Tears On Your Pillow Pie

Posted on May 23, 2012 by
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The Amish have all sorts of pie confections with odd names:  shoofly pie, whoopie pies, and Bob Andy pie to name just a few.  But then there’s this one: tears-on-your-pillow pie.  Where the heck did it get it’s name?  I’ve never really been able to establish an answer.  One theory I’ve read is that the pie can collapse in the oven, because it’s a very thin pie and maybe that gave rise to “tears on the pillow” from an upset Amish housewife trying to make a pie.  I’ve made the pie a couple of times.  The first time it didn’t really turn out, but I didn’t weep, I just tried again and it came out OK.  Here is a photo of how the pie is supposed to look like from one of our recipe-testers and the recipe itself is below.  It’s a very thin pie comprised of very basic ingredients, a classic Amish confection.

TEARS ON YOUR PILLOW PIE

1 /3 cup butter, melted

1 1 /2 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1 /2 cup evaporated milk

1-9 inch unbaked pie shell

Preheat oven to 350. In a large bowl, beat together the butter, brown sugar, eggs, flour, and milk until well-blended. Pour the filling into the pie shell. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Turn off oven and leave the pie for 1 hour.

Posted in PIES CAKES & BREADS | 2 Comments

May 21, Amish Cook: Fire Damage Worse Than Thought, Church Cancelled and Strawberry Shortcake

Posted on May 21, 2012 by
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THE AMISH COOK

BY LOVINA EICHER

Our work has still been centered around the recent house fire that we experienced. My husband Joe doesn’t have to work the next two days so we are moving the furniture from our bedrooms upstairs to the downstairs and basement. We will set the beds up in the basement for the girls to sleep in. The boys are sleeping on a bed in the living room now. The carpenters that are working on the rebuilding said that a sealant will have to be applied to the walls and the floors to block out the smoke smell. They discovered that there was more heat and water damage than realized when I wrote about this a week ago. Elizabeth’s bedroom has to all be redone as well. Her bedroom seems to be the worst after the boys bedroom. We are living a little crowded now with all of their belongings and bedroom furniture down here. I can’t believe all the things the girls have accumulated through the years. I told the girls they are fortunate to be able to clean the smoke from their things since the boys don’t have anything left to clean. They lost everything that was in their bedroom.

PHOTO:  Dining room becomes the bedroom for some of the Eicher children

The damage wasn’t just upstairs either. Part of the ceiling had to be redone in the kitchen and dining room. It needs another layer of drywall mudding and then it is ready to sand and paint.

We will have to repaint the whole ceiling since our living room, dining room and kitchen ceiling are all combined. I have decided to paint the walls too since we will be painting anyway. We have been living in this house for five years now so it will freshen everything up especially now since it was all smoked up.

We cancelled our plans to hold church services in June. I could not see us getting all the painting, cleaning and so forth done with only four weeks left. We will instead take our turn twice next year. I feel so much more relaxed now to clean without that deadline looming. Our plans are just to work on finishing all the upstairs bedrooms before moving all the children’s things back upstairs. It looks like a long, busy summer ahead. And along with everything else going on we are trying to fill our gardens up. We put out 84 tomato plants this week. We are out of tomato juice so I need to fill those jars again with homemade juice. Lovina had her eighth birthday on Friday the 18th. We were so busy putting in our first cutting of hay and cleaning up from the fire that we didn’t take time to celebrate her birthday. I also had to take Loretta to physical therapy and pick up some groceries. By the time I was done with all that it was time to make supper.

It was a hot day to put up hay but we got 212 bales from the hay field. Joe was glad for the hay as he had just run out. I asked Lovina if we should have cake and ice cream tonight for her birthday. She suggested having chocolate cupcakes instead so we will do that. Tomorrow, the 22nd, we celebrate another birthday for my 41st. I survived a year of the 40s and it has not been quite as bad as I thought. When Joe turned 40 I had given him a coffeecup that said “40 isn’t old if you are a tree.” Last year on my birthday, Joe gave the cup to me. I think I will pass it along to my brother-in-law Jacob who will be 40 in November.

We have been very thankful for the items donated to us since the fire. I also want to thank all the readers for their help. It is used to help to replace shoes, clothes, and so forth for the boys. May God bless everyone for their kindness.
(Editor’s Note:  If anyone wants to pitch in to help the Eicher’s recover from their fire, we don’t have a formal fire fund set up, but we are routing relief to them through The Amish Cook Friend Club. If you wish for more funds to go tot he Eicher’s, make a note with your contribution that you wish to forgo to the Friend Club rewards. Click here to sign-up for the Amish Cook Friend Club.  Lovina and her family are very appreciative! Be sure to put your address in because I know Lovina will want to thank readers later)

Strawberry season is coming up soon so I thought I’d share this recipe for a favorite around here (Editor’s note: I cheated on this photo, these are strawberries from my garden, not Lovina’s:)

OLD FASHIONED STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE

2 cups flour

3 tablespoons sugar

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 ./2 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons margarine

1 egg, beaten

2 /3 cup milk

In a mixing bowl, sift toegther flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Cut in margarine until crumbly. Combine egg and milk and then add all once stirring until moistened. May be rolled out and cut into six individual biscuits. Spread into a 9 X 13 cake pan. Bake at 350 for 18 minutes. Serve warm with crushed berries and whipped cream.

Posted in The Amish Cook Column | 4 Comments

Smoke Alarm Battle In Upstate New York

Posted on May 21, 2012 by
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This is a timely topic now for me because The Amish Cook’s house just experienced a serious fire.  The smoke alarm upstairs likely saved their home and maybe some lives.  Lovina was in the kitchen downstairs when they heard a smoke alarm going off upstairs. The fire department said if they had arrived only 3 minutes later, the house would have been gone. So one can conjecture the horrible scenarios that might have occurred had Lovina not had smoke alarms.  And she had to have them as part of their home being approved by local building inspectors.  Needless to say, Lovina is a fan of smoke detectors. Her Old Order Amish community does not object to them and compliantly comply with the local regulations.  Not all Amish do, however,.  So the issue is:  should a private home be required to have smoke detectors?

The BBC ran an article over the weekend about the issue and how it is playing out among a Swartzentruber Amish sect in Upstate New York. To me, it’s a tough issue.  Are smoke detectors a good idea?  YES!!  Should they be required in any public place: YES!  But a private home where one’s religious convictions preach against such devices?  What do you think?

The BBC piece is compelling.  There were some items in the article, though, that I thought seemed to stretch belief. Are Amish children really barred by their parents from entering Canton, New York, the nearest town to their settlement? That seemed a little silly because you doubt an Amish child – or any child – would be going into town alone anyway.  But traveling with their parents would seem to be acceptable, at least in the Swartzentruber communities I have visited.  And are they really walking around barefoot when it is 5 degrees outside> Karen Johnson-Weiner responded to a request from me via the Swartzentruber’s defense attorney, Steve Ballan, to clarify.  Here is what she said:

Parents tend not to take children with them on trips or into town.  Basically, kids travel with their parents only when they’re very young–or in the young folk.  They are in no way barred–there’s just not any reason for them to leave home and go to town.  Kids don’t sleep on hard pallets–they have mattresses.  And they would not be barefoot at 5 degrees F.  

Another issue in the article is about having a central milk dump station so the Amish can avoid contact with a truck driver.  Again, not completely accurate, that would just be one of a variety of reasons.  This is what Johnson-Weiner writes in her excellent book, New York Amish.

More philosophically, a Swartzentruber bishop, acknowledging that the dumping stations were a sharp departure from past practice, put the change in Amish perspective.  It would, he noted, make it possible for young men to keep farming, helping to ensure that life in the community would remain agriculturally based.  With a more secure income, there would be less need for farmers to hire out to do carpentry or other work outside the community.  Finally, he argued, building dumping stations was really “a step backwards,” a move away from the modern world.  As he pointed out, because milk truck drivers would no longer go to individual Amish farms to pick up cans of milk, the dumping stations would make the non-Amish world less intrusive in the daily life of the Swartzentruber settlement; farmers would deliver their cans of milk to the dumping station by horse-drawn wagon.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Amish In the News, Editor's Blog | 2 Comments