My Great-Aunt Flora only bought poultry from Harry Ochs.  She had a small freezer in the front hall closet of her Center City apartment and would stash freezer-bagged portions of chicken breasts, cut-up fryers and turkey pastrami in there for lunches, dinners and other culinary emergencies.  

During my first couple of years living in on my own in Center City, I had standing date to meet a friend for breakfast at the Dutch Eating Place on Saturday mornings.  We’d wait in line, trying to guess which diners would be leaving first, in order to open up two seats together for us.  After we were full of eggs and toast and turkey bacon, we’d spend another hour or two doing our grocery shopping, only leaving when our bags were threatening to burst.

My cousin Melissa left Philadelphia six years ago for Southern California, but hasn’t been able to forget the chocolate covered bananas from Termini Brothers.  She stops by for a dozen every time she’s in town, and in between visits, convinces her mother to send her a few packed in dry ice. 

My neighbor Suzanne shops at the Market because it reminds her of the time she spent traveling through Morocco during the 1960’s.  She likes the ability to buy in small amounts and values the connection to the people who grow and butcher her food. 

Everyone in Philadelphia has a connection to Reading Terminal Market, whether it’s a relationship to a particular vendor that was built over of shopping years or a singular memory of a particularly perfect turkey sandwich.  The goal of this project is to talk to the people who play roles in the life of the market—shoppers, merchants and passersby—and capture their wide-ranging stories.

Each day, a picture and a story/vignette/recipe/memory from the market will be posted on a blog as a way to give people an additional way to experience the richness of the Market.  My hope is to remind all those who have come in contact with Reading Terminal the many reasons why it is a unique and valuable element in the tapestry of the city.