Not even the recession fazed the New Hope developer’s meteoric trajectory over the last decade. And with his two latest projects well underway, one in the city and the other in the ‘burbs, he’s showing no signs of flaming out any time soon.
By Scott Edwards
A rendering of Rabbit Run Creek. Top: Scannapieco, pictured outside of Waterview, another one of his New Hope projects. Below: 500 Walnut.
Tom Scannapieco is sitting around a conference room table with the Buckingham metalsmith Ray Mathis talking through Mathis’ sketches of the gates for Rabbit Run Creek, the high-end townhome community Scannapieco’s building across town. Toll Brothers, this is not. Thirty-seven homes, each about 3,500 square feet, each with its own elevator, will be embedded among pocket parks. The asking prices start at just over a million.
Rabbit Run Creek is Scannapieco’s suburban follow-up to Waterview, which changed the game for the New Hope developer. “That was a real departure because no one ever built million-dollar condominiums in the suburbs,” he says. Again, not what you’re thinking. Twenty-eight nearly-4,000-square foot condos perched right on the west bank of the Delaware, a short walk from downtown New Hope. Every one of them sold before construction was even completed in 2006.
Scannapieco used roughly the same template in erecting the 31-story 1706 Rittenhouse Square, which was named among the Urban Land Institute’s “Top 20 Projects in the Americas” in 2011. He wanted to build it on the Main Line and in Princeton, New Jersey, but land and progress came faster in Philadelphia. Construction ebbed through the recession, but Scannapieco never lowered his asking prices. Again, every condo sold ahead of schedule. And three have since been sold again—for at least a million over the original asking price in a mere three years.
Last April, Scannapieco found himself publicly refuting a rumor that Jay-Z and Bey had bought the penthouse at 500 Walnut, another posh, 26-story condo tower shooting up over Society Hill, overlooking Independence Hall. “The rumor was that they bought it for $20 million, which was curious because we only had it on the market for 17.6,” he says, a sly grin underlining the obvious: Not exactly bad publicity. Nonetheless, he’s still looking for a taker. Precedent says he won’t be for much longer.
The real estate mogul may have no regrets about abandoning a career as a physicist, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still think like one. Also, for someone who spends most of his days thinking about how the upper crust lives, he’s remarkably low-maintenance.
I bought my first property … in 1974 for $11,000. It was a shell of a post-Civil War townhome in the art museum area. Those houses now are all million-dollar townhouses. I basically took a building that was converted into six small residential units and converted it into three condominiums. Sold two and lived in one. Great memories of that.
If I didn’t become a developer … I’d be an architect, because I love design, or an investment banker, because I enjoy structuring deals and negotiating land.
The last book I read was … Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (North Point Press, 2000), by Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk [and Andres Duany and Jeff Speck]. It was written 16 years ago, but she already perceived what we are now fully recognizing, this movement toward community and more urban-type spaces. And a lot of her comments, I think, were a result of living close to New Hope. As you read the book, you see her talking about New Hope.
The last show I binge-watched was … Probably “24.” Actually, the last one was “House of Cards.” I kind of liked the earlier episodes more than the later episodes. By the end of it, I was done with it.
If I ran Philadelphia … I would take all the empty rowhomes and give them to people. And then I would give them free materials and let them fix them up themselves. Because right now we have a system where you have people that need housing and we think the way to approach that is to pay people $100 an hour to go build a house for them. So you’re addressing one hundredth of one percent of the problem, because that’s all you can afford. You’re spending $200,000 to $300,000 to build a low-income house. Just give them a credit card for Home Depot and limit how much they can buy at any point in time and have spot inspections to make sure the money’s being spent. I think we’d be amazed at what people can do if they’re not told how to do it, they’re not inspected twice a day and they’re just left to do it themselves. And it would be a fraction of the cost of what we’re doing today.
To break a sweat, I … play racquetball once a week and I lift probably three times a week. I go to Cornerstone, here in New Hope.
When I’m not working, I’m … reading the newspaper in a bay window overlooking the river.
My last vacation … was in Venice, a year-and-a-half ago. My daughter was living in London and moving back to Philadelphia, so I met her in Venice and the two of us spent four days there during the Biennale. That was fantastic. It was like going to a world’s fair.
My death-row meal … would be between pizza and a pasta dish with a seafood marinara sauce or something like that. The pizza would probably be plain, nothing imaginative.
The advice that’s stuck most with me … I can’t put a source to it, but I absolutely believe that things are never as bad or as good as you think they are. There’s a real coming back to the norm. It’s just a point in time and, eventually, that’ll pass too.
In five years, … I’d like to be doing exactly what I’m doing. I’ve thought about retirement off and on. It’s only in the last year or so that I finally clarified in my mind that that’s not my calling.
Portrait by Josh DeHonney | Renderings courtesy Scannapieco Development Corp.
An insightful cookbook exploring the Chester County farm’s thoughtful ethos (and all its mouthwatering byproducts) drops this month, thrusting it and its photogenic owner into the national eye.
By Scott Edwards
Dean and Emelie Carlson
Dean Carlson had long been drawn to pastures. But when he looked closer, all he saw was a wasteland. As solid of an investment as farmland is—there’s not nearly enough of it to meet demand—the modern concept of farming itself is being undermined a little more every day by its reliance on cheap oil. Carlson saw no way around that. He was a trader, after all, not a farmer.
This was several years ago. Carlson ended up taking a hiatus when the bottom dropped out of the economy in 2009. He spent those months traveling and reading. It was then that he came across The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, a book that introduced him—and millions of others, of course—to the idea of sustainable farming. From that point, Michael Pollan has basically been the GPS narrator for Carlson’s life.
He found a 300-plus-acre tract in northern Chester County that was under foreclosure and imminent threat of development and he dug in. In the six years since, Carlson’s turned Wyebrook Farm, which dates back to the 18th century, into the ideal. Heirloom-bred pigs, cattle, goats, sheep, turkeys and chickens are raised and butchered with a unique mindfulness and served in a fashionable, on-site market and restaurant, the latter headed up by Andrew Wood, the owner/chef of the beloved Center City restaurant Russet.
This month, Carlson and Wood, along with Ian Knauer, the owner/chef of The Farm Cooking School, in Stockton, New Jersey, are out with Field & Feast—Sublime Food from a Brave New Farm (Burgess Lea Press), a hefty, insightful cookbook that will move Carlson and Wyebrook onto the national stage. The recipes are inspired by, and the advice is derived from, Wyebrook’s ethos and its resources. Central to Carlson’s vision is accessibility and transparency. Short of killing the animal ourselves, the only way we can truly trust the quality of our food, he believes, is by knowing where and who it came from. In that vein, before Carlson’s handsome, Midwestern-friendly mug becomes a staple on our TV screens, consider this your introduction.
Those first months on the farm, when your days were eaten up entirely by clearing the property, what was going through your head?
Carlson [He laughs.] Since it had been in foreclosure, it really had been neglected for a year or two. The first thought was, Where do you start? I bought a few pieces of equipment so that I had some way to lift heavier things. And then it was just start in one spot. When the bank had owned it, they had a farmer that had leased it. He had some cows there, so there was literally two or three feet of manure everywhere. So that was the place that I started.
Knee-deep in manure, you weren’t reconsidering?
No. I mean strangely enough, I didn’t. To my friends and family, they were surprised that I was doing that because it was so different than what I’d done before. But in my mind, it was something that I just felt like I had to do.
How steep is the learning curve? It sounds like this is still a work-in-progress.
It is. I think in terms of the way things could have gone, it’s gone pretty smoothly. There are certainly things, if you knew everything, you’d do differently, but nothing major. After I read Omnivore’s Dilemma, one of the characters in that book is this farmer, Joel Salatin. And he’s written a lot of books himself, so I’ve read a lot of them. And then through his books, learned about other books. So, I had a pretty good idea, theoretically or philosophically, what I wanted to do. Turning that into reality was the learning curve.
What drew you to Andrew Wood?
Before we’d become a full restaurant, we’d done a lot of chef dinners, where I would bring a chef in and we would do sort of a one-off, pop-up-type dinner. And he had done a couple of those, in addition to la tuade, where we would do the killing of the animal and also the dinner. At his restaurant, he basically sourced food that way already. He would buy whole animals. One of the cool things about this place, but also one of the challenges, is that we’re delivering a whole animal or several whole animals to the restaurant every week. A lot of chefs wouldn’t know how to handle that. It’s like, “Here’s what you’ve got to work with. Make a menu around it.” And so I needed to find somebody that not only understood that, or would accept that, but sort of reveled in that.
From the beginning, Wyebrook’s cool factor has been very high—the farmhouse-chic aesthetic, the pop-up dinners with rising, young chefs. Most family-run farms don’t make it into Martha Stewart Living. How much does that aspect factor into your consciousness.
I think the thing that sells it the best is that the food is better. I really tried to always make the focus the food itself. I really wasn’t trying to necessarily make it sexy. But I also—there was some idea of an aesthetic involved, only in the sense that, when people think about a farm, they picture in their mind it looking a certain way. And I know that that’s not really the reality of most farms. And so, in making this place, I knew that in order for it to be successful, it needs to look like that ideal rather than reality. That’s not to say that we don’t really do the things we do. It just needs to look a certain way.
“Sustainable farming,” you write, “sets out to produce food in a way that can be repeated infinitely on a given piece of land.” But is it economically viable? Is Wyebrook?
We’re at the point that we’re starting to make money, and this’ll be our fourth year or fifth year. I always looked at it as something that would become more viable as energy prices rose. When fuel is really cheap, commoditized food looks really cheap, because such a big input is oil. Whereas when oil would go up, the cost of industrial food would go up a lot. But mine wouldn’t go up that much. So I kind of looked at it as this would be the low-cost option. And in the meantime, you just have to take advantage of another positive part: that people are willing to pay more for organic food, willing to pay more for food where they know where it comes from, mostly because it tastes a lot better.
Field & Feast signals to me that you’re out in front of this thing now. You’re confident in what you’re doing and now you’re innovating. Is that an accurate assessment?
Yeah, definitely. I wouldn’t make major changes to what we’re doing. People always ask, “Are you going to continue to grow?” I don’t look at it that way. I don’t want Wyebrook to be bigger. I want it to be better. What we’re going to do in the future is continue to improve on things. An easy example of that is with grass-fed beef. A lot of the grass-fed beef out there is crap. It’s sub-par quality. It’s amazing when the animal is properly finished. Over the last four years, five years, we’ve learned a lot about how to get the animal to that point where the product, steak, is a lot better. And that’s one of the things I’m really encouraged about.
How much of this now is reinventing the wheel, if you will?
It’s hard to know, right? Because I can’t go back a hundred years and know what a steak tasted like then. But I know the way the modern system is doing it is not right. So I know I don’t want to do it that way. We have to figure out ways to make our product as good or better than what the industrial system makes. I read all these books that talked about the right way to do it, and I don’t think that those ways were necessarily the whole answer. We’re constantly still trying to figure out what the answer is and get better at it. And I think it varies a lot from place to place.
Between the featured recipes and the numerous guest-chef dinners you’ve hosted, what dish has resonated with you the most?
I eat a lot of the product from here. I can’t say that I’ve tasted every animal, but I really do try to eat something every week from that animal so that I can know what the progress of the quality of the meat is. Oftentimes, I eat the rib-eye. That’s a cut that is easily comparable. I look at it when it’s raw so that I can see the marbling in it. I kind of know what the level of tenderness should be and what the taste should be. That’s also one of my favorite things, probably my favorite thing to eat. The last two weeks, I sent out pictures to all of our people of this rib-eye and basically said this is the best steak we have ever produced. And it’s probably the best grass-fed steak I’ve ever had.
On a scale of one to five, with one being poor and five being excellent, let’s say this most recent example was a five. Where did the earliest examples fall?
A three, let’s say.
You mention in your introduction that food production is its most streamlined and natural when everything happens in one location. To that end, what are you working toward at Wyebrook?
Well, I guess the only thing that we don’t do here, the thing that we’re working on next, is vegetable production. In the beginning, we had to concentrate on a few things at a time. Meat was something that I felt was scarcer. And this farm was really set up well for that. But as we’ve become a restaurant, we’re buying a lot of vegetables. There’s no reason why we couldn’t be growing those here.
In the grand scheme, why is Wyebrook Farm important?
I guess if I had to give one answer for that, I think that it’s very important that people know where their food comes from. And the only way to really do that is to have a connection with it. Reading a label is good. Knowing who produced it is the next step. Going to a farmers market, having a conversation with a farmer, asking questions, that’s much better. But I feel like the ultimate along that continuum is to be in the place. That’s what we’re trying to do. You can ask us questions, and we do answer any question, but you can also use your eyeballs to tell if what we say we’re doing is what we’re actually doing. People can see the animals and see the environment that they’re in.
[divider]Cook Like a Farm-to-Table Chef[/divider]
Recipes from Field & Feast—Sublime Food from a Brave New Farm.
Roast Lamb Sandwiches with Tahini and Pickled Onions Serves six to eight.
We use slices of our Seven Fires–Style Roast Lamb for these sandwiches, but the Sear-Crusted Leg of Lamb also works nicely. Either way, this take on a classic gyro is a fantastic alternative to a burger.
2 cups baby kale
8 flatbreads or large pitas, warmed
½ lemon
1¾ pounds roast lamb, thinly sliced
Fine sea salt
½ cup organic tahini
Water, as needed
½ cup pickled red onions
Scatter the kale over the flatbreads, then squeeze the lemon over the kale. Divide the lamb between the sandwiches, then sprinkle with salt to taste. Whisk together the tahini with some water to thin it, and drizzle over the lamb. Scatter the pickled onions over the sandwiches and serve.
Pork Belly al Asador with Salsa Verde Serves 10 as a small plate.
When you have access to high-quality pork, there is very little you need to do to let it shine. After an overnight brine, the meat gets grilled over hardwood, picking up plenty of smoke, before it is seared and served with a bright and herby salsa verde.
Place the pork belly in the brine and refrigerate overnight.
Preheat the grill, preferably with hardwood or hardwood charcoal. Remove the pork belly from the brine and pat dry. Grill the pork belly, moving it between direct and indirect heat, until charred on the outside and cooked through, but not falling apart, about two-and-a-half hours. Let the pork belly cool slightly.
Slice the pork belly a half-inch thick. Heat a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Sear the slices of pork belly, turning once, until golden, about eight minutes. Transfer the pork belly slices to a platter as seared, then top with the salsa verde and serve.
Blueberry-Dulce de Leche Gratins Serves eight.
This summery fruit gratin might seem too simple to be true, but something transformative happens after just a few minutes under the broiler. While the hickory nuts toast and crisp, the berries soften and burst, releasing their sweet-tart juice, which then mingles with the melting dulce de leche. The resulting dish is balanced and nuanced—a perfect base for a scoop of ice cream.
3 cups fresh blueberries
1 cup goat’s milk dulce de leche
¼ cup chopped hickory nuts or hazelnuts
Vanilla ice cream, for serving
Preheat the broiler. Divide the blueberries between eight shallow flame-proof gratin dishes. Drizzle the dulce de leche over the blueberries, then scatter the hickory nuts over top.
Broil the gratins about five inches from the heat until the blueberries have just started to burst, and the dulce de leche is melted, about two minutes. Serve the gratins warm with vanilla ice cream.
[Read: A place so effortlessly cool that weary, middle-age adults can convince themselves that they still have a beat on what all the hype’s about.]
Call it middle age, but I’m exhausted by the mere thought of the drive to Philly for a night out. Or maybe it’s all the logistics that go into the planning anymore. Ten years ago, the destination(s) was almost always inconsequential. As long as we were all together and the booze flowed freely, it was a party. Now, dates need to be reserved a month, sometimes two, in advance. Babysitters need to be hired, budgets and ground rules established—don’t mention baby weight, job searches or house hunting. Every nuance only adds to the weight of expectation, to the point that it starts to feel like a burden. Which makes Xlounge, the new bar at Parx, a godsend. The drive’s cut in half, parking’s a nonstarter, and once inside, we’re back to being the savvy twentysomethings we always imagined ourselves as (and never actually were), entering a room with all the swagger of the “Entourage” crew (seasons one and two). Settling into a nook of velvet-and-leather lounge chairs and sofas, a round of craft cocktails and beers slipped into our hands like it was choreographed, it looks effortlessly cool, we look so effortlessly cool. Not like we’re a bunch of homebodies masquerading as cool kids who will be crippled with hangovers and responsibilities come the morning light. —Scott Edwards
If you ever thought about moving beyond your trusty ol’ drip machine but didn’t know how, this is your gateway.
By Mike Madaio
Five years ago, while serving as the director of education at the Wine School of Philadelphia, Zach Morris—yes, that’s his real name—presided over perhaps the greatest wine tasting I’ve had the pleasure of attending. Though the pours—Grand Cru Burgundy—were outstanding, it wasn’t just what was in the glass that left such an indelible mark. Morris’ palpable enthusiasm for the material made the region and its winemakers come alive.
He’s earnest and easygoing, but what’s immediately evident about Morris is his unquenchable thirst to know. Everything. At the wine school, his ability to digest even the most obscure details about a plethora of regions, producers and methods was uncanny. Curious as his decision to open a café may have seemed from the outside looking in, there could be no doubt that he’d approach Green Engine Coffee Co. with the same voracious appetite.
We meet at his Haverford café, where I planned to test the limits of his relatively newfound knowledge. I needed to know how to make a better cup of coffee. I finally arrived at the point in my life where I was ready to make an effort beyond setting the timer on my drip machine. Morris lights up and starts talking cold brewing straightaway.
“The beauty of cold brew is its simplicity. It’s almost no work. If you can grind and weigh, you just set it and forget it,” he says. “And you can use pretty much any vessel for brewing.”
The catch is the required steep time: at least 12 (and up to 24) hours per batch. In other words, planning ahead is mandatory.
“It’s just like barbecue, low and slow,” Morris says. “But the flipside of advance prep is that cold brew keeps well, especially when stored in an airtight, dark environment like your fridge.”
Beyond organization and patience, the grinding is the most critical part of cold brewing. Set your burr grinder to “coarse.” (If you’re not grinding your own beans, invest in a burr grinder. (See below.) Regardless of the brewing method, it’ll prove essential. And you’ll notice a difference in the taste of your coffee within the first sip. And every one thereafter.)
Once the beans are ground, use a two-to-one ratio of water to grounds. “But you can adjust that based on how strong you want it,” Morris says. Mix them thoroughly in a French press, ideally, then lower the plunger to the water line and let it sit overnight. Come the morning, lower the plunger the rest of the way. Morris, a perfectionist, suggests filtering, but I’ve seen consistently excellent results using just the press’s strainer.
This is our ever-reliable backup at the café. Special features aside, the only one that matters when it comes to weighing coffee and water is that the scale measures to a tenth of a gram.
Taking pride in brewing your coffee gets addictive really fast. This app’ll come in handy when you start obsessing over tenths of grams and temperatures.
The husband-and-wife owners of Wayne’s Cornerstone Cheese & Charcuterie share their Society Hill kitchen, a modest space that packs a surprising punch. Not unlike their surging shop. By Scott Edwards · Photography by Brandon Wyche
Down a steep, narrow spiral staircase, in the basement of a brick townhome in Philadelphia’s Society Hill neighborhood, sits Christine Doherty Kondra and Nick Kondra’s kitchen. For all of its colonial-era charm—the brick and stone wall, the exposed, original floor joists overhead—the space is, foremost, a model of efficiency. Because it has to be. Two people of average height standing shoulder to shoulder, arms outstretched, could probably cover the full length of the room. When they moved in, the sum of the storage was a couple of floor-level cabinets and a shallow pantry. The only source of natural light, the contemporary door that opens to the sidewalk, which doubles as a sort of skylight. But there was a gas stove, and that was every bit the priority that location was to them. This was two years ago, and Doherty Kondra was working as a private chef. “So every single day I was cooking. And not a little. A lot,” she says. The Berwyn native met Kondra, who’s from Syracuse, at a party their first summer working on Nantucket as chefs. They were engaged three years later. In November 2014, they moved back here to be closer to Doherty Kondra’s family. Coming from Boston, they gravitated to Philly. Kondra became the pasta chef at Amis. Within the next two years, they’d open Cornerstone Cheese & Charcuterie in Wayne. But, for now, Doherty Kondra was left to piece together a functioning kitchen in order to make a living. So, there was the gas stove, at least. It didn’t vent, though. “The woman who had been here I guess for like 15 years prior used the microwave to cook,” Doherty Kondra says. “So she had never actually turned the stove on.” That was corrected in short order. The unique (read: wildly inconsistent) dimensions of the kitchen added to the challenge of outfitting it. They landed on a compact island from Crate & Barrel with a stainless steel top and a wooden bottom that doubles as their dining table. There’s also a shin-high shelf hidden underneath. They installed a trio of eye-level cabinets from Ikea. And Doherty Kondra, with the help of her uncle, built the simple shelving that spans the length of the opposite wall, since nothing she found could accommodate the limited space and the varying heights of their pressure canner, crockpots, blenders and pasta machine. A pegboard that runs the full height of the door that opens to the next-door laundry room holds most of their hand tool arsenal. And their copper pots and pans hang in neat rows on the wall immediately on the other side of that door. Look closer and you’ll notice that the spices housed in the lower cabinets and the pantry’s contents are even alphabetized.
“Everything’s organized according to how I cook, and to be able to just easily grab and go,” Doherty Kondra says. “When we’re cooking down here, I have to remind Nick we don’t have a dishwasher.” A person, not the machine. There is a dishwasher. “That’s a common problem with guys that are used to the [commercial] kitchen; they start cooking at home and they’re using every single pan. You don’t do that as a private chef. You use like one, or two, or three, and you clean as you go.”
Since Cornerstone has taken off, they’re cooking less for themselves and using this home more as a pied-à-terre. They spend most nights during the week in a second home near the restaurant.
“I’m ready to take the plunge and just stay out in the suburbs,” Kondra admits.
His wife, however, is reluctant to let go of the city. “If we had all the money in the world, I would raise our kids in Philadelphia and buy a beautiful brownstone a block from here,” she says. “But we didn’t win the Powerball. It’s not going to go that way.”
Kondra planted another seed, and now he seems to be winning her over. “It sort of dawned on me,” Doherty Kondra says, “if we have a place in Wayne full-time, then we’ll come into the city—”
“And,” her husband jumps in, “stay at the Four Seasons.” Well played.
Not to gloss over the 60 kinds of handpicked cheese for sale or the house-made sausage, but it’s the deftly edited restaurant at Cornerstone Cheese & Charcuterie that shot it into orbit. Weekends are booking at least a week out. Impressive for what was supposed to be a gradual introduction. The original concept was a gourmet-bent shop that staged the occasional cooking class. And then, a couple months in, dinner service.
At the heart of the uniquely intimate atmosphere is a U-shaped, 14-seat chef’s counter—those are, by the way, the only seats in the restaurant—that encircles an open kitchen. Watch your meal come together or turn your undivided attention to your dinner companion. There’s no in-between. This is not a communal table. And beyond the Van Morrison bellowing softly in the background, there are no distractions. Even the wait staff seems to make itself invisible, plates appearing magically before you.
This is not dining out as you’re used to it, especially in Wayne. With the volume turned down on the white noise, the food and the conversation go 4K HD. —SE
The time to register is now, before the growing gets good. But every share’s a little different, so allow us to play matchmaker.
By Bill Gelman
We’re in the throes of CSA registration season. A few years ago, that news would have elicited a faint “Yay!” from the back of the room. Today, a mad scramble just broke out, because there are precious few shares still up for grabs. Community Supported Agriculture is a booming industry. There are now more than 12,500 of them nationwide, but the interest has grown just as fast, if not faster. Even with work requirements and more cucumbers than you’d ever want to eat in five lifetimes. What follows is a field guide to some of our favorite to CSAs to help you find the share that’ll best fit your family. Or, considering the urgency, just help you find a share.
A pioneer of the movement around here—this is Anchor Run’s 13th CSA season—it’s also one of the earlier adopters of sustainable farming. All of its crops are chemical- and GMO-free. Those looking for an easy haul, however, may want to continue their search. Every share comes with a work (harvesting, planting, weeding and thinning) requirement—eight hours, at least, over the course of the season for full shares and four for half-shares. Seasons Spring, Summer, Fall Cost $410-$800
Half- and full-shares are available with and without work requirements (12 hours for full-shares, six for half). You’ll end up saving a little under 20 percent by pitching in. Sweetening the enticement even more, Myerov gets creative with how, exactly, you can knock off those hours. They don’t necessarily need to be spent out in a field under a soul-scorching sun. Host a pick-up location instead or a potluck dinner, or write the CSA’s blog. Wait. Never mind that last one. Seasons SSF Cost $360-$720
If you’re an adventurous eater, welcome to your new CSA. Blooming Glen will set you up with all the staples over the next several months—arugula, heirloom tomatoes, sweet potatoes—and they’ll also throw you the occasional curveball, like Hakurei turnips and kohlrabi. Come those weeks, refer to their blog, where they’ll post recipes so that you can act like you know what you’re cooking. Seasons SSF Cost $420-$795
Honey Brook’s actually comprised of four separate farms, two in Hopewell Township and another two in Chesterfield Township, in Burlington County, New Jersey. Pick-ups are available in both locations, and crops are shared among them (different conditions mean certain crops grow better and longer at one than at the other). An innovative box share program is also available. There, shares of various sizes are delivered weekly to several central locations around Pennsylvania and Jersey. If you’ve been overwhelmed by the size or your share in summers past, the box share is the way to go. Seasons SSF Cost $369-$769
It’s the end of July, and if you so much as lay eyes on another cucumber, you’re liable to fly into a Walter White rage. Brilliant as farm-fresh produce is, it can get a little monotonous, even at the height of season. Especially at the height of the season. Sandbrook’s come up with a savvy way around that. Membership fees are converted into credits, which you can then use as liberally or as frugally as you like throughout the season. Snatch up all the strawberries that you can fit in your car and then skip the next couple weeks entirely as you slowly realize your eyes were bigger than your stomach. Seasons SSF Cost $425-$925
Farms, of course, are good for more than fruits and veggies, but that can get lost in a CSA’s onslaught. Not with J & J’s, though. Every other week—it’s a biweekly schedule—they also toss in free-range eggs from their own chickens, along with something out of the ordinary, like pickles in the summer and apple cider in the fall. Basically, the kind of small-batch stuff that lured you to a farmers market in the first place. Seasons Summer, Fall, Winter Cost $195-$360
We realize that the costs we’re throwing around here are not insignificant amounts. And a lot of these farms require that the whole thing be paid up front since the brunt of their expenses comes over the winter. So, if you’re wading into the CSA waters for the first time, Jack’s is the safe play. The extent of your commitment here is one week. Seriously. Every week, the farm emails its subscribers a list of the available produce and what the share will cost. You decide then and there whether you want in—usually. Some weeks, there won’t be enough to go around, and because you’re a newbie, you’ll get last dibs. Seasons SSF Cost T.B.D.
You’re looking at the OG of the CSA movement around these parts. Barbara and Kerry Sullivan, with a little help from some neighbors, doled out their first harvest almost three decades ago, making Kimberton the first known CSA in Pennsy. Even now, Kimberton remains on the forefront. They’ll see your organic certification and raise you a biodynamic farm. It’s a deeply intensive practice. But all you really need to know is that it yields the purest fruits and veggies. Seasons SSF Cost $500-$910
The kitchen is the heart of the modern home. But we’re clogging our arteries. A simple plan to get it—and your family—ticking like new.
By Laurie Palau
It’s where dinner parties find their identities. It’s where families find safe harbor following overloaded days. It’s also where the homework’s done, the bills are paid and, of course, the meals are made.
We ask a lot of our kitchens, and we give very little in return. Drawers designed for Japanese-forged knives are handed over to flashlights without batteries and half-used lint rollers. Large chunks of granite countertop are lost to a rat’s nest of charging phones and tablets.
That kind of scene goes from cozy to suffocating overnight. Before long, your family’s bound to start avoiding it—and each other. But it’s easily remedied by streamlining a few pulse points.
The Pantry
Everything that’s expired gets tossed in the garbage, even if you believe that those dates are merely suggestions. And don’t look past the spices. They’re only good for a year. Then, approach the pantry like it’s your personal market. Labels should face forward and foodstuffs grouped by kind. Corralling the bagged things—potatoes, onions, sugar—in a bin or two like the Sterilite Ultra Basket ($6 for the medium) will spare you shelf space and headaches.
The Pots and Pans Cabinet
Anything you haven’t used in the last year, donate. Anything that’s scratched or burned beyond recognition, trash. Nest the remaining pots and pans within each other. (Largest on the bottom, smallest on the top.) As for those always-uncooperative lids, they’ve finally met their match in the Organized Living Lid Organizer ($7). Now, start plotting what to do with all that extra real estate.
The Storage Shelf
Every container that doesn’t have a lid, and vice versa, goes. Holding out hope doesn’t make it any more likely to surface. If that really narrows the field, or if your set is less a set and more a collection of old takeout containers, invest in the Rubbermaid 40-piece Easy Find Lid set ($21). And prepare to have your mind blown: interchangeable lids, easy-peasy stacking.
The Tool Drawer
How many meals have gone up in flames while you dug (and dug) for the peeler or the small wooden spoon? And don’t forget those supposed friends of yours who very obviously rolled their eyes while you lost your patience (and theirs) chasing a corkscrew. Cut your arsenal down to no more than three of any one tool. You’re not employing line cooks, so you’ll never miss them. Then, insert these bamboo drawer dividers by Lipper ($20 for a set of two) to create a very basic order. As with everything else here, like with like.
The Junk Drawer
If you must have one, and I’ve come to accept that every kitchen does, at least pare it down to the useful stuff. Holding on to a Whole Foods receipt from seven months ago is hoarding. Get a drawer organizer like this adjustable one by Lipper ($16). But what about the things that don’t fit, you ask? They probably don’t belong anyway.
Laurie Palau is the owner of the New Hope-based simply B organized, a home and life organization service.
As if having a seemingly endless stream of recipes at your disposal (for free!) wasn’t enough (it sources from all over the webiverse), you can filter by allergies and ingredients. And that’s not even the most impressive feature. This is: Plug in what’s in your fridge, leftovers included, and Yummly will tell you what’s for dinner. Or late-night snacking. —LP
For Isabella Sparrow’s Hillary O’Carroll, cozy comes from many different walks. Photography by Matthew J. Rhein
You have to really love nature to see the beauty in it right now. Hillary O’Carroll does and can. But, then, she seems to find allure in all kinds of unlikely places: stuffy estate sales, backcountry flea markets, under dusty sheets in attics and barns. If you don’t know her Chestnut Hill home goods shop, Isabella Sparrow, you’re probably still familiar with the name by way of Clover Market. Isabella Sparrow has become the standard-bearer of farmhouse chic around here. But its wares don’t simply fit the fashion, they fill a function, too. Rural life, after all, is utilitarian. Here, O’Carroll shares a few pieces she’ll be settling in with for the frigid days ahead, some repurposed, some as they were always intended. —Scott Edwards
All the pieces featured here are available at: Isabella Sparrow
8511 Germantown Avenue, Chestnut Hill isabellasparrow.com
Salvaged bottles | $2 to $40 Load up a windowsill and filter the pastel wintertime skies through them for a kaleidoscopic light show. Or line them up along a mantle with a bare branch sticking out of each.
Glass cloche | $32 Fill it with bulbs and dried botanicals or hydrangea heads and mushroom caps to bring a piece of the outside in while it’s still too cold to stand actually being outside.
Vintage factory cart $649 Just a pop of extraordinary color, like the patina from this old factory cart, is enough to brighten a room’s stagnant palette.
Repurposed storage | $16 to $150 Old caddies and suitcases, antique grain boxes, it all comes in handy as we begin to gradually sort and organize ahead of the spring clean.
Dishware and accessories | $4 to $99 It’s a great time to simplify your dishware. I like to stick with white porcelain, whether it’s antique ironstone or new china, because it creates consistency, even when the collection’s piecemeal.
Wool and wovens | $49 to $199 These hand-loomed and handcrafted quilts in traditional textures pair perfectly with a mug of Earl Grey on a cold, gray Sunday afternoon.
Our favorite spice guys are out with a limited-run balsamic vinegar.
We’ve been worshipping at the church of Saint Lucifer Spice for quite some time now. Its subtle heat adds some assertiveness to a lot of our staples—hummus, mac-and-cheese, chicken, nuts. In fact, it’d be easier to list the stuff we don’t put it on. (Cereal, BTW, is a definite maybe.) Tom Hewell and Ted Ebert’s latest creation may be even more versatile (and addictive). Saint Lucifer Divine Nectar ($24) is habanero balsamic vinegar that, just like the spice, gives the tongue a little kick before it slides down the throat. Hewell and Ebert played around with the recipe when Saint Lucifer was in its infancy. A collaboration with the Ocean City, New Jersey-based City2Shore Gourmet saw it through. Divine Nectar’s being produced in limited supply in Modena, Italy, the home of the world’s most refined vinegars. Stock up and drizzle it over cheese and roasted veggies, for starters. Then reach for the ice cream. Trust us. —Scott Edwards
A few outside-the-mainstream treatments to help fight off that cold or even the seasonal affective disorder that always seems to lay you out right about now.
By David J. Witchell
It was like clockwork. Every year, as soon as it turned dark and frigid, I caught a debilitating cold that seemed to stay with me until the spring. I’ve always been a workaholic, and I was even more of one in my early twenties, so I wasn’t paying nearly enough attention to my wellbeing. Once I made the connection, the colds lessened in severity then disappeared almost entirely. The basic preventative measures I started adhering to religiously all those years ago sparked a deep passion for holistic treatments. Today, I credit them with keeping me above the fray when everyone else is struggling to stay upright.
Some stuff I do year-round, others are seasonal. The one ritual in my arsenal that I consider to be the most critical is nasal irrigation with a Neti Pot. I’ve been doing it almost daily for the last 20 years, and it’s significantly reduced or even eliminated nosebleeds, nasal congestion, headaches and sore throats.
I go back and forth between the traditional pot and saline solution and the more convenient spray. Both are equally effective. I use a pot and a spray by NeilMed, but the spray can be a bit harsh for first-timers. Arm & Hammer Simply Saline Nasal Relief is milder. Still, the sensation will take some getting used to.
If you think tipping a pot of warm saline up your nose sounds awkward, ear candling is going to blow your mind. Laying there, the first time, with a burning candle sticking out of my ear, the skepticism I felt was far outweighed by the fear that something seriously bad was about to happen. When it didn’t, I slowly relaxed and actually started to enjoy it.
Ear candling’s credited with everything from safely cleaning up the ear canal to sharpening the senses. I tried it because I was suffering from mild vertigo and non-sinus head congestion. The candle was lit—I could hear it crackling—but I didn’t hear or feel much after that. When it was done, I felt calm and lighter. These days, the moment I feel lightheaded, dizzy or congested, I arrange a session.
Essential oils comprise another part of my year-round regimen. Whenever I begin to feel rundown, I’ll draw a hot bath and add five to eight drops each of thyme, rosemary, tea tree, lemon, eucalyptus and lavender essential oils. Their essence can stay with you for a few days, and it’s not just a physical effect. I’ve worked alongside master aromatherapists whose blends have pulled me to a different place and time. Aside from adding them to a bath, the oils can be diffused or applied directly to the skin.
When I don’t act fast enough at the onset of an illness, my go-to remedy blend is called Thieves. It’s a mixture of clove, lemon, cinnamon bark, eucalyptus and rosemary. I’ll add four of five drops to a basin of boiling water, cover my head with a towel, lean in and inhale the steam. The blend was developed in the 15th century to treat the plague. It’s antiviral, antiseptic and antibacterial. I also use it as a sore-throat spray, and I’ll add a few drops to a warm, damp washcloth to help with head and chest congestion.
Essential oils are my magic bullet. But be sure to use them according to the proper dilutions, and pay close attention to contraindications with certain conditions.
Shirodhara is an Ayurveda practice that’s believed to stimulate the third-eye chakra. A thin, steady stream of warm liquid—it can be an herbal oil blend, milk or buttermilk—spills onto the forehead for about 25 minutes, but it can feel like much longer.
Afterward, I find that my concentration is sharper, my anxiety is diminished and my conscience expands to profound dimensions. The only sensation I can equate it to is the endorphin rush following an epic achievement, like finishing a marathon.
I learned of shirodhara 21 years ago during a week spent training with some of the icons of holistic medicine, Deepak Chopra, Bernie S. Siegel and Ram Dass. The version we offer at the spa features herbal oils, and it’s incorporated into a massage.
I’m 48 now, and it becomes more apparent to me with every birthday that my health—physical, mental and emotional—hinges on staying proactive with my care. I’m not discounting the merits of eating unprocessed foods and exercising consistently, but, in my experience, there’s more to it than that. And these treatments, however far outside the mainstream some of them may seem, fill that void in me.
