Survival Food

Survival Food: North Woods Stories by a Menominee Cook

by Thomas Pecore Weso

In this intimate and engaging Native food memoir, Thomas Pecore Weso writes, “I cannot separate foods from the moments in my life when I first tasted them.” His coming-of-age tales, set on the Menominee Indian Reservation of the 1980s and 1990s, recall the foods that influenced his youth—not just subsistence meals from hunted, fished, and gathered sources, but also the commodity food distributed by the government, like canned pork, dried beans, and powdered eggs, that made up the bulk of his family’s pantry. His mom called this “survival food.”

These personal essays—some serious, some laugh-out-loud funny—combine Weso’s lively stories with his perspective on the political currents of the era, as well as dozens of recipes, from turtle soup and gray squirrel stew to twice-baked cheesy potatoes. The result is a unique concoction of modern foodways, Indigenous history, and creative nonfiction from a singular storyteller.

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