Every year, my Mom and I anxiously awaited the arrival of strawberry season in Schuylkill County. The berries popped up in chipboard baskets — sometimes […]
Appetizers & Snacks
Coal Region Teaberry Cream Cheese Mints
The general recipe for cream cheese mints is generations-old. Of course, as a dyed-in-the-wool “coalcracker”, my spin on them is to use teaberry for the […]
Apie Cake (aka AP, Apea, Apee, Apies, or Apeas Cake)
Apie cake (and it’s various spellings) is a Pennsylvania thing; more specifically, a Pennsylvania Dutch thing — even more specifically, a mid- and south-eastern Pennsylvania […]
Old-fashioned Bavarian-style Soft Pretzels
Soft pretzels and I go way back; as far back as my earliest childhood memories. I grew up in Schuylkill County in the southern tip […]
Pennsylvania Dutch Milk Pie
Milk Pies are a classic example of the “waste not, want not” frugality of life in many old Pennsylvania Dutch and Coal Region homes. This […]
Smalec (Polish Lard Spread)
Many of us here in the Coal Region well remember our grandparents or parents sitting down to enjoy a food from their childhood that we, […]