Wow. I'd raise a barn if you brought THAT.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

VINEGAR CANDY?

Ok, I'm going to have to try that.

Me too - I'm going to make it the instant I get home from work. I can't wait.

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.

Kickass Mennonite shit!

I'm pretty sure it is her own recipe, and she won't share it with us heathens.

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!!

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.

Honey Refrigerator Ice Cream
...
Makes 8 servings.

Or two!

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.

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.

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.

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!