{AMISH COMMUNITY NEWS}
Vol. 3 No. 15
December 7, 2011
Merry Christmas from the Plain Country!
A Christmas Memory By Jane Attina
My fondest Christmas memories are those times past spent with family. Growing up in a big city house with my parents, grandparents and aunts, there was never a dull moment. I only had one sister and I was the elder by six years. I spent a great deal of time helping to take care of her especially when the rest of the family was preparing for the Christmas feast! This side of my family was of Czechoslovakian decent, which meant they made great ethnic food that I still fondly recall. Grandmother’s annual meal consisted of rabbit (caught and skinned by grandfather!) with a white dill sauce and mashed potatoes. She also made a special mushroom barley casserole in a huge pan. Every year I tried just a bit of it to make my grandmother happy, but I never did acquire
the taste. For
dessert we had a Christmas sweet bread that grandmother lovingly braided into a loaf. But my favorite was the apple strudel! I recall the evenings before when she and grandfather stretched the strudel dough across the whole kitchen table, and a big table it was. Slowly and carefully so that it would not tear, it became a thin sheet that she filled with apples, rolled up and cut into sections. Imagine that sweet smell baking in the oven! Some years ago while on the bookmobile I was telling a young boy named James about the rabbit dinner and how I remembered watching grandfather get it ready for cooking. At that time my grandfather had passed but grandmother was still preparing the holiday meal except that the rabbit was a frozen one from the store. The following week at the same stop, James came to the Bookmobile with a surprise for me. It was a skinned rabbit ready for the pot!
Our next issue of Plain Country is Jan. 25. Submission deadline is Monday, Jan. 9. Advertising deadline is Jan. 13. Please send the information to share to Plain Country, P.O. Box 626, Middlefield, OH 44062, or call 440-632-0782 or fax to 440-834-8933.