Four years ago, I donated to the Oregon Historical Society (OHS) library my collection of some 400 Oregon-published cookbooks, along with other research materials on Oregon’s food history. Among the books, only one was published before 1900, the Monday Club Cook Book of Astoria’s First Presbyterian Church, issued in 1899. My collection did not include…
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Apple fritters. I know what they are: sweet and crumbly and deep fried. I like ‘em. But I have rarely encountered or eaten anything else that has been frittered, and it turns out that we once fritterized a lot of foods: pineapple, clams, and corn among them. Dip in a drippy soft dough, deep fry,…
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Kitchen Secrets: this was the title of a number of community cookbooks issued in the year 1951, and all of them had this image of a Black Mammy on the cover. And just why would this have been so? Community cookbooks—those compilations of contributed favorite recipes put together by a local group to raise money…
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As a collector of regional historic restaurant menus, I have a particular eye out for examples from Albany, where I now live, and from the Astoria area, where I grew up. Today the mail brought me a breakfast menu from the coffee shop of the John Jacob Astor Hotel in Astoria from June of 1955,…
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At the instigation of Jan Dilg of the Oregon Women’s Consortium, I recently contributed an entry to the National Votes for Women Trail, a project of the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites during this year marking the centennial of national woman suffrage. (Yes, there were exceptions …) Soon the map that shows…
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The year 1959 marked the centennial of Oregon’s statehood, and the occasion pushed restauranteurs to expect a wave of travelers coming for the doings. The 1950s were a time before Yelp and TripAdvisor, a time when it was not easy for travelers to find information and advice about local restaurants. Seizing the opportunity, John A. Armstrong,…
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My modest collection of postcards includes a number that came to me because they were in the Engeman family house in Silverton. After the death of Uncle Ted in 1994, my sister Laural and I inherited the house, and among the items that we did not put up for auction were an assortment of postcards.…
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The Cabaret Grill was an entertainment palace, apparently a short-lived one that arose in 1913 and sank in 1914. It was located at 2nd and Burnside, an intersection notable at the time as the gateway to the North End, Portland’s boisterous zone of drinking, gambling, and women. Erickson’s famous saloon was there, and the Cabaret…
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The place and position of government with regard to old age and disease—think COVID-19—is a question of long standing. One of the major American milestones in government oversight of public health was the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. The act caused an uproar in the snake oil trade, for it effectively demolished most…
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The Rajneeshee were not the only followers of an Indian guru who opened a restaurant in Oregon. Our other culinary guru was Ciranjavi Roy, who inspired Nelson and April Souza to create a novel upscale restaurant in the sleepy and rather remote seaside resort town of Manzanita, Oregon (1970 population: 261). Opened on June 17,…
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