NEWSLETTER

March 2010

Beloved Reader,

Winter’s harshness has finally faded, and the radiance of spring is breaking through. The maple tree outside my office window has budded and now has flowers. Beautiful green leaves will soon cover its branches, and as sunlight pours forth, my workspace will have a calming green blush to it. Unfortunately, those same leaves will block my view of everything except them! :-) The fresh air pouring through my almost-always-open window no longer carries the aromas of winter, but smells of various types of grass and trees awakening after a long winter’s nap.

Even in our part of Georgia, a thin blanket of snow covered the ground and caused schools to be canceled during the first week of March. Much of the United States had a harsh winter—one that will linger in our memories and in our conversations for years to come. But new life is now upon us. The warmer days offer new freedom, and our school-age children are drawing closer to the end of another year. Maturity has taken place. Lessons learned. Emotions dealt with. Victories. Defeats. Joy. Excitement. Disappointment. Grief. We’ve survived at least a taste of it all. I’m grateful that life slows from time to time yet continues moving. Life keeps demanding that we try again. It asks us to acknowledge our weaknesses while we look into our own souls and forgive ourselves, so that we can carry that forgiveness to others who need it.

Life. It is beautiful. Painful. And varied. Its sameness brings us comfort and sometimes bores us. Its wide range of possibilities invigorates us and sometimes frightens us. But through it all God’s love supports us. I hope you’ll take the time to embrace those you love, because whether circumstances are delightful or difficult, we know that beyond what we see and feel is a greater truth: His love endures forever.

Em Gott Sei Sege (God’s blessings),

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Event Notice

Each year Amish communities have mud sales to raise money. Mud sales are a little different from the Amish school sale/auction, but they both have great food and interesting items to purchase. (Details on Amish mud sales appear later in this newsletter.)

WHAT:	35th Annual Amish School Auction/Sale
WHEN:	Saturday, May 8, 2010 From 8:30 a.m. to approximately 3:30 p.m. Quilt Sale begins around 12:30 p.m.
WHERE:	In and around a warehouse-type building owned by Jacob Flaud The address of this event has been removed from the Web site version of the newsletter. If you're interested in coming to this event, please send a private e-mail by going to my contact page, and someone will contact you with that information.

Note: This is not an author book-signing event

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I now have a Facebook page! Facebook friends’ page Facebook fans’ page

I want to invite you to join me on Facebook as either a friend or a fan or both. I post and chat regularly on each page. Facebook contests take place on the fans’ page, so a lot of readers have joined both pages.

I hope to see you there!

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The Bridge of Peace
Book 2 in the Ada’s House series
Available September 7

Love and lies abound in Dry Lake, Pennsylvania.

Old Order Amish schoolteacher Lena Kauffman has laughed off the prominent mark on her cheek for most of her twenty-three years. Her free-spirited personality can’t stop people’s prejudices, but she bravely ignores their whispers as she attempts to carve a bold if controversial path for the education of her young Amish scholars.

Grey Graber is bound inside a marriage void of affection and communication. He is determined to find a solution, but tragedy unhinges his good intentions. Can two people who have been friends since childhood find God’s love and learn how to embrace each other’s imperfections?

This second novel in the Ada’s House series returns to Dry Lake, Pennsylvania, and the beloved characters from The Hope of Refuge.

Excerpt of first chapter and more ordering info coming in the next newsletter!

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Amish Connection

When Amish Children Get Bored

This childhood memory from Mrs. Martha Esh
might remind you of your own childhood adventures!

Ruth Ann and I were at Uncle Mannie’s for a week while our dads were in Virginia. We must’ve run out of things to do, because Ruth Ann said, "I know! Let’s peel potatoes!" When I said, "I don’t know how," she said, “I’ll show ya.” So we commenced to peel potatoes—a big bag full of ’em—down in the cellar at that little old sink Uncle Mannie had. Peelings piled thick and fast. The potatoes were quite small once we had the peelings off! We put the dear little things in clear plastic bags. When we showed the first bag full to Aunt Katie, she mumbled “Uh-huh” and went right on enjoying her after-dinner nap. Guess what we had for every meal the rest of the week? Potatoes, of course: that Aunt Katie didn’t have to peel!

Aunt Katie would have benefitted from this recipe that day.

Crumb-Top Potatoes from Mrs. Martha Esh

1/3 cup butter	1-1/2 cup shredded sharp cheese
3 or 4 lg. potatoes cut in thin slices	3/4 cup crushed corn flakes
2 tsp. salt	1-1/2 tsp. paprika (optional)

Melt butter in jelly-roll pan in 375-degree oven. Add single layer of potatoes; turn once in butter. Mix remaining ingredients and sprinkle over top. Bake 1/2 hour or until potatoes are soft. Delicious!

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Amish-Made Quilt Contest

The winner of the 2009 Amish-made quilt contest is
Kelly Beaver of Warren, Michigan.

The winner for the Facebook Amish-made quilt contest is
Mary Collins of Henderson, Tennessee.

2010 Amish-Made Quilt Contest

It must be time for another contest! I don’t have a photo of the quilt because I haven’t bought it yet. I’ll attend the 35th annual Amish School Sale in May. I’ll post a photo of the quilt to be given away in the 2010 contest on my Web site and in the next newsletter.

To enter, go to http://www.cindywoodsmall.com/contest.php

I love offering this Amish-made Quilt Contest each year, and I hope you’ll join in the fun! The rules are a little different from past years. You can read them on my Web site. The contest will close January 1, 2011. A winner will be notified on or near January 15, 2011. The winner will be announced as soon as she or he responds to the notification.

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Newsletter Contest

In the December 2009 newsletter, my publisher, WaterBrook-Multnomah, a division of Random House, had a special Twelve Days of Christmas sweepstakes and The Sound of Sleigh Bells contest. The winner of the authentic Amish gift basket and two copies of The Sound of Sleigh Bells is Becky of Burton, Michigan.

For the spring newsletter contest you have the chance to win a hot-off-the-presses cookbook (Taste of Pinecraft: Glimpses of Sarasota, Florida’s Amish Culture and Kitchens) from debut author Sherry Gore (see Author Spotlight below) and a 17-by-18-inch Amish-made wall hanging. The contest will run until a few days before our June 2010 newsletter is sent out.

Here’s how to enter. (Please follow these steps carefully to prevent your entry from being disqualified.)

Note: You are reading the Web site version of Plain News. The Newsletter Contest is only available to those who receive the newsletter via their inbox. The newsletter is free and is sent four times per year, but on an occasion a special announcement may be sent. To sign up, to go http://www.cindywoodsmall.com/newsletter.php.

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Bookplates

Bookplates are adhesive-backed stickers that I can sign and mail to you in a regular envelope with letter-rate postage. Putting the sticker on the title page of your book makes it an autographed copy!

For more information go to http://www.cindywoodsmall.com/bookplates.php.

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Author Spotlight

I’d like to introduce you to Sherry Gore, author of Taste of Pinecraft: Glimpses of Sarasota, Florida’s Amish Culture and Kitchens. I first came in contact with Sherry in 2006. Our friendship has grown over the years, but we didn’t meet face-to-face until a couple of months ago. She came up from Florida to visit relatives, and I drove an hour and a half south to meet up with her. We met at the Blue Willow Inn in Social Circle, Georgia. It’s a well-known restaurant with the most amazing food served inside an historic home.

The restaurant is open for three and a half hours for its lunch meal. Sherry and I arrived when it opened, and we left after they closed. While there, we went upstairs, unlocked the doors to a widow’s walk, and stepped out onto what was probably a forbidden area. I could hardly believe the conversation that spilled from us as we quickly devised two very different but totally intriguing stories of love won and lost between young people who lived in that old home and the one sitting adjacent to it.

Throughout our visit, we imagined stories, spoke of difficult truths, shared goodies we’d brought for each other, and laughed with the joy of life before we prayed together and parted.

Sherry is a member of Sunnyside Mennonite Church—a Beachy Amish Mennonite church in Sarasota, Florida. For three years Sherry has been a scribe for the Amish newspaper known as The Budget. The Budget is a national publication serving the Amish and Mennonite communities since 1890. She is also a writer/food reviewer for The Pinecraft Pauper, Pinecraft’s village newspaper.

Author of Taste of Pinecraft:
Glimpses of Sarasota, Florida’s Amish Culture and Kitchens

Here’s an excerpt from the Introduction of Sherry’s book.

Life was chaotic. I had a sick child in the hospital in St. Petersburg, an hour’s drive away, and a young son who needed me at home. My daughter Shannon was fifteen at the time—too young to drive, but bearing great responsibility by working at Yoder’s Restaurant to help support the family. My days were spent keeping other people’s houses clean while attempting to be in too many places at once. I asked God for help at home.

I shouldn’t have been surprised when a call came the next day from a friend who had a cousin in Mexico who was looking for a family to assist in the United States. My friend asked if I would like her cousin to come help me.

Within the week, two planes passed in the night: Rosy’s, arriving from El Paso, Texas, and our medevac flight, destined for Cincinnati, Ohio, where my daughter Jacinda would receive treatment at the children’s hospital.

Rosy Banman (now Mrs. Pancho Neufeld), a minister’s daughter and Russian Mennonite from the Cuauhtemoc settlement in Chihuahua, stayed with us for a month. She was just nineteen, but her efficiency was amazing. She not only kept our household running smoothly in my absence, but her quiet spirit delighted just about everyone who came in contact with her.

A week before she was to return home, Rosy presented me with a gift: a cookbook from her Mennonite community. The heirloom recipes from Russia were written in their first language, German. I had intended to send Rosy home with the usual souvenirs we like to give our visitors: Florida oranges or key-lime and coconut candies bought locally. Instead, I returned to Pinecraft, hoping to send Rosy home with an Amish cookbook purchased there. I went from store to store and came away empty-handed. There was no such item for sale, because none had been written.

After Rosy left, I began compiling a cookbook myself. Vera Overholt helped by handing out recipe cards to the women in Pinecraft on which to write their recipes. After I mentioned the project in my Budget letters, many ladies in Amish communities across the country who have vacationed in Pinecraft responded.

Little did I know at the start that it would be three years before I finished. Much of the cookbook was written from a hospital room. Several times I had to put my work away and concentrate on caring for my older daughter. Nearly seven hundred recipes, and three years’ worth of excerpts of “Letters from Home” in The Budget newspaper,make up this wonderful cookbook.

The excerpts are only glimpses of Pinecraft. No book could capture every element and every character that comprise our unique settlement. That’s why I’ve started on a second cookbook!

Following are excerpts from a review of Taste of Pinecraft: Glimpses of Sarasota, Florida’s Amish Culture and Kitchens, written by Daniel Fisher, editor of the Pinecraft Pauper:

Sherry has written a cookbook, a WHOPPER-size one (400 pages), but it's more than just a cookbook. In addition to nearly 700 heirloom recipes from Amish and Mennonite women across the country, there are stories and tidbits about births, engagements, weddings, deaths, funerals, birthday celebrations, ordinations, anniversaries, wildlife encounters, and accidents. These are everyday comings and goings of life in Pinecraft, our Amish/Mennonite village situated in the heart of Sarasota, told through years of letters submitted to The Budget newspaper. Even if a recipe flops, the story with it won't.

For three years Sherry wrote on a folding table, but now she has a desk. Writing makes her happy. When at her desk, she keeps a glass of “Florida coffee” (Diet Pepsi) at hand. She only drinks real coffee when it’s snowing out, and she hasn’t tasted coffee since 1989.

The cookbook can be ordered through:

Pinecraft Village Publishers
P.O. Box 50231
Sarasota, FL 34232

Cost is $19.95 + $3.50 shipping & handling for the first book ordered. Add $1.00 S&H for each additional book sent to the same address. Discounted price of $16.95 applies to orders of six books or more.

Coming soon! www.sherrygorebooks.com (Check back regularly.)

A Sneak Peak of Recipes from Taste of Pinecraft:
Glimpses of Sarasota, Florida’s Amish Culture and Kitchens

Strawberry Tropical Soup

2 Tbsp. corn starch
2 Tbsp. cold water 
4 cups frozen strawberry juice
2 Tbsp. honey
1/2 cup lime juice
3 cups strawberries
1/2 cup light cream
1 cup frozen cherries
1/2 cup sour cream (optional)

Mix cornstarch in 2 Tbsp. of cold water. Simmer strawberry juice, honey, and lime juice until mixture thickens. Stir occasionally as it is cooling. Put strawberries and cream with chilled mixture and blend until smooth. Strain through a strainer. Mix in thawed cherries. You may add a dollop of sour cream to each serving to make it extra special.

“We’ve been selling strawberries at our fruit stand for about two months. The weather this fall was unusually warm, which caused the berries to ripen quickly. So the price dropped to about half of what they usually sell for early in the season. We’ve had below-freezing weather this week, but the berries were spared. The way the farmers save them is to water them just before they freeze. The ice over the berries protects them.”
—Mrs. John (Vera) Overholt


Party Nachos

1 lb. hamburger
1 pkg. taco seasoning
2 cans chili beans
1 tsp. cumin
1 jar salsa

Brown the hamburger; add taco seasoning, chili beans, and cumin. Pour a full jar of salsa over top. Cover with favorite grated yellow cheese, then sour cream. Serve with fresh diced tomatoes, crisp lettuce, green onions, and guacamole made from fresh avocado. Add green chilis for an extra-special dish. Spoon onto nacho chips and serve.

"After the hymn sing at church Sunday evening, the youth gathered at Tim and Julie Yoder’s for nachos and banana splits. After playing Apples to Apples, they all pitched in and wrote a letter to P. J. Yoder, who is serving at faith mission home in Virginia."
—Sherry Gore

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A Tidbit about Amish life

Lancaster County is known for its Amish communities. It has a wonderful blend of urban style and rural splendor, and the Pennsylvania Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau is dedicated to promoting its many rich cultures, from the Amish to the arts. Travelers can take in our vibrant downtown city life—featuring galleries, great dining, specialty shops, and live music—or explore some of the surrounding towns and villages to get a sampling of the heritage, food, craftsmanship, and hands-on activities for which Lancaster is famous.

Each year Amish communities have mud sales or school sales in order to raise money. The mud sales are a little different from an Amish school sale/auction, but they both have great food and interesting items to purchase. The mud sales are hosted by the volunteer fire departments and the money earned will benefit those departments.

Some of the Remaining Mud Sales for 2010
Press Release of February 26, 2010
Pennsylvania Dutch Country Convention & Visitors Bureau

Lancaster, Pennsylvania—Roll up those pant legs, pull on some boots, and head out to one of Lancaster County’s famous mud sales in 2010. Enjoy a day of great buys with the local Amish community—interweaving family, food and fun—all for the benefit of area fire companies.

Thousands and thousands of Amish and “English” flock each year to the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch Country for these traditional events on Saturdays from mid-February to early April, so named for the condition of the thawing ground. Both intimate and authentic, mud sales are perfect for browsing, bidding, and buying, as out-of-towners mix easily with locals and soak in Lancaster’s renowned hospitality and heritage.

What’s more, it’s hard to believe the value and variety of what’s on offer: hand-stitched quilts (donated by Amish women’s groups), hammers, buggies, sleigh bells, milk bottles, toys, farm equipment, livestock, produce, furniture, and even antique lightning rods! And the list goes on.

To ward off the last of winter’s chill, the fire companies’ ladies auxiliaries provide sustenance in the form of delicious Pennsylvania Dutch culinary favorites like steaming chicken corn soup, funnel cakes, pot pie, birch beer, chicken barbecue, and lots of hot cider and coffee.

The best values are snapped up by those who get there early. With start times of 8 or 8:30 a.m., why not make it easy by staying over the night before and waking up in Lancaster County?

Inviting and never dull, this annual rite of spring is a can’t-miss event, so plan to make some great deals and wonderful memories.

Below is the most current information we have on upcoming mud sales. You may want to call to confirm starting times and obtain directions.

March 27, 8 a.m. Gap Annual Spring Mud Sale/Auction Gap Fire Company 802 Pequea Ave., Gap, PA Call 717-442-8100 or visit Gap Fire Co. Web site Horse-drawn carriages, buggies, wagons, new and used furniture, quilts, crafts, dry goods, groceries and more

April 3, 8.a.m. Wakefield Annual Spring Mud Sale Robert Fulton Fire Company 2271 Robert Fulton Hwy., Peach Bottom, PA Call 717-548-2483 or visit Robert Fulton Fire Co. Web site Quilts, crafts, horses, lumber and building supplies, shrubbery, miscellaneous items and lots of homemade food

April 10, 8:30 a.m. Rawlinsville Annual Mud Sale Rawlinsville Fire Company 33 Martic Heights Dr., Holtwood, PA Call 717-284-3023 or visit Rawlinsville Fire Co. Web site Quilts, horses, crafts, building materials, lawn equipment, new and used furniture

June 25, 8 a.m. Bird-in-Hand Mud Sale Along Rt. 340 (Old Philadelphia Pike) across from Bird-in-Hand Family Restaurant Bird-in-Hand, PA 717-392-0112 Antiques, harness and tack, specialty items, quilts, crafts, carriages, buggies, wagons and food

June 26, 7 a.m. breakfast Refton Fire Company Sale Refton Fire Company 99 Church Street, Refton, PA 717-786-9462 Hardware, shop tools, plants, furniture, antiques, crafts, hay and straw, quilts, horses, food and more

August 28, 8:30 a.m. Kinzers Fire Company Mud Sale Kinzers Fire Company 3521 Lincoln Highway East, Kinzers, PA Call 717-442-4121 or visit Kinzer Fire Co. Web site Plants, groceries, antiques, furniture, lumber, tack, sheds and gazebos, equipment, buggies, quilts, horses