Every morning at 5 a.m. except for Sunday of course, several Amish women arrive at Tiffany’s, a surprising large restaurant in tiny Topeka, about ten miles outside of Shipshewana, to begin making the 15 or so varieties of pies served at the restaurant daily.

In all, they bake about 30 to 35 pies a day including mincemeat, apricot, blueberry cream cheese, Dutch apple, black raspberry and Bob Andy, a spicy custard pie. Other Amish women arrive at the same time to do such chores as peeling potatoes (the restaurant serves 75 pounds of mashed potatoes a day) and make noodles, dumplings and vegetable soup.

Tiffany’s is the real thing. An Amish restaurant where the Amish out number the tourists who happen to stop by. It’s not unusual to hear Pennsylvanian Dutch spoken at tables filled with men with whiskers and dark hats and women wearing bonnets and plain homemade dresses. The bulletin board is covered with fliers asking for volunteers to help rebuild a barn that burned in a fire or advertising a bake sale for one of the Amish schools in the area.