Cheesesteak wasn’t the only dangerously delicious food CK and I sampled in Philly.  Our weekend both began and ended with food coma inducing extravagances.  Consumption of beer and ice cream with the Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park led to pretzels, cookies, and smoothies at the Reading Terminal Market and finally ended with our first Water Ices at RIta’s Water Ice mere moments before we were dropped off at the airport. The calorie count for this trip had to have tipped the scales at levels none of us would want to admit to or coherently think about ever again.  Ladies and gentleman, please loosen your belts as I present to you the food of Philly in all its glory:

I don’t think there’s anything quite as good as a cold beer on a warm night at a ballpark. Even though the Red Sox are my true love I have to admit that I felt pretty pampered at the Phillies state of the art stadium.  The highlight of my evening though was this adorable rainbow sprinkle topped sundae.  The next day our adventures in the Reading Terminal Market brought me face-to-face with the most goregous basil I’ve ever seen.  You have no idea how much I wished I could smuggle two of those lush plants home with me on the plane.  Then I turned the corner and ran smack into a table full of perfect peppers sold by the bagful for only 99 cents.  This made my jaw drop since we usually pay more than a dollar for a single red pepper.  Oh what I could have done with just one of those packages…

CK and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to eat one of these sinful chocolate covered Chocolate Chip cookies at the Famous Fourth Street Cookie Company.  Than we chased our shared sugar shock with a glass of whole milk.  I honesty haven’t drank whole milk in probably 15 years.  You have no idea how good this combination was.  The next few items we thankfully just admired from afar including these bizarre chocolate covered onions made famous at the Custom Made Chocolate by Mueller shop.  Apparently they also make anatomically correct chocolate hearts as well but I unfortunately missed that photo op.

Doug insisted on ordering a smoothie made with wheat grass.  As a group we all collectively agreed his drink at the Four Seasons Juice Bar tasted like dirt.  Not being particularly fond of such earthy flavors CK and I drank a much less offensive banana and pineapple version.  Some of the kiosks sold pretty nasty stuff like these turkey necks.  My absolute favorite part of the market was a small area called The Cookbook Stall.  I could have stayed there all day looking at the books.  I honestly think working in that store would make me the happiest person in the world.  I took an embarrassing amount of photos while browsing the shelves.  The clerk probably thought I was a complete and total nut.  Here’s a crab waiting to be someone’s dinner.  He tried to make friends with us but I don’t really care for crab.

Everyone loves bacon so I had to include this image of what probably amounts to twenty pounds of the fatty stuff.  All of the seafood looked so fresh and inviting.  This shot of the masses eating is a good indicator for the level of business that this market has.  It was absolutely packed.  We concluded our trip with various flavors of RIta’s Water Ice.  I had banana and vanilla.  Water ice is similar in texture to a 7-Eleven slurpee but comes in a much more varied array of flavors.

So were you keeping track?  How many calories do you really think we ate over our three day excursion?  I don’t even have pictures of all of the fabulous things that Jen and Doug fed us at their home including some of the best pecan waffles I’ve ever had.  Please send me the recipe Jen!  It was so great to have someone cook for me for a change.  A girl could really get used to that.

I went to my first Red Sox game last night with CK and his co-workers. No, not of the season. This was my first Fenway Park experience ever! Yes, I’ve lived here for three years now and I’d never been to a game. And boy did I live it up. I ate and drank everything in sight from Fenway Franks to French Fries to Cracker Jacks, but the best food moment of the night was having a Sausage and Peppers sandwich from the infamous Sausage Guy. I did a double take when I saw the man behind the cart though as he looked uncannily like my Uncle Eric. Unkie Eric did you get a new job? If so then thank you for the best sandwich ever!

The other highlight of the evening (other than slowly succumbing to hypothermia over the course of three hours in the freezing cold weather) was finding out that Mike Lowell’s walk-up music is Iron Man by Black Sabbath. That was pretty hot!

In the end we won dramatically thanks to my old Portland Sea Dogs buddy Kevin Youkilis and after walking all the way to Copley, to avoid the insane crowds at Kenmore, I arrived home by 11:00 PM and fell into bed utterly stuffed. So CK…when can we get tickets again?!