Food

The lunch-hour rush is under way at the convoy of food trucks that line Spruce Street near the University of Pennsylvania campus. From inside the cramped Chez Yasmine, Jihed Chehimi is serving gourmet street fare from around the globe - heaping salmon sandwiches sprinkled with caviar, homemade couscous, and cups of Indian red lentil soup - all with a side of conversation that occasionally turns to the science of AIDS. For more than two decades, the Ph.D. in viral immunology was an HIV/AIDS researcher, first at Penn and then at the labs of the Wistar Institute, where the senior scientist explored innate and adaptive immunity.

It's the "trucker's" moment in Philadelphia's food world now - especially when it comes to lunch. That's when some of the area's most exciting new food options are making the scene, rolling in on four wheels with a griddle full of creativity and an entrepreneurial dream. Channeling a Shane Victorino craving for Super Spam musubi? Check. Tiny Poi Dog at Temple University is your new Hawaiian snack shrine. In need of stunningly rich peanut butter ice cream sandwiched between double chocolate chip cookies?

A trio of food trucks will be pulling up to the Camden waterfront every Friday at lunch beginning May 10 and continuing throughout the summer. Organized by the Cooper's Ferry Partnership waterfront development corporation, "Food Truck Friday," as it's being called, is drawing interest from a variety of gourmet trucks around the region, including the three that will start next week: deli-on-wheels Reuben on Rye, Cupcakes 2 GoGo, and Lil' Trent's Treats...

One year ago this week, Pennsylvania tied eligibility for food stamps to the assets people possess. Since then, nearly 4,000 households have lost or were denied benefits because they had too many financial resources, according to the Department of Public Welfare. In that same time, many more people - around 111,000 households - were denied benefits because they failed to provide proper documentation for the asset test. Advocates for the poor now say that by weeding out a relatively small number of people with too many assets, the Department of Public Welfare made getting food stamps so complicated that deserving low-income people became inundated by paperwork and lost their benefits.

Here is an excerpt from Craig LaBan's online chat of April 30, 2013: Craig LaBan: With the spring weather blooming, it's my cue to lighten up with salads like this one from Zea Mays Kitchen truck, which focuses on creative uses for Native American ingredients. It didn't make into our food-truck story, so I'm glad to give it a shout-out. In big restaurant news from the Insider , some exciting new projects coming to the burbs have been announced: Josh Lawler of the Farm and Fisherman is the latest big Philly name to head to South Jersey, with plans to take over Andreotti's Viennese Café on Route 70 in Cherry Hill with a larger and more casual F & F Tavern and Market, targeted for the fall.

A month after it began, the second Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts ends Saturday with a festive street fair on South Broad Street replete with food, tunesmiths, and animatronic dinos. And, beginning Friday evening, street closures and traffic headaches. Broad Street will close at 7 p.m. Friday from Chestnut Street to South Street. Cross streets will remain open but vehicles will not be able to turn onto Broad Street. The cross streets that will close at 5 a.m. Saturday are Sansom, Moravian, Chancellor, Locust, Bach, and Spruce Streets from 13th to 15th Streets.

T O MARK Earth Day, we talk with Dean Carlson, 41, of Elverson, Chester County, owner of the 360-acre Wyebrook Farm in Honey Brook. He practices sustainable agriculture and supplies the public - including several top restaurants - with grass-fed pork, chicken and beef. The former bond trader bought the foreclosed property in 2010 for $12,000 per acre. Q: How do you go from Wall Street trader to farmer? A: I got interested in agriculture as an investment because farmland is going to become more valuable over time.

Corner stores are a staple in poor neighborhoods, where large supermarkets find it economically unfeasible to flourish. The problem has long been that small groceries aren't known for fresh fruits and vegetables. That has left an impoverished population bereft of good food, compelled to live in so-called food deserts. But Philadelphia's Food Trust, a nationally recognized nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that everyone has access to nutritious food, has been working to change that.

And elderly fruit cart vendor was fatally stabbed early Thursday in South Philadelphia while preparing to leave for work, officials said. Police found Don Ly, 68, near his cart on the 400 block of Vollmer Street before 5 a.m. He had been stabbed seven time to the neck, arm and body and was taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where he died at 5:33 a.m. police said. Police said robbery did not appear to be a motive and investigators were studying surveillance video from the area for clues.

How often does a piece with multiple authors and a broad-reaching concept come out as a cohesive whole, but with poetic elusiveness that leaves you, hours later, pondering what you've experienced? Such was the case when the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts' time-machine concept made one of its less-well-documented stops: Where Heaven's Dew Divides , a dance/theater work that opened Wednesday at the Kimmel Center's Innovation Studio, commemorates the African American religious community's rebellion against discrimination in worship services and the 1794 founding of St. Thomas' African Episcopal Church.