Local Food

For those who desire to vote with their food dollars in support of a different food system, Milk & Honey Market at 45th Street and Baltimore Avenue is a good option. The market focuses on locavore, whose definition depends on whom you ask. For some, it means adding as much fresh and local foods to the shopping cart as possible. Others have geographic boundaries - eating or drinking nothing that comes from beyond a 150-mile radius or, in the extreme, 50 miles. I'll admit my bias here.

IF ROB KATZ tells you that his mother is "a creative genius," that "everything she touches turns to magic," you might chalk it up to his being a devoted son. But when his mother is Bobbi Katz, creator of Bobbi's Best Hummus, you realize that he's just sharing facts. The company's line of hummus and vegan-friendly spreads is exceptionally good, and I'm not just saying that because I was swayed by the subliminal message on the containers: "Your Favorite Hummus. " Or am I? What else, other than the incredible taste, explains the loyalty this product inspires?

A bumper crop of vegetables and fruits at the Haddonfield Community Gardens is overflowing to the point that local residents plan to share with the local food bank. This week those with extra tomatoes, peppers, or squash can drop donations in bins that will be distributed immediately to those in need. "We have a real shortage of fresh produce," said Lydia Cipriani of the South Jersey Food Bank in Pennsauken. "We have refrigerated space and trucks to distribute it immediately, but there is always a shortage of fresh produce.

It had been an exceptionally busy summer of eating on the job in Philadelphia, and I was hoping for a little break. Perhaps something a bit lighter than the usual restaurant critic's fare. Maybe even home-cooked in the rustic quietude of a mountaintop retreat. So, what was I thinking going on "vacation" to Vermont? The Green Mountain State has rustic quietude to spare, of course. But my resolve to go easy on the food hunt began to crumble within moments of our arrival when, stocking up at Singleton's Store in Proctorsville, I found myself lingering near the giant wheel of Cabot cheddar in back, where a butcher's counter also yawned with beautiful slabs of cob-smoked bacon and storemade country sausage.

Something was cooking yesterday at the Reading Terminal Market, but it wasn't just DiNic's roast pork. The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. launched the Philly Homegrown project inside the market to get more people to buy locally grown food. Philly Homegrown was created to help the region become known for more than just cheesesteaks, said Jeff Guaracino, vice president of communications for GPTMC. "People don't normally think of Philadelphia as this place with lots of healthy, home-grown food," he said.

Emily Teel's introduction to the local food industry was as a volunteer. She worked at Reading Terminal Market's Fair Food Farmstand while it was still only a folding table. After a year, she wrote herself a job description and told her employer, "You need to hire me. " In 2005, she became the stand's first manager. "Food became an event," said Teel, now director of public programming for Greener Partners, an organization that supports and raises awareness of local food growers.

Emily Teel's introduction to the local food industry was as a volunteer. She worked at Reading Terminal Market's Fair Food Farmstand while it was still only a folding table. After a year, she wrote herself a job description and told her employer, "You need to hire me. " In 2005, she became the stand's first manager. "Food became an event," said Teel, now director of public programming for Greener Partners, an organization that supports and raises awareness of local food growers.

Dinner at the Kensington home of John Vick and Amanda Jaffe is as simple as roast chicken, mashed potatoes, salad, and biscuits - and as complicated as farm-raised, sustainably grown, homemade, and locally sourced. Jaffe uses chicken from Griggstown Quail Farm outside Princeton, unaltered by hormones or antibiotics. Vick mashes the All Blue potatoes, a variety that produces colorful flesh as well as skin, from Tuscarora Organic Growers in Hustontown, Pa., adding butter from Hometown Provisions in Lancaster County and whole milk from Trickling Springs Creamery in Chambersburg, Pa. For his biscuits, Vick blends heirloom cornmeal from Rineer Family Farms in Lancaster and buttermilk from Maplehofe Dairy in Quarryville, Pa. 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.

It's farmer's market season once again, and Bob Pierson is zipping around the edges of Rittenhouse Square this Saturday morning long before any customers arrive, helping farmers hoist their white tents, moving folding tables and heavy coolers, counting heads, and ticking off the minutes till the eight-year-old market reopens, like it's the Kentucky Derby or something. On the dot of 9, Pierson shouts, "OK, we're ready to sell! We're open!" Within a half-hour, the sidewalks around the square are bustling with walkers, runners, and shoppers loaded up with babies, dogs, and canvas bags, many stopping to sample teeny squares of goat cheese or dabs of homemade hummus from the very farmers and artisans who made it. As head of Farm to City, which runs this and 15 other farmer's markets in Philadelphia and the suburbs, Pierson is in his element, which is to say smack dab in the forefront — and middle — of the local food movement in Philadelphia.

Franca Fusco is particular about what she eats. "I'm so worried that the things I buy from the grocery store are not as nutritionally wholesome as they are if I grow them myself," she said, "or buy them from a local farmer. " Thanks to Fusco and other consumers who are putting a lot more thought and effort into food, sales of locally grown food are climbing, forcing changes in the U.S. food system, which excels at moving goods over long distances. Consumers have lots of reasons to buy local food when possible: They think it is fresher and more nutritious; they want to keep small farmers in business; they like unusual varieties of vegetables that do not ship well; they want their children to know that food ultimately comes from farms, not factories and supermarkets; and they think it saves energy.

IF ROB KATZ tells you that his mother is "a creative genius," that "everything she touches turns to magic," you might chalk it up to his being a devoted son. But when his mother is Bobbi Katz, creator of Bobbi's Best Hummus, you realize that he's just sharing facts. The company's line of hummus and vegan-friendly spreads is exceptionally good, and I'm not just saying that because I was swayed by the subliminal message on the containers: "Your Favorite Hummus. " Or am I? What else, other than the incredible taste, explains the loyalty this product inspires?

The state claims uprooting the Camden Children's Garden will "enhance" the economic-development potential of the downtown waterfront. What a load of fertilizer. The plan to bulldoze most of the 14-year-old garden - a fun, funky landscape that blends elements of arboretum, playground, and amusement park - would enhance nothing. And it would obliterate the waterfront's only public attraction with true Camden roots. Most people who work at the garden live in the city. So do many among its dwindling number of paying patrons.

WITH THE HOLIDAYS approaching, my thoughts are on eating good food with great beer. As usual, I have a bunch of suggestions. But first, I want to make a pitch to support those who don't have enough to eat. This season, I'm partnering with Philabundance, the city's food bank, to drive hunger from our community. It's a very simple program that I'm calling Eat, Drink & Be Generous, and it works like this: The next time you buy a sixpack, I want you to plunk down an equal amount to help buy food for the needy.

Far too little of Center City's success has translated into progress for Philadelphia's low-income neighborhoods. But one surprising exception has been the growing availability of fresh, locally grown foods in communities far from the foodie redoubt of downtown. In 1992, three years before Steven Starr opened the first Continental and informally kicked off Philadelphia's (second) restaurant renaissance, the city had no more than three or four farmers markets. Twenty years later, one organization - the Food Trust - operates 30 markets on its own. And most of those, Food Trust executive director Yael Lehmann said, are in low- or mixed-income neighborhoods.

Special Events DEA Drug Take-Back Dispose of outdated and unused prescription and OTC drugs. Trinity Center for Urban Life, 2212 Spruce St.; 215-732-2515. 9/29. 10 am-2 pm. Gatsby in the Garden 'Great Gatsby'-themed party in celebration of the Rodin Museum's reopening. Entertainment, appetizers & drinks. Rodin Museum, Franklin Parkway at 22d St.; 215-763-8100. 9/28. 6:30-9 pm. Sold out. Germantown White House Exhibits Interactive exhibits featuring George Washington's family & household.

* A benefit barbecue will be held from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. Tuesday at Yards Brewing Co. (901 N. Delaware Ave., yardsbrewing.com) for Anthony Gualtieri, a longtime fixture on the local food scene (expediter at Le Bec-Fin, manager at Stateside, waiter at Parc). He is recovering from injuries suffered when he was struck by a car while riding his bike recently. $20 donation at the door; $10 gets you food from Wes Thompson's Smoky Mutt's Southern Barbecue, and there's a cash bar featuring $5 Yards pints.

How did we ever find food before the Internet? Joining the collection of online tools are a few new apps for the Web and iPhone designed to make foraging easier. Software developer Joe Krill seems, on paper, to be a major food-truck fan, given that he just launched Chowspotter.com , a Web resource for those trying to find Philadelphia's migratory culinarians. But no. "I haven't really eaten at a lot of them," he said. "I tend to eat healthy and pack my own salad. " He simply was looking for something to do on the side.

As the sun set Thursday evening over Germantown Avenue, hungry visitors formed lines dozens deep for local food of all types: caramel ice cream, biscuit sandwiches, pizza baked in a mobile oven. The event, dubbed the "Mount Airy Edition," was the seventh in the Night Market Philadelphia series put on by the Food Trust, a city nonprofit. Other Night Market events have taken place in East Passyunk, Chinatown, and University City. Mount Airy, which hosted a Night Market last August, was the first repeat location.

A bumper crop of vegetables and fruits at the Haddonfield Community Gardens is overflowing to the point that local residents plan to share with the local food bank. This week those with extra tomatoes, peppers, or squash can drop donations in bins that will be distributed immediately to those in need. "We have a real shortage of fresh produce," said Lydia Cipriani of the South Jersey Food Bank in Pennsauken. "We have refrigerated space and trucks to distribute it immediately, but there is always a shortage of fresh produce.