I think I have found the best Dilbert Quote ever, maybe even better than “Never spend time in meetings with time wasting morons.” In the second panel of the July 1, 2009 strip, ( http://www.dilbert.com ) Dilbert explains that test of their new software program shows, “Our user interface triggered wide-spread despondency and self-mutilation.” As someone who helps the general public with technology all the time, I surely identify with this. Recently at work I’ve been helping update our MLA handout (an updated version just came out) and trying to find stuff in it, reminded me of the quote as well, so it works for non-computer systems, too.
Last Updated: January 15, 2022
I added my current signature block and bolded the two quotes. On second thought I think the “Never spend time in meetings with time wasting morons” quote is more useful.
What is In the Kitchen with Laura? One of the ways I celebrate Laura is through historic cooking. These posts take you into a historic kitchen. Sometimes it’s something to try hands on, sometimes it’s just learning something about food and cooking. All of them are things you could do, In the Kitchen With Laura. Here’s a longer explanation. Here’s a directory of previous In the Kitchen posts. And a playlist of In the Kitchen videos.
Shortbread
I’d been meaning to do a making shortbread video for a long time. It’s one of my signature recipes that I started making because of my high school graduation Anne of Green Gables trip. I came home with Kate MacDonald’s The Anne of Green Gables Cookbook. I finally got it made because the Laura Ingalls Wilder Readathon I belong to on Facebook was doing a Montgomery related activity month and this was mine.
Shortbread Molds
In my version of shortbread I use a shortbread mold. You don’t need one. You can roll it out thick and cut it into the traditional bricks (see the commercially available Walker’s Shortbread) or with any cookie cutters you want. However, another traditional way to make it is in a mold. Today you can find them in ceramic but you historically you could also find them in wood. Personally I prefer this way because it comes out very prettily without a lot of work, but you probably want to mentally commit to making a bit of shortbread before you buy one. (I have two. I MAKE shortbread.) I will warn you though that I hadn’t made it for awhile before I did this video and as my grandmother always says even if something is your best dish you will always get out of practice.
Video Shortbread
This time we’re adding Anne Shirley to our kitchen visit. I’m demonstrating my “Sarah’s Summerkitchen Shortbread.” It’s a variation on “Mrs. Irving’s Shortbread” that I developed during my time cooking in the summer kitchen at Ushers Ferry Historic Village. The original version comes from “The Anne of Green Gables Cookbook” by Kate MacDonald.
Sarah’s Summerkitchen Shortbread
Name: Sarah S. Uthoff
Yield – 24 rectangles
1 cup softened butter
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
a pinch of salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
Steps:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
In the large mixing bowl, cream the butter with the electric mixer until it is soft, smooth and fluffy.
Add the powdered sugar, a little at a time, and beat until smooth.
Measure and add the flour, salt, and baking powder to the medium mixing bowl. Mix with a fork.
Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir until well mixed.
Dust the rolling pin and a clean place on the counter with powdered sugar. Turn the dough onto the sugared surface and roll it out into a large circle – about 1/4-inch thick.
With the cookie cutters cut the dough into any shapes you like, or cut the dough into rectangles.
With a metal spatula lift the shortbread onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Place them about 1/2 inch apart. Prick each piece twice with a fork and sprinkle with powdered sugar.
Bake the shortbread for 20-25 minutes until they turn light brown around the edges.
With oven mitts, remove the cookie sheet from the oven. With the metal spatula, immediately lift the shortbread pieces, onto a plate.
Hint: Shortbread molds are available. This recipe fills one a 9” diameter mold. If you use the mold, prick the entire surface with a fork to minimize air bubbles. Bake the mold at 325 degrees F. for 30 minutes or until light brown. Let stand for 10 minutes. Loosen edges with knife and turn over on board.
Note: This is one cookie dough you can eat raw because it has no raw eggs in it.
Sarah S. Uthoff is a nationally known Laura Ingalls Wilder authority and has presented at five of the Wilder homesites, many times at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, many conferences and numerous libraries, museums, and events around the Midwest. She is the main force behind Trundlebed Tales fighting to bring the History, Mystery, Magic, and Imagination of Laura Ingalls Wilder and other greats of children’s literature and history to life for a new generation. How can you help? Attend one of her programs, schedule one yourself, watch her videos, listen to her podcast, look at her photos, and find her on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , SlideShare, and Academia.edu . Professionally she is a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College and former director of the Oxford (Iowa) Public Library.
Another year and we’ve added at least a couple of our In the Kitchen With Laura posts. What is In the Kitchen with Laura? One of the ways I celebrate Laura is through historic cooking. These posts take you into a historic kitchen. Sometimes it’s something to try hands on, sometimes it’s just learning something about food and cooking. All of them are things you could do, In the Kitchen With Laura. Here’s a longer explanation. Enjoy the directory of all the posts from this popular series.
Fannie Farmer and Joy of Cooking Show the Change in Cooking
Sarah S. Uthoff is a nationally known Laura Ingalls Wilder authority and has presented at five of the Wilder homesites, many times at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, many conferences and numerous libraries, museums, and events around the Midwest. She is the main force behind Trundlebed Tales fighting to bring the History, Mystery, Magic, and Imagination of Laura Ingalls Wilder and other greats of children’s literature and history to life for a new generation. How can you help? Attend one of her programs, schedule one yourself, watch her videos, listen to her podcast, look at her photos, and find her on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , SlideShare, and Academia.edu . Professionally she is a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College and former director of the Oxford (Iowa) Public Library.
It’s 2022 and we’re working on starting things up again. So it’s been awhile, but one thing I do during a normal month is putting citations to articles or websites. I haven’t done that much this year, but it’s 2022 so we’re re-starting things and we have a mention to get started this month.
“Thank You to These Recent Supporters.” Wilder Homestead News, vol. 67, Winter 2021/2022, p.5.
For my birthday in 2021 I did a Facebook fundraiser. I usually pick a Laura homesite to be the recipient. Malone was having to replace the porch roof so they ended up getting it this year. My goal was $200 and thanks to your generous donations we topped out at $400. Thank you for your support! You can still make a donation for the project.
Sarah S. Uthoff is a nationally known Laura Ingalls Wilder authority and has presented at five of the Wilder homesites, many times at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, many conferences and numerous libraries, museums, and events around the Midwest. She is the main force behind Trundlebed Tales fighting to bring the History, Mystery, Magic, and Imagination of Laura Ingalls Wilder and other greats of children’s literature and history to life for a new generation. How can you help? Attend one of her programs, schedule one yourself, watch her videos, listen to her podcast, look at her photos, and find her on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , SlideShare, and Academia.edu . Professionally she is a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College and former director of the Oxford (Iowa) Public Library.
Each month I’ve started to share the top 10 blog posts that have had the most views in the previous month. Since it’s the end of the year here are the top 30 posts with the most views during all of 2021. Take a look maybe there is something there that will interest you too.
I have to say that you did an outstanding job of picking out some of my most outstanding posts and I hope you enjoyed reading them. Although there is some overlap, there is quite a bit of changing which posts were the most read so if you’d like to see the Top 30 of 2020 take a look.
Sarah S. Uthoff is a nationally known Laura Ingalls Wilder authority and has presented at five of the Wilder homesites, many times at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, many conferences and numerous libraries, museums, and events around the Midwest. She is the main force behind Trundlebed Tales fighting to bring the History, Mystery, Magic, and Imagination of Laura Ingalls Wilder and other greats of children’s literature and history to life for a new generation. How can you help? Attend one of her programs, schedule one yourself, watch her videos, listen to her podcast, look at her photos, and find her on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , SlideShare, and Academia.edu . Professionally she is a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College and former director of the Oxford (Iowa) Public Library.
Sarah S. Uthoff is a nationally known Laura Ingalls Wilder authority and has presented at five of the Wilder homesites, many times at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, many conferences and numerous libraries, museums, and events around the Midwest. She is the main force behind Trundlebed Tales fighting to bring the History, Mystery, Magic, and Imagination of Laura Ingalls Wilder and other greats of children’s literature and history to life for a new generation. How can you help? Attend one of her programs, schedule one yourself, watch her videos, listen to her podcast, look at her photos, and find her on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , SlideShare, and Academia.edu . Professionally she is a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College and former director of the Oxford (Iowa) Public Library.
There are quotes that help you understand life in general and specific other people. This is one of those. It comes from a TV show that I’m not a big fan of. I mean it’s OK, but except for episodes with Lou Ferrigno in them I’ll generally turn past it. This episode is not only an exception to that rule, it’s an episode you should run out and hunt up right now.
The show is The King of Queens which is basically about an upper working-class couple (Doug drives delivery for a company rather like UPS, Carrie works reception in a big law office) who have the wife’s slightly demented father living with them so she can help take care of him. In this episode Doug and Carrie drive out the airport to see his parents as they have a stopover between flights. As part of their meet up, Doug’s mom brings him lemon bars. Now these lines are from the script, but I’m still thinking I remember another line or two in there. The lines of asterisks are where I’ve made jumps in the script.
The King of Queens (1998–2007):
Season 3, Episode 21 – “Departure Time”
Doug [takes bite of lemon bar]: “Something’s…something’s different.”
Doug’s Mom: “Oh. Since we’re now in Florida, I’m using real lemons instead of that fake bottle stuff.”
****
Doug: “Real lemons in the lemon squares? Why would you ever mess with that?”
*****
Doug: “Yeah, but you gotta go back to using fake juice in the lemon squares, right?”
Doug’s Mom: “You got it.”
Doug: “Yeah, ’cause that’s a deal-breaker.”
Why Does That Help
The fact is this quote takes you far beyond the realm of baked goods. There are very few people who can honestly tell whether a particular thing is good or not. Instead what people like is what is familiar. In the documentary People Like Us: Social Class in America (2001), they talk about higher class people donating what I’m sure was better bread to a food bank. It had a better texture and I’m sure what I’d call better taste. It was produced in a bakery, not a factory — and the people there getting food went around it looking for Wonder Bread. Wonder Bread, less healthful, less tasteful, but it was what they were used to and what they wanted, not some strange bread. A study I read a few years ago (sorry, I didn’t save the link) had surveyed people around the world playing for them religious music from different parts of the world. When asked which kind sounded most religious it was always music that came from the same part of the world they did.
Whenever we see people picking the familiar over quality, in my family we look at each other and say, “Lemon bars.” It also often applies when people make different choices than you think they will or they should often because “Lemon bars.”
Sarah S. Uthoff is a nationally known Laura Ingalls Wilder authority and has presented at five of the Wilder homesites, many times at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, many conferences and numerous libraries, museums, and events around the Midwest. She is the main force behind Trundlebed Tales fighting to bring the History, Mystery, Magic, and Imagination of Laura Ingalls Wilder and other greats of children’s literature and history to life for a new generation. How can you help? Attend one of her programs, schedule one yourself, watch her videos, listen to her podcast, look at her photos, and find her on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , SlideShare, and Academia.edu . Professionally she is a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College and former director of the Oxford (Iowa) Public Library.
What is In the Kitchen with Laura? One of the ways I celebrate Laura is through historic cooking. These posts take you into a historic kitchen. Sometimes it’s something to try hands on, sometimes it’s just learning something about food and cooking. All of them are things you could do, In the Kitchen With Laura. Here’s a longer explanation. This time is a little different because we’re visiting someone else in the kitchen besides Laura. This time we’re visiting Snow White. Snow White’s Cookbook
Specifically we’re going to be visiting Walt Disney’s version of Snow White – if she and the dwarfs were living in 1956 when this cookbook came out. The booklet was preserved in the Walt Disney Archives and was published in a digital file online. Find the whole cookbook (each page scanned) at the link below.
The book exists in an alternative universe where Snow White is still cooking for the Seven Dwarfs in the 1956, shown with then modern recipes and then modern equipment like an electric waffle iron. (They even have English muffin pizzas which I thought were more recent than this. Pizza chain restaurants weren’t even a thing yet.) The Dwarfs are depicted as individuals with them making distinct kinds of dip, etc.
The booklet was put out courtesy of the American Dairy Association. It is called Walt Disney’s Snow White Dairy Recipes and features some adorable original art of the characters in full color. The recipes would have been developed in the ADA’s test kitchen by home economists who were in high swing at the time. (Skipping comments about what has happened to home economics.)
Recipes Although you will sometimes find this kind of themed cookbook to have put work in creating actual recipes that fit the character and are sometimes delicious (see Jeff Foxworthy’s Cookbook), they mostly involve illustrations and slapping character names on already developed recipes. In this case they all will have to have a strong dairy component as well.
I just want to take time to say again, how awful WordPress’s current system is. It says I made one mistake at the beginning of writing this post and I’ve had to fight it the whole time. If the formatting has issues, please understand that the formatting set up is such that there wasn’t a way around the problems other than deleting the post and starting over.
Sarah S. Uthoff is a nationally known Laura Ingalls Wilder authority and has presented at five of the Wilder homesites, many times at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, many conferences and numerous libraries, museums, and events around the Midwest. She is the main force behind Trundlebed Tales fighting to bring the History, Mystery, Magic, and Imagination of Laura Ingalls Wilder and other greats of children’s literature and history to life for a new generation. How can you help? Attend one of her programs, schedule one yourself, watch her videos, listen to her podcast, look at her photos, and find her on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , SlideShare, and Academia.edu . Professionally she is a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College and former director of the Oxford (Iowa) Public Library.
Something odd showed up in the October 20, 2021 issue of the Kingsbury Journal. Right on the title page a headline screamed “Pa’s Grave Marker Gone”!
A Stone Is A Stone For All Of That
Don’t worry though it was a planned disappearance. Pa’s stone was put up about the time of his death. It was designed as a headstone and a family stone where family members would be engraved on the other sides as they passed. That never seems to have happened and the only other one of the immediate family who had a stone soon after they died was Carrie.
Close Up of Pa’s Tombstone
Pa’s stone had worn the carving to the point that it was very hard to read. That’s unfortunate because it’s encouraged people to make rubbings (holding a piece of paper against the stone and rubbing against it with a crayon or something similar to show the bumps underneath the paper) which are a danger to a stone for many reasons and is even illegal in some states. It is especially a tipping danger for a stone with a high center of gravity and only gravity holding it together like this one.
The Memorial Society
During a visit in the 1950s, one Laura researcher said she was told by locals that all the family was there, but only Carrie’s stone was visible. Presumably Pa’s stone was worn to the point that it was completely illegible. According to the Kingsbury Journal in 1959 Rose Wilder Lane paid to have Pa’s stone recut. One of the early projects of the Memorial Society was putting up matching stones for the rest of the family.
Image from De Smet Memorial Society Handout, The numbers refer to a map on the handout. -Courtesy of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society of De Smet
When they were originally put in place the new stones were set up as foot stones and Pa’s stone remained where it was as a headstone. Then sometime between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s Pa’s stone was also moved up into the headstone position.
Memorial Society Facebook Report
The Memorial Society shared this on their Facebook page. I’m reposting it here with permission.
The base of Pa’s Tombstone with the marker removed to get re-engraved -Courtesy of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society of De Smet
From the Memorial Society:
Visitors to the cemetery might notice something missing…
62 years ago was the last time “Pa’s” stone was re-etched. Yesterday, the stone was removed in order to make the necessary repairs of re-etching the stone once again.
The De Smet news wrote several articles in 1959 regarding the original stone and its condition, “Visitor to De Smet cemetery interested in Laura Ingalls Wilder lore now find the inscriptions on the Ingalls tombstones on the family burial plot are easily read.” In 2021, we hope the same may be said when the stone returns in the Spring of 2022.
Shown is the article dated from the De Smet News newspaper in 1959 along with a view of the stone before its repairs and after its removal.
“De Smet News” article July 1959 -Courtesy of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society of De Smet
The stone was originally scheduled to be returned after the first of the year, but if weather and workload allow they might return it sooner.
The Journal article also talks about the Baby Boy Wilder grave – which we’ll get back to in another post.
Don’t Leave Stones
Then they talk about leaving coins and stones on the tombstones. They give a new completely wrong story. I mean, I follow this tradition and they give a version I’ve never come across before. The tradition really came from the Jewish faith where they leave stones instead of flowers. Apparently, a couple of other groups, including hikers, have picked up on the tradition. It’s not a great idea though. It’s a big help to the cemetery maintenance people for them to not have to sweep them up and throw them out. (Read the rules by the cemetery gates. That’s what happens to them.)
Sarah S. Uthoff is a nationally known Laura Ingalls Wilder authority and has presented at five of the Wilder homesites, many times at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, many conferences and numerous libraries, museums, and events around the Midwest. She is the main force behind Trundlebed Tales fighting to bring the History, Mystery, Magic, and Imagination of Laura Ingalls Wilder and other greats of children’s literature and history to life for a new generation. How can you help? Attend one of her programs, schedule one yourself, watch her videos, listen to her podcast, look at her photos, and find her on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , SlideShare, and Academia.edu . Professionally she is a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College and former director of the Oxford (Iowa) Public Library.
Videos added on Vimeo: 31 (total watches not part of standard Vimeo statistics). Vimeo did send me an ad that said I had 716 views in 2018.
Sarah S. Uthoff is a nationally known Laura Ingalls Wilder authority and has presented at five of the Wilder homesites, many times at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, many conferences and numerous libraries, museums, and events around the Midwest. She is the main force behind Trundlebed Tales fighting to bring the History, Mystery, Magic, and Imagination of Laura Ingalls Wilder and other greats of children’s literature and history to life for a new generation. How can you help? Attend one of her programs, schedule one yourself, watch her videos, listen to her podcast, look at her photos, and find her on Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , SlideShare, and Academia.edu . Professionally she is a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College and former director of the Oxford (Iowa) Public Library.
Sarah's Notebook 