By KEVIN WILLIAMS
Editor, The Amish Cook
For more than thirty years, I have been sneaking into a world most people only see from the window of a passing car. What began as a roadside stop for bread and cheese in an Ohio hollow when I was thirteen years old became a lifelong obsession. My new memoir, Not So Simple: My Adventures Among the Amish, Mennonites, Shakers and Other Plain People, tells the whole story — the Amish Cook column, a failed pie company, a reality TV misadventure, and the deeper question underneath all of it: what was I really looking for out there? The column began in Quincy and my journey has taken me to Adams County several times over the years. Hope to come back soon to give a talk about this book and a signing, so stay tuned! (and Gloria will return next week!)
The following excerpt is from Chapter 2.
FROM CHAPTER 2: THE SPECTATOR
ADHD has been a constant companion through all of my Amish adventures. Or in my case, ADD. I don’t think I was ever hyper.
But, yes, I have problems focusing. I misplace keys. I cycle through several bank cards a year because I lose them. I suspect under my car seat or deep within the cushions of my sofa is a huge cache of cards. I remember one time, when I was a teenager working my summer amusement park job at the Fool-the-Guesser booth, I took my keys out of my pocket and was fumbling with them while standing by the midway’s man-made lake, a lake stocked with hungry fish that came to the banks expecting people to feed them. My car key slipped off the key chain, into the water, and I watched in horror as a giant carp swallowed it whole. Telling your teacher that your dog ate your homework may be cliché, but how about calling your parents asking them to pick you up from work because a fish swallowed your car key?
Once my impulsivity almost got me stranded. Near the Berne, Indiana Amish community, farmfields often flood. This wasn’t a rushing current — just stagnant water sitting over the road. I thought I could make it through. But I got stuck. I knew better.
Then an Amish buggy appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Without saying a word, an Amish man got off his buggy, pulled out a long leather strap and hooked it to my car, got his horse moving, and pulled me out of the floodwater. My car somehow managed to restart. I never really got a chance to thank him. He unhitched the horse and melted away into the surrounding fields.
Yet sometimes I think ADHD is my superpower. And I have thought that maybe the Amish were my own way of self-medicating for it — chopping wood, baling hay, fixing cabinets, feeding goats, eating supper without screens, walking barefoot in a freshly tended garden, hands in the soil. Maybe it isn’t an ADHD thing at all. Maybe it’s simply a quest for a different kind of connectivity, one that doesn’t involve Wi-Fi or passwords.
While my family spent generations surrendering Italy, the Amish have spent generations preserving Germany. I spent 30 years watching people who had what my family lost: a language still spoken after 200 years, not 70. Answers that didn’t dissolve with assimilation. Communities that clung to the motherland. So I went looking for people who still had certainty. Who knew who they were without question. Who had something to call their own that couldn’t be murdered, dissolved, or assimilated away.
I went looking for the Amish.
FROM THE APPENDIX: OATMEAL COOKIE PIE
No recipe tour of my life would be complete without the Oatmeal Pie — the first recipe ever included in The Amish Cook, and the pie that flew off the shelves once I rechristened it Oatmeal Cookie Pie.
Makes 2 pies · Prep: 10 minutes · Bake: 1 hour
Ingredients:
2 unbaked pie crusts
4 eggs, beaten
1½ cups brown sugar
½ pound butter, melted
1½ cups light corn syrup
2¼ cups rolled oats
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Unroll the pie crusts and place each in a greased and floured pie pan. Flute the edges.
In a medium mixing bowl, combine the melted butter, brown sugar, and beaten eggs.
Add the corn syrup and oats and stir to combine.
Pour into the two pie shells and bake for 1 hour, until thickened inside and golden brown on top.
Let cool completely on a wire rack. Serve at room temperature.
Not So Simple: My Adventures Among the Amish, Mennonites, Shakers and Other Plain People is available on Amazon, at Walmart.com, and can be ordered through your local bookstore, price $23.99. To order by mail: signed copies are $35 (includes shipping) to Kevin Williams, PO Box 157, Middletown, Ohio 45042. or $23.99 for unsigned copies. Allow 3 weeks for delivery.
Dining and Cooking