While visiting St. Louis, we were treated to a night out by foodies Jim and Linda Reed (who happen to be my parents). They suggested an Italian restaurant called Trattoria Marcella. It sounded good, and I was excited to try a new place in my hometown, but what I found there was beyond good.

You’ll have to excuse some of the food photography. The cozy atmosphere included low lighting and I took most of the pictures with my phone…but I just had to share this experience with you! You can find the menu describing all of these dishes here. To start, we feasted upon the best fritto misto in the world. Light, crisp, and delicately fried calamari and spinach dance with the flavors of lemon, garlic, and asiago. We also ordered a shaved brussels salad to share as an appetizer. These thinly shaved brussles sprouts were mixed with fontina and toasted almonds and tossed with a lemon rosemary vinaigrette. Both of these appetizers were outstanding.

And now, the entrées. We’ll start with the straw and hay dish. This pasta consists of two different noddles: egg (straw) and spinach (hay). The pasta sauce was so creamy and rich, and had a unique flavor from the marscapone cheese. This dish also included coppa ham, crimini mushrooms, and sugar snap peas.

Next up is the lobster risotto, one of their off the menu specialties. This risotto was velvety and packed with flavor with large pieces of lobster nestled throughout the dish.

The veal marsala was great. Thin and breaded veal complimented by mushrooms, roasted peppers, semolina gnocchi, and spinach. A little heavy on the tomato sauce but still delicious!

Finally, the lasagna napoletana. One of us had to get the lasagna, right? It’s how you classically judge a good Italian restaurant (that or eggplant parmesan). This lasagna was a BEAST! It was a few meals in one. The layers of housemade lasagna noodles, Italian sausage, lean ground beef, ricotta, mozzarella, balsamella, and tomato sauce came together to make an outstanding meal that sung Italy’s praises.

Phemonal. You can’t get closer to Italy when visiting St. Louis (and it’s not even on the Hill!). After dinner, we headed down a few blocks to the world famous Ted Drewes Frozen Custard. I don’t know how else to describe Ted Drewes other than that it’s the best custard in the world. People flock to this retro stand each summer to enjoy this St. Louis specialty. When my family had visitors from Germany visit St. Louis, they saw the large gathering of people and thought it must be a “political demonstration.” My mother calmly assured their guests that it was just ice cream!

It is the creamiest, smoothest, most decadent custard known to man. When you order a concrete, they turn the cup upside down with the custard inside to show how thick it is. I always get the banana-heath concrete, and Neil really likes their brownie concrete.

St. Louis is such a wonderful culinary city. Can’t wait to go back!

We did it! We successfully completed the 10 day pledge from 100 Days of Real Food. Here are some reflections about how it went.

Neil felt that he was eating more frequently because the food he was eating burned off faster. He felt like the first few days he had more energy, but then as the pledge progressed he felt as he normally did. Most of the recipes on the blog were great, but let’s be honest, there is no substitute for real baked goods. With real sugar. One switch he didn’t mind at all was using whole wheat flour to bread fish- as far as taste goes, there was really no difference than using white flour. We both really liked the whole wheat pizza crust and white gazpacho, too.

I feel like we have a much better understanding of how much food we consume is processed. Also, we were amazed by how much false advertising there is. “All Natural” and “Made with Whole Grain” doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s made with 100% whole grain. You really have to read the ingredients to learn what in the product you’re eating. I enjoyed learning about the differences in oils and grains. I didn’t lose five pounds, but I did lose a few. I think this is partly because I was eating so much cheese and flour (even though it was whole wheat flour) than usual. What we were eating wasn’t bad, but still, the calories in the peanut butter, cheese, fruit, etc. all added up.

Overall, the pledge was pretty easy to follow. We made simple changes to what we were eating to make it real food. Sugar was replaced with honey, and we didn’t miss the sugar in our morning coffee. White flour was switched to whole wheat flour, and we made all our own snacks and sweets. Actually, we ended up cooking even more than we usually do. We can both see how this pledge would be hard to successfully complete if super busy with work or school. You really need to have time to cook, plan meals ahead, and taking the time to look at ingredient lists. We both felt that we had more energy and were benefiting long term from these simple changes.

Here are some questions we had for Lisa, the creator of the pledge:

Why is five the magic number when considering how many ingredients are in a product? If a product has six natural ingredients, is it still not considered real food?

Wild fish is recommended, however, many markets are now encourage buying farmed fish in order to promote sustainability. And would farm fish near to your home make it local? And more desirable?

On a similar topic, why can you eat seafood from miles away but not organic beef from miles away?

Our future plans: Incorporate more whole grain. Substitute honey for white sugar when possible. Read labels. If there are a million ingredients we can’t pronounce on the back, don’t buy it, even if you can get the product free with your excellent couponing skills. It was an eye opening pledge, and we’re excited to shift our thinking and our eating to a more healthy lifestyle.