2 comments about Betty Groff's Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook.

1. This is one of my most used cookbooks. I was raised eating a lot of Pa Dutch food but the aunt who cooked it passed away before I could pick her brain for all of her secrets. Ms. Groff's recipes are always exactly how I remember my aunt's dishes tasting.



2. I picked up this cookbook hoping to discover some recipes to make for my mother that would remind her of the cooking that she grew up with. I was not disappointed! There were several old favorites and many recipes that I could swear were family secrets. The Dandelion Salad with Bacon Dressing and Potato Filling recipes were very similar to what we make for special occasions, and the Apple Fritters, Hot Potato Salad, Coconut Cake, and the Ham, Green Beans, and Potatoes dishes reminded us of several other recipes we had not made in a long time. Listed by food type in an easy-to-follow format, the only thing missing in this book was a beautiful picture of each of the recipes. If you enjoy cooking, are from Penn Dutch country, or just want to sample some regional cooking, this book is a great choice for you! Enjoy!

No comments about Delicious Amish Recipes (People's Place Booklet, No. 5.).

No comments about The Best Of The Amish Cook: 1997 - 2002 (Volume 2).

1 comments about Amish Cooking.

1. It was written I believe in 1972 and it has what I believe are authentic recipes from the Amish themselves. Some of the recipes are a little on the bland side but there are some real good ones in there too. In my opinion, this is not just another Amish "style" cookbook. I believe it is a cookbook some of them do use.

3 comments about Central Market Cookbook.

1. As a native of Lancaster all of my life, a shopper of Central Market, and a person who loves to cook, I highly recommend this cookbook. It has some great facts about the start of Central Market and TONS of wonderful recipes for local food. Scrapple, REAL pot pie, dips, caseroles, pasta dishes, cakes, and pies are all in this book. My copy is very dog eared, because there are so many great things to make! Buy this book if you like to cook great food!



2. Every cook, young and old, must have this cookbook readily available in their kitchen. It is a perfect reference to all fo the basic and best recipes!



3. I found this book while searching for a good Amish inspired cookbook. Unfortunately, this was not one of them. While I realized that the book was lacking in pictures of finished dishes and seemed a bit dated, I was surprised at the wide array of dishes and had been hoping to find something more Old Country. The recipes are so broad from taco dip, pizza dip to "garlic gilroy" (Gilroy, which is the garlic capital in California) to Thai Chicken and vegetables.
   
   There are surely good recipes in here, and there are the traditional Scrapple, Whoopie pies, and Chicken pot pie, but they are tucked in with recipes for dishes like Tuna Nicoise and Chicken a'la King. I commend the author's attempt to present a cohesive collection of dishes that represent such a large and diverse market. I guess I was expecting something different based on the location of the Central Market and the olden look of the cookbook's cover.
   
   Maybe I was expecting something more "whole food" and was disappointed when canned soup was called for in a handful of potentially good recipes. I would have been thrilled if the author made use of the local dairies, using fresher ingredients instead.
   
   Some recipes are just overly simplistic which detract from other recipes that possibly have more depth, character and tradition.
   
   Pennsylvania Dutch Appetizer Logs consist of a jar of prepared horseradish mixed with cream cheese and rolled into slices of Lebanon balogna. Or Fresh Asparagus Wrapped with Prosciutto or Westphalian Ham. If you havent guess, the "recipe" merely instructs you to wrap blanched asparagus into prosciutto or... Westphalian Ham.

5 comments about Quilters Christmas Cookbook.

1. Whether you are a quilter or not, you will love this cookbook.
   The variety and quality of recipes is amazing...I probably have 70 cookbooks, but this is one that I can rely on regularly for having good recipes that are straight-forward, easy to follow, and (best of all!) delicious to eat. So many friends have asked for recipes that originated from this cookbook that, when they see the great collection, they ended up buying this cookbook, too!



2. `A Quilter's Christmas Cookbook' by `Good Books' (in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania) editors Louise Stoltzfus and Dawn J. Ranck is a genuine bargain for traditional recipe collectors who keep their magazine cutouts in little `tin' filing cans designed for holding 3" by 5" index cards. I know this because this is exactly how my mother keeps her recipes, and so many of the recipes in this book are the very same she has in her little gray can.
   
   For a list price of a mere $13.95, we get 330 pages of recipes, stuffed to almost always three to a page, giving us close to 900 very traditional holiday recipes. A quick look at the title, publisher, and the names of the editors may lead one to think that this book is all about Pennsylvania Dutch recipes, but it is not. The book is a collection of recipes from quilting hobbyists from all over the country. And, the traditional Amish and Mennonite centers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York State are in the distinct minority, While there are a fairly large number of contributions from small towns in southeastern Pennsylvania (Punxsutawney, PA seems to have an inordinately large number of contributors), my hunch is that there is at least one recipe here from every state in the Union, and some from Canada.
   
   In spite of the geographical diversity, there is a great commonality in the style of recipes. Not only do most of them hint of hundreds of little gray boxes from around the country, there is also a strong spirit of pre-Julia Child 1950s style of cooking epitomized by Poppy Cannon, of `Can Opener Gourmet' and other books in that spirit. Two of the symptoms of this style are the use of margarine in place of butter and the heavy use of packaged gelatins (`Jell-O'). The fact that these recipes come from all over the country makes this uniformity even more dramatic. The third symptom is a heavy use of canned goods, especially canned soups, vegetables, and fruits.
   
   As simple as almost all these recipes appear to the casual browser, many are simply too simple. For example, there is virtually never any statement of what size of egg to use in the recipe (The editors could not make such a statement, as there was no way they could know if our 900 contributors all used the same size egg.) Similarly, few recipes specify salted or unsalted butter, in the few cases where butter is used. There are also very few baking recipes that give instructions on how to determine that the baked goods are `done'. I see one recipe with such an instruction, but most recipes on either side of this example have none. So, these are distinctly NOT the kind of recipes you will find in `Gourmet', `Bon Appetit', or even `Martha Stewart Living'. I suspect that you will also not find recipes of this type in `Good Housekeeping', as all our major culinary media have been thoroughly steeped in the `fresh, fresh, fresh' and `local ingredients' mantras of Alice Waters and Deborah Madison.
   
   All this suggests that the editors, like the editors of church and social group cookbooks all tend to assume that their readers already know how to cook well, and are much more interested in the variety in dish than they are about honing their already quite satisfactory cooking skills.
   
   In a brief lapse of focus, I noticed that there seemed to be a rather large number of recipes using cranberries. When I came to my senses, I realized that this is, after all, a book of Christmas recipes, and the cranberry comes into season late in the year, just in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas. But this doesn't explain the four-(4) rhubarb recipes, when rhubarb is a traditional spring and early summer speciality.
   
   I don't want to leave this book without stating that for a very large cookbook audience, this book is exactly what they are looking for. An enormous collection of relatively easy recipes providing excellent ideas for what to make in the weeks surrounding Christmas. So what if there is no `bouche de Noel' recipe which requires a day to make and the patience of a saint, not to mention the skills of a journeyman pastry chef. And, this book is inexpensive enough and small enough so that it will sit alongside the household's copy of `The Joy of Cooking' without taking too many family resources.
   
   I confess there is just a bit of the insider's interest in the book, as each recipe's headnote includes the name of the quilting pattern the contributor is making when they submitted their recipe. I look at these names and draw a complete blank, although I suspect that among the quilting community, they are as well known as `Extra Virgin', `Colcannon', and `Ratatouille' are to us foodies. If I were to offer any suggestion to the editors, it would be to include a picture of each quilt, or at least some distinctive part of each quilt in the headnote, but then, this would probably double the price of the book.
   
   Neither `Gourmet' nor `Pennsylvania Dutch', but an immense collection for Christmas cooking.The huge chapter on Christmas cookies and the Christmas breakfast dishes alone make this book worth getting.



3. This cookbook is hands down my favorite cookbook of all time, it is jammed
   with recipes, little stories and great variety, it isn't your everyday
   cookbook. I have given this cookbook as a gift many times. Try it you
   WILL like it.



4. This book has excellent recipes; not just for the holidays but all year round. Love it!! I even ordered some more of Louise Stolzfus' cookbooks



5. I collect cookbooks but some are just my go-to books where I know I'll find what I'm looking for. This is one. Full of tried and true, down home recipes with common ingredients. My all time favorite from the book is Crockpot Sage Stuffing. The book falls open to it. Tastes just like the stuffing mom used to put in the bird but the convenience and safety of the crockpot.

No comments about Cooking & Memories : Favorite Recipes from 20 Mennonite and Amish Cooks.

No comments about Cook Books by Amish Kitchen.

No comments about Breads (The Best of Favorite Recipes from Quilters).

1 comments about Mennonite Foods and Folkways from South Russia (Mennonite Foods & Folkways from South Russia).

1. My father was on the last boat that came from his part of Russia in 1926. He was 11 years old and came to Manitoba and later settled in Saskatchewan,and finaly in B.C. I have grown up appreciating the Mennonite history and cooking alot of the dishes represented in this book. I really enjoyed reading the history that goes along with my heritage. A keepsake i will treasure.