AMISH CANNING AND PRESERVING COOKBOOK: Tips and Tricks to Learn Grandma's Secrets to Water Bath and Pressure Canning Meat, Vegetables and Much More

By Josephine Fisher

If you were to ask people to tell you what it meant to be Amish, they would say, "It means living a simple, traditional life where the community is very tight-knit, stay away from outsiders, and don't use any technology invented after the dawn of the 20th century." For the most part, this would be accurate. However, if that tenth person you aske

• Language: English
• Publisher: Josephine Fisher
• Release date: Jul 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088242773

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Introduction

If you were to ask people to tell you what it meant to be Amish, they would say, It means living a simple, traditional life where the community is very tight-knit, stay away from outsiders, and don’t use any technology invented after the dawn of the 20th century. For the most part, this would be accurate. However, if that tenth person you asked happened to be Nana Ruth, my crooked-backed, gnarled-faced, sharp-as-a-thumbtack grandmother, she would have a whole lot more to say about the matter. This is because, until the age of seventeen, Nana Ruth grew up in an Amish community known as the Pennsylvania Dutch out in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

When an Amish youth hit their late teens to early twenties, they’re allowed to go on a sort of spring break from being Amish, a ritual known as Rumspringa. Popular culture will often depict Rumspringa as a period of total anarchy for the participants, where they will wear scandalous clothing like t-shirts and jeans, dance to pop music they hear on the radio, and even watch daytime talk shows on the television. Plenty of partying and alcohol imbibing is included for good measure, just like many teens across the nation who are suddenly without parental guidance will indulge in. For Nana Ruth, though, Rumspringa was a far more mundane affair.

Reaching her mid-teens around the same time that the United States repealed the 18th Amendment, ending Prohibition, and was several years into the Great Depression, my grandmother’s initiation into the outside world consisted of walking seven miles to visit an A&P Supermarket. At the time, being a supermarket as opposed to a farmer’s market or traditional grocery store was a big deal, although Nana Ruth said most people today would’ve found it prohibitively small. To a young girl who had only ever seen food grown or raised in her own little hamlet, seeing nearly 500-square feet of fruits, vegetables, dairy, and meat, some of it shipped in from as far afield as Miami and Chicago, was like walking into the Sistine Chapel and looking up at Michelangelo’s masterpiece.

Like most Amish girls, my grandmother was taught to cook from a very young age. She had always enjoyed it, but the sudden burst of colors and flavors she realized could be available to her was overwhelming. For instance, she had no idea that peppers could come in colors besides green or red, and she didn’t even know about the existence of bananas. Nana Ruth used almost a third of the spending money her parents had given her to buy as many ingredients as she could carry, hauled them back to the little apartment she was sharing with three other girls from the community, and spent the rest of the night just experimenting with a canvas-worth of new tastes. She once told me that it might be the closest thing to Heaven a person could experience while still on Earth.

Before leaving for Rumspringa, Nana Ruth was pretty confident that she would return home and become a full-fledged member of the Amish community. Her parents had even been in talks with a neighboring family about betrothing her to their second-eldest son. Within a week, she was torn about the decision. She loved her family, her town, and the church, but she wasn’t sure she could simply forget about the world outside—especially the food. Within a month, she was fairly certain she wouldn’t be returning after meeting a young man named Gus, who worked on his family farm just outside the town where she was staying. Unsurprisingly, their first encounter came while he was picking up some feed for the chickens and she was making her daily pilgrimage to the A&P.

Six months after they met, Gus proposed to Nana Ruth. She had remained behind, coming up with increasingly-flimsy excuses for the other girls to bring back to her parents about why she was putting off her decision as to whether she would be returning or not. The final girl returned to their hometown with a letter from my grandmother, explaining that she had accepted Gus’ proposal and would not be coming back. She invited her family to the wedding, fully expecting to never even get a response. However, two weeks later, her father bent the rules somewhat and made a trek to Gus’ family’s farm in the middle of the night to hand-deliver a letter to Nana Ruth.

He only saw Gus’ older brother, who had suspiciously greeted the oddly-dressed stranger with his shotgun nestled against his shoulder but asked if Nana Ruth was happy. When told that she was, he simply smiled, handed Gus’ brother a letter from my great-grandmother, and disappeared into the night. In the letter, the family had politely declined the wedding invitation and made a few overtures at luring Nana Ruth back home, such as explaining how heartbroken the neighbor boy was to hear she wouldn’t be returning to be his wife. However, her mother ended the letter by wishing her well in her new life, if that was going to be her final decision, and asked her to remember the values they had taught her. This was something Nana Ruth was willing and able to do.

About twelve years later, my grandmother’s youngest brother, who was only around four when she left, showed up at the farm, having been given the address by their parents. He had decided even before he left for Rumspringa that he wouldn’t be returning, and Gus’ family employed him as a farmhand for about a year until he took a job with a local construction company. Funnily enough, Nana Ruth’s sister, who was a little over a year-and-a-half younger than her, had married the neighbor boy who was originally betrothed to my grandmother. Their brother’s description of the couple’s post-married life was remarkably similar to Nana Ruth’s, but with more church and no radio, electric lights, or motorized tractor. Still, she never regretted her choice to leave home for good, and I sincerely appreciate that, considering I wouldn’t have existed otherwise.

Over the years, my grandparents had four children—three girls and one boy—the youngest of which was my mother. Sadly, Gus passed away when my mom was fourteen, so I never got a chance to meet him. However, Nana Ruth still speaks of him very fondly and has always loved regaling us with tales of his exploits while preparing meals in the kitchen. The kitchen was Nana Ruth’s personal Sistine Chapel, where she created her culinary masterpieces that rival those served in Michelin-starred restaurants worldwide. One quirk of her cooking is that she liked to adapt the recipes from her youth in the Amish community, updating them with ingredients unavailable to her at the time and sprinkling in a bit of her own magic to really make them an exquisite experience for your taste buds.

Growing up, my mom’s pantry was always packed with mason jars filled to the brim with food made for us by Nana Ruth. Due to both her Amish roots and living on a farm with my grandfather in rural Pennsylvania, she became very proficient at personal canning and preserving foods of all kinds. Every time we went to see her, we left with a truckload of new goodies that she’d canned since our previous trip. When I had finished college and couldn’t justify spending money on groceries to make any meal besides ramen noodles, I asked my grandmother to teach me her secrets for canning and preserving food. Of course, she was more than happy to oblige.

This opened up a whole new world for me when it came to lunch and dinnertime, as I was no longer limited just to whatever leftovers I could fit in the fridge and scarf down within a few days. Instead, I could make a big batch of food, use Nana Ruth’s canning methods, and stick them in a pantry, closet, or basement shelf for months or years before cracking it open. The best part is that the food stays fresh and full of flavor the entire time. All I have to do is heat it up, and sometimes, not even that much effort is required. Fruit and vegetables can be preserved in plenty of ways, like making jams or pickling them, and you can eat them right out of the jar.

The purpose of this cookbook is to impart Nana Ruth’s secrets to the wider world. I’m going to let you in on exactly how she taught me to can and preserve food, which is a wonderful tool to have in your repertoire whether you’re pinching pennies or just want to be economical about your time and storage space. I’m also going to provide you with a library of recipes from Nana Ruth’s own cookbook. She spent her life curating a ton of delicious treats that she loved to share with everyone around her. And when I sat her down to ask her how she felt about the idea of sharing her secrets with the rest of the world, she gave me the same familiar, impish grin she used to get whenever she was about to say something truly conspiratorial, and simply replied, "I think