Amish Yummasetti

by Jan Drexler

I can hear you now - "What in the world is Yummasetti???"

Yummasetti is one of those dishes I had always heard about, but I never tried it until I made the casserole for a recent get-together with the ladies from our church.

It's a Pennsylvania Dutch recipe, so you know its roots go way back...at least 50 to 75 years when casseroles became popular.

I updated this recipe the way modern Amish housewives would make it (they're all into convenience foods - don't let the Amish fiction books fool you!), but my original recipe was written by an Amish housewife of a different generation. She used homemade everything - bread for the croutons, cream of mushroom and chicken soups, and sour cream.

Yes, of course you can make all those things from scratch - and they're better for you - but you have to plan on spending a lot of time in the kitchen.

Yummasetti

ingredients (serves 8-10):

2 pounds ground beef
1/2 medium onion, chopped

6 cups cooked and drained Amish noodles, or a 12-ounce package of store bought noodles, cooked and drained - hint: cook the noodles for less time than stated on the package since they continue to cook in the oven
1 cup peas, fresh or frozen
1 (10 3/4 ounce) can cream of mushroom soup
1 (10 3/4 ounce) can cream of chicken soup
1 soup can water
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

1 1/2 cups seasoned croutons hint: I used large croutons. The next time I'll crush them up a bit.

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

First of all, what are "Amish Noodles?" It's just a fancy name for delicious homemade noodles. I used this commercial product from my favorite restaurant:

The restaurant is in Amish Country, but I purchased
this package at my local Walmart.

Brown the ground beef with the onions and put in a large bowl. Add the peas, soups, water, sour cream and salt and pepper. Mix well.

Meanwhile, cook the noodles according to the package directions, but you want them to be slightly underdone.

In a 9" x 13" greased casserole dish, layer the cooked noodles, then ground beef mixture. Top with the seasoned croutons and cover with foil.

Bake in a 350° oven for 50 minutes. Uncover the casserole and sprinkle the cheese on top. Bake for an additional 5 to 10 minutes, or until the cheese is melted.

This was a hit at our supper - it's the perfect comfort food.

Would you ever try eating something with such a funny name?

Jan Drexler lives in the Black Hills of South Dakota with her husband and growing family. When she isn't writing, she loves hiking in the Hills or satisfying her cross stitch addiction.

You can find Jan on Facebook, Jan Drexler, author, or her website, Jan Drexler.com.

Amish Haystacks - not quite as seedy as you might think!

Hi everyone, Jan here. You might remember that I live in the Black Hills of South Dakota, right on the edge of the high prairie.

Around here we have haystacks.

Lots of haystacks.

More this year than normal, since we're getting a lot of rain.

Sometimes our haystack look like this →

And sometimes, they look like this ←

And once in awhile, we see ones that look like this →













But when you go to Amish country, some haystacks look a LOT different.

You see, haystack suppers are popular fund raisers or dinners for a crowd.

Those haystacks often look like this (although this one is pretty tame compared to some I've seen):

The nice thing about haystack suppers is that you can pile on as many or as few of the ingredients you want. The ingredients are as varied as the cooks and everyone has their own favorite combination.

Here's a recipe for a basic Amish Haystack:

(note - there are only ingredients listed, no quantities...that's on purpose!)

Pile the ingredients on the plate in this order:

crushed soda crackers

ground beef with taco seasoning

chopped lettuce

tomatoes, chopped

green peppers, chopped

onions, chopped

spaghetti or rice

shredded cheese or cheese sauce, or both

salsa or ranch dressing, or both

Or you can use these ingredients:

rice

beans with taco seasoning

chopped lettuce

chopped tomatoes

slices ripe olives

corn chips

cheese - shredded or sauce, or both

sour cream

chopped onions

The idea is to put each ingredient, in order, on a buffet line for people to either help themselves or be served.

And be sure to use sturdy plates!

Every year, the Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale has a Haystack Supper to open the festivities. This relief sale is in Goshen, Indiana (my old stomping grounds!) and is one of the largest in the country. They raise funds for Mennonite Relief efforts through the sale of food, activities, auctions, and especially the quilt auction!!!!! 

Look at all those quilts!

This year's sale starts Friday, September 27 at 5:00 pm - that's Eastern time. It's at the Elkhart County Fair Grounds in Goshen.

If you want to learn more about the Michiana Mennonite Relief Sale, go here.

So tell us, what is your favorite meal for a crowd? What is the go-to fund-raiser meal in your area?

Oh, by the way, Thatcher is at the vet's today. Yes, it's time for his...um...surgery. (We told him he's getting tutored!) He'll come home with a cone of shame, so I'll be sure to get pictures of that!

Book Launch Party!!! and Amish Soft Pretzels

It's here! It's finally here!


Saturday afternoon my husband insisted on stopping by Walmart while we were out, and look what we found on the shelves!

To celebrate the retail store release of The Prodigal Son Returns last week, I thought I'd share one of my favorite Amish recipes - Soft Pretzels.

Forget those pretzel places in the mall. They're okay if you're out and need a pretzel fix, but homemade is always better. (Do I hear an AMEN?)

Back in the day (my sons love to use that phrase), newspapers used to run recipe columns in their feature section - usually on Wednesday. When we lived in northern Indiana, the Goshen News had "Aunt Emma". Readers could request recipes, the feature writer (aka Aunt Emma) would collect them, print a selection, and then ask for people to send in recipes for next week's column.

I loved this column. Eighteen years ago I had four young children at home, and they were hungry ALL THE TIME! So I was always looking for new recipes.

And because we were in northern Indiana, many Amish and Conservative Mennonite ladies contributed their favorite recipes to the column.

This recipe is from Waneta of Goshen. Along with sharing the recipe, she added this tip for seasoning the treats: "I use the salt in the bottom of a bag of store-bought pretzels."

Thanks for the recipe, Waneta!

Soft Pretzels with Mustard Dip

Preheat your oven to 450°

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups water
2 Tablespoons yeast
1 teaspoon salt
6 Tablespoons brown sugar
4 1/2 cups bread flour (or all-purpose)

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water (no warmer than 115°) if using regular yeast. If you use instant yeast, mix it in with the other ingredients, and then add the water. Mix well.

Knead the dough for about 5 minutes or until smooth and elastic.

What does "smooth and elastic" mean? Believe me, you'll know when you get there. The dough makes a subtle change in your hands and suddenly it's working with you instead of fighting you.

Let rise until double (about 30 minutes).

(Confession time - I forgot to let it rise, and the pretzels turned out fine.)

Gently punch the dough into a ball and divide into twelve pieces. BTW - a pastry cutter works great for this!

Take each piece and roll it into a rope about 24" long.

And if you have minions around the house (otherwise known as cute children), this is a great step for them to do!

Start slow...

...keep rolling...

...and rolling...

Wait a minute...is it getting a little too thin?

Ooops. Oh well.

Just stick it together and keep going.

Once you get the rope made, it's time to shape the pretzel.

Legend has it that the shape of the pretzel was invented by a monk to help children learn their prayers (the twisted ends symbolized the child's hands folded in prayer), but there's a lot more to pretzel history. If you're interested, here's a link to interesting pretzel history trivia.

There's a trick to making an easy twist.

First, take the two ends and cross them.

Twist them again.

Then bring the ends toward yourself and press them into the loop.

And finally, use your index fingers on each hand to extend the loops up and out to form the pretzel shape.

In the old days, pretzels were dipped into a lye bath before baking.  Yes, I know - lye sounds dangerous to me, too, so we use baking soda instead!

Dissolve 2 Tablespoons baking soda with 2 cups hot water in a shallow bowl. Once you have your pretzel shaped, dip it into the water

(Please ignore the cinnamon roll in this picture. Leftovers from Mother's Day breakfast!)

and lay it on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Now is the time to season your pretzels. I like mine lightly salted, so I use regular table salt. Coarse Kosher salt is traditional, or you can leave them plain.

If you like them sweet (and without the mustard sauce!), you can wait until they're done baking, brush them with melted butter and sprinkle them with cinnamon sugar. Mmmm.....

Bake them for about 7 minutes at 450°, or until lightly golden brown.

And here's the Mustard Sauce:

Mix 1/2 cup plain salad dressing (aka Miracle Whip) with 2 Tablespoons prepared mustard and 2 Tablespoons sugar.

Waneta also said, "Some people prefer salsa or melted Velveeta cheese as a dip."

Or you can slice one in half and use it for a sandwich bun.

Either way, Wynter is ready for her share - 

But Maggie-cat just says, "Leave me 'lone. I'sleepin' in the sun."

IF you have leftover pretzels, you can freeze them. When you want one for a quick snack, just take one out of your freezer bag, run water over it for a second, re-salt, and then microwave. You'll have to experiment with the time...we don't usually have leftovers to freeze!

Jan's Three Bean Salad

Amish Country last spring - this spring was too rainy!

Jan here, back from a week long trip to visit family back in Amish Country.

Now, some of you might think Amish Country is in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, or even Holmes County, Ohio. And while there are large Amish settlements in both of those places, real Amish Country is in LaGrange and Elkhart Counties in northern Indiana.



Of course, when you visit Amish Country, you have to eat. And yes, we went to the best restaurants and had the best soups, mashed potatoes and PIE!!!

But I thought you'd like a look at my dad's refrigerator. This is the kind of stuff he keeps on hand for lunches....

These are the meats for sandwiches.

On the left is turkey...the kind normal people buy.

The top center? That's Lebanon baloney. Pure heaven. Oh my. I can taste it now, just looking at that slice....

But the other stuff? Souse.

Souse is made by taking all the leftover pig stuff after you're done butchering, adding in some onions and peppers, adding some good, rich broth, putting it all in a loaf pan and letting it solidify into a block of...this.

I tried it. I won't be making any at our house. I'll let your imagination figure out what parts of a pig would be leftover after making ham, bacon and sausage.


And now the cheeses.

Clockwise from the lower left: Colby from the Amish cheese factory out near Middlebury, Baby Swiss from Holmes County, smoked Gouda, New York Cheddar packaged by Yoder's Market in Shipshewana, and a bit of Muenster.

When you make a sandwich with wheat bread, spicy mustard, turkey and some of that Baby Swiss, you've got yourself a good sandwich!

Here's the final thing to round out a good, Amish Country lunch - Three Bean Salad.

Dad buys his from Das Dutchman Essenhaus (just the best restaurant in the area. Take a look at it here), and it's about the tastiest commercial Three Bean Salad I've ever had.

My mom used to make it quite often in the summer, and several years ago I developed my own super simple recipe.

Jan's Three Bean Salad

Ingredients:

1 can green beans, drained
1 can yellow (or wax) beans, drained
1 can kidney beans, drained
1/2 small onion, sliced thin and separated into rings
1/4 cup green pepper, cut in 1/2" chunks
1 cup Italian salad dressing

Combine all the ingredients and refrigerate for at least 90 minutes. Drain the excess salad dressing before serving.

Now you're all set for an Amish Country lunch!

Grandma's Sugar Cookies

Introducing.....

 (drum roll, please!)

......the cover of my debut novel!

(Streamers! Confetti! Cheering! Dogs barking!)


Wait, wait, wait! Is that MY name on the cover of that book? I'm just too stinkin' tickled for words!

Yes, it's time for another shameless plug here at the cafe - not quite party time, since the release date for "The Prodigal Son Returns" is still a few months away - but still, we can still have fun with a cover reveal, can't we?

And in honor of all this fun stuff, I'm taking today's post to share the recipe for some cookies that play a part in the story.

These are known around our house as "Grandma's Sugar Cookies," although I know other people call these "Amish Sugar Cookies" or even "those soft cookies you can buy at Walmart."

But you and I know there's no way you can buy Grandma's Sugar Cookies at Walmart. Don't even look down that rabbit trail.

Oh no, because there's a secret ingredient in Grandma's Sugar Cookies...see if you can guess what it is.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar
1 cup butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
5 rounded teaspoons baking powder
7-8 cups flour to make a stiff batter
1 1/2 cups milk

note: notice there is no salt in this recipe - that isn't a typo. There is no salt.

Cream together the butter and sugar, and then add the vanilla and the eggs. Stir together the baking powder and FIVE cups of the flour (the rest is to add later, if needed). Add in the flour mixture and the milk, alternately - this part is important - beating after each addition.

While you're mixing in the flour and milk, keep telling yourself you're making cake, not cookies. With cookies you're trying to make a dough - with cake you're making a delicate batter.

Believe me, you want a batter for these cookies. Grandma told me "the softer the batter, the better." But at the same time, it needs to be a bit thicker than a regular cake batter. You can add more flour than the original five cups if you need to - the amount of flour depends on your air temperature, humidity, altitude, etc. When we lived in the humid lowlands, I used more flour than I do now in the semi-arid highlands.

Since it's almost Valentine's Day, I split the batter into two bowls, and colored one with pink food coloring. (Grandma never did that - it's my own invention).

Refrigerate the batter for a couple hours.



While we're waiting for the batter to chill, I'll tell you what part these cookies play in my story.

Ellie Miller is a widow with three children, and among the people in her life are her husband's elderly aunt and uncle, Miriam and Hezekiah Miller. They had provided a home for Ellie's husband from the time he was sixteen until he married, and they were the closest thing he had to parents after being orphaned as a young boy.

Every time Ellie takes her children to visit Grossmutti and Grossdawdi (Grandma and Grandpa), Grossmutti Miriam always has a container of these soft sugar cookies waiting for them. Sometimes four-year-old Susan is afraid Grossmutti will forget to make the cookies, but seven-year-old Johnny knows better. After all, what would Grossdawdi Hezekiah eat if there weren't any cookies?

But of course Miriam, just like my own Grandma, never forgot to have a fresh batch of these delicious cookies waiting whenever her grandchildren came to visit.

My Grandma always kept the cookies in a big round tin on top of her refrigerator, waiting for us. She never forgot to make them. When I was little, I was convinced she always had those cookies there for her and Grandpa to eat every day. But as I grew older I learned the truth - she made them just for us.

I worked for years to be able to make these cookies the right way. I knew I had done it when I took a batch to my brother one time. He took one bite and said "Now these are Grandma's cookies!"


Oh, and speaking of cookies!!! Has the dough been in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours? Then it's time to get that oven going!

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface to about 3/8" thick...or between 1/4" and 1/2" if you like to guesstimate :)

And be generous with the flour - remember that you made a cake batter, not a cookie dough. Treat the soft batter gently, and use plenty of flour while you're rolling.

Cut out round cookies, or whatever shape you like. I use my great-grandmother's biscuit cutter because...well...it just seems right to do it that way.

And of course, the pink dough is cut out in heart shapes!

Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes, or until they're done. You can tell they're done by lightly touching the top of one of them with your finger. If the depression stays, the cookie needs another minute of baking. But if it springs back, it's done. And don't let the edges get brown - that means they're too well done.

If you find your cookies are browning before the spring test says they're done, lower the heat on your oven a bit.

Grandma and Grandpa
1962

Have you guessed the secret ingredient yet?

It's love.

My grandma had a hard time talking about love, but those cookies spoke for her.

Happy Valentine's Day!