DTBarton

"I will also grant that deli turkey breast is always and everywhere not as good as real roasted turkey breast, but also note that Boar's Head is at least edible and tastes like turkey, as opposed to some brands I've had that taste like water and MSG." Agreed. The better quality stuff is edible. And bad deli turkey, as you say, is REALLY bad! We have another nice local option for sandwich turkey. At Graul's market in Annapolis (a local supermarket) they have real roasted turkey breast that they slice at the deli. best of both worlds in that you get the real turkey and you don't have to buy the whole breast. But Grauls is a little out of the way on a regular basis for me, I hit them when I go to downtown Annapolis.

Oh, you mean this Fiorucci? http://www.fioruccifoods.com/ Yep, that looks like the folks. And which Giant? Giant (Landover, Md.) or Giant (Carlisle, Pa.)? Mine is Giant (Landover MD). I'm in Edgewater, MD, just south of Annapolis. We have a Giant store in town. The Fiorucci stuff just showed up recently. I hope someone other than me is buying it. I find that often when a local large grocery store starts stocking something I like, it disappears rather quickly. I figure I'm the only one that bought it!

You New Yorkers probably already know about this place, but I enjoyed finding it on a visit last week. Didn't see anything about it in a site search. Walking down Bayard street in Chinatown went by a small shop called Big Beef King at 89 Bayard. Guy sells beef and pork jerky and not much else. Tried some and it was excellent, much less salty and dry than your normal jerky. He has a few different flavors that I found to be kind of similar. They all have a touch of terriyaki sweetness. The hot variety has a nice peppery aftertaste. I actually like the pork better than the beef, it has a flavor reminiscent of ribs. Best jerky I ever had.

I have to say that I've never been that impressed with D&W or Boar's Head. To me they're OK quality middle of the road cold cuts. Maybe a little better than the regular grocery store stuff. I don't care for most deli turkey. If I'm going to do turkey, our local Safeway cooks turkey breasts in with the rotisserie chickens. Makes a great sandwich. I agree that Citterio is better for Italian stuff. I wanted to alert you Italian cold cut folks to a new find. Recently, our local Giant supermarket started carrying a brand called Fiorucci. Don't know if they're independent or a division of someone else. Their hot capocolla and dry salami are very good. They also have a soprasetta in a size for slicing (larger diameter) that's excellent. Only thing I've tried that was just OK was the Genoa salami, stick with the dry.

Up Light street a little ways in Federal Hill is Blue Agave. Good Mexican and margaritas in a nice urban atmosphere: http://www.blueagaverestaurant.com/location.html For upscale Italian that has always been worth it's considerable price tag, I like Aldo's in Little Italy: http://www.aldositaly.com/home.html

Not to cut on Alton Brown, who I like, but jerky's easy to make in your oven. Just spread the marinated strips on foiled cookie sheet sprayed with Pam. Put the sheet in your oven set at the lowest temperature (100 - 125 F). Put a folded dish towel in the opening of the oven door to keep temperature down and air circulating. It doesn't have to be open much, just a half inch or so. After 8 - 10 hours, it's all set! You might want to try the Brown mwthod for fun, but with the oven there are no fiberglass, cat hair, or gray gunk worries.

The most frequent thing I see in the menu not matching the plate is omitted ingredients. Restaurants love to have flowery descriptions of their dishes but a lot of times some of the things in the description aren't on the plate. My pet peeve is all the places that claim to have "Shepherd's Pie" on the menu and it's made with ground beef, like a pot pie with potatoes instead of a pastry crust. I've gotten the blank stares when I tell them it's supposed to be made with lamb. Really, they say? Yes, why do you think it's called SHEPHERD"S pie? Geez!

I think a good sturdy red zinfandel is the best match for barbecue.

"I thought about brisket, but they're kind of expensive and I pretty much only get them for the holidays. I was hoping there might be a (kind of) inexpensive kosher cut similar to a butt that might work." Beef ribs cook up very well using a low and slow type barbecue method and they can often be had cheaply.

Our local Whole Foods in Annapolis usually gets a brief run of Copper River salmon in May.

As the others have said, it's definitely a farm raised versus wild issue. I find the same problem with fish. The main thing, I believe, is that farm raised crustaceans and fish don't eat the diet they do in the wild and that has a huge impact on the meat. The farm raised creatures get fed the equivalent of Purina shrimp or fish chow. I first noticed this over 20 years ago while trout fishing in South Carolina. We caught a mixture of wild and hatchery raised fish. The wild fish tasted much better. So, I don't buy farm raised shrimp or fish. We're lucky in that we travel to North and/or South Carolina every year and buy wild shrimp to bring home and freeze. We also have a local seafood store that sells only wild Gulf shrimp. As mentioned above, you can order wild shrimp on the internet. I think a better (and cheaper) option is to discuss your desire for wild shrimp with a local seafood store or grocery store that sells seafood. They deal with distributors that can get them wild shrimp, many choose not to because the farm raised are a good bt cheaper. Almost all shrimp sold commercially start out frozen unless you're in a local shrimp producing area in season (May - October). They are delivered in 5 pound boxes frozen in a block of ice. If you tell your seafood seller you're willing to buy a 5 pound box, they can probably get it for you. You can defrost just what you need by running a trickle of cold water over one end of the frozen block until the amount you need can be taken off.

I agree that if Scottie is so turned off by the menu, he should find a new place of employ. And as others have said, he controls his own hygiene practices and could be a good influence on others at his restaurant if he made an issue of it. My restaurant experience was mostly at a small seafood carry out that had a fresh seafood counter as well. After hours immersed in the seafood, I didn't lose my appetite, but I did lose it for the stuff I'd been cooking all day. There was a deli across the shopping center where a friend of mine worked. He was tired of seeing deli stuff and I was tired of seeing seafood so we'd trade. I'd get a sandwich of some kind and he'd have fried shrimp.

I've had this situation mostly with people who don't understand the importance of good raw materials to the finished product. Usually someone has a dish at my place and asks for the recipe. Then they make it and it isn't as good. I try to gently encourage them to be more selective in the ingredients, but to a lot of folks, an ingredient is an ingredient. So, no, that cheap farm raised shrimp won't taste like the wild Carolina or Gulf shrimp I used. That big box store olive oil won't be the same either. Nor the grocery store brand cheese. etc, etc.......... Cooking for me now is primarily a search for the best raw material and then simply preparing it.

I'll second the recommendation for the Weber Smokey Mountain cooker. I got one last year and it rocks. I had in the past sucessfully cooked pork shoulder on a more conventional charcoal grill, but it required constant fiddling to regulate the temperature and my efforts to incorporate a water pan were only marginally successful. It takes a little while to get the Smokey Mountain cooker stabilized, but once you do it holds temperature like a champ for hours. I'm comfortable now leaving it for several hours at a time without checking temp. Commit the $200 to the Smokey Mountain. The other great thing is the learning curve is esentially zero since the web site waves2ya linked gives detailed step by step instructions with pictures. My stuff came out great the first time.

Don't know if you have any place to put one, but small upright freezers are pretty cheap. I've got one in my garage for fish bait, ice, etc that I paid about $170.00 for. Here's a link to some options. http://www.compactappliance.com/jump.jsp?i...mpact%20freezer

Thanks Sandy. As a regular visitor to Philadelphia, this was a great mix of things I'm familiar with and things I'm not. One of my few regrets in life is that I've never lived in a big city and had the opportunity to really get to know it. "We've got an Amish market in Annapolis too. Something I've wondered about their meats and produce but have never asked -- do they use sustainable agriculture methods or otherwise strive for organic products? I haven't seen USDA Organic labels on their goods, but it seems like the whole slow-food thing would fit in well with some of their religious practices." I shop the Annapolis Amish market also. I know from observing the delivery trucks outside that their produce mostly comes from the same distributors that sell to the conventional grocery stores. Perhaps there's some local stuff in season, but mostly it's the same stuff as elsewhere displayed differently. I've also found the meat to be just OK except for some nice sausage and bacon products. However, I really like their homemade butter, Pa Dutch egg noodles, and some farm cheeses (first stall on the left as you enter) and they also sell those decadent soft pretzels. Also an incredible selection of dry goods, I like their dry hominy much better than canned.

One other good reason to go to Claudio's: Their name brand dried pasta is some of the best I've ever had. Great flavor and texture in a bunch of interesting shapes.

The best crawfish I ever had were in Galveston.

"which is IMO the only cheese shop in town that gives DiBruno's a run for its money." Hey, what about Claudio's? Someone on 9th street once told me you're either a Claudio's person or a DiBruno's person but you can't be both. It just happened that I was introduced to Claudio's first. I frequent both places when I hit the Italian market (sshhhh! ) and find them to excel at different things. Claudio's has a smaller selection and seems to concentrate on the top notch product from Italy. Dibruno's has wider, more international selection of great quality cheeses and meats and also makes fantastic cheese spreads and mozarella/prosciutto rolls to die for. Both places have great selections of cured sausages. The only sad thing is the atmosphere at Claudio's isn't the same since its namesake proprietor passed away prematurely a few years back. I still remember him sitting my 5 year old niece on the counter and hand feeding her cold cuts and cheese like a princess, he was a piece of south Philly work.

I thought I'd add this from a recent observation. We were picking up some takeout from a local Greek place a couple days ago and in the space of about 10 minutes, two obviously pregnant women came in by themselves, separately, and ordered gyros to go. We thought perhaps gyros were on the list of pregnancy cravings.

"The podiatrist told me to do stretching exercises, get arch supports and roll my left foot over a frozen can of juice or food to fix the plantar fascitis." You should get hazardous duty pay for doing all this hoofing around with plantar fasciitis. I know from experience how much that can hurt! Various types of shoe inserts have helped a lot, but they ain't cheap.

Thanks for the Upper Darby stuff, I'll have to check out that east/west grocery store next time I'm heading to a show at the recently renovated Tower Theatre, one of my all time favorite live music venues. Great atmosphere and acoustics. If we'd had food service like you showed at Widener when I went to Clemson in the late 70s, I'd have thought I'd died and gone to heaven!

Thanks much for the DiBruno pix. Haven't been to the Rittenhouse store, when I get to Philly, I'm usually in the Italian market and shopping the big Oriental grocery store at 6th and Washington. I was slightly disappointed to see the cheese pre cut and wrapped there, a la Whole Foods. I'm sure they have fast enough turnover so keep it from drying out, but I'm old fashioned, I like the guy to cut my cheese (sorry) and maybe give me a taste. On the good news side, I'm excited to see that there's actually a good wine/liquor outlet in Philadelphia! Pennsylvania is notorious for their archaic, inconvenient alcohol distribution laws. My folks live in West Chester and have been driving to Delaware and Maryland for years to buy beer, wine, and liquor. My Mom got busted on 202 years ago coming back into PA with a case of wine, the cops were watching the liquor stores just over the border in Delaware and stopping people returning to PA. My Mom the rumrunner, right. Dad said at her hearing "if you had a decent wine store in PA, we wouldn't have to drive to Delaware!" They fined her and confiscated the wine.

"Its current occupant is a city economic development agency, which is probably the only reason it has been spared the fate of the buildings that surround it" What a sad irony that statement illustrates. Chester has sufferred the same fate of many former northeast and midwest industrial towns. As industry boomed in the 50s and 60s, local jurisdictions kept raising local taxes on business. For the double whammy, union labor kept demanding higher and higher wage and benefit packages. At the same time, the advent of wide spread air conditioning and a better educated non union labor force in the south attracted many businesses away from their old homes. Usually a renaissance happens small piece by piece when the local jurisdiction offers tax incentives to entrepreneurs to locate businesses in blighted areas. The successful areas end up with a mix of residential and business properties that attract shopping and restaurants, etc. Hopefully this will happen in Chester. Enjoying the blog, thanks. looking forward to Italian market stuff. Very familiar with that place, but always fun to see it from another's (and the camera's) perspective.

Good girl! In fact, with the size of the the grill on which we are working, once the steaks are down, we are hard-pressed to be able to fit anything else on the grill! It is a cheezy, little $15.00 table-top model that is perfect for two of us to sear a slab of meat and a few veggies, but once a guest or two is added into the mix, I am relegated back to the kitchen for my accompaniments, hence the genesis of this thread! ← The portabellos I mentioned upthread (post 17) are fine done in the oven. Hit them with the broiler to melt the cheese. The onions are fine in the oven, too. However, since you want your steaks to rest before you cut them, that's plenty of time to put some grill char on the sweet onions, which really improves them.