1. Take a spin. Before you buy anything, walk the entire farmers market at least once to see what's available and where everything is located. Often times, farmers and vendors will be at the same location every week so you can go right to your favorites the next time and know which stands are selling what.
2. Get to know them. Ask the person behind the table if they're the farmer or work with the farmer who grew the produce. Ask how far the food traveled to get to the market, when it was harvested, and if it was grown using conventional or organic methods. Also find out if you can visit the farm (even if you have no intention of visiting). Transparency is a sign that a farm's methods can be considered trustworthy.
3. Bring cash. Smaller farms that harvest and sell on the same day usually keep it simple, meaning employees accept cash or check only. If a booth accepts credit or debit cards, ask when the food was harvested and from where. But bring plenty of cash to be able to buy the fruits and veggies that you need.
4. BYOB. Bring your own bags. Don't clutter up landfills with more plastic. Bring your own reusable shopping bags or boxes to carry purchased produce and also bring your own produce bags if you can. You can also bring a cooler on wheels to store produce and eliminate bags altogether.
5. Buy the ugly stuff. Unlike conventionally-grown produce, organic produce isn't put through a chemical wash n' wax and can appear dusted with soil, dull or slightly blemished. A little bit of dirt is a great sign that it was grown with care.
6. Shop early, shop late. You'll find the best selection of produce when the market first opens, but you'll find the best deals just before close. A vendor's goal is to sell everything, so when you visit a market later in the day, you might just be able to negotiate that kind of deal you want.
7. Bring the kids. Studies show that when kids are more involved in shopping for the foods they eat, they have a better appetite, are more willing to try new foods and develop healthier eating habits. Give each child (and adult) their own produce bag to fill with new or favorite foods.
8. Don't go overboard. Freshly-picked produce, especially organic, lasts only a few days. Avoid buying more than your family can eat in five days.

For recipes and tips on how to cook with your fresh produce, visit Chef2Chef's recipe page.

But what does local food and farming really mean, and how can you tell the difference between what's really local and what's just used for marketing?

The local movement has two tines on their fork demanding clear definition by consumers: distance and ethics.

How far is local?

I live in Florida. When I'm at the grocery store and have a choice between organic produce from Mexico or organic produce from the U.S., I pick the U.S. It's local. If I have a choice between California or Georgia, I pick Georgia. It's local. If I have a choice between Georgia or Florida, I pick Florida. It's local. If I have a choice between Plant City, Fla. or Christmas, Fla., I pick Christmas because it's closer to me than Plant City. All of those choices are considered local.

In 2008, Congress passed an amendment to the Consolidated Farm and Rural Development Act, which attempted to define the distance food can travel in order to be considered local:

• the locality or region in which the final product is marketed, so that the total distance that the product is transported is less than 400 miles from the origin of the product; or
• the state in which the product is produced.

So that (sort of) takes care of distance, but what about the deeper meaning of "local?"

Deep thoughts on local: the ethics standpoint

Local, for many of us, means that food was grown with care, on smaller farms, by farmers who use organic methods, harvest and sell within a few days and personally travel with their produce, meat, cheese, milk and sell it directly to you. Or perhaps in slightly larger farms, there is one degree of separation - the sales person - between you and the market (as in a co-op situation or local grocery store). But that's not always the case.

Frito Lay, for example, operates one of its plants in Central Florida where they manufacture potato chips. Some (but not all) of the potatoes used to manufacture the chips are commercially grown in Florida using conventional growing methods. According to the Consolidated Farm amendment, Frito Lay is technically using local produce in manufacturing the chips in their Florida plant. And Frito Lay uses that to their marketing advantage in the grocery stores by advertising the use of local potatoes. I don't think that's the kind of "local" we had in mind.

The "locavore" movement, coined in 2005, limits the 400-mile radius to just 100 miles. So the four-or-more hour journey your local food could legally take under the guise of the Consolidated Farm amendment is streamlined to a sensible and manageable one-hour journey.

One hour. Think about it. Could you forage for local food from farmers and vendors 100-miles or less from your home? You can, and you should for three reasons:

1. By sourcing food grown less than 100 miles from your home and purchased from a small farm, your food will be fresher and will contain more nutrients.
2. By sourcing food grown less than 100 miles from your home and purchased from a small farm, your dollars and support stay within your community.
3. By sourcing food grown less than 100 miles from your home and purchased from a small farm, you feel good. And that's probably the best reason of all.

There's no end to the list of extreme restaurants out there - dining on toilets, eating with your hands, sci-fi and dinosaur themes. There truly is something for everyone. But what about "normal" unique concepts? Following are top 5 restaurants that I wish someone would create:

1. Grilled cheese on wheels. There are grilled cheese restaurants out there that claim to specialize only in the grilled cheese sandwich. But all have learned that a business cannot stand on grilled cheese alone. As a result, their menus become larger and more complicated, to the point where grilled cheese is no longer the main focus. On chilly days, I'd love for a food truck to roll up to the curb and provide me with a classic grilled cheese (and it wouldn't hurt if the truck behind it served tomato soup).
2. Allergy-free restaurant. Whether gluten, soy, dairy, nuts, shellfish, I'd love to see someone develop a restaurant based on Disney's food allergy program. If you've had the pleasure of dining at any location on Disney property in Florida or California, you know that 99 percent of the time, they can cook-to-order any meal for any food allergy sufferer without reasonable concern for cross contamination. How do they do it? Disney magic, along with years of planning and developing best practices for guest service. For a fee, they'll share their secrets via the Disney Institute.
3. Ice cream (without stabilizers) shop. Do you know that 99 percent of the ice cream you're eating, whether in a restaurant, a diner or from a store, contains stabilizers? Guar gum, carob bean gum, and carrageen top the list of "all-natural" highly processed stabilizers that prevent ice cream from melting quickly, keep ice crystals from forming, and artificially give you the creamy smooth mouth feel of homemade ice cream. Oh, you might want to know that these "natural flavors" are made from beaver butt--just saying.
4. From-scratch carnival food. Funnel cakes, dough boys, cotton candy, corn dogs, snow cones. Wouldn't it be wonderful if just one brave chef out there created our favorite carnival foods from scratch, without the additives, cancer-causing dyes, artificial flavors and preservatives? I'd drive anywhere for that. Seriously.
5. Conveyer belt restaurant. Picture this: A round restaurant; kitchen in the middle; conveyer belts radiating from the kitchen like a child's drawing of the sun. Each conveyer belt connects to a table. Each table has an order kiosk. Type in your order, make a payment at the kiosk and within a few minutes, your order is delivered via conveyer belt. When you're done eating, put the dishes back on the belt and send them to the kitchen. Want dessert or coffee? Type it into the kiosk, which is also a juke box.

What do you think of these concepts?What kind of restaurant do you envision? Be sure to leave your comments below.

No.

My chef instructors used a different approach - they were mentors, offering encouragement, advice and help when we needed it. They allowed us to make mistakes without berating us, and instead offered firm guidance; all without raising their voices and making us feel like the dirt on a russet potato.

So, back to my original question: why yell in the first place?

Theories abound. Some speculate it's the "old school" chefs doing the yelling because "that's how they learned." Others claim a verbally-abusive chef is ego-driven, needing to knock students down in order to feel important. The most popular theory is that instructors only yell at the stupid students. And that makes me wonder what that says about the authors mentioned above because they all seem like smart folks.

Does being yelled at make you a better chef?

Perhaps for those who need the discipline, much like a young person enlisted in the military might need harsh rules and consequence, the yelling works. But for the majority of students, from a recent poll, could do without the yelling.

I wasn't yelled at, spit on, degraded, humiliated or made to feel inferior at any time during my term semesters. I attended an accredited culinary program, learned and practiced the foundations of cookery while being exposed to classical, international and regional cuisines, butchery, cheese-making, garde manger and wine pairings just like anyone might experience in culinary school. I graduated with honors, have a successful career and turned out just fine without flogging-by-spatula.

What's your experience? Do your instructors inflict humiliation at every chance, or are you from a school of mentors?

It's the same debate as raw milk: many farmers, cheesemakers and consumers believe that pasteurizing the milk kills beneficial bacteria and alters the flavor. Federal lawmakers, however, want to keep the list of "death by cheese" as low as possible and require all cheeses made in the U.S. be from pasteurized milk, or aged 60 days if made with raw-milk.

I don't think the 60-day rule is such a bad thing. For cheeses like Cheddar, Manchego, Parmigiano-Reggiano and Gruyere the aging process is at least 60 days in rooms that are 50 degrees F. with 85 percent humidity anyhow, so the American versions aren't really missing out on anything. It's the soft cheeses like ricotta, Brie and chèvre that get the short end of the curd slicer in the 60-day deal.

So how can we have our raw milk cheese and eat it, too? Expert cheesemakers are voting for food safety vigilance in creameries across the United States, with rigorous HACCP (hazard analysis and critical control points) plans in place that require frequent inspections and on-site bacteria testing.

And I think that could work well in small operations that produce local, organic artisan cheeses. Which is how it should be: small, local creameries producing specialty cheeses that are so unique, you can pinpoint the grass and clover essence in the cheese, according to region or season.

But when the big companies want in on the artisan trend and decide that marketing is more worthwhile than local and organic, we start to have a problem. When supply and demand meets greed, the food safety system suffers.

I confessed earlier I couldn't bring myself to drink raw milk. However, I feel differently about raw milk cheese as long as it's mature. I'm a fan of the 1940s 60-day rule and don't mind waiting for a good raw milk Cheddar. But unless I'm on a hillside in Italy with lactating sheep grazing next to me, I'm not eating the raw milk ricotta made here in the U.S.

What do you think? Do you agree with the possibly outdated 60-day law or are you a supporter of the raw milk option for all cheeses? And what raw milk cheeses have you enjoyed (and lived to tell us about)?