The Way We Ate: Pacific Northwest Cooking, 1843-1900

by Jacqueline Williams M.Ed

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 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."

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Cooking

240 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1996

Reviews

[Debra Daniels-Zeller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well researched and informative, the way people ate when the first settlers arrived in the Northwest was so much different form the pampered way we eat now. From how food got here, to cooking and storing food, the challenges Williams writes about made me really appreciate all the conveniences we have today. It isn't a book to read all at once, rather savor it and learn how much it took just to get dinner on the table at the turn of the last century.

[Lapis Pezuli]

still working on this one (by the way, i <3 the pcc library big time), but it's a nice reminder of times past when not only people couldn't get certain foods year round; but our forebears didn't even have things like stoves, refrigeration, bread or clean water (imagine filtering constantly not for taste, but to make sure it was clean!) on a consistent basis.

[Abraham Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

weird cookbook about the pacific northwest.