The Amish Cook from Oasis Newsfeatures

Homemade Potato Bread...

editorkevin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:04:36 +0000

Leftover mashed potatoes can have varied uses. I'm sure many of you have fried them up into patties, which is delicious. But ever tried using mashed potatoes to make homemade bread? I've seen this done in several Amish kitchens. It's a great way to use the leftovers and makes for a thick, delicious bread. This is an easy recipe for Amish Potato Bread given to me by an Amish woman in Tennessee. I am not sure that many of us buy yeast in a "cake" form, so maybe someone has an idea of what equivalent 1 /2 "cake of yeast" would be in teaspoons or packets?

AMISH POTATO BREAD

2 eggs

1 /2 cup sugar

1 /4 teaspoon salt

1 cup unseasoned mashed potatoes

1 /2 cake of yeast

3 cups bread flour

1 /2 cup butter

1 cup warm water

Beat eggs and add 1 /4 cup sugar. Add salt and mashed potatoes which have been passed through a sieve. Add yeast which has been dissolved in a little warm water. Stir in enough flour to make a stiff dough. Place in a buttered bread pan and let rise for 2 hours. Then cream butter and remaining sugar together. Work this into the dough and let rise very slowly for 6 hours. Then work in warm water and shape into a loaf. Let rise again until very light and then bake for 15 minutes at 450. Lower heat to 350 and bake for additional 45 minutes or until golden brown.

Court Rules in Favor of Amish Farmer....

editorkevin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:56:44 +0000

An Amish farmer in Wisconsin challenged the state's new livestock registration program in court and has come away victorious. The new program would tag all commercial livestock in the Badger State with a numerical code so that disease outbreaks could quickly be traced and tamped down. But the Amish farmer saw it differently. The farmer invoked his religious rights claiming that this amounted to too much government intrusion and that the numbers could represent the "mark of the beast." Courts have traditionally helped sort out the murky middle where government needs and religious reason overlap. And in this case the judge was persuaded that the farmer's religious convictions truly would make this ID system untenable. So, in this instance, I think the Court did exactly what they are intended to do which is to umpire a dispute. Click here to read more about the outcome of the case.

Quick Poll: Should Hutterites in Alberta Be Required To Have Their Photo On Drivers Licenses?

editorkevin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:34:18 +0000

Amish Birding Symposium 2010

editorkevin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:58:15 +0000

Adams County, Ohio is a very special place for me. It’s home to probably my favorite Amish settlement and a lot of special memories. If I can slog through my current dramas I will have a new book in the future. It will be a different kind of book than ones done in the past and it will delve a bit deeper into why Adams County is such a special place for me. Now that’s all I will say for right now. Anyway, I spent this Saturday at the Amish Birding Symposium in the Wheat Ridge settlement in Adams County. This annual event is one of the neatest coming together of Amish and English that you’ll find anyway. The day-long event features a mix of speakers talking about various avian topics. There’s usually an Amish speaker. This year it was Ed Schlabach an Amish birder from Holmes County who spoke about his love of birding. The keynote speaker was Thayne Maynard, director of the Cincinnati Zoo and host of NPR’s 90-second naturalist. Throughout the event Amish and non-Amish mingle and talk and all share their common love of all things avian. This year's event was wonderful, as always. And, of course, as with any gathering that involves the Amish food is delicious and plentiful. The day begins with homemade doughnuts and juice and a lunch-break featuring soup and sandwiches is served. I saw a couple of Amish Cook readers mixed in among the 400 or so attendees. Next year, I plan on having a table to sell cookbooks, so hopefully I'll see more of you. In addition to the speakers and the food there are a mix of vendors offering bird-houses, bird books, artwork, etc. And my sister-in-law, director of education of Cincinnati-based Raptor Inc., is on hand with some of her feathered friends.

The event is now 7 years old. When it first started, it was held in the basement of an Amish man's house with just a handful of people attending. This year it was held for the first time in Wheat Ridge's spacious brand new "community building" which will be used to host various Amish events throughout the year. Such multi-purpose buildings are becoming more and more common in Amish settlements. The buildings, however, are not without controversy. Some Amish fear that the buildings are the first step towards having a formal church building. And, indeed, some Amish settlements are now holding events like funeral visitations in them...so it'll be interesting to watch this development over the years ahead....

Story...

editorkevin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:25:18 +0000

Okay, I'm not saying this is a bad story....it's just...a story, kind of blah. You know me, I always sort of have to "pick on" newspaper journalism. This is a story that ran in today's Evansville Courier in Indiana. There's nothing really wrong with the story, but I found myself trying to figure out what it's point was: okay, so the Amish run busineses and some are feeling the pinch from the recession and some aren't...okay....and???? I don't know, maybe I'm looking for too much...sometimes a feature story is just that a feature story. But if that's all it was it seems like the reporter could have dug a lot deeper and really added some more texture and nuance. SIGH.... Sooo, it's an okay little read that gives some insight into SW Indiana's Amish country.

Quick Poll: Which Do You Like Most?

editorkevin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:37:20 +0000

blackberries and Blackberries

editorkevin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:50:24 +0000

To me blackberries are a sure sign of summer and are a wonderful way to fill a pie crust or a jelly jar. Hand-picked homemade blackberry jam spread on warm toast is culinary nirvana for its simple sweetness. How things have changed. When my cell phone (Rachel and I don’t have a “land line”) finally went kaput the other day, we went to the Sprint store where they basically “gave” us an upgrade to Blackberry phones in exchange for extending our contract for two more years. SIGH, ply us with free phones and then soak us with our bill, I'm sure. SIGH, so we did….and so far I am not a fan of my Blackberry. I liked my minimalist, big-button razor phone. The Blackberry is like carrying a mini-computer and I alraedy felt too “connected” as is. My mother left me a phone message this morning - about something not very crucial. An hour later, she calls back “didn’t you get my message, you didn’t call back?” One hour had passed. Do you remember the days when we all just had land-lines, an answering machine and if someone was gone they were gone. A person left a message and just patiently waited - 5, 6, or 7 hours - until a person returned. SIGH, times have just changed so much when it comes to communication. There are great things about cell phones, Blackberries, etc...but I am not sure that constant connectedness is one and this Blackberry phone simply magnifies the speed of life. (DOUBLESIGH, I'll be the first to admit that maybe in a month I'll be wondering how I lived without my Blackberry, but that, to me, is equally frightening)

By the way, Blackberries – ironically – are produced by a company located in the heart of Canada’s Amish country. Blackberries are made by the company “Research in Motion” based in Waterloo, Ontario. Rather ironic.

Do any of our site visitors have Blackberry phones? How do you feel about them? So far I hate mine, but maybe over the weeks ahead I’ll grow to get used to it….

Follow-Up

editorkevin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:48:58 +0000

I guess this site has some wide reach. The other day I took issue with some media outlets in western Kentucky for their sensationalistic treatment of essentially something that was a non-story. It was about a "hit and run" buggy accident. I heard from Keith Todd, the public information officer for the state of Kentucky's Transportation Cabinet, tonight giving us a little bit more background about how the news story came about:

I wrote the news release that started all the hoopla over the Amish buggy hit and run. I also happen to have several Amish friends. I knew as I was writing it that some folks were going to have way too much fun with it. However, I also knew that if I didn't write it as factually as possible that it would get blown out of proportion even worse. When I started work on it the buggy driver was still missing. Fortunately, just as I was getting ready to send it out I got the call that he had retured to clear things up. Just wanted to provide some persepective on your comment.

That was nice of Keith to share the info with us. My quarrel was never with him, it was with the media outlets that knew full well it was not a "hit and run" in the classic sense but still couldn't resist running the inaccurate headline. Thanks for sharing with us, Keith!

SIGH: Hutterite Impasse.....

editorkevin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:39:23 +0000

I am "sighing" because it just seems like there are a slew of cases lately of "plain people" religious rules butting up against the government. And in all of these cases whether they be steel wheels on Mennonite farm equipment in Iowa, livestock tagging in Wisconsin, improper sewage disposal at an Amish school in Pennsylvania, or building code cases in Upstate New York, nothing - after months of mediation, hearings, etc - seems even remotely close to being solved. Democracy is sometimes messy and the push-pull of opposing sides sometimes leads to creative compromises. Other times these things just wind their way through the courts and someday come to a resolution. For instance the 1950s and 60s were full of cases where local governments came down hard on Amish parents who were pulling their children out of public schools during the 9th grade. The constant litigation eventually wound its way to the US Supreme Court in the landmark case, Yoder. vs. Wisconsin. The courts sided with the Amish and that was that. The courts seem to have traditionally been kind to the Amish. One of the attorneys who paved the way for an Amish court victory excluding Old Orders from having to wear "yellow hard hats" at construction sites is a fan and regular reader of the column. Hopefully things will get settled in these cases. It just seems like an awful exhaustion of money, resources, courts, etc on issues where simple compromising might yield results. Today's "impasse in the news" concerns Canadian Hutterites and drivers license photos. Members of a couple of Hutterite colonies are now vowing to defy the law and drive without a photo ID. It'll be interesting to see where their civil disobedience gets them.

Welcome Washington!

editorkevin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:56:25 +0000

Okay, so it's not Washington DC, but I'll happily take Washington, Indiana. Washington, Indiana is a small city in western Indiana, the county seat of Daviess County, Indiana. There is a large Amish presence in Daviess County. Anyway, I received word today at the Washington Times-Herald will soon be adding the Amish Cook to their pages. I'm thrilled to have them, so any of our visitors from Daviess County, Indiana will soon be able to read the column in their local paper.