Spend Christmas With The Snowbound Donner Party.
"The Donner Party Cookbook--A Gift For a Person Significant in One's Life--a Spouse, Friend, Home-Economics Teacher, Favorite Chef, or Parent."
(PRWEB) October 8, 2004 -- You probably know something about The Donner
Party, the wagon train that became snowbound in the mountains on the way to
California? You know.... when the food ran out, they resorted to eating their
dearly departed?
The tale of the 1846-1847 Donner Party is one of those
fascinating episodes of American history where there is a wealth of awareness
but not much knowledge. And our awareness is likely to be exclusively about the
cannibalism.
Terry Del Bene, Ph.D. an archeologists and historian, tells
us much more in his history of the ill-fated train and its people. In his book
we learn that the wagon train was made up of a group of ordinary people caught
in extraordinary circumstances, mostly of their own making.
From its
inception in what is now Wyoming, on July 20, 1846, the leaders of the Donner
Party made fateful decisions that doomed the wagon train from successfully
completing its journey to California. An early winter in the high Serria-Nevada
Mountains and record snowfalls isolated the Donner Party just short of making it
through the pass. By the time of their rescue in the spring, more than half of
the people were dead and those who were alive survived by consuming the frozen
flesh of their traveling companions.
But, this is more than a history of
this unfortunate episode in American history, the author lightens the mood with
many delicious recipes that the westward travelers used before the food ran out.
The book contains dozens of recipes, which are authentic to the mid-nineteenth
century. There are instructions as to how to cook outdoors, in the cold, in the
wind, at high altitudes and even how to use buffalo chips for fuel. Recipes
include such mid-nineteenth century favorites as buffalo tongue, brain stew,
gruel, lumpy dicks, journey cakes and various soups, breads, cakes, and
puddings.
The author admits that the book contains an element of dark
humor, but at the same time he hopes to presents the human side of this
compelling tale of survival. The mix between dark humor, well research history
and interesting recipes and tid-bits concerning nineteenth-century cooking makes
this book and extremely enjoyable read.
Donner Party
Cookbook: A Guide to Survival on the Hastings Cutoff. Terry Del Bene, Ph.D. ISBN
0972221735, Horse Creek Publications.
Contact
Sue Schrems
405-364-9647
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/10/prweb165418.htm