How Lovina Zook left the Amish and found an online audience

The Amish are what are known as “plain people” … religious Christians who value tradition over change. They dress modestly, and most don’t use technology like cars, computers or phones.

So, what exactly is going on here?

Meet Lovina Hershberger Zook, the unlikely 23-year-old social media creator who has amassed some six million followers with her recipes and stories about the Amish.

She comes from one of the most conservative subgroups in the Amish, and grew up speaking a dialect of German known as “Pennsylvania Dutch.” She’s no longer Amish – she left the faith five years ago. But she maintains many of their traditions at home. She made her dress, and prefers to wear it around the house.

Online, she’s known for cooking Amish dishes – simple, practical fare that ranges from the super-traditional to the unconventional, like a coffee soup made with hot milk, instant coffee, sugar, and saltine crackers. Her favorite way to eat it is with cottage cheese and meat.

Sometimes it’s what’s in a name that matters most. She made us an Amish cheeseburger – that’s two pieces of homemade bread slathered with butter and layered with cheese, grilled in a cast-iron pan until golden-brown and gooey. (What the non-Amish call a grilled cheese.)

“I’ve only had an Amish cheeseburger; I have never had a grilled cheese!” Zook laughed.

And that’s the thing: She doesn’t always know what she doesn’t know – what traditions and what words are ones the “English” (as the Amish call the non-Amish) might not know.

Zook had never used a phone before, and didn’t know what a computer was. “Like, I knew people worked on their computers. But I didn’t know what a laptop was,” she said. “And then I bought a laptop, like, a couple years after I left the Amish. Apparently it’s a laptop computer. And now I just call it a computer … Why is it called a computer? That’s a weird word. Computer. I don’t know why, sometimes I say words and I’m like, ‘Why is it called that?'” she laughed.

So, when Zook was growing up Amish, if someone had said to her, You’re going to be a social media star, what would that have meant? “Nothing,” Zook laughed. “Because I didn’t know what social media was. I would’ve been scared, because I would go, ‘What is social media?'”

Zook got her start online talking not just about food, but about the culture she left. Her most-watched video is a tutorial on how Amish women do their hair. It has more than 50 million views on TikTok.

Asked what it was it like growing up Amish, Zook replied, “We just live our life. We’re like, ‘Ooh, I know there’s people who live different lives. I know there’s people with electricity. But that’s wrong. And so, I’ll just, like, stay Amish and I’ll live an Amish life.'”

And that meant more than just no electricity. It meant no makeup, no dancing. The list of prohibitions was long. “I didn’t smoke; was not allowed for women,” she said. “No drinking; that’s not allowed for anybody. And no cursing. Absolutely not. You can’t even say, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ That’s considered a bad word.”

Gosh?!?  “You can say, ‘Darn it!’ or something like that. Like, ‘Cheese and crackers!'” Zook said.

And any transgressions came with serious consequences. For example, Zook was told, if she left the Amish, she would go to Hell.

Zook is one of 13 children. Her older brother left before her. When she finished eighth grade, she became a schoolteacher. “I loved being a schoolteacher. That was the best part of my life at that time,” she said. “But they were paying me $12 a day, and I was driving eight miles a day with horse-and-buggy. So, the wear-and-tear on the horse-and-buggy wasn’t covered by what I was getting paid.”

Her father said she was going to have to change careers, because teaching did not pay enough. He told her, “You’re gonna work at the saw mill.”

The last straw for Zook came when her mother criticized how she dressed for church. “She’s like, ‘You’re gonna have to use a smaller band around your neck because people are gonna start talking.’ And in that moment – I didn’t say a word, but I was like, I’m so tired of people telling me what to do. And I’m always trying to be perfect. And it is never right. And I was just done. And I was like, okay, this is the moment I start planning.”

She planned for two weeks, before escaping while her family slept – which she compared to escaping from prison. “I was like, I have to time this so they’re sleeping, like, really deeply when I leave, ’cause the stairs creaked a little, and I had to, like, figure out which stairs creaked,” she said. “And the day before, I sneakily oiled all the door hinges so they don’t squeak when you open and close them.”

Zook says she didn’t like living with all of the Amish rules, but she still respects a lot of their ways. And she misses her family: “My siblings, especially, ’cause I was the second oldest and I feel like they always called me Momma #2.”

Once she left the Amish, she had to learn all the ways of the “English” world. She stayed with her brother and other family members while she got settled, and five years later she drives. She makes a living making social media. She sells a self-published cookbook. And she’s married to an ex-Amish man named Eli.

She says that, rather than believing God will send her to Hell, she is living the life that God wants her to. “Oh, yes. I believe that 100%,” she said.

Lovina and Eli are expecting their first baby next month. And she’s not done yet: “I want a house. I want a garden. I want to farm. I’d like to someday maybe have an Amish restaurant, and an Amish market. Our plans for the future seem very busy, [and] very bright. My life just seems to get better and better and better every day.”

RECIPE: Amish Peanut Butter Pie

For more info:

• Lovina Zook (Official site)
• “Lovina’s Amish Cookbook: 230+ Authentic Amish Recipes” by Lovina Hershberger Zook (Lovina’s Kitchen Co.), in Hardcover and eBook formats

     
Story produced by Wonbo Woo. Editor: Jennifer Falk.