I bow to the Amish

The Amish are amazing at making about any kind of food. I'm close to the Amish Market again now that I work in Hunt Valley. They were about to close yesterday so I went in and ordered everything for dinner from the first counter I came too. I got delicious precooked and well seasoned meatloaf, a big tub of brown sugar mashed potatoes and creamed spinach, and rice pudding for desert. Jason and I were in heaven last night. We just stuck everything in the microwave and enjoyed. I've also enjoyed their bison burgers, steak fries, chicken wings, and turkey sandwiches before. Really I don't remember getting anything there I didn't enjoy. They also produce there own candies, pies, snack foods, jams, furniture, and many many other things. They're really incredibly resourceful entrepreneurs. I would love to take a tour of there homeland in Pennsylvania one day, I bet it would be very fascinating.

And Speaking of Furniture...

There are two sides to every coin.  Two poles to every planet.  Two sides to the Force.  Neither side is better or worse than the other (except in the case of the Force), and in this entry I'm featuring the cheese and sausage side of yesterday's crust.

The Amish, a Mennonite sect, is an offshoot of earlier Anabaptists known as the Swiss Brethren.  Jakob Ammann, the founder of what was to become the Amish Mennonites, felt that his brethren were slowly losing touch with some of the more radical aspects of the Mennonite faith, to their detriment.  Specifically, he felt that the practice of shunning, or socially ostracizing excommunicated church members, should be much more rigorously applied.  Jakob, a man gifted with second sight, also foresaw the development of motor cars, electric razors, Epiladies, and the comedy of Carrot Top, and decided that severing ties with the outside world was advisable.

Thank you, Wikipedia.

Except for that last bit.

Whereas the Amish create high quality products with very low-grade technology, their Swiss cousins at Ikea create low quality items with the latest technologies and efficiencies available in the flat-pack furniture sector.  And I love them for it.  Amish furniture is made to last.  You can't say that about Ikea furniture.  But Ikea furniture is so stinking cool.  And cheap.  Kate and I, like many of you out there, can kill hours roaming an Ikea showroom, occasionally buying the odd item that we don't need but can't live without.  We have an Ikea TV stand, bedroom end tables, a lamp or two, baskets galore and assorted bowls and glasses.  Even our kitchen cabinets are Ikea (as an aside, the kitchen cabinets are actually very well made and very good looking.)

Walking through an Ikea showroom, you can't help but feel like some sort of jet-setting European hipster..."The couch is cool because it's uncomfortable."..."Sure it's made of plastic.  It's a dining room table, after all."..."Whaddya mean you don't know what a Fnord is!"

They say that, regarding any given thing, you can get two at most of the following three qualities.  Price, quality and style.  I'm replacing "expediency" with "style" because it applies better here.  And it's true in spades for Ikea.  Style out the yin-yang for an affordable price.

I Love the Amish...or at Least Their Markets

I'm sure if I got to know a few Amish people I'd find them to be very pleasant, agreeable people.  The few that I've met seemed to have big hearts and friendly natures.  But I've never had the opportunity to chat with them.  My interactions are usually far less social, restricted to requests for extra ketchup on my bison burger.

And that's really enough for me.  I love the purely financial, consumer relationship the Amish and I share.  The Amish market is a wonderland.  You need pie?  How about the greatest blueberry pie mankind has ever seen?  French fries?  Pah!  Try seasoned fried new potato slices slathered in some sort of delicious animal fat.  And the bison burgers?  Forget about it.  It's no wonder the early settlers nearly hunted the beasties to extinction.

But it's not just food.  Furniture, housewares, holiday gifts, and most other categories are represented (automobile accessories and electronics being the obvious exclusions.)  The Amish have the ability to take any given thing, and make it better than it's ever been made before.  It's seems almost compensatory, like a blind person's heightened other four senses.  By swearing off modern technology and simplifying their choices, they've developed the technology they do have into an immensely efficient toolset. "Aiy", they say.  "We may only have a handsaw, a pair of tweezers, and a grinding wheel, but we'll make you a chair better than anything your 'Herman Miller' could ever make."

The only downside is the hours, at least at the Amish market near us.  They're open Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.  That's it.  How can they do that to us?  That's like Chuck E. Cheese telling kids they can only come in on Mondays after 11PM, or ABC airing a new episode of "Lost" every seventh odd-numbered Wednesday only.  Torture.

So, Amish god, consider this a formal petition.  I, and the millions of others who live for your macaroni and cheese and meatloaf sandwiches, hereby affix our names and beseech you to allow your children to do what they do second best.  Sell us great stuff.  Please grant them more time to sell us what they do best; they take the mundane and make it great.

Thanks, Amish god.  You rock.

Woodworking...as a Concept

I love the idea of woodworking.  Taking rough-hewn planks and transforming them into furniture.  Creating something lasting from something inherently fleeting.  We go to the Amish market for lunch occasionally, and I'm always flabbergasted by what these guys can do with a tree.  One day I'd like to be able to do that.  One day I'd like a fully tricked out wood shop where I can try and make the same sort of magic.

I watch Norm Abram on The New Yankee Workshop occasionally.  This guy is a freaking genius.  If he were a filmmaker, he'd be Stephen Spielberg.  If he were an architect, he'd be Frank Lloyd Wright.  If he were a 70's prog rock band, he'd be Yes.  And I think we know what sort of hot chocolate he'd be.

Each show he goes to some antique center, studies an old piece of furniture, and then comes back to the shop and builds a perfect replica.  Like it was nothing.  Not that he makes it look easy.  It's actually very hard to follow him because he takes something difficult and makes you understand just how intricate and complicated it is.  But watching the process, and seeing what comes out the other end, is almost mystical.

That's why I say I love woodworking as a concept.  I've never had the opportunity to try it, apart from studding out a wall.  But I suspect that if I ever had the space, the time, and the money to put a shop together, I would fall pretty deeply in love with woodworking as a hobby.