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The number one cause of obesity in homeschooling moms


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I'm always stunned at the amount of food Almanzo eats in Farmer Boy! I guess it must have been the long, long hours of hard physical labor.

 

 

I was stunned! Then I woke up one morning with teenage boys and reality set in with a bang! :glare: Seriously, all three are Almanzo Wilders. I don't even know where they put it...hollow legs or something. Two are slightly underweight for their height, and one is medically off the charts low for his height (currently 5' 8.5" and weighing in at 90.2 lbs. :001_huh:)

 

It's a good thing we stopped having children. What if we'd had more and they were, gasp, male eating machines???? :willy_nilly:

 

The book sounded great as a kid, but now that I'm really weary of fixing meals, I don't know if I should feel compassion for Mrs. Wilder, or should feel or rage towards Laura for even putting all of that on paper!

 

Mergath, so what exactly are you baking?

 

Faith

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If you go on a tour of the Wilder house in upstate NY they address the food issue. Laura grew up so hungry. She experienced real deprivation. I am hardly 5' tall, and I was told I would tower over Laura. Almanzo grew up with a relatively wealthy family. They never went without and often had more than many. His adult life was very difficult though.

 

The thinking is that Laura heard stories from Almanzo about the food he ate when he was a child and was just amazed. The historical society in charge of the house is of the opinion that she was fantasizing a great deal. The meals she describes were all the sort of thing a family might serve for a major holiday, but really not for every day. It just isn't realistic. So, enjoy the story and think about a hungry girl making up the most delicious food she could imagine.

 

And, I saw the kitchen, pantry and store room myself and they were tiny! There really wasn't enough room to store all those pies, breads etc. From a logistical standpoint it would have been very difficult.

 

It is a great tour and I highly recommend it.

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I'm always stunned at the amount of food Almanzo eats in Farmer Boy! I guess it must have been the long, long hours of hard physical labor.

 

Yeah, we were just listening to Farmer Boy -- my kids were like, "Almanzo had pie AND doughnuts AND oatmeal for breakfast on the same day!"

 

I think the cure is to read The Long Winter.

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If you go on a tour of the Wilder house in upstate NY they address the food issue. Laura grew up so hungry. She experienced real deprivation. I am hardly 5' tall, and I was told I would tower over Laura. Almanzo grew up with a relatively wealthy family. They never went without and often had more than many. His adult life was very difficult though.

 

The thinking is that Laura heard stories from Almanzo about the food he ate when he was a child and was just amazed. The historical society in charge of the house is of the opinion that she was fantasizing a great deal. The meals she describes were all the sort of thing a family might serve for a major holiday, but really not for every day. It just isn't realistic. So, enjoy the story and think about a hungry girl making up the most delicious food she could imagine.

 

And, I saw the kitchen, pantry and store room myself and they were tiny! There really wasn't enough room to store all those pies, breads etc. From a logistical standpoint it would have been very difficult.

 

It is a great tour and I highly recommend it.

 

 

That's VERY interesting. Were the Ingalls girls tiny from genetics (it didn't sound like Ma was a big woman and she seemed to come from a more financially stable family) or was there enough malnutrition in their younger years to stunt their growth?

 

Except for the Long Winter, and that initial period of time on the prairie when they ate mostly salt pork and some grains, I never though of them as going hungry. Did she pad her stories to make it seem that they ate far more than they did? In the Big Woods, she made it sound as though they really had a LOT of food put up for the winter and were successful at providing the basics. I'm wondering just how much of that was fluff in order to sell the books as children's literature during an era in history when people were much more conservative about what their children read in terms of real hardships, suffering, and death. Hmmmm....

 

Faith

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has got to be reading Little House in the Big Woods and Farmer Boy. We just finished up the former and are partway through the latter, and good lord, all she talks about is food. I haven't stopped baking things since we started them.

Wait till you get to the one where they're starving in the blizzard.

 

I have read others' views that she really gets into the food in Farmer Boy (food she never ate!) as almost a dream or fantasy compared to her own life.

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Wait till you get to the one where they're starving in the blizzard.

 

I have read others' views that she really gets into the food in Farmer Boy (food she never ate!) as almost a dream or fantasy compared to her own life.

 

I'd heard that, too, that she was sort of obsessed with the food due to having gone without so much.

 

I assumed she and her sibs were tiny due to lack of food. The second time through the blizzard (that is, the second time we read the series aloud) I decided her sister was gluten intolerant. But maybe she was simply starving at a critical time in her development.

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Mergath, so what exactly are you baking?

 

Faith

 

The day before yesterday, I baked a pumpkin pie completely from scratch. Yesterday, I baked a huge loaf of bread. And an apple galette. And we made a big pot of homemade apple sauce. I was going to bake another pumpkin pie, but dh was looking at me with a good deal of fear in his eyes, so I stopped. Still have that last pumpkin to use up, though... ;)

 

Also, since finishing Big House in the Little Woods I keep having the urge to smoke large quantities of meat out in the yard.

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Except for the Long Winter, and that initial period of time on the prairie when they ate mostly salt pork and some grains, I never though of them as going hungry. Did she pad her stories to make it seem that they ate far more than they did? In the Big Woods, she made it sound as though they really had a LOT of food put up for the winter and were successful at providing the basics. I'm wondering just how much of that was fluff in order to sell the books as children's literature during an era in history when people were much more conservative about what their children read in terms of real hardships, suffering, and death. Hmmmm....

 

Faith

 

:iagree: We just finished that one not too long ago, and there is food in every. Single. Chapter. They're either smoking meat, or butchering a hog, or storing massive amounts of vegetables, or baking for Christmas, or eating themselves silly at a dance, or... Yeah. Based solely on the book, I'd never have dreamed they went hungry at that point in their lives.

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Also, since finishing Big House in the Little Woods I keep having the urge to smoke large quantities of meat out in the yard.

 

 

:smilielol5::smilielol5::smilielol5:Post the pics please!

 

Faith - kicking herself off the boards to finish getting ready for houseguest and force her sons to write essays.

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:smilielol5::smilielol5::smilielol5:Post the pics please!

 

Faith - kicking herself off the boards to finish getting ready for houseguest and force her sons to write essays.

 

We really could have done it last year- we used to have a big smoker out in the yard, but someone stole it. :glare:

 

I'll have to see if I can find a hollow tree and a box of nails. ;)

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If you go on a tour of the Wilder house in upstate NY they address the food issue. Laura grew up so hungry. She experienced real deprivation. I am hardly 5' tall, and I was told I would tower over Laura. Almanzo grew up with a relatively wealthy family. They never went without and often had more than many. His adult life was very difficult though.

 

 

 

I remember reading somewhere that Almanzo was only 5'4". I wonder if genetics affected his height.

Edited by Trresh
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has got to be reading Little House in the Big Woods and Farmer Boy. We just finished up the former and are partway through the latter, and good lord, all she talks about is food. I haven't stopped baking things since we started them.

 

Do you own the Little House Cookbook? It is literally on my nightstand :D

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You are *not* kidding, especially Farmer Boy. The pies, the doughnuts, the yummy smells wafted through the pages, I swear.

 

My dd and I had to have long talks about why it wasn't too bad for them to eat the way they did. They were physically active all day long, even in the middle of the night, and it was coooold. They needed sustenance. :)

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Do you own the Little House Cookbook? It is literally on my nightstand :D

 

I just recently ran across this and have been reading it. It is fascinating!

 

One of the things that really struck me about it is just how new and uncommon white sugar is in human history. Another is how relentlessly less sweet things must have been in general, historically. For instance, even jams were made with half ripe and half unripe fruit, on purpose, so that the pectin from the unripe fruit would make them firm up. So they really sound more like savory sauces than like jams.

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My husband cries through Farmer Boy. I thought it was his relating to Almonzo winning the state fair prize and other boyhood accomplishments ... Now I realize it's probably the food!

 

"if only my wife would cook for me like this I'd be a truly happy man!" :lol:

 

:lol::lol::lol:

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