A Traditional Farm Life - Sometimes Life Gets in the Way in the Kitchen!

A Traditional Farm Life

By Shasta Hamilton

Greetings from Enterprise, dear friends!   Time sure flies this time of year.  We’re thankful for the increased traffic we’ve seen at The Buggy Stop recently, including a crop of new customers.  Thank you, and please come again!

We are also thankful to see a roof on the Hoffman Grist Mill down the street.  A grain mill must by necessity be tall, and the three story building with a steeply pitched barn-style roof needed “professional help” to be roofed safely.  A big “thank you” to all the volunteers who have got the project this far along.

If you were unable to volunteer so far, but have a desire to help, let us know.  If you have the financial means to help cover the costs of this venture, all help is greatly appreciated.  Simply contact Joe Minick or Michael at The Buggy Stop.

Getting the basic mill structure put up has been a great milestone for the project.  (Or should it be millstone?)  Now, for the time being, the boys can scurry on to other needed projects.

Last Saturday the boys attended an old-fashioned farm sale near Carlton.   They felt fortunate to bring home an anvil for the blacksmithing forge, as well as a harrow for the garden and a small grain cart.

Here on the home front, the girls and I have been cooking up a storm for various events, including extended family gatherings.  Things have seemed particularly hectic the last few weeks.

In fact, on Tuesday as I was at the restaurant baking the bread and preparing the sides for the week, I felt particularly scattered.  I’d be putting the ingredients into the mixing bowl, and the phone would ring.  Then, I’d go back and have to think carefully to determine what ingredients had already gone into the bowl.  About that time either the phone would ring again or someone would drop by. This seemed to go on and on all day long.

I got to thinking about the similarity of the situation to a “recipe” I remembered from a community cookbook in which the mother’s little boy, doorbells, and phone calls kept stymieing the progress of the day’s baking.

Last night I pulled several cookbooks off my shelf, trying to remember which one had that cute story.  (With more than 200 cookbooks on my shelves to choose from, it was no simple task.)  Pretty certain it was in one of my Mennonite or Amish cookbooks, I pulled the first likely candidate down and paged through.  Not finding it, I checked a few other possibilities, which turned out to be dead ends, finally deciding to go to bed and try again this morning.

I went to that same first choice again this morning, “The Montezuma Amish Mennonite Cookbook,” given to me by my mother this time of year in 1991.

Upon overnight reflection, it occurred to me that maybe the “recipe” I was searching for was printed in the text as an actual recipe rather than of one of those little bits of “wit and wisdom” often found in italics as filler on the bottom of the page. 

It was fun looking.  Some humorous, some wise, some pointing out the truth of the human condition, I came across all my old favorites, like “A little bit of this and a little bit of that, makes you big and fat.”

“Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.”

And the one that has hit a little too close to home all these years: “Nothing annoys a woman more than to have friends drop in unexpectedly, and find the house looking as it usually does.”

And then suddenly, there it was, on page 43 in the middle of the “Cakes and Frostings” section:  “To Make a Cake . . .”

To Make a Cake . . .

1.  Light oven; get out utensils and ingredients.  Remove blocks and toy autos from table.

2.  Grease pan, crack nuts.

3.  Measure 2 cups of flour; remove Johnny’s hands from flour; wash flour off him.  Remeasure flour.

4.  Put flour, baking powder, and salt in sifter.  Get dustpan and brush up pieces of bowl Johnny knocked on floor.  Get another bowl.  Answer doorbell.

5.  Return to kitchen.  Remove Johnny’s hands from bowl.  Wash Johnny.  Answer phone.

6.  Return.  Remove 1/4-inch salt from greased pan.  Look for Johnny.  Grease another pan.  Answer phone.

7.  Return to kitchen and find Johnny.  Remove his hands from bowl.  Take up greased pan and find layer of nutshells in it. Head for Johnny, who flees, knocking bowl off table.

8.  Wash kitchen floor, table, walls, dishes.  Call baker.  Lie down.

(cite - Montezuma Amish Mennonite Cookbook.  Yoder's Catering Service: 1988, p. 43.)

Copyright © 2015 by Shasta Hamilton

Shasta is a fifth generation rural Kansan now residing in Enterprise, Kansas.  She and her husband own and operate The Buggy Stop Home-Style Kitchen with their six home-schooled children.  You can reach The Buggy Stop by calling (785) 200-6385 or visit them on the web at www.thebuggystoprestaurant.com

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