Traverse City Record-Eagle

Lovina Eicher: The Amish Cook

November 24, 2011

Amish Cook: Five kids have the flu

BY LOVINA EICHER Special to the Record-Eagle

This is Saturday afternoon. Our day is going differently than expected.

Five of our children are down with the flu. Daughter Lovina was the first one to get sick; she came home from school yesterday not feeling well. This morning four more of the children woke up with some sort of bug. It seems to be like a stomach flu. I do hope it leaves our house soon at the rest of us won't catch it.

A lot of my day has been spent taking care of the sick. I decided to sit down and write my column in between taking care of the children. None of them seems to want to eat but I have been giving them liquids to keep them hydrated.

Meanwhile, husband Joe is out deer hunting with son Benjamin. Well, Benjamin is really just going along for the fun of it. Some friends who live nearby have offered to let Joe hunt their woods. Joe doesn't have any work next week so he should have time to go deer hunting then also.

Joe and Benjamin left early this morning before daylight and while they saw a deer they didn't get it.

Most of the children said they weren't hungry but I still made breakfast. I made biscuits, sausage gravy and fried eggs. Joe and Benjamin were glad to see the breakfast when they came home around 9:30 a.m.

Daughter Loretta washed dishes and swept floors for me. So far she is not on the sick list and has done a good job of helping me around the house. I brought all the laundry up from the basement that we washed yesterday. Everything was dry so we folded it and put it away. I hung a few pieces outside yesterday but it was so cold and windy it would have been hard to keep all the clothes on the wash line.

I sure do appreciate the lines in the basement to dry clothes during the winter months. With the coal stove down there it does not take long for clothes to dry.

I am glad we did our weekly cleaning yesterday so that is off the list. I'm also glad we did the laundry.

Daughter Elizabeth baked some "outrageous chocolate chip cookies" yesterday. They are delicious but not going as fast as they usually do with all the sickness around.

Hopefully this flu will be gone by Thanksgiving. I bought a 24-pound turkey and we plan to have Jacob and Emma here for Thanksgiving dinner.

This week will go fast with Joe being home and only a three-day school week. The first semester of school is already over and report cards were handed out. Verena seems to be doing well with her school work despite all that has gone on with her over the past 11„2 years.

Kevin, 6, is always excited to come home from school to let me know if he has learned something new. One evening when we were eating supper he said, "Mom, I know the days of the week now." I was amazed that he knew them. Last night, he came home and said "Mom I can count to 100 by fives" and he started counting. He was oh-so-proud to come home with a certificate saying he could count to 100 and wanted me to hang it on the refrigerator. He said, "Now I need to learn how to count to 1 million."

Lovina, 7, is a good help with Kevin. She is always trying to teach him new things that she is learning in first grade.

Our thoughts and prayers are with our friend Linda and family as she struggles with cancer. May God be with them as they go through this trial of life. Linda's husband and daughter are both teachers at our school and her son has been our children's bus driver for years. May God bless them and all of you wonderful readers.

I will share a new biscuit recipe that I tried this morning. They turned out nice and flaky. I like to try different kinds of biscuits instead of using the same ones all the time.

Southern Biscuits

2 c. sifted flour

4 t. baking powder

1/2 t. salt

1/2 t. cream of tartar

2 T. sugar

1/2 c. shortening

1 egg, beaten

2/3 c. milk

Preheat the oven to 450°. In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, sugar and cream of tartar. Add shortening and blend. Pour the milk into the mixture slowly. Add egg and stir until well blended. More flour can be added if needed. Drop by tablespoon onto cookie sheet and bake 12 to 15 minutes.

Lovina Eicher is Old Order Amish. She hand-writes this column from her home in southern Michigan. Anyone with cultural or cooking questions can send them to: Lovina Eicher, The Amish Cook, P.O. Box 2144, Middletown, OH 45042.

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