4 cups apples, pared and sliced
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/3 cup butter, room temperature
3/4 tsp. cinnamon
3/4 tsp. nutmeg
Grease the bottom and sides of an 8-inch square baking pan. Spread apples in the pan. Stir together the remainder of ingredients until you make coarse crumbles. Sprinkle over apples.
Bake at 375 for 30 minutes or until apples are completely cooked and tender.
3 eggs beaten
1 cup oil
1 ¾ cups sugar
1 T. vanilla
2 cups zucchini, grated
3 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
½ cup unsweetened cocoa
½ cup chopped nuts (optional)
In a large bowl, mix together the eggs, oil, sugar, and vanilla. Add the zucchini and stir.
In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and cocoa. Add dry ingredients to the zucchini mixture and blend well. Add nuts if using and stir again.
Grease and flour 2 loaf pans. Pour in batter. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes. Cool in pans for 10-15 minutes before removing zucchini bread to wire rack to finish cooling.
Many outsiders are curious about the myriad of Amish rules regarding buggy ownership. These rules deal with color (black, gray, brown, white, or yellow), lights (battery powered or kerosene), style (covered or uncovered), mirrors, blinkers, safety markings, and more. Almost all aspects of buggies are regulated by the district in one way or another. Different situations call for different types of buggies as well. The most common type is the family wagon, which has room for parents and children and has a window in the back.
I often get asked where my story ideas come from and how I research my fictional novels. Considering I live a little over an hour from Ohio’s Amish Country, I relish a day or weekend trip down to attend livestock auctions, sample authentic cooking, tour farms and homes, and interview Old Amish friends and acquaintances. But the research for my latest release, A Marriage for Meghan, was the easiest…and most enjoyable yet. Small one and two-room schoolhouses dot the beautiful countryside in Holmes and Wayne Counties. But I didn’t have to ask anyone what it was like to face a roomful of students as a first-year teacher, feeling wholly unprepared, since I had first-hand knowledge. An Amish teacher might have a gift for communication and patience with children, but her education stopped after the eighth grade. Opening day would be intimidating, considering she’s only a few years older than her students. Although I was twenty-two and had four years of college, I looked out over a sea of faces on my first day and went weak in the knees. Some pupils were sixteen and taller than me, and I’m not a small woman. But I survived my first day and persevered. I eventually became a very good teacher and mentor to beginning teachers throughout my ten-year career. The lesson I hope readers will take away from A Marriage for Meghan is that you must have faith in yourself, besides faith in God, in order to succeed. Set your sights on your dream, work hard, and never give up on yourself. Like my fictional Meghan Yost, you will be surprised by what you can accomplish.
Hello, Amish Readers! Here is today’s selection from Georgia Varozza’s The Homestyle Amish Kitchen Cookbook.
Biscuits
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
3 T. shortening
1 cup buttermilk
Sift together dry ingredients. Cut in shortening until mixture resembles coarse crumbles. Add buttermilk all at once. Mix with a fork until it forms a ball. Turn out the dough onto floured counter and knead for 30 seconds. Roll out the dough until it’s 1/2-inch thick and then cut with a biscuit cutter.
Place biscuits on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 425 for 15 minutes.
Sausage Gravy
1 lb. sausage
4 T. flour
1 quart milk
salt and pepper to taste
Brown the sausage in a heavy saucepan or iron skillet with sides. Do not pour off the grease. Add the flour and mix, stirring constantly. Add the milk and continue to stir while the mixture comes to a boil and thickens. Add a bit more milk if it’s too thick. Salt and pepper to taste.
Tear or cut biscuits in half and ladle gravy over the top of the biscuits.
One of the most fascinating things about writing Amish fiction is listening to their ongoing debate with technology. This has been going on particularly since the arrival of the telephone. You might think Alexander Graham Bell’s invention was rejected outright but no, it was actually used by the Amish for a number of years, until the Amish realized it was being used as a means for spreading gossip. Thus the problem was not that it was a new technology to be rejected out-of-hand, the problem was it could be used to destroy Christian community.
The motorcar was rejected because it adversely affected the sacred community as well – some could afford to own one, some couldn’t, it could become a source of pride and prestige and, in so doing, ruin equality among the members of the Amish church and community. You can ride in one for short distances but not drive one or own one. Not because the Amish don’t like cars – they don’t like what ownership of cars can do to their people. The same is true of airplanes. And motorboats. And a lot of other things.
The Amish are not striving to live in the 1800s although to some it looks that way. Why, some Amish communities have telephone booths that can be used in emergencies. No, the Amish are fighting to keep their communities intact despite the onslaught of technology that, in their eyes, divides communities and breaks up families and relationships. While, for the most part, the world outside their farms is eager to snap up whatever new technology floods the market, be it iphones or ipods or six foot long HD TV sets, without debating the human consequences of any of it, the Amish do debate and they debate the consequences of all of it.
What a difference it would make if society as a whole learned from the Amish that some precious things about humanity are threatened by the promiscuous use of technology and that there should be more debate going on about what technology is appropriate and what is not. A few discussions might be going on in churches and religious organizations and among other groups but not much. It seems that only the Amish are arguing and praying about this issue with any kind of seriousness and consistency. Which might be one explanation for their growth over the past decade – not only that some people are fleeing the turmoil of a fast-paced, hi tech society where there is no longer time to sit and think – but that some want to debate what technology is good for us and what isn’t. Few others are engaged in such an argument or discussion and some 21st century citizens apparently wish to be part of those who do argue, do discuss, do pose the important questions and objections. Even if it means learning to argue and debate – and listen! – in Amish.
Chocolate Zucchini Bread
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup oil
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 T. vanilla
2 cups zucchini, grated
3 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)
In a large bowl, mix together the eggs, oil, sugar, and vanilla. Add the zucchini and stir.
In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and cocoa. Add dry ingredients to the zucchini mixture and blend well. Add nuts if using and stir again.
Grease and flour 2 loaf pans. Pour in batter. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes. Cool in pans for 10-15 minutes before removing zucchini bread to wire rack to finish cooling.
A question that seems to pop up often in my email has to do with why, after so many years of publishing general historical fiction, have I recently been writing “Amish fiction.”
This may seem like an easy question to answer. Actually, it isn’t–but let me just make three points that might explain it best:
1. First, I’m still writing historical fiction set in Appalachia, but more recently with mostly–but not all–Amish characters, so a series of Amish fiction isn’t actually that much of a change for me. Also, whereas most Amish fiction published in the past few years has featured contemporary settings, I’m still writing in an 1800s setting, as I almost always do. The current series (The Riverhaven Years) is located in the hills of southern Ohio, close to the Ohio River, and as I mentioned, is peopled mostly by Amish characters, although the “anchor” character of the series–“Captain” Jeremiah Gant–is an Irish immigrant, and Asa, his helper-friend, is a freed slave.
In the series planned to follow The Riverhaven Years, the setting will also be historical, and will again feature a mix of some Amish and some non-Amish characters.
2. I’ve no doubt but what one of the reasons I’m writing Amish fiction is the same as one of the reasons you’re reading Amish fiction. I discovered that I, also, really enjoy reading about the Amish: their culture, their faith, their customs (and their food)! I believe there’s been a genuine longing by many of us over the past few years to return to a simpler lifestyle: a more basic, “uncluttered,” way of living. Even if we can only read about it, there’s a real comfort and contentment–and, yes, a fascination–about times and places less harried and unhurried, about faith that’s active and alive, a faith that is lived as a vital part of everyday life, not super-structured, complicated, and relegated only to Sunday worship.
Not until I had actually develdoped nearly half of the first book in The Riverhaven Years did I discover an element I hadn’t considered before I began writing about Amish characters. The very fact that the people are Plain in the way they live–in the way they dress simply and with no adornment, to the way they marry, raise their children, do their work, and conduct their daily lives–artificiality is stripped away and character is allowed to come shining through. That makes writing about them both a challenge and a joy. It makes weaving variety into the story details perhaps a little more challenging, but at the same time it makes character development and scene building more intriguing. And when you’re writing about people you like, it heightens the joy of the craft.
I remember telling my husband a few years ago, long before I had any real thought of developing an Amish story, that if I were going to write about any people besides the Irish, it would most likely be the Amish. We live close to more than one Amish settlement, and of course in Ohio we’re within easy traveling distance of several Amish communities, so research can be both fun and convenient. But more than anything else, the Amish people and their lifestyle have long interested me, and I’ve developed much respect and liking for those Amish folks I’ve talked with. I believe the primary reason I enjoy writing about the Amish people so much is because I enjoy them so much.
3. One of the elements of writing historical fiction that has always greatly appealed to me is the research. What to some is “work,” is to me a source of pleasure. In fact, I have to restrain myself from putting too much of my research in the story itself. I always need to remember that my readers don’t necessarily want all the details that interest me! So after years and years of researching “my own people” (the Irish), I’ve thoroughly enjoyed digging into another, different “community” and learning about its people. And with every new discovery, my interest in learning more continues to grow.
You can probably tell I’m having a great time writing Amish fiction. I can only hope you’ll continue to have a great time reading it!
BJ
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Hello, Amish Readers! Here is today’s selection from Georgia Varozza’s The Homestyle Amish Kitchen Cookbook.
Chocolate Fudge
3 6-oz. packages chocolate chips
1 14-oz. can sweetened condensed milk
small pinch salt
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup chopped nuts
In a heavy saucepan over low heat, melt the chocolate chips with the sweetened condensed milk. Remove from heat and then stir in the remaining ingredients.
Spread evenly into a waxed-paper-lined 8-inch square pan. Chill 3 hours or until firm. Turn out fudge onto a cutting board, peel off waxed paper, and cut into squares. Store loosely covered at room temperature.
Hello, Amish Readers! Here is today’s selection from Georgia Varozza’s The Homestyle Amish Kitchen Cookbook.
Braised Beef Cubes
2 lb. stew meat, cubed
2 T. oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1 package onion soup mix, dry
1 can water
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup sour cream
cooked rice
Brown the stew meat in the oil. Add onion and continue to cook for several minutes until onion is limp. Add the soup, dry soup mix, water, salt, and pepper. Cover and simmer on low for about 45 minutes or until meat is tender. When ready to serve, add the sour cream and heat thoroughly but do not boil.
Serve on a bed of rice.
