Farmer Boys

In honor of Laura Ingalls Wilder's 140th birthday today (thanks Cay!), we started reading our favorite book of hers again. Also, we had a real Farmer Boy style breakfast for dinner. I went for the Wilder breakfast menu because I thought it would be easier to make on a whim and more generally appreciated. Pictured below are just a few of the necessary ingredients.

Not pictured here were the butter, whipping cream, molasses, brown sugar, eggs, and shortening I used to make buttermilk pancakes, sausages and gravy, hot baked apples, steel cut oatmeal, and pumpkin pie. There was plenty of sugar, butter, cream, molasses, and real maple syrup on the table as well. I don't know what the surgeon general would say, but I'm certain Nina Plank would endorse us. After I made all this food, it occurred to me that we could have just gone out to eat at Cracker Barrel, instead. Then I remembered what happened the last time we were there, and I was glad we stayed home.

And here's a picture of the table I took without realizing that I was holding the camera over my own steaming plate.


We were all too full to eat this pie. But we did have the sugar cookies the boys made from the extra pie crust. Then we filled the kettle on top of the wood stove with water, cinnamon sticks and whole cloves. We warmed cider, popped pop-corn, and gathered round the hearth...

...to read all about that hardworking American boy, Almanzo Wilder, drinking cider and eating pop-corn beside his family's hearth.

This was so much fun and the perfect respite from our dull and dreary cabin fever, we might just have to make it tradition.