Going to the Amish grocery store

Having heard from my brother about an Amish grocery store near Charlotte Hall, MD, I decided to visit and see what it was like. The prices were astonishingly low for many things. A loaf of bread was $1.29, a jar of raspberry jam was $0.85. Some other things like coconut were relatively expensive, but on the whole, it is a wonderful place to shop. I picked up a big jar of peanut-butter for $2.30 or so, but upon arriving home, immediately heard complaints that it contained "transfats". OK, so maybe not all is well, but they also had transfat free peanut butter for about $3.35 a jar according to Jon. I didn't read the labels so I didn't know or care. The best deal of all was a can of oyster stew for $0.85 cents.

After the visit, I read up on Amish culture and saw the following advice: no photographs, don't stare, allow them to keep their distance. It is advised to wear suspenders, a mono-color shirt, preferably black. Women preferably should wear long dresses with no ornamentation. The Amish regard ornamentation and bright colors as a lack of humility.

Hallie would enjoy visiting in order to practice her German. These days the Amish also speak English well.

Aloha!

Greetings! We are still in Hawaii, which seems like it would be a locavore's dream, since almost everything could actually be grown here (we have all been enjoying bananas guilt free!). We took a (free- we were the only ones who wanted a tour and the owner suggested maybe we could buy some fruit in exchange for the tour) tour of a beautiful biodynamic, organic farm here the other day and got a few free purple sweet potatoes which were the best root vegetable that I've ever tasted! Here is a link to a story about them Laulima Farms. We even got to use the advertised bicycle powered blender to mix our smoothie. I think that it would be really far away from everything to live here, otherwise it would be a great idea.

On an side note, my friend Laura sent me a link to this blog which seems (I only read a few posts) to be relevant to the topic of this blog:Homegrown Evolution