So last Saturday, Nancy won two tickets to the kick off fundraiser for
The Gettysburg Festival. The tickets we won were sponsored through one of our favorite local magazines,
Susquehanna Style. The event was billed as a
A Culinary Adventure: Foodies Delight. It featured Pennsylvania's Iron Chefs at multiple stations throughout the venue. The venue was Oxford Hall Manor, the private home of Mike and Jane Rice. The Rice Family owns the delicious UTZ potato chip company. Lucky for me Nancy let David and I use the tickets. The evening was threatening rain so the very first thing my husband and I did was walk the gardens. A Foodies Delight -- this evening was a gardeners dream!
The blue are blown glass rain drops.
Wonderful garden statuary all through the acreage. We enjoyed one of our courses in here.
I want a conservatory like this. The swimming hole.
On the other side of the stone bridge is a Koi pond. Somewhere in the middle it becomes chlorinated water.
Doesn't David look handsome?
Oh Yes, the food was out of this world as well. Featured here is David Stoltzfus (Executive Chef, Morrison’s at Rydal Park, Abington, PA), a sample of what he prepared Petite lobster and rosemary flan with lobster confit, Conch and crab fritters with mandarin orange glaze, Jamaican Jerk pork crostini with ligonberries.
Desserts included: Chocolate Mousse profiterole, Grand Mariner Torte, Key Lime Creme Brulee, Chocolate truffles.
It was a grand evening! We won by listing our favorite local food purveyor. Our answer:
Spiral Path Farm. 
to perplex; bewilder -vi. 
1. to be perplexed 2. to exercise one's mind, as over a problem -n.
1. something that puzzles 2. a toy or problem for testing skill or ingenuity -puzzle out to solve by deep study -puz'zle-ment n. - puz'zler n.
a 35 piece Ravensburger Puzzle, 1997, Made in France
If you are cold, tea will warm you. 
If you are too heated, it will cool you. 
If you are depressed, it will cheer you. If you are excited, it will calm you. William Gladstone 
Our herb shop and tea room also made an appearance on Bernideen's Blog today. Although we haven't met Bernideen, we hope to some day. Her herb garden and gift shop (in Colorado) are at the top of our wish list of places to visit! She wrote a lovely blog post today about our side-by-side businesses and the tea room cookbook.
Here's a fun way to celebrate National Iced Tea Month. Dip the rims of your glasses in a shallow bowl of lemon juice. Then simply dip them in another shallow bowl with sugar. Turn right side up, and let them dry. Carefully fill with your favorite iced tea, or in this case lavender lemonade (which is why they were dipped in lavender sugar).
They are made with pieces of slate or riverstone and held together with rapid set cement.* We made them in a dishpan of moistened play sand. You stick the stones in the sand upright to create the shape you want the planter to be and then pour in a soupy mix of the cement. We added some black acrylic paint to the cement to make it darker and used pieces of twigs to make drainage holes. To make the cement "soupy" use a proportion of 4 parts cement to 1 part water. You can leave all the mess/work to us and come make one here on Wednesday, June 9th 2010.
I want a conservatory like this. The swimming hole.
On the other side of the stone bridge is a Koi pond. Somewhere in the middle it becomes chlorinated water.
Desserts included: Chocolate Mousse profiterole, Grand Mariner Torte, Key Lime Creme Brulee, Chocolate truffles.
and Cedar pitched in with a shovel just his size and a wheelbarrow just his size. The gardens are looking quite pristine with the new layer of mulch. 
