Jean Stoner| The Daily Record
Many things draw people to Holmes County -- shops, scenery and craftsmen, to name a few.
And then there is the food. You know, it's talked about all the time. It's that good ol' Amish cooking. People can make Swiss steak, mashed potatoes, noodles, dressing and all those goodies at home, but they just don't taste like an Amish-made meal.
Sarah Miller,* an Amish woman who lives near Holmesville, says there really isn't any secret to the Amish way of cooking. The difference between Amish and English cooking may be with the spices, she says, as the Amish don't use as many. And, the Amish use a lot of butter.
Does Sarah have any "tricks" she uses when she cooks? No, she says, she's not aware of any. She just cooks out of habit.
"I sometimes use recipes, but mostly I just put ingredients together because I've done it so often," she says. "When people ask for my recipe for something, it takes a little thinking, and even then, it often doesn't come out right because you're not used to doing it that way."
When Sarah creams corn, she browns butter in an iron skillet.
"I put it in a big skillet and brown a couple pounds of butter at a time. It needs constant stirring to keep from burning, but it adds a real good flavor to the corn, she says.
To brown flour, she melts a half-pound of butter and adds one-and-a-half cups of flour, stirring constantly until it's "really, really brown. Then I add water, beef broth, whatever, and it has a really different flavor."
Many meals at the Miller home are prepared with home-grown vegetables that are canned or frozen for year-round use. The garden is shared by the extended family. It contains many kinds of beans, beets, cucumbers, onions, sweet corn, potatoes, peppers and a whole line of melons. Tomatoes are Sarah's favorite, and she experiments with the varieties.
"The big non-acid ones with no seeds are my favorites," she said. "They don't have a name, because years and years ago we got tomatoes from a friend and we thought they were so good. We save seeds from them every year and start the plants in a hot bed. They are very meaty and sweet. They are late tomatoes, so I always buy an earlier variety, too."
Several years ago, a friend gave Sarah some yellow tomatoes. She liked them so much she saved seeds from them and began growing that variety, too. She also grows cherry tomatoes and little, yellow pear-shaped tomatoes that "are as sweet as candy."
The Millers do a lot of canning and some freezing. Since their home has no electricity, the frozen food is stored in a food locker at a nearby town.
Sarah's sister and her family raise beef and do their own butchering. The meat is shared among family members.
"We cut it up ourselves to freeze or can. When cold weather comes, near Christmastime, it's hog-butchering time," Sarah says.
While Amish children are in school, the main meal for an Amish family is served in the evening. When school is out, noon is the time for the heavy meal. When the men work away from the farm, their noon meal is packed. Breakfast is always a major meal where eggs, toast or plain bread and butter, cereal and leftover potatoes or meat are served.
"Breakfast is one of the main meals because it gets them started in the morning. The average family bakes four or five loaves of bread at a time -- some once a week, some twice," Sarah explained.
"Natural gas is available on many Amish farms, so the wood and coal cook stove is just about a thing of the past. We use it in the winter because Mom hated to give it up. Wed miss it because it always provides nice and cozy heat. The oven is always warm, and you can stick food in so easily. But gas is so convenient," she said.
Coffee, milk and water are the beverages served with meals. The Millers don't have tea as a general rule, as a personal preference.
Snack foods include homemade cookies because there are usually some around. They also like potato chips and pretzels, and a lot of popcorn is made. But ice cream is everyone's favorite -- homemade preferably, Sarah says.
The Millers don't have Swiss steak as it's served in the local Amish restaurants.
"Most of our steak is canned fairly thin. We brown it, make a gravy, pour it over the steak and can it," Sarah says. "Then we just heat it up. The steak we freeze is thawed and browned. We make a gravy and pour that over the top and put it in the oven."
Does Sarah ever eat in restaurants? Not as often as she'd like, she says. She bypasses restaurants where Amish cooking is a specialty because "I get that all the time."
Amish weddings are a time of joy, but much advance food preparation is the order of the day.
Sarah has helped with about 40 Amish weddings. Preparations start a week ahead with things that can be frozen, like angel-food cake. The cake part of date pudding can be baked early, too. Potatoes for potato salad and eggs can be cooked in advance. Celery can be diced early. Pie baking is usually done on Wednesdays. Weddings are generally on Thursdays, she says.
The morning of the wedding, chicken, meat loaf and potatoes are cooked. Usually, there are about 20 cooks in the kitchen.
Asked why Thursdays and sometimes Tuesdays are the most popular days for Amish weddings, Sarah replies the tradition dates back to the old world, during the time of Christian martyrs.
"When the Christians were martyred, for some reason, Thursdays were safe because no killings took place then. Tuesday was also a fairly safe day. Because the martyrs lived from day to day, those times were happy when their lives were again spared. I remember asking my father the same thing, and this is how he explained it to me," she says.
Seeing the practical side of Thursday weddings, Sarah says the first days of the week can be used for preparation. Tuesday weddings are more harried because weekend preparations are not easy, and time is short before the wedding day.
When Sarah's sister was married, other relatives were called upon for recipes that would serve a large number of guests.
"So many pounds of meat and so many loaves of bread, so many potatoes and how many pies. You have to get an idea from someone who has done it before," Sarah said.
"At weddings, she continued, "the food is passed and everyone can eat as much as he pleases, so it's better to have too much than not enough. Whatever is left over is divided among the cooks."
So what's cookin'? It appears as if it's a lot of very, very, very good food, made the time-honored Amish way. And that's good. Very good.
