My Polka Dot Apron

You are not logged in. Would you like to login or register?



September 12, 2022 12:13 am  #1


Cowboys didn't JUST eat beans on the trail drives & round-ups. . .

Although beans were a staple on cattle drives, it wasn't ALL they had to eat.  Food was better back then than most people realize.  The only thing I wasn't too crazy about were the hard-tack buns.  Some of these cattle drives were LONG, like all the way from TX to Canada.  Although they ate plenty of beans (P - U) to be sure, that's why most cowboys were spaced so far apart on the drives.  They were so full of beans they farted a lot, just like our current "President full of hot air" is, as well as shitting his pants on stage, like Jerrold Nadler).  Both of them are such creeps and not one bit believable.  WHY are they trying to reshape the America of Freedom THEY BOTH GREW UP IN???  It makes no sense, but then neither do they.  These cowboys of old would have whipped their asses - LITERALLY.

I grew up on a working ranch and therefore particiapted in many "drives", although we tended to call ours "round-ups" because they weren't nearly as long as a regular drive.  We "rounded up" cattle and bulls and drove them from one pasture to the next oftentimes less than 50 or 60 miles. When one pasture was grazed clean, the cattle needed to be moved to new pastures.  But, I remember being on one round-up as quite a young girl where we drove cattle from one hilltop to another hilltop pasture because the State was flooding the valley in between (partially on my Dad's land and partially on State owned land) with what is now a long, large part of the Missouri River, (which is in the area where I grew up) and is now melded together with the Grand River.  There were a lot of army forts in the area back in "the day" and they needed the water route for many reasons, not the least of which was transporting ammunition and for bathing purposes. 

And yes we ate beans but we ate lots of other stuff, as well, the one disliked most (as stated in the article) was truly the "hard tack biscuits".  Lord those things were like rocks.  But they traveled well, tasted good even topped with a few layers of dust AND they were filling if you could figure out a way to get them down!  I soaked mine at the bottom of my tin bowl of beans or bowl of stew.  Potatoes were also quite plentiful and there were myriad ways a good "cookie" could fix potatoes on the trail.

If history interests you as much as it interests me, this will be one of your favorites to save!!  VERY entertaining!

https://www.mashed.com/992116/what-did-cowboys-really-eat-in-the-old-west/
 


A government which robs Peter to
pay Paul can always depend on
the support of Paul.
-- George Bernard Shaw
 

September 12, 2022 4:14 am  #2


Re: Cowboys didn't JUST eat beans on the trail drives & round-ups. . .

There's a mistake in this article NOT having to do with food, but having to do with the movie starring John Wayne called Rooster Cogburn.  The scene with him throwing corn dodgers up in the air and shooting at them was in the  movie Rooster Cogburn, NOT True Grit.  I happen to know that for a fact because I didn't like the movie True Grit (I cannot STAND Kim Darby, never could, and she's in that movie).  Katherine Hepburn was in Rooster Cogburn and that was an epic pairing with John Wayne late in both of their lives.  So just to set the record straight, the movie they're talking about was Rooster Cogburn, NOT True Grit.

Got it?

Also, my Dad was a big fan of currants and my Mom learned to make a sort of cakey type bread (from my gramma Farm's recipe) using raisins (the soft BAKING kind), currants from the trees at the farm so they were ultra fresh, chokecherries which gave the bread a rather sour-berry flavor, and lots of cinnamon.  It was a sour dough base (my Mom always had sourdough going in her big, heavy, stone bowl that was gray with blue stripes, I'll never forget that huge bowl). I think she added quite a bit of sugar to her bread because of the tartness of the currants and the chokecherries.  My brothers loved this stuff, too, because THEY didn't have to help pick the damned berries, but my 2 sisters and I sure did.  And we weren't allowed to quit picking until each of us had 2 huge buckets full of currants AND chokecherries.  Our arms were always bloody when we got done but it was far too hot to wear long sleeves inside the dense underbrush of the chokecherry patch (we called it a forest when I was a really little kid).
 


A government which robs Peter to
pay Paul can always depend on
the support of Paul.
-- George Bernard Shaw
     Thread Starter
 

Board footera

 

Powered by Boardhost. Create a Free Forum