Another successful day trip

As my regular readers know by now, I’m a qualified foodie. So when my bestie says, “I’m going to take such-and-such day off, what do you want to do?” my immediate reaction is, “Lancaster County food trip!” Lancaster County is known as a foodie destination. You can get homemade Amish cooking in one town and fine dining in the next. And with multiple farmers’ markets, you can bring home a plethora of foods to eat or cook.

We have done this trip often enough now that we have a plan for all of the places we plan to stop. We always drive straight to the southern-most destination of our plans – the Strasburg Country Store and Creamery. They have the very best turkey lunchmeat, and we’re lucky enough to know how to get it by the pound. My bestie is lactose intolerant, so she never gets to partake of their home-made (made by their employees right on their property) amazing ice cream. One of the current feature flavors was root beer sherbet. I’m not a huge root beer fan, but the sample I tasted was yummy. Under new leadership this year, they now have a featured ice cream flavor and featured fudge which are the same. November’s feature flavor is turtle.

Once we visit with the staff for a bit, it’s time to head off. Our next stop is Rutter’s, a convenience store nearby. They have a made-to-order section of hot foods (the funnel cake fries are amazing!) and they make a really good lo mien stir fry. You pick your meat, your veggies and the sauce. The serving size is enough for two meals, and the cost is just $6.99. We bring it home to divide up and put in our freezers – lunch for my bestie at work and my main meal of the day when I want it.

From there, it’s off to Strasburg Farm Market. I wandered through this place one day without my bestie, and discovered they make chicken croquettes, which is one of her favorite meals, and I bought some for her to try. On this most recent trip, expecting it will be the last one before winter sets in, she got an entire dozen of them! They have a really nice, though small, variety of meals and sides, a bunch of candies and snacks, and beautiful produce. I picked up a container of raisin bread pudding, and it was fantastic!

Okay, off and continuing to head back north towards home. This time, we decided lunch would be fast food, as we wanted as much time for our last stops, now that it gets dark so early. Burger King was closest. (Note: I’ve become a really slow eater over the past year, so I saved half of my sandwich or we’d have been there a while!)

Off we go to our favorite Lancaster County thrift store, the Re-Uz-It shop in New Holland. This shop is always very clean and we know it well enough to head right towards the areas we’ll be looking for treasures! I only got a top and a new planter, since we’re on a no-book-buying sabbatical (until we both get our to-be-read piles under control).

Our final stop is always Shady Maple Market. Shady Maple is known for its amazing smorgasbord, known enough that it gets tourist buses in the travel season. The food is always really good, but again, I eat slow and fill up too fast, so I seldom go there anymore. Plus, you eat FREE on your birthday (with proof, of course)! Anyhow, we go to the market for specific items. This is where I got the huge head of cabbage the last time, and they still had them at just 99 cents a head. Part of me wanted to get one, but part of me didn’t want to do all of the work involved in using it up. I declined the purchase this time. 😦

Finally, everything was packed away in the cooler and trunk, and it was time to head home so that we were in familiar territory by the time it got dark. It was another successful day for a foodie trip!