The second generation perpetuates that idea for the sake of their fathers, but their hearts are not in it. William Miller, an Amana druggist, wrote at the time: “The first generation has an idea and lives for that idea. It isn’t religion, it’s darn foolishness.” In 1931 one young Amana woman told a reporter, “We are sick and tired of this old fogeyism that masquerades as religion. They adopted modern dress, started playing baseball and threw clandestine parties. Although the True Inspirationists were suspicious of such things as electricity, baseball and bobbed hair, they recognized that with the turn of the century there was no going back.īy the 1920s young people were rebelling. Unlike the Amish, the religious community for which they are often mistaken, the Amana never wished to isolate themselves from the rest of the world. The colony even had its own printing press. In the manner of Utopian communities, they endeavored to be self-sufficient. To this day, Amana remains perhaps the only model of successful communism - thanks in part to the society’s timely decision in 1932 to restructure itself in a capitalist mode. Everyone received a small allowance for shoes and clothing, most of which were made in the colony. Under Iowa state law the Amana Society incorporated as a group organized “not for pecuniary profit.”Īmana-style communism evolved to where no member of the society had to pay for food, medical treatment, housing, burial or most other essentials. By 1859 they had acquired 26,000 acres in the fertile Iowa River Valley. They settled briefly near Buffalo, New York, before striking out for the greenest of pastures. In 1842 some 1,450 German pietists who called themselves the True Inspirationists, fed up with persecution in their homeland, left their homeland. Their form of communal living had little to do with Marxism. But the Amana have an edge over everyone else when it comes to laying out a family-style spread: They were communists.Ĭommunism, an unholy concept nowadays, served the Amana well for 90 years. That partly describes the appeal of Amana cooking. Once a culture develops a knack for hard work, a reputation for hearty food quickly follows. A day’s eats might consist of the following: soup (pea, tomato, farina) and salad various meats (chicken, pork rind sausage, beef dishes like sauerbrauten or Wiener schnitzel) for protein potatoes for carbohydrates, or dumplings or spaetzle an assortment of garden vegetables to handle complex nutritional duties whose absolute description still leaves food experts brawling sauerkraut, especially in the winter milk products (butter, cottage cheese) and dessert (fruit pie, plum cake, streusel kuchen). It’s up-farm.īefore there were the basic food groups, even before there was the Scarsdale Diet, Amana kitchens were creating huge, solid meals for a busy, resourceful colony. After an Amana meal, a day of soil tilling or lumber lathing or, lest we forget, preparing the next meal could be engaged with all due enthusiasm.Īmana food is for agrarian sorts, manna for the self-sufficient, an antidote for those who are tired of spending $30 for a plate of wimpy Paul Klee squiggles sold under the banner of nouvelle cuisine.Īmana cooking goes one better than down-home. German cooking was never intended to entertain gourmets its main function is to keep the fires stoked. Now, down-home is usually reserved to describe southern cooking, where euphonious food names like hog jowls and bisquits ‘n’ gravy are fondly ladled into cuisine conversations like the names of good hunting dogs.Īmana cooking is sturdy fare that is strictly German in origin. Despite the fact that the Amana make what is easily the world’s most handsome and comfortable wood rocking chair despite the fact that they make modern appliances of noble efficiency and despite the fact that they have a fascinating history unique among all civilized people - the first thing that comes to mind for nine out of 10 visitors when you say “Amana” is food with down-home recipes.Īnd the first thing they say is “down-home recipes,” followed by a sound best represented by five or 10 m ‘s. Iowa’s Down-Home RecipesĪ million people visit Amana Colony each year it’s Iowa’s number one tourist attraction. What’s better than down-home cooking? Up-farm food! If any one culture is to be credited with inventing leftovers, it surely must be the Germans. Home Organization News, Blog, & Articles.Energy Efficiency News, Blog, & Articles.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |