My favorite foods,
aside from Soylent green...

Coffee ice cream

My very first coffee ice cream cone was at George's Luncheonette on Frankford Ave at Palmer Street  in Fishtown where my parents had a grocery store across from what used to be St. Mary's Hospital. The hospital is still there, but the block where our store was and George's Luncheonette and Dominic's Tailor Shop and Stanley Hardware is a community parking lot. Other favorite foods I remember was Birley's grape drink, Uncle Milty's (Milton Berle) Chocolate Bubble Gum and of course Tasty Cakes.

Yummy!!My grand parents sold halvah in their grocery store in Feltonville on the corner of Whitaker Ave and Smilie Road. When the hardware store was opened, we started to sell candy, cigarettes and halvah. The same supplier who sold us steel wool, Daskell Brothers, carried the Halvah. What is Halvah? A candy made from crushed sesame seeds. Look in Middle Eastern, Greek and Jewish Deli's. Joyva is the best. Cut it in little thin slices about 1/4" thick and let it melt in your mouth!!! I love halvah! Here's a recipe for halvah ice cream..the best of both worlds!

With mustard and relish
Just about any hot dog will do except those gray ones that sit in a pot of water for three hours. I like natural casing, all beef hot dogs like the ones at "Jimmy Johns Pippin Hot located on Rte 202 just north of Rt 1 in Chester County, PA. It's a must stop detour when I am coming back from Baltimore. While you're there, stop at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford to see works from the great illustrators and painters, Longwood Gardens, the Brandywine Battlefield, the Philips Mushroom Museum.You can also rent a canoe and travel down the Brandywine Creek. Make a weekend and stay at the Holiday Inn at Rt202/Rt1 Intersection. Lots to do in the western burbs of Philadelphia where it's still open country....hurry!

The History of the Hot Dog

Hot Dog Recipes

Philly Foods

 
Levis Hot Dogs and
Champ Cherry Soda

Click on Photo to Visit Levis Hot Dog Web Site
And my honey wants a combo
Champ Cherry is available in bottles and fountain syrup

We bought Levis Hot Dogs, a landmark hot dog emporium in Philadelphia since 1895, in 1990 because we wanted to produce Champ Cherry soda in bottles. After trying to run the original store which was really a shrine to people who went to Levis with their fathers and grand fathers when they were 10 years old, we licensed the trademarks to someone who was supposed to develop a franchise network. He turned out to be unscrupulous and we had him ejected from the store and finally closed the store when the lease expired.

Early soda fountains had to make their own CO2 gas. There wasn't anyone to deliver the gas in steel cylinders.  You remember chemistry in high school?  Mix limestone (calcium carbonate) with hydrochloric acid and you make CO2 gas and calcium chloride See how all this stuff backs up in your mind!. But you can make carbonated beverages at home without CO2 or sophisticated equipment using yeast and flavor extracts you have in the cupboard!

The late 1800's was about this same time after Crown Cork and Seal invented the "sanitary bottle closure" and machinery to apply caps, that many soda brands got started. Prior to that, there were many type of closures for food and beverage containers.

Here's an interesting site for antique soda  bottles.

Visit the Soda Fountain for information about old time sodas and ice cream fountains

The history of soda
 
 

You MAY think I only drink juice and Champ Cherry...NOT

And then I make nifty table lamps out of the empties.
Would you like one for your desk? Send me $30 bucks (check please) and I'll save the next empty bottle, get the parts from Home Depot, assemble it and ship it to you by UPS.
I'll even throw in a bulb and shade! Just plug it in.

Here is a Chambers Stove...state of the art when I was born in 1946 and my Grandmother Hirsh had one. It had 2 ovens, a well, a grill with a broiler underneath of it which lift up with the lever all the way on the left.

It had more levers than Flash Gordon's space ship and believe me, it was often used to fly to the planet Mongo! My uncle Arnold kept it when he remodeled the kitchen and built all the cabinets himself. When they sold the house on Whitaker Ave. and moved in the '70's, they left the stove. I miss it, but Rachel Ray has one just like it...sigh....

 

 

Early Adventures in
Food Preparation and Food Service

I had an early start with beverages. I don't think I sold lemonade...but fruit punch instead. Always ahead of the curve. And I seem to remember helping out in synagogue on Saturday mornings mixing the quart bottle of  kosher grape juice with water to stretch it enough to fill up 50 or 60 little cups for the junior congregation "Kiddush" after the service. However, the adults had cups of Malaga wine and "schnapps" which was a advantage of going to services with my grand father on Friday evenings.
At home, I used to be in charge of making the orange juice from the frozen concentrate unless we had real oranges to juice on the Sunbeam mixer and cooking the hot chocolate using Hershey's cocoa powder and following the recipe on the can.
 


A few years later I did a stint in the Cub Scouts (Pack 101) and then in the Boy Scouts (Troop 363) where I remember overnight patrol hikes where we had to plan the menus, do the shopping and prepare the meals for five or six guys. The winter hikes were the most fun..right! burrrrr! There was Treasure Island Boy Scout Camp in the middle of the Delaware River at Point Pleasant. Each troop had its own camp site and the meals were served in a mess hall. Everyone had a turn at busing the tables and washing the dishes and utensils. You had to immerse the dishes in wooden racks under boiling water to sterilize the dishes.

 

At Fels Junior High School, each home room was assigned a particular spot in the lunch room.  A boy-girl pair had a turn to sponge off the tables and sweep the floors under the supervision of a demanding teacher who had "lunch room duty".

I learned more about food service and life from Richard Brunner, the President of the house who was majoring in Hotel and Food and viewed the house as a practicum and of course Flossie White, the cook at Pi Lambda Phi at Penn State. Flossie cooked for about 35 people in the fraternity and came in early in the mornings a couple of times a week to bake pies to save us money and as a gesture of love. And all she wanted in return was that the boys didn't leave dirty glasses in the sink! She could make meat loaf for 30 using 5 pounds of ground beef . I am sworn to secrecy about the other ingredients. It took me years to use a spaghetti spoon instead of dishing up the plates using my hand. Things almost got came to a head when we voted Spanish Rice off the menu at one of the chapter meetings.  On Sunday nights, the pledges usually made hamburgers for the brothers since Flossie was off on Sundays. Dessert always included the reading of  a "scroll" and a "Jell-O Race" between the pledges. Guess what the winner got? Another bowl of Jell-O!

 

Never throw anything out that works.
I still have the Sunbeam Mixmaster my mother received as her engagement present from my father's parents.  It has to be 60 years old! I have the white glass bowls and the juice attachment in tact.

Here I am trying to make 100% squeezed orange juice from concentrate just like Coca Cola does. I think you have to put the concentrate in the orange peels then squeeze the orange peels into the bowl and add water. They must know more than I do about this stuff or just lying about how they make 100% squeezed orange juice from concentrate.

Every once in a while I haul it upstairs from the basement, plug in in and juice a dozen oranges. The grinding noises and the smell of the arcing electric motor brushes and hot Three In One oil brings back memories.  My mother even saved the original manual. There are about 10 on EBay going for about $15 bucks.  But I really use the Kitchen Aid for real cooking and baking. And Debbie uses her crappy little hand GE  mixer for mashed potatoes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have reached the point where I don't think I need one more thing in the kitchen to make anything. I even have the cookie cutter I made in the 7th Grade. I used to go into the Kitchen Kapers in Jenkintown and browse and would just buy something. Then I stumbled into William Sonoma at the Willow Grove Mall and knew why there were not going to be any more Kitchen Kapers type stores. So many things. So overpriced. I like their catalogs...lots of free recipes.

RECIPES ON LINE

Recipes Based on Specific Ingredients

A million shrimp recipes.
Secrets of Vidalia Onions...I wait for them every year
Crock Pot Cookery
Here's a million pasta recipes
Dutch Oven & Camp Cooking
Gourmet Meat loaf
Maple Syrup Recipes
Collection of Salsa Recipes
The Pepper Fool. Recipes Made with Hot  Ingredients
Pecan Recipes
Ice Cream, Frozen Desserts and Beverages
Hot Dog & Sausage Recipes
Elliott's Collection of Hot Dog Recipes

Patty Cake, Patty Cake Baker's Man

Jewish Cooking

Other Ethnic and Regional Cuisines

Home Made Brewing


Tang..they took it to the moon and should have left it there.
Food in Space

You are What You Eat.

Junk Food Conspiracy

Caffeine
Soft Drinks...Nothing more than Liquid Candy
The bitter truth about Aspartame
Snack Food...all four basic food groups in each handful
Fast Food Finder

You deserve a break today!

But what's really in a Big Mac?

BevNet Logo
BevNet...independent reviews of various beverage products

Better Eating

Playing with Your Food

The Sugar Packet Collector's Page.

Organizations Which Deal with Food & Hunger

Professional Food Stuff