BY LOVINA EICHER
We had a thunderstorm during the night but it has now turned out to be a beautiful sunny day. It is now sunny and breezy and temperatures with temperatures reaching the 60s, perfect weather for drying laundry outside! We have our laundry washed and on the line now. Beautiful sunny days like this are numbered before the cold weather is here. Last week we spent time picking a lot of potatoes from a few fields after the pickers were done. We now have more than enough for this winter.
They are the “russet storage potatoes”, so they keep really well in our cool basement. We sure are thankful to be able to get these potatoes since ours didn’t do so well. Right now we are drying them out, these potatoes do real well in storage. Our family enjoys potatoes and there are so many different ways of preparing them. One night I made homemade French fries with the potatoes which everyone seemed to really enjoy. I have been using up the frozen fish from husband Joe‘s summer fishing. Before we know it they will be ice fishing and there will be fresh fish to eat again. Fish and homemade fries are a good meal.
Daughter Elizabeth, 17, made 4 batches of oatmeal cookies last week. We took some to the church services yesterday, but she made enough that we had plenty to eat ourselves. . The children always enjoy cookies and milk when they come home from school. Seems cookies don’t last long around here.
October 1st has made it 9 years now that I have been penning this column. Sometimes I think what life would be like if mother were still here to write it. But God had other plans so we must make the best of everything when situations in life changes. Our oldest child, Elizabeth, was only 8 years old while Joseph was our youngest at just a few months old when mother passed away. Where has all the time gone so fast?
Joe finally did end up starting a fire in our coal stove after some cold nights. Makes it a lot more comfortable to wake up to a warm house in the morning. But on days like today we can have some windows open when it warms up.
Kevin, 6, likes the chore of gathering eggs each day. Although he still doesn’t trust that rooster yet so he has one of the older boys stay close by. Kevin brings them in and sometimes like to wash the eggs at the kitchen sink while he chatters away. Once in awhile he’ll break an egg but most of the time he is pretty careful with them. Last night he found a horseshoe out in the field which he brought in to show us. Horseshoes are expensive and sometimes when the horses lose a shoe out in the pasture field we can still find it. This isn’t the case if one if one of the horses loses their shoe along the road. Unless you hear the shoe come off when it hits the road you usually don’t discover until it is too late to know where it flew off at. Joe always tells the children to always check to see if a horse has all their shoes on before harnessing them up. It can wear their hooves down fast to use them without shoes.
This is a recipe from my mother. My father must have really liked this dessert, since she called it “Ben’s Bars.”
BEN’S BARS
1 package (18.25 ounces) of chocolate cake mix
2 eggs
1/3 cup oil
8 ounces cream cheese
1 /3 cup sugar
1 cup chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350. In a large mixing bowl, mix cake mix, oil, and one egg by hand until the mixture is crumbly. Reserve 1 cup for topping. Pat remaining crumb mixture into ungreased 9 X 13 inch pan. Bake 15 minutes. Cool slightly.
In a small bowl, beat cream cheese, sugar and egg until fluffy. Spread over baked layer. Sprinkle with chocolate chips and reserved crumb mixture and bake 15 minutes more. reprinted with permission from www.amishcookonline.com. Richard from Amish Stories
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| Martha returns to Amish Stories this Friday with a post about Rumspringa. Along with a Mennonite recipe! |
