FARMiCiA

A & I have been documenting our fresh and local produce from our CSA share, which has been well complemented by fresh baked bread from Metropolitan Bakery. If you combine these things with the restaurant scene, you might find yourself at FARMiCiA, a restaurant in Old City that focuses on simple dishes utilizing local, organic ingredients. Additionally, this restaurant is the brainchild of the owners of Metropolitan. Because A was in the Poconos...

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CSA Week 2

After some reader comments about "measly vegetables" in our last weeks CSA half-share, A & I are pleased to say that this weeks share was a little more exciting. In this weeks box we received the following:Front: one bunch Hakurei turnips, two bunches scallions (matured to more of a "spring onion"), one bag purple broccoli, one bag watercress; Back: one head red leaf lettuce, one bunch kaleThis box had THREE new products that we've never had-...

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City Tap House

This past week was a bit on the stressful side as both A & I had our preliminary/comprehensive exams for our respective programs. Good news is we both passed- making us official PhD candidates! Although we do have some bigger dining-based celebration plans for some point in the future, we really just wanted a low-key dinner at the end of the week. Very recently opened on Penn's campus, City Tap House has been getting a decent amount of press....

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Our First CSA Share

This past week was quite exciting as it marked the delivery of our first box of CSA veggies. We signed up for the CSA several months ago (we blogged about it here, so have been somewhat anxiously awaiting the start of the "season." Lancaster Farm Fresh Coop has been great about sending us updates about the progress of the farms and even including pictures of adorable baby lettuces that would eventually be ours!Our pickup location is conveniently...

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TMG

I know we are constantly raving about the huge number of great restaurants in Philly, but it's something that we are still amazed at after six years here! The variety of good places to eat are scattered across the city- from Northern Liberties to West Philly, and living in the middle of it all allows most of these places to be very accessible. However, it has also prevented us from taking advantage of some of the restaurants that are just under...

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Banana Pudding Adventures

One of the best parts of my work day is eating lunch (obviously- its food related!). All the lovely ladies who work in my lab (and one of the guys if he's feeling up to the gender ratio discrepancy) take a break to eat and catch up on non-science related topics. We usually check out what everyone is eating- lots of "ooh what's that?" and "Where did you get that?" fly around the table on any given day. A few months ago, a large quantity of homemade...

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Maru Global

A & I are always inspired to try to find the little niche restaurants that are often overshadowed in a city like Philadelphia. We have our favorite place for calzones (Gusto) and our favorite place for pitas (Hummus) and our favorite place for Mexican food (MadMex)- places that don't get a lot of attention because they don't have big name chefs or a fancy menu. Maru Global recently opened near Jefferson and offers a totally unique cuisine in...

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Vegan Banana Pancakes

Pancakes are a specialty in our house. Sometime during college, we started making pancakes on the occasional weekend. Any time someone came to visit us, we would end up making pancakes for breakfast. Every once in awhile, we'd have pancakes for dinner. During our senior year, we had a pancake party at our apartment where we fed over twenty of our friends (true story). J is the official pancake maker-- I'm responsible for a majority of the cooking...

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Hoof + Fin

When A & I get together with friends for dinner, we usually put a decent amount of thought into what restaurant we should patron. Sometimes we like to choose something that we know is good (we recently recommended Garces Trading Co. and Kanella to a couple sitting next to us at a restaurant), but we also are usually on a mission to try something new ourselves. With that being said, we have to make sure that the chosen restaurant will cater...

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