The dining room looks pleasant enough, and the napkins are displayed in a spectacular fashion, but the caption is probably a bit of hyperbole. At the right, there is a sign on the wall: COMMERCIAL TABLE MEALS 50 CENTS Traveling salesmen were the bread and butter, so to speak, of small-town hotels such as this…
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“At Meacham, in the midst of the Blue mountains is nestled an attraction that appeals to every traveler. It is a unique mountain station, known the land over for its excellent meals and home-like conditions. It is a large elegantly built log structure and is presided over by a dear old lady known as…
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The United States in the 1970s and 1980s witnessed a rapid broadening of interest in the cuisines of Asia, as China re-opened a few doors to the West, and Indian restaurants popped up even in such remote outposts as Eugene and Seattle. Living in Portland in the early 1970s, I trekked to Seattle to visit…
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Portland’s world’s fair, the 1905 Lewis & Clark Centennial Exposition and Oriental Trade Fair, was a landmark event in the city’s history. It prompted many kinds of civic activity, such as this cookbook, compiled by the Ladies Aid Society of the Piedmont Presbyterian Church. Piedmont had been platted by Edward Quackenbush as a residential subdivision…
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The Theda Bara sandwich was mentioned in my blog post on October 13, 2010: it was listed on the menu of the State Cafe in Huntington, Oregon, about 1918. The State Cafe had a most extensive carte, but a modern reader (me) was unable to precisely identify a few items on it, such as the…
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Coalca’s Pillar, about 1915 We don’t seem to take much delight or interest any more in geological oddments. There was a time when they had a strong appeal: our earliest national parks usually centered on geological marvels: the geysers of Yellowstone, the sheer face of El Capitan in Yosemite, the deep blue pool of Crater…
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Oregon tomatoes, you say? Oregon tomatoes? Big as a Sherman tank? Unlikely. The Edward H. Mitchell Company of San Francisco issued a wide variety of postcards in the 1910s that portrayed fabulous oversized strawberries, lemons, oranges, melons, etc., perched on railroad flatcars or nestled in a gondola car. Often they specified that these were California products;…
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You might undertake a vegetarian diet for any of a number of reasons. One might be that you were a Seventh-Day Adventist. I recently picked up this cookbook, which dates from about 1935, “published in answer to many requests from friends and guests at the Oregon Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists Camp-meeting cafeteria.” The author is…
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The locavore movement of the early 21st century has ties to regional chauvinism, as this document demonstrates. To be a locavore is to postulate that it is best (in terms of energy consumption, sustainable business practices, natural vitamins and minerals, and plain tastiness) to eat what can be locally grown and raised. To be a…
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An after-supper drink* Willamette Week recently spotlighted Oregon’s ten best-selling liquors of 2011: Hood River Distilling’s cheap vodka was the #1 seller, and four other vodkas were also on the list. There were also four whiskeys; item #9 was that sickly sweetish liqueur, Jagermeister. What were Oregon’s favorite liquors in 1960? How about right after…
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