Amish Country Arson Page 19

  Cut taffy in bite size pieces and wrap in wax paper. Store in airtight container. Makes 30 pieces.

  Amish Bumbleberry Pie

  Not long ago we attended a livestock auction and stayed to watch the Amish baked goods and small animals and birds sell. One of the pies auctioned was a bumbleberry pie. Of course, I think I know every kind of berry there is since I raise most of them.

  Very curious, I asked the Amish waitress at the salebarn cafe what a bumbleberry looked like.

  The young woman gave me a puzzled looked. “You mean bumbleberry pie?”

  “Yes, one sold at the auction just now.”

  “I'm not sure what's in that pie,” the waitress said.

  “Does bumbleberry mean something in Pennsylvania Dutch?” I asked.

  “Nah,” she said and left to wait on another customer.

  I wasn't about to let this go so I came home and googled bumbleberry. It turned out to be a combination of odd and end berries that have been frozen in small batches near the end of the crops. Black ones are thrown into one pie to get a dark pie using black raspberries, blackberries and blueberries. Or use strawberries, rhubarb, red raspberries and apples for a red pie.

  Mix together enough of your odd and end berries (fresh and frozen) to fill the crust of a nine inch pie, sugar to taste and use flour or cornstarch to thicken. Bake for 45 minutes at 350 degrees or until juice bubbles through the lattice crust on top.

  Amish Food for a Barn Raising

  This list of food was found in an old handwritten recipe book from Amish days gone by.

  115 lemon pies

  500 doughnuts

  15 large cakes

  3 gallon applesauce

  3 gallon rice pudding

  3 gallon cornstarch pudding

  16 chickens

  2 hams

  50 pounds roast beef

  300 light rolls

  16 loaves of homemade bread

  red beet pickles and pickled eggs

  cucumber pickles

  6 pounds dried prunes, stewed

  1 large crock stewed raisins

  5 gallon jar white potatoes

  5 gallon jar sweet potatoes

  This is enough food for 175 men.

  About the Author

  Fay Risner lives with her husband on a central Iowa acreage along with their chickens, rabbits, goats and cats. A former Certified Nurse Aide at the Keystone Nursing Care Center in Keystone, Iowa, she now divides her time between writing books, working in her flower beds and the garden and going fishing with her husband in their boat.

  Fay writes books in various genre – historical mystery series, western series, Amish series set in southern Iowa and two books for Caregivers about Alzheimer's and some novellas.

  She uses 12 font print in her books and 14 font print for her novellas to make them reader friendly. Her books have a mid western Iowa and small town flavor. She pulls the readers into her stories, making it hard for them to put a book down until the reader sees how the story ends. Readers say the characters are fun to get to know and often humorous enough to cause the readers to laugh out loud. The books leave the readers wanting a sequel or a series so they can read about the characters again.