Snacking

Snack food is a universal thing enjoyed by many people, and the Ingalls family are no exception. Several instances in the Little House books involve them making snacks to eat, some which are common even today.

It was common for pioneer families such as the Ingalls to eat turnip raw and in slices, after peeling off the rinds. For the Ingalls family in particular, they enjoyed eating it in the evening at winter time. Trying raw turnip, it has a peppery taste similar to radish along with a dry grainy texture. Being from the 21^st century and not from the pioneering era, I was not used to this as a snack and would probably have eaten it cooked instead, in much the same way that the Ingalls utilised it for mealtime purposes. However, Barbara M. Walker says that they “are excellent snacks for modern people whose problem is too many, rather than too few, good things to eat at hand” (p. 115).
 

Raw sliced turnips.

Popcorn is another snack that the Ingalls like to eat, which is something that a modern audience can relate to. The Wilder family, who the Ingalls become acquainted with later on, also enjoy popcorn. Nowadays, the snack itself tends to get taken for granted as we can easily buy it or put it in a popcorn maker, but at the time they would have to get the corn from the fields, dry it and cook it in a pan over the fire. In the books, snacks like these are used to emphasise when the Ingalls have enough leisure time and when they are too busy working. For example, Mrs. Boast secretly brings popcorn to the Surveyor's House in By the Shores of Silver Lake and Pa claims “I haven't tasted popcorn since – if I'd known you'd brought popcorn, Boast, I'd have routed it out before now” (pp. 152-153). This helps to signify that the work is over for now and that the family can now celebrate. It also highlights that the popcorn is a treat rather than something that they snack on regularly.
 

Before adding the milk to the popcorn.

 

The Ingalls and the Wilders also used the popcorn for different purposes. One of Almanzo's favourite things to do in Farmer Boy was to place popcorn in milk because it supposedly did not cause the milk to overflow. At first, I assumed that this was a form of artistic licence due to the books being historical fiction and Walker warns in her cookbook that it is best to try this out in a bowl to catch the milk, suggesting that my assumptions would be correct. Bizarrely enough however, the popcorn actually fizzed and sank to the bottom of the glass without a single drop of milk coming out, something I did not expect. When eating the popcorn in the milk, the taste is the same (if somewhat more milky) but the texture is more soggy and is almost similar to rice pudding. It is likely that the popcorn was not salted as this would have given the milk a sour taste, as well as caused the popcorn to float more easily.

After adding the milk to the popcorn.

 

There are more uses as well. For Christmas celebrations, the Ingalls family would make decorations out of popcorn to hang on the Christmas tree, a tradition that has been very popular in America and still persists to this day. In These Happy Golden Years, there is a scene where the family make popcorn balls together, which helps to emphasise the relationship between each other as they each help out with different instructions. Laura pops the corn and Ma stirs it into the hot molasses before shaping it into balls. According to Walker in The Little House Cookbook, homemade popcorn balls like these are no longer common due to the arrival of new cooking equipment, and it could be said that therefore the social interaction has dwindled in modern times due to this.

It is interesting how the Ingalls only seem to use popcorn for special occasions such as Christmas whilst the Wilders eat it more frequently. This is probably to do with their different social statuses, with the Wilders being wealthier and having a set supply of crops on their farm. They also lived in New York, where the climate was less temperamental. It is also fascinating that Almanzo eats his popcorn by himself (or at least wants to eat it by himself) but the Ingalls share their popcorn out as a way of socialising. Overall, these factors help to contrast the families in a literary context as well as a historical context in order to show that life for Almanzo was different for Laura, down to the small details such as how they ate their popcorn.