Intercourse, Pennsylvania – Catchy title, no? And sure to mess up a few filtering programs. I wonder if parents in Lancaster County are able to even use parental controls? Regardless, it was off to that far away land for a visit with one of my sisters and her family. The Amtrak ride was smooth and uneventful from Penn Station, pulling into Lancaster about three hours later. The visit was what family visits should be, we hung out, we talked, played Monopoly, we decided to take a drive. And what visit to Amish country would be complete without a visit to the Kitchen Kettle Village? A little shopping village of 32 stores offering crafts, leatherwork, candles, gifts, and all sorts of food items (fudge, pretzels, jams, etc.) of the “Pennsylvania Dutch.” You can even stay there overnight, in case you didn’t get enough shopping in during your first hour or two of wandering…
We stopped in for lunch at the Kling House Restaurant. The Kling House is one of those “all-American” sort of restaurants that offers a sort of something for everyone menu, covering everything from soups and salads to nachos and fried chicken, and then, pretty much anything else that might happen to fall into the category. It’s not particularly creative cuisine, but it’s hearty, filling, well made, and the atmosphere is comfortable. Here and there are interesting attempts at creativity, like my sister’s salad topped with chicken in a “date-nut bread” crust. What they seem to do best, however, is local cuisine (isn’t that generally true of most places?)
My nephews each opted for a plate of nachos – which arrived with a mix of corn chips topped with a bare dusting of melted cheese, a semi-sweet salsa, and sour cream. Not, by far, the best nachos I’ve ever had – where was the spice, the cheese, all the good, gooey, gloppy stuff? My sister and her husband both had main course salads which seemed to be fairly good, if slightly sweet on the date-nut one. I decided to sample their “soup sampler” – a trio of rich, creamy, ham and potato; a delicious chicken and corn chowder, and a decently spicy “signature” Italian sausage and clam soup.
Since I was sampling, I decided to go for their “mini-burger” sampler of three miniature Angus beef burgers (on strangely sweet buns, sort of like sweetened challah bread), each topped with a different housemade relish – Vidalia Onion, Green Tomato, and Hot Pepper. All quite good! It was served with some thick cut potato chips that were also good, and a side of “chow-chow,” a sort of mixed vegetable, pickle relish that was possibly the best thing on the table! I almost bought a jar at one of the stores to bring back with me – I’ll certainly be playing with recipes sometime in the near future.
[…] New York City – Every few days I take a look at the statistics for visitors to the blog, just to get a sense of how many folk are visiting, where from, and all that. I noticed a sudden spike in visitors beginning Tuesday afternoon and continuing until now – somewhere between 3 and 4 times the normal traffic on the site. I couldn’t figure out what would have prompted this until it suddenly occured to me that Tuesday morning’s post was entitled “Intercourse and the Amish.” I imagine it only took an hour or two before it was spidered, botted, or what have you and I started getting hits off of various search engines that, well, came from a bit of a different starting intent. We’ll just leave that all to the imagination (and no doubt this post will add another little surge). […]