I love vintage glasses. I pick them up at church sales, thrift shops, garage sales, wherever. You don’t have to spend a lot and you can’t beat the fun and colors. I prefer clear to jewel colors. No orange and mustard colored glass for me.
Seriously? How can you not like these glasses?
A lazy Sunday afternoon, warm enough to make a fresh batch of sweet tea, with fresh curly mint from the garden.
What is sweet tea?
Sweet tea is southern style iced tea, where you brew the tea with the sugar in it. I also add the mint at this stage and tie it with a tiny piece of kitchen twine so I can fish it out after the tea cools, prior to adding the juice of one freshly squeezed lemon. I am a bit of a tea snob and I like one of two teas for brewing homemade iced tea: American Classic Tea from Charleston, SC or PG Tips from England. Those are the two black teas I drink, hot or cold. Good tea is worth the extra money.
So dinner is semi-homemade without Sandra Lee (she’s kind of annoying I think). I have a pre-marinated Smithfield pork loin (Teriyaki), but I can’t just serve that with a salad (even if it is the beautiful red leaf lettuce I bought this week at the East Goshen Farmers’ Market), or there might be a revolt.
Since the 12-year-old loves pasta, I thought a spin on mac and cheese was in order. 
Now I made this pasta up today, and truthfully, it is rather tasty.
Side Stuff: Ziti with Mushrooms and Swiss Cheese Sauce.
Cook a small box of Barilla Ziti, drain, do not rinse.
Cheese Sauce:
2 cups of grated swiss cheese (I used a blend today that contained Gruyère) 
4 oz of fresh Queso
2 Tablespoons Dijon Mustard
Dash of Tabasco
Couple dashes of Worcestershire Sauce
salt & pepper to taste
dash nutmeg
4 oz. of sliced white button mushrooms*
4 oz. of sliced baby bella mushrooms*
(*it’s what was in the ‘fridge – you could use shiitaki or whatever fresh mushrooms you have handy except 
canned. Canned mushrooms are rubbery and gross.)
2 or 3 scallions minced
3 tablespoons of butter for mushrooms/scallions
4 tablespoons flour for sauce (rue)
4 tablespoons butter for sauce (rue) 
zest of fresh lemon
small dash nutmeg
squeeze of chilis in a tube (Gourmet Garden Chili Pepper Spice Blend)
Fresh flat leaf parsley
Melt butter for cheese sauce with flour. Create a rue. Add a dash of tabasco sauce, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, and whisk in.
Add milk, whisking constantly over medium heat, until the temperature comes up to just about a boil.
Add the Queso, whisking constantly until blended. Add the swiss bit by bit, whisking until blended.
Using a small grater or micro plane, give like three runs of a lemon across the blades over the sauce so the lemon zest goes right in.
Salt and pepper to taste. Nutmeg (seriously not much) Set aside.
Using a small saute pan, take the other butter and melt. Toss in the chopped scallions, salt to taste and cook until almost transluscent. Add the mushrooms, cook down.
Return cheese sauce to a medium to low flame and incorporate the mushroom and scallian mixture into it. Add a squeeze of the chili peppers in a tube, check the salt and pepper.
Pour over ziti in a medium dutch oven on the stove top, mix around a bit, throw in flat leaf parsley rough chopped. The sauce will be hot, but if the pasta is not warm enough, warm gently to your desired temperature on VERY LOW so as not to burn.
This is literally something I just did for the first time, so you might have to tweak it to your taste. This is not a stick a spoon in it and it will stand up in the cheese sauce either.
Later……..
Of course, Murphy’s Law of 12 Year Olds was triggered and he went to the neighbors’ house to have dinner with some other kids….and order take-out Chinese.
I am sure the left overs will entice him at some point later this week, and grown-ups will eat this too, incidentally.
Well, even out here where there is plenty of green and trees between houses, the misplaced sound of a buzz saw way before 8 a.m. will jar you awake. Such was the 
case with me, so I decided to get some baking out-of-the-way for later.
It’s Lemon Pound Cake day. I found this recipe in Real Simple that I tweak:
Ok so above is the recipe straight. I fiddle with everything, and what I do here is I add the zest of TWO lemons to the batter, I add grated fresh ginger, and I do a lemon soak before the glaze;
My lemon soak is juice of 2 lemons, grated zest, 1 cup of confectioners’ sugar and a couple of tablespoons of a liqueur called Framboise (right now I have an US Framboise out of Bonny Doon Vineyards.)
What I do is I line my pan (or pans as the case may be) with parchment baking paper after I do the grease and flour, so I can hike the cake or cakes out the pan or pans.
Anyway, I cool the cake or cakes post baking for 10 minutes, maybe a few longer. Then I pull them out of the pan gently, peel down the parchment paper and allow to cool for 30 minutes all in all on a baking rack on clean parchment paper.
I then poke little fork holes up and down the cake (no need to make hamburger out of the top, so be neat!) and gently pour the lemon soak goodness over the top of the cake. You will see today where I have propped up the new clean parchment paper with a single toothpick on each end of my cakes so the lemony-sugary goodness doesn’t run all over.
After that has all soaked in and everything is set I will either make a glaze or light lemony flavored royal icing and drizzle it over the top, or I also sometimes just dust with confectioners’ sugar before serving and adorn my platter with fresh mint sprigs and nasturtium blossoms. Today I soaked, I adorned with lemon royal icing, dotted with Nasturtium blossoms and mint sprigs.
In other fun of the day, my arugula is growing unmolested, apparently the blasted squirrels only liked the lettuce.
Remember you can still nominate this blog for a Country Living Magazine Blue Ribbon Blogger Award until July 29th, 2012. I hope you can do that for me, and you can also read about the contest more HERE.
And in the nesting of it all, thanks to Food Network I have discovered The Pioneer Woman. I am still not sure if her rancher hubby likes the cameras all over, but she has some terrific recipes. She has a website called (of course) The Pioneer Woman. I am also digging Trisha’s Southern Kitchen with Trisha Yearwood. Her website is here. I also love Barefoot Contessa, but she has been all re-runs lately. I used to watch Nigella Lawson a lot, but I got tired of the odd Euro pop music in the background and the fact they seemed to have an obsession with seeing her on camera raiding her fridge late at night. But she has some great recipes.
I love to cook, and do collect old cook books. And the bibles Mastering The Art of French Cooking are worth it to have in your collection. Julia Child taught me to do roast chicken and many other basics. There are also books by a woman named Kitty Maynard – American Country Inn and Bed & Breakfast Cookbooks that never disappoint (mine are so tattered, I really should replace them.)
Cooking is also somewhat instinctual. Almost everyone in my family cooks. My late father was a fabulous cook. I had one grandmother who was Italian and one who was Pennsylvania German. I also learned a lot from an Italian Great Aunt, Millie, whom I still miss to this day. Millie was a trip and if she was worried about her figure, she used to cut out the coca cola that she used to have in the afternoon for a while. And my maternal grandmother? No one, not any diner on earth could make meringues on pies go as high or be as perfect as my mumma’s were.
As a kid, I soaked this all up. I did not realize at the time I was soaking it all up, but I did. My cooking style blends my heritage of Italian, Irish, and Pennsylvania German. I can go haute or keep it simple. I actually have a handful of recipes uniquely my own on Scribd, including my epicurious.com award winning Sunday Pasta Sauce – yes I actually won a contest on this!
I should probably write down more of my recipes, like my chocolate chip cookies or 
various incarnations of gnocchi, traditional bolognese, sweet potato soup, crab mac and cheese, cranberry sauces and chutneys, apple and fruit butters, and pies, salads, and such, but most of my cooking is out of my head – a little this, a little that, judging flavors and textures. And when I use recipes, I am bad, I will often have several recipes open and cook from multiple recipes at one time for one meal. I am also the cookie fiend at Christmas, so I am happy to adopt any old cookie tins as I find them, especially vintage ones. (Speaking of which, I need to start hunting for those tines soon – I gave too many away last year during cookie craze!)
Enjoy your day people. I am going outside.
Today I was a lady who lunched. I went to the Ladies’ Day Tea at Devon Horse Show. I arrived too late for the actual hat parade and contest, but the flora and fauna were out in fine feathers….some literally feathers, yes.
Enjoy the photos…I loved a lot of the hats, saw a lot of familiar faces, met some new ladies. 
I will admit that some of the fascinators were more than fascinating and a couple made me check the wall when I came home to see if that Pheasant was still hanging there. I guess my issue with the birds of it all is that to me, a Pheasant is a fall bird, not
a spring one. To me, those hats, were just taxidermy run amok. But to each their own, perhaps my beautiful and more traditional black summer straw hat wasn’t to their liking, either.
There was also a tossed salad on a hat….and a very red cocktail dress before 5 p.m. There was a little bit of everything, and a dash of this and that. Fun people watching.
We each got a nifty gift bag with a bunch of fun stuff, including cute earrings from Lisi Lerch. The jazz ensemble is a group I actually heard in Sanatoga at a restaurant called Cutillos.
Saw society photogs doing their thing – Susan Scovill (and Susan’s photos from the preview of this event, held this past March, can be found HERE), Maggie Henry Corcoran, and Hugh E Dillon of PhillyChitChat 
who was there taking photos for Philadelphia Magazine. There were also a million other cameras there, some shooting for the Devon Horse Show and I am not sure where else. Bill Henley was there from NBC10.
It was like being in a room of exotic birds as there were hats and dresses of every hue and shade. I ended up having a terrific time. To be honest, I wasn’t so sure in the beginning 
because I used to attend a lot of things like this, but I only go to occasional events now. And when you are out of practice, it can be a tough room, especially with all that estrogen running around in a
confined space. But once the room settled in I saw many friends and had a delightful morning and early afternoon.
Photos will be loaded here, on mainlineclicks on Flickr and some on the Simple Shots Photography Facebook Page.
So yes, I came, I socialized, I lunched…and had a LOT of fun!
(And if you decide you like this blog, there is still time to nominate it for a Country Living Blue Ribbon Blogger Award!)
Readers, I have been sitting on something. I have debated writing about it for nearly a week, and that is my litmus test on writing about something.
I make no apologies for my opinions. After all, we all have them, it is what makes this country great.
A little over a decade ago I became a community activist in Lower Merion Township. What spurred me towards something I was hardly raised to do was respect and love for my friends the Foos who own a restaurant in Ardmore called Hu Nan.
It all started one night long ago, when my friend Betty, who is one of the most serene and lovely women I know said to me with tears in her eyes “they want to take my building.”
That was it. That was my defining moment that I could no longer just be a casual observer in the place I called home. Eminent domain for private gain just does that to a person.
Over the years I have worked hard on issues important to me and those I care about. I have the respect of many in municipal government and politics, some who scorn me, some who fear me. It is what it is. Of all the amusing things there is even a regional Patch editor who has never met me but who cut my freelance for certain Patches because I was a community activist and blogger. (yes, she has never met me.) I found that very limited in her, but then again, if you are looking for someone to photograph and write about disposable diapers, that is not me anyway, so we’re cool. But I am grateful that I have the respect of many others in the local, regional, and even national media. And ditto for many people in many different communities.
When I heard about the Ludwig’s Corner Horse Show Grounds being threatened by eminent domain for private gain late in the fall of 2011, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut on the topic. I just despise eminent domain for private gain. The Daily Local even published an editorial I wrote on December 13. Main Line Media News picked it up a couple of days later.
But being active in the communities where I live has never been all I have been about. I volunteer not just for community activism purposes but to help out friends who do cool stuff – like my friend Molly who was the driving force behind the establishment of the now very popular Bryn Mawr Farmers Market. I lent her my voice when she needed it and a few photos in the beginning because I believe in what she was doing. And then there is my friend Janet, the brains behind Clover Market in Ardmore. I love vintage and antiques, so when I can take photos for her at one of her markets, it is absolutely my pleasure. And on a monthly basis, save major holidays, you will find me in Ardmore with my dearest pal Sherry, snapping away for First Friday Main Line and so forth.
I have also spent years off and on volunteering for Historic Harriton House in Bryn Mawr, where my first volunteer gig was when I was 12 years old. A memorable adult volunteer experience was getting Willard Scott to wish the house happy 300th birthday a few years ago live on the Today Show.
And when I had breast cancer a year ago, these people were among my supporters to get me through. Paying it forward – it is what it is all about. And these people are fully and completely aware of my activism side when a crazy issue arises, and they respect me for that. And they do not judge me for it.
I just like people, and I like cool community stuff, so when I stumbled upon the East Goshen Farmers Market I was thrilled. So I wrote about it a couple of times up here on this blog and have taken some glorious photos the past few markets.
About ten days ago, one of the market organizers contacted me about this blog and said they would like to link to this blog, chestercountyramblings. I was so happy at that news. But then the link didn’t happen. The woman who had e-mailed me was very apologetic, she had been out-of-town, etc. But to make sure to stop by their table at the market to say hi.
So last Thursday, along with taking more fabulous photos, I did. The ladies were super nice, but the one who had corresponded with me pulled me aside and said she hoped I understood, but everything was so political that they couldn’t link to my blog.
Huh?
Aha. I knew immediately – it was because I have written about West Vincent Township politics and the supervisors Ken Miller, David Brown, and Clare Quinn. And I like to read Chickenman and say so. Who would have thunk the warped Mayberry of Chester County had a reach into pristine East Goshen? Well they do, because Ken Miller’s farm, Birchrun Hills Farms sells product at the East Goshen Farmers Market. And I have said, and I mean it, that I will NOT purchase products from his farm because of the part he played in an attempted eminent domain land grab of the Ludwigs Corner Horse Show, along with being part and parcel of what ails that beautiful community.
Now trust me, that is very tame for me. If I decide to get my Irish up, it can often be much worse. But because I took that position, the people who created the East Goshen Farmers Market won’t be able to link to my blog and I doubt will ever use my photos. That is their right, they are uncomfortable, that farm I won’t support is one of their vendors. I am sad that they had to go all super political PTA mom on me, especially since I am now a resident of East Goshen, but hey I am different, I get that. Some women can’t handle that. They see what they want to see, and do not take the time to get to know the person. It’s cool, it’s life.
So anyway, I had told some of you that the market people had approached me to link up my blog to them, but since they hadn’t, I wanted to let you know and why it wouldn’t happen.
Life isn’t fair sometimes, but for the record I am not sorry about what I have said about West Vincent because there is a big bag of wrong going on there. With publicly stated opinions come consequences – my blog has been shunned by my local farmers market so to speak. And that is o.k. People have to do what they are comfortable with, and play politics the way they know how.
I will of course continue to support the East Goshen Farmers Market because I think it is simply awesome. I will support my favorite vendors too. And I strongly encourage all of you to do the same.
Have a great day y’all. And if the spirit moved you, remember to nominate this blog for a Blue Ribbon Blogger Award with Country Living Magazine – it is very politically correct to do so :<}
How can you not love these vintage wooden spoons? Don’t they just make you want to cook?! Vintage wooden spoons if in good shape are even just pretty to look at, but I use mine. So much more fun that new wooden spoons and for the most part are better made and utilize better woods.
So, I told you all about the Smithfield Barn on 425 Little Conestoga, right? How many of you took my advice and checked them out this past Friday, Saturday, and Sunday? If you didn’t, you’ll have to wait until the end of June to do so.
We went yesterday. I love the Smithfield Barn because the folks who run it are real pickers. There is a little bit of everything, but you have to be willing to dig. I circled through the barn a couple of times yesterday before I saw my treasures:
I got great deals, and no, I am not telling you what I paid – if you go to the barn, you can negotiate on your own. I will tell you what, with places like this, if you don’t go in guns a blazing with attitude there is often some wiggle room on select items. But if you insultingly low ball them, you deserve what you get.
I love the quilt. I am a vintage textile queen as you can see from the 1950’s table topper that provided the background to the spoons and the box. That was probably all of $5 at St. 
David’s Church Fair a couple of years ago.
Some people can only handle new, I know people who have to re-do the furniture every few years like Barbie’s Dream House. That is their style, certainly not mine. I like objects that tell a story, or might tell a story.
And as much as I love to photograph barns, I love even more to root around in them. My friend Barb can tell you about a trip to Vermont where we made a side pilgrimage to New Hampshire and I had a swell time rooting around in a giant barm owned by a New England farmer who picked antiques and collectibles on the side. I negotiated some fabulous pink tea cups for her that day that she still has. But heck, I used to go to Adamstown, PA with my parents before it was Trendy Wendy to do so.
The barn had some cool stuff yesterday including a Hoosier cabinet and a pair of dressers that were first half of the 20th century – rounded and kind of cool. Not sure how old the cabinet was and you have to be careful when looking at them, because there are kits out there to make them again. The cabinet looked newly painted and it was bright white, so not for me. But it was fun to look at. There were some terrific chairs there yesterday and some fun lamps worth re-wiring, and if you like slot cars and matchbox cars? This would have been your barn!
Anyway, I am glad I decided to ditch the garage sale tour and go to the barn instead.
And remember, if you like this blog, you can nominate it for a Blue Ribbon Blogger Award with Country Living Magazine.
Winners will be featured in their December/January 2013 issue and will also attend a luncheon in their honor in New York City on November 13, 2012. Nominations are open from May 15, 2012 until July 29, 2012. Please only nominate once.
Read more: Blue Ribbon Blogger Awards – 2012 Blog Awards – Country Living.
The Gladwyne PA Memorial Day Parade – if you like traditional, old-fashioned Memorial Day Parades complete with antique fire trucks and horses, this is your parade!
Anyway, enjoy the rest of your long weekend. I got up and got my watering done early, it’s going to be a hot one today. In part I feel like Farmer MacGregor because some Peter Rabbit ate my baby lettuce this weekend. And I don’t know about you, but this crazy weather and no winter has many plants of mine ahead of schedule.
See ya! And Happy Memorial Day!