16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Tuesday, June 6, 1911: We had the raising of the barn this morning. Tweetie and her mother were here to assist. Besse also. Perhaps you may think I was in my highest ecstasy, a hovering among the dishes. M.C.R. was here. Good night.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
It’s amazing how neighbors helped one another a hundred years ago. I wonder how many men helped with the raising of the barn addition, and how much food Grandma helped prepare and serve. The Mennonite Community Cookbook by Mary Emma Showalter contains a menu for a barn raising. The book was published in 1950—but the author writes that the menu was found in an old hand-written recipe book of her great-grandmother’s so it’s old:
Food for a Barn Raising
(Enough food for 175 men)
115 lemon pies
500 fat cakes (doughnuts)
15 large cakes
2 gallons applesauce
3 gallons rice pudding
3 gallons cornstarch pudding
16 chickens
3 hams
50 pounds roast beef
300 light rolls
16 loaves bread
Red beet pickle and pickled eggs
Cucumber pickle
6 pounds dried prunes, stewed
1 large crock stewed raisins
5 gallon stone jar white potatoes and the same amount of sweet potatoes
The Mennonite Community Cookbook by Mary Emma Showalter
I love the “Enough food for 175 men”!
I just discovered your blog via your interview in Geneabloggers. 100 years ago, one of my grandmothers was four years old in Pittsburgh and the other was 14 years old in Chicago, so I look forward to reading your blog to get a sense of what life might have been like for them.
Welcome!
Wow Sheryl,
What a coincidence, I posted this on Monday Aug 22 this year. I quoted from Mary Emma Showalters Mennonite Community Cookbook also, which has been a constant staple in our home since its publication way back in the 50’s!
Your blog is so interesting.
It’s amazing how we both included the same excerpt from this book in our respective blogs. I also consider the Mennonite Community cookbook to be a staple of our home. Even though I’m not Mennonite–so many of the recipes are for the foods that I grew up with.