Local Food

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.

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.

I'm racking my brain trying to come up with creative ways to eat three square meals on $35 a week. Will $5 a day fill me up? Provide the occasional fruit or vegetable? Can I even stretch $35 over seven days before my money gets funny and my stomach starts to growl? Well, starting Monday, I'll find out by taking the Greater Philadelphia Food Stamp Challenge. With the mean-spirited, totally unnecessary asset test looming May 1 - you know, the Corbett administration mandate that punishes people with more than $5,500 in savings (for those 60 and over it's $9,000)

Smoked duck with lingonberry and pecan glaze, braised mustard greens and oyster chowder were on the menu at Philadelphia University's Thanksgiving dinner for 600 students last week. Chefs were carving roasted turkey; cherry chutney, parsnip mash, and a cranberry and sour cherry polenta tart were among the offerings. If that wasn't impressive enough for a college dining hall, consider this: The entire menu was sourced locally, the free-range turkey from Koch's Farm in Lewistown Valley, the produce from 12 surrounding farms, the oysters from Long Island (OK, a stretch there, but still within 150 miles)

Special Events DEA Drug Take-Back Dispose of outdated and unused prescription and OTC drugs.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.

For tomato-lovers, it doesn't get much better than this: a plant that combines the famous taste of heirlooms like Cherokee Purple and Brandywine with the traditional high yields and disease resistance of hybrids. This dreamy marriage has brought forth the grafted tomato, which tests show has a longer, healthier growing season and tastier fruit, with as much as 50 to 75 percent more tomatoes a season. "It's one of the hot issues, and it makes sense right here and now," said Chelsey E. Fields, vegetable product manager for W. Atlee Burpee & Co., the home gardening giant in Warminster, one of a growing number of companies that are jumping into the grafted-vegetable market.

Jere Gettle's been called "a young, countrified Elvis," and you can see why. The guy runs around in hokey tunics and overalls, goofy shirts and hats. Please read The Heirloom Life Gardener, by Jere and his wife, Emilee, with Meghan Sutherland, just published by Hyperion ($29.99). You'll learn a ton about this unusual fellow, who deserves respect for his family's commitment to the local food movement - specifically, heirloom seeds from around the world, which they sell through their 13-year-old company, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, in Mansfield, Mo. In 2009, they also converted a 1920s bank building in Petaluma, Calif., into the Seed Bank, and last year, they bought the venerable seed company Comstock, Ferre & Co., in Wethersfield, Conn.

In Saudi Arabia last fall and winter, American troops poured pancake syrup from Honey Brook, munched potato chips made in Nottingham and drank milk from cows raised in Atglen and Cochranville. Even setting aside the goods used by GIs waiting for war, Chester County's agricultural products are increasingly being shipped abroad. "During the war we exported about 25,000 cases of four one-gallon (containers of) pancake syrup for the government troops," Larry Bingaman of Good Food Inc. of Honey Brook said recently.

The four-course feast featured black-soybean soup with a ceviche of marinated raw beets, turnips, and rutabaga. Next, a salad of hydroponically grown butterhead lettuce with cornmeal croutons tossed in apple cider vinaigrette. The braised lamb, organically grown and grass fed, came with caramelized onions, sweet potato gratin, wilted greens, and cranberry creme. Warm apple cake with cheddar cheese ice cream rounded out the meal. Everything on that farm-to-plate menu was grown within about 100 miles, no easy feat in winter.