A Delicious and Crunchy Salad - No Lettuce Anywhere!

We decided to play around a bit with the classic Celery & Green Olive salad - basically a very old Italian recipe in the Cucina Provera ("poor cooking") mode.

Happily, we found that we had much in our produce drawers that "needed to be used". There were gorgeous purple and reddish carrots, a watermelon radish, celery, Cerignola olives, parsley and mixed sprouts - our neighbors had a windfall of sprouts this past week and shared. Everything we found got sliced, pitted, and chopped and went into the bowl.

With a little creativity in the way you slice everything, you can create a truly beautiful salad. Remember - we eat with our eyes too. The artful slicing you see is all the work of my much better half, by the way.

We dressed the salad with a basic vinigarette (made with champagne vinegar) to which we added pinches of dried oregano, garlic powder, salt and pepper, and pepper flakes.

I highly recommend letting the salad sit for a bit. And the next day? Wow - you have an amazing salad again or you could chop it down some more and have a glorious relish to nap over fish or a piece of meat or even onto toasted bread for a bruschetta appetizer.

Enjoy.

An Urban Garden Adventure Begins

Not to wax too philosophical about it, but I feel like I have been planning and learning and working through failures and successes for a number of past growing seasons just to get to THIS year of growing. This will be the year I get serious - and will have serious expectations - about having a successful tiny urban farm.

It's the year I will plant and tend more edible crops than ever before. We are also hoping to have a bit more in the way of color and cutting flowers. We have made some investments in the garden over the winter which will allow this to happen and for that I am very grateful.

I have a great deal of seeds and seedlings on order and am gradually building up my supply of bags of soil, plant tags, and hose attachments - among other things. I am watching closely as some perennial plantings begin to peek out from the soil. For example I have a nice start of Garlic Chives already (see photo). Our ancient Sage plant is budding a bit, as well.

Over the coming weeks I will be writing about what we are growing here at Il Moya, about getting the crops in and my experiences, successes and non-successes. I will also be sharing recipes and techniques for using the bounty of the season.

As you know, we have been learning and planning and making changes in the way we live for some time now. Self sufficiency, re-use, rescue and recycle and a smaller carbon footprint are all goals we strive for everyday.

I hope at the end of this growing season to be able to say that we were pretty successful and that the garden produced a lot for us to eat, to share, to can, to dry and to freeze.

This will be an adventure; one of joy and hard work and a lot of fun.

Stay tuned and stay in touch.

A Repost: Breakfast Cous Cous & Folk Magazine

I wanted to tell you all about a great new magazine, called Folk, that I think many of you would really, really enjoy. If you are interested in urban homesteading, gardening and growing some of your own food, becoming more self sufficient, and a wide array of other skills and issues, this is the publication for you. It is also just plain beautiful. See below for further information.


By the way, March is National Nutrition Month.



Recipe: Breakfast Cous Cous (originated by Vincent of the Jazz Quarters)

Here's a technique for a new breakfast dish we learned from the Innkeepers at the Jazz Quarters on our trip to New Orleans a few weeks ago. You can definitely get creative with the add - ins and it holds well in the 'fridge (I store it in large Bell jars). It also is probably healthier than a lot of the things most of us grab in the AM.

Take a cup of cous cous (we like the Israeli type but any kind will work) and sauté it in 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter for about 2 minutes. Give it a bit of a toast.
Remove cous cous from the pan and wipe the pan out.

Get your add - ins together. The original uses handfuls each of dried cranberries, raisins, chopped walnuts, and slivered almonds. Set these aside.
Get your spices together: 1/2 teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg, clove and salt.

Boil one and one half cups of orange juice.

Off heat, add the cous cous to the hot orange juice. Cover and let stand for 5 minutes.

Toss the slivered almonds into the dry pan for a few minutes; stay with them to avoid burning. Let the almonds cool a bit.

Uncover the cous cous - it should have absorbed all of the orange juice - and stir in the seasonings and then the fruits and nuts.

Let the mixture cool before storing it in the refrigerator.

To serve, let each serving come to room temperature. Enjoy accompanied by a dollop of vanilla yogurt and a drizzle of honey - or whatever else you'd like. It's delicious as is too.

Happy Daylight Savings Time! It could not have come fast enough for me.

Testing The Philly Foodist

Hi everyone

Please excuse the intrusion but I am testing the blogger software.

For some reason following an "update" the blog stopped publishing.

We are trying. Thanks

A Few Good Things That I'm Loving

Some things I thought were worthy of passing along.

I wanted to tell you all about a great new magazine, called Folk, that I think many of you would really, really enjoy. If you are interested in urban homesteading, gardening and growing some of your own food, becoming more self sufficient, and a wide array of other skills and issues, this is the publication for you. It is also just plain beautiful. See below for further information.

By the way, March is National Nutrition Month.

There are still a few tickets for the annual Brewers Plate. It's tomorrow at the Constitution Center from 6:00 - 9:00. Lots and lots of chefs, makers, and purveyors offering amazing food - matched with some of the best brews ever! How can you go wrong? Benefits Fair Foods so you can't go wrong. See you there? For further information go to:
http://bpfair-food.ticketleap.com/the-brewers-plate/details



Recipe: Breakfast Cous Cous (originated by Vincent of the Jazz Quarters)

Here's a technique for a new breakfast dish we learned from the Innkeepers at the Jazz Quarters on our trip to New Orleans a few weeks ago. You can definitely get creative with the add - ins and it holds well in the 'fridge. It also is probably healthier than a lot of things most of us grab in the AM.

Take a cup of cous cous (we like the Israeli type but any kind will work) and sauté it in 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter for about 2 minutes.
Remove cous cous from the pan and wipe it out.

Boil one and one half cups of orange juice.

Get your add - ins together. The original uses handfuls each of dried cranberries, raisins, chopped walnuts, and slivered almonds. Set these aside.
Get your spices together: 1/2 teaspoon each of cinnamon, nutmeg, clove and salt.

Off heat, add the cous cous to the hot orange juice. Cover and let stand for 5 minutes.

Toss the slivered almonds into the dry pan for a few minutes; stay with them to avoid burning. Let cool.

Uncover the cous cous - it should have absorbed all of the orange juice - and stir in the seasonings and then the fruits and nuts.

Let the mixture cool before storing it in the refrigerator.

To serve, let a serving come to room temperature. Enjoy accompanied by vanilla yogurt and a drizzle of honey - or whatever else you like!

Happy Daylight Savings Time! Could not come fast enough for me.

Philly Food shopping/Flower Show Tips

I totally love the Reading Terminal Market - it has been our supermarket for over 25 years now. With the addition of the Fair Food Farmstand, we realized we literally had one stop shopping. That said, there are two times a year we seek to avoid it - The Auto Show and The Flower Show.

Plan ahead. Get your goods from RTM during the "in between times" - 2-5 PM. Do NOT try to shop at lunchtime all week and Saturdays.

If you are attending the Flower Show - we find mid week nights at around 5:00 PM to be the best time to enter - at 5:00ish.


After that - I have two other suggestions for those wanting to food shop: the Italian Market and East Passyunk Avenue (Mr Mancusso's, Green Aisle Grocery, etc.).


For post show Diners: Vietnam - hands down. Go there. Avoid Vietnam Palace across the street

Enjoy.

And in the End, it really is all about Love

So we're back home to our beloved Philly with yet another set of great memories & stories of folks we met and chatted with, some new recipes, and some new music.

And to be clear, we are not so dazzled by NOLA that we don't realize it has its problems, some quite serious.
It is a city. Cities that are vibrant, diverse, busy, well traveled, worth living in and real, do.

Cities that attract the creative and the crazy; the seekers and the strivers; and the lonely and the lovers are mixed up, complicated balls of hot, wet messiness. That is as it should be. That is New Orleans.


A few things that we'll miss until we return to New Orleans:

Almost always, people on the street speak or at least smile. That's another human being there! (I'm happy to say that's the norm in our little village in the city here - although it's definitely not the norm city wide).

The glorious, glorious food. And the great places to eat that food that we've come to know - especially those that are beloved by the locals.

Being able to stop for a minute to give a listen to street music.

The music. And lots of places to hear it every night.

Accepting there's always time to chat. Also accepting that there's always time for a bit of alcohol, a bite of food.

Realizing that rushing should be reserved for the most dire of circumstances.

Dancing in public - which is accepted, expected and encouraged. There are no "bad" dancers in New Orleans!

The colors, the palm trees, the aromas, the people, the river, the warmth.


Ah, New Orleans, know that you are loved. See you soon!