No comments about Best Of Favorite Recipes From Quikters (The Best of Favorite Recipes from Quilters).

No comments about Salads and Vegetables: Recipe Sampler from the Amish-Country Cookbook Series.

1 comments about Cookbook From Amish Kitchens: Desserts (Cookbooks from Amish Kitchens).

1. I have all of these adorable little 'Cook Books from Amish Kitchens', and have really enjoyed them. The are very small and simple... the complete opposite of a coffee-table/display-style cookbooks we see most often today. This is a thin pamphlet with matte paper and does not include interior photos of any recipes (excluding the cover). The text is in a handwritten-style font and clearly explained. The recipes are very homey with basic ingredients and techniques; nothing fancy. Simple, delicious recipes in a simple, small booklet. RECOMMENDED.

4 comments about More Food That Really Schmecks.

1. The recipes in More Food that Really Schmecks are interesting, easy, use ingredients that many of us have on hand and above all, yield food that everyone loves. This is one of my "desert island" cookbooks. Among the 400+ in my collection, this is one of the top five! (Likewise Food that Schmecks, the first in the series.) I also love the little stories about Edna's mother and friends. There is a strong influence from old order Mennonites (similar to the Amish in the US.)



2. It's great to see that this book has been reissued, as the original has been out of print and copies difficult to find. Like Food that Really Schmecks, More Food that Really Schmecks is a great cookbook filled with many Mennonite inspired recipies that Edna Staebler has gathered from her friends and family, and is complimented by numerous anecdotes about the Waterloo region (and more) of which she is a native. I am not a big cook, but I really enjoy this book, and am greatful that Edna Staebler has done so much to preserve some of Canada's German cooking heritage.



3. This was one of my first cookbooks in the 70's. I recently reached for it, and found that it was missing - I was delighted that it was still available after all these years. Although there are no pictures, the recipes are easy, use staple ingredients and are fun to read. Lots of comfort food. I own close to 200 cookbooks, and this is one of my all time favorites.



4. Edna Stabler is one of the best cooks, and writers, I've ever encountered. Her very readable cookbooks are packed with solid information and mouth-watering recipes and I've had rave reviews on everything I've tried. I can't recommend this book highly enough, and if the first column, Food That Really Schmecks, can be bought or bagged or stolen or otherwise annexed into your cookbook collection you'll be ready for anything.

No comments about Classic Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking: 300 Classic Homemade Hand-Me-Down Favorites.

1 comments about Mennonite Recipes From The Shenandoah Valley.

1. The Shenandoah Valley has been home to Mennonites and Amish whose culinary skills and traditions have pleased palates and satisfied hungry appetites for many generations. Phyllis Good is the curator of The People's Place Quilt Museum and the author of "The Best of Amish Cooking" and "The Festival Cookbook", as well as the co-author of four other cookbooks drawing from Amish and Mennonite culinary traditions. Kate Good co-authored "Amish Cooking For Kids" along with her sister, Rebecca, and her mother, Phyllis. Together, mother and daughter have collaborated to once again showcase recipes from the Shenandoah Valley region, with Kate researching and writing the profiles of the Shenandoah Valley Towns associated with the recipes in this culinary compendium. Featuring color photography and a spiral binding allowing Mennonite Recipes From The Shenandoah Valley to lay flat upon the kitchen counter, the recipes range from Blueberry Oat Muffins, to German Potato Salad, to Sweet Potato and Apple Casserole, to Dutch Meat Loaf, to Old-Fashioned Egg Custard, to Golden Carrot Cake. If you only have time enough for one new cookbook for your kitchen, make it Mennonite Recipes From The Shenandoah Valley!

1 comments about Cookbook from Amish Kitchens: Cookies (Cookbooks from Amish Kitchens).

1. I have all of these adorable little 'Cook Books from Amish Kitchens', and have really enjoyed them. The are very small and simple... the complete opposite of a coffee-table/display-style cookbooks we see most often today. This is a thin pamphlet with matte paper and does not include interior photos of any recipes (excluding the cover). The text is in a handwritten-style font and clearly explained. The recipes are very homey with basic ingredients and techniques; nothing fancy. Simple, delicious recipes in a simple, small booklet. RECOMMENDED.

No comments about Cooking With the Horse & Buggy People.

2 comments about Pennsylvania Dutch Cook Book.

1. What an amazing book! I glimpse into the not-so-distant past when we couldn't just "log-on" and get whatever we desire. This cookbook goes back to the time of self-sustaining farms and communities. You can see this in the number of recipe variations that include the town where it is common. Anyone familiar with PA Dutch cuisine should own this cookbook!



2. This `Pennsylvania Dutch Cook Book' by J. George Frederick is the next step on my search to find the best `Pennsylvania Dutch' cookbook. For many reasons, it is not the best `Dutch' cookbook for the average modern American amateur cook who happens to want to make some traditional Lancaster County dishes, but it is near the top of the titles I have found for documenting this great Southeastern Pennsylvania cuisine for the author(s) of more popular books.
   
   The first thing to note is that this is a standard Dover reprint of a book published in 1935. This means that since the book has a distinctly early 20th century point of view, before James Beard and before Julia Child and before Craig Claiborne, and certainly before the `back to the farmer's market' movement of Alice Waters and Deborah Madison. This being so, the introductory material is not only a narrative of the Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine, it is a testament to the mid-Depression view of the Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine.
   
   The first thing which tickles me about this point of view is that the author has no interest in the more politically correct `Pennsylvania German' term, since the ethnic origins of the Pennsylvania Dutch is actually the German, French, and Swiss lands bordering on the Rhine. (I can personally attest to this, as my mother's family that settled between Bethlehem and Philadelphia were originally German Swiss Huguenot clockmakers from Western Switzerland.) The second thing that appealed to me personally was the fact that the author includes my hometown of Bethlehem, PA among the five great cities of Pennsylvania Dutch homeland, including Allentown, Lancaster, Reading, and Philadelphia. There is even a recipe for `Bethlehem Scrapple Cabbage'. Talk about a `signature' dish!
   
   One of the most distinctive aspects of the 1935 point of view is the author's belief that all regional American cuisines are dying out, diluted into the great American soup pot (my term). The great thing about this perception is that it was either wrong, or the emphasis on regional culinary identities of the last 30 years has overcome and reversed this fading of local differences. On the other side of the coin, the author's claim that of the three great regional cuisines he mentions, referring to `Southern' cooking and `New England' cuisine, the Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine, based in a few counties in Southeastern Pennsylvania, has by far the smallest geographical base, yet it has some of the greatest culinary diversity. The only real competitor the author sees is the Cajun / Creole cuisine based in New Orleans.
   
   At first, I was inclined to take this statement as simply an expression of regional pride, until the author started to remind me of the genius of the Pennsylvania Dutch culture for preserving food and using preserved foods in a wide range of recipes. Is this not the cornerstone of the great Italian cuisine, with their wealth of preserved meats, cheeses, pastas, wines, and liqueurs? As a minor participant in that great tradition in making and buying our church's `chow-chow', the classic vegetable relish. This, however, is just the tip of the iceberg, as there are dozens of varieties of pickled and dried vegetables and meats in the Dutch repertoire.
   
   On the recipes in this book, they truly reflect a cuisine of frugal self-sufficiency. They make me laugh at all those boosters of Italian `cuisine of poverty' as they load up their dishes with $16 pound cheeses and dried ham. The most common `rich' ingredient in these recipes is butter, but then, all these recipes arose on dairy farms, where the butter was made at home. Like the Northern Italians, corn is one of the most common ingredients in Dutch dishes, but we don't make a heavy use of corn meal. Instead, the `signature' Pennsylvania Dutch corn ingredient is dried corn, famous in Southeastern Pennsylvania in the green `Cope's Corn' cans and boxes.
   
   Since these recipes are so authentic, and since they genuinely reflect a thrifty culture, many actually appear rather unappetizing on the surface, due to the heavy use of flour, suet, lard, and items from the `fifth quarter' of animals. The most common examples of this `use everything' culture are scrapple and souse. The first is a pate of pork scraps and corn meal. The second is a Gelee of pork and vegetable scraps. Both dishes are symptoms of the Rhineland on the border between France and Germany. What is odd is that while the book gives a recipe for making souse and ten (10) recipes for cooking scrapple, it has no recipe for making scrapple. For this, you will need to go to `Country Scrapple' by the foremost author on `Dutch' cuisine, William Woys Weaver, the author of the best historical perspective on `Dutch' cooking, `Sauerkraut Yankees'.
   
   Frederick's book is more useful to the general audience than either of these two books from Weaver, but it is still something of a challenge to the amateur. There are several ingredients such as souse, scrapple, and dried corn that may simply not be available. There are other ingredients that I confess are a mystery to me, such as `sago'. On the other hand, `Reading Pretzels', a surprising ingredient in some soups, is plentiful throughout the country now.
   
   On searching the book for my favorite `Dutch' dishes, I find everything but stuffed pig's stomach. And, all the other recipes I found are close to or exactly like my grandmother and mother made; however, even their versions were a bit fancier and richer than the recipes given in this book. The hot endive salad, for example, wilt's the dickens out of the greens, while my mother's take on the same dish is to simply heat the greens with the hot dressing, without the endive ever touching the hot pan in which the dressing was cooked.
   
   For the amateur culinary archeologist and the native `Dutchman', this is a great, inexpensive find, containing a heap of nostalgia for the tummy.

No comments about Mennonite Cookbook: More Than 450 Classic Recipes.