When I first moved to Philadelphia, my world was small. I lived at one end of Center City and worked on the other end, a distance that spanned about 13 blocks on the same street. I didn’t have a car and didn’t know much about how Septa worked outside of my small downtown bubble.

In those days, I shopped at Reading Terminal Market because it was within walking distance from my apartment and I could get everything there that I needed for a week’s worth of meals.  However, I had never shopped at a place like it before.  Growing up in Portland, OR we stuck mostly to grocery stores, with an occasional stop at a Farmer’s Market.

I was also drawn to the Market because of how it was different from what I had known.  It was foreign to me in a way that made it feel magical.  I loved that my sandwich meats got wrapped in paper and that when I bought a slab of salmon it was plucked out of the case and deposited in a plastic bag.  I had never experienced meat, poultry or fish that wasn’t stamped with a “sell by” date and pre-packaged in styreofoam and shrink wrap.

During that first year, every couple of months my cousins Winnie and David would call early on a Saturday morning and tell me to meet them at the Market in an hour.  We’d have breakfast at the Down Home Diner or the Dutch Eating Place and then we’d wander.  David wouldn’t last long before finding a seat, but Winnie and I would walk every aisle.  She’d stop at a counter and ask me if I’d tried this Amish specialty or that exotic piece of fruit.  Whether the answer was yes or now, she’d call someone over and buy whatever it was that she’d spotted, enough for both of us to take some home.

Why do you shop at Reading Terminal?

I grew up in Portland, OR which is about an hour from the Pacific Ocean.  Every summer my family would spend a couple of days at the coast (no one calls it the shore out there) and we’d go crabbing.  I got used to interacting with crabs and learned to keep my fingers well away from their powerful claws.  One year we managed to catch more than 30 crabs and had an enormous feast with a collection of friends and family.

But for all the crab I had in my life back then, I never encountered soft shell crab until I moved to the east coast (I’m not even sure if soft shell crab is available out west, anyone know?).  In the last five years, I’ve made up for lost time, eating it fried on top of salad or wrapped up in a sushi roll.  However, I’ve never tried preparing it at home, but seeing these little guys at the market has given me the inclination to try.

Does anyone out there have any tips or recipes they’d like to share for success with soft shell crabs?  I’d love to hear them.

I was sitting at the counter of Hershels East Side Deli Saturday afternoon, chatting with owner Steve Safron about food, basketball and graduate education at St. Joe’s, when Betty Buffett dropped onto the stool one over from me. She looked up at Steve and asked, “Do you have a small diet coke? Just a small one.”

He looked at her, smiled and nodded.  By this point, Betty’s son Neil was sitting next to her, and he held up two fingers, to indicate that he also wanted a soda.  Steve came back with their drinks, and we continued chatting, until Betty requested a slice of lemon for her soda.  Just as he returned with it, he was called away again, this time by one of his employees.

Betty turned her gaze on me, took in the fact that I was taking notes, and asked me what I was doing.  I explained the project and I didn’t even have to ask her what she thought before she started to tell me how much she loved the market.  She said that it reminded her of the Bird-in-Hand market in Lancaster County, a place she’s always enjoyed visiting because of the Amish vendors.

Betty lives in Lake Placid, NY and Neil is a PhD student at SUNY Stony Brook.  That morning had been the first time in 20 years that she had been to the market.  She was astounded by how much it had changed.  For breakfast, they waited in line for counter seats at the Dutch Eating Place.  Betty tried the scrapple and liked it fairly well, although she did admit that she ate it with a healthy serving of ketchup.  Neil shook his head at the memory and confessed that he had stuck with the turkey bacon.

Neil said that since he goes to school on Long Island there really isn’t anything like Reading Terminal around him.  He can go into the city for a similar experience, but he believes that places like the market are strictly “an urban phenomenon.”

By this point they had finished their drinks and needed to get going.  Earlier in the day they had gone to the Franklin Institute to see the King Tut exhibit and were now on their way to the Archeology Museum at Penn in order to check out the companion exhibit there.  I gave them easy directions on how to get to Penn and we said goodbye.

It was a pleasure to talk to two people who were so enthusiastic about their visit to Philadelphia, and the market specifically.

Sitting in Center Court with Wendy yesterday afternoon, she confessed that she doesn’t get to the market to shop all that often. Living out in Mount Airy makes it hard, but she stops by when she can. Several weeks ago, she was passing through when she stumbled across baskets of ripe strawberries for $1 a basket. She picked up two, took them home and devoured them.  They were the first real summer fruit she had encountered this season and they made the hints of warm weather with which early May teased us feel real.

A few days later the strawberries were gone, but the tasty memory lingered (she admitted that even just talking about them made her mouth water). By then, she had forgotten where she had purchased the berries, and kept retracing her steps in her head, trying to remember where they had originated.  The next time she stopped into the market, it flooded back, and she raced over to the stall where she had found them.  Sadly, that day, there were no berries to be had (at least not for the low, low price of $1 a pint).  At least she’ll always have her memories.

This is prime time for strawberries, at Reading Terminal as well as the other produce markets around town.  It’s pretty easy to find excellent fruit right now that needs nothing more than a quick wash to be delicious.  However, if you find yourself running into fruit that is decidedly lackluster, you can toss those berries with some sugar and spices, wrap it all up in a crust and make yourself a tart.

I went over to the Market today in the later afternoon, to take some pictures and hopefully talk to a few people. Despite the beautiful day and the upcoming long weekend, the few individuals I approached weren’t feeling particularly talkative. After several fairly polite responses of, “No, sorry,” I took a seat in the Center Court of the market to watch the people coming and going. I noticed the Duke women’s lacrosse team, in town for the final four games tomorrow at Franklin Field, eating late lunches across several tables. They all seemed like nice girls, but I couldn’t help but think, “I hope Penn wins!” I guess I really am a Philly girl at heart these days.

Several people sat around me, their laptops open on the tables in front of them, taking advantage of the free wireless in the market. It seems like a really fantastic way of spending a workday afternoon.

A middle-aged man sat a few tables away from me, his back to the Tokyo Sushi stall. He had a sketchpad propped up on his knee and an array of colored pencils splayed out in front of him. He continually scanned the room, looking for people to draw. At one point I walked behind him, and noticed that he was using a young woman with bright pink hair as his inspiration. She continued to eat her sandwich and read a book, apparently oblivious to the fact that her likeness was being committed to paper. A group of young teenage girls walked by him and his sketches caught their attention. They swarmed around him and pelted him with questions. He answered every one with gentle patience, giving every girl the opportunity to look at his work close up.

The market has such a relaxed, easy going feel in the late afternoon, after the lunch rush has ended and before people come pelting through in the post-work hour, trying to pick up the bits they need for dinner before the market closes. I recommend spending a little time there during that window if you are able.

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.