Away on a bit of vacation

Winchester

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We got home around 1:00 this afternoon. We had decided to head down to Newell, West Virginia, to the Fiesta Outlet (my everyday dishes are Fiesta). We stopped at Penzey Spice in Pittsburgh on the way down, so I could grab some spices. Spent Thursday night in West Virginia, then circled back through Ohio and spent two nights in Holmes County, Ohio to visit the Amish region and go to the Lehman's store before coming back home. I had posted about the Lehman's store a couple of months ago, when we first found out about it.

It was fun, but I'm so glad to be back. I really missed my furkids. I thought I'd sleep OK when it was just Rick and me in a king-sized bed with no cats, but, I was so wrong. I missed them and the bed seemed very large to us with no cats to share it with. 

I did buy some pieces of Fiesta, but overall, I was a little disappointed with the selection. The prices at the store were out of this world expensive and there wasn't much in the way of pieces in the Outlet factory. Rick and I thought that, with sales and coupons, I might make out a little better at our local stores, so other than a few pieces, we didn't bother. We did get some Fiesta plates on seconds for the cats and I bought a couple serving bowls. I did find a gorgeous large mixing bowl in Cinnamon. It's beautiful and I will use it to raise bread doughs.

We pretty much ate our way through Amish country in Ohio. Lots of wonderful baked goods and cheeses. Did some wine-tasting at some of the wineries there and brought home a few bottles. Our ice chest was full of cheeses and some fudge, too. I found this hot, hot, hot Hungarian-type relish that is so good, even though it burns the whole way down. Rick tried a little of it on a cracker and his face got red and the tears came. He told me I was crazy. But it is quite good.

Lehman's is a neat store to visit. It has a little bit of everything! I bought a new rolling pin (no handles and the ends are not tapered....it's just a pin). I can't wait to try it out on pot pie some night this week. When a rolling pin hasn't been used yet, it has a new look. But after a while and with each use, it starts to develop a gorgeous patina from all the doughs and the butters and oils. A wooden pin is never washed; it's just carefully wiped off. They can be gorgeous and I'm looking forward to using my new one. I love rolling pins. (I have my great-grandmother's rolling pin and, a few years ago, a close GF bought me a beautiful new rolling pin that I've been using, too.) The store has a large selection of Legos (of all things for an Amish store to have!) and we found a few things for our grandchildren. Lots of interesting items there. Oh, and some old soft drinks. Rick and I each brought home a bottle of Kickapoo Joy Juice! And I brought home a bottle of Apple Beer (I used to drink that quite a bit when I was little) and Rick has a bottle of Nehri's Grape Soda to enjoy.

We stopped at Tis the Season, the largest Christmas shop in Ohio. It was just beautifully decorated and they had three floors of gorgeous Christmas ideas.

Another couple came with us; they're into flea markets and antiques. While I like looking in the old shops for a while, I get a little bored with it in time. And that' pretty much all they wanted to do yesterday. So Rick I would hit a bakery and then grab an apple fritter. Or a brownie. Or whatever else looked good. I had some sinfully delicious chocolate caramel fudge with sea salt. Our friends wanted to visit the Smuckers store, so while we were there, I bought a bag of White Lily flour......this is southern flour with less protein than our northern flours. It makes wonderful biscuits. And our dinners were at Amish-type restaurants. And at night, after everything closed down, we'd go back to the rooms and play cards while munching on snacks and enjoying a bottle of wine. I think we waddled back to Pennsylvania today.

Rick and I are playing another trip to Holmes County because there were some things that I really wanted to do, but not enough time to do everything. There's a huge bookstore that I really wanted to check out....over 100,000 new and used books. A Polish Pottery store. It's difficult when there's only a couple of days. So we'll go back, just the two of us, for another long weekend later on.

It was my first time away from the house since we went to Wisconsin back in September last year, so I was ready to hit the road. But it's good to be home, it's good to see the board again, and it's good to have a kitty in my lap. I really missed my kids.

A big Thank You! to Tammat for Friday's Question of the Day! Good job! 
 
 
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mani

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Welcome back!

Sounds like a great journey.  I really enjoy hearing about people's holidays.
 

tammat

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Sounds like a wonderful trip. Do the Amish make wines? And do they have restaurants? It sounds like fabulous country. I'd love to poke around in those shops too. It was a pleasure to do Fridays question of the day. Anytime. It's great to have you back:D
 
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Winchester

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The Amish may make a bit of dandelion wine for their own use, but they don't make anything else. At least not that we're aware of. There are getting to be so many vineyards, both in Pennsylvania and Ohio....it's a very big thing around here now. Even our area has quite a few wineries that are cropping up.

I like exploring shops, especially some of the neat gift shops. And the quilts are gorgeous (but you really need to be careful as many of the so-called hand-worked Amish quilts are coming in machine-made and some are actually from China! 
 If you're not really careful, you can get taken. I didn't really know that; my GF who is really into antiques and quilting was telling us about it).

We went to this neat gift-type store and they had a gorgeous huge rooster there. It was cast iron and I fell in love with it....he was really colorful and I thought it would be beautiful on top of the cabinets in the kitchen. It was a little on the expensive side, but Rick said he'd buy it. It was very heavy, so we figured it was something that Mollipop wouldn't be able to knock over while she walked along the top of the cabinets. But it was made in China. We didn't bring it home. But it was just beautiful. I'm not really "into" roosters or chickens, but I'd like to have one. Just one....it's an Alton Brown thing, I guess. I keep looking at roosters....I'll find one some day.

Some of the flea market/antique type stores were very expensive; we thought it was probably because it's such a tourist area that residents thought they could make a few extra bucks from the tourists. Items that we know are cheaper at home were very pricey. At least we thought so.
 

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That sounds like a great weekend!  I love poking around antique stores, gift shops, etc.  My MIL and I used to do that when I'd visit her; before the kids came.  I still remember finding the best little cafe right in the middle of one once.  Gosh I miss doing that!!
 

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Welcome back! :D It's sounds like you had a good time. :)
 
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Winchester

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Thanks! We had a good time. Going back sometime for longer than a long weekend. There's a ton of stuff to do there.

Judy, the Amish restaurant was a huge buffet. All kinds of salad stuff to make your own salad, in addition to potato salad, pasta salads, egg salads, etc. Broasted chicken, ham, roast pork, roast beef, pork and sauerkraut. Mashed potatoes (real potatoes, not from the box), green beans, peas, corn. Baked beans, pickled eggs. Desserts on the buffet were bread pudding, some kind of strawberry gelatin-type of dessert, and something with cherries and a streusel topping. We didn't have the buffet dessert, though; Rick had a slice of custard pie (singing the Zepplin song as he ate
) and I had a slice of deep-dish apple pie. They had homemade yeast rolls, too, and they were delicious. I think it's pretty much standard buffet-type foods. But everything we ate tasted good.
 

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Sounds fun!  I had to giggle about the White Lily flour.  I take it for granted that it's so easily come by here (and the corn meal).  I had no idea that Amish made any wines.  I just assumed they were anti-alcohol.
 

denice

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I used to work with an older man who went to Holmes County several times a year primarily to buy cheese.  He and his wife never bought cheese at the grocery store only at the Amish shops in Holmes county.  Of course while he was there he would also get some baked goods and candy which he would bring into work, we liked his trips to Holmes County.
 
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Winchester

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Sounds fun!  I had to giggle about the White Lily flour.  I take it for granted that it's so easily come by here (and the corn meal).  I had no idea that Amish made any wines.  I just assumed they were anti-alcohol.
I love White Lily flour, but can't get it around here. When Rick goes to Virginia, he always brings back a bag. And when one of his southern union buddies came up to visit a few months ago, he brought along a couple bags of White Lily flour. On the plane! What are the odds?!  I think all his buddies know how much I like to bake (snickerdoodles). He said he didn't really know what to bring us, but then he remembered Rick talking about White Lily flour one time when they were in Virginia. Problem solved. 

I told Rick that we had some leftover ham in the freezer from Easter and that some night, or some weekend morning, we would have ham and biscuits and some red-eye gravy (it's like a coffee-type gravy). He is now eagerly waiting for that dinner. 

Not sure about the Amish doing wine, other than a bit of dandelion wine for their own use (and the only reason I know about the dandelion wine is because I have a few Amish/Mennonite cookbooks and dandelion wine is mentioned). But I don't think the Amish own any wineries, although I could be wrong.
 
I used to work with an older man who went to Holmes County several times a year primarily to buy cheese.  He and his wife never bought cheese at the grocery store only at the Amish shops in Holmes county.  Of course while he was there he would also get some baked goods and candy which he would bring into work, we liked his trips to Holmes County.
If we lived closer to the border, Denice, we'd probably do the same thing. Honestly, the cheese there is simply wonderful. We bought mainly from Guggisberg ( https://www.babyswiss.com/index2.htm  ), but also checked out Heini’s ( http://www.heinis.com/ ). Heini's is where I bought that Hungarian hot relish; during the week, if you stopped in, you could watch cheese being made. Heini's also has a gourmet-type food store (I want to say it's in Berline, but I'm not sure anymore) and their wine selection is simply gigantic (at least we thought so). Guggisberg has decadent baby Swiss and we ended up buying a wheel. We both love cheese of all kinds. I mentioned to Rick that some night when we're having a movie night, we should just make some fondue and have that as our movie supper. He's very willing to do that with me. I brought home a recipe for fondue from Guggisberg. 

A lot of those places also have roll butter. Which, I think, is butter shaped into a roll. We didn't buy any, but I think we'll try it next time we go out. Rick said we'll need a larger ice chest.

One of the wineries we stopped at was Breitenbach ( http://www.breitenbachwine.com/ ); they're the ones who also had a huge dandelion festival going on. So many people, so much wine to taste and also tours throughout the morning. We brought a peach wine home with us and a wine called Frost Fire. A few bottles of some white wines....I tend to go for the whites, more so than the reds.

I think we'll probably end up waddling back into PA again.
 
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peaches08

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I know about red-eye gravy too!  I was raised on it, yet I've never made it.  It's hard to find anybody that still knows how to make it, actually.
 

denice

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Isn't red eyed gravy made with coffee?  I didn't use to get the name until I found out about the coffee.  My mother's family was from southern Missouri and Arkansas deep in the Ozarks and gravy was a staple at breakfast.  I don't think anyone made red eyed gravy though I think it was just a cream gravy.
 
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Winchester

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Yes, a red eye gravy uses coffee. You fry the ham and then use the ham drippings to make the gravy and add coffee. It's not a thick as real gravy, more like a thin sauce.
 

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Thanks! We had a good time. Going back sometime for longer than a long weekend. There's a ton of stuff to do there.

Judy, the Amish restaurant was a huge buffet. All kinds of salad stuff to make your own salad, in addition to potato salad, pasta salads, egg salads, etc. Broasted chicken, ham, roast pork, roast beef, pork and sauerkraut. Mashed potatoes (real potatoes, not from the box), green beans, peas, corn. Baked beans, pickled eggs. Desserts on the buffet were bread pudding, some kind of strawberry gelatin-type of dessert, and something with cherries and a streusel topping. We didn't have the buffet dessert, though; Rick had a slice of custard pie (singing the Zepplin song as he ate :lol3: ) and I had a slice of deep-dish apple pie. They had homemade yeast rolls, too, and they were delicious. I think it's pretty much standard buffet-type foods. But everything we ate tasted good.
Sounds too delicious for words and certainly not standard buffet type foods around here and what's the zepplin song?
 
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Winchester

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Led Zepplin had a song out called "Custard Pie" years and years ago. Rick is a big Led Zepplin fan. When he got his slice of custard pie that night, he just singing that song to me.
 
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