Little Foodie Across the Prairie, 2024 Edition, The Complete Laura Gastro Experience

Eating a gingersnap on Laura's front porch, where she had invited many visitors before. 

I'm giddy about this, a week later. 

Food - obtaining, raising, making, and enjoying it - is a big part of the Little House series. The overarching theme revolves around Pa's attempts at finding just the right farm to provide for his family and making enough money to keep Ma in silk dresses and candy for every day of the week instead of just Christmas. 

What I started last year on my trip out to Minnesota and the Dakotas I finished this past week with what has been my third major Little House trip. When pressed to remember if I did something special in Pepin, Facebook helpfully conjured memories of the trip made in 2016. 

The food I included for specific locations is faithful to her story in her books. What does that mean? She left out Burr Oak, Iowa, the missing years between Plum Creek and Silver Lake; therefore, so did I. I have not included Almanzo's story since I've been traipsing around the midwest. However, I can see a future trip, gleefully eating my way through New England since that nine-year-old boy had an appetite for everything from ice cream to apples 'n' onions.  

Ma made the family fried chicken from the wild-caught prairie chickens in Kansas. Mine is from Lambert's, home of the throwed rolls. 

The "Eating with the Ingalls" travel menu with a link to last year's blog post: 

Little House in the Big Woods: maple sugar candy on the shores of Lake Pepin collecting pebbles

Little House on the Praire: bread and molasses, chicken leg, and peppermint stick at a picnic table next to Pa's well 

On the Banks of Plum Creek: donut holes (for vanity cakes) and milk on the actual banks of Plum Creek, approximately where the footbridge would have been

By the Shores of Silver Lake: ice water and hard candy at the Tracy train depot

The Long Winter: baking powder biscuit and tea near the Brookings railroad tracks

Little Town on the Prairie: lemonade under the cottonwoods on the Ingalls homestead

These Happy Golden Years: chef's salad made with things Ma would have planted in her garden, at the DeSmet Mercantile, downtown on Calumet Avenue

The First Four Years: Hobo ice cream from the creamery at South Dakota State University

On the Way Home: last year it was a blackberry kettle sour before departing the area; this year it was a gingersnap on Laura's front porch

Ma liked to make hard-boiled eggs while camping and traveling. I had them too, dipped in salt and pepper before I jumped in the car to come back home. 

Hard-boiled eggs are usually the best option at the hotel's free breakfast buffet.