Tag Archives: Apples

Apple-butter-sweet memories in times of loss

It’s a beautiful Tuesday morning with a lot of sunshine. How we treasure mornings and days like this. We didn’t wash laundry yesterday due to the dreary, rainy weather. Now today we were blessed with a nice day to dry the laundry. This afternoon I will take son Kevin for his therapy appointment and get some groceries while I’m in town.

Last week Joe’s Uncle Phillip was laid to rest, and now we receive the sad news of another family member that passed away. My Aunt Lizzie, age 85, died yesterday forenoon, and her funeral will be held on Thursday in Bryant, Indiana.

Aunt Lizzie was my mother’s only brother Chris’s wife. Uncle Chris and her son Danny preceded her in death. She leaves to mourn nine more children, 73 grandchildren, and 99 great-grandchildren.

I have so many memories of Uncle Chris, Aunt Lizzie, and family from my younger years. We would help each other with hog butchering, putting up hay, and so on. And every year we would make gallons and gallons of apple cider at Uncle Chris’s house. The evening before we would all gather around their big kitchen table and peel apples for apple butter day the next day. Uncle Chris would cook down the apples in his big outdoor copper kettle, making the perfect-tasting apple butter! The apple butter would be processed into canning jars, and everyone took their share home. In my growing-up years we always had a dish of apple butter on the table. Apple butter sandwiches were also a snack we would have when coming home from school hungry.

It takes many hands to schnitz—peel, core, and slice—enough apples for apple butter. Apples, cider, and sugar are traditionally cooked in a kettle over a fire for many hours until the mixture is reduced to a thick, creamy consistency. Photo Credit: Grant Beachy/©MennoMedia

Another fond memory I have of Uncle Chris and Aunt Lizzie is driving with them to church with their team of horses and their big bobsled. They would come driving in on a cold snowy Sunday morning on their way to church and take our family along. Uncle Chris would be standing in the front driving the team. He would always wear a long black wool overcoat in the winter. Bales of straw were stacked on either side of the bobsled where my mother, dad, Aunt Lizzie, and all of us children snuggled under big buggy robes to keep us warm.

After Joe and I were married, Uncle Chris and Aunt Lizzie would stop in for a short visit if they were driving by. Aunt Lizzie was always more quiet but always friendly. She will be missed by many. Our sympathy goes to the family. How well I know what they are going through to be without parents. God helps us through these trials of life.

My sisters Verena and Susan, sister Emma and Jacob, brother Albert and Sarah, and Joe and I have plans to all drive together to go to the funeral. I am so glad that we have others to go along with us so the cost isn’t so much. Traveling to Ohio alone was quite expensive, but we want to attend the funerals if we can to show our support. God will bless us in another way if we do a good deed.

We enjoyed helping to package 7,000 gift/care packages last week for the Christmas Behind Bars program. For over three hours we filled bags. The care packages usually include Bibles, devotional books, hygiene items, and snack items. After the bags were filled, they were all loaded into a semi-trailer ready to travel south to a prison. If I remember right, I think they said Alabama. It was a good experience for Joe and I and the children. So often we get busy with our own lives and don’t take time to reach out to others.

Apples destined to be cooked down into apple butter—the perfect sandwich spread for an afternoon snack. Photo Credit: Grant Beachy/©MennoMedia

This week I am sharing the recipe for cider apple butter that is in my mother’s words, so it might not be a recipe you will make in that amount, but for sentimental reasons I felt led to share it with you readers. God bless!

Cider Apple Butter

12 gallons schnitz apples*
20 gallons cider
12 pounds sugar

Makes 9 gallons apple butter. It takes 2 bushels of apples to schnitz the 12 gallons. Greens are good for cooking but McIntosh apples seem to cook up better.

*Schnitz refers to peeling, coring, and slicing apples.

Lovina’s Amish Kitchen is written by Lovina Eicher, Old Order Amish writer, cook, wife, and mother of eight. Her newest cookbook, The Essential Amish Cookbook, is available from the publisher, Herald Press, 800-245-7894. Readers can write to Eicher at PO Box 1689, South Holland, IL 60473 (please include a self-addressed stamped envelope for a reply); or email LovinasAmishKitchen@MennoMedia.org and your message will be passed on to her to read. She does not personally respond to emails.

Plant garden, clean and work on cookbook: all in a spring day’s work for Lovina

We are having really nice weather this week. The garden dried up and we were able to plant some onions, lettuce and radishes. I need to go get some sweet onions and peas to plant this week. Spring is such a lovely time of the year! Dandelion blossoms are popping up, making the greens too bitter to eat anymore.

My husband, Joe, got the mowers oiled and ready to use. Verena, 18, and Joseph, 13, were mowing the grass for the first time this spring. Hopefully they will get the rest done today.

Joe opened the gates to the pasture field for the horses, ponies and the cow, Bessie. They are enjoying the lush green grass after a winter of eating hay. Our hay field is looking promising for a nice crop of hay.

Yesterday daughters Verena and Loretta and I went to help sister Emma prepare for church services. They will host church services on May 8 and May 22. Emma and her family added three bedrooms upstairs, so there is more to clean. They aren’t done remodeling yet, but we cleaned where we could. They want to hang drywall yet and put in new cabinets. Jacob plans to build their own cabinets. So it all takes time. Since they were behind in hosting church services, they will take it twice this time. Daughter Elizabeth and sisters Verena and Susan were also there for the day. We got a lot accomplished and even got a lot of visiting done.

We all left for home around 4:00 p.m. Our children attended a meeting and pizza supper with the youth at the community building. It is under new ownership, and the new owners wanted the youths’ opinions on what they could do for improvements. I am so thankful that the owners are being so thoughtful. Hopefully, the youth group will all respect the new rules and have a nice place to gather on Saturday evenings. It can’t be an easy job to be responsible for the upkeep of a big building like this.

The youth play volleyball, basketball and other games there. It will be so much nicer if some things would be added for the youth who are handicapped. I’m sure they would love to be able to play ball with the rest, but they can’t. Having games there that they can play will be so much more enjoyable for them than sitting and watching. As parents of handicapped children, we are more aware of this. My heart goes out to all children and adults with disabilities. May God bless people who care for and are thoughtful to others with disabilities. You will be greatly rewarded someday for it!

We received a wedding invitation this week for niece Lovina Coblentz and Benjamin Schwartz. They will join hands in holy matrimony on May 19, 2016. Lovina is brother Amos and Nancy’s daughter, and the sixth of their children to be married. Lovina was named after me. I still remember how special I felt when I heard the news almost twenty years ago. Amos and Nancy’s son Ben married a girl named Lovina last spring, and so she changed her name to Lovina Coblentz. So they will still have a Lovina Coblentz in the family. They will now also have two “Ben and Lovinas” in their family. What a coincidence! I was asked to be cook at the wedding and wear a smoke blue dress. It looks like I better get started sewing.
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I am excited about the announcement of my new cookbook coming out next year. It has taken hours of time and effort to get this done. What a pleasure working for the editors at Herald Press. They have been understanding through all our busy times. I’ll share this recipe, which will be in the cookbook. It was my mom’s recipe, and it is a family favorite. God bless everyone!

Apple Crisp

9 cups apples, peeled and sliced
1 cup sugar (more or less, depending on variety of apples)
2 tablespoons cinnamon

Crumb Topping
3/4 cup butter (12 tablespoons)
1 1/2 cup white sugar
2 cups flour
pinch of cinnamon

In a large bowl, toss apples with sugar and cinnamon. Pour into 9×13-inch baking dish. Combine crumb topping ingredients in a bowl with a pastry cutter or two forks. Mix until coarse and spread over apples. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until apples are tender.

Lovina Eicher is an Old Order Amish writer, cook, wife and mother of eight. Formerly writing as The Amish Cook, Eicher inherited that column from her mother, Elizabeth Coblentz, who wrote from 1991 to 2002. Readers can contact Eicher at PO Box 1689, South Holland, IL 60473 (please include a self-addressed stamped envelope for a reply) or at LovinasAmishKitchen@MennoMedia.org.

Soaking in sunshine on rare October day, with sympathy for family of 12 children now orphaned

What a beautiful October day! It is sunny and the mercury on the thermometer climbed over the 70 degree mark. Laundry is on the lines, drying really fast. I think autumn days like this are probably few.

Daughter Verena, 17, is taking advantage of the sunshine to weed the flower beds outside. Hopefully, this will be the last time for this season. My flower beds were just put in before our daughter’s August wedding so they are still basically empty. I hope to plant some flower bulbs this fall so we will have spring flowers. Those weeds seem to always find their way everywhere.

Our grass should be mowed but both our mowers decided to give up at the same time. They are being repaired and should be done soon.

Monday I went with niece Emma, nephew Benjamin, and Emma’s friend Menno to pick grapes at the u-pick orchard. I decided to get a few more bushels of grapes to can more grape juice.

GrapeJuiceCannedCropped
Lovina Eicher’s grape juice has deep flavor; she cans it in concentrated form.

I also picked a bushel for daughter Elizabeth and Timothy. Sister Emma and Jacob were going to go pick grapes, but found out Jacob’s dad was having surgery that day. They traveled the two hours to be with the family at the hospital while Jacob’s dad had hip replacement surgery. Sounds like the surgery went well which is always a blessing. We wish him a complete and speedy recovery!

We had a visit from Uncle Joe and Aunt Betty on Saturday morning. They brought brother Albert and wife Sarah Irene along. My friend Ruth and daughter Elizabeth and Timothy also stopped in for a while.

On Tuesday evening, Joe and I and four of the children traveled to Berne, Ind., to attend the viewing and visitation of Samuel Wengerd, age 52. He lost his battle to cancer. His wife died four years ago at age 46. They are mourned by twelve children, eight of whom still live at home. Four of the children are married. The youngest child is ten years old. I feel so sorry for the family. Our sympathy goes out to them. May God help them through this time of trial. Niece Elizabeth (daughter of sister Liz and Levi) is married to one of the sons. Jacob’s brother Martin is married to the oldest daughter.

My husband Joe will have only four-day work weeks in the month of October. Two of those Fridays we are invited to weddings. Tomorrow we will attend the wedding of Lester and Loretta. We hope it will be another nice day. Saturday we plan to attend a hog roast sponsored by our local feed mill for all its customers.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting Melodie from Harrisonburg, Va. She works for MennoMedia, which distributes this column. We enjoyed her visit and hope her train ride home was safe. I look forward to meeting more of the ladies that work with MennoMedia! I owe them all a big thank you for all the help they have been to me.

This week I’ll share a recipe for apple bread. Two bushels of apples are here, which we will put into sauce as soon as time allows! God’s blessings to all!

2BushelsApplesCropped
Two bushels of apples await their destiny as applesauce for the Eicher family. Lovina likes to blend two different varieties into her applesauce.

Apple Bread
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
4 1/2 teaspoons evaporated milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped, unpeeled apple
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9×5 inch loaf pan. Combine sugar, eggs, milk, and oil.  Beat until well combined. Add flour, soda, and salt, mixing well. Stir in chopped apple and pour into pan. Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on top. Bake about one hour.

 

Lovina Eicher is an Old Order Amish writer, cook, wife and mother of eight. Formerly writing as The Amish Cook, Eicher inherited that column from her mother, Elizabeth Coblentz, who wrote from 1991 to 2002. Readers can contact Eicher at PO Box 1689, South Holland, IL 60473 (please include a self-addressed stamped envelope for a reply) or at LovinasAmishKitchen@MennoMedia.org.