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Laura and Mary making candy in Little House in the Big Woods, copyright Garth Williams. 

The Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder is one of the most notable depictions of pioneer life in literature, being loved by millions since the first book was published in 1932. It is classified as historical fiction, retelling the life story of the author and her family. One of the most notable aspects of the books is the food that the characters eat, whether they be helping each other to prepare it for normal everyday use or for a special occasion.

The Ingalls family were a group of pioneers that moved around America during the 19th Century. The first book Little House in the Big Woods starts off in the forests of Wisconsin and the last set of books end in the prairies of DeSmet in South Dakota. Each place that they stopped off at was different from the last, which meant that they had to adapt to their climate in different ways, especially when it came to the food that they ate. These memories stayed with Laura, who when writing the first book thought back to "the details of the way her mother used to color butter using scraped carrots and the delicious aroma of a pig's tail roasting over the fire after a hog was butchered" (Berne, p.11, 2008).

There are two ways in which the author presents the food: the preparation of it and the consuming of it. The preparation is particularly important to the texts and literary critic Nicki Humbles comments on how "in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries scenes of children – girls – cooking are a particularly iconic feature of North American children’s literature. In a culture that strongly valorised notions of self-sufficiency, culinary skills were seen as a crucial element of a child’s education". The above picture is a perfect example of this importance and Humble describes "the child Laura pouring the hot syrup, her tongue protruding from her mouth indicating both care and anticipatory pleasure". The picture therefore gives a general idea of how the preparation of food is depicted - an enjoyable activity that rewards you with a delicious treat to consume.

There are also moments in the series when the Ingalls family do not have much to eat. This can be for a variety of reasons, such as the grasshopper plague in On the Banks of Plum Creek and the heavy snowfall in The Long Winter. Humble says that "Laura Ingalls Wilder's books are driven by remembered hunger...it is hunger that animates the descriptions of the rare treats her parents manage to provide" (p.54, 2014). Consequently, the family resorts to ingenious ways of managing this issue of hunger, such as preserving their food or making food from only a select few ingredients.
 

Being a massive fan of the Little House series, the idea of rereading it through the lens of food is something I am greatly excited about. In this blog, I will be exploring the use of food in these books and the underlying themes that they present. I aim to:

1. Recreate and taste some of the more memorable foods in the books. I will be using The Little House Cookbook by Barbara M. Walker in order to help me do this and I will try to use the ingredients that would have been used at the time, though I may have to use substitute ingredients when necessary.
2. Discuss the usage of food, whether it be for snacking or for a formal event. I will also compare different events to each other in their usage of food, such as the town party and country party in On the Banks of Plum Creek.
3. Explore the food's role in historical and social context. This includes showing class status and how the pioneers aimed to make the most of the ingredients that they had whenever they moved to a different place. I will compare how the Ingalls used food to how it was used by other families, such as the Olsons and the Wilders.
4. Explore the food's role in literary context and as a storytelling device. The Little House series itself is historical fiction, which means that it was based on real facts but has taken some liberties with them. Therefore, food becomes important in emphasising themes such as family and vanity, most notably during special occasions such as parties.
5. Explore the role of food in the spin-off book Farmer Boy. This focuses on Laura's future husband Almanzo during his childhood, which is depicted very differently to hers as his family "are assimilated citizens within an established and relatively com plex social milieu" (Erisman, pp. 123-130, 1993), in contrast to Laura's family who move around frequently and adapt to their new surroundings. By using this book, this will help to expand my discussion of historical and literary context.

Hopefully, the creative process of cooking the food, as well as the research on the context, will help me and this blog's audience to gain a better understanding of the use of food in Little House. I have enjoyed these books since I was a young girl like Laura was at the start of the series and I am looking forward to trying out some of the series' most well-loved recipes for myself!