Kung Hei Fat Choi, Philly Style

Sunday was not only Valentine’s Day but more importantly in our house it was Chinese New Year. We celebrated the year of the Tiger in Philly’s Chinatown where we unexpectedly watched a Lion Dance parade and enjoyed a late afternoon lunch of food that is suppose to provide good luck, wealth and a long life.

Approaching Chinatown we noticed a crowd of people on the corner of 10th and Arch streets, near the China Gate and heard the rhythmic sounds of drums and symbols. Then came a long, loud blast of firecrackers and above the heads of the crowd were large, colorful decorated lion heads bobbing. The parade moved north up 10th Street, made a left at Race Street and then headed north on 11th Street. They stopped several times to dance and light fireworks and visited a few restaurants and bakeries, offering good luck for the year. We followed the parade to 11th and Race streets where we decided to leave to enjoy some good luck food.

More pictures follow:

Snow Figures in Rittenhouse Square

Within a six-day period, more than 44 inches of snow fell on Philadelphia in two separate storms. With winter just past its halfway point, the city has already recorded more than 70 inches of snow, an all-time record. Most of the snow fell on three occasions. The most recent was Feb. 10-11 when 15.8 inches fell. On Feb. 5-6, 28.5 inches of the white stuff was recorded. This followed a freakish December snowstorm that dropped 23.2 inches on the city.

I’m not a fan of winter but the first two storms were actually enjoyable. The snow was light and fluffy, easy to move. They were followed by relatively warm weather and lots of sunshine so there was quick, sustained melt. Local businesses were open and stocked. It was an excuse to hunker down and enjoy the unusual events while eating comfort food. The third storm though put an end to the enjoyment. It was a heavy wet snow that covered what was left from the prior storm. It was hardened by cold temperatures and cloudy days. This is more typical of the type of snowstorms in the Philadelphia area.

Maria flirting with a snowman on a park bench

Frankly I’m sick of it and was totally through taking pictures the storm or its aftermath. That was until Friday when Maria and I strolled past Rittenhouse Square, the center of daily activity in center city Philadelphia and saw the snow figures. Rabbits, cats on the snow covered grass. Human figures sitting on park benches. There were also traditional snowmen and figures unrecognizable. Some of the figures were well formed while others were in various stages of melt. I don’t know how long they’ve been up or whether they were the result of children, adults, or both. But they were imaginative, clever and fun. It brought a smile on our faces and made an otherwise dreary winter day more enjoyable.

Snow covers all but the head of a frog sculpture

The Giant Colon

It lies in a serpentine position inside a glass case like a creature from an unknown place or something that could only be dreamed up in ancient mythology, like an Ouroboros. Or a giant snake that lived in the depths of the sea or that spent its life burrowed into the deep earth. Its brown skin is paper thin. If stretched out, it measures more than eight feet in length and has a circumference of 27 inches.

It is a human colon, one of the highlights of a trip to the Mütter Museum, which collects and displays anatomy and human medical anomalies and provides an historical context for medical tools and procedures used over the past 150 years. It’s a ghoulish, educational and intriguing collection.
The museum’s exhibits include: The plaster cast of the torso of the world-famous Siamese Twins, Chang & Eng, and their conjoined livers; a cancerous growth removed from President Grover Cleveland; and books that are bound by human skin. Unfortunately, the museum has an extremely strict no pictures and video policy, so most of images are from either the Mütter Museum Web site or other Web sites.


The abnormalities of the human skeletal system are the focus of the tallest skeleton on display in North America, a seven-foot-six-inch person from Kentucky; alongside a three-foot-six-inch dwarf. One notices immediately the oversized, protruding rib cage of the tall skeleton, a common occurrence among unusually large persons.

Famed Austrian anatomist, Joseph Hyrtl, donated a collection of 139 skulls that depict the physical variations among ethnic groups (pictured from Mütter Museum Web site).

Then there’s the “Soap Lady,” an exhumed body taken to the museum because her body had changed to adipocere, a wax-like organic substance formed by the fat in animal tissue—such as body fat in corpses when buried in a cool, moist environment. In its formation, putrefaction is replaced by a permanent firm cast of fatty tissues, internal organs and the face. Her preserved body is one of the museum’s most popular exhibits. She is believed to be more than 130 years old and is constantly being x-rayed as new imaging technology becomes available to determine, among other things: her age, when she died, and (believe it or not) how she lost her teeth at a young age.

The colon was removed from a man who didn’t quite make it to his 30th birthday and who used his medical condition to earn a living a sideshow performer in Philadelphia, billed at different times as the “Balloon Man” and the “Human Windbag.” He died, not surprisingly, of severe constipation. His colon contained more than 40 pounds of feces at the time of his death. There are pictures of him inside the museum naked with his protruding abdomen and a record of a visit to Hahnemann Hospital, which he was diagnosed as having constipation, and released. He was reported to go up to a month without a bowel movement and suffering severe pain.

Photos of "Balloon Man" and his giant colon at the top of the page are are from http://www.aliveandwellcoloncare.com

The museum is housed inside the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Founded in 1787, it is the oldest professional medical organization in the country. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia is not an academic organization, as the name suggests, but a not-for-profit educational and cultural institution dedicated to advancing the cause of health, and upholding the ideals and heritage of medicine.

The two-story museum itself isn’t very large, but it is filled to the rim with well-organized collections of medical tools, preserved human remains, and models of human remains. About 2,000 objects extracted from people's throats are stored in file draws. There are human and animal fetuses, sliced sections of a human head (pictured from the Mutter Museum Web site), and several exhibits and artifacts of conjoined twins.

Just outside the building, there’s an attractive, quiet medical garden—which contains more than fifty kinds of herbs with detailed explanations of their historical medicinal value and their value in contemporary medical therapy.

The Mütter Museum, 19 South 22nd Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19103.

I’ll have the Half-Smoke ‘All the Way’

It’s a Washington, D.C. institution that has nothing to do with monuments, museums or government buildings. It has fed the stomachs and souls of the folks in the nation’s capital and from around the world for more than 50 years. It’s Ben’s Chili Bowl.

It’s a place as friendly and unpretentious as it gets despite its amazing success, which we noticed as soon as we walked up from the Metro stop at 2: 30 p.m. and looked across the street at the line of people outside of the small white building whose façade was covered with yellow and red signage. Bill Cosby thrust Ben’s into the national spotlight in 1985 when he held a press conference there to celebrate his number one show. In 2004, Ben’s received the Gallo of Sonoma “America's Classics” Restaurant Award from the James Beard Foundation. The place has been spotlighted by every news, travel and food show imaginable.
(Photo from Ben's Chili Bowl Web site.)

The line weaved inside the building (a former silent movie theater) that looked every bit its 100 years of age but it moved fast with loud, friendly workers shouting encouragement. Ben's is proud of it's African-American roots and on its walls are pictures of black entertainers and leaders of the Civil Rights movement who are customers. A sign near the door proclaims "We Love Our Customers. You Are The Best." The menu is above the grill behind the counter. Other signs above the counter direct customers about food and service: "Our Sandwiches Are Made to Order," "Tipping is Permitted For Good Service, and "All Sandwiches Wrapped In Aluminum Foil To Preserve Heat And Freshness."
At Ben’s the line leads to a cashier where you order first then head for a table in the back where you are served your food, unless you skip the line and head for the white, Formica counter in front of the food station, which we did.

There, a large smiling man with a beard and long-braided hair tied back wearing a cook’s white shirt loudly referred to me as “Mr. Tony” and my wife as “Mrs. Tony,” took our order and then quickly moved, and I swear, disappeared, into the swarm of cooks, servers and cashiers working behind the counter.

Our server/cook in the center.

I had the half-smoke “all the way” (pictured above) and Maria ordered the chili dog. A half-smoke is unique to the Washington D.C. area. It is essentially a plumper version of a hot dog with a little more spice and smoke flavor. All the way, means it comes with mustard, onions and chili. Maria’s chili dog looked sad by comparison.

The half-smoke tasted like it looked: meat covered in meat sauce with lots of spice and hints of mustard and onion. There’s nothing subtle about the flavor. It’s good, hearty, fun food, which was perfect to sooth our hunger and feed our souls on a cold late December day.

Ben’s Chile Bowl, 1213 U St., N.W., Washington D.C. Across from the U Street/African American Civil War Memorial/Cardozo Metro stop, (Green Line).