It is Thursday morning and it looks like we will have another hot day. Yesterday’s temperature reached the nineties and the humidity was high. The humidity is high again this morning so we want to get everything done we can outside before it gets too hot.
I have a breakfast casserole in the oven for our breakfast. Joseph is out milking Bessie our cow. I decided to write this column first thing this morning since I’m already a day later than usual. Daughters Elizabeth and Lovina will soon be here. Lovina went to Elizabeth’s house yesterday morning and now Elizabeth is coming over here to help clean and cook for Susan’s upcoming wedding. Lovina is always so excited when she gets to go to Elizabeth’s house.
Tomorrow my three sisters who live in this area will come help make noodles for the wedding. I want to make more than last time, as they used all we had made for Elizabeth’s wedding. I would rather have more than enough of everything than to run out of something. It takes a lot of brain work to make sure you have plenty of food on hand for over 1,000 guests in a day.
Lovina and Kevin picked over five gallons of green beans this week. 
They cleaned them and I put them in the freezer. If the green beans keep doing well, that might be the vegetable we have at one of the wedding meals. I fixed some green beans one night this week. I diced onions, potatoes, and carrots in with them. Then I added crumbled bacon. Everyone liked the green beans a lot better fixed that way.
Joseph will be fourteen on Sunday, July 24. That will conclude the 
July birthdays in this family. Sister Emma turned forty-three on July 19 so I want to wish her a happy birthday. Her husband Jacob is planning a surprise birthday party tomorrow night for her. She will be here helping during the day so they should be able to sneak around her. We hope she will be surprised!
I should also mention that no matter if Mother isn’t here anymore, she is always remembered on her birthday. On July 18 she would have been 80 years old. She was a great mother to all of us children. We have so many good memories of her.
The porch deck is all stained now. That was a big job! Joe took all the vinyl railings off so we had it easier to stain. Now he’s put the railings back on. Sons Benjamin and Joseph are staining the ramp today. Hopefully they will beat the heat. It has rows and rows of railings (wooden) that need to be stained. It’s all time consuming but it will help preserve the wood better. I was helping the other evening with it and I had my share of it. I’m glad they will do the rest. I like painting walls a lot more than staining and I don’t even like to paint.
This is now after breakfast. Elizabeth and Lovina are here. Elizabeth is cutting out Kevin’s pants for the wedding. We want to wash laundry. There are so many unfinished jobs for the wedding that I have a hard time deciding where to start. I am starting to get a little nervous as time gets closer and closer. I want to try and stay calm and think everything will fall into place at the end.
Elizabeth always brings her dogs Crystal and Izzy along. This morning we heard meowing in the buggy. She is giving milk to two kittens which were orphaned when the mother cat was killed on the road. They look like they are doing well. The boys were teasing her about bringing two dogs, then two kittens, and wondered what she will bring two of next time. Kevin suggested that it will probably be ducks.
I must get back to work. Take care everyone! God’s blessings to all!
Zucchini Fritters
2 cups grated zucchini
1/2 cup flour
1 green pepper, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 or 2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste
Mix together. Drop like patties in skillet and fry. You can omit the onion and pepper and make them just plain if you like.
Lovina Eicher is an Old Order Amish writer, cook, wife and mother of eight. Formerly writing as The Amish Cook, Eicher inherited that column from her mother, Elizabeth Coblentz, who wrote from 1991 to 2002. Readers can contact Eicher at PO Box 1689, South Holland, IL 60473 (please include a self-addressed stamped envelope for a reply) or at LovinasAmishKitchen@MennoMedia.org.
I live in Australia and absolutely love reading Lovina’s column…have been reading her columns for many years now, even since her mother used to write. The Amish weddings are so much like the weddings from where my family comes from in Europe….I had one very similar to it as we come from the Anabaptist line also, however, have accepted technology as it progressed. The food is very similar too, the canning of foods also. I am sure Lovina will write about the wedding, so looking forward to that. God bless.
Love this far flung connection to Australia for Lovina!! Thanks for your comment!