Please tell us, have you been enjoying this weekly series? I'm so curious that I scroll right to the question, "Why did you become a member-owner?"  This week we are featuring Albert Yee, who is a fantastic photographer and has helped us capture many co-op events.  (Psst...keep reading below to see what Albert says about milk chocolate, I feel the same way!)

Meet Albert Yee

What do you do for a living?
I'm a freelance photographer and also work part-time at the local food non-profit, Fair Food, in Reading Terminal Market.

How did you hear about the South Philly Food Co-op?
I heard about the co-op right in the beginning but because I wasn't living close enough to South Philly, I didn't take a selfish interest. After moving south of South Street, I saw it was well on its way and decided to join.

Why did you join the food co-op?
The notion of the food co-op was foreign to me prior to moving to Philadelphia and the business model is an intriguing one. I was aware of other member-owner groups, but I had never been a part of one. As my interest in the local food movement has grown, the thought of having a direct say in the products that will appear on the shelves of a place I
co-own, sounded like something I wanted to be a part of.

How long have you lived in South Philly?
I live north of Washington Avenue but south of South Street.  I normally just say the Bella Vista/Italian Market area.  I've been in Philadelphia for 8 years, South Philly for 1 year.

What do you like best about your neighborhood?
I love the proximity to really tasty and inexpensive eats. All the Mexican spots (Taqueria la Veracruzana was my favorite prior to moving to the area), Vietnamese eats (I'm on a quest to find the perfect pho and so far Pho 75 has it) and the breadth of 9th Street is unbeatable.

What is your favorite meal to cook and why?
Lately it's between stir fry and spatchcocked chicken. Stir fry because it's a great way to incorporate a rush of a number of ingredients at all different times into the wok. Spatchcocked chicken over shallots, garlic and herb fingerling potatoes is super easy to prepare and yields a lot of food. Plus, spatchcock is fun to say.

What are your favorite products?
I'm a big cheese fan and living by DiBruno and Claudio's and working at Fair Food gives me unlimited access to it. The mozzarella at Claudio's is consistently the best I've had because of its freshness, which is so important with mozzarella. DiBruno is the gatekeeper of my favorite cheese from Neal's Yard Dairy: Berkswell. It's a delectable sheep's milk cheese with a whopping price tag, but every once in awhile I like to splurge on it. Local creameries produce some awesome stuff as well, such as Sue Miller of Birchrun Hills Farm.  She makes an incredible blue called Birchrun Blue which is creamy, dense, and rich. (It gives traditional Stiltons a run for their money.)  Lastly, Cherry Grove's Toma Primavera is fantastic in the summer with it's golden glow. I've been to both farms to see how the cows roam free, it's something everyone should see.

Honey Crisp or Pink Lady?
My favorite apple is the Gold Rush which is a late season apple like the Pink Lady.  It has the sweet/tart/crunchy/juicy qualities of Honey Crisp, but heavier on the tart, lighter on the sweet. The best thing about them is that you can store them in your fridge in the fall and if you're disciplined enough, enjoy them 6 months later still crunchy.

Kale or Collards?
Lacinato kale all the way. But it's been awhile since I've had some proper ham hock'd greens which could sway me back to collards.

Bacon or Sausage?
The double hickory smoked bacon available at Fair Food is my single favorite food item I buy on the regular. It's absolutely heavenly and importantly, it's *hickory* smoked, not the lighter applewood.

Milk Chocolate or Dark Chocolate?
Milk chocolate is fake chocolate. Dark chocolate all the way.

We’d love to hear from you! Please consider sharing with us why you became a member-owner. Email [email protected] to help with this feature.

Hello!  I thought that since we got that surprise snow that things would be pretty dead out in the garden.  But there's still lots of these:

I think I've already documented here that I am not the biggest fan of green tomatoes.  I would really, really like to like them but they are just too hard and sour.  But I may try dredging a few in cornmeal and frying them to see how it goes.  I think the secret to good fried green tomatoes is a good remoulade...

Of course, there are lots of other things to do with green tomatoes.  Like pickling!  I love pretty much all pickles but I don't quite trust myself on the canning front yet.  That's moving a little too far into domesticity for me.  Maybe next year.

What I'll likely do with most of these is try to ripen them inside.  I've experimented with this a little and here's the method that seems to work best for me:

When you pick the tomatoes, be sure to leave some of the stem or vine attached.  I read somewhere to do this (I'm not sure on the reasoning) but it seems to help.

If you only have a few tomatoes you can just put them all in a paper bag and set it in a darkish place.  You don't want to seal it completely but you do want to fold the bag closed or something to keep all those gases that ripen the tomato in.  Just check on your tomatoes every day or so to make sure they don't rot.

If you have lots of tomatoes you can wrap each one loosely in newspaper and set them all in a box or something and put that in a dark place.

Anyone have any luck with ripening tomatoes inside?  Any tips?  I'll let you know how my ripening experiment turns out next week!

Sarah DeGiorgis has lived in Philly for five years and is finally starting to feel like a true Philadelphian, though she still detests cheesesteaks.  She enjoys reading, watching bad tv, eating and cooking good food and digging in the dirt. Catch up with her continuing efforts to grow food in South Philly by clicking here.

At least, it enjoys legal vegetable status according to the United States federal government which essentially means that I can eat pizza and get my daily serving of vegetables. Never mind that (1) a tomato is a fruit and (2) seriously? do I have to say why this is ridiculous?

That's just one of many outrageous bits of news to be found in this story about Congress pushing back against the Obama administration's attempts to promote healthier school lunches.

I posted this story on our Facebook page and asked the question of why government attempts to promote healthier eating are considered by conservatives to be "overreaching" while changes made to a spending bill at the behest of "food companies that produce frozen pizzas, the salt industry and potato growers" are perfectly fine. It would seem to depend on whose behalf they're doing the reaching.

I rarely get so political on this blog. And I write all of this as someone who believes in government and its capacity to effect positive change. That's what makes this all so darn frustrating. I prefer to keep my writings on this blog about why it would be so good for there to be a food co-op in South Philly.

So I'll end with this point. Our elected government failing to act on behalf of public health by making it easier for children in the low-income, federally funded school lunch program to have access to more than just pizza and french fries is a prime example of why we need to take matters into our own hands. There are numerous examples of how government policy that was written to please large corporate food manufacturers has resulted in a system that is unsustainable, unhealthy, profit-driven, unaccountable and unsafe. There are plenty of good reasons to become one of the South Philly Food Co-op's 250 Founding Members. One of them is that it is our chance, at least in this little corner of the world made up of four zip codes, to take control, establish a place that we own and where we get to decide that pizza, however awesome it is, is not a vegetable.

And here is the usual disclaimer about how the opinions expressed in this piece are mine and mine alone and do not reflect any policies or opinions of the South Philly Food Co-op, its members or its board. Feel free to disagree with me in the comments section of this post or via email at dan.pohlig (at) gmail.com.

This month we started a new series called “Meet a Member Owner”.  You’ll hear more about why your neighbors decided to join us.

Meet Marsha Shiflet!

What do you do for a living?
Currently, I'm retired.  I've had lifetimes as a community organizer, grant writer, trainer, project manager, insurance salesperson, landlord and business owner - in both the profit and non-profit sectors.

Do you have a nickname?
Many, including "Marsha Fall-Down" but my favorite is "Grandmom".

How did you hear about the food co-op? 
I saw a sign for the very first meeting over a year ago, and I guess it stirred my social work roots, the rest is history!

Why did you join the food co-op?
My good friend Sylvia Carter is a founding member of Weaver's Way, and encouraged me to attend the first South Philly Food Co-op meeting because she thought my skill set would be helpful.  I landed on the Steering Committee and stayed on it until the Board elections in July.  What a great group of people!  I put my money where my mouth is because I believe this will be a great thing for the South Philadelphia community.   Although many of us older folk are not dissatisfied with the shopping opportunities in this area, a food co-op will give us so much more.  This area is a real melting pot, and the opportunity to be a part of bringing the various neighborhoods and cultures together via food is very appealing.

How long have you lived in South Philly? 
Over 30 years.  My husband, Bob Santoro, was born and raised here.

Which neighborhood of South Philly do you live in?
A terrific little enclave sometimes referred to as the triangle, between Passyunk and Broad, Moore and McKean.

What do you like best about your neighborhood?
We have had a HUGE influx of young, vibrant people over the last several years. They have meshed well with the old-timers, and our area is full of life, neighborhood activities, babies and dogs.

What is your favorite meal to cook and why?
Large amounts of anything! Our social life revolves around food, and I particularly enjoy making large batches of my favorite recipes and bringing people around the table, especially for holidays (although we do it on a daily basis as well!).

What are your favorite products?
Local and fresh, high quality products especially imported from Italy! 

Honey Crisp or Pink Lady?
Actually, Gala or Braeburn

Kale or Collards?
KALE!  I was introduced to kale chips at a Steering Committee meeting and have become addicted.

Bacon or Sausage?
Bacon, although my husband's sausage sandwiches with broccoli rabe or pickled eggplant on good South Philly rolls are hard to resist!

Milk Chocolate or Dark Chocolate?
How can you even ASK? 85% dark, of course!

We’d love to hear from you! Please consider sharing with us why you became a member-owner. Email [email protected] to help with this feature.

Whether we grow our own veggies or receive too much in our CSA or scramble to the farm market to get the last of our favorite produce before the end of the season, sometimes we end up with too much. Freezing is a great way to keep the goodness of seasons past on hand and ready for a meal. But just throwing most vegetables into the freezer isn't the best route to ensuring that today's harvest tastes fresh a few months from now.

I've acknowledged that my freezer overflows with homemade foods and preserved produce and bits of things (butter wrappers for greasing pans, ends of bread for making breadcrumbs, and all the leafy, scrappy ends of things I save for stock). About once a week, I look in the fridge and figure out what's just not going to make it onto our plates in time, and then I get a pot of water boiling.

I use my biggest pot.

This pot happens to have a strainer component, which is helpful but absolutely not necessary.

If your pot doesn't have a strainer - and really, whose does? - just be prepared to use a slotted spoon later on.

I turn the heat on to get the water boiling and then I prep my veg.

I'm really not one to boil vegetables, so what's going on here? Yes, I'm going to drop these nice fresh, crisp veg into boiling water, but I'm not going to cook the heck out of them and end up with something mushy and grey, I'm just blanching them to stop them from ripening.

The freezer isn't magic. So you've got veg, let's say it's a carrot, and it's firm and crisp and wonderful, but if you wait too long, the same enzymes that caused it to ripen and turn into a delicious carrot will keep going with their ripening until they've gone too far. You've seen it happen in your fridge. Yesterday's bright, crunchy carrot turns soft and flexible and dark. Yuck. Just freezing most vegetables doesn't stop the enzymatic ripening process, and freezing doesn't kill all of the bacteria. So, gross things can happen, even in the freezer. Since we want out veg to be fresh and wonderful when we pull them out next week or next month, we blanch the veg first. Blanching is just about boiling briefly, then chilling immediately.

Today I have carrots, kale, and spinach to freeze. The spinach just needed a good washing.

The kale gets de-stemmed and washed.

The carrots get scrubbed and cut into rough sticks. I don't peel my carrots, but this is the time, if you're going to. Of course, you can cut them into whatever shape you like, but carrot rounds remind me too much of canned carrots, so I just avoid that shape. These sticks will work nicely in a stir fry.

When the water is boiling, we're ready to go. This is when I think about the order of things. Sure, you can use fresh water for each vegetable, but I don't. Instead I think about how the veg will affect each other. I'm going to do greens first and then carrots, because if the carrots get infused with a bit of the goodness from the greens, that's no problem, but I might not want any of the sweetness of the carrots to leech out into my greens. This probably isn't a thing, but it's something I think about. Of course, if you're dealing allergies or strong preferences in your house, you'll want to separate your veg accordingly.

I dropped the kale into boiling water.



Then waited for a few seconds to be sure the water had come back up to a boil, and then set the stop watch. You only want the kale in there for two minutes. This is true of all greens, except collards, which need an extra minute.

This is the time to prep your chill bowl. Cold water and ice, enough to cover your veg when they come out of the pot.



When my two minutes are up, I pull the strainer basket up out of the pot. If you don't have a basket, use a slotted spoon to remove the veg.



And drop the kale right into the ice water.



The kale need to chill in the ice water for at least as long as they boiled (2 minutes).

Then I drain it - well - squeezing and such.

And into a zipper bag. Squeeze the air out well, and use a plastic straw if you have one handy.

I like to use masking tape and a Sharpie to label them. That way when you're reusing your bag you don't have to cross out whatever was in the bag last.

The spinach is done the same exact way. Boil 2 minutes, drain, ice for 2 minutes, bag and freeze.

I gave the carrots a minute longer. There is science to this (and actually, the science says just two minutes on the carrots, but I cut mine pretty big).

Veg like this keep a good 6-9 months in the freezer, and after that they don't spoil but they lose some of their flavor.

How do you know how long to blanch your veg for freezing? The Internet is your friend. The National Center for Home Preservation provides guidance on blanching and freezing, canning, drying, smoking and more. If there's a vegetable you're itching to freeze that isn't listed, just Google "blanching rutabega" and you'll get the appropriate time from something like Colorado State University Extension Center or New Mexico State University. Lots of schools have great info on preservation.

My most common veg are:

• Greens - 2 minutes

• Corn on the cob - 9 minutes

• Eggplant - 4 minutes

• Green beans - 3 minutes

You'll find tables with more veg at the links above.

Just remember, as much time as they spend in the boiling water, they should spend the same on ice before you drain them and pack them up.

A few tips that should be obvious, but I've messed them both up in the past.

• Label your veg. You don't want to think you're pulling out spinach one day and find out after the first bite that it's actually mustard greens.

• Freeze them in the quantities you're going to want them in once they're defrosted. No, you're not going to successfully break off half a block of frozen carrots. The advanced technique, which I do when I have bigger quantities, is to blanch, drain, and then lay out on a cookie sheet (lined with parchment or silicone) in the freezer. Then, once each piece is frozen, drop them in a bag or other storage device. That way you can get at just some of them, like how your supermarket veg are frozen.

• Of course, if you use your freshest veg, they'll be more delightful when you defrost them.  But this is how I clean out my fridge.

Happy Freezing!

This is cross-posted at Saturday’s Mouse, where I’m working on making food out of food. 

How can our collective efforts benefit Kensington? A cooperative grocery store would be a sign of our community’s self-reliance and proof that neighborhood development is possible without big-government assistance or mega-chain investments. It would mean we can help drive the local economy and connect liked-minded businesses (we already have a Shop Local through which members get discounts for patronizing local businesses). Just as important, it would mean we can enjoy the simple pleasures that go with buying and eating fresh food at a neighborhood store.

This month we started a new series called "Meet a Member Owner".  You'll hear more about why your neighbors decided to join us.

Editor's note: Sarah submitted this on Thursday before the temperatures dropped through the floor and we got that great pre-Halloween snow. We hope her fall crops are doing better than ours!

I kind of knew that when I said that last week's harvest was the last I'd be eating my words...look at these beautiful tomatoes!

The tomatoes are still going out there.  I'm loathe to trash tomato plants that still have lots of tomatoes on them but I also need to free up some sun space for my kale and chard, so I picked the tomatoes from the plants that only had one or two fruits on them and threw them out but left the ones with more fruit on them because I just couldn't get rid of all of them yet.  I love all the different colors of the tomatoes!

But I think I cleared out enough space, so here's what my sunny corner looks like now:

On the left side of the photo you can see all the tomatoes still growing...those are the ones I just couldn't bear to part with.  I left the scraggly-looking plant in the center of the picture because it has lots of tomatoes on it (and they are not as red as they seem in this picture) - as soon as I pick those that one will be gone, too.   This picture also shows my two figs:  the taller one is still kind of yellow but the smaller one is doing great.  Lots of figs on it:

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to put this fig (the non-yellow one) in the ground for winter or bring it inside.  We'll see!

I also pulled out all the sunflowers along my back fence (I left them for the birds and little creatures to take the seeds and they took every single one!)  Man, I could have used a saw for that - these sunflower stems were tough!  I ended up either breaking them over my knee or holding them at an angle and stepping on them to break them - I wasn't strong enough to break them with just my arm strength.  When they finally broke they snapped with a very satisfying pop, though, and that was fun.

I planted some things in the ground where the sunflowers had been (my raised bed):  a little rosemary plant I had inside and an heirloom strawberry plant.  I'm excited about the strawberry - it's from Bartram's Garden!  I heard that someone from Bartram's Garden would be at the Clark Park Farmer's Market (Thursdays 3-7 and Saturdays 10-2) with native plants from there to sell, so last Thursday I headed over after work.  I was hoping to get some raspberry plants and the ones they had were big and awesome but maybe not so great for carrying home on the trolley...but for $5 they had little strawberry plants and I've been wanting a strawberry for a long time so I grabbed one.  I still got weird looks for carrying a plant on the trolley but at least I wasn't in danger of scratching someone with a thorny raspberry plant (but it should be noted they had thornless black raspberries, too.  They were all just too big for me to carry on the trolley.)  Oh!  Here's little strawberry and rosemary in their new home:

Lastly, here's some kale enjoying its new sunny spot:

My backyard definitely gets less sun now than it was getting in the summer but hopefully it's still enough.  I find it crazy that things are still growing...fall is such a nice season when it stays warm through October!

Sarah DeGiorgis has lived in Philly for five years and is finally starting to feel like a true Philadelphian, though she still detests cheesesteaks.  She enjoys reading, watching bad tv, eating and cooking good food and digging in the dirt. Catch up with her continuing efforts to grow food in South Philly by clicking here.

Alison and I are currently taking advantage of an invitation from the good folks at Weaver's Way to attend their fall general membership meeting. So far we've been treated to some great vegan chili and salad. We're looking forward to some fun activities ranging from co-op quizzo to an apple tasting (good thing I studied for this by doing Cassie Plummer's apple identification game). Here are some pictures from the meeting so far: