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This is the final chapter of the “100 years of Kansas cooking” cookbook. Fittingly, this chapter is on American Pioneers. Sure all the early settlers were pioneers, even those from Europe. But “the pioneers” we usually think of were descendents of early American stock, who, following the Revolutionary War, pushed westward generation after generation. Most American settlers that came to Kansas were at least 2 generations of pioneers, used to hardships and simple living, but valuing independence and land of their own.
The desire to recreate patterns they had known “back east” is shown in the family treasures they brought: quilts, table linen, cooking pans. It is also shown in the schools they established. There were soon hundreds of one room schools -- and in the dinner buckets were baked beans, hard boiled eggs, and sometimes an apple.
While the pioneers were living in cabins and sod houses, they were starting churches, newspapers, and colleges. By 1873 cooking was being taught in one of the colleges, and cook stoves with ovens were becoming common.
Labor as well as limitations of variety made simple daily food a necessity, but barn raisings, community feasts, and Thanksgiving and Christmas brought family gatherings. In drought years when peas and beans dried up, resourceful women, thankful for deep rooted trees, made tasty, nourishing black walnut soup, (I have the recipe if you would like it.) and when the nearest lemon was a 100 miles away, a family could enjoy vinegar pie.
Today we go camping or have “cookouts” in order to eat for fun in the way our pioneer forebears ate from necessity. Sometimes their old, hard way gives us unexpected food delights. For instance, we consider boiled sweet corn on the cob a treat, but a greater treat is to press mud around ears of fresh sweet corn and bury in hot coals for an hour until the mud is baked and the kernels of a test ear are beginning to brown.
There were many, many wonderful recipes. Many we use today like cole slaw, baked beans, pickled beets, tomato preserves, homemade ice cream, and strawberry shortcake to name a few. My pick for “I don’t think I’ll try it” is
“Linament” - ½ pt ammonia, ½ pint turpentine, and 1 egg!!! Shake all together and rub on sore muscles. (Wow!)
For the recipe of choice, I picked Bread Pudding. An all time favorite at our house in any of its many forms. I grew up on many of these recipes and indeed attended a one room school for 3 years--a wonderful experience I would not trade for anything.
Bread Pudding
4 cups stale bread cubes 3 eggs
1 pint milk ¼ cup raisins (chopped or apples, dates)
½ cup sugar nuts
1 tsp vanilla nutmeg
Soak bread cubes in milk for 20 minutes. Beat eggs, add sugar, fruit, or nuts and pour over bread mixture. Bake 20 minutes in 350 degree oven. Serve with whipped cream hard sauce or jelly sauce.
Enjoy!
[Note from Jerry: We both loved Mom's bread pudding. And I haven't had any for ages.
Our ancestors were among those who came to Kansas in 1873, homesteading in Rush County. Coming to America originally in the 1750s from Switzerland, they first settled in New York and in Maryland in the late 1761, then westward to Pennsylvania around 1800, and on to Ohio by 1827, each generation moving further westward.]