Oh Crap!
Right before our first visit to
Great Tea International on Wednesday, i read
this:
In The Book of Tea, his treatise on Japanese tea's relationship with the Western world, Okakura Kakuzo explains that the tearoom is an ephemeral structure based on poetic impulse — not intended for posterity. It should be no surprise, then, that on June 9, Charlotte Lin, owner of Great Tea International ... , is closing the space she consecrated almost five years ago as an escape from her accounting career. The sanctuary was immune to the vulgar hustle of busy streets and cafes, but apparently not Philadelphia's dreaded business privilege tax. ... —Sam Tremble
Bonesli and i really liked GTI. The space was cozy and the other customers seemed to be regulars. The selection of imported teas (mainly from Taiwan, it seemed) was quite large, and my $4 order of Oolong was enough for 3 cups worth. To eat, i chose the light lunch of 2 lotus leaf rolls and 1 bun, while Bonesli had pistachios and pumpkin seeds with green tea powder with her herbal tisane. (They were out of the tofu sandwich that day.) The lotus leaf roll was filled with sticky rice and a few kinds of mushrooms, very tasty and fragrant. The red bean bun was good as well. Bonesli couldn't crack open the pumpkin seeds very well, so i ended up opening the majority!
I adore pumpkin seeds. Wait, clarification: pumpkin seeds with the shells ON. The fun is cracking open each little seed with your teeth, tasting the salt on the shell, extracting a perfect seed to eat, and repeating until you develop two matching sore spots on your lips from the salt.
I bought a 1 lb bag of salted shell-on pumpkin seeds from
Nuts to You, but any Chinese food store will have a few varieties. The dish at GTI was comprised of the very large seeds, roasted in green tea powder - a very different yet also addictive version.
In addition to the tea house, GTI also sells clay teapots, ceramic teacups, loose tea to go and tea accessories. It's so different from the 2nd generation tea houses who focus on mixed tea cosmos and tea lattes with fake flavors. So be sure to check out GTI before June 9th. It's on Sansom at 17th Street. They're still going to operate the online shop, but Philadelphia is sadly losing a great place next month.
Only 70 Miles!
We love Govinda's Gourmet to Go and frequent it often, especially for fake chicken cheesesteaks and chimichangas. Tonight we attempted to eat at
Govinda's Vegetarian, the fancier sit-down upstairs of GtG but sadly discovered that they're closed on Monday nights. But on a happy note, we bought mk a slice of the "Boardwalk Fudge" cake, made by
Vegan Treats and sold by GtG - and it was purely the best bite of chocolate cake ever! It was very chocolately, moist and rich with a delicious icing. I can't wait to try more of their cakes. Most importantly, i can't wait to get the car share and drive up to Bethlehem where Vegan Treats has an actual store front! OH YEAH whole cakeness!
Next places to check out:
Horizons, the Basic 4 Vegetarian Snack Bar in
Reading Terminal,
Cafe Nhu Y for vegetarian banh mi and
Great Tea International, who has toasted pumpkin seeds on the menu (very old skool tea house snackage!)
Lastly,
Snausages and i checked out the new
T Bar on 12th St today. The owner and staff were extremely nice and helpful. Airy, open space, lots of tea options and snacks. I had the Moroccan mint tea while S had the herbal "Safari" blend. Both were iced and refreshing. I'll definitely go back for more!
Bestucce
Originally uploaded by sudama. No, this is so not what our garden looks like although i sure wish it was! It's the lettuce & greens bed from the Rice house in Northern VA. We had the opportunity to eat some of their homegrown romaine, red and butterhead lettuce recently - and i realized how flavorful, crisp and fresh lettuce truly could be. I mean, come on, lettuce is lettuce right? Well hell no kids! After eating some fresh picked greens grown with care i can never justify paying $6.99/lb for organic baby greens that suspiciously all taste the same, or $1.99/ea for waterlogged, flavorless fluffy lettuce filler. The Rice lettuce was leafy, hearty yet tender and very flavorful. It even stood up to multiple washings to get the little bugs off. It undoubtedly is the best lettuce i've ever had!
Now be is really upset that we didn't dedicate an entire box to lettuce!
Our First Garden
We're lucky to have a good-sized backyard. Most of our neighbors' backyards consist of little patches of grass with a concrete patio block, but our lot was an oddball - amounting to a 30' x 60' back with plenty of room for fun stuff. Eventually we're going to design the backyard and incorporate the great antique bricks we got off
freecycle, make a fire pit and a few seating areas, plus a small (mosquito-free) "fountain" of some sort that be wants, but for now the only thing we've started is the garden.
be and i basically knew nothing about gardening a few months ago. Our main reasons for reading a ton of books, scouring the internet for information and constantly harrassing
dude over IM are as follows: 1) We need an insane amount of delicious tomatoes, 2) A constant supply of fresh herbs makes food so much better, and 3) Plants are our friends.
The technique we followed was the "
Square Foot Gardening" concept - a space-saving, non-traditional approach to growing produce. The book was very easy to follow; the only set backs were finding affordable vermiculite and decent compost in the amounts needed to fill the boxes. (We're going to start making our own compost shortly!) We made two SFG boxes, amounting to 16 squares. Everything we bought was organic (seedlings and seeds) and majority non-GMO. Most of the seeds were from
Botanical Interests and the seedlings from
Greensgrow in North Philly.
As you can see in the picures, we planted a bunch of seedlings and sowed the remainder from seeds directly in the ground. As of now, everything has come up (yay!) but it's going to take a lot of watering and care to keep the seedlings growing and not drying out. The location offers the garden full sun - about 9 hours a day - so we might even have to shade some of the greens so they don't fry.
be absolutely loves gardening. He's been waking up extra early each morning just to water everything. Every night after work, we inspect the squares to see any new sprouts or changes in the seedlings. It's been exciting and i can't wait to actually eat something we've grown!
Items in SFG Left:
Cucumber
Tomato: Sweet 100
Tomato: Cherokee Purple
Tomato: Pineapple
Radishes
Quinoa
Basil: Siam Queen
Soybeans
Marigolds
Carrots: Tonda
Kale
Spinach
Arugula
Lettuce: Marvel of the Four Seasons
Items in SFG Right:
Tomato: Brandywine
Tomato: Green Zebra
Tomato: Better Boy
Tomato: Sun Gold
Sage
Basil: Cinnamon
Basil: Asmin
Watermelon: Sugar Baby
Marigolds
Carrots: Nantes
Lettuce: Speckles
Lettuce: Black Seed
Watermelon: Crimson Sweet
Items in Containers:
Hot Pepper: Jalepeno
Hot Pepper: Thai Dragon
Eggplant: Cloud Nine
Eggplant: Ping Tung
Lavender
Rosemary
Lemon Thyme
Cilantro
Bunny Tails
Oats & Wheatgrass
Catnip
Mint: Common
Mint: Chocolate
Items we still have to plant somewhere:
Early blueberry bush
Late blueberry bush
Raspberry bush
I really hope all goes well. be says he's found some "bugs" on a few of the seedlings so we're now looking into non-toxic pest control. Otherwise, it's been fun getting the garden started. Seeing those tiny sprouts poke through the soil is something i can't describe, except that it makes us so happy. Right now we count 5 tiny green tomatoes on the Sweet 100 plant. The cats love the oats & wheatgrass. The herbs smell fantastic (and the cilantro sure tastes good!). Hope we'll be wallowing in tomato goodness by summer!
Yowzers!
The school sells Kool-Aid pickles from the popular red flavor family at its fund-raisers. “They’re easy to make a gallon,” Ms. Williams said. “You pull the pickles from the jar, cut them in halves, make double-strength Kool-Aid, add a pound of sugar, shake and let it sit — best in the refrigerator — for about a week. The taste takes to anything. A while back I made a mistake and bought a jar of pickle chips instead of halves or wholes. Came out fine. This whole Kool-Aid pickle thing is going so good, you wonder why somebody hasn’t put a patent on them.”
This
article from the NYTimes sure was an interesting read! I can't wait to make some Kool-Aid pickles of my own!
