For those who are keeping track, my baby was due 9 days ago. Don’t worry, we’re all fine! I just haven’t gone into labor yet. It looks like this baby is determined to camp out as long as possible! I think someone told them how cold it is outside right now, and they decided to stay where it’s warm (I told my mother-in-law that if the baby sees it’s shadow while being delivered, we get 6 more weeks of winter). 😉
I’m scheduled to be induced tonight if nothing happens earlier today, so either way I’ll likely be MIA from the internet for at least the next few days.
I may be feeling super ambitious and post something on social media the same day the baby’s born, but realistically I may not get to it until this weekend. I have a post planned to share the birth story, though. So if all goes well, I’ll hopefully be able to share more of the details with you as early as next week.
Any prayers and good thoughts you want to send our way would be highly appreciated! See y’all on the other side! 🙂
There are lots of great desserts in the Little House books, but I had my heart set on snow candy from the very beginning.
This is one of the fastest and most rewarding recipes I’ve ever made. Start to finish, it doesn’t take more than 5-7 minutes, and the resulting maple candy is delicious. The version I made (a recipe from Happy Hooligans) is truthfully nothing more than boiled maple syrup, but there’s something about the chill from the snow and the texture from the few remaining snowflakes still clinging to the candy as you lay it on your tongue that just make it so darn satisfying. ^.^
This is a fun, quick snowy day recipe to make with kids. I highly recommend eating the candy straight off the snow, as it tends to go soft a few minutes after being removed from the snow (the melting snowflakes start to dissolve it).
NOTE: You’ll want to be careful to use “food safe” snow—clean snow that hasn’t been walked or touched by animals. We had a big snow the weekend I made this, and I went out while it was still snowing and gathered some fresh snow off our back porch railing. If you’re sending out kiddos to gather the snow, make sure they know a safe place to get it.
Most of the Top Ten Tuesday prompts this month revolved around reading goals, but with a new baby arriving any day now, I have virtually no reading goals for this year. So instead I decided to do a slight twist on the suggested theme and write a Top 10 list that was more applicable to my current station in life.
I got a big stack of picture books as shower gifts, and I’m already looking forward to reading to our new little person. The books listed below are the top ten books I’m most looking forward to sharing with Baby. Enjoy! 🙂
In the Little House books, many of the foods are simple and hearty, but they’re also a little unusual. You don’t see many people eating smoked venison or salt pork these days, and Johnny cake is even more rare. So I thought it would be fun to take some time to make a pioneer food that’s a little more familiar to modern palates: roasted sweet potatoes.
Like most Midwesterners, I’ve eaten sweet potatoes all my life, so it was fun for me to read about a food I recognized in the Little House books. In Little House on the Prairie, a friend brings some sweet potatoes to Christmas dinner, and the Ingalls family bakes them whole in the ashes of the fire. I wanted to make something a bit more involved that still remained true to the simple, natural way the Ingalls cooked, so I diced my potatoes and roasted them (skins still on) with a little salt, pepper, garlic, and fresh thyme.
The end result was a hearty dish perfect for a pioneer kitchen! 🙂
My baby’s due any day now, so I thought now would be a good time to talk about the two awesomely bookish baby showers my family threw for me! 🙂
At first I didn’t think I’d have time to write a post about the showers, but I was so floored by the incredible effort my family put into them, it seemed like such a shame not to share them. Plus, if you’re planning any book themed baby showers of your own, there are some great ideas here! 🙂
P.S. I can’t take credit for any of the cool things described below. It all goes to my mother-in-law, mom, and sister. They’re the creative geniuses behind these parties. ^.^
Today’s post is more of a technique than a recipe, but it’s one I’ve been wanting to try for months now! 🙂
This past weekend, I got to do something super fun and pioneer-y: I made smoked venison! When my brother got his first deer this year while hunting with my dad, I begged for a hindquarter steak to use on the blog, since nothing could be more perfect for a Little House on the Prairie menu than smoked venison. 🙂
Then I called up my friends David and Gina, who were kind enough to let me use their smoker. I’ve included details about our process below. Enjoy! 🙂
National Hot Tea Day is tomorrow, so in honor of my favorite beverage, I’m ranking the best teas from my Alison’s Wonderland Tea gallery! Of course, choosing favorite teas can be super difficult, since the differences between varieties can make them hard to compare (how do you choose between a rich, robust black tea and a truly excellent herbal tea?). That in mind, I decided to sort them all into categories based on the type of tea (black, green, white, chai, honeybush/rooibos, mate, and herbal) and choose favorites in each category. Let’s get started!
NOTE: Varieties like oolong aren’t featured because I don’t have any blends that use it…yet! 😉
Straight out of the gate, I had trouble choosing and came up with a tie. However, much of my difficulty came from the fact that these two teas are VERY similar. They both have an Earl Grey base and feature lavender, but Miss Mary’s Garden is accented with strawberry and rose petals, while Second Star is mixed with cream tea. I love them both because they’re rich Earl Greys with floral notes that are strong but not overpowering.
I’m not usually a big fan of green tea, but this blend is so fresh and airy with hints of fresh tropical fruit. I could sip this by the seaside for the rest of my life! 🙂
This might be my all-time favorite non-black tea. It’s so fresh and summery! I love to make it as sun tea, and it doesn’t even need sugar (and I say that as a self-professed sugar addict). Personally, I think it’s the inclusion of white strawberry tea that makes the big difference. It adds a level of complexity that I have trouble finding in other white teas.
Tori’s Peppermint Tea is the best mint tea I’ve ever had. I love the refreshing but not overpowering mint flavor, tempered with faint hints of lemon. Add some honey, and it’s divinity (plus, it’s great hot or iced).
This is hands-down my best selling tea, and it might be my favorite out of all the blends I’ve ever made. It combines honeybush hazelnut, chocolate, and cream to make a rich, sweet, robust tea. It’s practically a dessert all on its own. I like to think of it as Nutella tea! 🙂
This tea is a tribute to my favorite Agatha Christie character: Hercule Poirot. Since he likes coffee and hot chocolate instead of tea, I made a mocha nut mate blend with chocolate and hazelnut. It’s got a definite coffee flavor, but the chocolate adds sweetness where you would otherwise expect to find bitterness. I don’t normally like coffee, but I LOVE this blend!
What’s your favorite tea to brew for National Hot Tea Day?
There are lots of classic, All-American desserts mentioned in the Little House books, but when I decided to make a tea for the series, I couldn’t get Ma’s pies off the brain. Dried apple pies are a specialty of hers that stood out to me, so I chose it as the theme for my tea! I chose one of my favorite rooibos blends from Adagio (Rooibos Cinnamon Apple) as my base, adding cream, apples, and spice to make the flavor more unique. The result was a tea that conjures of the cozy scent and taste of a winter day bundled up at home. Enjoy!
Welcome to our very first menu of 2017! I’m proud to announce that our new Book of the Month will be Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books.
I love all the hearty frontier food featured in the books—smoked venison, corn cakes, snow candy, and so much more! One food that stuck out to me in the Little House books was “johnny cake.” I’d never heard of it before, but the Ingalls family eats it while traveling to their new homestead, so it sounded like perfect pioneer food.
Howdy, folks! Our new Book of the Month (or rather, book series of the month) is the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I’ll start posting recipes based on the books on Thursday, but today we’re starting the month off with a Little House reading kit!
I always have fun planning reading kits, but I had a particularly good time making this one. I LOVED playing pioneers as a kid, so when I decided to make a Little House kit, it totally sent me back to my childhood. I kept thinking of things I would’ve loved to have while reading the books as a kid!
Of course, that now gives me the unique problem of reeeeeeeally wanting to buy all this stuff for myself. But is that even really a problem? I mean, I can just tell everyone I’m being cultured, and they’ll accept that as a TOTALLY legit answer, right? Please say yes…
