Vacation?

While I have not really been on “real” vacation the past few weeks, I have been busy taking long weekends outside of the city – D.C.; Podunk, PA; and the beach the past three weekends. Eating out at new restaurants (at least any where relevant to Philly) just simply hasn’t happened. Neither has elaborate or tale-worthy cooking. This trend may continue for a while. Like most people, this next weekend is a long holiday weekend for me, and I’ll be in Texas before I have time to even post about food or restaurants that I don't have time to get to. So, I’m announcing a sort of blog vacation. See you sometime after Labor Day.

Until then, here’s what I was doing this past weekend instead of heading out in the city to chow down. If you couldn't tell from the photos, I went to the beach...and evened out my sock tan!

This dog is obsessed with balls. Does not stop. Ever.

All the vegetables brought to the beach house were grown on my friend Stephanie's homestead. (That's her hand over the platter of grilled vegetables. She wanted her hand to make it into the blog. Her husband is stoking the coals with an empty beer bottle. I don't think he wanted in the blog, but he made it in anyway.) We grilled corn in the husk and marinated eggplant as side dishes to accompany fettuccine tossed in garlic and lemon and topped with feta and grilled squash, zucchini, and red peppers. That's about as exciting as things got...food-wise.I almost collected blueberry-on-steroid-esque beach plums that grow in the sand dunes to bring home – you know, to cook somehow and impress – but then I was like,"Nah, I'm going to be gone in a few days." Plus, they have pits, and I'm too lazy to extract the pits.