High on our list of favorite book pantries is Laura Ingalls Wilder’s 1932 book Little House in the Big Woods.

Our favorite parts of Little House in the Big Woods are all about food.  There is a cellar stocked with root vegetables and braided onions, pumpkins and squash stored in the attic. The pantry shelves are full. There is hulled corn, harvesting and storing nuts from old growth trees, and a cozy little house and cheerful family.

The Little House books are filled with adventure and hints of danger. There are close calls with wolves. There are blizzards, other settlers jumping claims, an American Indian chief, a black panther, and even bears in the series.  Each covers life in America for settlers moving west into the new territories of a young country.Despite the adventure, they are quietly reassuring to read because everything turns out well (with the one exception being that Mary goes blind from a  fever in one of the books) for the family.

The Little House series also gives us fascinating details of everyday pioneer life. There’s the joy of visitors, the hard work of homesteading, and the novelty (nowadays) of simple Christmas celebrations.  Cooking, homesteading, building a house, and storing food to survive in a new territory far from neighbors are all in the series. Reading about life over a hundred years ago gives readers a look into a way of life that many are no longer familiar with. It’s almost an adventure for the reader!

The following excerpts from Little House in the Big Woods are our favorite parts about the pantry, attic, and cellar food stores, and they convey the simple homey coziness of the Little House series.

Excerpt from Chapter 1: A Full Attic, Cellar, and Pantry

“Now the potatoes and carrots, the beets and turnips and cabbages were gathered and stored in the cellar, for freezing nights had come.

Onions were made into long ropes, braided together by their tops, and then were hung in the attic beside wreaths of red peppers strung on threads. The pumpkins and the squashes were piled in orange and yellow and green heaps in the attic’s corners.

The barrels of salted fish were in the pantry, and yellow cheeses were stacked on the pantry shelves.” (snip)

Later in Chapter 1: Fairly bursting with good food

“The little house was fairly bursting with good food stored away for the long winter. The pantry and the shed and the cellar were full, and so was the attic.

Laura and Mary must play in the house now, for it was cold outdoors and the brown leaves were all falling from the trees. The fire in the cook stove never went out. At night Pa banked it with ashes to keep the coals alive till morning.

The attic was a lovely place to play. The large, round, colored pumpkins made beautiful chairs and tables. The red peppers and the onions dangled overhead. The hams and the venison hung in, their paper wrappings, and all the bunches of dried herbs, the spicy herbs for cooking and the bitter herbs for medicine, gave the place a dusty-spicy smell.

Often the wind howled outside with a cold and lonesome sound. But in the attic Laura and Mary played house with the squashes and the pumpkins, and everything was snug and cozy.”

Excerpt from Chapter 10: Goodies in the Pantry

“The sunshine came streaming through the windows into the house, and everything was so neat and pretty. The table was covered with a red cloth, and the cook stove was polished shining black. Through the bedroom door Laura could see the trundle bed in its place under the big bed. The pantry door stood wide open, giving the sight and smell of goodies on the shelves, and Black Susan came purring down the stairs from the attic, where she had been taking a nap.”

Excerpt from Chapter 12: Nut Harvest

“Along the rail fence the sumac held up its dark red cones of berries above bright flame-colored leaves. Acorns were falling from the oaks, and Laura and Mary made little acorn cups and saucers for the playhouses. Walnuts and hickory nuts were dropping to the ground in the Big Woods, and squirrels were scampering busily everywhere, gathering their winter’s store of nuts and hiding them away in hollow trees.

Laura and Mary went with Ma to gather walnuts and hickory nuts and hazelnuts. They spread them in the sun to dry, then they beat off the dried outer hulls and stored the nuts in the attic for winter.

It was fun to gather the large round walnuts and the smaller hickory nuts, and the little hazelnuts that grew in bunches on the bushes. The soft outer hulls of the walnuts were full of a brown juice that stained their hands, but the hazelnut hulls smelled good and tasted good, too, when Laura used her teeth to pry a nut loose.”

Excerpt from Chapter 12: Potatoes, pumpkins, and squash

“Everyone was busy now, for all the garden vegetables must be stored away. Laura and Mary helped, picking up the dusty potatoes after Pa had dug them from the ground, and pulling the long yellow carrots and the round, purple-topped turnips, and they helped Ma cook the pumpkin for pumpkin pies. With the butcher knife Ma cut the big, orange-colored pumpkins into halves. She cleaned the seeds out of the center and cut the pumpkin into long slices, from which she pared the rind. Laura helped her cut the slices into cubes.

Ma put the cubes into the big iron pot on the stove, poured in some water, and then watched while the pumpkin slowly boiled down, all day long. All the water and the juice must be boiled away, and the pumpkin must never burn.

The pumpkin was a thick, dark, good-smelling mass in the kettle. It did not boil like water, but bubbles came up in it and suddenly exploded, leaving holes that closed quickly. Every time a bubble exploded, the rich, hot, pumpkin smell came out.

Laura stood on a chair and watched the pumpkin for Ma, and stirred it with a wooden paddle. She held the paddle in both hands and stirred carefully, because if the pumpkin burned there wouldn’t be any pumpkin pies.”

Making hulled corn

Ma looked pretty, with her bare arms plump and white, her cheeks so red and her dark hair smooth and shining, while she scrubbed and rubbed the corn in the clear water. She never splashed one drop of water on her pretty dress.When at last the corn was done, Ma put all the soft, white kernels in a big jar in the pantry. Then at last, they had hulled corn and milk for supper.Sometimes they had hulled corn for breakfast, with maple syrup, and sometimes Ma fried the soft kernels in pork drippings. But Laura liked them best with milk.

Autumn was great fun. There was so much work to do, so many good things to eat, so many new things to see. Laura was scampering and chattering like the squirrels, from morning to night.”

Chapter 13 excerpt: Late Fall Pantry and a Cozy Little House in the Big Woods.

“The weather grew colder. In the early mornings everything sparkled with frost. The days were growing short and a little fire burned all day in the cookstove to keep the house warm. Winter was not far away.

The attic and the cellar were full of good things once more, and Laura and Mary had started to make patchwork quilts. Everything was beginning to be snug and cosy again.”

Want more? We have a post on the pantry in By The Shores of Silver Lake.