“Life is short. Eat the pie.”
That’s the motto painted on Sherry Gore’s wall, inside her home in the Sarasota Amish community known as Pinecraft. Amish communities across the country have their own cookbooks, but Pinecraft didn’t have one until Gore came along and compiled Simply Delicious Amish Cooking. She had planned to self-publish, but National Geographic heard about her project, and before long she had a big-name publisher, HarperCollins.
Gore talked to CL about making meals from scratch (or not) and how she got all the little old ladies in town to write down their secret ingredients. Also, there was a lot of talk about pie. In fact, true to Amish hospitality form, Gore ended our conversation with a personal invitation to bake pie anytime at her home.
“You don’t even need to call. Just show up.”
So how did Simply Delicious come together?
Sherry Gore: I had a Russian Mennonite staying with us… she gave me a cookbook from her community when she left. It was a beautiful gift and I wanted to reciprocate with a collection from our community. Every Amish community has a cookbook and I discovered that we [Pinecraft] didn’t have one. So I thought, I’ll make one. I expected it to be just for us; I never anticipated anyone else having an interest in it.
Were you a writer before this?
I do write for our Amish newspaper, The Budget. It’s 120 years old. I write a weekly letter about our community, about Pinecraft.
How did you go about collecting recipes from the community?
It was entirely word of mouth in the village. They’d say Sherry Gore is putting together a cookbook, get your recipe in her cookbook. I put an 8×11 poster on the community bulletin at the Amish post office. I still have the Ziploc bag filled with handwritten index cards from Amish ladies’ kitchens. Some come from year-round Pinecraft residents, some come from snowbirds. But each person who has recipes in here has a personal connection to Pinecraft.
How long have you lived in Pinecraft?
I’m 47; I came to Sarasota in 1988 and lived here for a time. We got a home here in Pinecraft about 14 years ago. I didn’t grow up in a Mennonite community; it’s unusual for people to join and stay as long as I have. When I was originally living here, I was totally removed from their lifestyle. I wasn’t a Christian. I had a misconception about it. Later, I became a Christian, and studied the Bible and was living the same way as Amish Mennonites. But I didn’t know until I met someone at church that I was living the same lifestyle. When I joined church here, I was making friends with women at church and that’s who I would learn cooking from.
What is your day like when it comes to preparing food?
I ride my bike everyday to Yoder’s Fresh Market to get produce. I pick up greens. They have beautiful food available every day. There’s not a lot of canning in Sarasota; we can peaches but we’re more apt to freezing because of the heat. We eat a lot of salad, a lot of fruit salad. We enjoy comfort foods like mashed potatoes and fresh green beans. We usually drink fresh garden tea.
Do you have a favorite dish?
Pies are my favorite.
Why do you enjoy cooking?
I think Amish food is a good reminder of our dependence on God.
Now I know the majority of Amish cooking is from scratch, right?
It’s a lot of whole, unprocessed foods. That doesn’t mean you can’t buy a mix; it doesn’t have to be all the way from scratch. You don’t have to grind your own wheat to make bread. You can buy flour. But there’s something about baking bread, making food with your hands, that’s pretty intimate.
This article appears in May 2-8, 2013.
