West Philly

I *heart* Stonyfield Farm

~ thedailydish ~ 14 Comments

Last month I got a very unexpected email from the marketing coordinator at Stonyfield Farm yogurt informing me I’d won their Recipe of the Month contest. WOW! I didn’t even know I’d been entered, but apparently when you submit a recipe (something I did), they enter you automatically. Coool. So I was super excited to hear I’d been chosen as one of three winners for the month of November (an honor in and of itself), but even more psyched when I read that I’d also be getting… a PRIZE! Now, I don’t know if you can tell from my online persona, but sometimes I can get PRETTY EXCITED, and this was one of those times. A goodie bag of yogurt wonders ALL FOR MY VERY OWN!!! WOOHOO!

So I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of my precious yogurt box, and late last week I began wondering where it could be. I worried about it a little bit. You see, we have issues with our mail delivery here at our palatial West Philly estate. Indeed, our postal service has become so erratic that we’ve had to open a PO Box at the main Philly branch in order to ensure we actually get some of our mail. Unfortunately when you miss a payment, businesses do not care if it was because you never ever got the bill. That’s simply NOT an excuse. And when we do receive mail at our house, it’s often sampled or heavily used. Like our bank statements, which come open and pre-scrutinized. Or our magazines, which arrive so dog-eared we know what the mailman had for lunch. We also routinely receive mail for other people, blocks away, which I dutifully walk over and place gently through their slot. But who is getting my mail? And why aren’t they kindly returning the favor?? Yesterday my 94 year old grandma called to say she’d gotten my recent card, but someone had slit the envelope down the side and removed the rest of its contents. It made me SO MAD. WHAT IS WRONG WITH SOME PEOPLE?? HAVE THEY NO SHAME?? DO THEY NOT HAVE A GRANDMA~?? DO THEY NOT REALIZE GOD DOES NOT LOOK FAVORABLY ON THOSE WHO STEAL FROM 94 YEAR OLD WOMEN LONGING FOR PHOTOS OF THEIR GRANDCHILDREN??? As my husband would say, may God smite them. Painfully.

So you see, I was beginning to think my beautiful Stonyfield Farm prize might have been delivered and stolen off my porch. Like the time my husband ordered something from Apple, and UPS delivered it to some deranged woman 12 blocks away, who called us demanding money for its return. Or the time my neighbor ordered books from Amazon and found the open package three blocks away in the street. So this weekend I contacted the very nice marketing coordinator, explaining my concern, and YIPPEE! she told me that my package was on its way …. and finally, yesterday, my beautiful box from Stonyfield Farm arrived. 🙂

Let me tell you, it was even better than I’d expected. No expired yogurt at all. Instead I got coupons! Always great when you consume lots of healthy yummy delicious STONYFIELD FARM YOGURT like I do (*wink to camera*)! And not only that, but I got a bunch of awesome cooking stuff – a super thick Stonyfield Farm logo oven mitt,

heavy-duty pyrex measuring cup and double-spoon AND spatula. PLUS a yougurt cheese maker – which looks like a hairnet,

but actually makes you YOGURT CHEESE. Doesn’t that sound delicious??! I confess it does not sound all that delicious but I bet it is delicious if it is made with STONYFIELD FARM yogurt, because IT is the BEST. And not only did I get all of those amazing things, BUT I also got a cute cow-emblazoned magnet, a brand new pencil AND a Stonyfield Farm Cookbook, with tons and tons of recipes and ideas for using their delicious healthy yogurt, complete with scrumptious-looking color photographs. This book was written and tested by the CEO’s wife, so you know it’s got to be good. And last but not least, is my brand new beautiful Stonyfield Farm tote bag, with the SF Farm logo on one side and the Brown Cow logo on the other. My husband asked me who the Brown Cow is and I have to say I have no idea, but he/she is cute and that’s all that matters. I even got to USE my tote bag last night when we went to the library. I proudly displayed my yogurt preference to all and sundry and I know everyone was GREEN WITH ENVY. It’s lucky the library is so darn close to Whole Foods, because I think I left a trail of yogurt-hungry people all waiting for a quick release.

So, in conclusion, I urge each and everyone of you to go out and buy some wonderfully spectacular Stonyfield Farm yogurt today. Then you should go home and create a magnificently delicious recipe and send it to Stonyfield Farm, so that you too may be as happy as I am right now. Sitting here with my new potholder on my hand and my yogurt cheese maker on my head.

The one TRUE New Year’s Eve

~ thedailydish ~ 1 Comment

I am really truly psyched for this weekend. Not only am I feeling terrific, but my husband & I have managed to secure a babysitter – and not just for tonight – BUT FOR TOMORROW NIGHT AS WELL. I know, UNBELIEVABLE.

So all of this excitement and anticipation and giddiness has left me reeling and today I find myself feeling positively like a Russian orthodox. What? Well, you know how they celebrate Christmas roughly 2 weeks after the rest of us? Well, PREPARE YOURSELVES FOR WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY. I don’t know if any of you realize, or are open enough to even ponder the possibility, but this weekend may actually be the one TRUE New Year’s Eve.

You see, having spent Christmas 2007 out of town, by the time we got home the OLD Near Year’s Eve was upon us. And although we’d been invited to a kickin house party here in West Philly, scrambling for a babysitter 2 days before the big event was no picnic. Even my husband’s 86 year-old grandmother had plans. So rather than indulging in a night of wild revelry, dragging our bleary-eyed selves home at 5 am, we did what any other babysitter-less couple would do. We spent the day dragging our kids through the art museum, torturing all of the sensitive types, so I could catch the Renoir exhibit. As Aunt Esther would say:

“Take THAT, Suckas.”

Although we went Mummering New Years Day like all good Philadelphians do and of course MUST, we certainly did not celebrate NYE in quite the same manner as the rest of the world. And so we have decided, after much prolonged and brain-aching deliberation, to SCHISM from the rest of you. We will from now on (or at the very least, this year) be celebrating the one and only TRUE New Year’s Eve holiday tomorrow, January 12th. And in keeping with this Orthodoxy, we will be celebrating in a familiar, but DIFFERENT sort of way. Gone will be the masses of blithering idiots, drunken beyond speech. Public vomiting and lewdness are optional, not mandatory! No Dick Clark and his dropping ball. Our holiday – the new TRUE New Year’s Eve – will retain its preciousness like no other.

And so, I must cut this post short. Lots to squeeze in before 2008!

Happy New Year, everyone!

A resident responds to “As University City expands, paradox abounds”

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As University City expands, paradox abounds

My husband and I have lived in West Philly for almost 15 years, the last eight of which have been in Cedar Park. Over the course of our time here we’ve seen many changes, both good and bad. We’ve witnessed and been impacted by crime – which although statistically on the decline, appears ever-present. We’ve noticed young folks and families moving into the area, but seen an equal number displaced by rising rents or forced to the suburbs due to poor public schools. We live peacefully in a neighborhood with people of all colors and nationalities, yet within the past month, I’ve received my first of several tastes of reverse racism – and at a community fair in Cedar Park of all places.

Commercial investment is always a boon, and businesses – especially in the form of restaurants such as Dock Street, Dahlak, even our own mini-mart Fu Wah – have done a tremendous job of garnering interest in the neighborhood and making it a great place to live. The creation of the UCD has helped drive at least the outward perception of Cedar Park as a clean and safe community. And Penn has spent and will surely continue to spend thousands of dollars enhancing the image of its University City to the world-at-large.

What I fail to see, however, is how the Penn Alexander School has really benefited the majority of residents of Cedar Park, as such a small fraction of the population is served by the school. Most families in our neighborhood send their children to local public schools such as Alexander Wilson or Henry Lea, while a few of our (primarily white) neighbors have had their children bussed across University City to Samuel Powel near Drexel. Other Cedar Park residents send their kids to private religious schools like Spruce Hill Christian and Saint Francis De Sales, while others (as in our case), send theirs to public charter schools, such as Russell Byers, Laboratory or Independence Charter. It’s unfortunate that the true nature of the school situation in Cedar Park was not made clear in the article, and that other community resources, such as the A-Space on the 4700 block of Baltimore, which does a great deal to promote the direct interests of residents as well as others, were overlooked.

I welcome the good publicity that our neighborhood has been receiving lately, but I do question whether the public is being given the whole picture. Cedar Park is a collection of people as much as it is the buildings and businesses located herein. And unfortunately, many continue to be disenfranchised as others feel hopeful.