Weekly Blogroll: Amish Strawberry Cheesecake, Chocolate Sourdough Bread, Browned Butter Mashed Potatoes and More!;;;;;

By Kevin Williams

We have a good mix of stories in this week's Blogroll. So let's get right to it.

Wow, her food photos put mine to shame...I just want to grab a spoon and dig into these...was very excited to find this recipe to share with Amish365ers!

AMISH BROWNED BUTTER MASHED POTATOES:  I was thrilled to find this recipe on the blog of a cook who tilts towards Italian recipes. As I noted the other day, the distance between Italian and Amish cooking isn't as great as it seems.  Browned butter is a "secret weapon" in the arsenal of many Amish cooks, including our own Gloria Yoder.   The use of browned butter varies from Amish cook to Amish cook, some will mix the browned butter throughout, others will are more concerned with the color might just drizzle it on top.  Anyway, I was super excited to find this blog post, check out Amish Browned Butter Mashed Potatoes here.

BACKROADS TRAVELER INSIDE AN AMISH HOME:  Tom posted some beautiful photos from inside an Amish home.  Based on where Tom is and the color scheme of the home, I'd hazard a guess that this is somewhere in the Conewango Valley where blue is king.  This is an immaculate Amish home with a collection cast-iron neatly hanging on the walls and not a speck of dust visible anywhere. I can tell you that I have seen quite a range in Amish homes with many swinging towards the neat end like this, but, wow, I have seen some messy ones also.  So, the lesson?  The Amish are just like everyone else, there are sloppy people and neatniks among their ranks. Click here to see Tom's collection.

CHIMNEY FARM:  We go from a beautiful inside to a beautiful outside.  Bruce Stambaugh shares a photo of a farmstead in Holmes County, Ohio that definitely has its share of chimneys! Click here to see.

CHOCOLATE SOURDOUGH BREAD:  SIGH, this Weekly Blogroll has sort of devolved into just a collection of my favorite blogs (which is fine, I guess), but I do think this looks like an amazing recipe and she does a great job of letting us into a conservative Mennonite home. Click here for the recipe.

STRAWBERRY CHEEECAKE: Patricia offers up a recipe for a modified Amish style cheesecake.  The original recipe came from Marion, Michigan (Now I had a not pleasant experience there once, I was trying to find the address of some Amish friends of mine and I just couldn't find it, drove around for almost two hours, this was in the pre-GPS days and eventually I just gave up). Click here for Patricia's version of the cheesecake from Marion.