Tag Archives: rolls

A little bundle of joy before Christmas makes Lovina a grandma again

First, I need to share our very exciting news: my husband Joe and I are grandparents for the third time!

We welcome our first grandson, Timothy Josiah, born to daughter Elizabeth and Timothy on December 17. He weighed 7 pounds and is 19 inches long. He was born at 5:11 a.m. by C-section. I went to the hospital with Timothy and Elizabeth on Sunday evening. By the next morning complications had set in, and the doctor decided the baby needed to be born by C-section. Elizabeth was looking forward to a natural birth this time, but it would have been dangerous for her and the baby.

Timothy Josiah is greeted by his two-year-old sister, Abigail. She loves the baby but is not so sure she wants to share her daddy and mommy! It is hard for her to understand that she has to share her parents. She stayed at our house the several nights her parents were at the hospital. She slept with her Aunt Verena both nights. I was at the hospital the first night, but Abigail chose Verena over me when it came to rocking her to sleep!

So we now have three grandchildren: Abigail is two, Jennifer is 11 months, and our newest addition is two days. He is a sweetie and is very alert. Daughters Verena and Loretta are spending the night at Elizabeth and Timothy’s house. They made supper for them with fried chicken on the menu. I plan to go help spoil him tomorrow.

I want to bake bread in the morning to give to the children’s teachers for Christmas gifts. I will mix the dough up early so it can start rising.

Saturday, December 22, my husband Joe will have his 50th birthday. We don’t have any special plans, but I would love to do something special for the Big 50. With the holidays so close and the new grandbaby, it seems everyone’s schedule is full enough!

We received a wedding invitation for a nephew’s wedding. Congratulations go to John and Brooke! They planned a March 15 wedding at the bride’s home in Elkmont, Alabama. John is Joe’s sister Carol and Pete’s son from Tennessee.

Verena’s Yorkie gave birth to two puppies the same week as a third grandchild arrived for Lovina and Joe.

Daughter Verena’s dogs, Ruby and Ricky, are parents to two cute little puppies. Ruby is a good mother to her little ones. Verena wants to sell the puppies when the time comes.

We recently had our family here in honor of daughter Verena’s 21st birthday. Fried potatoes and grilled chicken were on the menu, along with cake and ice cream. After supper, everyone sat around the tables. We all had two little cups and a straw, with eight Skittle candies in one of the cups. The object of the game was to see which team (men against women) could suck the candies with a straw and move them from one cup to the next without using their hands.

Do I need to mention the winning team? Yes, of course, the women’s team won! We heard plenty of remarks from the men saying we are “windier” so we could do the job faster. It was so hard to do it without laughing. I really do think this was work for some of the men. I will be quiet now, just in case one of them happens to read this column. The girls suggest we not play this game again due to the men being so bad at it. Ha ha! Anyway: happy birthday, Verena!

Readers have been requesting the recipe for dinner rolls from Emma and Menno’s wedding, so I’ll include that here.

I wish everyone God’s greatest blessings over this holiday season. Let us remember Jesus is the reason for the season. Peace on earth!

Refrigerator Dinner Rolls
Makes 2 dozen rolls

1 cup warm water (105–115 degrees)
2 packages active dry yeast
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
4 to 4 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
additional melted butter

Combine warm water and yeast in a large bowl. (Do not use quick-rising dry yeast, as it’s designed to raise breads quickly.) Let mixture stand until yeast is foamy, about 5 minutes. Stir in butter, sugar, eggs and salt. Beat in flour, 1 cup at a time, until dough is too stiff to mix (you may not need as much flour as listed). Cover and refrigerate 2 hours or up to 4 days.

Grease a 9 x 13-inch baking pan. Turn the chilled dough out on a lightly floured board. Divide dough into 24 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a smooth round ball. Cover and let rise until double in size (about 1 hour).

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bake until rolls are golden brown, about 15–20 minutes. Brush warm rolls with melted butter.

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 at 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.

To follow Lovina around for the day, you’d have to rise at three

Diary of October 16, 2018

3:00 a.m. Alarm rings. It’s time to pack my husband Joe’s lunch, make some coffee for his coffee mug and fill his water jug with ice water. The 45-minute ride to work is enough time for him to enjoy the coffee. Joe is leaving 20 minutes earlier due to having a different ride than usual. Those 20 minutes make quite a bit of a difference this early in the morning! The man who picks him up works in the same place, so their hours are the same. They also pick up son-in-law Mose, as he works with them.

After Joe leaves, I usually take a nap on my recliner. But today I know this column needs to be written. (I’m writing a diary of the day before.)

3:25 a.m. Husband Joe leaves for work.

3:45 a.m. Son Joseph, 16, gets ready for work while I pack his lunch and fill his water jug with ice water.

4:00 a.m. Joseph leaves for work. Son Benjamin, 19, gets up to feed the horses hay before getting ready for his ride. I fill his water jug. Benjamin prefers to wait to eat lunch when he comes home. He takes some snacks but he’s usually home by 1:30 or 2:00 p.m. Joseph has a new ride too, so he leaves 30 minutes earlier than he used to.

4:30 a.m. Benjamin leaves for work and I go back to bed, setting my alarm for 6:00 a.m.

6:00 a.m. I wake up daughter Lovina, 14, and son Kevin, 13. Lovina showers at night and Kevin showers in the morning. Kevin always needs a little time to get his muscles loosened up to walk, so it takes him awhile to get ready.

6:45 a.m. The bus is here, and Lovina and Kevin leave. I relax in my recliner until it’s daylight outside. I decide to go check up on the horses in the barn, as the dogs keep barking. Usually the horses are outside in the pasture, but they needed to be inside this morning as they are all going to be reshod. The horses get impatient and kick at the box stalls, making the dogs bark, but all looks fine. A man and two young boys from our church will put new shoes on the horses today and then turn them out to pasture.

8:30 a.m. Daughter Verena is leaving to go help a family in our church. Daughter Loretta washes dishes while I gather the dirty clothes. It was rainy yesterday so laundry was put off until today.

10:30 a.m. Loretta and I are finally started washing laundry in the basement. I hang out the clothes on the lines. It sure is cold and windy! The sun is shining, which helps a bit. It’s still only 48 degrees outside. Sure feels cozy in the house. My husband, Joe, started the coal stove on Saturday. The guys are now here in the barn, putting the shoes on our horses. We have four horses and our pony, Stormy, that need to be reshod.

12:30 p.m. Lines are filled with clothes, and they are drying really well. The bed sheets are dry already, so I take them off. It’s so windy that it’s like they want to keep blowing off! Loretta and I take a break and eat lunch. Joe is home from work already.

1:30 p.m. Ben comes home.

2:15 p.m. Verena gets back home. She said several ladies were there helping today, and they canned more than 40 quarts of applesauce.

3:00 p.m. Joseph is home.

3:30 p.m. Lovina and Kevin are now home from school. We are getting the clothes in and folding laundry. Joe and the boys and Lovina are bagging up a load of sawdust that was delivered today. They use sawdust instead of straw for bedding in the barn.

5:30 p.m. Mose, Susan and Jennifer come, but they have had supper already. We are excited to see little Jennifer, since we didn’t see her for almost a week. Joe and Mose are working three-day weeks, so Mose and Susan spent several days at his brother’s house one-and-one-half hours from here. His brother is building a new house so they worked on that, and Mose also did some deer hunting. Jennifer was happy to see us again and just chattered away.

Abigail’s outdoor buddies rest on the patio. Frisky, the Australian Shepherd dog, and Kitty, their cat, get along great.

7:00 p.m. Pizza is on the menu for supper, and it’s about time to call it a day. Mose and Susan leave for home.

9:30 p.m. Everyone has gone to bed. Good night, and God bless you all!

Crescent Rolls

1/2 cup butter, chilled
1 package instant yeast
1/4 cup water
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup milk, scalded

Melt butter, then chill again until set; this makes your crust flaky. Dissolve yeast in water. Mix flour, salt and sugar together. Mix in butter. Beat egg and milk and yeast mixture. Mix just until it hangs together. Roll out on a 12 x 17-inch cookie sheet if you plan to use it as a crust, or shape into crescent-shaped rolls. Let rise. Bake at 350 degrees until firm. These beat the store-bought crescent rolls in a tube.

Lovina’s Amish Kitchen is written by Lovina Eicher, Old Order Amish writer, cook, wife and mother of eight. She is the co-author of three cookbooks; her newest cookbook, The Essential Amish Cookbook, is available from 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 at LovinasAmishKitchen@MennoMedia.org.

Holidays mean feeding 26 mouths and learning the perils of mail-order shopping

We had a rainy morning, but now the sun is shining brightly. Tomorrow we enter December and still no snow. Hopefully we won’t get it all at once! The temperature is showing 42 degrees.

Daughter Elizabeth and Abigail are here for the day. Elizabeth takes care of a little four-year-old girl named Nikiah every day while her mother works. Her mother is a friend Susan used to work with. With Nikiah and Abigail, she has her hands full. Nikiah likes to dress in Amish clothes when she comes here, and she likes to ride in the buggy with Elizabeth and Abigail. She calls me “Mom” because I’m the “Mom” around here.

Daughter Susan just left for a doctor appointment. Elizabeth brought a French toast casserole for our breakfast. The girls are washing dishes and sweeping floors and, of course, visiting. I am debating if I should move to my desk in our bedroom. If I’m not careful, I’ll start writing what they are saying! Ha, ha!

After I have this column written, we have plans to go to an Amish general store that just opened a few miles from here. They have an open house this week. Daughter Verena volunteered to stay here with Nikiah and Abigail.

Feeding 26 people on Thanksgiving Day requires a long table.

On Thanksgiving Day we had a total of twenty-six here. Jacob, sister Emma, Elizabeth and special friend Manuel; Emma and special friend Menno; Jacob Jr., Benjamin and Steven; sisters Verena and Susan; Timothy, daughter Elizabeth and Abigail; Mose and daughter Susan; Loretta’s special friend Dustin and nephew Henry all joined us for Thanksgiving dinner.

On the menu were two big turkeys (one was a smoked turkey), mashed potatoes, gravy, dressing, corn, lettuce salad, veggies and dip, deviled eggs, cheese, homemade bread and dinner rolls, apple, pumpkin, cherry, and peanut butter pies, pumpkin roll, fresh fruit mixture and ice cream. Needless to say, not many were hungry for dessert with dinner! Before everyone left I put out all the food again so they could eat something.

Lovina’s Thanksgiving menu included these mouthwatering dishes.

But we still had more food left over, so I took it along to Mose and Susan’s house the next day. Jacob and sons, Menno, Manuel, Timothy, Dustin and Joe and our sons assisted son-in-law Mose in putting up new drywall in their house they will move to. We women and girls heated up the leftover food from Thanksgiving Day here at our house and took it over there for those hardworking men and boys. We all ate in the garage, since the house was dusty. Mose and Susan really appreciated all the help they had. A lot was accomplished that day. Most of the drywall was hung. Last night my husband Joe went with Mose to get a stove and new flooring for the house. The house is ready for drywall mudding once the heat is going in the house.

I am doing a lot of mail-order Christmas shopping and decided to send off for a meat saw for my husband Joe for his birthday, which is on December 22. He will be 49 this year. The UPS truck drove in, and I didn’t think anything of it when Joe said he would go out to get the package. I just didn’t think his gift would be arriving yet!

So I didn’t know which way to look when Joe walked inside with the box, which clearly showed that it was the meat saw. He had a big smile on his face and asked where I want the box. I knew I couldn’t make him believe that it was for someone else, so I just told him happy birthday. He was very glad for it, as he had been wanting one for a while. His birthday is so close to Christmas, so I guess it’s nice to have his gift early for once.

God’s blessings to all!

60-Minute Dinner Rolls

2 packages dry yeast
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cup warm milk
4 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter, melted

Add yeast and sugar to warm milk and let stand for 15 minutes. Stir in remaining ingredients. Stir well and let stand in warm place approximately 20 minutes, until double in size. Form into 24 egg-sized rolls. Place on a well-greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes.

 Lovina Eicher is an Old Order Amish writer, cook, wife and mother of eight. She is the co-author of three cookbooks; her new cookbook, The Essential Amish Cookbook, is available from 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 at LovinasAmishKitchen@MennoMedia.org.