The Cuisine of Eastern Pennsylvania

This is an old post from our trip out to Eastern PA in February. I wrote up this post about the foods we encountered there, but just forgot to post it. So here goes...

A couple weekends ago we traveled to Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania for a family reunion on Beth's mom's side. You can read more about the weekend here. While there, we got to sample many of the unique foods of eastern Pennsylvania. It's a great example of some of the many regional varieties of food in America. Much of this food springs from the strong German heritage of the area. So we present to you some of the highlights...


1. Pickled Beat Eggs - these are eggs soaked with beets and sugar. Often found jarred. Some varieties are more salty. Grammie's are sweeter.


2. Tomato Pie - essentially a cold pizza with no cheese or toppings. Quite good.


3. Now, a pasta salad like this isn't necessarily native to Eastern PA, but these salads by Cousin Verl are really, really good. This shell pasta salad is supposedly Pop-Pop's favorite, and I can see why.


4. Shoo-Fly Pie - a pie with a bottom layer made with molasses. And we're told this is a wet-bottomed version.


5. And the piece de resistance: Scrapple - this is a meat dish made from the scraps (hence the name) of meat left over at the butcher, mixed with corn meal and fried. It's crispy on the outside, mealy on the inside, and really not that bad tasting. But I think knowing what it's made of doesn't help.

The only thing we didn't get a picture of was the Lebanon Baloney, which is a dense, smoky, spicy sausage named after Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. It reminds me of the summer sausage my family gets from Miesfeld's in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

Oh, Ethiopian food, how we love you!

Probably our favorite restaurant in the world is a tiny hole-in-the-wall Ethiopian restaurant in Grand Rapids called Little Africa. It's owned and run by a gentleman by the name of Lou. He's soft-spoken and extremely friendly.

We first experienced Little Africa just before we graduated from college eight years ago, and we've returned just about every time we visited Grand Rapids. The place is seriously amazing. We've never had food anything like it, even at other Ethiopian restaurants.

First, there's the hot tea (pictured at the top). We swear, there's something in this tea, aside from the indecipherable assortment of spices. We think it's laced with crack. It's that addictive. Lou makes it himself, and he won't tell you what's in it.

Ethiopian food is colorful and extremely flavorful. Lou makes exclusively vegetarian fare, but some Ethiopian restaurants use meat, too. His food incorporates peas, potatoes, lentils, chick peas, carrots, grape leaves, tomatoes, and various grains. The food is eaten without utensils; instead, you scoop it up with injera, a dense, pancake-like bread made from teff flour. It's fermented in a similar manner to sourdough. The owner of the Blue Nile, an Ethiopian restaurant in Columbus, once told us that it's common for people to feed each other over a meal like this, because people who feed each other will never betray each other.


The best part about our most recent trip to Little Africa was introducing Will to Ethiopian food! For the most part, he liked what he tasted, although he clearly had his doubts at first.

But he soon dug in. The only thing he didn't like was something mildly spicy (we barely noticed the spice). But he seemed pretty ticked with it - his face got a bit red and he stood up in his high chair and squealed, but we gave him some water and he was just fine. And he kept going back for more food. We gave him a taste of the tea, too, and that seemed to be his favorite part.

Next step, teaching him about Indian food!

Best Beer in the World

Over Easter my brother Mike and I finally indulged ourselves in a ritual we had been saving for a special occasion: drinking the best beer in the world.

I present to you two bottles of the Trappist Westvleteren 12. According to our favorite source on beer, BeerAdvocate.com, this beer is the best in the world. It's a Belgian Quadrupel brewed by Trappist monks at the Abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren. They make only three beers at the Abbey; the bottles come unlabeled, with different colored caps.

You can only buy the beer directly from the monks at the brewery, by reservation, by the case. A case retails about 36 Euro. When you purchase the beer at the brewery, you agree not to resell the beer. So the fact that I found our bottles - significantly marked up (don't ask how much) - at a store in Columbus means that someone broke their promise to the monks.

Mike and I took advantage of that broken promise to drink our bottles of it last weekend. We poured them into large goblets and slowly sipped them while we discussed them and jotted down notes.

Was it the best beer in the world? Hard to tell. Was it really, really good? Most certainly. Not the best I've ever had, but it was smooth and creamy, very well carbonated (even though the beer was probably 3-4 years old), and tasted/smelled fruity and sweet and bready. I may never have this beer again - it's too expensive to buy regularly, and I'm not planning to visit western Belgium any time soon - but it was fun to drink it with Mike. It's incredibly tasty, and I like the fact that I can say I've had one of the best beers in the world.

Here's some video of the tasting!

Lego cake!

These pics are a long time in coming, but we made this cake for Nick's 30th birthday on February 26th. We threw him a surprise party at the Wild Goose Creative space complete with Guitar Hero World Tour and tons of pizza.

We had to use a little model of legos to make sure it all fit together right. I baked the cake a few days before and it took us a few hours to put it together, but I think it turned out pretty good!

Ice cream!

We stopped by our Dairy Queen tonight (conveniently/dangerously one block away from our house) for some ice cream cones, and we decided to give Will a taste of it. He reacted much more enthusiastically than he did to peas and carrots.

Kate's Getting Married!

My little sister, Kate, is getting married! The lucky guy is Evan Fairey, and they met while serving at Urban Impact in Pittsburgh, PA.

Welcome to the family, Evan! And, CONGRATS!!!

Tiny Desk

When we were on our retreat for Wild Goose in the beautiful Hocking Hills, we stopped by this great antique shop and saw this little desk. Unfortunately, it didn't come home with us, but he seemed to like it!

Unrelated Bits!

My Grammie Richard got Will this little coat (and I got a new camera lens), so you get this shot:

Will is very mobile now, and - as expected - is getting into everything he shouldn't, including Nick's office and bookshelves. There are two lower shelves in particular that he is drawn to, and will crawl over and under anything we put in front of them to get to them. He thinks it's some kind of game now. :) At least he loves books!

So tired but I have to play!

I caught this video today of Will while he was busy playing. He kept himself so busy that he had to take a break to rest!

How big is Will...?

That's how big!

8 Month Photo Shoot

Last week, our really, really, ridiculously good-looking son had his 8 month photo shoot by my friend (whose back-of-monitor I stare at 40 hours a week) Robin Oatts (genrecreative.com). They turned out so well, I just had to share a bunch:

SPRING

I decided last week that it's Spring. I thought if enough people believe it, we can will it into being.

A few days later, we had our first truly stunning weather and the first Crocus were peeking through the leaves! I've waxed poetic about Ohio Spring before: Here, here, and here. I think I'm a closet Spring FANATIC...it's all cool to love Fall around here (which I obviously do as well), but, man, there is nothing like breathing in sweet damp air after a cold Winter.

Will is no stranger to nice weather - we had a beautiful late Summer and Fall last year, but this is the first time he can truly appreciate it.

He was a bit puzzled by the grass and leaves, but trudged right ahead to explore!


And Maeby Ray is just THRILLED to be able to join the pack outside, and walks will be much more enjoyable than in the snow and ice.

Now we need suggestions on how to block off our porch steps - one giant baby gate?

Happy Spring!

And one more thing he's doing...

... riding around on his car.

8 months old? What haven't we been up to?

Just some quick video updates...

Will is crawling like crazy. And here he is at Grandma and Grandpa Dekker's house, learning to take some stairs.

Clapping. And his balance is getting very good. Watch as he catches himself towards the end of the video.

And here's a clip of Will doing several things. Some shrieking and ba-ba-ing. Plus he's got a great little dance where he waves his head back and forth. And you can see how well he's standing up next to things and transfering himself between them.

Learning to play with Maeby

Will and Maeby are slowly learning to accept and play with each other, and Will took a big step this evening. Here he is mimicking Beth by crawling after Maeby and roaring at her.

Womelsdorf Reunion

Last weekend Nick, Will, Abbey and I headed out to Eastern PA for a Richard family reunion. Will had a lot of fun staying in his first hotel, especially with his aunts and grandparents next door! And he got his first Valentine's heart from Grandpa Meyer!


We got to spend a lot of time with his Great-Grandpa and Grammie!


We also got to meet Will's newest cousin, Kaelyn (actually, my first cousin once removed and Will's second cousin...see here) - Will just wanted to keep touching her, he was so fascinated by her! And, at 8 lb. 13 oz and 5 weeks old, we marveled that Will was NEVER that size this side of my uterus!

Hanging with Aunt Anita and Uncle Mike!


Testing out walking - I mean, it's already been a whole week since he's been crawling, why wait?!


My Grammie and Pop with their six kids (Mike, my mom, Mark, Marsha, Michelle, and Melynda).

His new favorite toy from Grammie - he just loves pushing himself along and hitting the music buttons!

He thinks he's pretty big stuff with his new little truck, and we just can't believe how fast he's learning new things!

Uh oh...

Well, we're in for it. The boy is mobile.

Just last night Will popped up on all-fours, like he's been doing since Christmas, and then started putting one hand and one knee in front of the other, and the boy is crawling. It's a joy to see it happening, to see him trying so hard to get where he wants to go, but already we're identifying what needs to be child-proofed.

Thanks to the blessing of technology, we were able to show all of Will's grandparents some of his first crawls. We plopped the computer down on the floor, fired up the video chat, and they got to see a ground-level view of him crawling towards them.

Really, Really, Ridiculously Good-Looking

We're pretty sure that Will is going to be a male model. I mean, he's got the looks down!

Blue Steel:

Le Tigre:


Ferrari:



Magnum:

He's still working on it. It's gonna blow us all away. I shouldn't even be talking about it.

The Running of the Brides

My little sister Marina is getting married in August! So, of course, we had to find a dress! Filene's Basement annual "Running of the Brides" was held this last Friday, Jan. 30, so it worked out perfectly to head there to see what we could find. Every other bride in the tri-state area had the same idea! :)

Marina is, how would you put it, particular? So, needless to say, we were concerned that it was going to be a long morning, even though there were almost 2000 dresses there. However, she fell in love with 3 stunning dresses and had a hard time choosing which one she liked best! She eventually chose a beautiful ivory strapless dress with delicate beading all over, with a chapel train. It will look perfect next to her fiance's Air Force uniform.

The video is a bit long, but it's worth the watch! We had a crew of 9 ladies consisting of my four sisters, me, my sister-in-law, mother, and aunt. Of course, we had matching shirts, which came in handy in the confusion! Enjoy!