Catch Up!

Carly's been busy but still found the time to write in her journal. Come on over and catch up on Quilted Hills. It is a busy time to be at the farm stay.

Check it out!

Hi all, I just finished writing in my journal, gosh I hope no one reads it but it does help to write it all down. I am the person that forgets everything, now I have a place to put idea and items that I need to remember.
Hope you do is going well, it is beautiful here all the colors of fall are outstanding.
Carly
https://authorspiperandlily.blogspot.com/p/carlys-journal.html

PS They are predicting snow and lots of it.

Authors Piper Forrest and Lily Simmons Amish Blog: Ruby's Journal

Authors Piper Forrest and Lily Simmons Amish Blog: Ruby's Journal: Hello Journal. Is this how a person starts? I have never attempted this before. Um...clunky, as my son Matthew, would say.  Oh my, there...

Cabbage Rolls

Time gets away! How did we get to the middle of October? It's time for a post on the blog. Waaay past time. Enjoy heating up your oven for this great recipe. ~~Piper~~

Country Cabbage Rolls Straight From A Mennonite Kitchen

easyrecipesly.com/country-cabbage-rolls-straight-from-a-mennonite-kitchen/

7/6/2017

Ingredients

·       1 large savoy cabbage

·       2 pounds lean ground beef

·       2 medium to large onions

·       2 tablespoons canola or Bertolli olive oil .. or even butter is fine

·       1 cup white or brown rice. . . and 2 cups water

·       3 Eggland’s Best eggs

·       1 1/2 teaspoons Morton salt

·       1 teaspoon pepper

·       2 cans tomato soup

·       2 small bottles (individual serving sizes) tomato juice or vegetable cocktail . .like V8

·       1 can or small carton chicken broth

Ingredients

In the bag that you brought your savoy cabbage home,  place the cabbage in the freezer and leave for 12 hours or overnight.. . .remove and leave to thaw at room temperature. .this will take awhile. . so I often take it the night before the day I want to make the cabbage rolls. The leaves will be soft and easy to use without having to boil them.

In a small saucepan or a microwave safe covered dish. . .cook the rice. . set aside to cool. The rice can be made the day ahead and kept chilled in the refrigerator overnight.

Chop the onions fine and saute them slowly until they are golden brown. . .set aside to cool.

In a large bowl, break apart the ground beef, add the salt, pepper, eggs, sauteed onions and the rice. . mix together until combined. . use your hands.

Remove the leaves from the cabbage, cutting away the tough part closest to the core.

Spray your large casserole or two small casserole dishes with cooking spray.

Put about a 1/3 to 1/2 cup meat mixture at the bottom of the leaf and roll up. . the meat amount varies depending on the size of the leaf. . repeat until all the meat is used up.

In a large mixing bowl. . .combine the tomato soup, juice, and broth. . pour evenly over the cabbage rolls. Cover with foil. . or the lid.

Bake the cabbage rolls slowly at 325 for two hours. . serve or cool on the counter. .remove the foil (if you don’t. . you will have little bits of foil on your cabbage rolls where ever it touches. .) cover with plastic wrap. .and either refrigerate or freeze.

For reheating . .thaw first if frozen . .remove the plastic wrap and cover with a lid or foil. . and just reheat in the oven. . for about an hour .. at 325. . . or if you want, they can be reheated beautifully in the microwave on sensor reheat.

Source :  allrecipes.com

Amish Faceless Dolls

Take a look at an Amish doll and you’ll see it has no face. The faceless dolls are believed to deter against pride and vanity.

Source: National Geographic, Image: Wikipedia

Meadow Tea

August 2018 is half over. If you are like me, I enjoy a cup of ice-cold tea on a hot summer afternoon. Here is a great recipe for Meadow Tea. Enjoy
Piper

MEADOW TEA

3½ quarts water (14 cups)

2 packed cups fresh mint, whole

½ - ¾ cup sugar ***see note***

INSTRUCTIONS

This recipe makes 3½ quarts of iced tea - enough to fill an average sized "sun tea" jar.

Boil water in a large pot.

Rinse mint leaves - keep whole. I do this in a colander - inspect and rinse well - I always find lots of sticky little critters on mint.

Add mint to a pot of boiling water.

Cover pot, remove from heat and let steep for 2½ - 3 hours.

Remove whole mint leaves with a slotted spoon. Let leaves drain and dry in a colander. Leaves can be reused once for another batch of tea.

Pour tea thru a fine screen into your storage container. I use a handled screen that fits over the top of my sun tea jar and pour/ladle the tea thru. If you don't have a screen you could use a sifter or even a kitchen towel. Please use something - you don't want bits and pieces of leaves floating around.

Stir in sugar to taste. ***NOTE*** I prefer a lightly sweetened tea so I add ½ cup - ¾ cup sugar. Local Meadow Tea is made MUCH sweeter - I'd estimate they use 1 cup - 1½ cup sugar. Start with the lower amount of sugar and add in any additional sugar until you reach desired sweetness.

Refrigerate, serve cold. Enjoy : )

Welcome to our Amish blog ")

You really have to ask yourself how two individual authors of romance, turned to write together and change our genre, it isn't an easy answer and yet it is.
Oh, and we felt our new venture needed new author names to boot lol, I am Lily.
Piper and I have been together on the internet since 1995, we were part of a group of authors that actually began ebooks. Not only, did we publish ebooks, we figured out ways to sell them from CD's to email attachments, and downloads from our site or one that eventually handled the sales and delivery of an ebook, along with an author based radio show.
All these authors, cover models, artists and techs of the internet really did believe in the future of ebooks and still, do.
The circle of expertise continued to grow into the industry of today, not bad for a very young industry. During all this growth we experience so many changes in the romance genres, this growth opened up some fascinating genres, along with new degrees of heat in the bedroom or outside it. We sort of crashed and pushed our ways past the norm for romance. Even the writing techniques changed, my favorite is the POV (Point of View) that went from a single POV to multiple POVs in a story. You see, I like to know what the gentlemen are thinking about the woman that interest them.
Best get back to the present :)
Piper and I have been writing for a long time and we still love the books we have released, but we needed something new, something neither of us thought about doing and it must be fresh. Like a breeze that tickles your nose, the ideas began to sprout. Piper loves the Amish romance and has for years. I like new anything in romance, fantasy is what I would read in between writing. Together we made a decision we wanted to write in the Amish genre. The surprise came in that we decided to write together on the same story, now this is major.
Authors are pretty much solitary in their writing. Yes, you need other authors to review and give opinions on your writing, but actually becoming a writing team is so different for us. I have to say that I love it!
We have always, as friends, thought the same about things, we even finish our sentences or know each other's thoughts, so writing together really proved to be a simple step for both of us. It is amazing to be writing a scene and as one of us writes the other follows behind and fixed any errors as we go lol.
In all honesty, I am enjoying myself and writing once again.
We have finished our first book in the QUILTED HILLS SERIES - IN PLAIN SIGHT, it is a wonderful feeling and I am so proud of us. Yes, it still needs tweaking but it is written and we are starting the next book in the series. We decided early on that we wanted more than one book completed before we release the first one.
I hope you will visit often as we will be posting writing articles and questions along with recipes and other interesting items concerning our writing in the Amish genre. There is so much to learn and discover about the Amish, please join us.

Lily Simmons