Inexplicable

Today I finished reading Wilder's novel, The Long Winter. The thing that got me the most? When they start running short of supplies, Ma Ingalls starts a sourdough, which lives underneath the stove. But as soon as the train comes in the spring, she immediately goes back to baking with yeast cakes.

?????????

There are good reasons to use commercial yeast today rather than sourdough for lots of folks. But none of those reasons apply to her. I noticed in Little House on the Prairie that she actually preferred freshly-butchered longhorn beef to duck and venison (!). There is just no accounting for taste. I charitably remind myself that the poor woman seems to have never even seen garlic.

Quite unaware of what I was reading, my husband made biscuits for dinner.