MANHEIM, Pa. — “Cherished Recipes Nourish the Soul” is the title of a favorite article that Miriam “Mim” Friesen has copied from a newspaper. Friesen, 80, lives, breathes and teaches those words. Along with the article, written by Nancy Olson, Friesen has copied, cut, pasted and made thousands of recipes throughout her lifetime. Her fascination with recipes started in a seventh-grade home-economics class where she learned to make pie crust. Now, she finds herself reflecting on the recipes she has collected for nearly 70 years and still keeps organized in books and by categories in her home.
Friesen grew up literally on the Mason-Dixon line. Her family’s house was in Maryland, but their mailbox was on the other side of the street, in Pennsylvania. She attended a one-room Pennsylvania schoolhouse until sixth grade. Besides teaching students to make pie crusts, her seventh-grade home-ec teacher required every student to create a recipe book. Friesen loved doing it. She still has hers, and said that it was while she was making the book that she decided to become a home-ec teacher herself.
In 1960, Friesen graduated from Eastern Mennonite College in Harrisonburg, Virginia, with a home-ec major. She then taught home-ec for eight years at Bethany Christian High School in Goshen, Indiana. It was there that she met her husband, Ronald Friesen, who was a biology teacher. They married in 1965 and continued living in Goshen where they raised three sons and she became a homemaker. More recently, in 2011, she and her husband moved to a retirement community in Manheim, Lancaster County, where they live near one of their grown sons.
To say Friesen loves recipes is an understatement.
“I could hardly pass up a recipe!” she said.
She loves to cook and bake and talk recipes. She gathers them from many sources — friends, magazines, dinners, potlucks — and shares them often. She has asked Plain Sect women for several pie recipes — including Bob Andy pie as well as pecan and pumpkin pies — which she considers authentically Amish. She has organized and filed them all throughout the decades, so she can find the ones she wants when needed.
Her kitchen shelves hold more than 300 cookbooks. In 2001, her newly married son asked her, “When do we get our black (recipe) books?” In response, Friesen created her own self-published cookbook, called “Celebrate Good Taste: Mim’s Favorite Recipes.” Out of 500 copies published, she said she has only two copies left. The cookbook has 660 pages of recipes, carefully curated by Friesen to reflect what she likes to cook and eat. Since that book was put together, she has assembled 12 more potential recipe books, stacked high in a basket on the floor.
She carefully cradles her mother’s cookbook, full of notes and handwritten recipes.
“She was a good cook!” Friesen said. “We went to market and sold meat to make a living, but Mother could always get together several dishes of food for Sunday company.”
One of Friesen’s much-used cookbooks is the classic “Mennonite Community Cookbook,” by Mary Emma Showalter. But there is a twist. Showalter, who was Friesen’s college professor and head of the department at EMC, handed Friesen the cookbook personally, because she gave every one of her home-ec students a copy.
Betty Crocker’s classic cookbook was the one Friesen considered her “main” cookbook.
And, she has developed many favorites over time. Guests arriving to her home might find a freshly baked plate of “Gail’s coffee cake” awaiting them.
Or, they might enjoy a brunch with Friesen’s special quiches or baked Italian omelets.
Friesen laughs about some of the humorously titled recipes in her collection, like “bishop’s bread,” “preacher cookies” and “cow pies.”
Growing up Mennonite, her cooking has been influenced by Mennonite traditions. Her husband encouraged her to learn Russian Mennonite cooking. But, Friesen wanted to branch out to more “interesting” foods, she said. “I am interested in Chinese cooking, too. I make very good Chinese egg rolls. I use ground chicken.”
She also loves making chicken dishes from nearly 800 chicken recipes, though she admits she has not used them all.
Friesen is active these days, walking and playing bocce ball in the community. She is a talented quilter and enjoys gardening as well. She is ready to hand on her recipe collection and thinks there might be interest.
“I think it’s the biggest collection of recipes around,” she said.
Anyone interested in the recipes can reach Friesen at 717-723-6544.
https://ift.tt/2OJ1ZGp
Post a Comment