With Friends Like These

I'm a cat person, let's just get that out there. I know it's not as cool as being a dog person, but I don't care. And what's the coolest thing for a cat person? A kitten! And my mom got one-- yay! So I've been going over to visit him everyday and squeeze up his sweet little kitten face and kiss all over his sweet little kitten lips (I'm practically turning into Edna over here, he's so fuckin' cute he makes my earlobes hurt!).  

Anyway, the other day I walk into Mom's kitchen to see the little scamp and see a ziploc bag on her kitchen island that looks to be full of papier mache paste.  It is expanded with air and smells a bit of the loft I lived in in Denver that was above a microbrewery.  "Hey Mom, where's the cat? And what the hell is this?" I ask and point to the science project.

"Oooh! That's Amish Friendship Bread! I need to mush it!" Yeah. You need to do something with it, or it'll be all over your kitchen cabinets in about three seconds, I think as I grab a bottle of water from her fridge.

"Amish Friendship bread, eh?" I ask skeptically. 

"Yes! I got it from my friend, Francie. You just mush it around in the bag and add some stuff and then split the recipe into four bags and pass it along to your friends. It is supposed to be delicious!" She tells me as she pushes the air out of the bag and proceeds to "mush" it around. Pass it along to your friends? This sounds not only unsanitary, but contagious, the dietary equivalent of an STD. Great. I see a bag of mush on my counter in the near future. I take my water into her craft room and play with her new baby kitty yum-yum.

Fast forward four days, I'm in my kitchen making yet another delectable and nutritious meal for my family (ok, a box of mac n' cheese with turkey dogs sliced up and thrown in) when Ace walks in the back door with a tin foil wrapped loaf, a ziploc bag of paste and a piece of paper. "Grandma made us some bread," he tells me and rips into the foil to happily spread crumbs all over the floor. Super. 

I take the bag of goop and the "instruction sheet" and give it a look-see. 

DO NOT REFRIGERATE! It blares across the top. Ohhh-kaaay. Why would I want to refrigerate something that I'm gonna eat in... TEN days? Keeping it on the counter seems perfectly reasonable.  

If air gets in the bag, let it out. It is normal for the batter to rise, bubble, and ferment. Never use any type of metal mixing spoon or bowl.

Ok, that sounds easy enough. I throw the bag on the counter and forget about it. 

Day 1-5: Mush the bag.

Luckily I remember to "mush" the bag these first few days only because if I don't let the air out it I'm afraid it will explode all over my kitchen. "Rise, bubble and ferment" is right. It is starting to behave like a teeny, beige version of the La Brea Tar Pits. I start regarding the bag as an Amish Goo Grenade and are thankful that the Amish are a nonviolent people as this as a weapon, while gross and possibly annoying, could not inflict much real damage. 

Day 6: Add to the bag: 1 cup flour, 1 cup milk, 1 cup sugar. Mush the bag.

Ok, I can do this. I'm not particularly busy on Day 6 and Ace has ravaged the loaf that Mom sent over, so he really likes the stuff. I may as well try, right? I can do this house-wifey stuff if I try. Wait. Did that just say to add MILK?! Am I to still regard the warning across the top of the page not to refrigerate? Really? With milk in it? I'm no stranger to what happens to milk sitting out for God's sake. I'm a mom of three with a mini-van. My ride always has the pungent smell of rotten milk from some lost sippy cup. Oh Lord. Please don't let my house smell like my car.

DAY 7-9: Mush the bag.

I like mush the bag days. Those are easy. But I've started keeping a wary eye on the concoction now that it has rotting milk in it. The bag starts expanding more rapidly.

Day 10: Pour the contents of the bag into a non-metal bowl and add: 1 1/2 c. each flour, milk, sugar. Mix together using a non-metal spoon. Label four ziploc bags with today's date, this is your new Day 1. Measure 1 cup of mixture into each bag, seal them and give them to four friends with a copy of this recipe.

My Day 10 was last night. So I finally read the whole recipe.  

First of all, what is with the whole non-metal bowls and spoons directions, I wonder, as I slowly mix together the ingredients in a glass bowl with a wooden spoon. Wouldn't this be a helluva lost faster if I just used my mixer? Oh, crap. That has metal beaters. Can't do that. What exactly is in this that can't be touched by metal, anyway? What'll happen, I wonder. Corrosion? Explosion? Salmonella? 

I'm no baker, and more than a little miffed at having to mix up this bowl of mushed glue by hand, so I start thinking about it. I think the rule is not anything to do with messing up the ingredients with metal, but just that the Amish aren't allowed to use electric mixers. And they are jealous we can. They're like, Hey, if we have to stir this shit by hand, so do you, infidels! Just be grateful you aren't wearing a rough cotton dress, a bonnet and crazy homemade boots! 

I mean, really. What could be that bad about metal touching it? Well, I can't be sure. Because then I see this: 

Keep a bag for yourself, you'll be baking every 10 days. Only the Amish know how to create a "starter" recipe, so if you give them all away you'll have to wait until someone gives you one back.

Yeah, that's not really incentive for me to keep another bag of mystery explosives on my counter there, pal. And what is this enigmatic "Only the Amish know" crap?! I'm getting really nervous about eating this loaf of bread I'm sticking in the oven, in, get this, a LOAF PAN. Now I don't know about you, but my loaf pans are all metal. You see my quandary. Is metal suddenly ok to put the batter in? Why? Or more likely, I think I've just caught those Amish in the big, gut-busting lie this whole edible chain-letter farce is.

 I'm just certain that all the Amish ladies are back in houses just rolling with laughter about this. They've got all us leaving bags of rotting ingredients on our counters for a week and a half and then they just wet themselves over the idea that they've made us dig through our cabinets for that nasty old wooden spoon. They are having Amish giggle fits over us trying to make this bread with the "secret" Amish ingredient that somehow makes perishable food edible after being un-refrigerated. I keep wondering how many "friends" ago left-over milk is still left in this batch I have. I probably have milk so old in there it would be cheese if we'd just stop all that darn daily "mushing"! 

I think that's it. This is a big, Amish joke. Well, the joke's on them, really. Know why? 'Cause I could go on and on and talk all the smack I want to about them and their crazy non-refrigerated bread and they'll never know!! Why? Because I'm doing it on the internet. So there. Suck it, Amish people.

Oh, and this: 

Cool until bread loosens from the pan and turn out on a serving tray. Keep refrigerated.

Really, you little Amish yucksters? I'm to keep the COOKED bread refrigerated? Why? I just left the nasty-ass dough out for ten days! What could possibly need refrigerating now?! 

I'm telling you people, the Amish are after us. They are ridiculing us and in the same breath totally indoctrinating us by forcing us to use their stone-age tools to make their loaves of Amish bread that are probably filled with magic "REPENT, SInner!" Amish dust that'll make us give up all our technological wonders. And it is working. Why? Cuz that shit be yummy! 

Now I'm just looking around for four "friends" to pass these bags of expanding goop along to. 

Comments

[Magpie]

So I happen to be one of the friends that she gave the "bag of goo to" and I happened to be the friend that gave the bag of goo to her Mom. I am Mennonite, not Amish and damned proud of it. I can make some Mennonite food that would knock your socks off....literally. Take for instance, picked beef tongue, stuff beef heart and oxtail soup. Yummy, I think I will go home and feast on some organ!!! Tee hee

[Nicfit]

Listen here, Magpie, what you do with your old man is none of our business. But I'm not sure the brethren would look to kindly on your type of organ feasting. Heaven awaits, sister.

[mydogrules]

Sour milk mixed and yeast... sounds like an infection I don't want any part of.