MarketStEl

Took me longer than I said it would, but it's up on RecipeGullet if you are at all interested. (I know at least one person is--I got a PM from him. Like me, he once lived in KC but no longer does.)

Don't think I've seen you on the Pennsylvania board yet... Or do you reserve your posts for New Jersey, or DC/DelMarVa?

I'll have to double-check, but I believe I saw them on the menu of sides at the Broad and Catherine store here in Philly last time I went there, about two weeks ago. ChefCrash: Thanks for telling me where the spices go. That actually makes sense, now that you mention it. I'll try that next time I try this at home. Agreed that the recipe calling for crushed cornflakes had little if anything to do with the actual Popeye's recipe. I've had pretty good results getting a crunchy crust with double-dipping in egg, then flour. Diva: Yeah, I love the crunchiness of Church's chicken too. But Popeye's seasoning is so much better, and its crunch is in the neighborhood. Gotta go with the kick.

Ollie Gates' Barbecue Sauce This recipe, which produces the very same Gates' Barbecue Sauce that you can get at their six locations in Kansas City, most KC-area supermarkets, and from their Web site, was featured on an episode of "From Martha's Kitchen" on the Food Network about four years ago. Since the program no longer airs on FN, and I know there are others out there who would like to try their own hand at creating that Gates' taste, I'm posting it here, because you can't find it on foodnetwork.com any more. 1 c sugar 1/4 c salt 2 T celery seed 2 T ground cumin 2 T ground cayenne pepper 2 T garlic powder 1 T chili powder 2 qt ketchup 2 c apple cider vinegar 1-1/2 tsp liquid smoke 1 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice In a small bowl, combine sugar, salt, celery seed, cumin, red pepper, garlic powder, and chili powder. Set aside. In a large bowl, combine ketchup, vinegar, liquid smoke, and lemon juice. Add dry ingredients and mix until very well blended. Serve warm or at room temperature. Sauce may be stored in an airtight container in refrigerator for up to 3 weeks or in freezer for up to 6 months. Yield: about 3 quarts Keywords: Easy, Sauce, Barbeque, Hot and Spicy ( RG1689 )

Okay, the research project is finished! And I have the names of all 52 "Best of Philly" winners in the Pizza category or variations thereof from 1973 to 2005 that I do not know to have gone out of business. (A moment of silence, please, for those that have: Apropos (1986, "yuppie pizza"), Gelateria Fratelli (1986, "hardcore yuppie pizza," and 1988, by the slice), Pizazz (1987, "yuppie pizza"), Mezzanotte (1989, "brave new pizza"), Boccie (1990, one of three editors' picks in the year they let the readers do all the choosing), and especially Lombardi's (1998, best pizza from a pizzeria).) Now for the categorization. In a class by itself, needless to say, is Tacconelli's, the only six-time Best of Philly winner in the bunch (1985, 1986 ["messy"], 1988, 1989 [for the white pie both of these years], 1993 [inducted into the first Best of Philly Hall of Fame] and 2002). I still say we should save it for last in our Best of... Tour. (Besides, as the only winner in Port Richmond, it's nowhere near any other Best of... winner--the next nearest ones are in Kensington and Frankford. It would probably make a good first or last stop on the Northeast Philly segment of the tour.) Below that is what I'd call the pantheon--the greats that made it to the top at least three times: • Marra's (five: 1978, 1979, 1985 [south Philly regional winner], 1990 and 1993 [south Philly hangout) • Celebre's (four: 1983 [for the white pie], 1987, 1989 ["good old pie"] and 1995 [city champ]) • Lamberti's Cucina (three: 1989, 1990 [vegetarian category both years] and 2000 [eastern 'burbs]) • Mom's Bake-at-Home (three, all special categories: 1986, bake at home; 1992, Northwest Philly; 1996, pizza on a diet). • Vitarelli's (three, all special: 1990, the readers' pick; 1995 and 1999, South Jersey). After that, the other 46, including three two-time winners--Apollo Pizza (1992, best in Delaware County, and 1993, one of four regional winners), Montesini Pizza (two regional wins, in 1992 and 1993) and Towne Pizza (1976 and 1977)--and three chains: Pizza Hut and Pizzeria Uno (both 1982, the year of the suburban "Best of Philly") and Peace a Pizza (2005 winner for best in Delaware County, at their Wayne location). (Does Pietro's Coal Oven Pizzeria qualify as a chain? It won the city category in 2000). I'd like to suggest tackling this geographically, starting in South Philly, home to more winners--10--than any other community. The obvious place to start, IMO, is Marra's, the only pizzeria in town that could touch Tacconelli's robes reputation-wise. From there, we could head one block north on Passyunk to Fiore's, then head south to La Rosa for a stand-up slice of potato-topped pie (the place has no seats) before finishing at Celebre's in the Packer Park Shopping Center. And keep in mind that that's only four of the 10--and those 10 are just under 25% of all winners. We've got our work cut out for ourselves, folks. Are you game to start on the 22nd?

How did I breeze by this post when you originally posted it? I assume they're still chowing down on cereal at Penn. It still boggles my mind too, but hey, I guess there are folks out there who get a cereal jones at any hour of the day. In case you're still hanging out here, Diann, I have a couple of comments re: decent Italian places: --You can't have everything in University City! (Though my former employer did try, and still does.) This is a big, wonderful old city, and if this gives you an excuse to explore it, so much the better. --You mean to tell me Penne doesn't count?

Is this recipe for the sauce available to share? I'm on the hunt for a great bbq/barbeque sauce recipe... thanks ← I found one posted here but, as it's not directly related to MS or OG, caveat emptor. ← Since "From Martha's Kitchen" no longer airs on the Food Network, it's not up on their site any more, but I saved a copy of it on my hard drive at home. I'll post it to RecipeGullet later this evening.

EVCO? You know your olives, but the stuff I find on the shelves that's labeled "extra virgin" is uniformly darker in color* and stronger in flavor -- more bitterness and a more pronounced olive flavor -- than the regular olive oil next to it. That may just be an American thing, I guess. *Goya extra virgin olive oil being the sole exception so far. It's about the same color as most brands of regular olive oil.

Carman's Country Kitchen for a breakfast you won't be able to match anywhere else, mainly because nowhere else does Carman come with your breakfast--but the dishes are inventive too.

All of a sudden I feel so...inadequate. You, sir, are truly awesome. This has been quite an edifice you've built--and edifying to boot. I do have an off-the-wall question here at the end, but I figure that since you live in one of those high-tech paradises, you'd have occasion to contemplate this: Does the use of the word "architect" as a verb (the way software and computer systems engineers seem to do) grate on you as much as it does on me?

Okay, here's the report from this week's foray into groceryland. Same sources as my previous post: Produce: Reading Terminal Market unless otherwise noted; within the RTM, this week's prices are from OK Produce unless noted as Iovine's. All other items: Acme (A) or Super Fresh (SF); sale prices noted. First price listed is per pound/quart, second is per kilo/liter. Bacon $1.99 $ 4.38 (SF: Oscar Mayer, sale price) Chicken, whole $1.69 $ 3.72 (SF: Perdue, whole fryers) Salmon, steaks $6.99 $15.38 (A) filet $7.97 $17.54 (A; sale price $2.99/6-oz portion) Shrimp, medium (51-60/lb) $3.99 $ 8.78 (A, sale price) Carrots $0.49 $ 1.08 (Iovine’s) Peppers, green bell $1.49 $ 3.28 (Iovine’s) red bell $0.99 $ 2.18 (SF, sale price) $1.99 $ 4.38 Mushrooms, white button $1.99 $ 4.38 (Iovine’s) wild mix $11.96 $26.31 (Iovine’s, oyster/Baby Bella/shiitake blend, sold ready- sliced in 4 oz pack for $2.99) Potatoes $0.20 $ 0.44 (SF, sale price $0.99/5-lb bag) Onions, yellow $0.49 $ 1.08 (Iovine’s) Texas 1015 sweet $0.79 $ 1.74 (Iovine’s) Bananas $0.59 $ 1.30 (Iovine’s) Lemons $1.00 $ 2.20 (SF, sale price $1.99/2-lb bag) Tomatoes, cherry $1.98 (sold by volume, $0.99/pint) regular $0.99 $ 2.18 $1.49 $ 3.28 (Iovine’s) Pasta $0.47 $ 1.03 (SF: Ronzoni, sale price) Olive oil, extra virgin $8.18 $ 8.59 (SF: premium store brand, price reduction) Butter $1.69 $ 3.72 (A: store brand, sale price) Eggs, dozen $1.33 (A, sale price $1.99/18 ct) Bread $1.01 $ 2.21 (A: Stroehmann “Family Grains” sandwich, sale price $1.50/24-oz loaf) Coffee $2.20 $ 4.85 (SF: Maxwell House, sale price $1.79/13-oz can) Juice, orange $0.88 $ 0.92 (SF: Florida’s Natural, sale price $1.75/64-fl-oz carton) Tea, green, 50 bags $1.99 (A: Harris, sale price)

I went back to the Silhouette after an absence of some 20-plus years when I went back for my 25th college reunion last June, and damned if one of the patrons didn't recognize me! (So did the bartender, the next night, at a reunion kick-off party at which she was a server.) I used to live right around the corner from the place, on Quint Avenue. I got a few columns for the neighborhood weekly (the now-defunct Allston-Brighten (Citizen) Item) out of that place. FWIW: The Silhouette--now with a separate room for the dart boards--is on Brighton Avenue in Allston. At the corner of Allston Street, IIRC. --Sandy, momentarily mourning the fact that, just like Charlie, the Watertown trolley will never return

Ask your daughter about the Scorpion Bowl at the Hong Kong! That's I place I plan on returning to this next trip out. ← She admitted to quaffing a few but most remembers the place for the salsa nights (??) ... ← The Hong Kong, of course, is a Harvard (Square) institution. The crowd that frequented it tended to be a little more New England preppy than the classmates I hung out with in my undergrad days. But it hasn't changed one whit, God bless it.

Bassett's is absolutely fantastic--one of the best ice creams anywhere. Really rich and creamy thanks to a high butterfat content, and top-quality flavorings. If you're interested in knowing your sources, this is also an excellent excuse for you to travel to Philadelphia and sample it in its native habitat, at Bassett's stand in the Reading Terminal Market. Did you see a Web site about the company?

When I was at Penn, I occasionally exchanged wits online with an undergraduate who argued that there was really no such thing as altruism--that everybody had selfish or self-serving reasons for acting in others' interest without apparent regard for one's own. The concept he came up with to answer the obvious objection--that acts of heroism and bravery, where one risks one's own life to save another's, clearly cannot be performed out of self-interest, since the actor has no way of knowing for sure that someone else will do the same should it be he that needs rescue--was that of the "moral high." Much as we might smoke weed or drink because of the feelings of pleasure they generate, he argued, doing good can produce a similar physiological or psychological response. If this student was on to something with this idea--which he may well have been--then it might go a long way towards explaining Whole Foods' use of virtue as a marketing tool. By wrapping its practices in the mantle of a movement--and if you look at the CEO's blog, Mackey is a movement kinda guy, only his mixes equal parts social consciousness and libertarianism--WFM allows its customers the opportunity not only to buy really wonderful food at prices that range from competitive to almost breathtakingly high, depending on the product, but to feel virtuous about doing so. (I think there was an article linked from eG recently that made similar criticisms of the Fair Trade label for coffee.) A somewhat relevant tangent: Riding the El to work this morning, I noticed a large billboard--at El level--atop the Freshgrocer supermarket at 56th and Market. It featured the face of an attractive young African American woman holding a cucumber slice over her left eye. The text said simply: "Locally Grown Organic Produce. thefreshgrocer." Now, the neighborhood around 56th and Market is mostly working class and totally African American--not the sort of demographic that Whole Foods goes after, nor the population segment that marketers usually associate with concern over such things. And thefreshgrocer is not one of these businesses that wears its virtue on its sleeve, either. The owner of this independent chain of four supermarkets, who originally ran several IGA stores in the Philly 'burbs, has stated that he learned he could make money giving urban consumers a high-quality shopping experience after he opened a store next to Penn's campus at 40th and Walnut (after being approached by Penn when efforts to land a Whole Foods Market for the space failed). He built the 56th and Market store from the ground up. His supermarkets are not that different in merchandise mix or operating philosophy from a better suburban supermarket, in contrast to Whole Foods. And yet he senses that his customer base is also interested in "buying fresh, buying local" and buying organic. They just don't see it as a badge of moral superiority. (Edited to fix misplaced punctuation.)

Forgive me, Father, for what I'm about to do... Rebecca said merely that Shola will go into the "private sector." We've already heard the personal-chef speculation; indeed, nothing could be more private than that. But this evil thought just crossed my mind: Perhaps someone at Aramark has purchased a clue?

John: I don't think anyone here was arguing that the Slate article should not have been written, or that the questions being raised were not worth raising. What people have been doing is questioning how effectively he raised them. Upthread, you cited the CEO's stock options as an example of how WFM's more egalitarian pay policy wasn't everything it seemed on the surface. I cited another WFM policy that IMO neuters this skepticism. Most of the criticism of the article I see here is in a similar vein--that there's less to the "accusations" than meets the eye. Since you raised the subject of PR, may I respond as a practitioner? You are absolutely right that PR is fundamentally nothing more than "publicity" -- letting others know the good things someone is doing. (It's also about letting others know what someone is doing to right some wrong or redeem himself after making a mistake--what is known in the business as "crisis communications.") But like all tools, it can be put to bad--or disreputable--use as well as good use. The reason Ivy Lee's work for the Rockefellers is so often cited is because the publicization of John D.'s philanthropy looked like a calculated effort to get the public to forget his less noble deeds. Now, I'm not entirely convinced that this is "disreputable"--after all, Lee said nothing that was untrue in his publicity--but it certainly qualifies as "spin," which does have a (sometimes deserved) bad rep on the street. In fact, the criticism of WFM leveled in the Slate article, like your citing those stock options, is based on the notion that what WFM says it does is somehow different from what it actually does--IOW, that Whole Foods "spins" its actions to make them seem like something they are not, or not quite. --Sandy, member, College and University Public Relations Association of Pennsylvania (CUPRAP)

Is there something special that differentiates a grove from some other type of stand of olive trees? I ask that because I thought that a lot of olives were grown in California. Is that untrue? ← Thank you for the lesson on US olive production and the clue on terminology. So what is the proper term to refer to a stand of olive trees? I used "grove" from the similarity I imagined with citrus fruit trees, stands of which (well, mainly oranges, but I think lemons and grapefruit too) are called "groves".

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, no? (According to the patron saint of harried-but-not-desperate suburban housewives, the late Erma Bombeck, the grass is always greener over the septic tank.) Seriously, they're only evidencing the same adventurousness that animates so many of us. It's just that they're starting from a different base point.

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." --David Byrne (sorry, couldn't resist)

Cunning linguist aside, Sandy, I had absolutely no idea you were a pilot. Trainee or instructor? They booted me from the club because I kept making fun of the Yalies. Stephen Starr shrugged. Isn't that the way of the world? Anent your tax-bracket comment further downthread: I don't worry too much about dining or socializing outside it--I figure I will do that a lot. <StatusShowoff="namedropper"> As I said to my classmates in Cambridge last June, </StatusShowoff> I occasionally worry that my income and net worth are dragging down the class averages. (That drew a laugh from everyone else in the small group discussion where I made it.) But the truth is, I don't worry about that much, if at all. After all, a typical Harvard graduating class is actually quite diverse: One of my closer classmates had working for the Chicago Transit Authority as his lifelong dream, which he achieved (unfortunately, his life was cut short when he stepped on the third rail near CTA headquarters earlier this year), and another works as an illustrator and cartoonist for a small newspaper in western Massachusetts--hardly upper-echelon occupations, either of them. Besides the name on our diploma, what we all have in common is that we are doing (or did, in my Chicago classmate's case) the things we truly enjoy. Everyone should be that fortunate.

This, perhaps, is the best way to live. A life where possessions and material experiences are valued not for their $$ price but for the personal satisfaction they bring. With that idea, however, is the tangential implication that one doesn't have to look or care about price tags. Needless to say, I don't quite agree with that last statement, except to the extent to which it means "If it's worth it, you should buy it." But I wrecked my credit rating taking that phrase literally. Mr. Micawber may have been too reductionist in his expression of the philosophy, but one should always strive to live within one's means. Saving up for something really swell makes the satisfaction all the greater when it comes. Agreed 110%.

I'm pretty conservative in my fashion tastes, but even though I own some designer stuff, I have no particular label fixations--though I do like Kenneth Cole's social consciousness and wit. (However, the only Kenneth Cole I have is from his lower-priced "Reaction" line and stuff I bought at either his outlet store in Franklin Mills or an off-price store. Edited to add: Oh, I forgot--I have a couple of pairs of Kenneth Cole socks that I got at a clearance sale at his Walnut Street boutique. To translate into other cities: "Walnut Street" = "Fifth Avenue"/"North Michigan Avenue"/"Rodeo Drive" (well, it has a little ways to go to reach that rarefied plateau).) Given what I like about Kenneth Cole, I should probably shop at Whole Foods more than I do. Given how I acquired my Kenneth Cole, the fact that I don't shop there much should not be surprising.

Call me an anti-elitist elitist. Or maybe more accurately, I'm not into conspicuous displays of status via consumer goods. (I much prefer using verbal and linguistic skills to do this, sprinkled with the occasional bit of name-dropping here and there [viz. my personal e-mail address-- sandysmith80 @ post . harvard . edu].) My father was a cheapskate but a better cook. My mother had fun but racked up a pretty good pile of debt. I seem to have inherited both of their traits. How this plays out gastronomically is: --I'm an aggressively thrifty shopper: I play the amateur version of The Grocery Game, playing supermarket specials off each other, clipping coupons promiscuously and buying the store brand unless a name brand is simply so much better as to make it worth the price difference. --I'm a sucker for exotic cheeses and would gladly blow my paycheck at DiBruno's if I could. --Most of the time, when I dine out, it's in places that serve everyday fare at modest prices: diners, hoagie shops, pizza places and the like. But every so often, I like to drop serious coin on a really good, inspired meal at an interesting restaurant. However, I'm more likely to do this when someone's reimbursing me for the effort. Otherwise, it's more accurate to say I'd like to do this more often. --I'm not ashamed to buy basic tools at the dollar store. But I learned the difference between price and value when I finally got a good chef's knife as a Christmas present. --I'm somewhat adventurous, but as often as not, I will go for the familiar: My repertoire of dishes is heavy on a relative handful of favorites (especially my chili) but I try to throw something new in every so often.

You are aware, are you not, that "the guys who throw" have become the foundation of a huge workplace motivational enterprise? In fact, I'll bet that the film that started all this is one of the main reasons they attract throngs of tourists now. The Human Resources department at Penn regularly featured showings of "FISH!" and workshops based on "The FISH! Philosophy." Somehow, I managed to avoid all of these during the 18 years I worked there.