I want to be Laura Ingalls

I want to be Laura Ingalls - or better yet, her husband Almanzo Wilder as he was as a boy in northern New York State.   Life was simple but more importantly, eating was pure.  The sheer simplicity of living off the land, enjoying the sweetness of sugared off maple syrup - eating as much pumpkin pie as you can hold in your belly.  As I read the "Little House" series to my daughter each night, my mouth waters not only at the descriptions of family food and meals, but also at the verbal illustrations of the painstaking process of growing those foods.  How to raise a milk fed pumpkin, the exact placement of seed for carrots or corn.  It's alluring and nostalgic and - well - ordinary.  Seems we've come so far from the earth with our technology and readily available shelf food that we've become bored with the extraordinary wonders of progress.  The ordinary life of Almanzo Wilder seems very romantic to me here on my little patch of ground in my little patch of a house.  True, life was harsh then too - winters exceedingly colder than anything I've ever experienced - and extended days of hard manual labor.  But the smell of warm wheat drying on the barn floor - or the delight on your tongue of wild wintergreen berries buried in snow on the south facing slope of a forest hill in late winter seem extraordinary to me now.  Cooking was straightforward but delish - I'd love to be in that kitchen and cellar - smelling the smells and tasting the tastes.  A quick search on Amazon and Bam! there I am - The Little House Cookbook -place in cart, enter credit card information, choose shipping method and in a few days I'll be cooking circa 1866.  Could be just the way to learn to eat as my great-grandmother ate - that is my quest after all isn't it?  Funny how our fast-paced complex world of technology can so easily summon the simpler, slower past.