.

Cashier:  Crazy.

DW:  Did they send a shuttle up to space again?  Every time they do they mess with the ozone layer and it screws up the temperature.  I wish they'd stop sending people up to space.

***

[Dennis introduces himself to the owner and explains that we are new to the neighborhood.]

Owner:  Where ya from?

Dennis:  South Jersey.

Owner:  Oh yeah, where?

Dennis:  Magnolia, it's not far from Deptford.

Owner:  [Silence.]  What diners?

Dennis:  Philly Diner, Geets Diner.

Owner:  Oh yeah, Geets.  Right.

And then we got our sandwiches and headed back.

*A Mummer, as far as I can tell, is someone who participates in Philly's Mummer's Day Parade on New Year.  Apparently this is the country's largest folk parade, which means rather than elaborate floats financed by corporations, you have groups of families and friends parading around.  The parade is divided into the comics, the fancies, the string bands, and the fancy brigades.  Each of these groups is more lavish than the next.  The comics (at least from what I saw this year, my first encountering this very unusual tradition) seem to be mainly drunk men in goofy costumes, sometimes organized around a theme, but usually pretty loosely.  The fancies have slightly more exaggerated costumes, using the three main ingredients (sequins, feathers, and parasols) liberally.  The string bands have fairly complex acts and are judged based on musicality, choreography, theme, etc.  Their themes might be "Hot Nights in the Jungle" or "The Old West."  Finally, the Fancy Brigades, which focus mainly on the staging and choreography.    It is really bizarre to watch straight men prance around in sequins and feathers for twelve hours, but it's apparently at the heart of what makes South Philly and environs so community-oriented.  If you have a second to google Mummers, you'll get a much better idea of what I'm trying to describe.