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Posts Tagged ‘laura ingalls wilder’

happy 145th birthday, laura ingalls wilder!

Posted in author recipes, cookbooks, pie recipes, weekend cooking, tagged , , , , , , on February 7, 2012 | 52 Comments »

“Remember well, and bear in mind, a constant friend is hard to find.” ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

I like to think of Laura as a good friend. I first “met” her as a shy child who devoured her books, and she’s remained a constant presence in my life as a reader, writer and human being.

I’ve enjoyed deepening my connection to Laura by learning more about the foods mentioned in the Little House books (via Barbara M. Walker’s Little House Cookbook), and making some of the recipes contained in The Laura Ingalls Wilder Country Cookbook (Trophy Press, 1997).  Some of you may know that this cookbook contains over 70 recipes compiled by Laura during the 30′s and 40′s when she lived with Almanzo at Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield, Missouri.

Last year, I made her Chicken and Dumplings and Apple-Upside Down Cake, and two years before that, her famous Gingerbread. To celebrate Laura’s birthday this year, I decided to try her Apple Slump, another of the six apple recipes included in the Country Cookbook.

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sunday bear: jeannine atkins

Posted in sunday bear, tagged , , , on January 22, 2012 | 8 Comments »

"Rose" by Brenda Dewey (German mohair, antique lace collar, 1986)

Love’s language is imprecise,
fits more like mittens than gloves.

~ Jeannine Atkins (Borrowed Names: Poems About Laura Ingalls Wilder, Madame C.J. Walker, Marie Curie and Their Daughters)

♥ Your weekly bear hug is brought to you, as always, by the dashing Mr. Cornelius, who has a not-so-secret crush on Ms. Atkins. Have a good week!

(((YOU)))

((Jeannine))

—————————————————————–

Copyright © 2012 Cornelius Rattigan of Jama’s Alphabet Soup. All rights reserved.

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happy birthday, laura ingalls wilder!

Posted in author recipes, cake recipes, cookbooks, main dish recipes, tagged , , , on February 7, 2011 | 12 Comments »


Over the fence to the farmhouse,
With laughter and repartee gay,
It’s almost time to be eating again
And we’re rather too far away.
There’s chicken and dumplings for dinner,
With salad and vegetables fine
And fruits just fresh from the orchard
Oh who wouldn’t love to dine!
Over the fence to the farmhouse
We’re afraid they will not wait
And with chicken and dumplings for dinner
Twould never do to be late.

~ Laura Ingalls Wilder


If ever a writer comes to mind when I think about “comfort and joy,” it’s Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Her Little House books provide lifetime nourishment with their ample stores of hope, optimism, familial love, strength, and enduring pioneer spirit. I’m quite certain at least 90% of you reading this post wanted to be Laura after reading her stories – wanted to be the kind of girl who never compromised who she was, who possessed a singular determination and always ventured forth with a brave heart.

To celebrate her 144th birthday, I decided to try two of the recipes Laura often prepared while living at Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield, Missouri. They come from The Laura Ingalls Wilder Country Cookbook, a collection of 73 recipes adapted from the ones Laura pasted in a recycled scrapbook during the 30′s and 40′s. Besides recipes, notes, and meal ideas, she also saved clippings from newspaper food columns and cooking advice from both her mother, Caroline Ingalls, and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane.

Laura and Almanzo

            

Laura’s cookbook is comfort personified — old fashioned favorites which called for “foods gleaned from her kitchen garden and staples she kept in her cupboards: cornmeal, brown sugar, white sugar, spices, whole wheat flour, and white flour.” Do Macaroni Casserole, Meat Loaf Supreme, Pork Pie with Sweet Potato Biscuits, Orange Nut Bread, Applesauce Cake, and Molasses Cookies conjure up visions of a wholly satisfying meal cooked in a wood-burning stove in a cozy farmhouse? Suffice to say, many of us today crave this brand of farm-to-table goodness, and experimenting with some of these old recipes might be the closest we’ll ever get.

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jeannine atkins and her friends, laura and rose

Posted in author recipes, cookie recipes, poetry potluck 2010, tagged , , , , , , , on April 21, 2010 | 1 Comment »

#15 in the Poetry Potluck Series, celebrating National Poetry Month 2010.


 photo by nobleup.

Why, yes. That would be Jeannine Atkins up there waving to us from atop that airplane. Of all our Potluck guests, Jeannine knows best how to make a dramatic entrance. And she’s not fashionably late or anything, which is quite surprising considering she had to travel back in time to bring us the two amazing women who appear in her poem: Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane.

Today, Jeannine is sharing an excerpt from her recently released verse biography, Borrowed Names. You may remember my singing its praises on its official pub day. Since then, it has earned yet another *starred review*, this time from Horn Book! We’re absolutely thrilled for this author/poet/professor who dares to defy publishing odds against poetry and historical fiction. Just as Rose Wilder Lane once flew over San Francisco Bay strapped to the wing of an airplane, these days Jeannine Atkins is flying high on well-deserved praise.

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soup of the day: borrowed names by jeannine atkins!

Posted in book reviews (all genres), soup of the day, young adult, tagged , , , , , on March 16, 2010 | 6 Comments »

“Can the past press closer than the present? Who is a daughter without a mother?” ~ from “Handful of Dirt,” Borrowed Names by Jeannine Atkins.


Alice Vanderbear reads to her daughter, Fluffy.

I’m absolutely thrilled to be wishing dear friend, Jeannine Atkins, a very Happy Book Birthday! Borrowed Names: Poems about Laura Ingalls Wilder, Madam C.J. Walker, Marie Curie, and Their Daughters (Henry Holt, 2010), is officially out today!

Though this is Jeannine’s first book of poetry, Borrowed Names is by no means her first book. She’s published a number of collective biographies and picture books about other notable women, including, Anne Hutchinson’s Way (FSG, 2007), Wings and Rockets: The Story of Women in Air and Space (FSG, 2003), How High Can We Climb?: The Story of Women Explorers (FSG, 2005), and Girls Who Looked Under Rocks: The Lives of Six Pioneering Naturalists (Dawn, 2000).

Borrowed Names is unlike anything I’ve ever read before. The poems are absolutely exquisite, far-reaching, quietly powerful, and undeniably moving — they reveal a poet with a rare, discerning sensibility and wickedly keen insight who, with just a few deft strokes, is able to paint riveting, multi-layered emotional landscapes.


    Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane.

Focusing on the mother-daughter relationships of three extraordinary women born in the same year (1867) is both highly original and endlessly fascinating. Though Wilder, Walker, and Curie came from vastly different backgrounds and made their mark in distinctly different ways, they were all fiercely independent women who shared an unwavering devotion to work and family. Despite numerous personal, social, and economic challenges, they all raised remarkable daughters in a rapidly changing world.

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