Many less-than-enthusiastic dandelion eaters agree that the best thing about dandelion salad is the hot bacon dressing traditionally served over it! The dressing reflects the ingredients commonly available on Amish farms in eastern Pennsylvania. Most homesteads had at least a cow or two for their own dairy supplies and usually also had a flock of chickens. Bacon and lard came by way of butchering; vinegar was often home-produced from the abundantly fruitful apple trees on the property. Furthermore the blend of flavors is sweet and sour, that specialty of these people who like its taste and digestive properties. Many variations on this dressing have developed; some use no bacon, fat or egg and are served cold (often over cole slaw); others use spices (occasionally dry mustard); still others call for chopped onion.

Watercress grows bountifully and without cultivation along fresh water streams in the springtime. Farm families cut it primarily to eat in sandwiches rather than in salads where its tangy flavor can predominate.

The first taste of spring!

This vegetable is eaten only seasonally and then not regularly. Perhaps it is simply impractical to prepare such a last-minute, labor-intensive dish for a large, hungry family.

Sometimes the line between dessert and main course is blurry. Take the old tradition of sweetening certain vegetables, for example. Although the Amish generally prefer mild seasonings, they seem to find some dishes too bland without the help of added flavoring: the older people, especially, like some sugar with their rice when they eat it as a vegetable. Perhaps the Amish first enjoyed rice as a pudding before immigrating to America. The old dish was eaten in Germany in the 16th century. Whatever their first acquaintance with rice, many Amish have always preferred it with sugar, simply adding more if the rice is served for dessert. “When my mother made rice as a vegetable, she always made extra so she could have enough for dessert. She made it a little sweet as a vegetable, but she’d add whipped cream and pineapples to it for a dessert.” Particular combinations, varying from family to family, were traditionally eaten with rice. One woman in her late 50s explains, “We’d often eat tomato sauce over rice as a vegetable.” Remembers another, “We used to have cooked rice with milk and sugar added to it with cinnamon on top. That was served hot with raw-fried potatoes.”

Creamed celery is traditionally prepared for the feast which follows a wedding in the Lancaster Amish community. Most weddings occur in November and December, so celery is one of the few fresh vegetables available then. Since it is not usually raised in quantity, it is not eaten routinely for main daily meals. Creamed celery, then, is a delicacy adding to the celebration. It is the custom for a family with a daughter planning to be married in the fall to put out an unusually large celery patch. Alert neighbors and visitors learn from that cue that a wedding will be coming up! The formal announcement of the event takes place only a week or two before the wedding itself. One mother of nine, who has made an abundance of creamed celery, explains that vinegar is added to prevent the cream sauce from curdling. The sweet-sour dressing is present here again, another example of that particular taste preference among the Amish.

Some folks delight in the full flavor of spring’s first asparagus—they want it simply steamed and drizzled with brown butter. Others prefer it dressed up a little. Sometimes the presence of toast and eggs help children learn to eat a vegetable that is less familiar since it comes only seasonally to the table.

“Schnitz and knepp,” a ham-apple-dumpling dish usually attributed to the Pennsylvania Dutch food tradition, is not commonly eaten by the Amish of Lancaster County. Nor do they remember it ever being a part of their family diet. “We’d eat peas and knepp, but not schnitz and knepp. That seems to be a Lutheran and Reformed dish,” smiled one Amish historian, referring to Germanic peoples of a different faith community. “Our knepp are fluffy,” he added.

A variation on sweet and sour cabbage, warm slaw has a creamier dressing but a similar effect.