Florida being Florida

On Monday I took my time for breakfast, driving to the Weis grocery again for fruit and protein.

I filled my car up with gas and started driving to my sisters house, but stopped at Rohrbach‘s farm stand.


Rohrbach’s has been a fixture in this part of Pennsylvania since the 1950s. It started out as a roadside fruit stand, the Rohrbach family selling some of their produce to passerby. When the second generation took over the farmstand, they added baked goods to their wares, making everything from scratch.

Over the years they have expanded into more than just a stall, they have basically a general store now with lots of other products from local farms, dairies, and butchers.

They sell candles and soaps and housewares, and most recently have installed a barbecue restaurant on the second floor.

Despite these changes, the interior is much as I remember it from childhood. Right when you walk in there is a huge wall of canned goods and preserves, with the produce of the season on island displays in the middle of the floor, and a refrigerator/freezer against the back wall with venison, beef, kielbasa, and other meats processed locally.


This is a separate freezer where you can get apple dumplings, pies, Whoopie pies, imported meats, and some prepared meals like lasagna and casseroles, premade and frozen. I picked up a frozen apple dumpling and peanut butter Whoopie pie to bring to Jameson.


The apple dumpling. Our church also used to sell these once in a while. They are made using an old recipe, with a thick and somewhat salty dough, and a whole baked and spiced apple in the middle. As you would expect, great with vanilla ice cream on top!


Here are the Whoopie pies. These are the “original“ ones, but they come in a wide variety of flavors like peanut butter, red velvet, oatmeal cream pie, mint, and pumpkin. If you’ve never had a Whoopie pie, it’s another Pennsylvania Dutch dessert thing. The O.G. is soft and moist chocolate cake circles with vanilla icing in the middle.


There was also shoofly pie of course, the stereotypical Pennsylvania desert, but I hate shoofly pie.
It’s molasses-based, really sticky and overly sweet, not a fan.


Here is some raw milk for sale from a local dairy. Yes, some people still drink raw milk or use it in recipes. It is hard to tell from the opaque containers, but raw milk separates quite a lot, so there is a layer of thick creamy white stuff at the top and yellowish clear liquid at the bottom. I’ve never had raw milk, but would try it once.


For Jameson I got a bag of circus peanut candy from Ohio, the apple dumpling and Whoopie pie, and a can of Pennsylvania Dutch birch beer, which annoyingly is also made in Ohio but has been sold in in PA for many years, I remember this can from childhood.


For myself I got some peach preserves, which will go into a peach bourbon pulled pork shoulder when I get home. I also gifted myself a small jar of apple butter, a sample bag of locally roasted coffee, and a Rohrbach‘s Farm sticker. Don’t know where I will put that yet.

Near checkout was a small ice cream counter containing two of my favorite flavors, bittersweet and Teaberry. I was very tempted, but ultimately passed them by.


This was a nice nostalgic visit. I’m grateful that I got to stop in while I was home. Who knows when I will be back in this area again.

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Tomorrow I will do data entry stuff, promise!
And a trip to Whole Paycheck for the pork shoulder, which I'll make on Saturday.
I'll make the slaw tonight so it has time for the flavors to mingle.

Other plans this week include getting some stock market advice since everything is tanking, and making paninis for us at some point.