Milk

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.

Residents of Philadelphia and its Pennsylvania suburbs probably do not know it, but they pay at least 15 cents more per gallon for milk than Lehigh Valley residents. In a bid to halt this decades-old discrepancy instituted by the Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Board based on a calculation of production costs, the city yesterday petitioned for a reduction of the minimum price in the Philadelphia region to the state average. "We believe it is unwarranted and unjust to surcharge Philadelphia-area consumers 15 cents a gallon for milk that comes from the same cows, processed in the same plant, and driven the same amount of miles as the lower-priced milk," Lance Haver, director of the Philadelphia Mayor's Office of Consumer Affairs, wrote in a letter to board chairman Richard Kriebel.

Whiskey adds myriad subtle flavors in cooking. And what would holiday egg nog be without it? EGG NOG 8 large eggs 4 egg yolks 1 cup granulated sugar 5 cups whole milk 2 cups bourbon 1/2 cup blended Scotch 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract 1/2 tablespoon freshly grated nutmeg In a mixing bowl, whisk eggs, egg yolks and granulated sugar until smooth. Pour into a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan. Stir in milk, gradually, blending well with each addition.

'We'll do anything for you - as long as it's legal. " That's a pledge from Sean Davoren, head butler at the Lanesborough, a St. Regis Hotel in central London, where guests are blessed with a butler throughout their stay. ?Davoren and his team of 23 will lay out clothes, take away dirty laundry, polish shoes, run a bath, and chill the champagne. In Davoren's 13 years at this 95-room luxury hotel, which has attracted the likes of George Clooney, Nicole Kidman, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, he has retrieved a 12-carat diamond ring from a Bond Street jewelry store, arranged an emergency gown selection and seamstress when a panicked guest arrived without luggage before a party at Buckingham Palace, and hunted down wild goat's milk on a distant farm.

'We'll do anything for you - as long as it's legal. " That's a pledge from Sean Davoren, head butler at the Lanesborough, a St. Regis Hotel in central London, where guests are blessed with a butler throughout their stay.  Davoren and his team of 23 will lay out clothes, take away dirty laundry, polish shoes, run a bath, and chill the champagne. In Davoren's 13 years at this 95-room luxury hotel, which has attracted the likes of George Clooney, Nicole Kidman, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, he has retrieved a 12-carat diamond ring from a Bond Street jewelry store, arranged an emergency gown selection and seamstress when a panicked guest arrived without luggage before a party at Buckingham Palace, and hunted down wild goat's milk on a distant farm.

I don't know about you, but the recession has done nothing to curb my appetite for fancy cheese, just my ability to buy it. So I set out to make the stuff at home. That explains why I soon found myself pouring curdled milk into an old pillowcase; dialing up the cheese-making equivalent of the Butterball Turkey hot line; and, eventually, eating some very good and some not-so-good cheese. "You make a lot of bad cheese before you make good cheese," said Kate Dallam, owner of Broom's Bloom Dairy in Bel Air, Md. I started with ricotta and saw that the recipe called for the cheese to drain in "butter muslin," a type of cheesecloth with a tighter-than-usual weave.

Lancaster County dairy farmer Dale R. Hershey recently spent some sleepless nights riding his stationary bicycle, debating whether to endure an expected $70,000 loss this year or sell out. Hershey, 61, lost $10,000 in February - his milk check was half what it was a year ago because of a breathtaking collapse in milk prices. "When you're losing money every day, it just sort of takes the love out of what you do," he said last week. Partners with two brothers on a property that has been in the family since 1867, and where last week alfalfa and rye fields were a lush green, Hershey decided to stick it out, partly because he believes the worst is over.

Prominently displayed in every classroom in the House at Pooh Corner in Germantown is this chart: Ben: peanuts Audrey: blueberries and strawberries Marley: squash Mateo: fava beans Tahir: seafood Elie, Lola, Raj, Solveig, Zuri: dairy Elise: milk, soy Sarah: eggs These are the reported food allergies of 12 out of 55 Pooh preschoolers. "This is a relatively new phenomenon," says Teri DiCesare, owner and director of Child's Conceptions Day Care Center, which operates Pooh.

It seems schools are always under fire for the food they serve, but here's one of the many things the Philadelphia School District is doing right for our children - it serves milk free of rBGH, an artificial hormone that increases milk production but is also linked to colon, breast and prostate cancer in humans. Most of the industrialized world has banned rBGH. The U.S. not only allows it, but also serves it to our children. School boards from California to Wisconsin have passed resolutions making their districts officially rBGH-free.

SOUP OFTEN qualifies as health food, but sometimes greasy or creamy ingredients can ladle plenty of extra calories and fat grams into your bowl. Take Subway's cream of potato soup with bacon, for example. A cup of that soup contains 210 calories and 12 fat grams. You could have a small order of McDonald's french fries instead for just 40 more calories and one more fat gram. So when Rachel Reynolds of Wichita, Kan., asked me to slim down a recipe for bacon-jalapeno corn chowder that had 235 calories and 9.1 fat grams per cup, I aimed to show that you don't need cream or even half-and-half to create a thick and creamy soup.