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09 November 2005

Menu for an Amish Barn Raising From this very kickass Mennonite Community Cookbook that I just found at the library for 10 cents (you don't often see kickass and mennonite in the same sentence).
[More:]Food For a Barn Raising. All of this food was made in my grandmother's kitchen.

115 lemon pies
500 fat cakes (donuts)
15 large cakes
3 gallons applesauce
3 gallons rice pudding
3 gallons cornstarch pudding
16 chickens
3 hams
50 pounds roast beef
300 light rolls
16 loaves bread
red beet pickles and pickled eggs
cucumber pickles
6 pounds dried stewed prunes
1 large crock stewed raisins
5 gallon stone jar white potatoes and the same amount sweet potatoes

This is enough food for 175 men.
Wow. I'd raise a barn if you brought THAT.
posted by selfnoise 09 November | 09:23
That is totally kickass, and a very appropriate use of the word, I might add.

My favorite recipe from a cookbook of this type is a recipe for cooking possum from an appalachian cookbook I have:

Ingredients:
1 possum
1 board

Roast possum on board 3 hours. Throw away possum, eat board.
posted by omiewise 09 November | 09:25
I've never raised a barn, but when I help friends move they nornally buy a pizza at the end of the day. Next tie I'm holding out for a few chickens, some fat cakes, and a bowl of stewed raisins.
posted by Slack-a-gogo 09 November | 09:31
My Mennonite aunt is the best cook I know. They stopped giving me gas cards for Christmas a few years back because she figured out all I really wanted was a batch of her cookies and a jar of her salsa.
posted by sciurus 09 November | 09:34
Hee - possum!

Ok this book has some very intriguing recipes in it. I really love it. I also just discovered a yellowed old paper in one of the pages, on which someone wrote down a recipe for shoo fly pie! I have to scan it...

Honey Refrigerator Ice Cream

3/4 cup honey
3 eggs
1/4 tsp sale
2 cups whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla

Heat honey to boiling point and slowly add to well beaten eggs.
Add salt.
Beat with rotary beater or electric mixer until thick.
Cool and add cream and vanilla.
Por into 2 freezing trays and freeze.
Stir once during freezing.
Makes 8 servings.


Vinegar Candy

2 cups sugar
1/2 vinegar
2 tbsp butter

Combine all and cook until it's brittle when dropped in cold water (270 degrees).
Pour onto buttered plates.
Mark into squares while warm or roll into small balls.
This is an excellent hard candy.
This is an old family favorite.

Plus I love the miscellaneous section, which has tidbits like this:

If your basement is dark, paint the bottom basement step with white paint. This will prevent accidents.
posted by iconomy 09 November | 09:38
Sciurus, what kind of salsa? There are some great relish and piccalilly recipes in this book. I'm drooling over here.

Here's the cookbook, although the one I have is from the 1950s and has a different cover.
posted by iconomy 09 November | 09:41
VINEGAR CANDY?

Ok, I'm going to have to try that.
posted by selfnoise 09 November | 09:44
Me too - I'm going to make it the instant I get home from work. I can't wait.
posted by iconomy 09 November | 09:45
I love things like this. In this case I am put in the mind of the stupendous poop that this menu would engender in the barn raisers. I assume that after they eat they go home and distribute that cloacal holocaust into individual bathrooms/outhouses, otherwise no one is going to be able to go near the bathroom closest to the newly raised barn for like four, five years.
posted by Divine_Wino 09 November | 09:45
Kickass Mennonite shit!
posted by Hugh Janus 09 November | 09:48
I'm pretty sure it is her own recipe, and she won't share it with us heathens.
posted by sciurus 09 November | 10:06
My best friend lives right next to that publishing company. It's in Morgantown.

I live in the heart of PA Mennonite country. Lots of old ladies in "sin sifter" hats and little kids dressed like they're auditioning for the new Little House on the Prairie. For years, most of the businesses were run by the "Mennonite Mafia" and would only hire employees of their own faith. (Not so much true nowadays.)

I'm not a big fan of a lot of the cooking (funny cake, shoofly pie, chow-chow), but Butter Cake...my god, the Butter Cake.

Hurf durf butter cake eater!!
posted by jrossi4r 09 November | 11:08
That honey ice cream sounds scrumptious!

Quite a few Mennonites here in the Fraser Valley (British Columbia). I see them out shopping once in a while.
posted by deborah 09 November | 11:27
Honey Refrigerator Ice Cream
...
Makes 8 servings.


Or two!
posted by omiewise 09 November | 12:10
I have a recipe for Ben Franklin's rum punch.

I will be test driving it soon, it requires a gallon of rum, 2 pounds of sugar, 2 quarts of orange juice....and 3 to 4 weeks of letting the sonuvabitch sit and umm...mature?

I'll let you know the results, and yes I will be eating this with Robert E. Lee cake ( recipe from his wife!)

mmmm historical bellyaches are nigh.
posted by Mrs.Pants 09 November | 12:37
I used to get Monster Cookies from an Amish family at the farmer's market. They made them out of oatmeal, peanut butter, M&Ms, nuts, and I'm sure pounds and pounds of lard and each one weighed about a half-pound. They we're great but you needed to lie down for a while after eating one. If you eat that food every day, you have to raise barns and plow fields by hand or you'll weigh four-hundred pounds.
posted by octothorpe 09 November | 12:53
I have a recipe for Ben Franklin's rum punch.

I will be test driving it soon, it requires a gallon of rum, 2 pounds of sugar, 2 quarts of orange juice....and 3 to 4 weeks of letting the sonuvabitch sit and umm...mature?


Oh my! Another reason to love Ben Franklin.
posted by amro 09 November | 13:08
Oh, I'm so jealous of your cookbook find! I collect odd and old cookbooks, I love them.

Shoo Fly Pie! I must have that recipe!
posted by PsychoKitty 09 November | 15:45
I'd just like to thank the voters of Maine || Drunken Elks Report

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