7:45 We are ready to eat breakfast. On our menu is biscuits, sausage gravy, fried eggs and potatoes, cheese, juice, milk, and coffee.

8:30 The girls are now washing the breakfast dishes.

9 a.m. Elizabeth, 15, leaves to go help get ready for a wedding that will be held on Wednesday. Joe and the boys go out to help clean up and organize in the pole-barn. Joe has put in four windows and would like to add three more to the pole barn. It sure does make it brighter in there. The windows are some we saved from our old house. Meanwhile, Susan, Verena, and Loretta start doing the weekly cleaning. They get a little bit of help from 5-year-old Lovina. Lovina, though, says she needs keep going up to her bedroom and check on her little.doll baby. While they are doing that I am doing the mending and sewing on the dress Elizabeth will wear to the wedding. She is to be a tablewaiter at the wedding so she needs a certain color and material. This will be her first time as a tablewaiter at a wedding. We are also invited and Joe plans to take off work for the wedding on Wednesday. The bride and groom both live in our church district. I hope it will be a nice, warm sunny day for them. (Editor’s note: young unmarried boys and girls from the church and the families are chosen to be “waiters” at the weddiung meal, it’s considered an honor to be chosen)

Noon - The girls are done with the cleaning on the main floor. They heat up leftovers for lunch from our supper last night, which are mashed potatoes, gravy, and barbecued steak. After lunch the girls clean the bedrooms upstairs and the back porch. It seems empty around here with Elizabeth not being home. After lunch, I baked three rhubarb-custard pies and gave the three boys a haircut. That is one job I do not care to do is give haircuts, especially getting Kevin to hold quiet long enough. He keeps telling me to be careful because I could cut his ears off.

3 p.m. Elizabeth is back home. Susan and Verena and Loretta are finished cleaning. They go after milk at our neighbors with our horse Diamond and the buggy. They usually take Stormy, our pony and the pony wagon, but it is rainy so they take the covered buggy. Susan enjoys going out and harnessing and hitching up the horses. I never cared for that job either but now I hardly ever have to get the horse ready to leave. Elizabeth or Susan usually get the horse ready for me. Joe is also glad he doesn’t always have to stop what he is doing to get a horse harnessed up. Susan, 14, always volunteers to go help when needed in the barn. She likes horses and spends a lot of time with them in her free time. The girls are also going to take the sugar cookies Elizabeth baked to the place where church will be held tomorrow. It is within walking distance so if it is not raining we will walk.

4 p.m. While Susan, Verena, and Loretta go get the milk, Elizabeth does some ironing and I go back to sewing on the dress.

6 p.m. We have mashed potatoes, hamburger gravy, rhubarb pie, and ice cream for our supper. I make a gravy like a sausage gravy, except I used hamburger and milk instead. The children like it over mashed potatoes.

9 p.m. Everyone is cleaned up and ready for bed. It will be a long day tomorrow as we will have Communion services at our neighbors. Usually we are gone most of the day. With rhubarb season in full swing, I will share the recipe that the girls made the other night. These muffins are great served warm!

Rhubarb Muffins

2 cups flour

1-1/4 cup sugar, divided

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg

1 cup milk

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 cup chopped fresh or frozen rhubarb

In a bowl combine he flour, 1 cup sugar, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl beat the eggs, milk, and oil. Stir into dry ingredients until just moistened. Fold in rhubarb. Fill paper lined muffin cups 3/ 4 full. Sprinkle with the remaining 1 cup sugar. Bake at 350 for 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Makes a dozen.

“Scratch N Dent” Amish Cookbooks Available

The company that prints the Amish Cook cookbooks is testing some new printing equipment on the third shift of Saturday, May 1 and they have requested a test run from one of their customers. Because of this, cookbooks can be bought essentially at cost by customers to be printed on May 1. Book covers will probably have some wrinkles, creases, dimpling and maybe even some minor scratches as they test different settings, but the insides of the books should be in excellent shape. All six Amish Cook soft-cover cookbook, with the damaged covers, are available for $48.56, plus $4.99 shipping. Titles are Best of The Amish Cook, Vol 1 - 3; The Amish Cook Treasury, The Original Amish Cook Cookbook, and the Amish Cook’s Family Favorites & Facts. This damaged book offer is being passed along to readers as a “thank you” for keeping this column around for what will be its 20th year in 2011.

To get these imperfect books, all orders must be in by noon, Saturday, May 1. Books will be sent out USPS media mail on Monday, May 3 through our partnership with Amazon.com. To order by phone, call . To order online visit www.amishcookonline.com/update. Multiple sets may be ordered. PHONE AND ONLINE ORDERS ONLY, not enough time to mail in orders this week.