73 replies to this topic

[annabelle]

I think everyone worked so hard back then, kids included, that they were out like a light when Ma and Pa got cozy.

[Shelby]

Good point!


Ok, so I got to thinking today, I wonder if you could use something like a pear to make vinegar out of, or is there something specific to apples that you could only use them?

[heidih]

Little House in the Big Woods

I was intrigued by the treatment of corn to make one of Laura's favorites called "hulled corn and milk". After Pa "shelled the corn", "Early next day Ma put the shelled corn and the bag of ashes into the big iron kettle" The ashes were from some clean bright hardwood ashes she had been saving. The corn was boiled for a long time and "swelled and swelled until their skins split open and began to peel off". Ma repeatedly washed the corn to remove the hulls. Sounds like hominy or nixtamal to me which I associate with the southwest and Mexico. (this started on page 218 in my new softcover)

[Shelby]

Little House in the Big Woods

I was intrigued by the treatment of corn to make one of Laura's favorites called "hulled corn and milk". After Pa "shelled the corn", "Early next day Ma put the shelled corn and the bag of ashes into the big iron kettle" The ashes were from some clean bright hardwood ashes she had been saving. The corn was boiled for a long time and "swelled and swelled until their skins split open and began to peel off". Ma repeatedly washed the corn to remove the hulls. Sounds like hominy or nixtamal to me which I associate with the southwest and Mexico. (this started on page 218 in my new softcover)

I've always thought it was hominy. Somehow the ash was used...kind of like how it was used to make soap??? I don't know details. Lye?? I need to look in the cookbook. Give me a bit as I'm making dinner and I'll look to see if it's in there.

[pax]

Jo's blancmange and Amy's pickled lemons always piqued my interest.

My kid has a "Little House" cookbook and we've made all kinds of things out of it. Popcorn in milk is a weirdness I cannot wrap my head around. Maple candy, yes.

Not yet mentioned, Raold Dahl's Totally Revolting Recipes, which is made up of stuff mentioned in his books; James and the Giant Peach, The Big Friendly Giant, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Mathilda, etc. We made the Trunchbull's Chocolate Cake for Kid #2's birthday in November and we also make 'Stinkbug Eggs' pretty often.

[rooftop1000]

Between these 2 threads and my friend texting me Long Winter trivia questions everytime it snows (we're in NJ it's snowing alot) I have been laughing to myself all morning. We are going on a little roadtrip today and it feels like one of Pa's trips to the homestaed for hay between storms.
I guess it helps the theme that we are heading out to Amish country in PA for a buffet lunch LOL maybe they will have green pumpkin pie.


tracey

[tomdarch]

Little House in the Big Woods

I was intrigued by the treatment of corn to make one of Laura's favorites called "hulled corn and milk". After Pa "shelled the corn", "Early next day Ma put the shelled corn and the bag of ashes into the big iron kettle" The ashes were from some clean bright hardwood ashes she had been saving. The corn was boiled for a long time and "swelled and swelled until their skins split open and began to peel off". Ma repeatedly washed the corn to remove the hulls. Sounds like hominy or nixtamal to me which I associate with the southwest and Mexico. (this started on page 218 in my new softcover)

Wow. That really does sound like nixtamalization. I wonder when "european" Americans found out about nixtamalization? Given that pellagra (a deficiency of niacin (vitamin B3)) was a problem in the US south through the 1910s, maybe most never did.

Nixtamalization is steeping corn with an alkali solution (in this case from the wood ashes, but could also be "lime"). The overt effect is to cause the hulls of the corn to come off, which was clearly Ma's main aim here. But the critical side effect is that the processing causes niacin (B3) to become nutritionally available. OK - some Wikipedia research tells me the following: In terms of producing large quantities of calories, corn is an amazing crop. But for poor people, who don't have access to a well rounded diet, eating basically nothing but non-nixtamalized corn results in a deficiency of niacin, and that in turn has really tragic, and sometimes fatal, health effects (pellagra). Once this problem was understood, like scurvy, it's easy to intentionally eat specific foods to get enough of the crucial nutrient, so it has been essentially eliminated in the developed world. I wonder how wide spread this technique of boiling corn with ashes was in different parts of the US? It clearly wasn't common in impoverished southern communities, or pellagra wouldn't have been present.

Too bad for Luara - they were sooooo close to having masa! The could have made tortillas for venison tacos, or made grilled (or pickled) wild onions and topped stewed pork with them on some fried sopes, or, while they're at it, tamales! Oh, poor Laura, if only there had been Mexican neighbors out there on the praire to show them how to make all this great stuff!

I don't have the books available to me, so I'll be following everyone's discussion. My mom read them to me as bedtime stories, then repeated that with my younger sister. The books might be around my parents' place somewhere, but I'd be surprised if they weren't given to neighbors or donated to some school or other.

I suspect, though, that I have a less romantic view of Laura's life. The comment above about how vinegar was a normal table condiment made me think, "why?" I suspect that much of what they ate wasn't what we would call "fresh" today. Vinegar can go a long way to mask those issues.

Also, as an architect, I've learned a lot about not just "classical monuments" but also ordinary homes around the world and through history. Looking at all the teepees, igloos, longhouses, and such around the world, I'm pretty sure that in one room cabins, sod huts and such, kids were/are unavoidably exposed to their parents becoming "the beast with two backs" pretty regularly. (shudder...)

[acautrell]

This is all from memory, since I don't have my set of Little House books anymore, but they were my favorites in elementary school and I've even made the pilgrimage to De Smet, SD twice to visit all the historical sites there.

I had a major obsession with The Long Winter. I was really intrigued by survival-mode little house. I remember the green-pumpkin pie Ma makes in the beginning when they're just hinting at how small the harvest was that year and how they'll have to rely on Pa's hunting skills to make it through the winter. Before the end of the blizzards they're down to a single loaf of brown bread daily. Definitely nothing romantic about nearly starving to death on the prairie.

[rooftop1000]

Does anyone remember if the last "meal" before just the brown bread was the salt cod gravy or the 5 potatoes?


tracey

and extra points for anyone who continued onto the next series of books...where did the foreign lady carry the biscits?

[heidih]

I suspect, though, that I have a less romantic view of Laura's life. The comment above about how vinegar was a normal table condiment made me think, "why?" I suspect that much of what they ate wasn't what we would call "fresh" today. Vinegar can go a long way to mask those issues.

I just saw an interesting use of vinegar. In the 6th book "The Long Winter" Laura gets this surprise when she is quite thirsty working the hay with Pa: "Ma had sent them ginger water. She had sweetened the cool well water with sugar, flavored it with vinegar, and put in plenty of ginger". The stated reason was that the ginger would warm their stomachs and they could drink as much water as they liked without a tummy ache.

[nakji]

I wonder if that was fresh or powdered ginger?

[heidih]

I assumed powdered.

[heidih]

Moving into the second book of the series "Farmer Boy" there is a lovely scene about a meal served when the schoolteacher came to stay starting at page 25 in my recent softcover. It included slabs of tempting cheeses and quivering headcheeses. What spoke to me a few pages later was the description starting on page 31 of a happy family evening that combined popcorn, sweet cider and apples. Again I am intrigued with the corn uses.

[Kim Shook]

Just finished Little House in the Big Woods. Over and over, as I was reading, I got a feeling of slight shame. A realization of how easy my culinary life really is. And how, when it is difficult, it is because I choose to make something new or complicated. The first part of the book seems to be all about food – finding it, prepping it, preserving it, and enjoying it. I am food obsessed and so are the Ingalls, but in completely different ways. I would eat just fine without my obsession. Without theirs the family would starve.

As I read the part about maple sugaring, I was again slightly shamed. I feel superior when I bake a cake from scratch rather than using a mix. These folks not only make their own maple syrup and sugar, but have to fashion all of the implements (buckets, etc.) for collecting!

The cooking that Ma does is really subsistence level cooking. They eat almost entirely what they can grow, hunt, glean and make themselves. Almost nothing is store bought. And yet, there is an appreciation of beauty and specialness in the preparation. There are special molds to make the butter pretty. And for Christmas morning breakfast, she makes pancake men for each of the children. None of these things are necessary – there really isn’t time in Ma’s busy life for anything but practical hard work. And still she takes the time. Part of this is explained by the fact that Ma is not really a pioneer woman – she comes from back East and was raised in affluence compared to how they lived in this book. But, time and time again, I’ve come across that yearning for a little bit of beauty in an otherwise mundane existence that country women every where and every time seem to have.

On a completely different and much less philosophical note: Towards the end of the book Laura, Mary and Ma go out collecting nuts. She mentions walnuts, hazelnuts and hickory nuts. I wonder why hickory nuts are so uncommon now? I know that they are available online, but I don’t think that I’ve ever seen them or even tasted one.

And just like everyone, these books make me HUNGRY! I want to taste molasses candy and maple syrup candy and Ma’s hoop cheese. For some reason, the item that always gets me is the pan of beans. I can smell those beans, slow baked and rich with molasses, as I always imagine them.

[Shelby]

Just finished Little House in the Big Woods. Over and over, as I was reading, I got a feeling of slight shame. A realization of how easy my culinary life really is. And how, when it is difficult, it is because I choose to make something new or complicated. The first part of the book seems to be all about food – finding it, prepping it, preserving it, and enjoying it. I am food obsessed and so are the Ingalls, but in completely different ways. I would eat just fine without my obsession. Without theirs the family would starve.

As I read the part about maple sugaring, I was again slightly shamed. I feel superior when I bake a cake from scratch rather than using a mix. These folks not only make their own maple syrup and sugar, but have to fashion all of the implements (buckets, etc.) for collecting!

The cooking that Ma does is really subsistence level cooking. They eat almost entirely what they can grow, hunt, glean and make themselves. Almost nothing is store bought. And yet, there is an appreciation of beauty and specialness in the preparation. There are special molds to make the butter pretty. And for Christmas morning breakfast, she makes pancake men for each of the children. None of these things are necessary – there really isn’t time in Ma’s busy life for anything but practical hard work. And still she takes the time. Part of this is explained by the fact that Ma is not really a pioneer woman – she comes from back East and was raised in affluence compared to how they lived in this book. But, time and time again, I’ve come across that yearning for a little bit of beauty in an otherwise mundane existence that country women every where and every time seem to have.

On a completely different and much less philosophical note: Towards the end of the book Laura, Mary and Ma go out collecting nuts. She mentions walnuts, hazelnuts and hickory nuts. I wonder why hickory nuts are so uncommon now? I know that they are available online, but I don’t think that I’ve ever seen them or even tasted one.

And just like everyone, these books make me HUNGRY! I want to taste molasses candy and maple syrup candy and Ma’s hoop cheese. For some reason, the item that always gets me is the pan of beans. I can smell those beans, slow baked and rich with molasses, as I always imagine them.

Kim, you are a really great writer. You describe everything so perfectly it's like I'm reading the book, only I'm not!

Great catch on the hickory nuts. I'd love to see and taste them.


Like I said in an earlier post, it really makes you realize that you can do all of the preserving and cooking that you want to --without the "fancy" cookware/preserve-ware that we all think that we "need".

I got busy these last couple of days--we're supposed to get a huge ice/snow storm, so I've been doing all of the laundry and cleaning etc. because we tend to lose power easily. The last big storm we were without power for 12 days sigh. But, if that happens, it gives me plenty of time to read and it sure makes me feel like a pioneer.

[StanSherman]

On a completely different and much less philosophical note: Towards the end of the book Laura, Mary and Ma go out collecting nuts. She mentions walnuts, hazelnuts and hickory nuts. I wonder why hickory nuts are so uncommon now? I know that they are available online, but I don’t think that I’ve ever seen them or even tasted one.

Hickory nuts are in the walnut family, so are the more popular and "better tasting" pecans. I've known several people with walnut acreage and very few make any money at it. Where we used to live they'd let us pick the nuts any time we wanted because they made zero money on them. It's like many crops, you need to have a huge investment to make it.

Hickory lumber is valuable like walnut but I suspect hickory nuts can't be harvested profitably in the US.

[annabelle]

Shelby, I feel your pain about the power outages. We lost our power for twelve days, as well. Thank goodness for the genrator and the kerosine lamps, eh? I have new found respect for pioneer women after living for ten years in Oklahoma weather.

[Snadra]

Little House in the Big Woods

I was intrigued by the treatment of corn to make one of Laura's favorites called "hulled corn and milk". After Pa "shelled the corn", "Early next day Ma put the shelled corn and the bag of ashes into the big iron kettle" The ashes were from some clean bright hardwood ashes she had been saving. The corn was boiled for a long time and "swelled and swelled until their skins split open and began to peel off". Ma repeatedly washed the corn to remove the hulls. Sounds like hominy or nixtamal to me which I associate with the southwest and Mexico. (this started on page 218 in my new softcover)

I haven't read these books in over 20 years, but I could have sworn in the edition I read the word hominy was used. Or maybe I've just done some convoluting in my head over time

My mother made molasses or maple snow taffy a few times every winter (having grown up in rural Quebec) and I was always thrilled that I was doing something just like Laura did. Plus it was delicious! She used to sew my dresses in floral calico (no, really) and I remember getting her to make a pocket on one of them like Laura had when she collected rocks on the lake shoreline (how can I remember that after so many years?). I suspect it was out of relief that I had moved on from my Heidi phase (= braided hair, toasted cheese and hard bread obsession).

Although we raised our own pigs for a few years I was never given the bladder to play with

I had the full set of these books and have no idea what happened to them. Of course, now I simply HAVE to get another set, plus the cookbook.

[heidih]

We had some discussion up topic about the use of vinegar and also a few people mentioned something about green pumpkin pie. Well.....In "The Long Winter" (book 6 of the series at p.32 in the new softcover) the description came up. They were really struggling with the food supply. So in a forward thinking way Ma said when questioned about the concept of using a green pumpkin out of the field: "But we wouldn't do much if we didn't do things that nobody ever heard of before". They sliced and peeled the green pumpkin and started with a pie crust dough in the pie pan. She covered the bottom with brown sugar and spices (good start!) and then filled it with thin slices of the pumpkin. That was followed by a half cup of vinegar !!!!), a knob of butter and the top crust. Laura with wide eyes said "I did not know you could" in reference to the entire concept. Pa was quite pleased and surprised and thought it was apple pie.

[Shelby]

Little House in the Big Woods

I was intrigued by the treatment of corn to make one of Laura's favorites called "hulled corn and milk". After Pa "shelled the corn", "Early next day Ma put the shelled corn and the bag of ashes into the big iron kettle" The ashes were from some clean bright hardwood ashes she had been saving. The corn was boiled for a long time and "swelled and swelled until their skins split open and began to peel off". Ma repeatedly washed the corn to remove the hulls. Sounds like hominy or nixtamal to me which I associate with the southwest and Mexico. (this started on page 218 in my new softcover)

Ok, so in the cookbook it's listed as hominy, but, unless I missed it, the book calls it hulled corn.

My cookbook says we could use baking soda in place of the lye, so, I'm definitely doing this starting in late June when our field corn starts getting big enough.

I'm excited!

Oh, and my husband, then wants to make homemade corn nuts......I guess that's a whole 'nother topic lol.

[onrushpam]

On a completely different and much less philosophical note: Towards the end of the book Laura, Mary and Ma go out collecting nuts. She mentions walnuts, hazelnuts and hickory nuts. I wonder why hickory nuts are so uncommon now? I know that they are available online, but I don’t think that I’ve ever seen them or even tasted one.

We had a couple of hickory nut trees on the land where I grew up. One of them always had a LOT of nuts. They were hard as rocks. My sis and I would gather a bunch and try to crack them. Normal nut cracking devices were useless, so we'd bash them with hammers on the patio. The salvagable pieces didn't taste very good raw. (They look something like a hazlenut/filbert.) Roasting might have helped. We tried it several years in a row until we realized it was useless. The black walnut trees were where the real prizes could be found (along with horribly stained hands).

When DH and I moved to this house, I was excited to see we had two big pecan trees. Sadly, they turned out to be as useless as the hickory trees of my childhood. Too old and of some variety that yields little meat. A friend of mine once picked up several huge bags of them, ignoring my warning that her efforts would be futile. Sure enough. After several evenings attempting to crack/pick them, she pitched the whole lot. One of the trees is now gone. The other no longer bears nuts at all.

[Hest88]

Heck, I don't know how I missed this topic! I re-read the entire series at least once a year. Yes, I drool over the smoked venison, the pig tail, the blackbird "chicken" pie, the syrup candy, the green tomato "apple" pie, the pancakes, etc. I also own the Little House cookbook, mainly because I was trying to find a recipe for the vanity cakes from "On the Banks of Plum Creek" years ago. Reading the stories of deprivation always make me appreciate food so much more too. Even the canned peaches in the surveyor's house in "On the Shores of Silver Lake" sound good when I get to that part, and the late Xmas feast at the end of "The Long Winter" just seems heavenly.

[Shelby]

I'm reading "Farmer Boy" now. When I was little, this was my least favorite book in the series. I disliked switching from Laura and her family's traditions and ways to the Wilder's vastly "richer" way of life. However, now, I'm enjoying this one. Being older puts things in a different light.

I'm craving salty buttery popcorn now. Has anyone ever tried putting popcorn in milk?

[Shelby]

There is such a difference between the Wilder family and the Ingalls family. For instance, Mother Wilder cooks on Sundays and the Ingalls make do with cold leftovers as they consider cooking "work".

[Shelby]

I'm hogging this topic lol.


I'm to the part where Almanzo scours the hills looking for wintergreen berries. I've never seen these in person, so I looked them up online.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wintergreen

I found this quite interesting.

30 mL (about 1 fl oz) of oil of wintergreen is equivalent to 55.7 g of aspirin, or about 171 adult aspirin tablets (US). This conversion illustrates the potency and potential toxicity of oil of wintergreen even in small quantities.

Now, I have no idea how much oil is in each berry...so I don't know how much Almanzo ingested, but, he spent whole afternoons hunting and eating these suckers. Obviously he never had any ill affects??? Or, am I looking at the wrong kind of berry?

[heidih]

Beans definitely played a significant role in the meals. In Farmer Boy (p.79 softcover) I liked the sound of the baked beans and the rye n' injun that was put in the oven to cook overnight. Mother filled a 6 qt pan with boiled beans, and added onions, peppers, a piece of fat pork and scrolls of molasses over the top. I wonder what the main dry bean was for them. I also wondered if the peppers were sweet like a bell or hot. The rye n' injun was a mix of rye flour and cornmeal, milk, eggs, "and things". Leavening of some sort? I like the idea of rye and cornmeal together.

[Shelby]

Beans definitely played a significant role in the meals. In Farmer Boy (p.79 softcover) I liked the sound of the baked beans and the rye n' injun that was put in the oven to cook overnight. Mother filled a 6 qt pan with boiled beans, and added onions, peppers, a piece of fat pork and scrolls of molasses over the top. I wonder what the main dry bean was for them. I also wondered if the peppers were sweet like a bell or hot. The rye n' injun was a mix of rye flour and cornmeal, milk, eggs, "and things". Leavening of some sort? I like the idea of rye and cornmeal together.

I wondered about the dry bean variety, too. I did a quick scan of the chapter about harvest and I only see them called "beans". In the cookbook, however, there is a recipe for succotash that Almanzo and his family ate during the county fair in October. It says that the beans they would have used were "shell beans" or "pole beans". It says that if you cannot find these then lima beans could be subbed.

[Shelby]

I lied. They planted navy beans.

[emilyr]

Now I have to dig out my set. I hope mom didn't give them to the church rummage sale!

These books had so much to do with some of my earliest cooking projects. I know for sure that I made my first loaf of bread because of them. I asked my mom why it would take all day to do the baking, so she showed me.

One thing I hope some of you have made are Ma's Vanity Cakes in OTBOPC. I got the set for Christmas when I was 7 and had them all read by my 8th birthday in March. I really wanted the vanity cakes; they sounded so good, crispy and sweet. Mom wasn't sure exactly what they'd be, but we did two trials. One of a classic beignet recipe, but they were too dense, and the one we ended up going with from a church cookbook called Resurrection Cakes. You wrap biscuit (from a can) dough around a marshmallow and bake. The biscuit absorbs the marshmallow as it expands, making a hollow cookie. They weren't quite right either, but were good.

Anyone tried them?

[Shelby]

Every time I read about the little cakes, my mouth starts to water. I'm definitely interested in trying the marshmallow and biscuit recipe!

I've been lax about uploading pictures for a while, so these are a couple of weeks old.

We got 17 inches of snow so it seemed like a great time to try the molasses candy.

I boiled the molasses and brown sugar roughly to a bit over soft ball stage...I need a candy thermometer *sigh*




These bowls were filled with fresh, fluffy snow.



Here is the candy drizzled.



In hindsight, one should really pack the snow down into the bowls.

Here is a piece of the finished product.



Both my husband and I thought it tasted really good! Very sticky, though!

I also made some snow ice cream...very very good.