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612-822-4611
Survival Food: North Woods Stories by a Menominee Cook

Survival Food: North Woods Stories by a Menominee Cook

Paperback

Culinary BiographiesBiographies General

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1976600219
ISBN13: 9781976600210
Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society Press
Published: Nov 7 2023
Pages: 312
Weight: 0.74
Height: 1.00 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
An intimate and engaging Native food memoir

In these coming-of-age tales set on the Menominee Indian Reservation of the 1980s and 1990s, Thomas Pecore Weso explores the interrelated nature of meals and memories. As he puts it, I cannot separate foods from the moments in my life when I first tasted them. Weso's stories recall the foods that influenced his youth in northern Wisconsin: subsistence meals from hunted, fished, and gathered sources; the culinary traditions of the German, Polish, and Swedish settler descendants in the area; and the commodity foods distributed by the government--like canned pork, dried beans, and powdered eggs--that made up the bulk of his family's pantry. His mom called this survival food.

These stories from the author's teen and tween years--some serious, some laugh-out-loud funny--will take readers from Catholic schoolyards to Native foot trails to North Woods bowling alleys, while providing Weso's perspective on the political currents of the era. The book also contains dozens of recipes, from turtle soup and gray squirrel stew to twice-baked cheesy potatoes. This follow-up to Weso's Good Seeds: A Menominee Indian Food Memoir is a hybrid of modern foodways, Indigenous history, and creative nonfiction from a singular storyteller.

2024 Wisconsin Library Association Outstanding Achievement Award

2024 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence

Silver winner of the 2023 Midwest Book Award for Cookbooks/Crafts/Hobbies

Thomas Pecore Weso's Survival Food was selected by the Wisconsin Center for the Book as the Wisconsin entry in the Great Reads from Great Places program of the Library of Congress.

This book is not only about survival food, but about the singular beauty, creativity, and fortitude that comes out of that survival.

Also from

Weso, Thomas Pecore

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Biographies General