lol…polly want a cracker?
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Monthly Archives: August 2014
buy fresh, buy local, cook deliciously
Sundays invariably become a cooking day for me. I often get things lined up for the week ahead. Today I made another batch of fresh Gazpacho and put a small beef roast and chicken breasts into marinades for cooking over the next couple of days.
I toss the meat and chicken into their own (as in individual) ziplock bags with either a homemade or semi-homemade marinade which includes fresh herbs out of my garden, garlic cloves peeled and sliced.
Marinades are easy. There are tons of recipes out there, or you can use a prepared one and tweak it. I like Stubb’s marinades and Pete’s Produce has their own line of marinades too which are very good, and KC Masterpiece has a couple which aren’t bad. I seem unable to use these marinades on their own, I tweak them to what I want. I never add more salt, but I might add herbs, spices, lemon juice, lime juice, fresh ginger, and so on.
We buy our meat and poultry from a local Chester County butcher who in turn buys from a lot of local farms. We use Worrell’s Butcher Shop on King Street in Malvern (Borough). You can’t beat the quality, and truthfully their prices are competitive with supermarket chains. If you have never tried them, you should. They will prepare custom freezer orders for customers too.
Since I have moved to Chester County I have made an effort to source our food locally. I love the East Goshen Farmers Market and West Chester Growers Market, but am becoming increasingly fond of Pete’s Produce on 926 because they pull in from a bunch of local farms, including for dairy products. Also on my list is Sugartown Strawberries and Strattons’ Wynnorr Farm. Also to be included in the rave category is the Phoenixville Farmers Market.
The locavore movement is continuing to grow in this country and there is more than a little truth in local food is better on so many levels. In Chester County we are lucky to have so many farms and farmers markets, so why not support the local farm economy?
Buy fresh, buy local, cook deliciously.
Thanks for stopping by!
american gothic
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lost cat in malvern
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damaged people
From the past comes ugly anger,
That left on their own.
Back to sling words,
Angry and cheap,
They damage no one but themselves.
Cyber bullies.Damaged people,
Troubled mental turmoil.
Sad people, sad lives, a stalker’s existence
They damage no one but themselves.
Cyber bullies.
They don’t have me.
late summer is here
Dew on the day lilies,
Early morning bird song.
The hum clickety click of the sprinkler
Sunrise so sparkly
New day begins.
The weather feels different
Late summer is here.
this is summer….
A cool evening with a breeze coming in the open windows,
The sounds of cicadas and happy children playing.
Sun flowers and Black-eyed Susans,
This is summer.
little lime hydrangea
This hydrangea is a wonderful cultivar. It is called Little Lime. It has puffy and conical shaped pale green bloom that fade to white or cream. In the fall the blossoms also become tinted with pink on the edges. This is a fairly compact hydrangea that is about 4 to 5 feet in diameter. It is also very winter hardy, and came through the winter better than the rest of my hydrangeas. I purchased mine at Applied Climatology in the West Chester Growers Market
Here is their inventory for this coming Saturday (as in tomorrow):
Sad and to be mentioned in local nursery news is that one of my favorite nurseries is consolidating their business to their Chadds Ford, PA location. Woodlawn Nursery which is on the old Potter’s site at Sugartown Road and Paoli Pike in Malvern is having a consolidation sale. I will miss them when they are gone from Malvern, but am glad they are keeping their Chadds Ford location. They do excellent work and their plants have been amazing. Plus they are super nice people.
Oh and just so you all know, this is not a compensated blog. If I post about goods and services it’s because I want to, it’s not a services swap or direct compensation. There is nothing wrong with bloggers who do that, but I want to be clear about my own blog.
Thanks for stopping by, I hope you are enjoying this amazing day!
very true….(and worth sharing)
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people. life. life’s journey.
Yesterday I met two new people. One is a woman newly diagnosed with breast cancer who had sent me a lovely note about something on my breast cancer blog. I also met another equally remarkable woman through more ordinary means.
I also recently have made the acquaintance of a mother and a daughter who used to live in Chester County. They are now spread far and wide, and I have met them because I had written about what was their family farm. And they so graciously have shared their memories with me so I could share them with you, my blog readers.
A couple of months ago I also met another person that I think I was destined to meet. It ended up once we got to talking that they actually lived on the periphery of a former life of mine. That is to say, we knew people in common, but never met at that point in time in either of our lives.
My friend Sherry is always saying things about opening yourself up to the universe and being positive, and the cool people you meet as a result. It took me a while to get the concept, but I actually think it’s true.
I think it is the Irish in my genealogy that makes me almost a little fey and makes me believe that people enter and leave your life for a reason. And I mean that in the most positive sense, not negative. The people I have met recently, I believe I was somehow supposed to meet. I don’t know why, it’s just a feeling.
I am also blessed in my life that I have this amazing core group of people I can call friends who have been in my life since I was a small child and a teenager. These people are all age ranges.
Truthfully I like having friends of all age ranges, it makes for a more rich life experience.
I noticed in myself a couple of years ago that I am a little more guarded than I used to be. I think life and circumstance make us all this way to an extent. It’s sad that we, as human beings get that way, but it happens. I guess we can file it away to that old adage about being older and wiser.
One of the last people I was more open and accepting of, ironically is now one of my cyber bullies. This person went from being the person who said I was like “the sister they could choose for themselves” to today, where they cyber bully me in a warped fatal attraction stalker-like style. I don’t regret getting to know this person, but I do feel sorry that they are so super deeply damaged and living such an empty life that existing to be mean and attempting to inflict pain keeps them going. They just can’t let go and can’t be anything other than negative.
The people you meet in life teach you things, good and bad. As I’ve gotten older I try to take the good and leave the bad on the curb. There are people whom you let go of, and people who let go of you. Sometimes these partings are very difficult, but in the bigger picture, you just weren’t destined to be in each others lives permanently. Some people are just gypsies in our lives, traveling through our lives for a while before they move on.
I have had three life events in the last decade which have taught me the true goodness of people. The first is when the ex factor left and people circled and supported me, the second was watching how people circled and supported my sister when she suddenly became a 43-year-old widow, and the third was when I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Ironically, these life events all happened within the span of a couple of years. I guess you never know how strong you can be, until that is one of your only options. But what resonates the most with these life events is the goodness of people and the love of friends and family.
People play different roles in your life. Some have a more permanent role, others are more transient. Guest stars and supporting roles, as it were. I think sometimes the reason people leave your life is that there’s almost this balancing act in the universe that causes your life to open up for new people.
I am often amused by the people who don’t know a person, yet feel free to judge. As a writer and a blogger I experience that every now and again. These people and their perception of dislike is not based on ever having had a conversation or in most cases having even met me, but instead their whole dislike is based on the fact that they just don’t like something I wrote. They can’t just put me in a category that they understand and are comfortable with. I’m not any particular type at all, and I freely admit I am a very independent thinker at times. What is the most amusing thing about people like this you encounter? For me it is they are so puffed up by their own self-importance that they don’t realize in the big picture they don’t matter. They also don’t fully comprehend that what they put out in the universe eventually comes back to them.
I have always been a bit of a people-watcher. Human beings are fascinating. And isn’t life like a bit of a puzzle? Different pieces fit different ways?
As I leave you for today, I want you to think about how it is you perceive new people? Are you instantly inherently suspicious, or do you try to meet them with an open mind?
I think life is much better as a flowing stream, versus a stagnant pond.
Thanks for stopping by!