Buffalo Ragout

Imagine this grocery list: 1200 pounds parchmeal, 3400 pounds flour, half ton hulled corn, nearly two tons pork, 750 pounds salt, 100 pounds lard, 112 pounds sugar, 50 pounds coffee. Whew! In 1804, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark gathered provisions for a grand expedition to secure control of the Louisiana Purchase. Their party of forty-five men and a dog pushed up the Missouri River through Nebraska and the Dakotas into what’s now Montana where they reached the Missouri headwaters, crossed the Rockies, and finally, followed the Columbia to the Pacific. In 1806, the exhausting journey drew to an 8000-mile close, returning to grand celebrations in St. Louis on September 23rd. During the trek, the explorers ate much and ate well. In her book The Food Journal of Lewis & Clark, culinary historian Mary Gunderson brings alive the explorers’ planning, hunting, fishing, gathering, trading, cooking and eating. It is historybook and cookbook all in one, both readable and cook