Farm Show

See? We were still smiling even after paying $10 to park and then driving around looking for a spot for over 10 minutes. Here we are on the shuttle bus that took us down to the PA Farm Show! My first happy sighting was a big tractor trailer truck labeled "organic." Yes!

I knew it would be crowded because it was a weekend, the parking was awful, and it's always crowded anyway. There was a line for the broken escalator, which is just a testament to the laziness of Americans. You can see by looking at it that it's not moving. Just take the steps! And we did.

The best place to start is in the free samples section. We had about an hour and a half until Farm Show's "Got Talent," which we planned to check out. Still more crowds to fight! We found some nice selections of treats, from mustard to raw milk cheeses to mustard to buckwheat cakes (yum!) to mustard. Oh, did I mention the mustard? We ended up buying 2 kinds: Seltzer's Horseradish and Miller's Hot and Sweet. That was lunch.

The butter sculpture was amazing, as usual. What a crazy amount of butter!!!! We found some sample apple slices and the Turkey Hill samples nearby.

I was really excited to find the PA Maple Syrup on display. We used to make maple syrup up at our cabin (coincidentally in the Endless Mountains) so this was great!

We tried a variety of wines (sadly, not this one but I liked the name :-) ) and ended up buying 3 bottles from Blue Mountain. They had the nicest sales lady, which just goes to show that customer service really does matter! We're always on the alert as to how we're being treated since we both work in customer service. When someone impresses us, we react! I got Bri's Blush, which I'd had before, and Mountain Frost. Bup got a Merlot.

My one milkshake of the year is safely tucked away in my belly. I'm not a milkshake person for a lot of reasons, mainly that I'd rather eat than drink. Because the dairy industry has a lot of issues, I try not to consume a lot of excess dairy anymore. Ice cream and cheese are still on the list of loves, though! I just look for sustainably raised and hormone free dairy products and we drink Almond Breeze in place of milk. If you haven't tried it, it's delicious and it doesn't spoil if you don't use it within a week. Thank goodness for that!

We drank our shakes while watching Farm Show's "Got Talent." The one girl was in 3rd grade and she was excellent on the violin! Then we got a few more goodies to bring home at the food court and headed out. After all those snacks and no real food my stomach wasn't super happy with me but we looked around the food court and couldn't find anything else we wanted. I needed something fresh. On the way back to the car I realized I should've gotten an apple but it was too late.

We stopped to visit our friend's new puppy, Lexus, on the way home. Isn't she a cutie? I'm a cat person, but this little pup has a spot in my heart!

Cookies, Wine & Eggrolls

If you like chocolate and you like cookies, you'll like these. Correction: You'll LOVE these. Mom found a recipe for a crunchy chocolate cookie with an added kick. These cookies are full of chocolate. How many recipes do you come across with 1 1/2 cups of cocoa powder in them? The recipe said it would make 3-4 dozen cookies, but she divided the dough into 3 hunks and after 1 was rolled and cut out we already had 3 dozen cookies. So we froze the other 2 hunks for the future.

While Mom was rolling out these hearts of chocolate, I mixed up the dough for a batch of Sante's Hermit Cookies from 101 Cookbooks. They had to chill for an hour so after I mixed them I moved on to Mom's Crunchy Cookies.

The dough is basic but then you add oatmeal, cornflakes (We ad libbed with frosted flakes and then cut back on the sugar. I have a HUGE box of frosted flakes in my cupboard from making Tiger Cookies but we don't eat them as cereal so I'm using them in as many things as I can!), coconut and chocolate chips. In other words, you add everything delicious and lots of it!

Mom's cookies finished about the same time I started putting in the Hermit Cookies.

The Hermit Cookies sort of taste like an oatmeal raisin cookie and I love them. Plus they're little 2-bite cookies, so if I eat 3 that's ok. ...Right? I still haven't iced them like the recipe calls for because I hate storing iced cookies. Plus Mom's mailing a package with some of each cookie to my aunt in Oregon and the icing won't ship well. We're icing them as we go along with a cream cheese icing I can store in the fridge.

The men were working hard on bottling wine in the basement.

Luckily they brought us some samples.

That helped give us the energy to start making dinner!

We made 2 kinds of baked egg rolls. One had cabbage, carrots, celery, onions, grated ginger, water chestnuts and mushrooms in it.

The other was bean sprouts, carrots, onions, grated ginger and baby shrimp. Egg rolls are very complicated. Lots of chopping and then you cook the mixture and add soy sauce and any other preferred seasonings. They you wrap them and bake them for 15 minutes.

And they come out nice and crispy!

*Please note my beautifully painted "new" stove. Bup decided to paint the original cream top and make it black and stainless steel. I love it!

I mixed up some dipping sauces and used our Pampered Chef bamboo bowls we got for Christmas (Thanks Connie!). We had duck sauce, chili lime sauce, soy sauce, and peanut sauce (my favorite).

Oh, did I mention the Chocolate Cranberry Nut Pie Mom made for dessert?

I went to bed tired, happy and well-fed!



Season for Soup

Mom gave us a Christmas cactus that is part of the original one my great-grandma grew! And it's blooming!

I have to find a more permanent spot for it, though, because I keep bumping it when I cut the corner too close. It's in our dining room, so we get to enjoy it every evening during dinner.



We've had soup a lot in the past few weeks. It's that time of year! Last night we had Broccoli Potato Chowder with beer bread. The soup tasted WAY better than it looks here. Trust me. I even packed some for lunch today! If the bowl looks half empty, that's because it was. We were so excited to eat dinner that I forgot to take a picture. Note the bite out of the bread. :-) The Bup said I could blame him, but this is my bowl so I guess we're equally at fault.

I made the beer bread with Yuengling Lager. My favorite! The flavor came through nicely. We had a big salad with kale, spinach, mixed spring greens, onion, carrot, green bell pepper, and cucumber. Can you tell I went to the farm market?

Broccoli Potato Chowder
adapted from Cooking Light 

Yield: 6 servings

1 T coconut oil

1  large onion, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

2  c (about 1 lb) red potato, cubed

2  T  Worcestershire sauce

2 T rice vinegar

1 T liquid smoke

1/2 tsp dried sage

1 tsp  salt

1 tsp ground black pepper

1/4  tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp Italian seasoning

Dash of hot sauce

6 c low-salt vegetable broth

2 1/2  cups  small broccoli florets

2 T  all-purpose flour

1 14 oz. can coconut milk

1/2  cup shredded cheddar cheese

2  tablespoons  lemon juice

Heat coconut oil in large pot over medium heat until melted. Add onion and celery and cook until softened. Add potato and next 10 ingredients (through broth). Bring to a boil, uncovered, and then reduce heat and simmer for about 30 minutes or potatoes are tender.

Puree mixture with an imersion blender until most of the chunks are blended. Soup will look nice and thick.

Whisk together flour and coconut milk in a small bowl. Add to soup mixture. Cook over medium heat until soup starts to thicken, stirring constantly. (I walked away a lot during this and didn't stir constantly. It still tasted good.) Stir in broccoli and chedder cheese. Mix in lemon juice and stir. Enjoy!

Note: The original recipe called for lump crab meat. I bet that would be delicious but I didn't have any, so I didn't add any. It was equally delicious without!