Talk Back! 
Most Read stories this week
Most Emailed stories this week
RSSSeven courses start the day at Arcola B&Bs
ARCOLA - Chef Dan (aka Daniel Harshbarger) helps those who stay at the Flower Patch and Diamond House Bed & Breakfasts in Arcola get the day started with a seven-course bonanza of food.
Before the meal begins, however, Lynne Harshbarger, Chef Dan's mother, starts with an Amish-style prayer, another of the traditions of the Flower Patch.
Though Chef Dan's recipes are closely guarded, here's a sampling of one day's offering:
Start the breakfast with freshly brewed coffee or tea, a fresh fruit compote served with lemon balm (the herb of the year) and garnished with viola flowers, homemade tomato juice, pear almond muffins and angel biscuits (a signature bread of the inn).
Follow these openers with:
* Breakfast soup
* Dutch sausage
* Herbed potatoes and butternut squash
* Corn on the cob wrapped with roasted red peppers
* Rice with a dill mushroom sausage.
And if there's still some room - and a sweet tooth - healthy yogurt pancakes and maple syrup are served for finishers.
While the food choices are many, so are the settings of china and silver.
"We have three weeks' worth of table settings," said Dan Harshbarger, "enough to change it every day."
"Here, healthy means good," said Lynne Harshbarger, who started the inn 20 years ago with her husband, Bill.
"We were going to sell the house," she said. "The boys were leaving."
It was more room than the couple needed for themselves, she said, and they couldn't decide what they were going to do. But one day, she fell asleep on the sofa only to be awakened by a couple knocking on the door.
"Is there a bed and breakfast in town?" they asked.
Faith is the center of their lives, Lynne Harshbarger said. So this seemed like the answer to a prayer, and that was all it took to cement the idea with the couple.
"Bill would not let me advertise until we were ready to open," she recalled, and the first thing she thought was, "Oh, I'm going to get a new kitchen."
Though that was 1988, the new kitchen didn't actually come until 1995.
One of the things both husband and wife enjoy is being able to bring freshness to the table.
"Part of the fun of coming to a bed and breakfast is the fresh and in-season foods, right from the field to the table," said Bill Harshbarger.
"I was raising herbs before herbs were fashionable," Lynne Harshbarger added.
The facility involves each of the couple's four sons in some way or another, she said.
"It's a labor of love," said Lynne Harshbarger.
"You know what the nicest thing is about a bed and breakfast?" asked Bill Harshbarger.
"Everyone is so interesting. Everyone shares," he said, especially as they sit around the harvest table for breakfast.
Arlene Mannlein can be reached at amannlein@herald-review.com or 421-6976.
If you go
WHAT: Arcola Flower Patch and Diamond House Bed & Breakfasts
WHERE: 225 and 229 E. Jefferson St., Arcola
PHONE: 268-4876
COST: Room prices vary; packages available
ON THE WEB: www.arcolaflowerpatch.com
Previous Page 
Subscribe 
Email Alerts 
Print this story 
Email this story
del.icio.us
digg
newsvine
facebook
Search By Issue
Search By Keyword
