the girls can tell shop (at 12th + pierce streets, in south philadelphia - just below passyunk + morris!) will be open this weekend! celebrate small business saturday here in the shop with complimentary gift wrapping on your purchases, some wine + cookies!
the shop will be closed on thursday + friday of this week so that i can spend time with my family, and i hope you enjoy those days with the ones you love as well. happy thanksgiving!
the chill finally found philadelphia this week. i certainly can't complain about the amazing autumn we've had - nice + mild - the finest i remember in my 6+ years of living here in philly.
we signed up for the fall farm share, since we were so pleased with the summer vegetables this year. however, even though the friends we were splitting our share with opted not to go through fall, we got a full share anyway. if you've ever participated in a farm share, you know a full CSA is a lot of vegetables each week! it's a fun challenge, though, and a healthy one for sure.
my goals were to primarily to use the cauliflower, cabbage, kale, and green peppers that were taking up precious fridge space. i came up with dinners for two nights from almost one recipe. enjoy!
stuff / filling:
1 - 1.5 lb ground turkey
1 can diced tomatoes (or fresh, if you have them)
1 can tomato paste
1ish tomato paste can of water
1 head cauliflower
1 bunch kale
1 yellow onion
4 cloves garlic
2 t paprika
1 T fresh oregano
1/2 t chili powder
brown turkey in a large pan, then add vegetables, tomatoes + seasoning until everything is tender. divide into two parts.
monday dinner: stuffed cabbage
wrapping: 6 nice full leaves cabbage, boiled until pliable.
olive oil (to coat casserole dish)
2 c tomato sauce
half the stuff / filling recipe above
when leaves are cool enough to manage, place about 3/4 cup filling in the center of each leaf. wrap from all sides, place in oiled casserole dish. once all your cabbage parcels are in the dish, spoon tomato sauce to cover the cabbage. bake uncovered for 20 minutes at 425, until sauce is bubbly. top with grated pecorino. yay.
thursday dinner: stuffed peppers
wrapping: 2-6 green peppers (depending on size - we had puny ones)
tops cut off, cored, deseeded + steamed to soften.
olive oil (to coat casserole dish)
2 c tomato sauce
half the stuff / filling recipe above
when peppers are cool enough to manage, fill each pepper to the top with filling + place in oiled casserole dish. once all your peppers are stuffed, spoon tomato sauce to cover the cabbage. bake uncovered for 15 minutes at 400, until sauce is bubbly. top with grated pecorino. easy!
in college, we had the option to take fun supplemental classes - ballroom dancing, wine tasting, etc - just things to use the other part of the brain. i, of course, snagged a spot in the wine tasting class as soon as i turned 21 (actually, if i recall, i think the class actually began the week before i turned 21 - i was always the baby in school, with a mid-september birthday).
the instructor wanted nothing more in life than the talk about wine. he was great. i'm sure the class was full of amazing information, but my number one take-away nugget of wine knowledge? there are few food/wine pairings in this world better than pizza + chianti. so last night, erik made a simple, awesome pizza for us from the pizza dough i made a few weeks ago + topped it with sausage. the house smelled amazing when i got home from the shop - like baking bread, salty sausage + pizza-y goodness. i immediately remembered that important life lesson from college, so we uncorked a bottle of chianti. perfect for the first chilly night this fall. yay!
burger + fries + milkshake + music truck!
at a picnic a few weeks ago i ran into my neighbors, matt + quavin, who had just bought a food truck with the plans of creating the lucky old souls burger truck (named for the lucky old souls jazz club they're in the process of opening in our neighborhood). as we got into discussing what the truck would look like, there was a lightbulb moment among us. they've been fans of my work for a while (their infant son is quite the drooler + i'm told he only wears girls can tell bibs). lo + behold, after an whirlwind exchange of ideas + one awesome lunch meeting over, you guessed it, burgers, they commissioned me to create a series of illustrations for the truck.
since they were about as excited as you could be to go pick the truck up from the shop that did the vinyl graphics for it, they invited me to tag along to see it for the first time. who says no to being among the first to see a burger truck featuring your own drawings scaled up to bigger than yourself? not this girl. so along i went.
(the trumper played on the red driver's door is one of my favorite bits of it)
(the truck, as a little branch of the lucky old souls jazz club, will play jazz from speakers on top, hence the jazz ensemble diagrams)
(matt + the crew inspecting the service window + menu board)
(full burger diagram featuring all their amazing toppings on the service window)
(obligatory photo of me with the truck.)
(here's the teaser photo i tweeted the other day, riding back to the studio inside the truck)
it feels pretty awesome to be part of such a fun project. if you're in philadelphia + are lucky enough to catch the lucky old burger truck (follow them on twitter to learn their location + more!), i highly recommend the burger. (with smoked blue cheese! and housemade ketchup!) everything the truck serves is locally, responsibly sourced + made from scratch, and it all tastes super, super great. enjoy!
as much as i love summer vegetables + all the amazing things we can do with the fresh, local awesomeness we pick up in our great CSA each week (tomato + corn salad with fresh basil dressing was a favorite this summer!), there's something about fall flavors i just can't get enough of. as soon as there's a chill in the air, all i want to do is make soups, pumpkin anything, seasonal cocktails + quick breads.
this weekend, i made two tasty drinks perfect for the october weather. not coincidentally, they're both very simple + bourbon-based (my go-to spirit, especially when it's cooler out). enjoy!
bourbon hot toddy
(makes one - recipe via epicurious.com)
one of the best treats of our recent spring break was getting time to read. i'm always a sucker for a good biography, and given how much erik + i loved our recent outing to bistrot la minette a few weeks ago, i selected julia child's my life in france for the trip.
which, of course, inspired me to immediately purchase the epic mastering the art of french cooking upon our return. while i have no grand disillusions of becoming the next julie + julia, i am hoping to find the time to make some deliciousness for dinner ( + dessert!) soon.
in browsing around the internet, i stumbled across the delightful blog of kate flaim. she has a great eye for photos, and posts about adventures with her CSA often, which means lots of fantastic seasonal recipes for us. not only does she have great voice that makes for a really entertaining read, but she's also not afraid to post when things don't go exactly as planned, which is completely refreshing.
enjoy!
i don't, as a rule, typically post personal things here, but i figured this might be a nice little exception.
some family + family friends trekked out to the boulder, colorado area this past weekend to celebrate the wedding of my little sister. everything about the weekend was pretty close to perfect - a lovely dreamy venue, really great food, and, of course, since denver's about as good a beer city as my own dear philadelphia, lots of fantastic beer.
here are some of my favorite photos from the weekend - just some of many super nice moments.
[i want to thank erik, who took several of these great shots]
my neighbor and friend, leslianna, has decided to embark on a pretty fun project for this month - for all of january, she's attempting to only eat food that she's purchased in our neighborhood. it's an effort to not only support the countless corner stores and several new restaurants throughout our neighborhood, but also a method of really getting to know all the resources available where we live. it's kind of amazing the wide range of things you can pick up here.
our neighborhood, newbold, is in philadelphia, of course, between broad and 18th st., south of washington avenue and north of snyder. you can read all about her culinary adventures in newbold here!
(the photo above i swiped from another neighbor, pineapplepalace on flickr, is our friends, sam + andrew, enjoying the best indonesian food ever, which happens to be one block from my house, at hardena)
it's no secret that i love craft beer. one might even say i like craft beer as much as i like... crafts. what exactly is "craft beer" and where does it come from?
well, according to beertown.org, here's what constitutes a craft brewery and craft beer:
An independent brewery with an annual beer production of between 15,000 and 2,000,000 barrels who has either an all malt flagship or has at least 50% of it's volume in either all malt beers or in beers which use adjuncts to enhance rather than lighten flavor.
Craft beer is made using a traditional process of blending the sugars from malted grains (such as barley or wheat), with hop flowers and water. The skill of the Masterbrewer brings out the desired aroma, color, mouth feel, foam and flavor qualities of the hops and malt through formulation of recipes and the fermentation of sugars into alcohol, carbon dioxide gas and other characters. After careful aging at just the right temperatures the beer is packaged and delivered to the consumer.
anyway. beer geekery aside (note i didn't say snobbery -i thought about it, but went with geekery instead), most of the beer i love comes in bottles, and many of those bottles are not twist off caps. for a while now, i've thought it would be super fun to have a diagrammy bottle opener and so i finally made it happen. and now i will probably use one of these superfun bottle openers to open even twist offs, and you should, too.
right now, they're available in five fun designs! (doesn't that make you want to collect all five?). look for them with the:
buy one for yourself or your favorite bottled beverage loving friends!
