Photos courtesy of Courtney Apple Photography. Featured photo of Mount Airy’s Food for All Market.

Ambler’s popular Deterra Restaurant offers a ‘A Tasting of Beets’ with goat cheese spuma and toasted walnuts.

We recently celebrated National ‘Eat Your Veggies Day’ across America—a fun excuse to load up on vegetables and acknowledge a healthier diet. One of our favorite veggies is the beet, which is commonly featured in a variety of local restaurants and markets across the Main Line. And, of course, a staple at the dozens of Farmer’s Markets our region has to offer.

Beets have been around for quite some time—dating back to the second millenium B.C. Raw beets are absolutely loaded with folate, a B vitamin that is essential for cell growth and reproduction, as well as potassium. And, they are exceptionally low in calories and fat! Beets are super rich in dietary fiber, vitamins and minerals. They also contain a significant amount of Vitamin C, one of nature’s most powerful antioxidants and cancer fighters.

For moms looking to encourage their kids to incorporate more veggies in their diet they should know kids are more likely to eat vegetables that they have grown themselves as opposed to those that are store bought!

Some of our favorite suburban chefs have delicious beet salads as part of their seasonal repertoire, including Wayne’s Chef Zach Grainda of White Dog and Chef Jeffrey Power of Ambler’s Dettera Restaurant and Wine Bar.

‘Eat Your Veggies Day’ is a great reminder to load up on beets and all veggies for a healthier approach to our diets now and moving forward. In addition, if you are dining out around the Main Line, look for healthy choices from local chefs using beets!

Have a favorite way to prepare or serve beets—or a beet recipe that cannot be beat, LOL? We would love to hear from you on our comment form below.

Thanks to our awesome friends at Wegmans for sharing two great beet recipes below! They both sound delicious and nutritious!

Wegmans Glazed Beet and Orange Salad

3 pkgs (8 oz each) Melissa’s Baby Red Beets
1 cup Wegmans Organic Orange Juice
1 Tbsp Italian Classics Chianti Red Wine Vinegar
3 Tbsp light brown sugar
1 Tbsp water
1 Tbsp cornstarch
3 large navel oranges, peeled, separated into segments
2 Tbsp + 1 tsp finely chopped mint, divided

Wegmans Red Flannel Hash

3 cloves Food You Feel Good About Peeled Garlic, minced
1 sweet onion, peeled, 1/4-inch dice (1 1/2 cups)
1/2 lb parsnips, trimmed, peeled,1/4-inch dice (1 1/2 cups)
1 pkg (8 oz) Melissa’s Baby Red Beets, 1/4-inch dice
1 pkg (8 oz) Food You Feel Good About Cleaned & Cut Brussels Sprouts, sliced thinly into rounds
2 Food You Feel Good About Organic Carrots, trimmed, peeled, 1/4-inch dice (1 cup)
12 oz Wegmans Fingerling Potatoes, 1/4-inch dice
1 pkg (0.25 oz) Food You Feel Good About Italian Flat Leaf Parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste

Photos by Courtney Apple Photography

Main Line Restaurant Week is Philadelphia’s largest suburban dining event!

It was most certainly a week of culinary delights to remember! 38 restaurants participated in the inaugural Main Line Restaurant Week, organized by AroundMainLine.com. This incredible celebration of the region’s finest chefs proved to be the most successful restaurant event to date in the Philadelphia suburbs.

Main Line Restaurant Week, which offered fixed price dinner menus for the entire week of September 27th through October 3rd, brought tens of thousands of locals out to support the western suburbs’ tastiest restaurants. “I’m so proud to have worked closely with so many of the area’s best restaurants. There has never been a dining event of this magnitude in the suburbs and I felt our area was long overdue. Many restaurants are reporting they had record weeks or were sold out several of the nights, so I know we have a good thing going here. I am thrilled everything turned out so well!” enthused Main Line Restaurant Week founder Sarah Lockard. Read the full story

Photos courtesy of Courtney Apple Photography

Saffron Indian Kitchen, a popular BYOB with locations in both Bala Cynywd and Ambler, has received a tremendous response for reservations for Main Line Restaurant Week starting September 27th.

It is the Philadelphia suburb’s largest dining event ever—Main Line Restaurant Week! Created and organized by AroundMainLine.com, a week of culinary delights awaits thousands of foodies across the western suburbs starting tomorrow night, September 27th and running through October 3rd, 2010.

I have been a huge fan of the Main Line and western suburb dining scene having grown up here. And, we have some of the best chefs in the region and the most successful restaurants right in our own backyard. To me, it was due time to bring Main Line Restaurant Week to life this fall. When I announced the launch in early May, the immediate and enthusiastic response from our 2,200 AroundMainLine.com Facebook fans proved that we were on our way to a very successful event.

Here’s how it works. Our restaurants offer a prix fixe, three course dinner menu for one of the four tiers: dinner for $15, $20, $30 or $40. In addition, starting Monday night September 27th, we will kick off the first of eight special events that are a part of Main Line Restaurant Week with a ‘Monday Night Meetup’ at The Desmond in Malvern! Read the full story

Photos courtesy of Courtney Apple Photography
By AML Publisher

Wednesday Night Whinos has become the premier Main Line ladies social club!

Wednesday Night Whinos, AroundMainLine.com’s very popular Main Line ladies social club, continues to grow in its popularity—and for good reason! Whinos, which launched this past March, has brought hundreds of local women together at restaurants, shops and businesses across the Main Line and surrounding suburbs. Wednesday Night Whinos is free and open to all women 21 and over and has helped local gals meet new friends, make business connections and experience the fantastic businesses, boutiques and restaurants the region has to offer!

Whinos picks back up this month with, not one, but two awesome parties. New AML client Whitney Ayerle Bachrach opened an exciting, chic accessories boutique in Eagle Village Shops on September 1st called Kat Bradley! Join over a hundred local women this Wednesday for a great kickoff to fall fashion. Then, as part of our exciting inaugural Main Line Restaurant Week running September 27th through October 3rd, 2010, we will host a special Wednesday Night Whinos at Dettera Restaurant and Wine Bar. Full details below and, of course, on both AroundMainLine.com Facebook event pages. See you soon ladies! Read the full story

By Laura Kicey
Photos courtesy of Laura Kicey

Ambler photo journalist Laura Kicey continues her three part series documenting her weeklong journey of the mystical country called Iceland. Kicey’s trip was funded entirely by a new, innovative website called kickstarter.com – which specializes in micro-patronage for creative ventures and concepts. For other kickstarter.com success stories, visit their website.

Pictured is a fortuitous shot of The Great Geysir of Iceland, for whom all geysers are named. The Geysir first erupted in the 14th century. It used to erupt every 60 minutes until the early 1900s when it became dormant. Earthquakes in June 2000 subsequently reawakened the ‘sleeping’ giant and it now erupts approximately every 8 to 10 hours.

The Geysir, for which all geysers are named, burbles and steams constantly in between eruptions. The explosive drama of the geyser’s spout against the backdrop of the purple, June-time landscape, surrounded with jewel-toned pools of steaming water, rich blue skies and intense sun was quite rousing. But, the intensity and raw power of our next stop at Gullfoss, the grandiose Golden Falls, dwarfed even Geysir. When you pull into the parking lot, you can neither see nor hear this raging force of water cutting into the land, but after a short walk over the hill, the turbulent wind and mist grab you and start to pull you into the core of Golden Falls. Standing on a ledge a few feet from the edge, separated by only a single thin wire, the wind at your back edging you forward, it would be easy to get swept away by its puissance.
Read the full story

By Laura Kicey
Photos Courtesy of Laura Kicey

Several months ago we connected with Ambler photographer Laura Kicey by a cool twist of fate. I was thrilled to learn that Kicey was gearing up for an exploration and photo journey through Iceland. Kicey worked closely with kickstarter.com, a website offering a very innovative and productive way to fund creative endeavors. Through kickstarter.com, individuals across the United States can communicate an interesting, creative idea to a network of people who offer a tremendous source of encouragement and potential funding for the project. Kicey raised all of her funds for her trip thanks to a group of 32 strangers who pledged a total of nearly $3,000. She returned with thousands of images – 260-plus of which are now available on Flickr. Kicey stated she is considering a trip to Alaska next year because “I love cold, icebergs, remoteness, etc…so it is right up my alley.” And, after looking at her captivating collection of photos, we could not agree more. The following is part one of our three part series following Laura Kicey’s Icelandic adventure.

Enjoy!
Sarah Lockard
AroundMainLine.com ePublisher

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Valley Haus
Kicey and her travel companion, Sandra, enjoyed a lunch picnic their first full morning in Iceland overlooking this mountainside cabin and lake.

Every step leading up to my adventure in Iceland meant moving forward without any sense of what was to come. I was not sure I could afford the trip at all, which prompted me to launch an art sponsorship program. Likewise, although we have been friends for years, my travel companion Sandra, (who lives in Stockholm) and I had only met once in 2005. And, despite having seen many photographs and some movies of Iceland, nothing could truly prepare me for what I was to experience. Similar to the all-too-common sign we would eventually see on one-lane roads in the more rural areas of the country – BLINDHÆDIR, which indicated that you were about to crest a hill blind, without any sense of what was approaching from the other side, this trip rested on a hundred leaps of faith occurring on an almost hourly basis. It had been several years since I had traveled beyond North America and the need to venture outside the country was becoming quite strong. While planning for the week-long trip, I realized that even though I had a companion to share the costs and I was going to keep myself to a strict budget, it would still be a financial stretch. One of my friends, joking that she would like to live vicariously through my trip, offered to become my sponsor as long as she could have a print of one of my photos from the excursion. At first I scoffed at the idea. But, soon it started to become clear that I couldn’t afford the trip on my own and might have to take my friend’s offer seriously.
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