Amish in the News: Solo Amish Trip, Conquering Cracker Barrel, Country Recipes, and More!

By Kevin Williams

We have a bundle of Amish stuff in the news today, but let's start out with an "eclipse excerpt."

This is from the Finger Lakes Times in New York:

Martha and Noah Burkhold operate Mennonites Ride Bus Company near Dundee,New York and she said they’re taking 30 fellow Mennonites to a remote spot near Hopkinsville, Ky., to watch the eclipse in an event called Eclipse Encounter 2017.

Speakers will address the eclipse from a biblical perspective.

The group is also making stops at the Creation Museum and the site of a life-size interpretation of Noah’s Ark, both in Kentucky, she added.

She said the solar eclipse provides a symbol of the power of God.

“I think it’s very exciting,” she said.

In Kentucky, they will meet up with some 1,200 other Amish and Mennonites on a large hill on an Amish farm, Burkhold said.

Going to Eclipse Encounter 2017 on the Amish farm would have been an awesome experience but, yeah, right now, travelling with a 1 and  almost 4-year-old is just tough.  Not impossible, but not easy.  So, no eclipse trip for us.

AMISH SOLO TRIP:  SIGH, the snarky side of me wants to say "Gee, Mary Alice, if you like Amish culture so much, why didn't you sign The Blade up for The Amish Cook all those times I tried to convince you over the years?"  Mary Alice Powell was the long-time food editor of the venerable Toledo Blade newspaper.  She held sway over their food section throughout the 1990s and I'd always try to sell her The Amish Cook column but never got anywhere, now I find out that she really likes Amish culture and she details a solo trip she took there recently.  Fun read, click here to read about her journey to Ohio's Amish Country.

Cracker Barrel, home of delicious sweet tea and Momma's Pancake Breakfast! And frequent stop for Ray and Betty Yoder.

CRACKER BARREL:   Ray and Betty Yoder are known as America's "Cracker Barrel couple."  The restaurant ought to pay this couple to do commercials, although they are getting plenty for free publicity from them.  This couple have been to almost every Cracker Barrel in the USA.   This article is in some ways an opposite from the above one in the sense that this is the polar opposite of solo travel, this couple seems to have stuck together through all the Cracker Barrel visits and still enjoy one another's company.   What caught my eye is that the couple was once Amish, but now they identify as "liberal Amish", probably Beachy Amish?  Does anyone know?  Anyway, click here to read this fun article.

KALONA ORGANICS:  Read about an upstart largely Amish cheese cooperative and dairy operation in Kalona, Iowa. Click here.

Corn and bean salad, mmmm, this looks good! (Illinois Farmer Today photo)

FARM RECIPES: SIGH, these recipes come to us from Mount Carroll, Illinois in the far northwest part of the state. The Amish Cook column used to run in a tiny farm paper there and I loved that little paper but it was bought by a largely corporate entity and promptly dropped. Too bad, but that is the business these days.   Anyway for recipes for Zucchini Chocolate Cake, Unusual Macaroni Salad, Corn and Bean Salad, and more from a rural Illinois home ec teacher and cook, click here.

NEW/OLD MENNONITE COOKBOOK:  A group in Newton, Kansas have banded together to help preserve some of that area's old Swiss Mennonite recipes.  Wow, I bet there are some awesome ones in the collection, I may have to try to get my hands on the book.  It's only available through the organization directly, click here to read more!