Robert has some cool info on the signage above the stall in this post.

DiNic's
Reading Terminal Market
12/Arch
Su & M: 8am – 4pm
Tu – Sa: 8am – 6pm
(215) 923.6175

We met them earlier today on their Philadelphia Sandwich Crawl: 12 sandwiches in six hours. First stop: Picky's favorite sandwich in Philly: DiNic's. 10.15a we met them. Oh yes, you gotta start early if you want to eat all this food. We had to wait until 11a to get the famed pulled pork so we started with a rare roast beef with horseradish, sharp provolone and broccoli rabe. Here's Theo getting nostril deep into the juicy sandwich.

When the clock struck 11a, Theo rushed to the line. We got the first pulled pork of the day. Here's Theo and Nick with Theo's longtime friend Alain (sp?) and the Italian pulled pork with sharp provolone and broccoli rabe.

Here's Theo with a wet juicy bite of the sandwich.

Here's Nick about to take a ginormous bite out of the king of sandwiches (in Picky's humble opinion).

We parted ways and bid them well on their journey across Philly. Hopefully they will not have exploded by Sunday.

The first stop was at Fair Food Farmstand, Picky's day job. Fair Food's new General Manager, Kristin Mulvenna (left), took the group through a quick history of Fair Food (it started off as a single folding table in the back of Reading Terminal about eight years ago) and the plates of goodies she had in front of her. We had sliced super crispy heirloom York apples from Beechwood Orchards with some spring wildflower honey from Two Gander Farms, Sylvia's granola topped with Pequea Valley maple yogurt and a hunk of challah from Four Worlds Bakery out in West Philly.

Here's a look at the year-old newish space for Fair Food which is about 3x the size of the old space in the back of the Terminal. Lots of seasonal everything available 7 days a week as long as the Terminal is open. If you're looking to buy a great, locally and naturally-raised bird for Thanksgiving, Fair Food is your spot and you can order one here. If you want one of the prized heritage red bourbon turkeys, Monday the 15th [today!] is your last day to reserve one.

Here's Eric talking in front of Salumeria, one of two dedicated cheese shops in the terminal. Salumeria prepared a selection of local cheeses for us to enjoy.

We had (clockwise from the left): a very peppery Peppercorn Jack and sharply salty Misty Lovely (a ricotta salata), two goat cheeses from Misty Creek Dairy in Leola, PA. They gave us a feel of the range of goat cheese available in the area. Cherry Grove Farm's cousin-to-cheddar Herdsman was up next to cool off our palates. (Picky is a huge fan of Herdsman cheddar — see this post from earlier this year.) To finish, we had hunks of God's Country Creamery's Country Blue, a mild-mannered blue.

We headed out of the Terminal, down 12th Street, to Tweed Restaurant. There's Mme. Fromage toting a big bag of DiBruno Bros. goodies.

Our little heard of local munchers filing into Tweed.

Chef David Cunningham came out from behind the kitchen doors to walk us through the tasting plate and give us a little history on Tweed. Chef Cunningham regularly visits farms in the area — he's stood by the rivers where his trout comes from and seen his hogs up close and personal. As he told us, for him, "local food is not a fad." It's a way of life. Above, Chef Cunnignham takes a glance at the plate in front of Art from Foobooz.

Up front is the pork tenderloin with sauteed onion and apple. To the right, trout served atop a delectable sauce of brown butter, honey, capers and chopped walnuts. To the left, a beet salad with frisee, walnuts, French breakfast radishes and a hunk of chèvre.

The final stop on our journey was Capogiro on 13th Street for a blind taste test of six offerings.

Here's a closeup of each flavor. Given the time of year, you can probably guess the first flavor by sight alone, but the rest were tougher. At least one person from our group guessed correctly on each flavor. (Sadly, Messy guessed wrong pretty much every time.) Since Capigiro's offerings change daily, we're not too concerned with giving away what we had, but we'll leave it up to you to find out. Select the redacted text to see the answers. From the top: pumpkin, sesame (Picky's favorite), fig, pineapple mint, pear, apple. These treats were a great way to polish off the afternoon!

A City Food Tour is a terrific way to get a nice feel of the different food options available in town, interact with local foodies, and learn a little history. Their five permanent tours are available year round. Reservations are required, but you can call as late as one hour before tour time to reserve a spot. Tours are limited to 15 each, but you can book a private tour of up to 150. This Philly Homegrown Tour will be offered on 3 Saturdays between now and Christmas, so place your reservations before they're all sold out.

We haven't written about it much here, but a few months ago, Messy was diagnosed with a plethora of food allergies — and it's made eating out (and eating in general) more difficult. The City Food Tours folks were so incredibly accommodating, making sure that Messy never accidentally ingested any potential allergens. In fact, they were so on the ball, they actually had to remind Messy of her allergy when she forgot and tried to indulge in one delicious-looking treat that happened to contain egg. So, if you have food allergies or other dietary restrictions, don't let it stop you from going on a City Food Tour. They are more than happy to take care of you without making it a big deal.

Here's a video from Philly Homegrown about the local food scene

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.

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).

Local chocolatier John&Kiras piled up their colorful square boxes filled with little treats for all to peer into.

Market Cafe's canele are among the best single or two-bite items in the entire city. What is a canele? It's this delicious pastry with a just-slightly crispy exterior with a decadent, custardy soft interior. I've had a couple of Market Cafe's canele and they're worth every penny. Check out Gaetano's post on the LGLB event.

Wanna know who also loves the Market Cafe canele? Jose Garces. That's him in the blurry shot above about to shake hands with the garlic man Tom Coulton of Coulton Organics. But more on the Iron Chef in a bit.

Daisy Flour built a mini walled fort showing off their many many varieties of flour. I have some serious baking friends and many of them swear by this stuff. It's expensive, but the lightness of their pastry dough and the high gluten content of their bread flour are the real deal.

Here are the samples at the Birch Run Hills stand. I wanted to eat one sample and just keep going down the line of mini spoons, but I had to keep clicking away.

Mark Skinner is one of my favorite farmers in the area. His 16 varieties of heritage chickens produce the coolest rainbow dozens of eggs you'll ever see. Brown, white, cream, maroonish-pink, speckled, blue-green. They're sooo cool. I always love chatting with him at markets and when he delivers to the farmstand. He was doing double (or was it triple) duty sampling some other stuff including the Apple Tree Goat Farm chevre he's cutting up with that mini cleaver above.

And here's Coulton. He's a character. He's got lots of cool hats, most with feathers in them. Come summer, he'll be bringing dozens of varieties of garlic to market along with his other heirloom varietals of everything under the sun. Here, he's jabbing at the air while holding a Jerusalem artichoke which surround his land – once you plant those, you'll never have to do so again, they're crazy growers.

Keeping in line with local characters with great products, Ryan, the elder brother of the duo behind the best ice cream in the city, Franklin Fountain, was there. They're always coming up with cool new things every year in their Old City shoppe. I hope he went home inspired.

With all this delicious food all around, there had to be something to drink, right? Philadelphia Brewing Company came through with samples of their full lineup of brews.

So let's get back to the newly minted Iron Chef Garces. We knew his head buyer, Adam DeLosso, was gonna be there, but Garces himself showing up was extra cool. Garces is committed to bringing the farm to table in his yet to be named spot, under construction eatery at the Cira Centre. He took a full tour of every single vendor there and stayed well over an hour. Above, he's sampling and taking a look at Shellbark Hollow Farm's chevre (which is delicious!). The sharp chevre is the famous "Obama cheese" people have been requesting all over town since not-yet-President Obama picked up a helping at DiBruno Bros during a campaign stop.

The Geechee Girl Cafe crew fluttered from table to table all night.

Trickling Springs Creamery brought out all kinds of [pasteurized] milk to the event. I've had their buttermilk, whole and chocolate varieties and they're all incredibly rich. Most likely thicker than any kind of pasteurized milk you've had before. Closer to raw milk than store bought ultra-pasteurized milk. If you're scared of raw milk (there's no reason to be scared!), but want a creamier product, search out TSC milk at Whole Foods and Fresh Grocer in Philly. Fair Food might carry some of their stuff down the line.

Here's Ryan trying out some of the colorful, filled chocolate from John&Kira's.

Nicole from Quince and Garces listening attentively.

And yes, there were many PA Dutch vendors there. Here are two of them talking to Coulton. See that feather in his cap? I told you this guy has lots of feather'd caps.

Here's Garces talking to Chris of Common Market Philadelphia, a wholesale consolidator, marketer and distributor of food produced in the Philadelphia region. While Garces has made it clear he wants to pursue local sourcing, the pure volume of his eateries poses logistical problems. People from various local foods organizations are brainstorming to remedy that situation.

Ever wonder how eggs are graded? Coulton brought along an old school egg grader and a big fat goose egg.

And for a parting shot, here's a closeup shot of the brick of Shellbark sharp chevre Pete created. This pesto-tomato-chevre brick is as delicious as it is gorgeous. It's almost a shame to break the brick for serving, but then again, it would be a waste to have it for art's sake so it was eagerly eaten by all those who passed by.

I missed last year's event, but I'd be stupid to miss it next year. I've never heard of an event like this before and I'm not sure an event like this, at this scale, is done in other cities. I'd love to hear about it happening in NYC, DC, Chicago, Boston, LA, SF, Seattle, Portland and elsewhere, but I have no idea. Anybody know? If not, it should be done. If there are people in areas outside of the Philly area who want to do this, get on it. Gather up everyone on a night restaurants aren't too busy in your area, in Philly it's Monday when many eateries are closed, in a nice big space like Philly's RTM (another thing I haven't seen elsewhere is a RTM-esque spot) and have at it. Stand back and marvel as local buyers meet local producers. Good things will happen, I gua-ran-tee it.

A slideshow of the images above and more up on flickr. Click on the slideshow below to see them full screen.

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.