Zone 7 is a farm fresh-distribution service that connects farmers and chefs. We pick up the highest quality ingredients from New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania farms and deliver them weekly to restaurants, grocers and institutions.

Based in central New Jersey and named after our agricultural growing zone, Zone 7 works exclusively with the region's best organic and sustainable farmers to offer fruit, berries, vegetables, mushrooms, eggs, honey, cheese, grain products and other farm-fresh food.

Our mission is to strengthen our local and regional food chain by enabling restaurants, grocers and institutions to buy from and support small- and medium-sized sustainable farms. Zone 7's role is to act as a direct link between farmers and chefs. We create a new and dependable outlet for farmers and offer a consistent and reliable source of locally grown products to chefs and grocers.

Zone 7 provides goods to my day job at Fair Food Farmstand in Reading Terminal Market. "Zone 7" refers to the plant hardiness zone we inhabit here in Philly. What is plant hardiness?

Basically, plant hardiness zones are a guide to help you know which plants will grow where you live, so you don't plant things that will soon die just because they can't manage your region's temperatures. Plants vary in the temperature extremes they can endure. Basic laboratory testing can determine the lowest sustained temperature a particular plant type can withstand, but, as gardeners, we still need to know how these measurements relate to our own gardens. BackyardGardener.com

And as you can see in the map above, Philly is in the magical band of light and dark pink which allows for lots of varieties of plants which can grow here.

Anyways, check out the video, it's really well done. Kudos to the Zone 7 crew and the director Brian Hedden.

Step one is get your hands on some thick-cut pork chops (about 1" thick). I highly recommend these Countrytime pork chops. Paul raises some incredible hogs. From the site:

The "Big Black" pigs we raise on our farm were called Devon or Cornwall pigs from their area of origin in England, but now are a registered rare heritage breed named "Large Black Hog" and are hardy, docile and friendly foraging hogs that feed from pasture vegetation and grains. Because they are slow to mature, they aren’t the type of animal that produces uniformly injected flavor, chemically treated meat one may find at large supermarkets, but alternatively are appreciated for tasty succulent meat and excel cured as artisanal bacon.

"Tasty succulent meat" ditto.

Two-packs run roughly $10 – $15 so you'll get 2 solid meals out of them. I cook them, cut them in half and take them in for lunch so I actually get more than 2 meals out of them. If you get them fresh, that will save you some time, but you'll have to make them quickly before the meat's no good. I'd stick meat in the freezer by day 5. If you get a frozen chop, put it on a plate and in your fridge overnight. It'll be ready to handle by dinner prep time. Once you have a defrosted chop, take it out of the fridge and bring it to room temperature. While you're waiting, do your prep work. Ah, what should you stuff into your chops? I think apples are great, but not here. I went with onion, shallot, garlic and habanero peppers. In addition to that, I coated each side with coarse salt, fresh ground pepper, sage and rosemary. I also prefer the awesomeness of cast iron, but any oven-safe skillet will do.

The prep: preheat your oven to 400&deg:F. Chop up half an onion, finely slice up a shallot and finely slice a habanero, mince a clove of garlic. In a little mortar and pestle, portion out a couple pinches of rosemary and sage and give them a grind. Once the chops are at room temperature, hold the chop on the bone end with your non-cutting hand. Take a sharp knife and cut a pocket on the fat side running the length of the side. You may need to do some maneuvering to cut out the inside of the pocket some more. Salt and pepper and rub the herbs into each side of the chops. Get some heat going under your skillet. Add in some olive oil and once hot, add in the onion and shallots. Cook those down for a minute and add in the garlic and habanero. Cook them down until your kitchen smells lovely and then dump the goods into a bowl and place the skillet back over the flame. Now the fun part.

Stand up the chops, bone side down, and open up that pocket. Now stuff the chop with the hot onion, shallot, garlic, habanero mixture. This will get easier after you've done it a few times. Overstuff it a bit, don't worry. Now put the stuffed chops into the skillet and cook each side for about 4 minutes until a nice crust develops. Stick the entire skillet into the oven to finish off for another 8 minutes. Take them out and marvel at how easy that was. Let them sit and rest for a few minutes before digging in.

In case you've never seen a cheese like this, with it's gorgeously deep grooves on all sides of this magnificent, medium sized wheel, it's an Italian basket molded cheese. I found this page from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company's website explaining a bit about the style. Canestri is Italian for wicker basket. The cheese curds (once separated from the whey) is pressed directly into the baskets where they sit and develop those gorgeous grooves in the thicker than usual rind.

The cheese is inoculated with mold spores (it's aliiiiiive!) and poked with metal rods allowing the mold to travel through the cheese and form those characteristic veins you've seen in blue cheeses. Riiiight, but how does it taste?

My co-worker, and in house cheesemonger, Paul Lawler, writes the blurbs for our cheeses and I'll quote from his tag:

A bold and meaty — even porky blue!

I gotta agree, it's meaty, bordering on porky. It's immensely salty. It's a heavy cheese on the palate. The only saltier cheese available at the Farmstand is a cow's milk feta from Keswick Creamery which we sell in little tubs resting in brine. Eating a piece of this cheese, the rush of flavor is bigger than you'd expect from taking a whiff of it beforehand; it's not an immensely stinky cheese. It's creamy and a little bit crumbly. It's a sticky wheel to cut and it'll stay all over your fingers if you try to crumble it over a salad by hand (that salad better not have any bacon in it or it'll be overload!). I know that Mme. Fromage [who we dined with last night!] is most definitely a fan as she tweeted:

My local cheese of the moment: Incanestro, a porky blue. Salty, creamy, meat-tastic.

I'll close this post with a shot of the rind of the cheese. Wedges of this decadent Italian style blue cheese to for $18/lbs so a nice 1/3lbs hunk will run you $6. It won't break the bank, but it's a little something different from the more standard cheddars Americans love to love. Ask for a taste, but remember that the taste will be fullest after letting the cheese come to temperature.

The ramps were foraged by a friend of mine and his friend, LJ and Lou, in Chester County. Where you ask? They could tell you, but then they'd surely have to kill you – perhaps even before they told you. Locations for ramps, which grow wild, are like old family recipes or locations for chanterelle and morel mushrooms. Closely guarded secrets which one can enjoy the fruits of, but never can the secrets be revealed. The asparagus from Buzby Farm in South Jerz. The shiitake from the mushroom capital of the world, Kennett Square. The eggs from the man with 16 heritage breeds of pastured hens, Mark Skinner of Natural Meadows Farm.

I melted some unsalted butter in a pan and dropped in the ramp bulbs (3 or 4) to cook for a minute and then added in the asparagus slices (3 or 4 spears). A pinch of fleur de sel and fresh cracked pepper are added to the mix. Let the ingredients cook for another minute and add in a handful of sliced shiitake (I have big hands and love the strong flavor of shiitake) and another pat of butter into the pan. Toss them around for another minute. Sometime around when you add the mushrooms to the pan, start up another flame for your eggs. I love cast iron for eggs and I cook them in unsalted butter, always. Lightly beat the eggs with some salt and pepper and few sprigs of chopped chives if you have them handy. Once the pan is hot, pour in the eggs and stir them around a bit to get them cooking. Slivered up some Hillacres Pride habanero cheddar with a veggie peeler and spread it over the cheese. Now I add in the ramp leaves to the pan of veggies to wilt them. Above is a shot of all the veggies removed from heat for a sec for me to get a pic in.

After a final minute of sauteeing, add all the veggies atop the eggs and let them warm up the cheese below. Fold over the other edge and presto, you've got an omelet fit for a king.

Here's a duck egg, a chicken egg and duck egg in a row to give a sense of scale. It's the same size as a chicken egg. But there is a big difference: the feel of the actual egg. The exterior of the shell is a lovely satiny texture as if a chicken egg was sanded down.

The duck eggs are either a very light creamy brown or a very light greenish color with splotches of white throughout like in the egg above.

Side by side, the cracked eggs are the same size. The duck egg's yolk is just slightly bigger, but not by much in this case. I think it's just a slightly smaller egg and not proportionately bigger than the chicken egg. But the white is very clear, just like with goose eggs.

I fried it up just as I would a chicken egg: in a cast iron skillet with butter, salt and pepper. They taste exactly the same to me. I had two duck eggs in the last 2 weeks and I can't taste a significant difference in them to the über awesome Natural Meadows chicken eggs I've been eating for the last year and change, but those are some super eggs. I've had other people tell me they think duck eggs are the strongest out of chicken, duck and goose; not me. But the shells themselves are the prettiest by far. The mottled color, the silky finish…

Mallard duck eggs are available at Fair Food Farmstand in Reading Terminal Market for $6.50 a dozen.

I picked up two of these beauties at Fair Food in RTM last week. We got them in on Thursday and they're $3 a pop. The eggs are 4.5" from end to end (3" tall) and 7.5" around the waist. I don't have a scale handy, but it's roughly 0.5lbs or so, maybe a little more 0.40lbs. It's a little heavier than 3 chicken eggs in my unscientific kitchen test. The color of the eggs range from stark white to a scratchy light brown like in the photo above. I don't know exactly what kind of goose the eggs are from, but I'll find out and update the post.

Here's a chicken egg (from Natural Meadows Farm as previously posted about) in front of the goose egg.

After cracking a chicken egg and a goose egg, I compared the shells. The goose egg shell on the left is the bottom piece so the top piece is the narrower, longer part. Without a micrometer handy, I'd say the goose egg was fully twice as thick as the chicken egg and that chicken egg is pretty thick. When I hit the egg on the side of the bowl for the first time, it basically laughed at me. And this is coming from a guy who's now very very used to cracking an egg pretty hard from these much thicker shelled farm fresh eggs. A couple more clangs and I had it.

So here they are side by side. Yes, I know, they're not perfect comparison vessels, but I think many people are familiar with those small, glass prep bowls (4" wide) and your basic cereal bowl (6" wide). The goose egg's yolk is about the size of the whole chicken egg. The albumen of the goose egg was so remarkably clear. After seeing how cloudy an emu egg was [see here], I expected this egg to be closer to that. But it was just as clear, if not clearer, than a chicken egg. Based on how it tasted and the texture, I'd say it had more water content in the albumen, but didn't taste watered down.

A glory shot of the French table bread.

So here's your average Lodge Pro-Logic 10" cast iron skillet; my favorite cooking vessel. It takes up about 80% of the pan.

I broke the yolk and flipped it. The yolk bled out a little bit and took up even more of the remaining 20% of the pan.

Here's your basic egg sandwich I made for Messy. A fried egg with some cheddar and Oldwick Shepherd (mold ripened sheep's milk, cave-aged 3-4 months from Valley Shepherd Creamery). Note, her sandwich is on Metropolitan's multi-grain loaf which is a tad bigger than the French table bread, but basically the same size.

Here's the fried egg on your average plate (not a full sized dinner plate), with 2 smallish slices of bread. This sucker was huge. But how did it taste? It wasn't different from a chicken egg to me. If anything, it wasn't quite as tasty as the Natural Meadows eggs. I'm just spoiled by them really. I'm told that goose eggs are richer than your average egg, more sulfury, but the Natural Meadows eggs are just unreal. But that's not to say that the goose egg wasn't tasty – it was delicious. The albumen turned a very white white and fluffed up nicely. I have one more goose egg to try out (Messy vehemently refused to eat a goose egg) so I'll be scrambling one up soon. I hit this fried egg with a sprinkle of sea salt and fresh cracked pepper to bring out the flavors. Then I dabbed a couple drops of El Yucateco for a little tingle on the lips which is how I love my eggs.

We got a bunch in on Thursday, but I have no idea how many are left for the next week. Call the farmstand to see if there are any for you: 215.627.2029.

The eggs come in the coolest colors from your plain white and light/medium/dark brown to cream, maroon, brown speckled, blue-green and what one person exclaimed to me at the Farmstand: "like Mississippi mud". A few months ago, I got Mark to sit tight after dropping off an order of eggs at RTM to scribble down all the varietals of hens he keeps: Light brown eggs: Speckled Sussex, Russian Orloff, Turken / Naked Neck. Brown eggs: Wyandotte, Buckeye, Delaware. Dark brown eggs: Marans, RI Red. Speckled brown: Welsummer. White eggs: Hamburg, Ancona, Blue Andalusian, Leghorn, Black Rosecomb (more of show bird), Old English Redcap. Green-blue eggs: Ameraucana.

If you'd like to grab a dozen or few of these eggs, you can catch Mark at The Piazza Farmers Market on Saturday 10a – 2p or at Weaver's Way Co-op up in Mt. Airy or at Fair Food Farmstand in Reading Terminal Market.

And one final tip: if you're looking to hard boil eggs, use older eggs. The egg shell will separate from the egg easier with older eggs.

Semi soft cheese washed with local beer from Flying Fish Brewery in Cherry Hill, NJ. Super flavor and creamy texture are but a few of Maidenheads' attributes!

To me, it's like a harder, stinky brie. I'm no super cheesehead, but I like me a good cheese so forgive my lack of a proper cheese lexicon. It's definitely a creamy cheese, like Cherry Grove describes it as being, not dry and brittle and not buttery like a brie. Cutting into the wheel, the aromas are released and all that are within a few feet of it will smell it. It's not one of those take a step back because the nose hits you so hard cheeses, more of a pleasing stink to it.

Next up is their Herdsman which, I believe, they just started distributing last year. From the site:

Most often compared to cheddar, this creamy raw milk cheese is our best melting cheese for anything from an omelet to fondue. Unlike cheddar, Herdsman does not separate when melted.

I couldn't tell you about the Cherry Grove recommendation to use it as a melting cheese in omelets since it's so delicious on its own. I don't recall the flavor being as complex as it is this year. Last year, it was more of a fluke cheese from what I recall. They didn't intend to make it, it just happened. Perhaps one of those happy accidents in the cheesery.

And here's how we cut wheels of cheese at the farmstand. For perspective, that's your typical 8" – 9" chefs knife. This wheel of Cherry Grove's Toma Primavera is about 17" in diameter.

This washed rind recipe comes from the Piedmont Section of the Italian Alps. Toma has a deep, creamy flavor and can be best be described as "tangy." It melts beautifully and releases a stronger aroma and flavor when melted.

The Toma is my favorite of the Cherry Grove line. It's got a delicious, old, aged flavor, but without the crumbliness. It's got a richer color to it than the Herdsman (which I didn't take the time to distinguish enough while taking and editing the photos, d'oh) making that much more pleasing to the eye. I'm told that DiBruno Bros. further ages and washes the Cherry Grove Toma to a more brilliant red (bacteria) colored exterior. Very cool. This will lead to a distinctive taste different from what you'll find when purchasing Cherry Grove Toma elsewhere (like at Fair Food).

Cherry Grove has a really cool operation just north of Princeton, NJ. I really want to take a field trip up there to see everything. Reading the description of their farm lifts my spirits. Pasture raised cows producing luscious milk which makes delicious cheese. The whey from the cheese making process going to the pigs which live in a forest in the middle of the property. 1,000 pasture raised chickens roaming free. Even the wood they use for heat and hot water is from a great and sustainable source: tree surgeons drop off piles off wood on their property. This saves the surgeons money from dumping fees at landfills and this gives Cherry Grove free fuel! Awesome.

All of Cherry Grove's cheeses are available at Fair Food from (I think) $14.99 – $21.99 /lbs. We also have the Shippetaukin Blue, but I didn't cut any of it the other day, so no photos. It's an incredibly salty blue. Also on the crumbly side. I prefer my blues much creamier. A co-worker of mine couldn't finish the little chunk I cut for her as it was too salty. I'm pretty sure Whole Foods carries Cherry Grove cheeses and DiBruno Bros definitely does. I'm no good at pairing foods together, so you'll have to go somewhere else for that. I like cheese with just about everything. Happy munching!

They're not even 1.5" wide at the base. The stalks are a solid 18" long with those familiar Apiaceae family leaves (think dill, carrots and parsnip).

Here's a shot of me from last year taken by my friend Thad. You can get a sense of scale from this shot. From a distance, and close up, they look like giant avocados. The color will range from a lighter chalkboard-green to an almost black green. The texture will vary from smooth to deeply pebbled. Apparently, each emu lays a particular looking egg so the farmers can identify which eggs were laid by which bird, pretty cool! These emu eggs are roughly equivalent to 8 – 10 regular chicken eggs, so, you're looking at brunch for 4 with one egg.

But this egg will taste a little different than your average farm fresh egg with their bright orange yolks. Emus have a different diet so they're going to have a different taste and look. The emu egg isn't as rich as the other eggs at the Farmstand from Meadow Run, Natural Meadows (my favorite are the rainbow dozens), Lancaster Farm Fresh… The yolk to white ratio is crazy – the yolks are HUGE! The ratio is closer to 50-50 instead of roughly 1/4 – 1/3 yolk to 3/4 – 2/3 white. The whites of the emu eggs are thicker as they have less water content – this will make for fluffier eggs.

And there you go, an emu egg cracked into one of those large soup mugs with my hand and a quarter for scale. That sucker is GIGANTIC. The yolk is roughly the size of a donut. What in the world does one do with such a large egg? You can make a serious frittata or omelets. Make a custard or some quiche. Bake a cake. Messy is terrified of the gigantic eggs and refuses to go near them.

A closeup shot so you can see the texture of the eggs.

A gigantic emu egg can be yours for $10 at Fair Food Farmstand in Reading Terminal Market. They're going for $30 at Whole Foods in NYC according to Serious Eats NY. Get them before spring settles in (can you remember ground without snow on it?!) as they'll stop laying and that'll be it for emu eggs until next March. If you want one for Easter, don't worry, grab one now. The shells are so thick that they'll last for months on your counter unrefrigerated and a good 6 months in your fridge. What makes eggs go rotten are actually hairline cracks in the shells. Thicker shells mean hairline cracks don't let air into the inside of the egg so no rotting! And if you're feeling especially adventurous, you can blow out the inside of the egg and save the egg for art like these people.