Last week I shared a recipe from a favorite pastor’s wife at my current church, Trinity Presbyterian. This week I’m reaching way way back to share a recipe from a truly sweet saint of my growing up years, Lizzie Weaver, at my home church, North Goshen Mennonite.
Lizzie and Henry Weaver
Isn’t she just the cutest? (Some of the older women of the church at that time would have still worn covering strings as shown here, as did my grandmother.)
Lizzie Weaver was the deacon’s wife at North Goshen Mennonite, before my mother became the deacon’s wife. (Wouldn’t The Deacon’s Wife make a lovely title for a novel? Wait til you read one of the dreaded duties of the deacon’s wife in my next blog post.) In the first half of the 20th century, a deacon in Mennonite practice was not just a trustee or an elder of the church, but an ordained pastoral assistant in the tradition of I Timothy 3:8.
J.C. Wenger’s history of North Goshen 1936-1986 documents my memory of “Cottage Meetings” held in homes as Wednesday night prayer meetings, and we enjoyed going to Henry and Lizzie Weaver’s home partly because they were both just dears; I’m sure as children we looked forward to the “Coffee Cookies” she served that my mother submitted for the North Goshen Cookbook published sometime during the 60s.
Lizzie lived to the age of 94 and died in 1980–long after my parents moved away from North Goshen. J.C. Wenger also commends the older women of North Goshen for the Pilgrim’s Prayer Circle they convened, which was “a veritable [prayer] power house for the congregation.” It was started by Paul Mininger’s mother Hettie Mininger (Paul served as president of Goshen College for a time). These women, though we as children thought of them as ancient and “cute little old ladies,” were undoubtedly strong matriarchs of the church.
Next week I look forward to sharing here the first of three blog posts out of the biography My Calling to Fulfill: The Orie O Miller Story by historian John Sharp. Orie was an Indiana contemporary of Lizzie, and my distant cousin (more well known for his ties to Akron, Pa.), whose father, D.D. Miller, served as bishop over North Goshen for a time. I’ll also delve more into Henry Weaver’s intersections with my father—and the impact on my own life.
For now, enjoy these old timey, easy-to-make cookies with me, at least vicariously!
Lizzie Weaver’s Coffee Cookies
2 cups sugar (I used white but I bet Lizzie used brown)
½ cup liquid coffee
2 eggs beaten
4 cups flour
1 cup shortening
1 cup raisins or nuts or both
1 Tablespoon baking powder
½ cup boiling water
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
Cream the sugar and shortening. Add the boiling water. Dissolve the soda in the coffee and add to other ingredients. Add eggs, raisins, and vanilla. Sift the baking powder and flour together and add to the other ingredients. Stir well. Add nuts if desired. Drop on greased cookies sheets with teaspoon and bake at 350 degrees for 11-13 minutes.
These make great dunking cookies–evoking another powerful memory of dunking cookies with my grandma and grandpa–in coffee of course. (I “marked” those with raisins with two extra dots of raisins on top, so that those who don’t like raisins could just enjoy the nutty version with plain old pecans.)
Mildly amusing side story: These cookies were made most famous in our own family because of the time we could not eat them! My oldest sister baked a batch using a half cup of instant coffee as it comes out of the jar—not liquid coffee like you drink. Our family lore became “The cookies so bad even the dog didn’t eat them.” (Note: I changed the above version to specify liquid coffee so no one else would make that mistake.)
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Looking for your stories here: memories of matriarchs of your church and why you remember them?
Did or does your church have deacons? What role do they serve?
Or, if you prefer, flopped recipe stories??
Betty Allen is a fantastic cook of southern heritage who grew up near Tallahassee Florida. For my senior year of high school (1969-1970) I lived an hour away over in Blountstown, so I know that heritage a bit.
But I first met her when my then boyfriend and I started going to Trinity Presbyterian Church in 1975, which was founded by Betty’s husband, Don Allen. I should say founded by the Allens with a lot of help from God and the people who became charter members in 1963.
Don was the minister we chose to marry us in May 1976. In 1980, Don finally persuaded us to finally join Trinity. We were never in a house church with them (like a small group but with a mission focus) so I never really got to know Betty during those years.
Soon after we joined they left for a new pastorate serving Capitol Hill Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C. Eventually Don and Betty retired and returned to the Shenandoah Valley in the late 1990s and ever since, I have been in the same house church with Don and have enjoyed finally getting to know Betty, although she belonged to a different house church for many years, until health issues got in the way.
Betty and Don Allen
This woman is one of a kind both as a pastor’s wife and host. I love the tea carts she prepares when we meet at their house, and especially love her always delicious Chicken Casserole which is a standard fall back if she needs to take a covered dish somewhere. Without further ado:
Betty Allen’s Favorite Chicken Casserole
Bottom portion
2 cups cooked chicken, chopped/shredded
2 cans cream of chicken soup (low sodium, or make your own for healthier options)
2 cups cooked rice (brown or white)
½ cup mayonnaise
4-5 boiled eggs, peeled and diced
4 teaspoons lemon juice
Mix all together. Pour into greased 9 x 12 baking dish.
Topping
Combine:
1 small (2 oz or so) package slivered almonds
1 bag (14 oz) Pepperidge Farm cornbread stuffing
2 teaspoons butter or margarine melted
Stir topping together and spread out on top of chicken and creamed soup mixture in baking dish.
Bake in 325 degree oven for 45-60 minutes, until center bubbles like it is good and hot. Place foil on top of the pan if casserole gets too brown.
Let set 10 minutes and serve. Serves 6-8.
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If you’re not familiar with Whatever Happened to Dinner, and all the recipes it includes, check the link.
Here’s yet another vegetable that I learned to love after I became an adult. I think I have written about how on the farm in the 50s, we consumed only the basics and mostly what we grew in our garden: green beans, corn, peas, carrots, celery, tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, lettuce, onions, turnips, potatoes, squash, sweet potatoes.
No lovely spinach, limas, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, peppers or asparagus. What a shame.
Once I left home, I have learned to love all these. For my family, all these were outliers. I’d barely heard of the even more exotic ones like avocado, kale, kohlrabi, and leeks, or the southern trio of okra, turnip greens, and collard greens.
I’m happy to have grown up on a farm but even happier to widen my taste pallet after growing up to enjoy most of these, along with what to me were many new grains. When my family moved to north Florida, I was soon introduced to the “southern trio” at my high school cafeteria; a year in eastern Kentucky with a Voluntary Service unit of slightly older young adults expanded my repertoire even more; college friends and living in Spain brought a host of new foods to my tongue and tummy. I think most of us like many more foods as adults than we did growing up.
And so asparagus. In my boarding house in Spain, for the main meal served around 1-2 p.m., we usually had three courses, including an appetizer of various wonderful soups or pastas. My roommates and I also often experimented with many packaged Knorr soups for our lighter evening “cena” or supper that could be made on our one burner camping propane “stove,” in our room. The asparagus soup had a delightful taste and small flakes of dried asparagus. We often stirred in one or more of Spain’s excellent cheeses.
When my youngest daughter lived at home for four years after college (and worked hard at a bank, no sloucher!) she wanted us to start an asparagus bed. It has never done well, but I have now read of ways I need to improve it, including using our own wood ashes and even Epsom salts. This was my main picking this year. A few days later I found two more spears and stashed them in my lunch bag with a small bag of shredded Parmesan cheese, thinking I would maybe make them into a small batch of soup in the office kitchen. I knew I had some butter in a container in the office refrigerator, and I could lean on the office supply of half and half cream (and make sure I volunteer to provide the next quart sometime soon!)
I thought it may be worth sharing here if you have only a little asparagus (perhaps that you found on a hunt!) or it’s the first spear of the season, or the last. Or if you’re the only one who loves this stuff in your family! I was pretty happy with the way it turned out using my quick grabs for whatever was convenient at home and then at the office.
Quick and basic asparagus soup for one (my invention)
2 long spears fresh asparagus, chopped into 1 inch pieces
1 – 2 teaspoons water
1/2 cup of shredded fresh Parmesan cheese (not dried/grated)
1 tsp butter
1/4 cup half and half
In ramekin or other small bowl, boil asparagus pieces in water and butter for 1-2 minutes in microwave. Stir at 30 second intervals, and to gauge desired doneness.
Add half and half cream and Parmesan. Stir well. Cook 1 – 1 1/2 minutes more; stirring in 30 second intervals. Garnish with more Parmesan or parsley.
Makes 1 ramekin bowl. You can easily increase these quantities to serve 3 or 4.
The Parmesan cheese itself supplied a lot of flavor and “seasoning;” if I had been at home I might have added dried mustard, garlic flakes or seasoning salt.
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Mary Beth Lind has a much more complete recipe for asparagus soup in Simply in Season cookbook, available here. There she recommends using low fat milk and dried milk in the soup to increase nutrition and cut fat. Of course!
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What foods did you learn to like or adore as an adult?
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I wonder now why our food and vegetable repertoire was so limited? I can understand not buying vegetables we didn’t or couldn’t raise (I don’t raise broccoli, for instance, too many worms and bugs). Ideas? Insights?
Pobai (pronounced “po-bee”) Hefelfinger was a pastor’s wife and also loved painting. We first met her when she and her husband William Hefelfinger retired and moved to Sunnyside Presbyterian Retirement Community in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Parkinson’s Disease stole away the smooth functioning body movements most of us enjoy, but it never stole her giving and loving spirit. Nor did it filch her ability to paint.
I recently came into possession of one of Pobai’s awesome watercolors (this one somehow reminds me of a Renoir painting) which includes our two oldest daughters, Michelle and Tanya. For the record and my Trinity Presbyterian friends, the girls in this painting include from bottom left and around the table, Michelle Davis, Rebecca Held, Pam Starick, Tanya Davis, Catherine Barber, and Eleanor Held.
I wanted to know more about Pobai and her paintings but I was having trouble finding anything online. Pobai died in 1997 at the age of 73, a few years after her husband succumbed to complications of Alzheimer’s. I sat down with our pastor of 24 years and still a good friend, Ann Held, now retired (young!). Ann’s daughters Rebecca and Eleanor were close in age to our daughters, Michelle and Tanya.
Ann’s husband, John Held, was the children’s choir director at Trinity which became a dear and valued part of their elementary years. Ann remembered that the scene in this painting, which was created from a photograph, was most likely taken at the end of the Sunday school year when the choir typically had a picnic at church or a park to celebrate the year. (And also, let’s face it, celebrating the end of trudging to late Sunday afternoon choir practice which John often made a fun delight, but sometimes girls—and their parents— don’t always like to quit playing or relaxing and hurry off to church.) They especially loved the annual trip to a weeklong Music and Worship Conference at Montreat, N.C. for children and adult choirs in the Presbyterian Church, and learned to know their pastor and choir director very well as they all shared a cabin together.
John Held, in a cabin at Montreat, checking music literature.
Ann said creating and giving paintings to people or the institutions that were important to her was Pobai’s gift and ministry.
William Hefelfinger and Pobai, left, talking to two visitors at our church in the early 90s.
In those later years, I can imagine painting was also an outlet and survival mechanism for coping with her and her husband’s ailments. Pobai would assist with artistic efforts at church such as helping make a banner, artwork at a retreat, or help with Celebration Sundays several times a year where we typically enjoyed intergenerational activities often in an outdoor setting.
Pobai listening in with other women at a Trinity event.
I tracked down Pobai’s paintings at several nearby Presbyterian institutions including this large depiction of Massanetta Springs Conference Center (a synod-owned camp, conference and retreat center that anyone can rent or book for such occasions) that presides over the fireplace in the dining hall there.
Pobai’s painting at Massanetta Springs, of the grounds and wonderful old hotel there.
I love that the painting alludes to a favorite resting place at Massanetta: the rocking chairs on the front porch entrance way. (below)
At the nearby Sunnyside Communities for retirement living, one of Pobai’s best paintings of irises is found on the third floor of the Pannel Health Center. When our church goes Christmas caroling to those in health care there, we old-timers are sure to point out the Pobai painting.
Pobia’s watercolor on the third floor of Pannel Health Center, Sunnyside.
Ann owns a lovely chalk drawing of her two daughters created by Pobai. Ann’s husband, John, died of cancer in 2010, a traumatic loss for our whole congregation but especially his daughters and wife.
Left to right: Eleanor and Rebecca Held.
There’s also a flower painting in the church administrative office at Trinity.
Still life in Trinity’s administrative office.
Before our new pastor, Stephanie Wing Sorge moved into her new pastor’s office, several of us painted her new digs and the “Children’s Choir Picnic” was bequeathed to me in order to make room for whatever the new pastor wanted to hang on her new office walls.
Pobai’s painting “Children’s Choir Picnic” will watch over my grandchildren’s toy corner in the living room of our home.
I’m happy to be the painting’s temporary steward until someone wants it back for the church walls or elsewhere. We will enjoy it and the memories as we pay tribute to a woman who never stopped painting and reached out to touch others in beautiful ways until she was just too ill.
Just before finishing and publishing this, I looked closer at Pobai’s signature on one of her paintings. I had been spelling it Pobie (which is how the church memorial plaque spells it). Wrong! Her true spelling was Pobai!
Using the new spelling, I was able to find a current painter in the arts guild in Rockbridge County, Lexington Va., Eleanor Penn, who mentions studying with Pobai as being important for her own artistic style. Pobai and her husband lived and pastored there for a number of years. I’m sure there were many others.
But my real find—was an article in the local James Madison University’s student newspaper The Breeze, where Pobai is quoted saying, “My artistic intention is to paint for the sheer joy of painting. I try to communicate some of the joy I feel in the presence of beauty.”
Now that sounds like the sweet and lovely woman who was Pobai! The article also mentioned that there was a display at JMU’s Women’s Resource Center celebrating women artists (usually students, but they had chosen Pobai’s work and another artist Rebecca Flores because “They not only offer visual stimulation, but also intellectual stimulation.” The director of the center at the time met Pobai in an art class and was so impressed with her work that she asked her to submit her pieces to the art committee.
Pobai is quoted saying, “I want to be famous and there are not so many years left,” and that she paints every chance she gets. Pobai was recognized for her art with a John Singleton Copley award in Boston, Mass., and was a charter member of the National Museum of Women in Arts.
My blog and writing is not so famous either but I’m thrilled to let Pobai’s work and joyful spirit shine a little longer through this medium—now that I know how to spell her name correctly! (Please don’t tell me I have Hefelfinger wrong.)
Pobai, between her husband William, left, and my husband, right, at a church Epiphany dinner in the home of Jim and Mae Guthrie. Jim (far right) was the chaplain at Sunnyside before retiring.
What do you do for the sheer joy of doing it?
What would you like to be remembered for?
I found another of Pobai’s paintings at Invaluable.com’s art auction. Which of Pobai’s paintings you’ve seen here would be your favorite?
My great niece has got me way beat. This is my sister’s granddaughter and she is only 11.
She has had her own children’s book published, in hardback, complete with color illustrations (drawn with markers). It is for sale on a website. I love it!
I love that creative and industrious teachers make the effort to give their students lasting keepsakes of their work—and introducing them to the world of publishing. I love that Jade had to write a bio for herself in third person just like in the back of any book, design a cover, and think through the story’s pacing. I don’t know Mrs. Cook at Jade’s school, Elm Road Elementary but I think I would l love her for my child’s teacher.
The youngest of five children in her immediate family, Jade has two brothers at home, a married sister, a grown brother, and lots of cousins, step-cousins, two nephews, a niece in heaven, and some step-nieces. Anyone with more than one or two children knows how easy it is to get lost in the “herd” of children of a bigger family, as Jade’s grandmother once said.
In Falling, Jade writes of a picnic where her grandmother—my sister—dropped by to enjoy s’mores over a campfire but had a bit of a surprise. Don’t worry, the short tale ends well! I love the opening line of Jade’s book, and detect a teacher’s prompt to help the children remember or think of sensory details here:
“I could feel the hot fire on my face and cheeks.”
Nice evocative opening. (Jade, if you read this, “evocative” just means it helps me feel what you felt and remember. And “sensory” means things that you feel with your senses like touch, smell, taste, sound.)
On page 5, Jade has another good sensory detail: “Crack!” (That’s when the “falling” happens.)
Jade’s drawing of her grandma driving away into the night.
That’s enough of a book review for this short book so I don’t give it all away. Jade chose a good title too, Falling, which makes me wonder “Who fell?” “What happened?” “Is whoever or whatever fell ok?”
And I was pleased to read that THAT was the first question Jade asked the person after the fall happened. “Are you ok?”
On her author page with her bio and classroom photo, Jade gives great advice to other young authors: “Write from the heart and be positive.” She also tells what she enjoys doing in her free time and that “one day Jade would love to travel to Disney World.”
Jade has great parents who love each other and all the children very much, but like many others, they’ve had their struggles. So now I have some advice for my great niece: I hope too you get to go to Disney World someday, even if you have to wait until you are grown. With your positive and caring outlook—and one book already published—(not to mention life with three older brothers) I’m sure you can accomplish whatever you set out to do.
One of my favorite photos of Jade as a toddler 🙂
Love,
Your great aunt Mel.
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Student Treasures is one website where teachers and students can get their books published. Do you know of others?
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What advice would you have for young author Jade or any aspiring writer or artist?
This past year I loved working with Marianne Jantzi, a young Amish mother near Kitchener, Ontario, to publish her first book, Simple Pleasures: Stories from My Life as an Amish Mother.
It was especially enjoyable for me because she is about the age of one of my daughters and while a little ahead of them in the number of children she has (four), her youngest child is sandwiched between my grandchildren in age. So I felt a little like a grandma-at-a-distance in hearing her aside about promising a popsicle if they were good while she talked to me on the phone.
I also felt like maybe a mentor in helping her figure out how to take magazine columns for The Connection she’d written over the past five years and synthesize them into a book. Which is exactly what I have done 4-5 times in the books I’ve been able to have published over the last 30 something years. (You can read two shorter excerpts from Marianne’s book here, download an entire free chapter here, read more about the publishing process with an Amish author who writes her work by hand, and an exclusive interview with Marianne by Ardell Stauffer on our company blog, Mennobytes. (Scroll to the end for the interview.)
I would love to meet her family someday, but meanwhile her oldest daughter Alyssa first baked one of the recipes shared in Marianne’s book, a simple four-ingredient recipe for chocolate chip bars. Everyone has a recipe for chocolate chip cookies or bars, but I am dumbfounded as I look at this simple recipe and wonder how many other cookies or bars could be streamlined to this simplicity.
Alyssa’s Chocolate Chip Bars
1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 cups flour
1 cup chocolate chips
Cream butter and brown sugar.
Add flour and chips.
Mix well. Spread in greased 9 x 12 pan.
Bake at 350 degrees until golden brown, about 25 minutes. Cut into bars after 10-15 minutes. Makes about 32 bars.
Of course I “tested” these at the MennoMedia/Herald Press office. One man emailed his thanks: “Yum. How can you go wrong with flour, sugar, chocolate and butter?”
They are rich and buttery good—and delicious warm right out of the oven. In defense of the other ingredients most of us usually add to a bar type cookie like this, I think the normal eggs, baking soda/powder and vanilla added help keep the bars a little moister as time goes on. But in an Amish family of 7-10 children, leftover bars wouldn’t last that long anyway.
So for a simple recipe the kids or grandkids can almost master themselves, this is an awesome find! Thanks, Marianne and Alyssa!
The bent over, diminutive elderly woman with a headscarf, lifted her hands to the heavens and with a grateful spark in her eye, murmured some words in Russian.
She had gathered infant and toddler clothes from our clothing racks at the Trinity Clothes Closet, along with some dresses, sweaters and tops for women. We carefully folded and placed the clothing in three large white kitchen type garbage bags.
Her companion, a younger woman in her 30s commented in perfect English, “This is her work. She says it is a miracle.”
Her work? A miracle? Clothes donated which we in turn make available free to those in need?
Sometimes we wonder where all the clothes go and this night—because the two women seemed open to chat, I asked if the young woman had a baby—often a good conversational opening especially if the clients have gathered baby clothes.
“Oh, no, she sends these to an orphanage in Ukraine where the children are deaf—or blind, I’m not sure” the younger woman replied, adding “And some to her friends and family over there.”
I said appreciatively, “Oh, wow, that can get expensive.” She responded that the older woman uses her “retirement” to send the clothes.
Suddenly a book I’m reading about the horrible suffering and starvation experienced by people in the Ukraine during and after World War I in the early 1920s comes to life. Here was a woman—likely at least as old as my mother (91) who had been born into that misery in Ukraine about that time, the early 20s. The book is a biography (which I plan to review) of Orie O Miller, a Mennonite born in the late 1800s who was also moved as a young man by that torment and went on to be instrumental in founding the world wide Mennonite Central Committee (relief organization). How can it be that 100 years later humans are still inflicting such wretchedness on each other?
Nadezhda, age 93, and her granddaughter Natalya
I had to know more. I asked the younger woman for their names, if I could take pictures, and share the story online. She translated to the older woman who immediately pulled from her purse a bent brochure about her orphanage mission—which turns out to be for deaf children.
Natalya Zotov is the granddaughter of the older woman, Nadezhda Zotova, who is actually 93 years old. I didn’t find out how long ago she came to the U.S. but her granddaughter speaks great English so I’m guessing the family emigrated sometime after the opening of the Soviet Union in the early 90s when so many came to the U.S. as political refugees.
At the Clothes Closet our church, Trinity Presbyterian, operates, (with the generous help of volunteers from Muhlenberg Lutheran Church and a youth group from Harrisonburg Baptist Church), we have seen various waves of immigrants over the decades access the donated clothes—a supply which seems unending thanks to the shopping habits of (mostly) North American women. We had many visitors from the former Soviet Union in the 90s, folks from Mexico and Central American heavily in the early 2000s, and Iraqi and middle eastern refugees from 2005 on. (Of course there are many U.S. born and bred clients.) Some of these help us by donating clothing back to the closet and also volunteering—sometimes in order to get references for job seeking. In the past we have also been the recipient especially of Russian and Middle Eastern pastries. It’s been one way to stay in touch with and learn from other cultures without leaving home.
Sometimes we learn, like we did this night, that we are also partners in the “work” or ministry of women like Nadezhda, who come to the U.S., experience the bounty we have here, and so desperately want to share it with friends and family and ministries back in their home countries that they send clothing with folks traveling back (stuffed in extra luggage), load it in cars heading to Central America, or pay the hefty postage to mail or ship it. Nadezhda praises God for us, because to her it is a “miracle” that we give the clothes out free.
Yes, we know we are sometimes shafted—people who get clothes and turn around and sell them at yard sales. Not much of a way to get rich, but if it helps them pay rent or buy groceries, and as long as we North Americans go through as much clothing as we do, we don’t have a problem with it, as the supply seems endless. It also keeps the clothing out of landfills. (We do run short on infant and children’s clothing sometimes, especially for little boys. Wonder why?!)
The opportunity to share freely reminds us of one of the theme verses for our ministry from Isaiah 55:
“… you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.” Which in turn is a reminder of the beautiful and costly gift God gave to us—which we receive without money and no price.
Some of the faithful Trinity volunteers at the Clothes Closet.
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Yours truly on a recent Saturday morning hanging up clothing.
I’d love to hear of others who have unusual outreach ministries like that of Nadezhda–at whatever age!
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Harrisonburg area folks, we invite you to share news of the Trinity free clothes closet with your church, and always welcome infant and children’s clothing! Here’s another post with additional stories.
I first made tortillas out of More-with-Less Cookbook and was somewhat astounded to learn how easy they were. (Well, not as easy as sliding them out of a package, but significantly better. Homemade.) They’re so easy to make you can stir them up anytime you run out of store-bought tortillas (and don’t want to run to the store), or when you are in the mood for a nice cheese or egg quesadilla.
I also recommended these as an easy recipe out of Whatever Happened to Dinner book and included it in the 10 Easy Recipe PDF I mentioned last week. Although I do admit rolling out a thin tortilla may be a bit stretching or daunting if you’re a 93 year old guy trying to cook much of anything for the first time in your life (as he indicated when he first wrote to me).
Rolling them out thinly is indeed the challenge, but they are forgiving. These were a little on the tough or too-much-flour side, because I ended up using a bit more wheat flour than I probably should of.
Carmen Wyse, one of the food editors for Whatever Happened to Dinner, tells how she first discovered how easy tortillas were to make, with the recipe she included in the book:
Tortillas
Carmen Wyse
On one camping trip, I tried making breakfast tacos out of store-bought tortillas. They were crumbly and weren’t working well. A camping companion said she always makes her own tortillas. I figured if she could, I could too, and I have been making them ever since. I usually make a double batch and keep the leftovers for snacks throughout the week. I can always count on a big hug from my twelve-year-old son when he sees me starting to make these.
3 cups / 750 ml flour (Carmen uses up to 1 cup whole wheat*)
1 teaspoon salt
½–1 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup / 75 ml vegetable oil
1 cup / 250 ml warm water
Mix the dry ingredients together. Add the vegetable oil, and mix with pastry cutter or forks until crumbly like cornmeal. Add 1 cup warm water. 
Kneed a bit to bring it together, cover with plastic wrap, and let it sit for 30 minutes to several hours. Form into 12 balls.
I halved the recipe for this small batch.
Heat a cast-iron (or whatever you have) skillet to medium high. Roll each tortilla out as thin as you can, and plop it in the hot skillet.
When it starts blistering, turn it over for about 30 seconds. Sometimes I [Carmen] hold the edges down some to keep the tortilla from puffing up. Put it in a tortilla warmer or under several kitchen towels.
Tortilla with egg and cheese omelet and chive garnish.
*I added an asterisk here to explain that Carmen grinds her own wheat berries, which means she is able to use very fresh flour, which tends to result in lighter and fluffier tortillas (or whatever you’re making), I’m told. Not to mention healthier. That may account for why mine turned out a little pasty.
Below are the original ingredient quantities I used from More-with-Less Cookbook—which by the way, is coming out with a 40th Anniversary Edition later this year including yummy photos of some favorite or intriguing dishes! Can’t wait to see it in print. (And if you like the “More-with-Less 40th Anniversary Edition” Facebook page, you will be find fun testimonials for the next couple of months from dozens of cooks who have grown up with or used the book for years and years.)
Tortillas in More-with-Less
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
¼ cup large or shortening
½ cup lukewarm water
(Mix and cook as in directions above.)
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I love Carmen’s camping story. What’s the best or your favorite recipe received from a friend?
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Do you grind your own flour? I know grinders are expensive (Carmen got one for a birthday, Christmas, Mother’s Day, all-in-one gift one year, I think). But so worth it, according to Carmen. There are alternatives to wheat grinders (coffee grinders work, some say). I’d love to hear your ideas.
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Never owned a copy of MWL? This classic edition of More-with-Less by Doris Janzen Longacre will stay in print (I’m told) even after the 40th anniversary edition comes out later in 2016.
More-with-Less Cookbook
Whatever Happened to Dinner?
I doubt that we’re the only family with children and grandchildren who didn’t quite manage to get an Easter photo of all the family members.
I have learned that if a group photo happens, it’s great, and if it doesn’t happen, well, like my friend Martha always used to say, “That’s life.” She used to say it, not because she’s physically gone, but because her great mind is now gone. I’m very sad, but that too is life.
With toddlers and babies in tow—naps, feedings, wanting to change out of sometimes uncomfortable or chilly Easter outfits as soon as possible, mild tantrums—these things can all get in the way of managing an Easter family photo when together.
That’s ok. That’s life. Because after all, we know that a beloved but controversial religious leader being crucified on a cross and then experiencing an amazing resurrection is all about getting a beautiful Easter picture with everybody in suits and smiles.
The important thing about life is not the perfect family photo, as my kids are teaching me, but that you truly live it—every, every minute, (as another great mind used to say—Thorton Wilder, in his play, “Our Town.”)
We actually managed to all gather together quickly outside the church building while waiting for the Easter egg hunt and posed for a picture. I grabbed a dear man, Mark, (and he’ll feel terrible if he reads this, but it is SO NOT his fault), and I neglected to turn the camera switch to “take photos” instead of “view photos.” I never realized this until it was far too late for a do over. So. No Easter Family Photo for 2016. We didn’t get one either in 2015 or 14, but I felt ok about 2014 because we had planned a professional family photo shoot a few weeks later.
Instead, I do have various not-group photographs and bushels of sweet memories that no one quite managed to grab on camera, but that’s ok. We lived the moments, like visiting my brother-in-law who just had knee surgery a week and a half earlier, and little Sam being asked by a second cousin,“Sam, did you bring me any Easter eggs” and while he/we had NOT, the quick little thinker, though just two-and-a-half-years-old—ran to a little shopping cart he’d been given to play with which was filled with colorful plastic eggs, grabbed an egg, and took it smiling (like he knew he’d pulled a good trick) to cousin Anna.
Or, tracking behind another grandson, future track star James, who, while we were waiting for the Knights of Columbus Saturday morning egg hunt to begin, decided to make like Forrest Gump and just took off running and running and running all around the park with father following him, uncle following him, and even Grandma following him. No one got pictures of that, but on Sunday at the Trinity egg hunt, I managed to get one of my daughter Doreen chasing little James.
I have no photos of Sam watching out the car window every where we went that weekend in the lovely Shenandoah Valley countryside exclaiming “Moo cow!” with delight when he’d spot them. Upon seeing a brown cow he’d launch into “How now, brown cow?” from a storybook someone has read him.
Michelle on wedding day, 2008.
Michelle and Brian’s son James, Easter 2016.
And I have this lovely mother-son duo of shots, standing in the exact same doorway at our church which meets in an antebellum old house. The photos were taken eight years apart. Was the bride contemplating a future little man standing there? How about many years hence—will the little man wait there for his own bride? I don’t even want to think that far into the future! (Note: no one asked James to pose for this, it just happened.)
I also have scattered unposed photos of spring blooms and outfits,
Knights of Columbus egg hunt moments (can you find two month old Henry??)
and dyeing a few Easter eggs (but how did I fail to get a photo of Sam with his prize bunny at one hunt?).
And Grandpa Stuart rocking the newest addition to the tribe, young Henry Stuart who is smiling at Aunt Doreen.
The photos I have are enough. My heart is full. For all these gifts I am so very thankful.
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How do you work at combining Easter customs with the meaning behind them?
Do you have any tried and true methods for organizing a quick family photo that doesn’t have the toddlers in tantrums and the teens rolling their eyes?? And no cheesy smiles?
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This part is mainly for my Trinity friends:
I’m thankful for those who took the time and energy to pose this group shot of Trinity members and attendees in the fall of 1985. (Click to enlarge.) It includes pastor Dan and Pat Grandstaff (upper far left), our two oldest daughters (Tanya and Michelle in center of front row, next to Joannie in her wheelchair) along with Stuart (gray shirt by upper left white column) and I (maroon maternity jumper near the center of the photo, with Doreen just “on the way”). The photo is also full of so many dear departed saints. Below is a photo of the egg hunters from 2016, this one taken and shared by John Henderson.
Front row left to right: Michelle, me, grandson James, grandson Sam, Tanya. Our new pastor, Stephanie Sorge Wing and her older son Isaac are right behind us. Click the link on Stephanie’s name to get to our newly restored and relaunched website for Trinity! (I will work on updating other links to Trinity’s website on my blog in the near future, they mostly don’t work right now.)
This is a recipe from my hippie days. Hippie, not hipster. As in 1972-73, when I lived in an “intentional community” which means in addition to being allowed to have guys and girls in one house at my rather conservative Christian college (before very many co-ed dorms were around), we shared food expenses and agreed to have household “community” meetings as the need arose.
From left: Clair Mellinger, Vic Buckwalter, the late Chet Wenger, random unnamed guest, Tim Brenneman, Ruthi Detwiler.
We also took turns cooking the evening meal and ate together as often as possible. It was the highlight of most days at “Arborvitae,” named for the shrubbery outside our group home.
Eldon Miller, Mamie Mellinger, and Clair Mellinger, watching the evening news in the Mellinger apartment part of the house.
The biology professor Clair Mellinger (who, with his wife Mamie, nursing professor, were kind of our “house parents” to make things all legal-beagle with aforementioned conservative Christian administration), especially loved the other Latin connection of “Arborvitae” which can be translated to mean “Tree of Life” and also refers to the cellular white matter in the brain when spelled arbor vitae.
Our long dining room table also doubled as a study table. Eldon Miller, Tim Brenneman, and Bob Mast shown.
But more about that another time. This is a recipe included in my book but I’ve never shared it here, along with a few food prep photos. I made it for the “10 Easiest Recipes PDF” I prepared especially for the 93-year-old guy wrote to me after I shared a condensed version of my “Cooking with Lizzy” series last this fall in the Another Way newspaper column, saying if 12 year old Lizzy could cook, maybe there was hope for him to learn to make a few dishes now that his wife of many years could no longer cook for them. I plan to feature more of those recipes and prep steps here on my blog.
Dave Schrock in our pantry scoping out a possible recipe in a cookbook. From the 1973 Shen EMU Yearbook.
It’s called Dave Schrock’s Tuna/Egg Skillet Dinner because when it was Dave’s turn to cook (we usually had two cooks working together), he would often make this simple and CHEAP dish filled with the protein goodness of tuna and eggs. And no, this is not a variation on tuna casserole at all (or at least not any tuna casserole I’ve ever eaten) but rather a stir fry or fried rice without any veggies. I suppose you could creatively add veggies like chopped broccoli or carrots if you want more complete nutrition and a little more color. I adapted it to fix quickly sometimes when my husband was away and I needed something for just the kids and me. They enjoyed the dish (hubby, not so much).
Dave was one of my high school friends at Bethany Christian High School so we also had our Indiana roots in common. Dave was a good friend of Chuck Kaufman who grew up with me at North Goshen Mennonite; Chuck was probably most influential in urging me to go to Eastern Mennonite University. (And Harrisonburg is of course where I met my husband so … there you go. The rest is history. Forgive my serious recipe digression.)
Onward. (Additional description below as printed in Whatever Happened to Dinner.)
Dave Schrock’s Tuna/Egg Skillet Dinner
This is a one- or two-person meal that I adapted from one of the guys who made it (greatly multiplied) for a houseful of students who lived in a big old house during my sophomore year at Eastern Mennonite University. That year of sharing one-dish meals with a long table of twelve to fourteen people was a glimpse of true community. This recipe serves one or two. So simple, but hearty and tasty, it is basically a variation of fried rice.
1 can tuna, drained
2 eggs
2 teaspoons margarine or olive oil
1 cup / 250 ml cooked brown or white rice (fix according to package directions)
Sauté eggs in a skillet over medium heat, gently chopping them up with the side of a spatula so that the eggs are mixed and chopped (but not scrambled). Push eggs to the side of the skillet, so they won’t get overly brown, while you brown tuna for 2–3 minutes, stirring.
Add cooked rice. Stir tuna, eggs, and rice together, and brown several more minutes. Serve with soy sauce, if desired.
Additional variation ideas to add, not listed in Whatever Happened to Dinner:
- Sauté onions or garlic clove
- Add chopped broccoli, carrots, or peas
- Add mushrooms
- Top with fresh cilantro or parsley
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Most of us have recipes that came from other people, and every time we cook that dish, we remember that person. Who or what story do you strongly associate with a particular person in your past? Stories? I’d love to hear.
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Did you ever have roommates or a community where you share or shared meals, either regularly or occasionally? What is a fond memory?
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If you’re new here, check out my book Whatever Happened to Dinner? which includes over 100 recipes, mostly from Mennonite cooks, if that matters. 🙂 Recipes tested and collected by Jodi Nisly Hertzler and Carmen Wyse, two foodies who (mostly) loved doing it and shared their dishes between families as they cooked.
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