I've only seen the rather melodramatic TV series starring Melissa Gilbert as the author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and I don't recall any sumptuous meals in it, although it should be said that the potatoes and meat that the family consumed in quantities always made me feel hungry. The wife grew up on Wilder's books, however, and she certainly recalls the lavish feasts described in them. Here, for example, is what a nine year-old Almanzo Wilder ate at one sitting some time in 1866, as written in Farmer Boy.
Almanzo ate the sweet, mellow baked beans. He ate the bit of salt pork that melted like cream in his mouth. He ate mealy boiled potatoes, with brown ham-gravy. He ate the ham. He bit deep into velvety bread with sleek butter, and he ate the crisp golden crust. He demolished a a tall heap of pale mashed turnips, and a hill of stewed yellow pumpkin. Then he sighed, and tucked his napkin deeper into the neckband of his red waist. And he ate plum preserves and strawberry jam, and grape jelly, and spiced watermelon-rind pickles. He felt very comfortable inside. Slowly he ate a large piece of pumpkin pie.
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