Product Description

The residents of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, are famous for their Pennsylvania Dutch cooking. With Pepper Cabbage, Chicken Pot Pie, Creamed Celery, Apple Dumplines, Whoopie Pies, Funnel Cakes, and Shoofly Pie, this new cookbook overflows with their old-time, traditional recipes. Stoltzfus is author of the enormously popular Favorite Recipes from Quilters. Cooks from every corner of Lancaster County and the various sections of Lancaster City submitted their favorite family recipes to be included in this timeless collection. From their kitchens comes this compilation, filled with recipes which are easy to prepare and pleasant to the palate. A collection of essays also profiles particular Lancaster County villages and several sections of Lancaster City. A wonderful treasure for people everywhere.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #326231 in Books
• Published on: 1969-12-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 251 pages

From the Back Cover
The residents of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, are famous for their cooking. Cooks from every corner of Lancaster county and the various neighborhoods of Lancaster City submitted their favorite family recipes to be included in this timeless collection. From their kitchens come these more than 500 recipes which are easy to prepare and pleasant to the palate. A wonderful treasure for people everywhere.

About the Author
A native of Lancaster County, Louise Stoltzfus lives in the Seventh Ward neighborhood of Lancaster City. She grew up in an Amish family near Strasburg, Pennsylvania, from whom she inherited her cooking tastes. She is the author of Favorite Recipes from Quilters and co-author with Phyllis Pellman Good of The Central Market Cookbook and The Best of Mennonite Fellowship Meals. Stoltzfus is also author of Two Amish Folk Artists: The Story of Henry Lapp and Barbara Ebersol.

Also a Lancaster County native, Jan L. Mast lives with her husband, Dean, near the village of Smoketown, Pennsylvania. She grew up in a Mennonite family in Leola with a long tradition of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking styles. She is the author of The School Picnic, a children's book about the last day of school in a typical Amish community. She also collaborated with Rachel Pellman to create the book, Patterns for Making Amish Dolls and Doll Clothes.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction A place deeply rooted in its rural farm beginnings, the fertile land of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, yields hundreds of acres of crops and produce each year. Gardens abound. Truck farms thrive. Traditional corn, hay, and cattle farmers run their machinery alongside suburban housing developments and growing towns and boroughs. Many of these farmers have expanded their operations to include cottage industries-quilt shops, roadside vegetable and fruit stands, health and bulk food stores, and larger ventures such as furniture or farm equipment manufacturing plants. The people who live in Lancaster County today reflect years of tradition as well as an increasing diversity and multiculturalism. The thriving city of Lancaster, founded in 1729-30, is home to persons of many different cultural understandings and practices. Art galleries, women's and men's specialty stores, delis, and cafes often give the city a cosmopolitan feel. Many of the villages, towns, and boroughs scattered throughout the County also have a particular history, often revolving around specific national or religious groupings. Places such as Lititz, Manheim, Strasburg, and Columbia date to the mid-1700s, within 50 years of the establishment of Lancaster County and the arrival of the first European settlers. The area's proximity to the vast eastern seaboard cities makes it a natural vacation hub. Visitors come to experience the unique and living story of Amish and Mennonite culture. They return to participate in a slower pace of life and to drive along winding back country roads where few cars pass and neighbors all know each other. They also come back to enjoy concerts in the park, downtown festivals, and the abundance of autumn auctions and farmers' fairs. From the various neighborhoods in Lancaster City, from towns and villages such as Adamstown, Peach Bottom, Bainbridge, Kirkwood, and Mount Joy, cooks and lovers of food throughout the County share their favorite recipes, as we'll as short vignettes about their lives. Widely known for their Pennsylvania Dutch food heritage, many Lancaster Countians have made room for other ways of cooking, including a greater health consciousness and willingness to experiment with different food traditions. The seven sweets and seven sours of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking are in this collection. Chicken potpie, shoofly pie, and funnel cakes still please many a Lancastrian's palate. However, stromboli and burritos and egg rolls also often find their way onto the tables of Lancaster homes-reflecting the variety of peoples who now live in the County-and recipes for such foods also are included here. To the many people from all parts of the County who gave of their valuable time and energy to collect recipes and to help test them, we express our grateful thanks. We also wish to thank the men and women of various volunteer fire companies and auxiliaries, as well as those of other community centers throughout Lancaster County, who graciously answered our questions and helped spread the word about our project. The recipes and stories in this book provide a way for people everywhere to share in the vibrant life and treasured history of those who call Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, home. We thank you for helping make that possible. -Louise Stoltzfus and Jan Mast Bird-in-Hand Called Enterprise as late as the 1880s, Bird-in-Hand served the surrounding Mennonite and Amish farm community as a stop on the Pennsylvania Railroad line. Built around the area where the railroad crossed the Old Philadelphia Pike (Route 340), the hamlet eventually became more easily identified with the local hotel and tavern which practiced under the bird-in-hand sign. In 1910 the fire company witnessed some significant excitement when lightning struck Jake and Fannie Beiler's barn on a stormy summer afternoon. Jake had taken a load of wheat to the railroad station. While he sat waiting to unload, a neighbor galloped into town with the message that his barn was on fire. Unhitching his horses from the load of wheat, Jake ran over to the local firehouse and hitched them to the firewagon. At breakneck speed he dashed the mile-and-a-half east to his farm on Weavertown Road. In spite of his heroic efforts, Jake Beiler was unable to save the barn. Today, the Bird-in-Hand Fire Company serves the surrounding community with its busy volunteer fire organizations, which include many local Amish men and women. Well known for its annual fall ham supper, the company recently built a new addition, bringing its firehouse and shining modern fire engines into the 21 century. Stretching east along Route 340 from Mill Creek as far as Ronks Road, where open Amish farmland takes over the landscape, Bird-in-Hand embraces a popular local restaurant and motel on its eastern edge as well as a manufacturing complex on its western edge. At the village center a sprawling farmer's market and several small gift and curiosity shops line the busy highway which bisects the town.

Customer Reviews

I've got lots of pages bookmarked
This is the kind of cookbook that friends and neighbors create, friendly, unintimidating and comfortable. The recipes are for everyday, hearty food. Nothing is fancy or modified for our health-conscious times nor does it contain recipes to challenge jaded tastes. They are the recipes our mothers grandmothers exchanged and that we loved as kids. Definitely worth having!

Very good for its category
I haven't cooked from this book yet but looked at it carefully and will comment that it seems very good to excellent for its category or type of cooking offered: old fashioned, daily cooking, with lots of casseroles (vegetable and meat and spaghetti) with items likely to be on hand from any grocery store. This is not a health food cookbook although one could substitute healthier ingredients for some used. The chapter on potatoes looks excellent with several good recipes for scalloped potatoes. If you are reforming your diet you should eat more raw foods than cooked for better health, alhtough some cooked vegetables are better for you than fresh or should be eaten in conjunction with fresh. And a lot of baked dishes with tons of butter, white flour, pasta as in this book is not recommended but, as I say, you can modify recipes and many are easy, good, daily recipes to use. Beyond the daily ease, what's especially nice about this book is it easy-to-read format. Recipes are in black print, nicely spaced, and stand out so you can follow them well. Really a great cookbook overall.

This is a must for people who want good everyday food!
Louis Stotzfus was also involved in putting together a A Quilter's Cookbook which is equally as good as this one. I bought the Quilter's cookbook first and was so impressed that when I found out about the Lancaster County Cookbook I had to have it in my library at once. This purchase is for a friend. The recipes in both books use what most people have in their kitchen on a weekly basis and the family loves them. Each have their own favorite. The Chocolate Bash is to die for!! This book is like having a 1000 grandma's bring their best recipe to your pot luck! Roxane Hepker, Milton, WA