Eatin' on the range ...

Here an interesting tidbit from The Outing Magazine in 1911:

The difficult-to-please Easterner who drops in at Delmonico's or the Cafe Martin and glowers through the list of dishes in search of a fresh delicacy to tempt his appetite would receive something of a jolt if he should be confronted suddenly with the menu of an Arizona cowboy. It runs about like this:

BREAKFAST
(at 5 a. m.)
Fried Veal Steak
Potatoes, fried raw
Sour-dough Biscuit
Coffee

DINNER
(at 11 or 12)
Fried Veal Steak
Fried Potatoes
Cold Sour-dough Biscuit
Coffee

SUPPER
(anywhere from 4 o'clock on)
Fried Veal Steak
Fried Potatoes

Source: The Outing Magazine, October 1911 (Volume 58, No. 1), page 714.

"Outing was a late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American magazine covering a variety of sporting activities. It began publication in 1882 as the Wheelman and had four title changes before ceasing publication in 1923," according to Wikipedia.

You needs no teef to eat my beef ... part 2

Leonard "Wagon Cook" Sanders posted this photo of his 400-pound smoker on Camp-Cook.com Saturday. It reminded me of an article that I wrote for Suite101.com in 2001.

Sanders is the chef/owner of the Chuckwagon BBQ Company in Oroville, California.

Click to read part 1 of the story.

The camp kitchen

Sanders is a master of his decade-old trade and camp kitchen, which includes a 300-pound Bushrods smoker (that's pounds of meat, not steel) that's full of pork butt with a spicy barbecue rub. A few feet away, stands a line of 12- and 14-inch Dutch ovens with cornbread and scalloped potatoes. And hanging from a 14-foot set of irons is no. 8 Lodge Dutch ovens with sweet rice pudding.

Sanders' signature dish for the evening -- pinto beans with ham hocks -- hang over red-hot coals in two no. 10 Lodge Dutch ovens (the kind with rounded lids and flat bottom). The beans were the hit of the evening, because in Sanders' words, "People just don't take time to cook them anymore."

They've the "best beans we ever made," says Sanders. At the last minute he dumped leftover breakfast sausage, ham and bacon into the beans.

But be warned Sanders' beans don't favor those with tender noses. He's aptly named them Gossiping Beans, so-called, "'Cuz the beans are pleasant to your face, but then they talk behind your back."

Sanders became a cowboy in the early 1990s to fulfill a life-long dream. By the time the new millennium dawned, he said, "I don't want to be a cowboy any more." He had worked "until I got it out of my system."

A cowboy does more than punch cows, Sanders learned along the trail. As his decade-long quest subsided, he says that he farmed hay, irrigated fields, mended fences and repaired ranch machinery. And he cooked over the open fire at roundup time.

So you might say that being a camp cook is the realization of Sanders' cowboy dream. After all, old cowboys don't die. They become camp cooks.

You needs no teef to eat my beef ...

Leonard "Wagon Cook" Sanders posted this photo of his 400-pound smoker on Camp-Cook.com Saturday. It reminded me of an article that I wrote for Suite101.com in 2001.

Sanders is the chef/owner of the Chuckwagon BBQ Company in Oroville, California.

You might wonder how a man who tended boilers on a Navy destroyer during the Vietnam War, changed tires in his father's Oroville tire shop and wrangled cattle at a Sierra Nevada cattle ranch became a professional camp cook.

You'd expect him to be driving the lead wagon in a living history event instead. When you ponder Leonard Sanders' adult life, he's the quintessential camp cook.

Leonard has followed the in the foot steps of hundreds of trail drive and roundup cooks -- men (and a few women) who had taken up cooking after their cow punching days reached the end of the trail.

Like the Nineteenth Century chuckwagon cook, Sanders has no formal training in the culinary arts. That's unless you reckon the endless hours reading Ramon F. Adam's Come An' Get It: The Story of the Old Cowboy Cook as "formal training."

Dozens of Dutch oven and cowboy cookbooks -- like those by Stella Hughes (Chuck Wagon Cookin' and Bacon and Beans) and sisters Sue Cunningham and Jean Cates (Chuckwagon Recipes and Others) -- have shaped his style and chuckwagon fare.

Evolution of a wagon cook

I caught up with Sanders at the encampment of the 2001 Historic Sonora Pass Wagon Train at Kennedy Meadows.

Located on a 15-foot bluff overlooking the Middle Fork of the Stanislaus River, Sanders' large frame donned a black and white plaid flannel shirt tucked neatly inside a pair of bib coveralls.

With a black broad, flat-brimmed cowboy hat squarely fitted on his head, the camp cook's straightforward approach to camp cooking keeps some 60 living historians filled meal after meal.

Sanders started barbecuing in Santa Maria some 20 years ago. For this cowboy-turned-camp-cook, Santa Maria, located just inland from the Central California coast, was ideal. The Santa Maria Valley is home to some of California's oldest cattle ranches and tri-tip barbecue and deep-pit cookery.

Like Sanders' cooking, Santa Maria style barbecue is known for its simplicity. It's prime cuts of beef roasted over the coals of red oak wood and seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic.

Then about 1985, Sanders purchased his first Dutch oven. Today, this oven has grown into a collection of "about 50." When asked what prompted him to start cooking in the black cast iron pots, Sanders only says that it's "historic research" into cowboy life.

It was a book like Adam's Come An' Get It that probably inspired Sanders. Sometime after reading about the camp cook of Western lore, he was asked to cook for a cattle roundup and branding in the foothills above Oroville, Calif. Cowhands ate his food, and to his surprise, "Nobody died."

Next word of his camp cooking spread throughout Butte County. The food must've been good. First it was a wedding of a cowboy to a cowgirl.

Today, Sanders caters several large events throughout the year. They all have one thing in common: Each event celebrates the Western lifestyle.

To be continued ...

I know times are tough ...

I found this note on the bulletin board at the Missouri Flat Road parking lot for the El Dorado Trail. The address has been removed to protect the innocent.

Flank steak

Flank is one of my favorite beef cuts ...

SEOUL, Republic of Korea (Feb. 28, 2010) -- Chef Trevor Hamilton prepares grilled flank steaks at the Navy Club for single Sailors stationed in Seoul, Republic of Korea. Since 1999, Hamilton has been a part of the Adopt-a-Ship program, a partnership between Naval Supply Systems Command and the American Culinary Federation.

U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Bobbie G. Attaway.

This old pot

This old pot
Originally uploaded by SeabeeCook

I love these old stockpots. Unlike a new out-of-the-box pot, this one at last week's 1st Annual Hangtown Winter Fest '10 matches the character of many of the competitors.

Rough and unkept on the outside, many are sweet people who have hearts full of kindness on the inside.

The pot's rough exterior -- tarnished from boiling over on top of an untamed propane flame -- shed light on its contents.

Full of simmering water when I shot the picture, I suspect the pot has been used to dissolve salt and sugar for a brine in the past. Or it may be from a lively pot of chili, one that boiled over when the cook's attention turned toward something else.

I didn't get a chance to talk to the owner of the stockpot. I suspect that the team was presenting its entry for beef brisket to the judges when I took the picture.

My only advise to the pot's owner: Please don't clean it exterior. It has too much character to srub it away!

Hangtown Winter Fest '10

Louis and Stephanie Hudson of North Highlands, California pause for the camera moments before turning their beef brisket entry in to the judges.

Lou and Stephanie smoked a 13-pound brisket throughout the early morning hours of Sunday, February 14 for the 1st Annual Hangtown Winter Fest '10 in Placerville.

I first met the couple at Oinktoberfest in Oroville, California last October. Lou is currently a culinary arts student at Le Cordon Blue College of Culinary Arts in Sacramento.

"The only reason I'm going to school is to learn the restaurant and catering business," said Hudson.

A "stage lighting designer" by day, Hudson looks forward to the day that he can open a barbecue restaurant in his native Redding, California.