One Knife Kitchen

(Or how to cook Thanksgiving Dinner with ONE knife)

    We have just returned from spending a week in a guest house on a Mennonite farm in the Amish country of Pennsylvania. In our living/kitchen area, there were 11 windows. We could see the countryside all around us dotted with Amish houses and farms. Everyone of these homes were as clean and neat as anything I have ever seen.

   This is a picture of the owners' house. Our guest house was attached to the left side as you look at the picture. We had 3 bedrooms and 1-1/2 bath, kitchen, living area. Lots of room and beautifully decorated.

   We planned to cook Thanksgiving dinner in our guest house with Deedie, Mitzi, me, Tim, Amy, Gabe, Annette, and Tim's mom, Ruth attending. I discovered early in the week that the kitchen was meagerly equipped (in my way of thinking and cooking), but I was determined to make-do with what was there. I had one butcher knife which was not very sharp, no cutting board and no Pampered Chef chopper. After cooking several days, I learned to like coarsely chopped apples in my tuna and even wondered briefly why I had 5 Pampered Chef knives and 4 Cutco knives in my drawer at home. The cleaning up was much easier with only one knife, especially since there wasn't a dishwasher.  There was a TV in the living room, but no TV service. It was connected to a DVD player, and we even watched part of an old Andy Griffith movie one night. Our Thanksgiving dinner turned out very well, with turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, peas, corn, deviled eggs, cranberry sauce, ham, a special dressing that Ruth makes and pumpkin and pecan pies purchased at an Amish bakery. Ummm good! It was a gorgeous day and a beautiful setting to enjoy Thanksgiving.

   Of course, being with Tim, Amy and Gabe part of every day was the reason we were there and it couldn't have been more fun. We enjoyed Gabe, who turned one on Sunday, November 25th, the day we had to leave. He is so smart, with a laid back, sweet nature and it was hard to leave him.

   The owners of the home we stayed in were industrious and hard working. She has a gift shop in the town of Bird In Hand, as well as runs the household where we were. Every year at this time, she along with her sisters and sisters-in-law, mother, grandmother, etc. stop everything they are doing and put together Christmas wreaths from live trees. They have a building behind where we were and they worked all day and into the night. They make them by the thousands and trucks pick them up and deliver them to retail stores all over the country. We were able to watch for a few minutes one morning and it was very interesting.

   We shopped one day at Lena's gift shop and wee surprised to discover that there must be Amish people who live in China, because a lot of the gift items in her shop said "Made in China". She also had a lot of beautiful handmade items and we enjoyed looking. We loved looking at the countryside and driving around just looking at the farms and passing the horse pulled buggies. Mitzi jogged a few mornings and had to dodge the horse droppings.

This is a picture of the front porch of the main house.

The top two pictures were taken on an old well, and the bottom one is at Gabe's birthday party on Saturday.

   Between Mitzi and me we took between 200 - 300 pictures, so if you ever have a free day - just come on over.
   We loved the simplicity of the life on the Amish farms. Everyone does their share and they work hard, but they are always smiling and friendly and I would go back again if ever given the chance.