Jan has been posting on Facebook about the early October blizzard that hit South Dakota so hard last week. She was brave enough to read The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder DURING the storm.
In balmy North Carolina, I was reading The Children's Blizzard, a non-fiction account of the storms Laura wrote about in her book. As gripping as can be. Interview with author David Laskin about researching The Children's Blizzard
Between Jan's posts about how the storm affected her state and The Children's Blizzard, well, I had to go back and read Long Winter too. So many things we don't get as kids, just read over them without the significance jumping out at us. That's why we need to reread our childhood favorites.
How I loved the descriptions of food in the Little House books. I remember the roasted pig's tale from Little House in the Big Woods and the wedding cake tasting dry in Laura's mouth in These Happy Golden Years.
But other folks have differing memories. Farmer Boy says FOOD to a lot of readers, all the way through the story. Others remembered different things out of Little House in the Big Woods like headcheese and snow candy making.
Actually, lots of folks loved Farmer Boy the best. What's with that? I was bored with it. It was about a boy. I spent my summers on a farm and loved it. Didn't teach me anything new.
Give me the romance of These Happy Golden Years, even when it was a hard-won, practical version of romance.
We interrupt this blog post for a Little House Smackdown. What's your favorite book in the series? Did you love Farmer Boy? Dislike Happy Golden Years? I'll take you on!
Deep breath. Back to LH food. I'm glad I wasn't the only one who tried to make snow candy with Log Cabin syrup. And totally failed. I found a recipe that works from The Little House Cookbook. The Little House Cookbook can be found here
But it uses molasses and brown sugar. Hmmm, I wanted the maple candy from the Big Woods not the molasses candy from the prairie days. I searched the Internets and found something totally incredible. A recipe that uses maple syrup and butter but, more amazingly, VANILLA ICE CREAM for the snow. Thank you, grouprecipes.com Here's the recipe for maple candy on vanilla ice cream snow.
So what IS your favorite Little House book? Have you lived through a blizzard? Made snow candy? Or wanted to know the real story behind Laura Ingalls Wilder as a writer?
PS.
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