To market, to market

Friday, June 13, 2008

I’m super behind the times - I only just recently discovered Robert’s Market Report, a blog that scours several farmer’s markets and Reading Terminal Market on a weekly basis to talk about what’s being sold and which farmers are doing what.  He reports out a lot on Reading Terminal Market, Headhouse Square, Clark Park, and several others.  He’s a veritable one-man market reporting machine!  Great photos, too.

Robert Libkind, the man behind Robert’s Market Report, doesn’t focus exclusively on in-season vegetables, although his farm market reports certainly highlight the best that our local farmers are offering.  Robert was kind enough to tell us why he began writing about the local markets:

I started posting regularly about my weekly (often more frequent) visits to the Reading Terminal Market more than three years ago at egullet.org, but about a year later figured I might as well start my own blog (though I still regularly post to egullet, too). I’ve been shopping at the RTM since about 1982 or 1983, so I’ve experienced it from before the rehab started in conjunction with the building of the convention center, though I surely cannot boast of being one of the RTM regular shoppers with the greatest longevity. Over the last two years both the blog and my egullet postings have expanded to include farmers’ markets I visit. Although it will be a challenge, this summer and fall I hope to visit and write about a larger number of the different farmers’ markets in the region beyond my normal Schuykill-to-Delaware River range.

I’ve been a journalist/editor/writer/PR manager since my college days, so when I was bought out of my 23-year corporate PR tenure and retired I had to find something to do—I have to have an outlet for my typing fingers. So I’m combining my professional skills (reporter and writing) with my favorite activity, eating, which necessarily entails shopping for food.

I’m more of a home cook than a restaurant maven. I also try to avoid cooking complicated dishes: that’s what restaurants are for, after all. ("Complicated," of course, is relative. To /She Who Must Be Obeyed/, the use of a single cooking vessel establishes a recipe as “complicated”.) The key to good cooking, whether at home or in a restaurant, is starting out with quality ingredients, so I try to highlight in my blog the gorgeous produce, meats, dairy products and other foods I find at public and farmers’ markets. Because it’s also an interest of mine, I tend to delve into the business of food distrbution/marketing on occasion, particularly as it relates to efforts by public markets like the RTM and Pike Place to serve both merchants and three distinct consumer markets: people who need/want to buy food for cooking and consumption at home, the office lunch crowd, and the tourists.

I also, whenever possible, try to remind people of the differences between a farmers’ market and a public market.  Both are wonderful mechanisms for distribution of quality foods. Neither one is superior to the other, but the distinctions are important (or should be!) to shoppers, merchants and farmers alike. Although I think the variety of produce at the RTM is exceptional, I don’t expect produce vendors there to offer some of the esoteric varieties or quality to be found at a farmers’ market; likewise I do not expect to find the variety of meat, fish and cheese at a farmers’ market that can be obtained at the RTM or a similar public market.

As I explained to a visiting friend this weekend, I’m not very philosophical or politically sensitive as to my food shopping and eating habits, though I find the best quality food frequently (though not necessarily) falls into the locavore, organic or green category. Simply put, food just has to taste good. A business card I pass out sums it all up: “Big Hungry Boy With Word Processor”.

Thanks Robert!  You’re now one of my favorite resources for getting the latest news on area markets!