Local Mouthful

Episode 113: Travel Special!

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An amazing double cheeseburger with a heap of homemade pickles from Pullman in Iowa City

In this special episode we set aside our usual format to talk about three recent travel destinations.

Last month, we visited the annual Natural Products Expo East together. Marisa had been before, but it was Joy’s first time to this enormous industry-only trade show. You’ll need to listen to the episode for our specific favorite items there, but here are some of the broad trends we saw there and dissect in this episode:

Meat sticks
Gluten free everything (We found one pasta we loved!)
Paleo baked goods (Should these even exist?)
Broccoli leaves/greens
Fermented things
Coffee kombucha
Camel milk (Yes, we tasted it.)
Crickets (Just one of us tasted it.)
Sea snacks
Bone broths (Really good ones!)
Jack fruit as meat substitutes

During her recent visit to Pittsburgh, Marisa fell in love with the Beans & Greens at Legends of the North Shore. She liked it so much that when she returned, she scoured the internet to find the recipe for this surprising dish. Here’s the recipe Marisa found.

She also enjoyed Max’s Allegheny Tavern and Pamela’s Diner, both for breakfast.

In Iowa City, Joy love the double cheese burger at Pullman’s Bar & Diner and her rye old fashioned at Clinton Street Social Club. Another highlight was Devotay‘s crispy poached egg.

Joy had an unplanned layover in the Atlanta airport, but enjoying a midday meal at One Flew South (highly recommended: the lentil soup) made the mishap all better.

Remember: We’re going to record our Thanksgiving episode soon so send us your questions ASAP. The comment section right here is a good place to leave them.

If you like what you hear, make sure to subscribe! Bonus points if you rate us or leave a review. Follow us on twitter @localmouthful and help us spread the word about the show.

Episode 112: Tacos, Olive Oil, and Tea with Alexis Siemons

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Something we read: is cabbage the new kale? Smoked, fermented, slow cooked, braised, stuffed and salad-ified. We don’t think cabbage was ever out of the limelight in our kitchens.

Tacos are a many splendored thing, and we talked all aspects of the classic: fillings, shells, salads, toppings. Sometimes we make them at home and sometimes we go out to eat them.

The first installment in our new series on cooking fats is dedicated to: Olive oil! Marisa went to a tasting seminar this year and lays down some serious know-how about how to taste and choose the extra-virgin kind. Joy tells you her favorite fancy finishing oil.

Rainbow chard–it’s the vegetable Joy loves but cannot remember how to pronounce! We talk about the key to loving this nutrition powerhouse and all the ways we like to cook chard.

An finally, our echo-y interview with Alexis Siemons. You should go and check out her blog. Do you have a special tea lover in your life? Consider ordering Alexis’ beautiful With Tea journal. It comes wrapped in a vintage handkerchief.

If you like what you hear, make sure to subscribe! Bonus points if you rate us or leave a review. Follow us on twitter @localmouthful and help us spread the word about the show.

Episode 111: Pumpkin Spice, Nonstick Cookware, Making Dinner with Molly Watson

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Food writer and cookbook author, Molly Watson

It’s October now, and pumpkins are on our brains (and our tables) this episode.

Starbucks added real pumpkin puree to its pumpkin spice lattes. We discuss. Did you know there’s such a thing as pumpkin spice Oreos?

Fall = potluck season. We talk about our past potluck experience (Marisa’s, extensive; Joy’s less so), favorite dishes, and the unspoken rules and regs of the potluck table.

Nonstick cookware. Yes or no? We are both users of teflon, though our feelings are indeed mixed. To get Marisa’s specific brand recommendation, well, you’ll need to listen to the show 🙂

Marisa visited food writer and cookbook author Molly Watson in San Francisco and the pair talked about her time in the Sunset test kitchen, solving the “dinner problem” with Munchery, and her story about home cooking that will appear in this year’s Best Food Writing. We love her latest book Greens & Grains.

At her farmer’s market, Marisa is scooping up all the heirloom type pumpkins while Joy cooks with pumpkin out of the can. Here’s that Ruth Reichl pumpkin recipe we talk about.

If you like what you hear, make sure to subscribe! Bonus points if you rate us or leave a review. Follow us on twitter @localmouthful and help us spread the word about the show.

Episode 110: Vegetable Soups, Kitchen Towels, Carolyn Alburger

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CarolynAlburger — Today’s guest: Carolyn Alburger, Eater.com’s cities editor

Did you know there’s a nifty, new Thermapen? And it costs a hefty $99? Russ Parsons sung its praises in the LA Times and it made us want to talk about all the kitchen thermometers we’ve ever used.

Soup’s on! Fall is here and we both love to make it. In today’s show, we talk all about our favorite vegetable soups, sneaky vegan subs for dairy, and all the good garnishes.

Kitchen towels are another theme we tackled today. It was a surprisingly animated and opinionated conversation!

For our interview, we talked to Carolyn Alburger, Eater.com’s cities editor. She dished with us on food trends across the country and told us about Eater’s “Future Week.” You should follow her on twitter.

We wrapped the show up with some talk about mushrooms–exotic ones, to be precise.

If you like what you hear, make sure to subscribe! Bonus points if you rate us or leave a review. Follow us on twitter @localmouthful and help us spread the word about the show.

Episode 109: Winter Squash, Slow Cookers, and ReAnimator Coffee

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Finally, there’s a fall feeling in the air here in Philadelphia, and today’s episode covers some seasonally appropriate topics. But first, we chat about the fact that recalls on organic food seem to be up, according to this story in the New York Times.

At last, we are ready for some wonderful winter squash!!! We’ve got ideas for hubbard, red kuri, acorn, butternut and our very favorite: delicata. Look how many delicatas Joy bought this Sunday:

We also dusted off our slow cookers, the perfect appliance for many cool-weather classics, like stews. But we use them (Marisa owns four!) for all kinds of things, especially beans, whole chickens, sweet potatoes, chicken thighs, steel cut oats, caramelized onions. We love it all.

Mark Capriotti co-owner of ReAnimator Coffee, tells us all about his business and explains “relationship coffee.”

Finally, Marisa unraveled the alluring mystery of Italian Prune Plums.

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Episode 108: Whole Grains, Oysters, and Crave Philly

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Hope Cohen with her book — Hope Cohen with her cookbook. Scroll down to find out how to win a copy!

Today, we shared our views on this somewhat controversial Q&A with Alton Brown New York Times magazine.

And, to clarify something: Joy said “Kenji” had been nipping at Alton Brown’s heels, without explaining who Kenji is. She meant Kenji Alt-Lopez, the brains behind Serious Eats genius series The Food Lab and the forthcoming book by the same name.

Here’s that fantastic recipe from Eating Well magazine for Barley & Wild Rice Pilaf. (Try it. You’ll like it.)

If you are in Philadelphia, check out the millet muffin at Metropolitan Bakery. (Both of us just love it.) Live someplace else? You could try out this recipe inspired by the muffin.

Also for those of us living in or visiting Philly: go eat raw oysters at Oyster House. We discovered our new oyster crush there, Sweet Amalias, at a recent event.

By the way, what’s your interest in a Local Mouthful oyster club? Tell us in the comments and if enough of you want to eat oysters with us we just may try to set something up.

Our guest today was Hope Cohen, the host of the new two-minute video series, Crave Philly. Check out the first episode, during which Hope will take you inside Spread Bagelry, a Montreal style bakery in the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood. Follow Hope on twitter and instagram @icravephilly.

We also talked about Hope’s book, Fast, Fresh and Simple. And she gave us a copy to give to one of you! (Thanks, Hope!) Win the book by signing up for our newsletter (see the box in the left sidebar).

If you like what you hear, make sure to subscribe! Bonus points if you rate us or leave a review. Follow us on twitter @localmouthful and help us spread the word about the show.

106: Homemade Pizza, Packing Lunch, Brine Street Picklery

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Thanks for joining us for today’s episode so soon after the long Labor Day weekend!

On this week’s show we reacted to the recent New York Times article, My Dinner with Longevity Expert Dan Buettner.

We returned to an already familiar topic for us: Pizza. Specifically, we discuss how to make homemade pizza easy and convenient. Joy explains her “Pizza System” and Marisa tells you how to use pizza night to clean out the crisper and eat more vegetables.

As promised, here’s Joy’s pizza dough recipe taped to her KitchenAid.

Marisa strongly recommends this free online class from Craftsy, Perfect Pizza at Home with Peter Reinhart.

While we were discussing the art and craft of the packed lunch, whether for school or for work, Marisa mentioned one of her favorite ingredients from childhood: Toby’s Tofu Paté.

It’s not available on the East Coast, but Joy found a delicious looking recipe for a homemade version, and she’s going to test it out soon to see if she likes it, too.

Our guest is PJ Hopkins, of Brine Street Picklery. (If you like things spicy, try their Hoagie Relish.)

In our At the Market segment, we discussed buying local, pastured pork from Philadelphia Cow (and Pig) Share. Joy bought a quarter pig after reading Pig Tales by Barry Estabrook.

It’s a book you might like, too.

If you like what you hear, make sure to subscribe! Bonus points if you rate us or leave a review. Follow us on twitter @localmouthful and help us spread the word about the show.

Episode 105: Kitchen Shortcuts, Our Favorite Cookbooks, Fermentation

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This week's guest, Amanda Feifer — This week’s guest, Amanda Feifer

Did you know that Chipotle recently unseated Subway as America’s favorite “healthy” fast food chain? In this week’s episode, we discussed the Business Insider article that explained this passing of the torch and shared our own thoughts on the two restaurants.

One of our favorite Philly-based fast casual spots is Farmer’s Keep. (Correction: this is the restaurant’s name, not “Farmer’s Table” as Joy said in the podcast.)

marisa's cookbook wall — A segment of Marisa’s cookbook library. We told you it was a lot!

The cookbooks we discuss as our longtime loves are:

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and Joy of Cooking

We’d love for you to share your own go-to cookbooks in the comments here.

Our guest today was Amanda Feifer. Check out her blog, Phickle.com, and preorder her book, Ferment Your Vegetables.

In our discussion of tomatoes, Marisa mentioned her tomato jam recipe which is definitely something you should make if you have a lot of tomatoes on your hands.

If you like what you hear, make sure to subscribe! Bonus points if you rate us or leave a review. Follow us on twitter @localmouthful and help us spread the word about the show.

Episode 104: Cooking for the Week, Unsung Restaurants, Sarah Grey

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Entertaining was a theme this week–and we weighed in on The Kitchn’s 5 Ways to be the Best Dinner Guest Ever. (Sound advice here, but we don’t agree with everything in that piece!)

On the heels of Adam Robert’s recent Amateur Gourmet blog post titled OK I Lied: It Sucks to Cook After Work, we discussed our favorite strategy for making it not suck: Cooking once and eating all week. (One of our favorite sources of inspiration here is An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace)

We chatted about our favorite local unsung restaurants and sources for surprisingly great take out though–we freely admit that sometimes we just don’t want to cook either.

It was our pleasure to talk to Sarah Grey, who wrote about her Friday Night Meatballs events for Serious Eats and watched the story go viral last year. (Since we recorded this episode, we learned the piece was selected for the 2015 edition of Best Food Writing. Congratulations, Sarah!)

And finally we discussed cooking with ground beef. We were choosing local, grass-fed, small-scale ground beef even before this week’s bad news about ground beef.

If you like what you hear, make sure to subscribe! Bonus points if you rate us or leave a review. Follow us on twitter @localmouthful and help us spread the word about the show.

Episode 103: No Cook Meals, Carbs and Your Health, Madame Fromage

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Our guest, Tenaya Darlington aka Madame Fromage

First up in episode three, we talked over a recent Washington Post story about the common (and controversial) practice of working in coffee shops. (Do you have opinions? We’d love to hear them in the comments here.)

Marisa explained that she enjoys working at Nook and Good Karma Cafe and shares her tips on being courteous about it. Joy can’t get much writing or editing done in cafes, but she does have a lot of meetings at Chhaya. Share your favorite spots with good coffee and strong wifi in the comments.

Next we tackled no cook meals. Listen for all the great tips, but a couple recipes we mentioned were this one for Chilled Cucumber and Avocado Soup and this one for Veggie Nori Rolls.

With several recent studies on the topic of carbs and health in the news, we shared our approaches to eating the starchy stuff. It turns out we both love one particular low carb recipe–Green Chicken from Nom Nom Paleo.

This conversation may have backfired: just talking about it made us hungry for our favorite breads (from High Street on Market) and pasta (from Zeppoli restaurant).

Our interview this week features Tenaya Darlington, whose blog Madame Fromage is a cheese-lover’s dream. If you enjoy what she had to say us, buy her first book, Di Bruno Bros. House of Cheese, and pre-order her second, The Modern Cocktailer.

If you like what you hear, make sure to subscribe! Bonus points if you rate us or leave a review. Follow us on twitter @localmouthful and help us spread the word about the show.