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The Road to Travel this Yeary

Welcome to the table of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which traveled across the North American continent 200 years ago. In the summer of 1804, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark journeyed up the Missouri River, exploring thousands of miles of uncharted, unexplored territory in the hope of find a waterway to the Pacific. The Corps of Discovery traveled up the Missouri River, over the Rocky Mountains, and down the Snake and Columbia Rivers to the Pacific Ocean.

This is the year to follow their trail yourself—retrace their steps and learn more about how they did it. The National Council of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial (lewisandclark200.org) will be host to 13 signature events over a three-year span.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark wrote about food almost every day in their journals. The corps had a hot meal once a day; for breakfast and lunch, the travelers ate the leftovers. From the journals they so carefully kept, it is learned when they ate the last of their butter, and when they first tasted buffalo.

The expedition’s hunters did their best to supply the corps with what they most wanted to eat—meat. When buffalo was plentiful, they ate their fill. If the hunters shot a wolf, they ate it. They ate squirrels and opossums, and even bear. An old bear supplied several gallons of oil from his winter fat stores. And a single roasted beaver made a meal for two men. Lewis wrote, “my fare is really sumptuous this evening; buffaloe’s humps, tongues and marrowbones, fine trout parched meal pepper and salt, and a good appetite.”

But if the hunters did not come back with wild game, the corps ate pork. The corps carried with them almost two tons of pork layered into kegs.

PROVISIONS PORK STEW
2 pounds pork butt, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
1/4 cup of cornmeal
1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of black pepper
2-3 tablespoons of vegetable oil
2 onions, peeled and cut into eighths
4 cups of beef broth

Place pork in a paper bag with the cornmeal, salt and pepper; close and shake. Heat the oil in a large pot; lightly brown the pork cubes on all sides. Stir in the onions and cook until they soften. Pour in the beef broth; simmer over low heat for about one hour.

Serve with CORNMEAL DUMPLINGS
1 cup of flour
1/4 cup of cornmeal
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/3 cup of water
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil

Mix flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt. Stir in water and vegetable oil, just until the mixture is moistened. Gently drop spoonfuls of dough on top of the stew while it is simmering over medium-high heat. Cover the pan tightly; lower the heat to low and cook the dumplings for about 10 minutes without lifting the cover during cooking. Serve immediately. Serves 6-8.

During that first winter, expedition members traded for parched corn, sunflower seeds and squash raised by the Mandan and the Hidatsa women, who were great gardeners. A chief presented Clark with about 10 bushels of corn and some beans, which the corps accepted with pleasure. They gave in return some sugar, a little salt, and a sun glass.

THREE GOLDEN SQUASH AND CORN
3 pounds winter squash (butternut, buttercup, acorn, Hubbard)
Cut up squash and put in a pot with a little salted water. Bring to a boil, turn heat down, cover, and simmer until tender; peel and cut into small cubes.

Return to pot; add 2 cups of whole kernel corn, a little salt and pepper, some water and heat. Serves to 2-4.

In August 1805 the corps traveled into the unknown, into what Lewis called the northern plains “beautiful in the extreme.” They faced the challenge of crossing the rugged Bitterroots and headed into “the most terrible mountains ever beheld.”

After nearly starving among the snowy peaks for three weeks, the party made contact with the Nez Perce, who offered food from their abundant stores of roots, berries, nuts and fish. They ate morels, roasted, and were introduced to pine nuts.

Lewis wrote of picking red, yellow, deep purple, and black currants as well as black gooseberries. There’s mention of wild blackberries and blueberries and chokecherries. Here’s a dish they really would have enjoyed:

CREAM AND BREAD PUDDING WITH CHERRIES
1 cup of dried cherries
2 tablespoons of brandy
4 cups of French bread, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2 1/2 cups of half-and-half
2 cups of milk
4 eggs
1/2 cup of sugar
1 teaspoon of grated lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg

Soak the cherries in brandy for 20 minutes. Layer the cherries and bread in a well-buttered one and one-half quart casserole. Heat 2 cups of the half-and-half and 2 cups of milk to just below boiling; pour over the bread and cherries and let stand for 30 minutes. Beat together the eggs, sugar, lemon zest, salt and nutmeg; pour evenly over the bread and milk mixture. Bake in a 325-degree oven. After 30 minutes, pour the remaining 1/2 cup of half-and-half over the mixture. Bake one hour more, until the mixture is set.

The travelers learned how to find and process many varieties of edible roots, and for months they ate many pounds of roots—at times they had nothing else. The wild turnip they called a white apple, “a tasteless, insipid food.” One dish they ate was:

NEW POTATOES WITH HAZELNUTS AND FENNEL
Toss 1 pound of new potatoes, peeled and quartered, 1 fennel bulb, peeled and quartered, and 1/4 cup of chopped hazelnuts in a 12x9-inch baking pan. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil and stir to mix. Bake in a 400-degree oven 45-50 minutes. Serves 4-6.

Finally the explorers reached the Pacific and spent the winter at Fort Clatsop in Oregon. Here they ate more wild roots, elk, salmon, and a whale. Lewis described eating the whale—“it was white and not unlike the fat of poark, tho’ the texture was more spongey and somewhat coarser.”

Members of the Corps of Discovery spent roughly a thousand days and nights together, from the rainy October morning they left the falls of the Ohio River until they finally pulled their canoes out of the Mississippi at noon on September 23, 1806, when they reached the St. Louis river bank.

The expedition had traveled nearly 8,000 miles. Their detailed journals contributed important information about the land, its geographic features, its natural resources, and its native peoples.

And now it is your turn to follow their trail and retrace their steps and learn more about how they did it.

Thanks to Mary Gunderson’s Food Journal of Lewis & Clark: Recipes for an Expedition. The recipes in her book reflect life along the trail in North America at the beginning of the 1800s.