ghostrider

It's a great word! I think I'd have bought it, too, for that very reason! Orange pekoe, by the way, isn't a type (like oolong, pu erh, for example) or flavour of tea, it refers to the quality of the tea--it's usually the leaves at the tips, I think (I can't remember exactly, and I left my Mariage Freres tea book back in Canada) ← Me too. Actually OP refers only to leaf size - it tells you that you're buying a whole leaf tea. Other abbreviations may be added to OP to characterize a particular lot more precisely. Here is one handy guide to tea grades, courtesy of Upton. (Note that when they say "finer," they are speaking of leaf size, not quality.) And here is a slightly different take that I found some years ago at a site called LeafTea - it perpetuates the usage of OP on Ceylon teas, though this still seems to vary depending on the merchant - I've seen Ceylon FOP and GFOP, though I don't think I've ever seen a Darjeeling OP: I thought the House of Orange reference was particularly appropriate here. Enough tea pedantry! I forgot to say happy birthday! I am saying it now! Happy birthday!

My ancestry is 1/4 Dutch, yet I haven't visited Holland since 1962, alas, so it's really nice to have these "inside" views of Amsterdam! Thanks. The bag of "Balangoda OP" couldn't help but catch my eye. I was unfamiliar with the name but a quick google led me here, where I learned that this is a Ceylon tea that I have yet to try. The naming convention has me curious though. Most US tea merchants would label this variety as "Ceylon Balangoda," as it is on the linked site. Has Orange Pekoe come to denote Ceylon teas in Amsterdam? Or am I just being misled by one merchant's peculiar way of labelling tea?

WHole Foods has been having an extended sale (last week & this) on halibut steaks for $8.99. It's a sale in their world at any rate, I haven't seen halibut elsewhere lately so can't say whether this is a real sale. But I can say that the halibut is very fresh & quite delicious!

Ha, all that research paid off. I'm honored to have tied. In researching that final question, somewhere I came across a long passage from Benjamin Franklin about how he improved Philly's public markets - they were just designated areas and essentially mudpits when he came on the scene. He kept pressure on the city to pave the market areas with cobblestones, and then pave the streets around them, until they became decent areas to shop. I fleetingly wondered if this had anything to do with those wide streets but didn't have time to follow that thought. So it goes. I've learned a lot this week about one of my favorite cities, both from this blog and from surfing into many unexpected places to find answers for the trivia contest - that was a great idea! I even came across a development plan for West Philly that ties in very nicely with Sandy's coverage of the Fresh Grocer. I also learned that the "tree streets" were named in order of increasing hardness of the wood, presumably as a memory aid to early Philadelphians. This has been so much fun. I gotta hop a train to Philly soon again. Thanks Sandy.

Hmm...... Although I grew up in the midwest, my parents admired Yankee frugality, &, for the most part, took it to levels undreamt of in cold stony New England. But curiously, part of that frugality translated into growing one's own vegetables, & it didn't forbid enjoying the taste of food. The result was that, for much of the year, we ate better than our neighbors. Of course, as an impressionable kid, I was constantly torn between enjoying the taste of corn that had been picked minutes before going into the pot, and wanting to eat TV dinners out of shiny compartmentalized aluminum trays like everyone else. Food-related neuroses take many forms & are hard to escape, though with a bit of luck & intelligence, we may outgrow them.

Gosh that's a splendid light display! In researching Sandy's 2nd trivia question, I ran across the interesting fact that the Philly City Hall is the tallest building in the world that doesn't have a steel support system at its core. It's something to sit & contemplate while savoring a takeaway mozz & tomato salad from DiBruno's.

When you're working 50-60 hour weeks year in & year out, sometimes jarred sauces are a useful thing. If you've never been so bone tired that making a sauce even by opening a can is too much effort, you're lucky. At such times, I originally went for Aunt Millie's, because it had the least amount of extraneous stuff in it. I think it may have had a bit of sugar but it beat the alternatives. Then the original Classico came along and it seemed to taste better (less sweet) to me, and had no additives, so I switched. Then I got laid off & the need for these things pretty much evaporated. Now, since I work at an Italian deli, when I don't feel like making my own, I take home a container of their freshly made sauce. I know that the ingredients are pure & simple and it tastes good. I don't really enjoy making sauce from canned tomatoes nearly as much as I do from fresh Jersey plum tomatoes when they're in season, so I'll still go for a sauce I don't make in the off season when I feel like it.

Funny how things go, but of the hundreds of varieties of cheese out there, Brie is one of the few that don't float my boat. Unless it's baked, in which case it's wonderful. ← Brie doesn't excite me much these days either, but 40 years ago, to a still wet-behind-the-ears college freshman..... OK I was about to dive into the cliched "it was a revelation!", which would be a bit exaggerated, but it was a memorable experience. Delighted to see your photos of the new DiBruno's! We'd stumbled onto the South 18th St. version on our last trip, & wound up buying our travelling supper there for the train trip back to NJ. Watching the scenery float by the train window & savoring their wonderful pasta & veggies, also memorable. I wanted to go right back and order a half dozen other dishes that we had to forgo. Thanks again for bringing the Philly area to life so well, this is terrific fun.

Just to say I'm really enjoying this, as a longtime Philly aficianado who hasn't spent nearly enough time there. My fondness for your city dates back to Thanksgiving 1966, which I spent with a college classmate in Pottstown PA. We took the train into Philly one day (I'm also a train maniac) & went to the Reading Terminal Market, where I had my first taste of Brie, among other delights. Here's one vote for a trip to the RTM this week, though I realize it's been nicely covered in other threads. Still one of my favorite places on the East Coast. ANd if you don't get there, my thanks for wherever you take us.

Fortunately, I was familiar with precisely two of these "celebs," so I guess my life just ducks under the wire. This show was appallingly pointless (I had it on in the background whilst doing some real cooking of my own). I mean, what is the supposed attraction in seeing what a group of morons can absorb from "real" chefs? (Who are the two who aren't Puck anyway?) The whole thing reeks of being pitched to the network execs because "it'll be really really cheap," from Thicke on down. What a sad waste of lobster & gelato.

I would second the advice about the door seal. I had a similar situation in my first NYC apartment 30-plus years ago. My local hardware store had rolls of roughly 1-inch-square foam backed with adhesive, I bought that & stuck it all around the door frame. Made a huge difference.

Not with a bang, but a whimper..... As an interested consumer of Maine shrimp, and with the season definitely over, I wish to express my sadness at the way it went into a long and steady decline after January in these parts. This was to have been the Year Of The Shrimp, but it didn't work out as I'd expected. I wasn't even able to hold up my end on the consumption front, thanks to illness & family responsibilities, when the stuff was plentiful, & then came the great slow fizzle. Then when I was back to normal & ready to be an active buyer again, the shrimps had disappeared from the markets. Here's hoping that next year will be better.

This thread petered out much longer ago than I'd remembered. Anyway, Stop & Shop had asparagus (Mexican) yesterday for $0.98 a pound with their price card ($1.98 w/o card). Does that qualify as a bargain or am I just jaded by Whole Foods' prices? Anyway it was quite fresh & tasty, considering how far it had travelled. No, doesn't compare with the NJ Fresh stuff at the farmers' markets, but to tide one over till our season hits, it's not bad.

Who ever looks there? I have the Jersey forum bookmarked & then hop around to other forums that interest me. In addition to being a wonderfully succinct food writer, Rosie always struck me as a generous & gracious soul. Her input here will be missed. Jason - while I'm not sure that "succinct" applies , "wonderful food writer" certainly does, & I will miss his posts as well. Or perhaps both still will post? Resignation doesn't necessarily = completely dropping out? Anyway good luck & fortune to both.

I've long been a fan of Upton's, as those who've seen my sporadic posts in this Forum will know. I've gotten some good teas from Harney's but, to my taste, never quite as good as the best I've had from Upton. I'd gotten some good teas from Frair & Grimes in Seattle before I discovered Upton, but their website seems to be down now so I don't know whether they're still in business. T Salon in NYC is a fun place to shop if you're in the area and they have some good quality teas, as well as a stunning array of tea paraphernalia. Their Mahuxami Assam is particularly interesting. I've never ordered from them online because I still get into NYC once in a while.

I always take a tea kit of some sort. Depending on where, how & how long I am traveling, it can range anywhere from a baggie full of quality teabags, to a box containing 2 teapots (one for steeping, one for pouring off into), 4-5 tea tins, strainers & measuring spoon. I also carry water, some fruit & a couple of Clif bars just in case I get stuck somewhere with no food available.

Today I drove by "Gag's Carribean & American Restaurant."

Russ, if you go back up the thread, you'll see that my comments on the Montclair WF are based on a full year of shopping there at least twice a week. I can count the # of times I've seen any Jersey produce there on less than the fingers on one hand. I have never seen Jersey peaches or tomatoes there. I think that's why they keep the sign hidden amidst the greenery. That, at least, is an honest way to present the message.

Well, I learned something about Whole Foods today. I went to my local branch again and stopped and made a careful inspection of the upper periphery of the interior space. There on the wall, half-covered by the greenery atop the produce shelf, was the notorious "Our Commitment to the Local Farmer" poster. I bet that 99.999% of the WF shoppers in Montclair have never seen this poster - I hadn't noticed it for a solid year - so it's certainly not a message that they're pushing very hard at this particular branch. Nor is it a practice there. But it now seems clear that this is a standardized part of their corporate message. As I've indicated, I'm a fan of Whole Foods, & enjoy shopping there. At the same time I think that this particular aspect of the image that they're trying to build is the most questionable. It's not at all clear to me how, or if, they practice what they preach when it comes to local produce. Whatever they're saying with regard to local farmers is starting to look like nothing but hype, and they ought to rethink it or drop it.

I shop at Whole Foods in Montclair NJ a couple of times a week for reasons of convenience. They are not as overpriced as one might think if one shops carefully, but that's tangential to the issues in this thread. I haven't seen any advertising emphasis on "Our Commitment to the Local Farmer," as reported in the Slate piece, at this particular WF branch over the past year. Thus I don't know whether this was a tentative marketing gimmick that they were trying out in NYC, or an ongoing strategy aimed at certain specific branches. Nor do I see much in the way of local produce at this WF store. As a standard of comparison, I think that Shaw's supermarkets in Maine do a much better job of selling local produce than does WF. Anyway, I'm curious as to just how widespread the WF "Commitment to the Local Farmer" campaign actually is. Have folks in other parts of the country seen any signs of this?

Oops, I speed-read right over "the EU" in your original post, thereby creating confusion where there was none. Never mind.

I was surprised that France, Greece, Italy and Spain were not listed as members, but a visit to the websited confirmed that theyare indeed members - founding members, in fact. I now have more faith in that "Tuscan EVOO" label. The US, Canada, and more than a dozen other countries are listed as IOOC "observers."

Try finding low-salt anything in Walmart's grocery dept, though. I couldn't. Though if they've evolved & are actually offering healther choices now, good on them.

Actually it's quite easy to find, at least in the US. If you read the fine print on certain labels, you'll find oils from Tunisia/Greece/Spain, & perhaps even Italy, that have been blended & bottled in Italy. Given what's been happening to olive harvests in recent years, this trend isn't surprising.

Tea OJ Oats (oatmeal or some oat-based granola mixture) I miss salad when I don't have it, but we usually have Chinese takeout a couple of times a week, & thus I go without. There was a time when ice cream would have been on the list - a time that lasted, oh, close to three decades - but I was finally able to break that addiction a couple of years ago.