Preserving Food

Rather than focusing on food itself, this post will be exploring the ways in which food is preserved in the Little House books in order to keep it in good condition before eating. This is usually done so that the Ingalls family could be prepared for the winter season, in which food was scarce and crops could not grow properly.

One way of preserving food in the books is by keeping it at a low temperature. Nowadays we have refrigerators and freezers to keep food cold in but as that technology did not exist in the 19^th century, the Ingalls would leave them outside in the cold weather, depending on the type of food. In Wisconsin in particular, the food is plentiful and this allows the family to have different approaches to keeping food cold. In the first chapter of Little House in the Big Woods, much description is given of these methods. A deer that Pa has shot is hung up in the trees before it is turned into venison, not only to keep it preserved but also so that the wolves cannot eat before they can. Afterwards, the venison strips are stored in a hollowed-out tree. Vegetables such as the potatoes and turnips on the other hand are stored in the cellar, as not only does it keep them cold but it also prevents them from freezing over and going off as a result, unlike what would happen if they were left outside. The ones that are not stored here such as the onions and pumpkins are kept in the attic instead.

Ma prepares the venison strips in Little House in the Big Woods, copyright Garth Williams.

Another way of preserving the food is by pickling it, especially if it involves fruit and vegetables. For example, The Long Winter features a scene in which the Ingalls take in their crops and when they get the tomatoes, Ma “sliced them and cooked them with salt, pepper, vinegar and spices” (p. 28). These are the traditional ingredient for pickle, with salt in particular being capable of preserving food by itself. Not only are the ripe tomatoes preserved, but also the green ones, which are made into green tomato pickle. This helps to present the Ingalls as efficient workers, preparing their food supplies carefully so that they will not go hungry during the winter season and making the most of different types of food, whether they be ripe or unripe.

As well as making pickles from the fruit and vegetables, both the Ingalls family and the Wilder family would dry them in order to keep it preserved. This most frequently happened with the apples, which can be used for other recipes such as the dried apple and raisin pie made in The Long Winter. When making this dish, I did not have to de-seed the dried raisins like Laura and Carrie did as nowadays, according to The Little House Cookbook "the raisins you buy will be free of stems and seeds" (Walker, p. 130). The pie had a similar taste to apple pie but the texture was quite different. It was delicious and not something I would have considered baking normally.

A slice of dried apple and raisin pie.

 

In the books, the Ingalls always make the most out of the meat, which tends to be salted and left in the pantry along with the dairy products. In Little House in the Big Woods, Pa has a pig in the forest that he kills for food in the first chapter. They use the pig to make sausages and ham and turn the pig's head into head cheese. At no point is any part of the animal wasted; even the pig's tail is eaten after being cooked over the fire and the bones are given to their dog Jack to eat. Describing this in the first chapter helps to set the Ingalls up as people who know how to make the most of food, even the parts that seem to be unimportant.

The plentiful amount of food that the Ingalls family have and can preserve in Little House in the Big Woods contrasts with the scarcity of food in the later books, especially in The Long Winter. Though Pa is able to catch fish in On the Banks of Plum Creek, the crops still fail due to grasshoppers and cold weather. It is not until Little Town on the Prairie that the family start to have plenty of food again.