Inqlings: Phila. Magazine buys food blog Foobooz

Following a media trend, Philadelphia Magazine has acquired the local food blog Foobooz and hired editor/founder

Arthur Etchells

as a digital product manager.

Etchells founded Foobooz - essentially a compendium of links to local food writing - about four years ago. He will continue to run the site, with Kirsten Henri, the magazine's food editor. Henri herself guest-edited Foobooz from time to time in its early days.

Parent company Metrocorp says it will launch Foobooz in Boston next year with a national eye.

The move follows a current model by which old media buy upstart blog brands, much as Comcast SportsNet bought The 700 Level last spring and hired editor/founder Enrico Campitelli.

As for a social-media partnership: Independence Blue Cross' Facebook page now features eating tips from local chef/dietitian Katie Cavuto Boyle, a former finalist on The Next Food Network Star and the nutritional consultant to the Phillies.

What Phillies outfielder

Ben Francisco

and pitcher

Kyle Kendrick

have in common, besides new contract offers: new wives. Kendrick and Philly restaurateur

Stephenie LaGrossa

were married Nov. 13 in California, while Francisco - who likely will platoon in right field with

Domonic Brown

next season - tied the knot with

Cindy Lopez

a week later near their offseason home in the Kansas City area. Kendrick and LaGrossa met here in 2008. Francisco and Lopez met in Cleveland in 2007 during his rookie season. Pitcher

Cole Hamels

and his wife,

Heidi

, attended the Francisco wedding.

The Governor's Mansion is changing occupants in a little more than a month, and that means that

Ed and Midge Rendell

will return their borrowed art to the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg. But they won't altogether lose one painting that Main Line artist

Susan B. Howard

donated to the museum in 2002, before Ed Rendell took office. The artist and her husband, retired news anchor

Marc Howard

, ran into Midge Rendell at an awards ceremony and mentioned that she had painted

Hanging by a Thread

. The judge invited them to a holiday open house on Sunday, and showed the couple the work, which hangs in the living quarters upstairs. Since the original will go back to the museum - where incoming

Gov. Corbett

and his wife,

Susan

, can do their own browsing - Marc Howard gave the Rendells a lifesize (18-by 24-inch) print of the work.

NBC's Today show will shoot Tuesday at Philadelphia's Magic Gardens, Isaiah Zagar's enormous mosaic installation on South Street, for a Christmas Day story about gifting within a community.