What's That You Got Cooking?

The usual breakfast on the trail was bread or pancakes, fried meat, beans and tea or coffee.  Pancakes were made with flour, water and baking soda, cooked in a large frying pan or baking kettle.  If bread were baked, it was placed in a skilled or Dutch oven with an iron lid.  The creativity of these pioneer women was amazing...

Lucy Cooke rolled her pie dough out on the wagon seat beside her while they were traveling.  Cecelia Adams wrote that on one Sunday in June, she had "cooked beans and meat, stewed apples and baked suckeyes (pancakes) besides making Dutch cheese and took everything out of the wagon to air."

Jane Kellogg, another bride on her honeymoon recalled that "our provisions consisted of hard sea biscuits, crackers, bacon, beans, rice, dried fruit, teas, coffee, and sugar.

Charlotte Stearns Pengra even recorded what she cooked for each meal..."April 29. 1853: I hunt out

what things were wet in the waggon, made griddle cakes, stewed berries and made tea for supper.  After that was over made two loaves of bread, stewed a pan of apples, prepared potatoes and meat for breakfast, and mended a pair of pants for Wm.  Pretty tired."

May 8:  "baked this morning and stewed apples this afternoon, commenced washing...got my white clothes ready to suds...I feel very tired and lonely."  By May 14 Charlotte was thinking she had become lax in her duties..."gathered up the dishes, and packed them dirty for the first time since I started.  On May 18: she "washed a a very large washing, unpacked, dried, and packed clothing...made a pair of calico cases for pillows and cooked two meals...done brave, I think.  Those who come on this journey should have their pillows covered with dark calico and sheets colored...white is not suitable."

After the evening meal, the women's work began again, the unpacking of the bedding and the tents, the preparing of the next day's food, sewing torn spots in the canvas, collecting berries if there was still enough light.  After dinner, the beds had to be made up, the wagon cleared out and aired to prevent mildew.  Make you wonder where were the men in all this? 

Brave indeed ladies!

Next Time...What didn't you find in their trail journals?

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Today in Pioneer History: On September 21, 1904, the remarkable Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph dies on the Colville reservation in northern Washington at the age of 64. The whites had described him as superhuman, a military genius, an Indian Napoleon. But in truth, the Nez Perce Chief Him-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt ("Thunder Rolling Down from the Mountains") was more of a diplomat than a warrior.