Pennsylvania Dutch

Palmyra, Pa. -- Where there's smoke, there's history in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, where Lebanon bologna has remained a popular foodstuff since the 18th century. The uninitiated may dismiss Lebanon bologna as an obscure luncheon meat, but for those who grew up eating slices of the stuff in sandwiches, served fried with eggs or smeared with cream cheese, it is an "identity food" redolent of southeastern Pennsylvania's distinctive culinary heritage. "True Lebanon sausage," writes Evan Jones in American Food: The Gastronomic Story, "is made of nothing but coarsely ground beef pre-cured and aged in barrels, then seasoned with sweet herbs and assertive spices, forced into airtight casings, and smoked over smoldering sawdust for a matter of days."

Mention Pennsylvania Dutch Country, and for many, it conjures up images of the Amish people and their legendary Old World culture. Yet beyond that community's time-honored heritage, Lancaster County offers more. Visitors will find a vibrant and increasingly diverse population and a downtown bustling with urban appeal. "There are a lot of progressive things happening in the city," says Elizabeth Todd Lambert, a former Baltimore resident who relocated in 2006 and now heads LancasterARTS, a local arts advocacy organization.

You'll feel as though you're back in the late 19th century this weekend and all next week at the Kutztown Pennsylvania German Festival. The event, held on the Kutztown Fairgrounds in Kutztown, Pa., runs Saturday through July 7. Visitors will get a taste of early Pennsylvania Dutch traditions through an array of events and activities. Adults and children can observe Mennonite meeting-house services, cow-milking, sheep-shearing, blacksmithing and more. There'll be traditional crafts, a petting zoo, puppet shows, sing-alongs, performers on five stages, Pennsylvania Dutch foods and a farmers' market.

Amish food vendors in prayer caps and suspenders have come to Baltimore to sell meats, cheeses, baked goods — and a little bit of fantasy. The vendors might be Old Order Amish who live without electricity and many other modern conveniences in Lancaster County, Pa., traveling here in a van with a hired driver because they do not drive. But many of the foods they're peddling in the Cherry Hill market they opened last month are modern, industrial products. There is, for example, the beef, promoted as a grass-fed product from a Lancaster County farm.

Inflation may be under control, prices for paintings and furniture may be stabilizing, but as Barron's, the financial weekly, recently reported, the price of trivia is out of control. The cost of movies, haircuts, Good Humors, cable TV and Time magazine is up and up dramatically and so is the cost of trivia in the antiques market. A recent sale in Ephrata, Pa., proves it.Clyde Youtz, a 79-year-old retired antiques dealer of Lebanon County, sent 365 lots of 18th and 19th century Pennsylvania Dutch stuff to Horst Auction Center for a September sale.

The weather was more suited to ducks than people.But, despite heavy downpours Friday, Carroll Countians flocked to the new Pennsylvania Dutch Farmer's Market in Westminster to see what it was all about."

The telephone at Westminster's Pennsylvania Dutch Farmers Market kept ringing, and customers stopped by the announcer's booth to ask whether it was true that the popular collection of vendors will be relocating after 11 years. Not closing, but moving, by the second week in June, said Nancy Boltz, the market's advertising and public relations director. She said yesterday the market owner will choose soon from three locations -- two in Carroll and one in Baltimore County. Boltz said she doesn't know where they are. Over the years, rumors surfaced frequently that the market was leaving Crossroad Square Shopping Center at Routes 140 and 97. "At least once a week, someone would say, `I heard you were closing,' " Boltz said.

Seventeenth-century Europe was embroiled in political and religious turmoil - no place for peaceful farmers who loved good food. As farms burned and heads rolled in the Palatine, German Protestants accepted William Penn's invitation to settle and develop the central woodlands of his American grant, Pennsylvania. Group by group, Mennonites, Amish, Seventh-Day Baptists, Dunkers, Schwenkfelders and Moravians packed their cookbooks and their families and came to the New World. Spreading out over what is now Northampton, Berks, Lancaster, Lehigh, Lebanon, York and Adams counties, they tidied up the countryside, built stone houses like those they had left, planted vegetables and started cooking, adding local products as they discovered them - corn, sweet potatoes, squash and beans - to their traditional recipes.

SO YOU WANT TO BE in pictures? Well, first, you've got to change your name.The outside of The Sun's bureau in Westminster is going to make it to the silver screen, albeit with a "stage name."The Winchester Exchange was renamed the Lancaster Exchange with a movie storefront sign this week as the Tim Allen comedy began shooting scenes along East Main Street. Other businesses also got new signs; a few had extensive interior redesigns for indoor shots.The block was closed off for filming, allowing the easy passage of horses and buggies that are an integral part of the Amish culture represented in the film.

Adam Atwell, businessman, stock market investor, peanut-roasting tycoon, surveyed the Pennsylvania Dutch Farmers' Market on a recent Thursday afternoon like a king inspecting his kingdom. This is where, at the age of 10, Adam started roasting and selling brown bags filled with peanuts. This is where Adam, now 17, has spent hundreds of hours in a booth the size of a Volkswagen Jetta, chatting with customers and other vendors about school and current affairs, and making thousands of dollars.

The Pennsylvania Dutch Market, which moved from Westminster to Cockeysville nearly four years ago, is a foodie's dream come true. Vendors here sell row upon row of fresh-baked breads and cinnamon rolls with thick layers of icing; fabulous cheeses; deli salads; spinach and strawberries grown in nearby Lancaster County; smoked meats, sausages and chickens; candy, soft pretzels, peanuts, pies and so much more. The sprawling market also sells blankets, soups and furniture. It has a deli and a barbecue stand, but the sit-down meals are found at the Dutch Kitchen, where customers sit in simple booths, hunched over steaming platters groaning with old-fashioned fare like chicken salad sandwiches ($5.95)

Palmyra, Pa. -- Where there's smoke, there's history in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, where Lebanon bologna has remained a popular foodstuff since the 18th century. The uninitiated may dismiss Lebanon bologna as an obscure luncheon meat, but for those who grew up eating slices of the stuff in sandwiches, served fried with eggs or smeared with cream cheese, it is an "identity food" redolent of southeastern Pennsylvania's distinctive culinary heritage. "True Lebanon sausage," writes Evan Jones in American Food: The Gastronomic Story, "is made of nothing but coarsely ground beef pre-cured and aged in barrels, then seasoned with sweet herbs and assertive spices, forced into airtight casings, and smoked over smoldering sawdust for a matter of days."

Barbecue and baked goods will replace the smell of paint this morning when the Pennsylvania Dutch Market reopens at its new location in Cockeysville. With only final inspections left to go, the market should be ready at 9 a.m., said owner Rosemary Schinzel of Finksburg. "People are very, very receptive and eager for us to open," she said, noting a flood of e-mails. The popular Westminster market closed May 29, losing its lease after 11 years at the Crossroad Square Shopping Center at Routes 140 and 97. A search for new space led to the vacant Metro Food Market about 22 miles away at 11121 York Road.

Westminster's popular Pennsylvania Dutch Farmers Market will close its doors by the end of next month to prepare to move into a vacant grocery store in northern Baltimore County this summer, its manager says. The new farmers' market will be in the old Metro Food Market space at Ashland Marketplace in Cockeysville, said Nancy Boltz, the market's advertising and public relations director. The farmers' market, open Thursday through Saturday, plans its last day at its present site May 29, she said.

Westminster's popular Pennsylvania Dutch Farmers Market will close its doors by the end of next month to prepare to move into a vacant grocery store in northern Baltimore County this summer, its manager said. The new farmers' market will be in the old Metro Food Market space at Ashland Marketplace in Cockeysville, said Nancy Boltz, the market's advertising and public relations director. The farmers' market, open Thursday through Saturday, plans its last day at its present site May 29, she said.

The telephone at Westminster's Pennsylvania Dutch Farmers Market kept ringing and customers stopped by the announcer's booth to ask whether it was true that the popular collection of vendors will be relocating after 11 years. Not closing, but moving, by the second week in June, said Nancy Boltz, the market's advertising and public relations director. She said yesterday the market owner will choose soon from three locations - two in Carroll and one in Baltimore County. Boltz said she doesn't know where they are. Over the years, rumors surfaced frequently that the market was leaving Crossroad Square Shopping Center at Routes 140 and 97. "At least once a week someone would say, `I heard you were closing,'" Boltz said.

GREEN LANE, Pa. -- The past rests lightly on this green and pleasant corner of the Pennsylvania Dutch country called Goschenhoppen. The old ways are preserved, honored and celebrated.Goschenhoppen might sound like a village on The Shire inhabited by hobbits, but it's actually a verdant swatch of eastern Pennsylvania countryside along the upper Perkiomen Creek, about 40 miles north of Philadelphia.This long-domesticated landscape was the Colonial frontier when German settlers began moving here at the end of the 17th century.

The telephone at Westminster's Pennsylvania Dutch Farmers Market kept ringing, and customers stopped by the announcer's booth to ask whether it was true that the popular collection of vendors will be relocating after 11 years. Not closing, but moving, by the second week in June, said Nancy Boltz, the market's advertising and public relations director. She said yesterday the market owner will choose soon from three locations -- two in Carroll and one in Baltimore County. Boltz said she doesn't know where they are. Over the years, rumors surfaced frequently that the market was leaving Crossroad Square Shopping Center at Routes 140 and 97. "At least once a week, someone would say, `I heard you were closing,' " Boltz said.