The salad greens, baby arugula, and baby spinach were grown hydroponically at Woodland Produce in Fairton, N.J., by a farmer who recently got a grant from the USDA to install photovoltaic cells in order to run his greenhouses on solar energy.
For dessert, Jaffe made an apple cake with two Mutsus and two Ida Reds from Beechwood Orchards in Biglerville, Pa. Even the beer, Flying Fish Amber Ale, is brewed in Cherry Hill.
Get the picture?
For Vick and Jaffe, who bike to work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where he is in special exhibitions and she's a photographer, eating is all about the sourcing.
This couple and their cohorts put a premium on knowing who grew it, how, and what distance it traveled.
"Five years ago, this wasn't on my radar," Vick says, "but now, eating this way makes me feel I am supporting the local community I am part of."
They eat this way for the pleasure it brings them, not from a zealot's sense of responsibility.
"Local food is just really delicious. There is nothing like good fresh butter," Vick says. "When we make our grocery lists we write down good butter and 'bad butter' because sometimes we need bad butter - unsalted - for baking."
Vick and Jaffe often share dinners with like-minded friends. Emily Gunther, produce manager at the Fair Food Farmstand in the Reading Terminal Market, and her partner, Charlie Kaier, a WHYY engineer, shared the chicken, blue potatoes, salad, and biscuits meal, for example.
At the Farmstand, Gunther stocks only produce grown within 150 miles of Philadelphia, which leaves out blood oranges, grapefruit, bananas, avocados, olive oil, and myriad foods that start elsewhere and are "finished" locally, such as chocolate, tea, and coffee.
