Originally Posted by: Rinshin 
Hello Mjes. I went to middle and early HS in Amish area of PA.
Then you likely knew someone with my maiden name Eshelman/Eschlemann/Aeschlemann and many other variations in spelling. There were 500 of us listed in the Lancaster County phone book when my uncle looked after the war. I grew up in (very) rural south central Washington where our heritage was Finnish/Lappish, Amish/German (rather than Ukrainian), and Irish. Our family was one of the few that was all three - most were pure or a mix of two. It was half an hour, half on gravel roads, to the nearest shopping - a lumber town of 2,000. So I grew up with the what you grow/what you preserve/what your neighbor grows style of cooking in which the Amish/German cooking was over-represented as it had already adjusted to American ingredients. Shall we say that barley flour, Baltic herring and reindeer weren't readily available for my Grandmother's family? It is in fermented veggies, ginger bread/cookies, slaws, and scrapple where Amish recipes really remind me of home. But my Applachian daughter-in-law, from Maryland near the Pennslyvania line, swears that my stews betray an Amish background ... especially if I add dumplings.