Home on the Range: A Culinary History of the American West
YA-Not a cookbook, but a collection of stories that will leave readers wondering why everyone in the Old West didn't die from starvation or malnutrition. Dependent upon the weather, which determined available crops and food sources such as deer, wild fowl, and fish, many settlers subsisted on meager rations. All types of people and representative foods are included, from the mountain men to the boarding-house cook, from the chuck wagons on the cattle drives to the settlers and the military. Many original recipes are given, such as "A Recite for Peach Cordial," which calls for two gallons of "good old whiskey," and for cake made from flour and water shortened with coon oil and fried in coon fat, complete with actual spellings and abundant capitalizations. Diary and journal accounts of many cooks, including those at a gold mine, logging camp, farm, and church, are provided, detailing the day-to-day obstacles they encountered preparing meals far removed from regular provisions. Black-and-white photographs poignantly and emphatically illustrate the harshness of their lives and the primitiveness of their facilities. A palatable means of studying the settlement of the West.Pam Spencer, Thomas Jefferson Sci-Tech, Fairfax County, VACopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.