Inaugural Post

Goal for the blog - basically, similar to many cooking blogs, the simple sharing of recipes, tips, recommendations/disapprovals. Differences - my guess is that what shows up in this forum will cater particularly to our early 20s lifestyles, whether professional or academic or something else entirely. The contributors stem from a group called Tutta La Famiglia, formed in the loving halls of Hill House at the University of Pennsylvania, although the group has expanded to include many wonderful Penn (now) alumni (Class of 2006). From that group, the ladies were filtered out to create the LadyTalk association, a way of keeping in touch with one another, despite having incredibly busy schedules.

I'll start. One of the ways I like to save time and still eat wonderfully delicious food is to put a lot of effort in on Sunday, that I can reap throughout the week. Last week, it went like this:

1. Walk to Ferry Building Farmer's Market (in Philly, I'd recommend heading down to the Italian Market on Saturday or Reading Terminal, if anyone else has a recommendation for a good place in their city, please comment!) and purchase fresh sweet Italian basil and organic heirloom tomatoes (I like to use the small ones, about the size of cherry tomatoes).

2. Walk home. On the way, stop and pick up a roast chicken from Safeway (approx. $8) - if I'm feeling really ambitious, I'd roast it myself, but this saves time and isn't that expensive. I also pick up pita bread, a small bag of pine nuts, fresh parmesan, fresh mozzarella and fresh garlic.

3. Get home. Eat some of the roast chicken because I'm starving by this point and it's frustrating to cook when you're really hungry. Wash the basil and tomatoes, set out to dry.

4. Come back a little while later, bust out the food processor. Use epicurious.com's recipe for pesto, put it in tupperware. Note: besides items listed above, you'll need salt and extra virgin olive oil.

5. Peel skin from chicken, throw away. Spend about 20 minutes getting the rest of the cold roast chicken off the bones and putting it into a tupperware.

6. Preheat over to 350 degrees.

7. Open pita, place on aluminum foil. Liberally apply pesto. Arrange in whatever fashion I desire pieces of chicken, tomatoes sliced in half, pieces of mozzarella cheese, and red onion (which I didn't mention buying because I almost always have onion in the fridge). Heat in 350 degree over for about 10 minutes. Take out, relish the deliciousness.

Now, for the rest of the week, because I now have a ridiculous amount of pesto, I use it in dinners. Either I make more pitas, toss it in angel hair pasta or TJ's frozen ravioli, or lather it on chicken breasts, if I've run out. I'm sure there's plenty more uses, but those are the most common ones for me. Basically, I can survive on the pitas (they don't get old, especially if the basil is really good - meaning, the pesto is really good) so I don't have to do more than chop up and arrange a few things and heat it in the oven for the rest of the week (takes maybe 20 minute total, plus, if you're really hungry like I usually am after a long day at work, about 2 minutes to eat). =) On Sunday, I spent (not including the walking/shopping, which was more for my leisure anyway) maybe an hour preparing all the items.