Unwanted souvenirs

Unfortunately, in addition to some great memories and a few carefully chosen souvenirs, it appears we also brought home some kind of unpleasant stomach bug that brought Miss B home from school early today and has left me totally uninterested in eating or even thinking about food. All the more cruel given that I finally managed to buy The Little House Cookbook, which I've been meaning to track down for ages and which not only includes recipes for all the many dishes described in all the books, but also sets them in the context of some pretty interesting agricultural, culinary, and social history. And as a bonus, I discovered The Laura Ingalls Wilder Country Cookbook, produced from the author's own recipe notebook. Yes, of course I bought both of them. What better souvenir(s) could I take away from such a memorable visit? And they will endure after this malaise is a distant memory, even if I can't bring myself to look at them just now.

Hoping to be back to regularly scheduled #NaBloPoMo food natterings tomorrow. I've still got a pumpkin-chocolate tartlet recipe from last week to post about!

Prairie weekend

I had a prairie kind of weekend: I went to visit Rocky Ridge Farm, where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived for more than 60 years and wrote the "Little House" books:

got up close and personal with some bison at Prairie State Park:

and rounded off my 19th-century field trip with a visit to the now-defunct US Army Fort Scott:

Oh, and I also went to a "dessert lounge" for the first time ever. Kind of the antithesis of a prairie experience:

Is this a thing now? It would be nice to know just how out of the loop I'm getting while I'm off examining calico sunbonnets and such.

What adventures did you have this weekend?

Saturday shuffle

This song is in very heavy rotation on my iPod at the moment. Eddie Vedder on the ukulele--sounds like a bad joke, doesn't it? But it's so, so good.