Have you ever heard the saying that your friends are the family you get to choose? I'm a firm believer in this. Don't get me wrong; I love my family. I love them in all their quirky, crazy glory. That being said, my friends are pretty quirky too.

On Sunday, we're heading over to Lancaster to our friends', Tom and Katelyn, place for a Friends' Thanksgiving. Tom and Katelyn are taking care of the bird and the beer and everyone else is pitching in with the sides. It's kind of a dry run for the actual Thanksgiving with all of our real families on Thursday.

Last weekend, I had the incredible opportunity to attend a Japanese tea ceremony demonstration at the National Watch and Clock Museum in Columbia. Why a tea ceremony at a clock museum, you may ask? The demonstration was part of their current exhibit, A Sense of Time, which explores the significance of incense to Asian cultures. The exhibit showcases more than 70 East Asian "fire clocks." Even if you're not into watches, clocks and the history of time itself, I think you'll find this exhibit very interesting.

My friend Katie, a fellow tea drinker and Director of Education at the National Watch and Clock Museum, invited me to this tea presentation and I'm so thankful she did!

Moran Beard, a licensed instructor with the Urasenke School of tea ceremony in Kyoto, Japan, performed the Chanoyu (the Japanese name for tea ceremony) and then took our many questions. The tea ceremony is an intricate affair. It can take months to learn just the sequence of movements and the enumerable procedures. Every movement between the host and the guest(s) is steeped in tradition and treated with reverence.

It's here... The holidays have crept up on us. Wasn't it just Halloween? There are many signs of a holiday invasion out there. Radio stations have started sneaking in the occasional Christmas song among their usual audio offerings and stores are already fairly coated in glitter and tinsel.

Paul's Pancake Barn is a long-standing Dillsburg establishment. Though if you go looking for it by that name, you won't find it. Nowadays it goes by the name Flapjack's Pub. They added a pub to the back, expanded the menu, did a little remodeling and gave it a shiny, new name.

But to locals it will always be Paul's Pancake Barn.

When it gets chilly outside, we often turn to warm, hearty dishes like casseroles and soups. With cold season in full force, keeping some soup on hand is a must. Scrolling through the channels one day, I paused briefly on the Food Network, as I often do to see what was cooking. Of course, it was lunchtime so everything looked fabulous.

The program on at the time was Giada at Home (or it might have been Everyday Italian) and the host Giada De Laurentiis was making what she called her Quick and Spicy Tomato Soup. It's a full-bodied soup with beans, carrots, onions and just some red pepper flakes for a little bite.

Are you finding that you have way too much Halloween candy leftover? Whether your kid made out a little too well trick or treating this year or you bought so much candy and no one knocked on your door, you find yourself inundated with Halloween candy. The thought of another sugar high (whether your child's or your own) is too much to handle.

Relax, there is an option. Some dental offices will buy back your Halloween candy for around $1 per pound, sometimes more. What's even better, most of those dental practices then send that candy to our soldiers through Operation Gratitude.

Hello all! I just returned from a short trip to the West Coast, to Portland, Oregon to be exact. The food was delicious; the city was quirky. We even drove out to the Coast so we could stick our feet in the chilly Pacific Ocean. This is what most of our breakfasts looked like.

Our hotel was adjacent to a Stumptown Coffee Roasters so we were blessed with breakfasts of lattes and pastries. My favorite!

When in Portland, you have to go to Voodoo Doughnuts. This is not your average doughnut shop. It's eccentric, just like the city it calls home. This place has carved out a niche here, so much so that some people choose to get married at Voodoo Doughnuts. Don't believe me? Check out their website and look at their wedding packages.

I learned something recently. This is a dead giveaway that I used canned pumpkin puree for my pumpkin pies. Those pretty, symmetrical orange pumpkins that we associate with the season have nothing to do with pumpkin pie, just jack-o-lanterns.

It was a sad day in Dillsburg last Saturday. Our beloved Farmers Fair got rained out. Clouds of foggy, misty rain drove us all indoors from Friday night to sometime Sunday morning when the sun finally decided to show its face. In the rain's wake, however, there was one cancelled Halloween parade and one Farmers Fair cut short. Translation: no chicken corn soup, no pumpkin funnel cake, no slice of pizza from the Boy Scouts. And it wasn't just Dillsburg that got the shaft from Mother Nature this past weekend. Dozens of other area festivities went swirling down the storm drain too.

But we were hell-bent on making the most of the weekend. My very pregnant sister Diane, my mom and I got together at my mom's house to make a fall treat that rivals even that of a Farmers Fair pumpkin funnel cake... I give you the Pumpkin Roll.

Last weekend I went up to Knoebels Amusement Park in Elysburg for their annual Covered Bridge Festival. Every year, 200+ crafters and vendors alike converge on the outskirts of the park and hundreds of people crowd through to peruse their wares. They also open the park's rides, minus the watery ones.

But there's another draw to Knoebels that you may not know. Amusement Today has awarded them with the Golden Ticket in Best Park Food for seven years running. This is thanks in part to the variety and the quality of their food, from pizza to pierogies. Inside the park itself you can find plenty of good eats... like their infamous potato cakes.