Customer Reviews

My Little House Cookbook (My First Little House Books)

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I purchased this book to find recipes to make for my daughters 8th birthday. She had read all the Little House Series and had a "Laura" party. I was very disappointed when the recipe for making butter called for a food proccesor. I was looking for recipes that would illustrate the frontier lifestyle not modern day cooking. The recipes called for ingredients they wouldn't have or use.

I've loved the Little House books my whole life. Now that I'm grown, with children of my own, I've started collecting anything to do with these books since they can help teach and illustrate the more simpler times gone by and I'm trying to teach my children those values. Considering that these recipes are very simple, most of them a child can make on their own or very little supervision, helping to impart a sense of accomplishment. You do have to take into account that these recipes were not written for an adult. If you want that, I reccomend The Laura Ingalls Wilder Country Cookbook. It's a collection of recipes that Laura compiled during her life. I was amazed at the horrible reviews left for this book. You have to remember that most of these recipes were from a more simple time when not only our habits but how food was prepared was radically different. Some people mentioned that these recipes seemed old fashioned, or that some of the techniques weren't what they expected. Well, as to old fashioned, what did you expect from books written about a time over 100 years ago? As for being dissapointed that the technique for the butter was too modern, you're lucky that they were updated so a modern reader could understand them. I have a cookbook that's over 100 years old passed down through my mothers family and I'm still trying to decipher some of it. All you had to do was buy some cream, some small canning jars, and give each girl a jar about half full of cream and let her shake it to her hearts content. No, popcorn and milk doesn't sound very appetizing to me, but then bread in milk doesn't either, and my great grandmother ate that with a bit of sugar for her "sweet tooth" quite often. As to the carrot in the butter, in the winter since fresh green pasture was not avaiable, the butter was not always yellow, but sometimes pure white and carrots were once used to give it a bit of color. You don't add the actual carrot to the butter. Grated carrots are added to water and boiled down to extract the color. It's the colored liquid left as a result that colored, as well as sweetened the butter. Carrots were often more available than annatto, a popular dye made from a tropical tree, that was also used, as well as powdered turmeric, which imparted a richer flavor. My copy of this book is packed at this time since we just moved, and it's been some time since I read it so I don't remember how the butter recipe was set up. However, if it does tell you to add the carrot directly to the cream in the blender, I would reccomend not doing that since you would wind up with little bits of carrots all through your butter. :D If it's available, buy carrot juice at a local health store and add a small amount of it to the cream before churning it. I do admit that some of the ingredients called for, and some of the technique as well, definately wouldn't have been used in that era. But you would be surprised at a lot of stuff that they did have access too, at times under different names than commonly used today. You really should give this little book a chance. I also reccomend The Anne of Green Gables Cookbook

While this isn't exactly gourmet cooking, it is the type of cooking a child can handle. This also teaches a child about the tools you need for cooking and shows step-by-step pictures in some recipes. The ingredients are divided into the recipe parts and the instructions are numbered.

The recipe for butter might be worth buying the book because it teaches children how foods are made from scratch. They might never really think about how butter is made until they are older. This teaches them some of the basics. The carrot is used for coloring but I can't imagine why you would put the carrot in the blender with the cream. I just found that rather odd. The recipe for Popcorn and Milk is not exactly delicious. But hey, you can't always have it all. And who knows, maybe someone out there thinks carrot butter is good.

The recipes include:

Breakfast Sausage Balls
Butter & Jam Sandwiches
Buttermilk Cornbread
Creamy Oatmeal
Homemade Butter
Laura's Little Maple Cakes
Lemonade

Ma's Best Butter Cookies
Pancakes
Popcorn and Milk
Strawberry Jam

Most of the recipes look fine although I can't say I've tried any of them. I see this book as more of an introduction to cooking. Basically showing a child how foods are made.

~The Rebecca Review

This is a very simple cookbook. My neice was so excited to try the recipes. I would recommend this for those children who are Little House fans. I think they will enjoy some of the recipes. Only downfall...some of the items are more old fashioned, such as, making homemade butter. However, if they would like to see what it would be like, or maybe a class project, this could be fun.

Horrible! Horrible! Horrible! The recipes were terrible. Would anyone actually eat popcorn and milk mixed together?!! Is it really a recipe to just make popcorn and add it to milk?!! And the butter recipe was terrible. Butter is the easiest thing in the world to make... just add cream to a jar with a lid and shake. Why would you add a carrot to the cream? Why make it complicated? And do I really need a cookbook to make oatmeal or a butter and jam sandwich?