Loretta will be in hard casts for four weeks

I decided to write this col­umn while my red beets are cook­ing. I cook them long enough so that the skin peels off easily.

I want to make pick­led red beets to put in cans. We will serve those for lunch when we have church ser­vices next spring.

I also have sev­eral more buck­ets of toma­toes ready to put into juice. With these toma­toes I’ll have well over 100 quarts of juice canned already along with 80 pints of salsa so far.

I’ll keep putting toma­toes into jars until it frosts which I am expect­ing early this year.

Daugh­ter Loretta’s surgery went well on Mon­day. She has hard casts on both legs up to her knees.

She isn’t allowed to put weight onto her feet for four weeks until the casts are removed.

She will then have walk­ing casts for 2–4 weeks and will need ther­apy. Dur­ing that time we want to get her AFO (ankle-foot orthotic) braces ordered. That way they will be ready when the walk­ing casts are off.

Loretta is in a wheel­chair so she needs help to get to bed and to the bath­room. Time is already going slow for her but plans are to go back to school next Tuesday.

There isn’t any school on Mon­day so she’ll have an extra day home. The school will send a hand­i­capped bus so it will be eas­ier to get her wheel­chair off.

Our fourth cut­ting of hay was put in last night. Hay prices are still very high. Jacob, Emma, and fam­ily and Elizabeth’s friend Tim­o­thy and Susan’s friend Mose assisted us with the hay.

For sup­per we had bar­be­cued ham­burger and ribs, pota­toes, cheese, let­tuce, toma­toes, green pep­pers, and ice cream cake.

The ice cream cake was brought by Jacob’s in honor of their old­est daugh­ter Elizabeth’s 16th birth­day. It is some­thing dif­fer­ent for Emma and Jacob to have a child old enough to be with the youth.

(Editor’s Note: At age 16, Amish chil­dren are able to attend the young person’s gatherings.)

Joe doesn’t have work tomor­row so he plans to till up the gar­den parts that are done for the year. Tonight he will go fish­ing with Tim­o­thy. That is always relax­ing to him and espe­cially with the hay being in the barn.

Sun­day we attended church in a neigh­bor­ing com­mu­nity that brother Albert’s lives in. We attended the bap­tismal ser­vices for Albert’s daugh­ter Irene.

We hired a dri­ver to take us as it was 22 miles from our house.

We have three wed­ding invi­ta­tions on our refrig­er­a­tor. Con­grat­u­la­tions go to Del­mar and Polly who will be united in mar­riage on Sept. 19.

Also to Clyde and Dora who will unite their lives as one on Sept. 27. Both the grooms work at the same fac­tory as Joe does.

And we were sur­prised to receive an invi­ta­tion to the wed­ding of Menno and Mag­gie on Oct. 6. Menno’s father, Lean­der, would be a cousin to Joe. They grew up together and made many memories.

We wish God’s bless­ings to all the cou­ples and wish them many happy healthy years together. It seems short years ago that our own wed­ding day was and it has already been 19 years.

On a sad­der note our thoughts travel to dear Mother’s death 10 years ago on Sept. 17.

I often wish my younger chil­dren would have been able to meet their grand­mother. She was a won­der­ful per­son and will always be greatly missed.

I will say the words she often said, “God makes no mistakes.”

With us being in the mid­dle of salsa sea­son, I thought I’d share my recipe.

After mak­ing the salsa, I can mine so it keeps longer. But you can freeze this and you can also cut the recipe way down to fam­ily size and serve imme­di­ately, this doesn’t have to be stored.

HOMEMADE SALSA

14 pounds of toma­toes, scalded, peeled and cut up

10 green pep­pers, chopped

5 cups onions, chopped

1 cup vinegar

2 ounces of hot pep­pers, chopped

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup salt

2 tea­spoons oregano flakes

3 tea­spoons chili powder

1 tea­spoon gar­lic powder

10 table­spoons Clear Jel (mixed with 3 cups water)

In a saucepan, mix all of the above ingre­di­ents, except for the Clear Jel.

Cook con­tents of saucepan on low heat on the stove top for 45 min­utes, stir­ring occasionally.

In a sep­a­rate bowl, mix Clear-Jel and water and stir until dis­solved. Add the Clear-Jel mix­ture and cook for 5 more minutes.

If you are can­ning the salsa, cold-pack it for 20 min­utes. Or freeze it for use later.

If you are mak­ing a smaller batch, cool to room tem­per­a­ture and serve.

Read­ers with culi­nary or cul­tural ques­tions or to share recipes write Lov­ina at: Lov­ina Eicher, c/o Oasis News­fea­tures, P.O. Box 157, Mid­dle­town, OH 45042. To learn more about Amish cul­ture and the Amish Cook col­umn and to sign up for the twice weekly newslet­ter, visit www.amishcookonline.com or “The Amish Cook Fan Page” on Facebook.

Posted by Lovina Eicher on Sep 28 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.