Eating Seasonally and Whipped Jello

One of these things is not like the other. 

This is something called whipped Jello.  You take Jello let it set a while, and you whip it, then you let it set longer.  It is not food.

A friend of mine asked about a statement I made about having been eating seasonally for a few years.  We do, generally, eat our produce seasonally.  That means that while I buy tofu and chicken and mustard and couscous and kidney beans year round, I only buy tomatoes when they're here.  "Here" means that someone local (within a state or two) grew them and they're ready now.  

Sundried Tomato and Basil Crackers

My basil plant is thriving, which is a shock, because last year I killed a handful of them.  Looking for new uses for the abundance of sweet leaves, I thought back to crackers.  There's a cracker we've liked that's crispy and wheaty with sundried tomato and basil.  I can do that. 

I started with the flavor.  Dried tomato from Margerum's, via Winter Harvest and still fresh in my fridge, basil from the backyard and a bit of parmesan.   You can totally leave out the parmesan, just add a bit more olive oil and salt.  The crackers don't taste cheesy.  For cheese crackers, try something like the Mac and Cheesy Crackers I made last year.  These crackers are based on the recipe for the Thyme and Onion Crackers I wrote about more than a year ago (!) but they're tangier and almost spicy. 

CSA Summer 2012 - The Goods - Week 2

For years now, I've spearheaded this CSA thing at Saturdays Mouse HQ, and beyond the CSA part, the change in how we buy and cook food in general.  Sometimes I get all gender-role irritated about it, wife's gotta cook and shop and all of that, but mostly, I'm just glad we get such good food.  

This year, things have shifted.  The one drawback I see to our CSA this year is that Sous Chef Brian has to pick it up, so I'm never actually there.  Yesterday, he came home with the produce and told me it was, "magical."  Not the produce, which, from what I can tell, looks pretty magical, but the picking up.  Going to the farm and choosing the asparagus and interacting with other members and all.  I'm so jealous!

But it's especially awesome, because as I've hinted before, the farm market is wonderful until it's crowded and angry there and sometimes it's hard to go there on the weekend, knowing I'll be elbowing for asparagus.  Sous Chef Brian has opted out of that this season - he really hates it.  So if picking up the produce at the CSA gives him that wonderful farm market experience without the hate, everyone wins.  And I don't have to go to the market on the weekend. 

So yesterday, Sous Chef Brian went to the magical farm with the pig and the chickens and picked up all this gorgeous veg.  Honestly, the first time I saw the veg was when I was uploading these pictures.  Photo credit to Sous Chef Brian. 

Dining Out: Da Vinci

We live in South Philly. South Philly is Italian.  South Philly is a lot of things, but a lot of what it is is Italian.  My next door neighbor speaks only Italian.  There are a lot of great restaurants here, and many of the restaurants here are Italian.  I don't know how to make this clearer.  

Before I felt like I was someone who could cook, I could cook Italian.  Sous Chef Brian and I are both part Italian.  We were both raised on Italian food.  And yet, in this Italian neighborhood, we've been consistently disappointed in the Italian restaurants.  There are exceptions, sure.  We had an amazing dinner at Le Virtu several months ago.  We really liked everything about our experience at The High Note six months ago. We go to bakeries and buy tomato pie. But most of the places around here seem to drown the food in cream sauce and cheese, and then you can't taste anything. I really have nothing against cream sauce and cheese, you know that, but I want to taste my food.  Lots of times we're served red sauce swimming in oil.  It's not ok. 

One of the things that holds us back, beyond our negative experiences, is our own menu limitations.  I'm not going to eat veal or mussels, and that makes it tough.  Brian's going to eat less of that than I am.  So we check menus in advance.

Last week we were celebrating (it's my birthday, he released his EP, we've been together for a million years last week, it's even our houseiversary) and figured it was time to try another Italian joint.  The first place we picked wasn't open, and the next two menus we looked at were a bit too meat-focused, so we ended up at Da Vinci.   It had decent Yelp reviews and the menu looked good.  

Spring Pasta Salad with Balsamic-Yogurt Dressing

As I was putting lunch together today, Sous Chef Brian said, "This'll be a great post celebrating the new spring veg!" And I thought, yeah, if every other post hadn't already been that.  I mean, new spring veg are VERY exciting, but really, there's a limit.  Plus, I've failed on the veg a bit - I got those gorgeous peas in our first CSA haul and I thought I'd use them in this dish, but they didn't make it.  Turns out peas are "urgent" and you should pretty much just eat them as soon as they show up. 


But it's still exciting, since these are my first tomatoes of the year and we've eaten them in everything over the past few days, and while asparagus and radishes aren't brand new, they're still a welcome treat, so yay, spring veg!  


This is pasta salad, so of course, you can make it with whatever you get at your local market that week, it doesn't need to follow a recipe.  I used yogurt to make the dressing creamier and pretty much relied on the veg themselves for flavor, with a bit of cheese and some basil.