I  hope y’all know that Philly Fringe is going on right now. In case you don’t, give it a go! After checking out a fringe event, we mosied, and we actually mosied, over to Standard Tap. I’d been here for drinks, but never food. I guess it’s been a long time coming. Their menu changes frequently and is written on chalkboards. Man, I have terrible eyesight. I always have to walk over and stand right in front of it. They had a wide range of options available, but in the end, we both went for the burger. People rave about it, so I had to check it out.
The burger! It’s served with cheese and a thick slice of seared onion, mushrooms, lettuce and tomato on ciabatta bread. You also get a heap of fries and some pickles. The burger is really good! It was juicy and cooked to what I asked for, and the toppings were good. The giant slice of tomato was incredibly flavorful! The fries are great too. My only problem was with the bread. The outside of the bread is so hard and inflexible that when I was trying to bite into the burger, the inflexibility of the bread made all of the innards be pushed out. So it often ended up being a mess. M just ignored the bread completely and just stuck to the innards. I also would have preferred that the onions were cooked more, but that wasn’t a big deal. All in all, a very solid burger.

I rarely eat a hearty breakfast on any normal day. But I relish it when I do. This is what a whole package of bacon looks like when cooked. Bacon is amazing. And M cooked down romaine lettuce with chicken broth and this is what we got. Cooked romaine? Delicious! There was also scrambled eggs, peaches, and hot dog bun toast to round out this breakfast. It was excellent fuel for our 14-mile bike ride along Lehigh gorge.
When we got back, it was time to eat again. There’s nothing like nature, clean air, and exercise to make you just want to eat all the time. More romaine! And random veggies like green beans, eggplant, and tomatoes.
Corn on the cob! I ate two.
M cooked up some chicken breast with an orange – soy marinade.
We didn’t have much bacon left over for the next morning, so we had to opt for sausage instead.
But the real star of that breakfast was the french toast made from hot dog buns. There was french toast from double fiber bread (!?!) too, but the hot dog buns worked out great! I’m a big fan of just working with what you have, so if hot dog buns is all you have, then by all means, use them!

Labor day weekend at the poconos was relaxing, nature-filled, and full of good home-cooked meals. How can you not relax seeing ducks cruising around a lake?
Since M is an awesome cook, she made us a stew where she basically threw things together. To start, take your stew meat and cut it into cubes. Dredge it in flour and then brown in your pot.
Browned stew meat. Nom.
Then in a big old pot throw in the meat, some broth (there was one can of chicken so we used that), onions, celery, sweet potatoes (because we didn’t have regular potatoes), carrots, tomatoes, crushed garlic, dried chives, sage, bay leaf, a couple of yuenglings, and maybe a little cooking wine. Then we just let it cook for hours. It does not get any easier.
Once we got back from kicking it at the lake and beach and doing pretend gymnastics, there was a giant pot of delicious stew awaiting us. The meat was super tender. There was a thick and delicious broth. The sweet potatoes were amazing. It was perfect! I never realized how easy it was.