Excerpted from Sam’l Arnold’s “Eating Up the Santa Fe Trail.”
An old Mexican phrase says, “A la primera cocinera se le va un chile entero.” To the best cook goes the whole chile. Surely no kitchen can be without either!
According to ethno-botanists, chile, or “capsicum,” is a pepper indigenous to the Americas. One of the treasures Columbus brought back to Spain from his second voyage was a quantity of chile seeds. Later, Spanish and Portuguese explorers spread chile … Read the entire post >
Today, we think of beef jerky in its signature stick form: easy to grab for an afternoon snack or a quick energy boost on the hiking trail. During the Fur Trade era, however, beef jerky often made the difference between eating at all, or going hungry.
Although the concept of drying meat had existed for centuries, it became particularly important to hunters, traders and travelers of the mid-19th century as a way to preserve meat without refrigeration during long journeys.… Read the entire post >
In the Southwest, the name Kit Carson is almost synonymous with “fur trapper” or “frontiersman.” This real-life historical figure became the subject of folk lore and legend even in his own time, as he expanded the fur trade and forged new trails across the West during the mid-19th century.
Raised in Missouri in the early 1800s by poor farmers, Carson made his way west to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1826. He began fur trapping two years later, moving north … Read the entire post >
In the mid-1800s, the fur trade expanded to the American West, with mountain men trappers, merchants and American Indian tribes eager to exchange their wares at trading posts across the frontier. While the opportunity to swap pelts, ammunition and ingredients initially brought these traders together, the meals they shared at these posts provided rare and welcome moments of community on the expansive prairie.
At popular trading posts like the original Bent’s Old Fort, guests were welcomed with an impressive meal. … Read the entire post >
