One of the many reasons I love the Lehigh Valley is because you get to really experience the four seasons here, each bringing so many identifiable traits that there is no mistaking time is passing and the weather ushers us into another cyclical routine. In the thick of spring with sights set on the summer, I can count on apple cider slushies at the farmers' markets, watching live music with my bare feet in the grass in front of the Bethlehem Steel Mills' stages, and quiet, solitary runs on the D+L Trail.
A perfect summer Sunday includes a trip to the Emmaus Farmers' Market, and this year there will be a new stop between admiring rainbow chard and visiting the coffee shop. Let's Play Books! opened on the Emmaus triangle last December, and has been a welcome place for children and families to create memories.
I've worked in and around books most of my life, and found a kindred spirit in Kirsten Yauch Hess, the store's owner. Walking up to the porch and into the shop feels like entering the home of your favorite aunt, the one who has all the best toys and encourages you to play with them. At Let's Play, the toys are picture books ranging from iconic classics to modern titles with bold illustrations. “I like to carry books with cultural and worldly themes, but I also just like to carry anything with a great story,” Yauch Hess says. “Kids think they don't like reading—a lot of adults don't think they like to read either—because they are told they aren't advanced enough, or they are reading the wrong subjects. But if we can just encourage people to fall in love with good stories, we will get them to fall in love with books.”
“When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does”
In a time when online retailers can offer huge discounts and ship overnight, one may wonder why a small children's bookstore is a lucrative business idea. But talking to Yauch Hess makes it evident that this isn't just about business, this is about passion. With years of experience working for a large indie bookshop, she knows the value of bookstores—enhancing not just the local economy and community, but the way good books can have a lifelong effect on every person who reads one.
Let's Play offers free storytime sessions and special programs with literary themes appealing to toddlers through teens. They offer a membership program for a small fee that discounts books every time you shop, and discount card free to educators. While most of the books are new, there is a used book buy-back program, and donations of gently used titles are accepted. The area is comfortable with child-size seats and tables set up to encourage reading, and non-book items like Putumayo music CDs and bookish t-shirts are sold, among other clever gift ideas.
Leaning across the counter, I feel like Yauch Hess is Meg Ryan's character in You've Got Mail, a noble pioneer for one of the simplest and truest pleasures: reading. I quoted the movie to her, “When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does”. She took a deep breath and looked admiringly around her shop saying, “Yes. Yes. That's exactly it.”
Inspired by spring
I hopped over to Allentown afterward to pop into one my favorite places for furniture finds. If spring cleaning has inspired you to freshen up your home with functional, beautiful pieces, schedule an appointment to visit G&M Style in Allentown. The vintage furniture showroom is set up in an old factory full of midcentury modern treasures, so well selected and vast you feel like you're in Willy Wonka's factory, but instead of giant lollipops there are Eames lounge chairs.
If your style is more Apartment Therapy than Pottery Barn, you'll love to follow G&M Style's social media pages to keep up with new inventory as it comes into the store. They fill a niche in the Lehigh Valley for those of us looking for clean lines and sculptural furniture rather than overstuffed recliners. They take all the urban chic appeal of retro and vintage home design and find quality (and often times designer brand) pieces. My Grandmother used to say of her old, solid wood coffee table, “They just don't make them like this anymore.” At G&M, each piece is carefully selected based on style and durability. This isn't a thrift store. It's a curated showroom, and the pieces that have lasted 50 years make them a stylish investment over something new made from particle board.
If you shop here, you have the added benefits of supporting a small business and being environmentally friendly, in addition to infusing your home with evocative personality. Whether you're interested in orange vinyl chairs, natural polished wood sideboards, or want to create the set of Mad Men in your living room, G&M Style is a unique big city home design shop right here in the heart of Allentown.
Rustic sophistication
Later in the week, I got the craving and needed to visit a deli. If you have a food allergy or dietary restrictions, you probably know that seeking out ethnic foods gives you the best chance of culinary diversity without surrendering flavor or creativity. I was first introduced to food from Forks Mediterranean Deli when a friend gave me marshoushe, a cold dish of cooked Swiss chard, cabbage, green beans, parsley and cracked wheat with fava beans the size of an infant's fist. This simple dish is a reminder of how good whole ingredients can taste when cooked with thoughtfulness and years growing up in the family kitchen.
And that's the undercurrent of all of the dishes at Forks Mediterranean Deli: authentic Lebanese recipes made with love. The deli, owned by Vivianne Riz and her family, has a small room with tables and chairs for eat-in orders, a cooler case and deli counter for takeout, and two aisles of pantry ingredients like green cardamom pods and carob molasses (“a great all-natural sweetener!” I am assured).
Most appealing to me are the seemingly endless number of vegan foods and their gluten-free fare. Better yet, everything in the cooler is clearly labeled as such, making anyone concerned with off-limits ingredients feel welcome (and increasingly hungry). “Understanding vegan food is important to our customers, so it is important to us,” Riz says.
There are standard dishes like homemade hummus and baba ghanoush (and you should buy them), spinach pies and rose Turkish delight, but the standouts are the creative twists on traditional Lebanese dishes, like the vegan kibbeh. Typically filled with ground beef, meatless kibbeh is a crushed wheat and chickpea flour cake filled with a layer of beans and cooked for a crispy outside and a soft middle. Another impressive curiosity was the garlic dip, a creamy white spread the texture of whipped butter, but made from only garlic cloves, olive oil and salt. It is achieved using a special process only Riz can properly execute. “It's not for the faint of heart,” her daughter joked bringing me a small container and some fresh-grilled za'atar bread for dipping, then suggested using a spoonful in soups or to rub on vegetables before roasting.
A unique item is the family's homemade, hand-pressed and unfiltered olive oil. Made from olives grown on the family farm in Lebanon and sold exclusively at the deli in reusable glass bottles, this olive oil is rustic sophistication, and worth the drive just to stock up.
What makes a deli, which serves meat and dairy, so vegetable-friendly? Growing up in her village, Riz and her family only ate meat on Sundays. “Everything came from the ground,” she says. Not a chef by trade, she became a skilled cook out of necessity. The family needed to eat, so they cooked together and used what was in season. When she moved to Easton 17 years ago, she began to make prepared dishes out of vegetables past their saleable peak and sold them at her family's vegetable stand. The prepared foods sold fast, and she added new dishes until the deli was the next step. “We appreciate people who can see value in our food, that everything is a multi-step process. Something gets chopped or soaked, made by hand, and one dish can take hours. Our customers can taste that care.”
Though caring doesn't end with the food. Customers and family become one in the same at the deli. Three times while eating lunch, customers stopped to tell me how much they love this family. After one hour there, I had seen maps of the small village where Riz was from and where some of her family still lives, heard about the migration of the Lebanese to Philadelphia, and later to Easton, to find jobs and work on farms more than 100 years ago, and saw family photos that had been tucked into wallets, water-stained and years old. Riz's brother, an architect by trade, stopped in for a sandwich, and showed me photos of his daughters. “They are the reason we work so hard,” he says with a proud smile. By the time I had hugged and kissed the family goodbye, I felt like I had become one of them in some small way, and the impact of their success and their story really sunk in as I sat down to dine on leftovers.
All that good food cooked with love and those first iconic bursts of spring got me thinking about one of my favorite fresh sauce recipes. The pumpkin seeds in this recipe are a budget-friendly alternative to the pine nuts typically found in pesto, and provide plant-based, healthy Omega-3 fats. Nutritional yeast is a vegan staple, as it gives foods a cheesy flavor with the benefit of vitamin B12 (if fortified). It can be found at natural food stores or the bulk bins at Wegmans.
Minty Pumpkin Seed Pesto
(vegan. gluten-free. soy-free. paleo.)
½ cup raw pumpkin seeds2 cloves garlic1 cup packed basil leaves¼ cup packed mint leaves¼ cup nutritional yeast½ cup olive oil2 Tablespoons lemon juice½ teaspoon salt
Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend.
Pesto can be mixed with pasta, spread on roasted veggies or grilled pita bread, or blended into other foods (like hummus) for a bright burst of flavor.
Let's Play Books! | 379 Main St., Emmaus | 610.928.8600 | letsplaybooks.com
Forks Mediterranean Deli | 1530 Sullivan Trl., Easton | 610.250.0711
G&M Style | Allentown (by appointment/address given at the time) | 484.554.5289 | facebook.com/gandmstyle
