Friday, April 17, 2009

Getting Ready For Church

This next week will be a busy one for me as we will have church at our house a week from Sunday. Bunny said I should explain about our church, since many of you might not know how the Amish do.

Amish church services are held every other Sunday. We are divided geographically by where we live into church districts. Since church services are held in homes, not in church buildings, each family normally hosts church about once, maybe twice a year. Currently our district has 25 families. We will have about 150 people here for church.

In order to prepare, I need to wash walls, wash floors and all baseboards. I need to clean all of the curtains and wash all of the windows. The bathroom needs a good scrub down as does the kitchen. The furniture needs to be arranged to make room for tables and extra benches. This is all in addition to our regular chores. Two of my sisters and three of my cousins will come to help me this coming week.

We will have to move the buggies out from the garage and give it a good scrub-down too. A typical Amish garage is much larger than an English garage or carriage house. Bunny says it would be like a 4 or 5 car garage, whatever that means. Anyway, Jacob built the new garage last year and made it big enough so we could hold church there when it was our turn. This is where the benches will go for the church service. Then following that, we will move some tables in and have a light lunch. Some with small babies and children will eat in the house while most will stay out in the garage (buggy barn).

Lunch is usually a simple light meal so that it can be prepared ahead of time. We will probably have the usual bologna or lunch meat, breads, traditional "Amish Peanut Butter Spread", jams including apple butter, cheese, pickles, pickled red beets, cookies and probably some snitz pies.

Here is the recipe for the Amish Peanut Butter Spread if interested:

1 C light Karo syrup
½ C peanut butter
¼ C marshmallow crème


Mix all ingredients until smooth. Store in airtight container. May refrigerate; let sit at room temperature a few minutes before using for sandwiches.


God Bless,
Rebekah

6 comments:

Ruthykins said...

as an english girl, i've never been to church with the amish. i've been to weddings and funerals, but never church. i guess i just never got invited. can anyone go? too bad i don't know of any amish communities out here in my area.

greenolive said...

I just made a batch of pickled beets. Do you need some for church?

ann said...

thanks for the peanut butter spread YUM!

Puphigirl said...

Please include your recipe for Amish Church Cookies. I have the one from Grandma but others may be interested yet.

Betty said...

How about the recipe for the snitz pies? Sounds fascinating!

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