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.

Now the daunting task of picking out a ripe one. Over the year and change I've been working at the Farmstand has schooled me pretty well on picking some ripe fruit. I was decent beforehand, but now I can ID a ripe [fill in the blank] with the best of them. A truly ripe paw paw looks and feels offensively ripe. Like past how ripe you want a banana to be for banana bread (i.e. too soft and gushy for just plain eating). In the photo above, we have an almost ripe, brown paw paw at top and a green paw paw at bottom. Some people prefer the harder green paw paw, but some people also think a well done burger is acceptable fare . The one pictured at top was squishy, but not about-to-burst ready.

So what does it taste like? It's somewhere between a banana and a mango. Yep, you read that right. Banana-mango. If you've ever ordered up a banana-mango smoothie at a smoothie stand, you just might love yourself a paw paw.

(Annoyingly, I've changed the position of the un/ripe paw paws from the first photo, sorry) How do you eat one of these suckers? Well, you can bit into one I guess, but I've split them open, lenghtwise and dug in with a spoon. On to specific taste… The unripe one first: it's got a fruity custard texture which goes well with one name for the paw paw: custard apple. It's not stringy inside, but not fully creamy. The seed pods, which are roughly as tall as pennies, but tapered and not as wide, are chewy – don't eat them, I was just curious. To me, the paw paw has more of a mild papaya than mango with a hint of banana. Closer to the skin side of the meat, the meat is a little chunkier and not as creamy as at the center.

The ripe one: Much more fragrant and much creamier meat with almost no harder chunks to be found inside. When scraping the meat from the inside of the skin, you get a hints of a toasted flavor which I really liked.

I've read that one can make chilled desserts from paw paw and that good old GW's favorite dessert was chilled paw paw. They're a strange fruit and well worth a try if you don't mind the texture – I know lots of people who have issues with oddly textured foods. The Farmstand received a shipment of paw paws from Green Meadow Farms in Gap, PA today. I haven't seen them yet, but I just called in and was told they were pretty large.

One volunteer from last year, whose family is from Jamaica, brought some home to her mother to try. She said her mom said the American paw paw was quite different from the Jamaican variety so if you've had the Jamaican one while island hopping in the Caribbean, these are different.

And on another note, tomorrow, Friday October 2nd, is the Grand Opening of the new Fair Food Farmstand on the 12th St side of RTM. Speakers/guests include Fair Food Executive Director Ann Karlen (that's my boss of bosses), RTM GM Paul Steinke, City Councilman Frank DiCicco, author and professor of all things food Marion Nestle, and some of the farmers who make our lives better by farming right: the Brendle family of Green Meadow Farm, Paul Tsakos of Overbrook Herb Farm, Maryanne Thompson of Paradise Hill Farm, and James DeMarsh, General Manager of Common Market Philadelphia. I'm told there will be some prizes and gifts (no idea what) so come on by between 10.30a – 11.30a if you're in the area.

Fair Food Farmstand
M – Sat: 8a – 6p
Su: 9a – 5p
215.627.2029
Reading Terminal Market
12th & Arch Sts

But not all was lost this year at the Farmstand. Above is a shot of an heirloom glacier tomato from Rineer Farm in Pequea Valley, Lancaster County. These good sized heirlooms are closely related to the smaller, rounder green zebra tomato. These tomatoes, as you can see above, have some incredible colors. Green, red and yellow swirls throughout. Heirlooms are much meatier with less seeds. This particular tomato is very low in acid as well.

I happily munched on a few slices of this beauty at the Farmstand and we have one on the kitchen counter at home right now just waiting to be torn into. But they don't come cheap. They're $5/lbs at the Farmstand – we've had a handful of $7 single tomatoes this year. You might be able to find them a little cheaper at market around town (Daryl is at the Tuesday/Saturday Rittenhouse Market, Thursday Jefferson Hospital Market and most likely some others I can't think of right now. I'm not sure if other farmers in the area also grow the same varietal. Happy eating! The tomato season is just about over now. I hope the weather's better next year for a more bountiful harvest (which will lead to lower prices!).

Fair Food Farmstand
Tu – Sat: 8a – 6p
Su: 9a – 5p
Mon: Closed, but starting October 5, 8a – 6p
215.627.2029
Reading Terminal Market
12th & Arch Sts

Giovanni delivers his figs about twice a week – approximately 20 dozen figs with each delivery – through October. The figs are sold for $4 a half dozen. Yes, they're expensive, but they're better than any California fig you'll ever have here on the east coast.

What makes these figs different from those red/brown/maroon figs you see elsewhere? Well, these have a much denser taste to them. Almost a thick syrupy flavor instead of the sweeter taste of others.

Giovanni dropped off 31 dozen figs yesterday so there should be plenty today, but who knows how long they'll last; people come buy all day searching them out as he's been delivering them to the Farmstand for the last few years and nobody's ever seen these green figs before. They're quite memorable.

Messy would like it if Picky made some homemade Fig Newtons. Picky thinks that's blasphemy. They are to be eaten raw. Or maybe grilled with Shellbark Hollow Farm's Goat Chevre.

I'll be writing about recent fig foraging outings all around Philadelphia as well as a writeup on the talk I had with Giovanni in his driveway. I'm fig crazy.

Fair Food Farmstand
Tu – Sat: 8a – 6p
Su: 9a – 5p
Mon: Closed
215.627.2029
Reading Terminal Market
11th & Arch Sts