Our country is facing a major food crisis. Food quality has steadily been declining since World War II. We're losing farms and farmers at increasing rates and, for all intents and purposes, there is no next generation of farmers. We at the Palmyra Real Food Emporium want to control the quality and availability of our food. The Emporium is our answer to regaining control of our food system.
Join us in promoting a return to fresh food consumption. We're open Fridays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. And we're on 
. Follow us there, too. – Tom Maurer, Maywood Farm, Annville, Pa.
Posted By Karen on November 14, 2010
Thanks to the many new and current customers attending our fall/winter open house this weekend! We sampled chili, soup, sausage sliders and feta-style and cream cheeses soon to be available. We also got great feedback re: additional items our customers would like to see at Market! Visit us in future weeks: Fridays from 8-6 and Saturdays from 8-3.
NOTE THANKSGIVING WEEK HOURS: Wed 11/24, 8-6 and Fri 11/26, 8-6 — closed Saturday!
Posted By Karen on November 7, 2010
Hello, I’m the new/interim administrator, Karen. I helped Tom with the business plan, layout and even initial painting/staining! I’m also helping with the upcoming Open House next Fri/Sat, 11/12-11/13. Anyone who hasn’t been out yet, this is a great opportunity: in addition to the large variety of local/fresh/organic offerings, we’ll be sampling soups and other items made from our products, some of our producers/vendors will be there to meet/discuss, etc. Hope to see you there!
Posted By Karen on October 25, 2010
The Emporium will be celebrating the arrival of the holiday season at a Holiday Open House for its shoppers on Friday and Saturday, November 12 and 13. The celebration’s hours will be noon to six on Friday and 10 to 3 on Saturday, within the Emporium’s usual hours of 8 to 6 on Fridays and 8 to 3 on Saturdays. The Emporium can be holding an open house in November because it’s open year-round.
Drop in at the Emporium, at North Forge Rd. and Broad St. in Palmyra, and greet Tom Maurer, the Emporium’s circuit-riding manager, and his fresh-food suppliers, enjoy soup and chili, sausage and other meats along with just-baked bread and more treats!
There will be food and wellness discussions both days, as well as door prizes. This is an opportunity for the Emporium’s shoppers to become more familiar with its aims of preserving and developing local food supplies and healthy eating. There’s no other market quite like it in Central Pennsylvania.
And while anticipating the Open House, be mindful that Barb Blauch, of Palmyra, has started contributing fresh-baked apple dumplings to the Emporium’s weekly baked goods table!
Posted By Karen on October 18, 2010
The Emporium is a specialty market with an accent on freshness. You’ll find items here you won’t find anywhere else, unless on a farm itself. Sometimes Tom Maurer himself is surprised by what he’s offering on his Friday and Saturday market days.
Last week, for instance, in addition to Tom Maurer’s local produce rounds, Tom Littlefield
dropped by from his farm in North Umberland County with six varieties of potatoes. And Tom Maurer added them to the week’s surprises. “Since we buy in small lots from different places,” he explains, “I have what I have available” – meaning that sometimes Tom himself is surprised at his weekly offerings.
Tom Littlefield’s potatoes included Katahdin, Purple Sun, Canela Russet, Adirondack Red, Laratte and French Fingerlings. In addition to their sizes, they were distinguished by the color of their flesh, yellow and white, and subtle differences in their flavors. Any fine restaurant would have been pleased to have them all on its menu.
It being the time of year it is, last week also produced a bumper crop of apples at the Emporium. There were Ida Reds, Suncrisp, Rome Beauty, McIntosh, Red Delicious, Cortland, Empire, Gala, Crispin and Winesap, all from the Eli & Gingrich farm on the Palmyra-Bellegrove road here in Lebanon County. Again, there were subtle differences in flavor and flesh between them.
You need to stop at the Emporium weekly to discover what sort of fresh food surprises and subtleties will be on hand.
Posted By Karen on October 14, 2010
Fall has its own array of farm products and they’ll all be at the Emporium this week – apples, potatoes, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, squash, along with lettuces, Swiss chard and fall radishes.
Tom Maurer is finding himself extra busy as the Emporium evolves. Besides keeping the tables, shelves and refrigerators stocked for the Friday and Saturday customer days, he’s building an office area on the rear balcony and starting to plan for the Emporium’s first Open House, set for Friday and Saturday November12 and 13. You’ll be able to meet some of his farmers then, as well as sample raw milk, yogurt and cheese, soup and chili, breads, meats, apples and more. Note the dates!
Posted By Karen on October 7, 2010
For this weekend, the Emporium is adding yellow-gold apples from the Eli and Gingrich orchard
on the Palmyra-Bellegrove road. And building on Tom Maurer’s newly acquired mastery of baking Swiss braided bread with spelt flour, there will also be freshly baked cinnamon-raisin spelt bread and spelt hamburger buns. The Emporium will be smelling of freshly baked bread and samples will be provided, says the proud baker. Spelt (see next post) has a nuttier, slightly sweeter flavor than whole wheat flour.
Posted By Karen on October 6, 2010
Tom Maurer is baking Swiss braided bread at the Emporium with a new twist (you might say). He’s using spelt wheat flour in the recipe he got last month
from Rita Stoller in Canada. Originally Middle Eastern, spelt is an ancient forerunner of modern wheat and has a nuttier and slightly sweeter flavor. Spelt has been grown in Europe for over 300 years, and in North America for just over a century. About.com notes that it has gained popularity as a dietary grain due to its flavor, high protein and nutrition content.
Explains About.com: “Spelt flour can replace whole wheat flour or whole grain flour in recipes for breads and pasta. Some people like to blend spelt flour with wheat flour. Spelt is used to make bread, rolls, sweet-breads, cookies, muffins, bagels, and to replace wheat in almost any recipe.” Try it in Tom’s Swiss bread. Loaves and half loaves have been selling briskly!
Posted By Karen on September 27, 2010
Tom and Sue Maurer (Tom’s the Emporium’s manager) stopped at a country store in Ontario, Canda, on vacation this month. They were stocking up to spend a couple of days at a fishing camp and got talking to the proprietor, Rita Stoller. She and her husband, Walter, came to Canada from Switzerland 30 years ago because they wanted more land. It wasn’t too long before the Maurers discovered that Rita bakes great Swiss braided bread. After enjoying her bread, they came back and asked for the recipe. “Well, it’s in my head,” Rita said. But she provided the recipe, half in metric, half in English. Last week Sue baked some of Rita’s bread, and it made its debut at the Emporium. It’s great! Sue and Tom expect to keep providing it. Tom told the story of a customer up in Canada who bought a half loaf of Rita’s bread, hoping that her husband, not a bread-eater, would like it. She came back in an hour asking for the rest of the loaf. Her husband had eaten the first half already!
Posted By Karen on September 22, 2010
Fresh food and good health go together, all the way to the seasoning or sweetening stage. As part of the Emporium’s alternatives to refined sugar sweeteners, we’re introducing XyloSweet, starting Friday, September 24.
XyloSweet®, a xylitol-based sweetener, is the sweetest of all bulk sugar substitutes. Currently used in many sugar-free products, XyloSweet is increasingly gaining acceptance as an alternative sweetener; using it may reduce the risk of tooth decay. Unlike artificial sweeteners, XyloSweet contains all-natural xylitol — nothing else! Xylitol is typically derived from corncobs and birch trees. The xylose molecule contains one less carbon atom than most other sugars.
XyloSweet can be used for cooking, except that it won’t work when baking breads or anything that contains yeast. And because it doesn’t crystallize as much as table sugar, it does not do well when making peanut brittle or other hard candy. Finally, the amount required to sweeten drinks, such as lemonade, may cause diarrhea in some people until they become accustomed to it. There is no recommended daily intake. Simply use it as a sweetener.
Posted By Karen on September 14, 2010
The Emporium is about farm fresh food and tasty eating. Components of tasty eating are found not only on the vegetable tables, but on the market’s shelves. We have a growing assortment of seasonings, sweeteners, jellies and other flavor enhancers.
From Christina Maser, of Lancaster, we’re offering apricot, lime, blueberry and peach basil jellies. We’ve got a variety of vinegars and olive oils, some of which Tom Maurer found at the Mt. Gretna Art Show. We’re building a line of non-sugar sweeteners. We’ve got stevia, a South American herb sweetener that looks as though it’s in the mint family – its leaves are incredibly sweet. And there’s maple syrup and evaporated cane sugar, as well as organic raw blue agave, a sweet liquid seasoner.
Be sure, as well, to check out the Emporium’s dried fruits – bananas, raisins, apples, tart cherries, Turkish and California apricots, pineapple rings and slices. We’ve also got trail mixes of fruits and nuts, organic oatmeal and -five, -eight and ten-grain cereals, as well as whole grain steel cut oats. And where else can you get corn spaghetti?
Want to interest your kids in cooking? Get them the Simply in Season Children’s Cook Book at the Emporium!
