Weekend Chow - part 2 Day Trip Report

Note: This post delayed due to technical difficulties..


On to the rest of our weekend...

Before the Red Head left her job as a day care director, her staff scrounged up some moola and purchased her a night in a brand spanking new bed and breakfast. We also had a AMEX gift card (to use for chow) that I received as a result of spending other peoples money while traveling on business the past 10 years.


Speedwell Forge is an amazing place - fully restored - mansion originally built in 1760. It's just a gorgeous building, with 2 separate restored buildings that were converted into guest rooms. We stayed in the Paymaster's Office, which was originally used for pretty much what you would think. It served as sort of a bank for the forge workers.
Browse their web site and you'll see pictures of the room. Here's the outside.

So we arrived around 3PM and were greeted by one of the most pleasant people you could ever meet. Dawn really has a passion for running her B&B. The house used to be her Grandmothers, so she puts a lot of love into what she's doing. She also makes a mean omelet, but I'll get to that.

After checking in, we headed up to Cornwall, to the Bluebird Inn. It's also an historic old building, with lots of charm and character. They've got a nice enclosed porch, which is where we decided to dine since it was so warm on Sunday. The Bluebird is clearly trying to hit some niche as a sophisticated English pub. I will admit that I got a little concerned when the menu bragged at how all their beers were served chilled to 30 degrees!!! Yikes, cold beer is fine most of the time, but not all beer is meant to be served at the same temperature, just ask Michael Jackson (the one with his original nose)

We both started with soup - crab bisque for the RH, and shrimp chowder for me. The bisque was quite good, though a little too thick, even for that style of soup. The chowder was a bit spicy, which is normally fine for me, but it kindof over-powered the tender shrimp, making it sortof a miscellaneous chowder. But still we both graded our soups in the B-range.

I ordered fish n chips, which were in this case very crispy breaded haddock. I generally prefer cod for my fish n chips, but haddock is acceptable. Strangely, it was not a beer batter, which is unfortunate because they were cooked perfectly. Ok, decent fish, but the fries were quite good. They had that slightly crispy, very potato-ee taste. Not greasy at all. Some of the best fries I've had in a while.
The wife had the Guinness tips pie topped with a puff pastry crust. If you know her at all this is sortof up her ally - she loves beef tips over noodles, puff pastry, and while she doesn't care for beer much, she usually loves cooking with it. The description says it's in "a rich Guinness demi glaze" and baked 'till "golden brown." Hmm. In actuality it wasn't all the rich like you would expect. It was decent beef, but the sauce just tasted like a generic thickened beef stock (not gravy) with half pint or Guinness poured in at the end. There was clearly no reduction or demiglaze to it at all. It had tons of alcohol still in it, and the flavor was just way too beery that you couldn't taste anything else. As for the golden brown puff pastry? More like a light blond soggy mess. I guess that description makes it sound worse than it really was, it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't what we were expecting.

All in all, I'd have to give the Bluebird a B or B minus (saved from a C by the fries). They have a huge menu, so I'd go back if someone I knew wanted to, but it's not worth going out of your way, and was a bit of a let down.

We had no desert plan, but I must mention at this point that I had been craving these cream filled made by Harting's Country Made bakery. I could not find them for the past few weeks, so we though maybe for a treat we'd find some the next day.

Before heading back to the room, we scooted down toward Lancaster and hunted down Bruster's Ice Cream Shop. This is a make it on location chain that's starting to infiltrate Pennsylvania. Maybe I should replace infiltrate with infect. It was so bad that I really can't figure out how it succeeds at all, and I can't imagine how in the world it's expanding in a state that makes some of the best ice cream in the world. I feel bad for the folks who live wherever it originated, because they have no idea what ice cream tastes like. The people working there were nice enough, and they have some nifty flavors - perhaps too many gimmicky choices, but the ice cream is just terrible. Oh well.
UPDATE: I cant' believe this. I looked up the web site and discovered the place actually originated in Pennsylvania!!! I decided not to edit what I wrote because it still reflects what I believe. How could we let ourselves go like this!!!!

Considering our ice cream disappointment, we became obsessed (that's a theme with me lately) with finding those Harting's cream filled donuts. We stopped at two different grocery stores on the way back to the B&B with no luck. Let me tell you, no grocery store donut was going to be "good enough" after our ice cream fiasco. But they were not to be found that night :(

For breakfast, Dawn serves 3 courses. We started with homemade granola, which isn't one of my typical choices, but this was really good. Moving on, she brought us a dish of fresh berries (Rasp, Black, Blue) with real yogurt - yummm. We finished with a light and fluffy omelet with crispy red potato home fries. Quite delicious, with good company from another couple who were finishing up their meal and our host, who really made us feel comfortable.

We spend the rest of the day taking a nice drive around Lancaster County, walked around Lititz, where after about 45 minutes, I realized that I still had the key to the paymaster's office!!! So we finished up our walk and headed back to drop it off, making a convenience store stop still hunting for the donuts. When I dropped off the key, M hung out in the driveway and booted up my laptop - we were determined to get some of those donuts!!! We knew the place was in Bowmansville, which was more or less on the way home, but were not sure exactly where. Low and behold, it's right on the main drag. And we were off to grab the donuts.

They have a little tiny shop attached to the front of the bakery, with big windows looking into the actual baking area. The first thing you see are the creme filled donuts - exactly what I was looking for. They also have chocolate filled, fruit filled, and many others. Also various sticky buns and creme cheese buns and I could go on and on. I was surprised to see bread products, including fresh made hamburger buns - one of which I just consumed and used to eat a leftover Chipolte Orange Turkey Burger that I pulled out of the freezer.

As for the creme filled donuts. Just go buy some, I really can't describe how awesome they are.

Worlds BEST Moravian Sugar Cake

World's best what? you say? Ever had sugar cake?
You probably have in some form or another.

Do you like sugar cake? I bet if you stop and think about it you'd probably say, "eh, it's alright once in a while." Moravian sugar cake? Some of you who are or know Moravians may have had this version.

What's a Moravian? This is no history or religion blog, but I'll give you a brief run down. The Moravian Church was founded in (fittingly) Moravia - a province now part of the Czech Republic in 1457 - which makes us the oldest Protestant Church in the world. Under persecution, the early faithful fled Moravia and settled in what is now Germany, eventually sending missionaries around the world, including America. OK, long story short - Moravians are known for missions, music, and food.

I can guarantee very few of you have ever had anything like really good Moravian Sugar Cake. Any my wife makes the absolute best. The best examples are moist, flavorful, buttery, not too sweet. It easily makes my list of all time anywhere favorite foods. It takes a bit of time and a number of steps to prepare. As you'll see.

The day before making the sugar cake, the red-head peeled, boiled, and mashed some red-skin taters. She reserved the potato water to use in the batter. Here's what all the ingredients looked like all measured out. Tater water, mashed taters, flour, sugar, butter and margarine (weird huh?), brown sugar (not pictured), eggs, salt, yeast.

Next, the wet ingredients - along with the yeast are creamed together - with the sugar and salt.

Switch to the dough hook. The flour is gradually added and kneaded until it pulls away from the bowl in a nice gooey dough.


Then the dough is left to rise for, um, well, about as long as you want. In our case, we left the dough before leaving for church and came home to it having pretty much tripled or quadrupled in size.



Then, the R-H split the dough in half in to 2 pans for a second rising, where it tripled again. Most expert bakers like the R-H will tell you that it's these multiple risings that develop flavor and and texture. I'll agree.


Now to the final prep for baking. Butter is spread all over the top of the dough, followed by brown sugar. But, we're not done with the butter at all! Holes are poked into the dough where little pats of butter added. Yum.


Here's what the heavenly goodness looks like after it comes out of the oven.

And after it's half eaten.

Oh, you really have no idea how good this is, you really don't. It's buttery, and creamy, and a little bit tangy, with a crunchy sweet (but not too sweet topping). A few of my co-workers may remember the couple of times I've brought it in. And a few friends have had it on special occasions - such as the case today for a birthday.

The house will smell awesome for the next 3 days.

Peanut Butter Eggs

Happy Early Easter everyone!

After my review of Speckled Hen I was thinking about doing a post about all time favorites. The kind of post that would include not just favorite foods but favorite actual dishes. Not just favorite food, but the actual best version of that food. One thing that will be sure to make the list will be our church's chocolate covered peanut butter eggs. Some of the wonderful ladies of the congregation make these just before lent to be sold at the same time as our fastnachts. They also make coconut eggs, but I'm just not as into that. I really love chocolate peanut butter combo. Obviously, I love Reese's, but my favorite is Watchamacallit.

Anyway, the mixture is pretty much just peanut butter and cream cheese. They ladies carefully measure and roll out each egg and allow them to set a bit.

Then the mixture is dipped in a slightly dark chocolate mixture. I think the real secret here is the Wilbur Chocolate - made in nearby Lititz.

Then the eggs are cooled, trimmed - yup trimmed to perfection, then packed for sale. I can't even express how good these are. If I had to list my top five foods anywhere anytime - these would make the cut.

My Valentine

I am a loved man. Really, I am. My wife found a way to make a nice evening for us without going to a fancy restaurant. As you can probably guess - she cooked. It was quite simply the most delicious meal I've had in a long time, and that includes our trip to Arizona. Sorry that some of the pictures are a little blurry - my arms were tired from shoveling snow and ice for 2 hours!

We started off with home-made bruschetta. This is one of our favorite starters, and the red-head struggled at first to make it just right considering this isn't exactly tomato season. After trial and error -low and behold, it tastes outstanding good with canned maters as well - some of the best I've ever had.



That was followed up by sauteed dry scallops (dry - meaning not treated with preservative like most scallops). Nice and simple, a few breadcrumbs, butter and olive oil, and a nice hot pan. Cooked till lightly brown on the outside and just barely done on the inside. Sweet and yummy.



Our entree was crab stuffed chicken breast with twice baked potato and sauteed broccoli. The taters were great, but we both agreed that the recipe used for the crab chicken was a little bland. I think it was supposed to be a light and simply flavored dish, but in the future, leaving the skin on and/or browning the chicken would be the better option. 'Twas still quite good though, particularly the crab stuffing.



Ok, and now for the best part, which is saying a lot considering how awesome the scallops turned out. Frozen peanut butter pie, with chocolate graham cracker crust and homemade hot fudge sauce. Yah, I said homemade hot fudge sauce. This pie shows precisely why I rarely eat desert out. Quite frankly, most restaurants, particularly chains, can't match anything the red-head makes.

Light lunch in prep for CJ

Today was our home visit with our wonderful social worker from Bethany - our adoption agency. A little more info on that can be found on my adoption blog.

We had lovely salad with home-made red wine vinaigrette and scrumptious Quiche Lorraine (quick edit - for those of you who might not know, quiche is basically a creamy egg pie - make 1 crust pie shell, and fill it with an mixture of about 4 eggs and 2 cups of cream - throw in some meat, veggies, and cheese, then bake it for an hour. Ths one had Gruyere cheese and bacon).

Did I ever tell you my wife makes the world's best pie crust? Desert - lemon bars - yum.

The Red-Head's pies

Just to change things up from all the smoky goodness the other day, here's a few pics of some equally tasty items. My wife makes the most outstanding pies. Part of the magnificence comes from the flaky yet moist crust, part of it comes from the fresh ingredients, and the rest comes from practice.

Let's just say that in our house, a frozen or otherwise pre-made pie dough and canned pie filling would be practically sacrilegious. Over the years I've enjoyed apple, pumpkin (not one of my favs), pecan, chocolate cream, lemon meringue, cherry, blueberry, raspberry, peach, strawberry, mixed berry, and probably a few more I can't thing of at the moment. My favorite is probably apple, followed closely by pecan, chocolate cream, and blueberry.

Here are a few examples. Note the nifty magazine like picture with the lemons, just in case it wasn't obvious what was under the meringue! The apple pies is from this year's T-giving, and I can't even remember the raspberry - but it looks delicious (and like it has almonds)!