I abandoned you. I know. You don’t have to tell me. You don’t have to weep and sob and wipe your teary eyes and snotty* nose and pull out all the histrionic stops to get your point across. Or tell me you have abandonment issues and accuse me of taking advantage of your frailty.
So I left you for the weekend. I left you and I left New York, and I spent a weekend in Philadelphia, which I’d abandoned once the new millennium was upon us. I spent very high quality time with an old friend, who in turn introduced me to some new ones.
Of course, just because I left this city doesn’t mean I left any part of myself behind. Food photos are not just confined to New York. Food can also be found in Philadelphia. Take a look, for instance, at these entrées:

 
Rare is the day that I indulge in double entrées. Ordinarily if I have a major lunch, I’ll have a minor dinner, or, if I know in advance that I’ll be having a real dinner, I go light on the lunch. (This is known, I believe, as “vice-versa”.) But because I was on different turf, I felt free to abandon all conservative behavior and just let myself run wild.
The dish on the left is vegetable moo shu, which I enjoyed at Reading Terminal Market. I don’t remember the name of the vendor**, but it’s one that I frequented on a regular basis when I used to work at the market in 1984, and the moo shu is the dish I ate almost every time. (Here it’s shown with rice, because I didn’t want to get all involved with the wrappin’ and rollin’ of the pancakes.)
The dish on the right is vegetable kung pao from Serrano. It shocked me by packing quite a wallop. Although I suspected it would satisfy me, I was not prepared for the pao to wow me as much as it did.
When I excused myself to ladify myself in the room provided for that express purpose, some wiseguy decorated my paper placemat like this:

My weekend included many other funtastic adventures, but because I like to remain remarkably mysterious and keep you a-guessin’, I won’t share the details here. All I’m going to say is that Thomas Wolfe was wrong: you can go home again.
* Forgive me the use of this word. It disgusts me as much as the actual substance it describes. Still, if the snot fits … bear it.
** Update, 7:56 p.m.:  The vendor is Golden Bowl.