I started traveling to an Amish farm around 7 years ago, treating all my Amish patients at once. This allowed them to not have to pay a hundred dollars to get a driver to come see me, and only have a few at at time at that.
My first time there they asked if I would stay for dinner. Picky eater, by nature, I didn't really feel like staying and trying to eat something I didn't really like. Then I heard, we are having pizza. Pizza! Easy. Pizza with the Amish, what a great story.
What came out was not pizza! It was loaded with vegetables on top of some type of cream cheese(?) on top of some soft bread. It did have a bit of shredded cheddar. But to call this pizza was a stretch. A big stretch at that. It was actually pretty good though.
Through the years, I've stayed for dinner after every visit. I've had close to 10 variations of "pizza" none of which would be classified as pizza to the outside world. Fruit pizza, ground beef pizza, mashed potatoe pizza to name a few.
Over the years, I've asked many questions on different aspects of their culture. They ask questions about my travel with sports teams and countries I've visited. I ask questions like taxes, school, marriage and work. One thing I never asked was about the pizza.
I've told many friends about the pizza, and my basic comment was that if it has cheese on it, they call it pizza. A misunderstanding I never corrected. Until this last weekend.
I always have loved the Origen Stories they do in movies now. I now know the Origen story of Amish pizza.
My host that does all the cooking is probably in her early 60's. We sat down to eat some fruit pizza and she asked if their was any foods I didn't like. "I hate onions. In fact, when I was traveling in Germany with bobsled, the only German I learned was Nine Zwiebel. No onion."
She responded by saying that her Dad, since passed, also hated onions. The only time he had pizza it was loaded with onions, and he told his daughter, my host, how disgusting pizza was. My host would not have a real pizza until she was 20 and she goes, "it was so delicious". There was no onions on pizza!
About 15 years ago, she was gifted a recipe book of all the different pizzas you could make. Over 50. She started cooking them for her dad before he passed. The myth of Amish pizza died. Misunderstanding was cleaned up.
In this story is something I hope to remember. Ask questions. Sometimes it is just pizza. Sometimes it is much bigger then that. How often do we think "onions" ruin a thing and think that is for everything?
Keep digging.
