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Monthly Archives: January 2017

Updates

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I promised myself I would try and blog at least once a week, but life keeps getting in the way of writing. This week I finally sat down and cleaned up all my pages. Some of them hadn’t been touched in two years, but now, hopefully, no broken links and no outdated information.

What is new? I visited a new to me farm in Carroll County. Evermore Farm. According to the owner, Ginger Myers, the farm was once part of the vast Charles Carroll’s holdings, established in 1783.

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Their farm store is located on the property, which is just southwest of Baugher’s Restaurant and Market, off of Rte. 31. I went up there specifically to get Rheb’s Candy for Christmas presents.

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I saw a video of the store. I bought some eggs and lamb while there. A good source for grass fed beef, too. And Freedom Ranger chicken. Heritage pork. If you want to fill your freezer, they sell many varieties of packages. I am partial to their lamb package.

Head out Main Street in Westminster and keep going west on Uniontown Rd to Rockland, a left turn to the farm. I am seriously considering using their CSA program for meat, chicken and eggs.

As for other updates around here, I added some services and changed some restaurant information on my HoCoBiz page. I want to commend Chandler’s Collision Center in Columbia for the outstanding work they did on my car, which was a casualty of a hit and run in a parking lot. Who knew that a daytime running light assembly cost more than my first car? Yep, someone backed into my car while it was parked at Royal Farms, and left my light assembly smashed. A new assembly and a paint job on the scratched bumper, and it looks like new. Chandler fixed our old Jeep twice, after front end damage. They are absolutely the nicest people and their work is guaranteed for “life”. Right now, they are so swamped they are only taking insurance work and the backup time is at least two weeks. We were lucky that our car wasn’t damaged enough to make it undriveable, so we just waited 10 days to put it in there. They told us they are seeing a very large amount of deer-car damage. It’s one of the main causes of the body damage they are repairing. We know to be careful out here, but it is almost inevitable that an encounter will happen to most of us living here. If you need your car repaired, contact Chandler.

Other than car repairs, house painting, and bird watching, we seem to be rather settled in for winter. Anyone want to guess whether our new resident hawk will bother the cardinals in the yard?

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Oh, and as usual, I am still cooking like crazy. Just trying to make it work around all the changes in the kitchen.

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Lamb shanks with spelt berries, parsnips and carrots. It may not be pretty but it definitely tasted great.

A Winter CSA

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Community Supported Agriculture. In the dead of winter. Believe it or not, many farms here in the MidAtlantic have crops in high tunnels and greenhouses, all year long.

Recent comments on local blogs and Facebook lament the condition of produce in our grocery stores. Yes, even the higher end stores have slimy produce. We all miss that fresh from the ground delivered produce, ours is only one day from the field.

Here, where we live, there are two winter CSAs. Zahradka and Lancaster Farm Fresh. There are other delivery services, but not all their produce is local. And yes, Zahradka and LFFC bring in regional vegetables to augment the harvests. After all, who would complain about a chance for citrus, or maybe greens from the Carolinas.

Here is our first delivery from LFFC, yesterday.

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Looks good to me, for roughly $26 a share. All organic. About 10 pounds total. A couple of pounds of carrots. 12 ounces of tatsoi. Turnips. Chard. Red beets with their greens attached. Onions. Two absolutely lovely watermelon radishes.

I added many specialty items. Pantry item. Yogurt. Cheese. Bread. I could have added meat or chicken, eggs, milk, tofu, grain and flour, fermented beverages.

It is nice to have a source of fresh food when the farmer’s markets are closed. There are just a handful of us this winter. Thanks to our CSA for keeping us going, even when we didn’t meet the minimum. I suppose we should all be thankful for Roots and David’s and MOM’s, the local organic markets where our driver drops off produce on the same run as our CSA pick up. It’s really nice for us, since our cost is lower than buying the produce there.

I missed having fresh veggies on our four week break. So happy they are back.

Inspiration

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So, say HI to my chicken water pitcher. The inspiration for my kitchen.

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I have followed the Mediterranean diet for years. First inspired by a trip to the Med in 2002, where we bought our chicken while in Sicily. He is a cute rooster. His bright colors are the inspiration for our kitchen renovation.

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It is almost there. Next up, countertop, stove, sink and cabinet hardware. This is the first real cosmetic upgrade to our house. Almost everything before this was energy driven. Better insulation. Better appliances. Better windows and doors and roof. Well, besides replacing the rotting deck and crumbling patio.

I use my kitchen. Some say I could be abusing my kitchen, with all that steam and chopping and cooking. I know, I should be looking for granite and open concept and the other buzz words. Spoken by people who may have Pizza Hut on speed dial. Our decisions are based on durability and use. So, probably no to granite and yes to quartz. If I mistakenly drip olive oil on quartz, I have a much better chance of recovering.

To christen the new kitchen, a Mediterranean dinner.

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Slow baked tuna in tomatoes and Italian seasoning. Sautéed chickpeas. A nice old red wine.

Now, I need to update my HocoBiz page to thank our electrician for the great work he did to replace our old fluorescent lights.

Mama Millie’s to the Rescue

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Some days you can’t possibly consider cooking.

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Monday night the kitchen ceiling looked like this. Tuesday it was way better, but still at 8:45 PM when the electricians left, I was in no mood to cook. So, I called Mama Millie’s.

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They are in “downtown” Glenelg, not far from us. Small. Locally owned. A pizza was a good idea. While cleaning up dry wall and other stuff.

Then, come Wednesday, ceiling repair and “mudding”. Another day with the kitchen covered in plastic.

This time I was tempted by the Stromboli.

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Trust me. The “small”. Could feed us for two days.

Today, we heated up leftovers.

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Originally, we had ordered a Stromboli and a baked ziti. Either one of them could make half a meal for us. Tonight, I reheated the ziti, and the rest of that Stromboli will be dinner tomorrow. I never opened the garlic bread last night, as two pieces came with the ziti order.

Over all, I spent $40 over two nights. Have at least four nights of dinners. They are fresh. They are seasoned well.

I could occasionally be tempted in the future to get Stromboli when I don’t want to cook. They are very good.

By the way, my husband first tried them while looking for a good Italian cold cut sub. Like he used to find in Pennsylvania at the local Italian deli. This one.

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You know, even as slow food and home cooked advocates, we sometimes take a break. My break? Has to use small businesses, and not chain food places.

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Mama Millies. Glenelg. Try them.

Change is Hard

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First of all, Happy New Year! I have been fairly busy with the painting around here, and haven’t kept up the blog. At least I remembered to change the copyright notice date to the current year. Hopefully, I can remember to write the correct year on all these checks we keep writing.

As for the past, current and future, I admit, not sorry to see 2016 go away. To us, 2016 brought Medicare, Social Security and lots of other reminders of getting older. Like realization that bad weather is worse when you aren’t a spring chicken anymore. Last year’s blizzard and tornado proved to be problems for us. In minor ways, but still problems.

We learned that we had to change things. Make things more accessible. Eliminate possible accident sources. Update bathroom, kitchen and other interior spaces. All these things are disruptive. Sometimes I think even more so because we are retired and here most days. We didn’t get to run away to the office and come home to the chaos only at night. Or, have the luxury like those on-HGTV people who could stay elsewhere while their houses were under renovation. I understand why people resist doing renovations. It can literally stress you out to the point of wanting to give it up. Yes, the results are nice, but living in complete disarray gets to me.

Every item from my pantry is in bags and boxes on my family room floor. Cooking is difficult.

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Add to it, the sheer shock factor of going to a bright yellow.

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Let’s just say I really like it. My better half? He’s still adjusting to the major color change.

We at least had New Year’s Eve dinner even while working around it all. I have to say that this recipe is a keeper, and it was a simple meal served with an excellent bubbly.

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Emeril Lagasse’s Oyster Stew. Recipe from online. Oysters from the Jessup Seafood Market. A side salad. Champagne savored from beginning of cooking through to a glass just before we gave up and crashed around 11:30. Yep, we couldn’t make it until midnight.

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Here’s to a better brighter 2017! At least my kitchen will be bright and cheery.