Sweetie's Pie Diner

I can't explain how excited I was to see the words "pie diner" decorating the door of a building being renovated at 19th and Spring Garden streets and they finally opened a couple of weeks ago. The place lives up to the name, they not only are a diner that specializes in pie, but local sourced gourmet pie with the most unusual and delightful combinations. I got a day old sample of an apple cake that was fabulous, then came back later that day with coworkers to taste a lemon pie. They also had plum, chocolate, pumpkin, more kinds of pie than I could remember. It was a memorable experience.

What I also love is that they have items like beet salad, savory pies for lunch, weekend brunch and get their supplies from local farms. It's a pie diner done right and the morning crew is really sweet. I stopped in again last week for coffee and tried a ginger scone. I think this might become a regular stop for me.

Oh, and the prices are so reasonable in comparison to other neighborhood coffee places! $2.25 for a slice of pie!

Food Inc. Movie Premier and Eats & Beats

I went to the Food Inc. movie premier tonight (free tickets were given out to see it at the Ritz Borse) and it was much of the things I know from work, corporate food vs. local growers, but some new stuff: the companies that control the chicken, beef and pork, corn and soybean seeds.

There were the usual experts: Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan author of Omnivore's Dillema, but the best character in the movie is Joel Salatin
owner/farmer of Polyface Farms in Virginia, who feeds his livestock grass, and has the most matter of fact way of describing how scewed the food system has gotten when he describes how his cows eat grass.

I've been trying to wean myself off of plastics and this movie made me think more about cutting out traditional food products, esp. industrial meat. I've been shopping almost exclusively at Whole Foods, but I really don't know where the turkey I bought came from, or if the salmon is fed corn. And it makes me strongly consider buying the meat products at Farm Fresh Express or farmers markets. I knew about the industrial mechanization of the meat corporations, but I didn't think about the chemicals and poo and ecoli and where it comes from (even on spinach).

This is all connected with my work for the Urban Nutrition Initiative and I'm excited to go the the Eats & Beats dinner on Saturday night, 5:30-8:30 at 48th and Baltimore Ave. The high school farmers and chefs are doing the most of the cooking, but they also have donations from many local restaurants and farms. I took photographs of the garden they tend at University City Hish School, my garden at Spring Gardens Community Garden and at Reading Terminal Market at Iovine Brothers and Fair Food Farmstand and they will be on the silent auction tables, matted and in sets of cards.