Adventures in Amish Country

My friend Kira and I left at 6:15 am Saturday morning headed for Berlin, Ohio. The heart of Amish Country in our area (at least the tourist-friendly part). The main purpose for the trip was to stock up on bulk food items and just have a girls day. Both were accomplished!

I left my camera in the car most of the trip because the Amish really don't like to have their picture taken and I didn't want to run the risk of offending anyone. It's a good thing I didn't try, my hands were too full most of the time to have taken a picture anyway!

Alpaca farm on the way there!

Bulk food haul! We also stopped at a Goodwill on the way home and

found the stacking tins you see at the back. After a good washing,

that now houses tea bags, hot chocolate mix and drink mix packets.

Antique store finds: 10" cast iron skillet for...$8!! A $9 meat grinder,

a measuring cup/scoop and a $2 linen tablecloth. It's square and won't

fit my table, but I'm going to make it into napkins :)

Cheese! Both my and Kira's hubby's love cheese. We each got a round of baby swiss.

I got a few other yummy hunks as well. I also found a jar lifter (finally :),

a skinny spatula to replace the cheap one I had and melted and

a stopper for my bottle of cooking wine.

Please pardon the blurry shot. But this is freshly ground peanut butter.

Ingredients: peanuts. We each got a big yogurt tub full that we

ground ourselves from the natural food store.

A 50 lb. bag of wheat flour we got for .39/lb.! How crazy is that!

I'm most likely going to be getting some buckets

so we can split this and store properly.

This is a 20-yd. bolt of brown denim. Pre-washed. I got it for $40!

This was in a remnants and leftovers section at a canvas bag store.

I will be doing our furniture in this as soon as I can :)

I got some "overripe" peaches at a fairly decent price at a stand.

Yesterday I canned them. Some were a little more than overripe, but they worked out.

The pieces I tasted while cleaning the peaches were quite yummy!

My fingernails are also stained orange.

And the "after" shot of my haul from Amish Country. Nicely put in jars and labeled.

This is the fruits of half a day's work. I didn't think it would take that long, but it did!

It took a little maneuvering, but it's now all in my pantry where it belongs.

During our antique store trips, I learned that all these blue jars,

bail jars and old lids I have are worth quite a bit of money!

I will try and get a menu up later today as well. I'm a little discombobulated in the kitchen at the moment and need to get my bearings before I do so. Since we ended up with sloppy joe's Friday instead of Funky Chicken, I'm thinking funky chicken tonight!