New Little House Series

 

Publicity shot from the new “Little House” series, released this week.
We have watched the first episode.

 In the 1970s, our family read aloud the “Little House” books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, beginning with Little House in the Big Woods, set at the time when the narrator, Laura, was four to five years old. As we read through the series, we were captivated by the characters and by the way Laura experiences the frontier as her family moves onward. It’s impressive how the books reflect the history of the American West as it was is being settled. We were quite aware of the author’s negative views of non-white people, especially the original Native Americans who were being displaced by settlers of European descent. 

The first episode of the new TV series starts at the time of the third book in the Little House series. The TV script has depicted Laura as around 11 years old, which gives the entire story a different point of view. The new script depicts more clearly the author’s views about race, downplaying the mother’s hostility to Native Americans. Historically, the Black doctor who plays a large role in this episode was a real person, though I don’t think he was depicted in similar detail in the books. From Wikipedia: 

“Dr. George A. Tann: An African American physician and veteran of the Union Army, Dr. Tann ran a homeopathic medicine practice in Kansas and the Osage Diminished Indian Reserve. He became well known as a pioneer physician in the region and treated both Black and white families on the frontier, including acting as a neighbor to the Ingalls family.”

It seemed to me that the focus of this episode was emphatically turned to “Pa” — the father and head of the household. As in the book, Pa was a restless and ambitious man who wanted to move west and settle the frontier, while “Ma” was loyal but not happy to leave her settled life in “the big woods.” The TV family seems to have been forced to leave for the frontier, though in the books this was not the case. 

In sum, I see many differences between the characters and situations in the script and in the original books as I remember them. More importantly, I’m not sure the TV show captures the spirit of the original — and maybe isn’t trying to do so. There are a whole lot more episodes, which I may or may not watch.

Blog post © 2026 mae sander

Idealized Farmers?

Dust Bowl scene from PBS special, looks just like the ones in "Interstellar"

I was thinking about the stereotype of the farmer reflected in the movie "Interstellar." The main character, Cooper, is a farmer in a vast dust bowl where the only crops left are corn and okra, and okra is in trouble. His children are being programmed to a life of more farming by a pathetic and unimaginative educational system, teaching a revised, untrue, and vile version of history.

In the early scenes of the movie the usual cliche -- nobility of farming in extreme and challenging conditions -- seems set-off against the unexplained chase after a drone where Cooper runs his truck (with flat tire) through huge fields of corn.

Soon after this, Cooper finds a clandestine underground NASA space program and meets the secret NASA scientists. We learn that he despises farming and always wanted to return to his original occupation as a space pilot. Presumably the endangerment of okra was to get our attention and make us see what a travesty farming has become in this post-apocalyptic world. Everyone is eating okra? OK. Being a farmer is beyond depressing, not so noble at all in the coming disaster, thanks to negligence on the part of current humanity. Social relevance!

Although the key to the situation is that humans are facing starvation, in fact there isn't much actual eating (presumably of corn and okra) in the movie except for a sort of around-the-table-in-the-farmhouse scene and one meeting where Cooper and the chief scientist have a cup of coffee in the secret NASA headquarters. The piloting mission Cooper accepts is to find a well-watered temperate planet where the remnants of the human race can avoid mass starvation -- sort of like the settlement of Australia in the early 1800s. Humans have ruined this world and he and a few stalwart comrades must find them another.

The romance of farming continues to be questionable in the lives of the two Cooper children, the very bright daughter Murph who becomes a scientist and actually seems to sort of save humanity and the unimaginative son Tom who in fact loves farming even though it's so blighted. Flashbacks to the dust-bowl days of the early part of the movie all echoed the testimonies of actual 1930s farmers interviewed on the PBS American Experience special "Surviving the Dust Bowl."

Farmers have a big role in popular movies, even when there's really very little going on with the actual process of farming. Like in Star Wars where we meet the good honest protective farm family of Luke Skywalker (with the retrospective explanation of who they all were, given in the prequels). We all want to see heroes live like the Ingalls family in "Little House on the Prairie."

Utensils

"There have been books on potatoes, cod, and chocolate, and histories of cookbooks, restaurants, and cooks. The kitchen and its tools are more or less absent. As a result, half the story is missing. This matters."

Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson is about much more than the often repeated history about how nobody used a fork until whenever it was supposed to have been discovered (or maybe re-discovered, since maybe the Romans used forks).

This highly amusing and interesting book talks not only about the fork, but about the spork. It also describes the history of the hearth and various types of cook stoves and spit roasting devices; cook pots and pans and skillets; rice cookers; knives, Chinese cleavers, and other cutting or mincing tools; egg beaters; spoons; the blender; ice boxes and refrigerators; and other interesting devices. The author explores the history of level measurements in the US and of measuring by weight elsewhere. She talks about the history of canning food, and the very slow development of an effective can opener.

Many elements affect the way people eat. One that's explored in a way that's new to me is how the supply of firewood or other fuel affects the way food is cooked. I knew that the combination of Chinese cleaver to cut food in clever small bits and the use of the wok to cook quickly was a response to scarce fuel, and Wilson explores the result of this fact. Less obvious: the habit of roasting huge cuts of meat, even sides of beef or whole smaller animals in an open fire was available in England because fuel was plentiful. However, the supply of cooking fuel in France was less plentiful, so other techniques of cooking became more prevalent. So the French call the English "les Rosbifs."

Wilson discusses how slaves or servants in the kitchen have affected attitudes towards labor-intensive cooking, quoting various people including the Roman philosopher Seneca: "I like food that a household of slaves has not prepared, watching it with envy, that has not been ordered many days in advance or served up by many hands." And in our own time, she points out that we depend on invisible workers far from our own kitchens. "We do not see the hands in the chicken factory that boned the breasts… nor the workers who labored to assemble the parts of our whizzy food processors. We only see a pile of ingredients and a machine ready to do our bidding. Alone in our kitchens, we feel entirely emancipated."

I particularly liked Wilson's awareness in the book of the differences among various social classes when it came to cooking and kitchen equipment. She quotes a great comment from Laura Ingalls Wilder -- "The rich get their ice in the summer, but the poor get theirs in the winter."

Appreciation of Food in Fiction

In the Guardian food blog:

Food writing, glorious food writing

The author, Sarah Crown, describes the use of food by a number of authors, many new to me. I loved this passage:

All books, in my opinion, benefit from a bit of food – and I've been a connoisseur since childhood. During my Blyton phase, it was the luxurious descriptions of midnight feasts, and the Famous Five's acquisition of "new rolls, anchovy paste, a big round jam tart in a cardboard box, oranges, lime-juice, a fat lettuce and some ham sandwiches" (Five Get Into Trouble, in case you're interested) that hooked me. In Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods I was enthralled by the descriptions of meat smoking, butter-churning and the putting away of provisions against the long, cold winter. My mouth still waters at the thought of the homemade ice cream with burnt toffee which Roald Dahl remembers eating at his grandmother's house in his childhood memoir, Boy.

Rhubarb

I love rhubarb. The crumble in the photo, which I baked this evening, was really good. Do you remember the Laura Ingalls Wilder story about how, as a young bride, she made pie from rhubarb (she called it pie plant) and forgot the sugar? I think Almanzo ate it anyway: just sprinkled some sugar on it.

According to the Larousse Gastronomique, my favorite culinary reference, rhubarb originated in northern Asia. Its first European use was by monks, as a medicinal plant, in the 14th century. This normally impeccable source claims that you can eat the leaves "like spinach" -- totally false -- they're poisonous!

A quick web search turned up the technicalities of this well-known danger: "Oxalates are contained in all parts of rhubarb plants, especially in the green leaves." The stems, explains the website, have a very low level of this toxin. "During World War I rhubarb leaves were recommended as a substitute for other veggies that the war made unavailable. Apparently there were cases of acute poisoning and even some deaths." From The Rhubarb Compendium.

The recipes in the Larousse Gastronomique suggest cutting peeled rhubarb stems into 2 to 3 inch pieces when you make compote, jam, or "English-style" pies and tarts. My mother did it this way, and her rhubarb compote was delicious but full of stringy things around 2 or 3 inches long. I am in the habit of using the food processor to make extremely thin slices of rhubarb -- as shown. This process is very fast, avoids the need to peel the stems, and thus preserves the beautiful red color. Also: no strings! I also pour a kettle of boiling water over the slices to reduce the acidity.

Rhubarb Crumble Recipe
For one 8-9 inch greased pan -- serves 4.

Rhubarb filling:
1 egg
3/4 cups sugar
2 tbs. flour
3 cups sliced rhubarb (wash & slice in food processor before measuring)
A few strawberries, chopped (optional)
Pour boiling water over rhubarb and drain well to remove some of the acid. Beat egg, stir in flour & sugar, and mix with rhubarb. Reserve strawberries for assembly.
NOTE: Rhubarb may be increased to 4 cups, other ingredients proportionally increased.

Crust:
Combine the following ingredients into crumb-like topping:
4 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup oatmeal

To Assemble and Bake:
Butter the pan and spread the chopped strawberries in it. Place rhubarb filling in pan, and sprinkle topping evenly over the rhubarb. Dot with more butter.

Bake at 350 degrees, 40 minutes.

I bought a lot of rhubarb, and prepped it all at once. While my crumble was baking, I made a pot of compote (AKA rhubarb sauce) from rhubarb, strawberries, and sugar. Cooking the very thin slices goes fast. It was done quite a bit before the crumble. I added a bit of vanilla after cooking. Isn't the color beautiful? We'll eat it later: it keeps in the refrigerator.

Finally, when I open a book like the Larousse Gastronomique, there's no telling what I'll find. Here is an obscure and silly fact: the entry just before rhubarb is rhinoceros, whose flesh "is edible." In fact: "It is preferred," says this revered source, "to that of the elephant by natives who consider hippopotamus meat to be even better." I wonder if that's more accurate than the claim that rhubarb leaves are edible.

In Real Life

"To me, life lived in commercials was real life. Commercials were instructions; they were news. They showed me what perfection could be: in the right woman's hands, the layers of a cake would always be exactly the same size. In the right woman's kitchen, a cartoon rabbit would visit the children and show them how to slurp down a tall glass of Nestle Quik with a straw. ... Commercials had a firm definition of motherhood, which almost all of my friends' mothers had no trouble fulfilling. They swept floors and scrubbed bathtubs. They cooked casseroles and washed dishes. They had smooth, sensible pageboy hairstyles and serene smiles. They set the dinner tables every night and sang Cinderella songs and taught their children where to sit."

In her actual life in 1980s Grand Rapids, Bich Minh Nguyen -- author of the memoir Stealing Buddha's Dinner -- was defined by her origin as a Vietnamese refugee. Her father, working in a factory, was more and more distant. Her older sister was adjusting better than she was. Her step mother Rosa was a native-born American, whose parents had been Mexican farm laborers in Michigan agriculture: she taught ESL, worked on an advanced degree, and was a Cesar Chavez fan, a boycotter of grapes, supporter of teachers' strikes and starving refugees. Rosa, too, created a vast gap between the family and their white Republican Grand Rapids neighbors. Rosa reminded them that they too had been refugees, boat people, threatened with starvation.

American food memories define the author's culturally confused childhood. Pringles. Nestle's toll-house cookies. Big Mac vs. Whopper. Kool-aid popsicles. 7-Up. Hostess cupcakes. Frozen pizzas. Jiffy-mix muffins. A famous dish like beef stroganoff or simple American whole pork chops that needed to be politely eaten with a knife and fork. For each of these foods and many more, the author presents a vivid story of how she first tried it, how she coveted it, or how it showed the character of a girl who ate it.

She also loved salty Vietnamese pickles, lychees, green sticky rice with pork in neat packets, and steaming soups that her grandmother cooked. The descriptions are vivid: I wonder how they relate to anything I've eaten. Probably nothing similar to the scallion pancakes or spring roll I tried on my last time at a Vietnamese restaurant. Her food is not symbolic: you can almost taste it.

While the author loved her grandmother's pho and didn't mind the Mexican roasts her step-mother occasionally made, she longed to fit in with the American kids, characterized by what they had in their lunch boxes or what their families ate. Her family bought in bulk or on sale, while she longed for widely advertised brand-names.

Although she had arrived as a toddler and learned English essentially as a native, the author could never be assimilated into blond, Christian, mainstream Grand Rapids elementary school life. Even her name was impossible: Bich. How could she get even teachers to call her Bic or Bit? Not a good life on the playground or in the lunch room.

This is my favorite kind of memoir: vivid tastes tell the story. Yes, there was a spelling bee triumph that the teacher begrudged her because she was an immigrant. Yes, there were children's put-downs because she was not Christian. Yes, she was forgetting how to speak Vietnamese, so she also didn't fit in with that crowd. Her father gambled; her step mother divorced him but didn't move out. Her step sister shoplifted. Yes, she felt isolated. Her closest family member seems to be Noi, her grandmother, whose room she shares along with a Buddha statue -- they sleep with their heads towards Buddha, in respect, and her grandmother presents food to Buddha and to the ancestors. Once, she took a plum from Buddha's dinner and ate it herself, but usually she just looked hungrily at Buddha's dinner.

Finally, nearly an adult, she discovers that her unknown birth mother had had contact with her father and step-mother for years, but they never spoke of her. As it has been throughout her life, when she meets her birth mother, food is the issue. The first thing they do is go for Dim Sum: "our table filled up with tin and bamboo steamers of shrimp shumai... We ate spare ribs, shrimp balls, and sticky buns stuffed with red pork... my mother kept the food coming, anxious to show [her] welcome through generosity." This is their one and only contact, and it seems sad but not profoundly so, with a hint that her mother had not really wanted to raise the author and her sister.

Even her memories of children's books are dominated by food memories: "Ramona Quimby, Encyclopedia Brown, The Great Brain, Mrs Piggle-Wiggle ... I lingered over my favorite food parts -- descriptions of Turkish Delight, fried chicken, hamburgers with onions, thick hot chocolate, even the beef tongue the Quimby family once had for dinner." As I read the book, I remembered the meals in Little Women and the Little House books as well as she does. I also appreciate her growing recognition of Laura Ingalls Wilder's attitude towards outsiders -- and how this attitude still affected her life -- "I didn't have any nonwhite literature, anyway," she remarks. And her hope: "I could read my way out of Grand Rapids."

This is a remarkable memoir, not the least because of its incredibly skillful and consistent use of food to tell the powerful story of an immigrant experience.

(Stealing Buddha's Dinner by Bich Minh Nguyen. Quotes: pp. 125, 151, 160, 232, 163)

Update, August, 2017: This was the selection of my Culinary Book Club. All participants seem to have enjoyed it quite a bit.