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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One of my Xmas presents Harry & David’s Fruit-of-the-Month Club, delivering Oregon pears and other fruits, began in 1938, but the idea of sending a gift of local products predates that innovation. This small brochure from Portland’s Seely Dresser Company, grocers, bakers, and caterers, dates from the late 1920s. Featured items include Oregon Franquette walnuts,…
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Ocean Spray leaflet The Thanksgiving Day meal pushes many seldom-eaten foods briefly into the limelight: brussels sprouts, stuffing, pumpkin pie, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, even the roast turkey itself. And cranberries. I like cranberries. I hailed the development of cranberry juice and cranapple juice. I grew up on the Oregon coast, where cranberries were grown;…
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The furor at Penn State adds another dimension to the discussion of the purpose of intercollegiate athletics. A few months ago I acquired an offprint of an article by the first president of Reed College, William Trufant Foster, entitled “An Indictment of Intercollegiate Athletics.” I have uploaded a .pdf file of this essay to Internet Archive. It…
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