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Connecting curious minds with uncommon, undeniably Northwest reads

The Way We Ate

Pacific Northwest Cooking, 1843-1900

Jacqueline Williams

$22.95

Food historian Jacqueline B. Williams describes cooking and dining practices from the earliest years of settlement to the time when railroads transported the latest ingredients and utensils, shedding significant light on a mundane aspect of our past.

“Well-researched and well-written.”—CHOICE

“Williams illuminates not only Pacific Northwest cooking but the realities of frontier experience and the ways in which pioneer cooking came to reflect changes in food preparation and preservation in the East.”—Journal of American History

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Description

Probing diaries, letters, business journals, and newspapers for morsels of information, food historian Jackie Williams here follows pioneers from the earliest years of settlement in the Northwest—when smoldering logs in a fireplace stood in for a stove, and water had to be hauled from a stream or well—to the times when railroads brought Pacific Northwest cooks the latest ingredients and implements. The fifty-year journey described in The Way We Ate documents a change from a land with few stores and inadequate housing to one with business establishments bursting with goods and homes decorated with the latest finery.

Like she did in her earlier acclaimed volume, Wagon Wheel Kitchens: Food on the Oregon Trail, Williams has in her latest book shed important new light on a little-understood aspect of our past. These tales of a pioneer wife bemoaning her husband’s gift of a cookbook when she really needed more food, or preparing sweets and savories for holiday celebrations when the kitchen was just a tiny space in a one-room log cabin, show another side of the grim-faced pioneers portrayed in movies. Here we encounter real American history and culture, one that vividly portrays the daily lives of the people who won the West—not in Hollywood gun battles, but in the kitchens and fields of a world that has disappeared. Interlacing a lively narrative with the pioneers’ own words, The Way We Ate is truly a feast for those who believe that “much depends on dinner.”

Illustrations / notes / index / 240 pages (1996)

Recognition

“Through this well-researched and well-written work, readers are provided with a rich portrait of the place of food in the lives of the early inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest.”—CHOICE

The Way We Ate succeeds admirably in providing a glimpse of one important aspect of daily life in the nineteenth century. Williams illuminates not only Pacific Northwest cooking but the realities of frontier experience and the ways in which pioneer cooking came to reflect changes in food preparation and preservation in the East. In addition, the author provides clear explanations for a host of arcane food terms, such as ‘duff’ and ‘dandy funk.’”—Journal of American History

Additional information

Weight .77 oz
Dimensions 9 x 6 in
Format

eBook, Paperback