The Amish Cook:
Recollections and Recipes from an Old Order Amish Family

Sometimes a book comes along that touches me in a way that makes me wish I knew the author personally, that I could sit down at their kitchen table or they at mine and we could share a pot of coffee and talk for hours. Elizabeth Coblentz was someone I would have very much liked to have met. An Amish woman from Indiana, she wrote a weekly syndicated cooking column by the light of a kerosene lamp, in longhand about her life in an Old Order Amish community with her husband, 8 children and 32 grandchildren. Sadly, I won’t ever get the chance to meet her and not because we come from two very different worlds, (stranger things have happened) but because she passed away in 2002 at the young age of sixty six.

Coblentz co-wrote the book "The Amish Cook" with Kevin Williams; it is a fascinating and poignant collection of memoirs many of which were reprinted from her syndicated column; stories of her simple but happy life with recollections from childhood, her mother, the food they grew, ate and shared and what it was like to live on and maintain a working farm without the modern conveniences we so readily take for granted. Williams recounts the story of how he came to meet and then eventually establish a working relationship with Coblentz, something that proved to be a lot harder than he imagined due to the strict restrictions and codes of conduct that Coblentz lived by. He is the narrative voice that provides the background history of the Amish people and explains the different branches and doctrines of the religion. The text provided by Williams is nothing short of fascinating, but it is the gentle voice of Coblentz describing her daily life that has me mesmerized and longing to have known this gentle woman and to (dare I admit it) live a simpler life myself.

The photographs by Laurie Smith are just gorgeous, many of them taken in and around Coblentz’s Amish community as well as of the food that Coblentz and her daughters painstakingly prepared. The recipes peppered throughout the book are for dishes that are hearty and meant to stick to your ribs, but many were also creative reinterpretations for when times were a bit leaner. Coffee, Soup, Breakfast Casserole, Amish Friendship Bread, German Rivvel Soup, Winter Morning Oatmeal and Rhubarb Coffeecake are just some of the dishes that were well loved and eaten by Elizabeth's family. One particular passage in which Elizabeth writes :

Breakfasts were simpler when I was growing up and coffee soup was on our breakfast table every morning. When Mother fixed a big bowl of coffee soup, we would take a dipper and put the coffee soup on our plates. Mother toasted the bread in the oven to give it a crispier, crunchier consistency. When we are just eating toast with butter for breakfast, we toast our bread on top of a burner on the kerosene oven. Toasting the bread inside the oven makes the bread harder, which is what you want for coffee soup.

reminds me of my beloved Grandfather and of the way he used to take his morning coffee, breaking off pieces of his buttered toast and dropping it into his cup so that the bread and coffee became one big mush that he would then slurp up with the aid of his spoon.

You won't find recipes that can be considered haute cuisine in the book and a few times you will even be surprised that some recipes call for modern convenience foods like canned soups. Many Amish today even eat chips and drink soda and Williams explains that in some communities the rules are more relaxed therefore allowing some of these items in. While some of her recipes reflect this relaxation of the rules most of Elizabeth’s recipes are of simple rustic fare from livestock and fruits and vegetables that Elizabeth and her family raised and grew themselves and that she was proud to prepare.

Elizabeth's daughter Lovina Eicher took over the column after Elizabeth died. The column appears in over 100 papers around the country and is also found at Kevin’s website oasisnewsfeatures at www.amishcook.com Written by Deb on March 11, 2005 04:03 AM