Dishes

For decades, Thanksgiving morning in South Jersey has meant the smell of a turkey in the oven and the sights and sounds of high school football. But the second half of that tradition is starting to give way. More and more schools are scheduling games on Thanksgiving eve in hopes of increasing attendance and freeing up the holiday for family-related events. "People are so busy and do so much traveling to get to Thanksgiving dinner," said Kingsway athletic director Joe Galliera, whose school will host rival Clearview on Wednesday at 6 p.m. "This creates more of an opportunity for people to have more time to spend with their families.

Dorie Greenspan came to cook in my kitchen when her new cookbook, Around My French Table , was published last fall. (See that story at www.philly.com/philly/restaurants/105368503.html .) A prolific author who has rubbed elbows with the world's best chefs, Greenspan is also among the most gracious and humble people I've ever met. Most important, I love her recipes. Her latest book, an ode to French home cooking, is chock-full of 300 of her favorites, and she details each step in clear, straightforward prose.

Man Lam, a veteran of Chinatown's Ting Wong , and wife Shu Jie Lin are first-time owners with M Kee (1002 Race St., 215-238-8883), in a former produce store. They specialize in noodle dishes, pork, and duck - they hang in the window here - in a utilitarian atmosphere that's reminiscent of the original Sang Kee around the corner. Most dishes are under $7 and it's open from morning into the late evening. What's new The brick-oven-pizza and craft-beer spot Birra is open at 1700 E. Passyunk Ave. (267-324-3127)

IN HIS REVIEW of Amber Heard's new movie, "The Rum Diary," Daily News film critic Gary Thompson referred to Heard as "a dish. " It's an objectifying term, for sure, but one from a previous era - the type of term Alan Ladd might say about Veronica Lake, or Robert Mitchum in referencing Marilyn Monroe. And it's fitting for Heard, whose beauty and style is from another era. Yes, she's been on the cover of Maxim , but her image could just as easily be painted on the side of a World War II plane, like Betty Grable, or working for French director Roger Vadim in the 1960s, like Brigitte Bardot.

City Council members passed a resolution Thursday containing 40 changes they would like to see in the proposed zoning code, a once-in-a-generation rewrite of the city's building and development rules. The resolution was a crucial advance in the now-four-year process to rewrite the city's antiquated code before the end of 2011. The amendments come after months of hearings and negotiations. They now go to the Zoning Code Commission, the voter-created body that proposed the rules.

WHAT MAKES Vedge Vedge and not Horizons? Rich Landau explained the thinking behind three of Vedge's signature dishes: * Little leaves and herbs, rutabaga, smoked shiitake, pistachio, green onion. "The entry-level dish into the Vedge repertoire, but when you get into it, this is probably one of the more intricate things on the menu because of the way we put it together. "You won't just be eating a bunch of green. You're not going to taste chlorophyll. You're not going to be like, 'Wow, I'm grazing, look at me at the vegetable restaurant, grazing . . . wow, isn't this remarkable.' "The rutabaga, which is just one of my favorite vegetables in the world, we slice very thin and we roast it down in the oven with a touch of sherry vinegar, olive oil, fresh thyme, salt and pepper.

I'm always trying to find new and unexpected ways to use ingredients. So as I started thinking about how to give meat loaf a healthy makeover, I wondered if I could substitute kamut cereal for high-carb, low-nutrition bread crumbs? The answer turned out to be a delicious yes! Kamut, a trade name for khorasan wheat, is one of the so-called ancient grains that have become popular alternatives to wheat. It has 20 to 40 percent more protein, and is higher in good fats, vitamins and minerals than wheat.

In parts of Philadelphia, so many satellite TV dishes are perched on the fronts of homes and apartments that some staffers in City Councilman Darrell L. Clarke's office joke that the neighborhoods look as though NASA operates there. The space agency has not touched down in Philadelphia, but controversy over placement of the satellite dishes has landed in City Council again. On Thursday, Clarke is expected to offer final amendments to a bill requiring satellite companies to try to install dishes somewhere other than the front of a building.

You say tomato , they say pomodoro . And when they say it, they mean it. That's because the Italians are champions of simple, classically delicious ways of using fresh tomatoes. And they should be; they've been cultivating them for hundreds of years. One of the many basic ways they use garden-fresh tomatoes is in a pomodoro sauce, made with basil and garlic and tossed with pasta. This dish, just noodles and tomatoes, embodies the core philosophy of Italian food - letting a few perfectly ripe ingredients shine.

On the short list of those who have contributed to Philadelphia's image as "an American Paris" are Paul Philippe Cret, the architect who fashioned the Benjamin Franklin Parkway after the Champs Elysees, and Jinous Kazemi, resident fashionista and owner of Millésimé in Northern Liberties. Kazemi, who grew up in Tehran, Iran, and moved to Philadelphia in 1979, frequently hops the pond to France, her aesthetic home. There she looks for finds for her concept store, which she compares to Merci, the Paris retailer renowned for its quirky mix of high fashion, used books, furniture, and flowers.