Eat Close To Home

So I’ve decided that this whole “cooking my way through the Little House Cookbook” project would be a lot more fun (and a lot less daunting) if it were collaborative! I want y’all to cook with me, and to blog about the recipes. I’ll keep a running list of all the posts, and maybe between all of us, we can cover the whole book! I know *someone* out there has access to a wild turkey…

This is me, so of course, I’ve made a spreadsheet. (It’s shared in GoogleDocs; you might need a free account to see it and sign up.) This lists all the recipes in the book (over 100!), the page number of the recipe, and notes about which ones I especially need help with (most often for reasons of food allergies). Feel free to add your name to the “cooks” column if you want to volunteer to take on a recipe. When you’ve finished cooking, post a link to your blog entry about it. Pictures are encouraged but not required! I’m going to start this weekend, probably with a preserving or cornbread recipe.

I’ve also noted a rough estimate of the season certain foods should be cooked. Many are listed as “any,” which means the ingredients could be had easily year-round. Other foods must be prepared at certain times of year – dried apples, for example, or fresh tomatoes with cream. There are some things that are available to us year-round, but wouldn’t have been for Laura. Use your discretion about when you’d like to prepare those.

A note about recipes: I’m not going to be able to copy out recipes for everyone who wants to participate. You’ll have to borrow or buy a copy of the book, or see if you can find the recipe online.

So, onward! Who’s in?

You may be familiar with the blog, book, and movie about the “Julie and Julia Project,” in which Julie Powell cooked her way through the first volume of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogging about it.The book was a fun read, and I have even higher hopes for the movie. (Mom, it comes out August 7th…is it a date?)

A couple weeks ago, I was inspired to do my own take on the project. I’m calling it the Em and Laura Project, and I plan to cook my way through most of Barbara Walker’s Little House Cookbook, which collects recipes from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books.

I’m not going for 100% here; I’m not sure I can procure a prairie chicken, for one thing. But it will be fun to try to cook simple foods with simple pantry staples. Sometimes, I’ll use the stove and oven. Sometimes, I’ll try to cook in the fireplace (which is very differently-equipped than any of Laura’s fireplaces or cookstoves). Some of the recipes will require scouting or making some ingredients – salt pork, for example. I may just have to use bacon. On the other hand, we’re getting half a hog this year; maybe I’ll cure my own? I’ll try to stay true to the original recipes, though I will probably use my grain mill instead of a coffee mill for Long Winter Bread, and while I’ll try home-ground germ-in cornmeal for some recipes, by the fifteenth cornbread variation, I’ll be using store-bought.

I’m also not sure what I’ll do about beans and dairy yet. I’m allergic to them, but some of the bean recipes are the ones that appeal to me the most. Maybe I’ll have people over to help me eat them, and serve other things alongside. And I think there will be a fair few recipes that we won’t really *eat* much of…hardtack, anyone?

I’m aiming for a one-year timeframe, but I reserve the right to leave off if it just gets to be too much! I’ll probably do 2 days of cooking a month, with one or more recipes on each day.

So, who wants to come over for dinner?